Cool online tools and how to use them

It seems like every week I learn about some new online tool that can automate some part of my business, enhance my marketing, make research easier or help me reach more of my target market.

It’s truly amazing what’s out there, and how many small and solo business owners have no idea that these tools exist. It’s so easy to get caught up in the day to day operation of our businesses and put research, strategy and systems development on the “I’ll get around to it next week” list.

Well here are a few tools that are worth checking out now. See how you can put them to work for you right away. All are either free or low cost.

Tele-classes: Book a teleconference line for free at FreeConference for up to 150 attendees. Tele-classes are a great way to connect and share information with prospects and clients anywhere. There are many ways you can use tele-conferences to grow your business.

Automated phone calls: Use an customized automated voice message to alert customers of special events and offers or to invite them to an event. Even set up a virtual receptionist at VoiceShot.

Social Bookmarking: make bookmarking your web pages and blog to social bookmarking sites much easier and less time consuming at SocialMarker. It’s free.

Video submissions: Submit your video to multiple video sites all at once and be able to track how many viewer you get on multiple sites at TubeMogul.

Search Engine Optimization: Want free traffic from the search engines? Here’s a free tool that will help you see how you can improve the SEO on you web pages- SEOQuake.

Track your online reputation-this is great if you want to monitor what people are saying about you and your business. TrackUR

Check your website traffic ranking: Alexa. At the top, click on Traffic Rankings and enter your URL in the search box. Your Alexa ranking tells other business and potential clients how busy and popular your website is.

Get your website graded compared to others, and learn how to improve your website at WebsiteGrader. This tool doesn’t always work properly, buy hey, it’s free.

See how your website looks in different browsers with BrowserShots. You may find that your web pages look great in Internet Explorer, but not so great in Firefox, for example. It’s important that they look great in all major browsers so that you don’t loose visitors. This is also a free tool.

Just a few cool tools. I’ve got many more I’ll share with you in the future. Do you know of a cool tool? Please include it with your comment or join my free marketing forum at:

http://greatmarketingideas.ning.com/  and share it there.

6 Comments
  • Nancy King
    Posted at 13:46h, 08 August Reply

    Hi Janis:

    Thanks for the nice endorsement on FreeConference.
    Just wanted to let you know that we also have InstantConference.com and a new InstantConference.com/enterprise service featuring
    administrator controls and very low cost toll-fre
    service, free desktop sharing, free recording
    and more. I would apreciate the opportunity to
    speak to you further about it. Feel free to contact
    me.

    Nancy King
    VP Marketing
    Global Conference Partners

  • Danella Rutherford
    Posted at 22:03h, 14 August Reply

    Hello Janis,

    since I’ve been following quite a few of your bits and pieces I thought I might drop you a comment for a change.

    You pieces have beeen really valuable to me, as I am a Pensioner and trying to set up something that will help others in the same situation as me.

    Not easy when we get to our latter years, to understand all this modern day English!

    I have very recently been able to use this wonderful piece of software to build and set up a completely detailed and monetized site using WordPress, on my shared hosting, and it has been so very easy.

    It is basically just point and click after you view the actual videos. you have to learn not to run ahead of the videos as you go htough, which I tried and had to re-trace my steps.

    because the videos follow in sequence it makes the whole task of looking like an expert in Word Press so easy.

    Don’t know if it fits your criteria of being useful for your readers or not.
    Just passing it along in case it is, as it certainly has been for me.

    http://www.expertwordpress.com/?rid=26

    Worth a look anyway.

    bless you for listening,
    Danella

  • Danella Rutherford
    Posted at 22:05h, 14 August Reply

    sorry Janis,
    Forgot to let you know my site is a work in process as I tried to run ahead and had to re-trace. Forgot to add this bit with the comment.

    Danella

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    Posted at 20:13h, 16 March Reply

    […] Cool online tools and how to use them […]

  • Dorothy
    Posted at 03:29h, 06 January Reply

    Great little article with some great tools. Some I already knew of but many I hadn’t seen. Thank you!

  • Jack Holland
    Posted at 05:09h, 31 July Reply

    Both webinars and teleseminars can be effective tools… but its important to take the opportunity to add branding to the experience for participants. For example, customize your greeting, play some nice nostalgic hold music, and at least make the “wait” more enjoyable. http://brandedbridgeline.com does this– others that you might consider are uberconference and speek.

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