Send out a text message to your best clients regarding upcoming specials, promotions and news or just keep in touch with colleagues about an upcoming event. With GroupMe, you populate your groups with people already in your contacts, then you can send and receive messages using your data connection. Any time you have a weak connection, you can switch to SMS, so you never miss a message!

You can also start discussions in Open Groups by directing a topic towards your GroupMe contacts, or send it out on your social networks and see who joins. Find Open Groups from your contacts using the Discover tab.

You can even take private conversations aside with Direct Messaging, add photos, submit your location with any message you send and see all group members on a map. What an excellent way to market to small, targeted groups or keep up-to-the-minute with team members!

Available for all smartphone platforms, FREE.

Want to get organized, save time and be more productive? The apps, gadgets and websites I’ll be highlighting in this series will get you on the road to doing just that. Please take note, these are by no means paid endorsements…they appear on this list based solely on personal experience and/or recommendations from fellow small business owners.

CamCard mobile app: The fastest, easiest way to scan, enter, store, manage and share your business cards! Use your smartphone’s camera to “scan” a business card, add the information to your contacts and sync card data across devices. I tried several business card scanner apps for my Android and found this one to have the best recognition technology. The free version limits users to saving 200 cards.  Available for Android ($11.99 for full version), iPhone (full version is $2.99), Blackberry ($9.99 for full version) and Windows Mobile (the pro version for Windows Mobile also appears to be free).  So get rid of that shoebox full of business cards and get CamCard!!