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14 Online Tools Every Small Business Owner Should Use
- 1. 14 Online ToolsEvery Small Business Owner Should Use www.DYWTSI.com By: Lisa McTigue, Owner © DYWTSI, 2011
- 2. 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 UCF Arena in 1997. Since then, I’ve worked with Fortune 500 Companies, Hollywood films, Oscar-winning actors, and top-selling performing artists. One day, I grew tired of big business and decided to use my knowledge to help small business. I’ve been a small business owner for more than eight years and some of my clients do not know much about the internet, but do know they have to be a part of it. 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 a mock-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 already have, show us websites you like, design your own in Word, Pages or Photoshop, or hand-draw us an outline. We are here to help you put your most professional foot forward online and in social media.
- 3. #1-6 Google Free Email Free Phone Service Free Calendar Free Video Hosting Free 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 well with their Calendar and Documents service. I think their best product is Google Voice. As long as you have a cell phone, home phone, 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 can create custom greetings, send text messages, and transfer calls. You may have heard of their Video Hosting service, YouTube. This is a great SEO tool for you business. Video not only promote your business, but also aid with your search engine ranking. Google Analytics is also a free service that let’s you see the breakdown of visitors to your site. City, State, Country, Number of pages viewed, how long they were viewed, etc. 14 Online Tools Every Small Business Owner Should Use
- 4. #7 Free ConferenceCalling FreeConferenceCalling.com Online call management software. Whether you need 3 or 1,000 people on a call this service can handle it. You can change the host code as often as you like and can even give out a guest speaker code. They also play MP3 recordings that can be archives, downloaded, embedded into a website, 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 unmute callers. 14 Online Tools Every Small Business Owner Should Use
- 5. #8 Email Marketing AWeber Online email marketing tool that comes with autoresponders! The key tool that other services 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
- 6. #9 Online Storage Egnyte or MozyPro Everyone should back up their hard drives! When your hard drive crashes it can be emotionally 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, or theft. Now with cloud computing there are several services that are easy to access and cheaper than the options before it. I’ve recommended two different services because their pricing is arranged differently. If you do not use a lot of hard drive space (under ~20 GB), then MozyPro should work perfectly for you. However, if you are like me and have more than 1TB of used hard drives, Egnyte is excellent. Egnyte is also HIPPA and SEC compliant. 14 Online Tools Every Small Business Owner Should Use
- 7. #10 Professional Video Animoto Animoto is a create Small Business tool. You do NOT need to be a professional videographer or editor to have professional videos online. Adding videos to your Website, Blog, YouTube, Facebook, and elsewhere will not only 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 is worth a million. With video you can quickly draw someone to your business or drive them away. Animoto is an internet application that let’s you produce videos with the click of a button. Choose you images, select the music and publish for the world to see. Client testimonials, promotional spots for your business, compelling content for your website or blog. Get people talking. Get people sharing. Drive more business. 14 Online Tools Every Small Business Owner Should Use
- 8. #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 a local service. 9AM Monday company meetings no longer have to be held in the conference room. If your employees work different shifts, work from home, or have floating schedules gotomeeting.com allows you all to connect in one place at one time and collaborate. You can share your computer screen, use docs, polls, whiteboard, chat, and invite others on the fly. • Boost Employee Productivity • Increase Sales • Consult from Anywhere • Reduce Training Costs 14 Online Tools Every Small Business Owner Should Use
- 9. #12 Social Media Facebook Facebook is the #1 Social Media site in the world. It has surpassed Google for weekly traffic within the US. With more than 500 million users, if Facebook were a country it would be the third largest nation - larger than the United States. Twitter 50 million tweets are sent everyday on Twitter. 26 million people follow brands on Twitter. 67% purchase products & services from those brands. YouTube YouTube is the 4th most visited site on the Internet and 2nd in search, just behind Google. The average online viewer watches more than 12 hours of online video every month. Blogs 34% of bloggers post about products and brands. 78% of people trust peer recommendations over advertising. 14 Online Tools Every Small Business Owner Should Use
- 10. #13 CMS Content Management System Manage your website and/ or blog with a web content management system that simplifies 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
- 11. #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 more visitors your website will have. There are several variables involved and each search engine weighs them differently. First and foremost your website must be SEO friendly. What does this mean? The text, menus, images, videos shopping carts, and other elements on your website 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” otherwise known as inbound links to your website. How do you achieve this? Web Directory submission, link co-ops, blog/fan recommendations, etc. 14 Online Tools Every Small Business Owner Should Use
- 12. Website Addresses Google Google Email (Gmail): www.gmail.com Google Calendar: www.google.com/calendar Google Documents: docs.google.com Google Phone (Google Voice): www.google.com/voice Google Video Hosting (YouTube): www.youtube.com Google Website Analytics (Google Analytics): www.google.com/analytics Free Conference Calls: www.freeconferencecalling.com Email Marketing: www.aweber.com Online Storage: www.egnyte.com or www.mozy.com/pro Professional Video: www.animoto.com Online Meetings: www.gotomeeting.com Social Media - Facebook: www.facebook.com Social Media - Twitter: www.twitter.com Social Media - YouTube: www.youtube.com Social Media - Blogs: www.wordpress.com or www.blogger.com or www.movabletype.com CMS: www.wordpress.com or www.blogger.com or www.movabletype.com or www.joomla.com or www.drupal.com SEO: www.dywtsi.com/seo 14 Online Tools Every Small Business Owner Should Use
- 13. Getting you businessonline 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 Why Us? – Joomla – Drupal – Magento • 14+ Years Website Building Exp. – osCommerce • We Care About Small Business • Photoshop to Email • High Client Retention Rate • Technical Consulting • Affordable • Social Media Consulting • We’ll Talk To You! • Social Media Planning • SEO Services 14 Online Tools Every Small Business Owner Should Use 10% Off Orders Over $120 - Code: SLIDES