Top 10 Tools Every Entrepreneur Should Know

Starting and running your own business may be hard due to plenty of reasons. Lack of knowledge and experience, limited financial resources or distance teamwork often comes in the way of growth and wealth. While gaining experience is a question of time, the other problems can be solved with the aid of information technologies. Below you’ll find the list of software solutions that help entrepreneurs organize different business processes and have decent free or low cost plans.

1. Website Building

Wix enables you to create a web flash site in a couple of minutes with no special knowledge necessary. You just choose a template that is most attractive and suitable for you. Then you customize it according to your corporate brandbook choosing the appropriate colors, upload your info and fotos, set the menu, that’s it, the website is ready. If you upgrade to the premium version, you get your own domain, extra storage space and no wix adds inside your website.

2. Web Analytics

Google Analytics is a well-known solution that helps you monitor and analyze your website traffic. A detailed statistics shows you the web sources that bring you visitors and your audience characteristics. You can set up a goal – the desired action a user should make – and track efficiency of your website performance and advertising campaigns.

3. Project Management&Collaboration

TeamLab offers a wide range of features to organize business and teamwork. Along with a basic toolset including time tracking, tasks, reports, you get a variety of additional options that mainly aim at building efficient communication. Though multifunctional TeamLab is easy to understand and get used to. The majority of features is provided for free with no limits. Depending on your requirements and needs, you can choose one of the three deployment solutions: SaaS, open source or Amazon Machine Image.

4. Mail

Among the plenty of Zoho tools, Mail is one of the most popular ones. It provides a standard suite of desktop email options. Unlike the mentioned desktop clients, Zoho Mail operates in a browser bringing the convenience and accessibility of web apps. The free plan is limited to 3 users, one domain and 1GB Mail Storage per user.

5. Accounting

Developed especially for small business, Yendo provides the most essential accounting features. You can create and send invoices, generate reports, use sales, purchases, profit & loss and balance sheets. All payments and expenses are automatically recorded. Yendo is smartphone and tablet compatible, what makes bookkeeping processes even easier to track and manage.

6. Workforce Management

Kappix is designed to organize staff work, schedule shifts, positions, duties and employees. You get an ability to customize the interface according to your needs: to change the calendar format to different sizes or set up the day when scheduling begins. Kappix is installed on a client’s server and operates on the Windows platforms: Win7, Vista, 2003 Server, WinXP.

7. CRM

Free CRM is a web-based software solution to maintain customer relationships. A fine bunch of options includes calendar, contacts tracking, support, service and sales management. For those who prefer in-house solutions, Free CRM offers server editions. The free version has almost all the features but data and record storage is quite limited.

8. Helpdesk&Support

Mojo Helpdesk provides a centralized space to work with customer requests. Clients feedback is organized in the system of tickets, each one assigned to a particular employee. This way you achieve ultimate efficiency and quality of support. Mojo Helpdesk is integrated with Google Apps: Gmail, Calendar and others.

9. Customer Surveys

Survey Monkey allows you to be truly client-oriented and learn the most about your customers. Using this service, surveys are extremely easy and quick to organize. There are templates at your disposal that let you create a new research in just a few steps. The answers are validated and converted to graphics and can be downloaded to your PC or printed.

10. Social Media Analytics

Social Mention monitors your company presence in social media: Facebook, Twitter, Digg, FriendFeed, YouTube  and other web resources. You can choose whether to check your popularity in blogs or find out questions and videos about your product. It also calculates company’s influence in online community and defines brand strength and reputation. The automated alerts system helps users constantly keep track of social buzz.

Source : shoutmeloud.com

Top 5 Uncommon Ways to Promote Your Business

Sometimes trying unorthodox methods does lead to success, however that is very rare. How successful your promotion campaign goes depends upon the way it is planned. The ways you decide to promote your business should be well thought and well reviewed. There are thousands of easy ways in which a promotion campaign turns out successful but still, some people choose pretty unusual ways.

These unusual ways, if somehow works in their favor, can give results far better than anyone can imagine. Even one or two of these methods, if included in a strategy, can save a lot of money. We have studied all the cases and have designed a list of 5 uncommon ways to promote your business.

1. Seaplane

This is an old but effective way to promote your business. If you are 30 years old or above, then you would have probably seen a seaplane promoting a business, a product or a movie. Seaplanes were considered the best tools to business promotions, as they covered almost the entire city and attracted attention of all those who it passed by. A seaplane will have a banner tied on its tail and will fly around the city for several hours. A seaplane will also be used to distribute fliers all over the city. However today this method of promotion has become a thing of the past, and even though some people still use it others find it inappropriate and a low standard marketing technique.

2. Bus Ads

How many times have you seen a bus with a movie or a product advertised on it? It is one of the cheapest ways to promote your business. Placing an ad on a bus will spread your name to every area and corner of the city where the bus will travel. This turns out to be a very effective strategy but still most people avoid this. This strategy is usually avoided due to the fact that one cannot target specific people, but only attract a great volume which sounds useless.

3. Sponsoring Game shows

Another uncommon way to promote your name is by sponsoring a series of game shows. Game shows are watched by people who love entertainment and there is no age or content restriction on them so they cover an extremely wide range of audience. It could turn out to be even better if the show goes international.

4. Brand ambassadors

Celebrities and sports personalities are followed by people all over the world. People are crazy about what brands they wear, what products they use, and what cars they drive. Making an uprising star your brand ambassador could be the break your company needed. This way of promotion helps your company become a worldwide name and every new product can become an instant hit using your marketing weapon.

5. Product Placement

Product placement is displaying your products in movies or TV shows. TV series and movies are watched by almost everyone on the planet, making it a promotional hit. However if the show or the movie is a failure, so is your marketing campaign.

Tim is a brand support specialist. After spending 5 years in the industry, Tim recommends the use of promotional merchandise and especially promotional keyrings for effective business promotion.