Posts Tagged ‘Small Business’

GoToMeeting is a tool I have used for a number of years now and is something I couldn’t do without. Sometimes it’s a training session I am giving that has multiple attendees who need to call in from different locations, or sometimes it is a client who needs a little help with their WordPress Blog, either way, GoToMeeting is what I use in these scenarios.

Granted, this product will only be useful for certain business owners but one should never assume, so wanted to share it with you! Here is how it works, straight from the horses mouth so to speak:

Pretty simple right? Some of the features are as follows:

• Show attendees your desktop, or switch to an individual person’s desktop. Great when you are trying to help them solve issues with their machine or a specific program they are using
• You can also share a keyboard and mouse. This allows you to move around their machine, or vice versa.
• You can use their phone service which allows you to have up to 15 people conferenced in on the call at one time.
• Online sessions can be recorded. Great for training sessions that can be used in the future for others to view.

So, as you can see, a lot of great benefits to using GoToMeeting. It’s perfect for the small business owner, just $49 a month for the service. If you want to get bigger and have the need, you can use their GoToWebinar product which allows you to have a maximum of 1,000 attendees at one time!

To get started with GoToMeeting click this link to get a Free Trial + $10 Off or click the ad below. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

When I started out with Purple Star Consulting, I knew I wanted (or needed really) to have a fax number. I looked at some fax machines, all pretty expensive and not within the budget of a new company getting started. Also, I didn’t want to be tied down to having a physical fax machine that I have to use to send and receive faxes. As a consultant working on my laptop, I love that I can do my job from any coffee shop, beach or vacation home in the world! So, I wanted to keep my faxes the same way.

I did some searching online and found e-Fax. I found out that I could get a fax number that sends and receives faxes using my current email address. Click here to check out their site (they have a 30 day FREE trial too!). I need to be able to receive signed service agreements and this service is great. Using a fax number assigned to me, the sender can use their own fax machine and send the sheets of paper through in the usual way. When receiving the fax, it comes through as a PDF attachment to my e-mail address.

The cost for the service is a monthly fee. You get a certain number of free sends and receives, then after that you pay per page. Below is their current costs for their eFax Plus service.

No more buying expensive toner, no more faxes that are difficult to read due to black smudges all over the paper, and no more missing important faxes because you aren’t right by your fax machine! You don’t really have much to lose with trying out the FREE 30 Day trial. If you don’t like it after that, just cancel. Pretty simple!

If you use Constant Contact, you may already know this, but I just found out the other day and thought it was pretty cool! (If you don’t use it, click here for more information and a free 60 trial
). There are many different ways you can add contacts to your database. Sometimes they sign themselves up through your website which means you don’t need to do anything. Other times, your new contacts come from networking or business meetings and the e-mail addresses are on business cards. This means you have to log in to your account and add the information, or so I thought!

Although there are different ways to add, and sometimes you might just upload a spreadsheet of new contacts, if you just have one or two to add, you can do it simply, direct from your desktop. Log into your Constant Contact account. From the home page, click the Import your contact list link on the right side, or alternatively, click the Contacts link from the top to add new contacts.

Next, you will be asked how you would like to add contacts to your list. Click on the link right at the bottom for import tools:

You will see a list of many different ways to import in contacts directly (you may find some of these useful also). Click on the one right at the bottom, the Contact Capture Tool.

This will start a download. Pretty simple, just walk through the steps to complete the download. Once complete, you will need to enter in your user name and password for Constant Contact. You also determine which of your mailing lists you wish to sign people up to by clicking on Add or Remove Contact Lists from the middle of the pop up. Enter in the new contact e-mail address. At the bottom, you can determine up to 4 fields of information that you wish to contact. First Name is always a good one, as is Company Name. With fields, you can add these to your e-mails for a personal touch. Enter everything in and click Add.

If the contact is already in Constant Contact, it will let you know and ask how you want to handle this contact. If its a new contact, it will be saved exactly as you enter it. Click OK.

Once the contact is saved, you will be notified at the top of the screen. You can close out of the capture tool, but can either get back to it from your icons on the bottom toolbar of your computer, or from your desktop if you created a shortcut icon during the install. Quick and easy!

I recently worked with some wonderful new clients, so wanted to share with you and get them some visitors!

The first one is a business that already had a great sit. Sarah Johnson, the owner of Pampered Pet Care of Atlanta, realized the value of having a blog on her site. Having a blog gives you access to publish articles, educate people and  inform clients of upcoming holiday news  or services. She also knew that a blog is one of the key elements in having great search engine results.

I was able to use her current site as the template, and incorporate the blog right into it, using the same images, fonts and color scheme. She has some great things to say, so check out her blog here: http://www.pamperedpetcare.com/blog

Next is another pet sitting company, but this time they are in North Carolina. Pet Sitters of Charlotte are a relatively new company. Phil & Lisa Koch were great to work with. Phil knew that to have a site that would work “for” them, Twitter, Facebook and a blog were the way to go. I created a website using WordPress, giving them control of their own pages using the Content Management System that this blogging platform provides.

I added all of the standard features to their package including a favicon for their site, submitting their site to all of the major search engines, adding keywords, descriptions and titles, and providing them with Google Analytics to see who is visiting their site. Their site is still so new, a couple of extra visits won’t hurt, check them out! http://petsittersofcharlotte.com

The last site I want to highlight is one I worked on for a wonderful lady named Tracy Knight. Tracy and I must have had about 3 or 4 calls before I started doing work for her. She already had a blog, but was using WordPress.com which has certain limitations.  Having reached the limit of what she could do with this, she began to realize that having a WordPress blog set up under her own domain would allow her to have a custom theme, put banner ads on the site, and get access to code if she needed to.

Tracy had a beautiful header image that I used as a starting point for her custom theme. Tracy’s blog provides inspiration, thought provoking questions and most of her blog posts get some great comments posted to theme. No matter your belief, religion or opinions, I think everyone can gain by taking a look at her blog. Keep up the great work Tracy! http://womenencouraged.com

If you are like me, you don’t exactly have ‘free time’. Twitter is a tool I use, and have a love/hate relationship with. I love it for marketing and getting the word out there, and building new relationships with people I would otherwise never meet, but I hate it because there is so much I know I miss! There are so many great links posted, good information and also retweets and mentions that I some how don’t always have time to get to.

Well, to help keep me up to date, I use a service called Social Oomph. I signed up for it almost a year ago when I first got into using Twitter but have really found it useful the past six months during which I have tweeted more and more on the social networking site. Social Oomph allows you to sign up and create an account and link it to your Twitter feeds. It will track when you are mentioned, when you get Direct Messages, or when your tweets are reposted by someone else (retweeted).

Simply sign up for a free account, then click on Social Accounts, Add New Account, then Add Twitter.

Once you do this, you will be prompted to authenticate with Twitter which allows SocialOomph to connect with your account. Once you have done this, the following screen will appear. You have options to autofollow people that follow up, and send them a message directly at the same time. Be careful how you use this. Many people using Twitter hate this, including me. It’s impersonal and even worse, if it’s someone trying to sell to you it’s really offputting. You may notice that in the screenshot below, I do have a message and I am auto following people. Well, true, and here is where I view it as the exception. This account listed is one for our local city project, New Lawrenceville. The message is to inform people about an upcoming event we are having. Hopefully it won’t appear as salesy or offensive! Make up your own mind about setting that message.

Finally, you can then see all of the times you are mentioned and who mentioned you. One of the settings for your account allows you to have an e-mail sent to you at the end of the day, listing all the times you were mentioned. I like this feature as it allows me to see who has retweeted my tweets or sent me a direct message, even if I have been busy with other things throughout the day and not noticed this.

Finally, they do have a paid version with some fantastic features that I wouldn’t mind trying, but after the free trial, at $30, not sure I would be willing to fork out that much each month.