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14 Online Tools Every Small Business Owner Should Use By: Lisa McTigue, Owner © DYWTSI, 2011 www.DYWTSI.com
14 Online Tools EverySmall Business Owner Should Use
By: Lisa McTigue, Owner© DYWTSI, 2011
www.DYWTSI.com
Message from Lisa
Getting your business online should not be confusing.
I’ve worked in web services for more than 14 years. My first client was the UCFArena in 1997. Since then, I’ve worked with Fortune 500 Companies, Hollywoodfilms, Oscar-winning actors, and top-selling performing artists.
One day, I grew tired of big business and decided to use my knowledge to help smallbusiness. I’ve been a small business owner for more than eight years and some ofmy clients do not know much about the internet, but do know they have to be a part ofit. I started DYWTSI for them and other small business owners like them.
DYWTSI is here to help small businesses reach their mass audience. Give us amock-up of the webpage(s) you want and we will turn them into a functioning website.You do NOT need to learn technical terms or applications. Use a design you alreadyhave, show us websites you like, design your own in Word, Pages or Photoshop, orhand-draw us an outline. We are here to help you put your most professional footforward online and in social media.
#1-6 Google
Free Email Free Phone ServiceFree Calendar Free Video HostingFree Documents Free Website Analytics
Google is great tool for overall integration at the price of $0. Their email service(Gmail) allows you to send and receive emails from your own domain and works wellwith their Calendar and Documents service.
I think their best product is Google Voice. As long as you have a cell phone, homephone, or office line you can set up Google Voice. Google Voice is its own number,but can ring to multiple phone, emails you transcriptions of voicemails, you cancreate custom greetings, send text messages, and transfer calls.
You may have heard of their Video Hosting service, YouTube. This is a great SEOtool for you business. Video not only promote your business, but also aid with yoursearch engine ranking.
Google Analytics is also a free service that let’s you see the breakdown of visitors toyour site. City, State, Country, Number of pages viewed, how long they wereviewed, etc.
14 Online Tools Every Small Business Owner Should Use
#7 Free Conference Calling
FreeConferenceCalling.com
Online call management software. Whether you need 3 or 1,000 people on a callthis service can handle it. You can change the host code as often as you like andcan even give out a guest speaker code.
They also play MP3 recordings that can be archives, downloaded, embedded into awebsite, blog, Facebook, or elsewhere. They also support live online chat.
Free Conference Calling is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from anywhere.
The online management software is easy to use, you can control access to the call,watch attendees join the call, manually exit participants from the call, and unmutecallers.
14 Online Tools Every Small Business Owner Should Use
#8 Email Marketing
AWeber
Online email marketing tool that comes with autoresponders! The key tool that otherservices are missing.
Aweber is a minimal investment to growing your business.
• Manage Subscribers• HTML Email Templates• Blog Newsletters• Blog Posts to Email• Email Newsletters• Performance Tracking• Subscriber Segmenting• Integration into 3rd Party Applications: Wordpress, PayPal, Twitter, Facebook• Follow Up Autoresponder• Email Deliverability Rate
14 Online Tools Every Small Business Owner Should Use
#9 Online Storage
Egnyte or MozyPro
Everyone should back up their hard drives! When your hard drive crashes it can beemotionally devastating. For a small business it could mean that you close up shop.
I have always recommend offsite back-up storage, in case of fire, natural disaster, ortheft. Now with cloud computing there are several services that are easy to accessand cheaper than the options before it.
I’ve recommended two different services because their pricing is arrangeddifferently. If you do not use a lot of hard drive space (under ~20 GB), then MozyProshould work perfectly for you. However, if you are like me and have more than 1TBof used hard drives, Egnyte is excellent.
Egnyte is also HIPPA and SEC compliant.
14 Online Tools Every Small Business Owner Should Use
#10 Professional Video
Animoto
Animoto is a create Small Business tool. You do NOT need to be a professionalvideographer or editor to have professional videos online.
Adding videos to your Website, Blog, YouTube, Facebook, and elsewhere will notonly improve your SEO, but also draw clients towards your business.
Like the saying used to go “A picture is worth a thousand words,” well a video isworth a million. With video you can quickly draw someone to your business or drivethem away.
Animoto is an internet application that let’s you produce videos with the click of abutton. Choose you images, select the music and publish for the world to see.
Client testimonials, promotional spots for your business, compelling content for yourwebsite or blog.
Get people talking. Get people sharing. Drive more business.
14 Online Tools Every Small Business Owner Should Use
#11 Online Meetings
GoToMeeting.com
Collaborate with a large group, host an online meeting, or training session.
Small business is global. We’re no longer confined to being the corner store or alocal service. 9AM Monday company meetings no longer have to be held in theconference room. If your employees work different shifts, work from home, or havefloating schedules gotomeeting.com allows you all to connect in one place at onetime and collaborate.
You can share your computer screen, use docs, polls, whiteboard, chat, and inviteothers on the fly.
• Boost Employee Productivity• Increase Sales• Consult from Anywhere• Reduce Training Costs
14 Online Tools Every Small Business Owner Should Use
#12 Social Media
Facebook is the #1 Social Media site in the world. It has surpassed Google forweekly traffic within the US. With more than 500 million users, if Facebook were acountry it would be the third largest nation - larger than the United States.
50 million tweets are sent everyday on Twitter. 26 million people follow brands onTwitter. 67% purchase products & services from those brands.
YouTube
YouTube is the 4th most visited site on the Internet and 2nd in search, just behindGoogle. The average online viewer watches more than 12 hours of online videoevery month.
Blogs
34% of bloggers post about products and brands. 78% of people trust peerrecommendations over advertising.
14 Online Tools Every Small Business Owner Should Use
#13 CMS
Content Management System
Manage your website and/ or blog with a web content management system thatsimplifies the publication of your web content.
• Wordpress– Open Source blogging tool and publishing platform
• Joomla– Open Source publishing platform
• Blogger– Blog publishing service (owned by Google)
• Movable Type– Blog publishing software
• Drupal– Open Source CMS and content management framework– Used by whitehouse.gov and data.gov.uk
14 Online Tools Every Small Business Owner Should Use
#14 SEO
Search Engine Optimization
Process of improving the visibility of your website in search engines. This is called“organic” discovery or free marketing.
Unfortunately, it is a very tedious process that consumes a lot of time and energy.But, one thing goes without saying - the higher you appear in search results the morevisitors your website will have.
There are several variables involved and each search engine weighs themdifferently. First and foremost your website must be SEO friendly. What does thismean? The text, menus, images, videos shopping carts, and other elements on yourwebsite must be easily read by the Search Engines. You must also have a sitemap,this allows the Search Engine to see all of your available webpages.
The best way to promote your site in the rankings is to have “Backlinks” otherwiseknown as inbound links to your website. How do you achieve this? Web Directorysubmission, link co-ops, blog/fan recommendations, etc.
14 Online Tools Every Small Business Owner Should Use
Website Addresses
Google Email (Gmail): www.gmail.comGoogle Calendar: www.google.com/calendarGoogle Documents: docs.google.comGoogle Phone (Google Voice): www.google.com/voiceGoogle Video Hosting (YouTube): www.youtube.comGoogle Website Analytics (Google Analytics): www.google.com/analyticsFree Conference Calls: www.freeconferencecalling.comEmail Marketing: www.aweber.comOnline Storage: www.egnyte.com or www.mozy.com/proProfessional Video: www.animoto.comOnline Meetings: www.gotomeeting.comSocial Media - Facebook: www.facebook.comSocial Media - Twitter: www.twitter.comSocial Media - YouTube: www.youtube.comSocial Media - Blogs: www.wordpress.com or www.blogger.com or www.movabletype.comCMS: www.wordpress.com or www.blogger.com or www.movabletype.com or www.joomla.comor www.drupal.comSEO: www.dywtsi.com/seo
14 Online Tools Every Small Business Owner Should Use
Getting you business online should not be confusing.Web services for small business.
• Domain Registration• Hosting Account Set-up• Document to Photoshop• Document to Website Coding
– HTML– Wordpress– Blogger– Movable Type– Joomla– Drupal– Magento– osCommerce
• Photoshop to Email• Technical Consulting• Social Media Consulting• Social Media Planning• SEO Services
14 Online Tools Every Small Business Owner Should Use
Why Us?
• 14+ Years Website Building Exp.• We Care About Small Business• High Client Retention Rate• Affordable• We’ll Talk To You!
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