Women in Business Creating Profit and Lifestyle!

Are you continually blown away by the all the advances in online technology? Just as I master the latest innovation, something new and different pops up, that others are now making millions on. 

If you’re a business owner it’s paramount that you keep abreast of these advances though, to ensure your business is running as effectively as possible and gaining continuous exposure.  On the flip side of this, there is a plethora of free online marketing tools that make marketing your business very affordable.  The trick is knowing which tools are useful and appropriate for your business.  Carol Daunt Skyring from LearnTel is a an expert in this area and she has kindly highlighted those we should be looking at.

Free Online Tools Can Boost Your Business
By Carol Daunt Skyring

The Internet has changed the nature of business. Most businesses can benefit from not only having an online presence, but by actively using their websites to generate business.

There are many free online tools that can give small and medium sized businesses an edge on their competitors and against larger organisations. These tools enable you to be more effective for less cost. Below is an overview of some of these free tools that can extend your business reach.

Blogs
A blog gives you a voice to the world and raises your profile to a broad market. Become an expert in your industry by posting relevant and useful information. If you keep giving something that is seen as being useful, people will keep reading. Of course, you make sure that you have ways of capturing details of your readers so you can market your products and services to them.

You can also use a blog as a dynamic, and free, website. You might have a fairly static website that links to a blog for up-to-date information. We do this with our events so we’re not relying too heavily on our web developer who only works part-time for us.

Our preferred free blogging solutions are Blogger (quick and easy to set up) and WordPress (more complex but with many more features in it).

Wikis
A wiki is a web space where you can collaborate with others. It can be public or private. All of our team are teleworkers so a wiki is a great way for us to share files and work on them without emailing versions to and fro – and usually losing track of which is the current version!

You might also set up a wiki to work collaboratively with your customers. Imagine their delight to be able to input directly into your thinking process on their project.

We’ve been using PB Wiki – it has some nice features. Another popular one is Wikispaces. Wikis have taken a great leap forward in recent times and there are now some very nice solutions that give you a lot of functionality. Ones we’re experimenting with are Wetpaint and Netvibes.

Online Surveys
Surveys are a great way to engage clients and interest prospective clients. Online surveys are quick and easy and the data just has to be exported – not typed up from numerous printed or handwritten documents. You can use surveys to get feedback about your products and services and then suse this to improve your operation.

Another use is to position yourself as a leader in the field by collecting the thoughts and ideas of others. We run a monthly survey through our blog as well as directly to our clients. We might ask for their tips on a certain topic or what professional books they would recommend to others. We then share this with the world through our blogs.

Our favourite free online survey tool is Survey Monkey.

Podcasts
I seriously doubt that there’s anyone under 35 who doesn’t own an Mp3 player (it doesn’t have to be an iPod to play podcasts). There are many of us over 35 who also have them!

This is a fabulous way to get your message ‘heard’. All you need is a computer and microphone to record a podcast. Once done, you can post it at several websites and your voice is available to the world. Our favourite place for podcasts is Podcast Alley – you can search on any topic and easily download it into your computer. We’ve been experimenting with MyPodcast.com.

Online Discussion Forums
If your business is in an industry that is constantly changing, your clients may appreciate being able to discuss topics of interest with others. You can always ‘seed’ these discussions with your own take on it – along with a solution you just happen to have available!

We usually keep our discussion forums private and make them available only to clients. They usually run for short periods of time until the topic has been exhausted. Our favourite free tool for this is Quick Topic and we’re looking at portBB.

Chat/Instant Messaging
Skype is an amazing use of voice over the Internet to provide free calls from computer to computer. It also allows you to call regular phones for a small fee – about 3 cents per minute. You set up an account with an initial 10 euros charged to your credit card.

Skype also allows you to videoconference if you have a webcam. All you need is a cheap camera that attaches to your computer or a built-in camera on your laptop. Skype is our office – if you’re on Skype you’re in the office!

Online Calendars (public & private)
Online calendars allow you to share your appointments with your customers and/or staff. We use two free versions for different reasons. RSS Calendar allows us to publish events on our website quickly and easily. There’s a piece of code on the website that links to RSS Calendar and whenever we add an event it automatically appears on the website. You can have different categories and publish different events to different websites if you wish.

With a virtual team, it’s essential to share a calendar so that everyone knows who is available when and where. We use AirSet to share events, meetings and my business appointments. You can set up different ‘groups’ and invite relevant people into each group to view the information. You can also combine some, or all, of the group calendars to have everything on the one page.

Are they really free?
Yes they are – but there’s always some small catch. Most of the tools I’ve listed run advertising alongside your activity eg Google Ads. They also usually provide you with a limited range of features and have full-featured versions that you can pay for.

These are just some of the free tools available – ones we find useful.  Others you might be interested in include: Royalty free photos, Email promotions manager, SlideShare, RSS Aggregator and various google tools.  Links to these and others listed here.  

Are you utulising these free tools to your best advantage?

What are your thoughts?

What free tools do you find most effective?  What would you not recommend?  Do you have any advice for other women about great tools you’ve discovered?  Let’s share our secrets here.