I can't take it! There are just too many valuable resources online today that I have such a difficult time deciding which ones to choose for my business. Social networking, blogging, database services, email marketing, stock photography sites, design resources, and on and on and on...
I may sound like I am complaining, but really I couldn't be more excited when I find out about another useful online tool that I did not know about. If you have a few minutes, please join me on a brief "site"-seeing tour of three sites that I have visited and returned to many times in the past month or so.
First is Mint.com - a really neat money management tool that I recently stumbled upon in a Yahoo article. To utilize their services, you enter all of your online usernames & passwords for your banks, credit cards, retirement accounts, and any other online financial accounts that you have and Mint pulls all of your transactions in to its software and analyzes it. You can also create your own budgets so you can monitor where you are financially on a daily basis. And, the best thing of all - IT IS FREE!!! Did I mention that I am in love with this site?
Another online tool that I recently started using is MailChimp.com to send out monthly e-newsletters. This one is free if you send less than 3000 emails a month - so it should be perfect for any small business owner like myself. I had no problems designing my campaign using one of their templates or when importing my contact list. The thing that I really like best about MailChimp is that it has really great tracking tools. You can see almost immediately how many people have opened your email, how many people have clicked through to your website, and who has done these things. In my opinion, it couldn't be more informative.
One more! I have been doing some database work and design for a financial planner and she introduced me to Zoho.com. This site has TONS of different resources, but so far I have only been using the Customer Relationship Managment (CRM) section. I had been keeping all of my client information in Outlook, but was not too happy that I had to be on my desktop to access all of this information. With Zoho, I can access my client's information from anywhere. I still use Outlook on a daily basis, but I use the Zoho Outlook Plug-in to add any important emails to Zoho. I can then easily view these emails from Zoho. The CRM is a free feature, but some features you do have to pay for (I am paying a whopping $3/month for the Outlook Plug-In). I am just getting started with Zoho, but I am very pleased with what I have been able to do so far.
I hope that this tour has been informative and that some of these sites can be of use to you!
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