Tools are vital for any business. If you use the wrong tool, or the right tool the wrong way, it will have disastrous results. In this installment of my “Band Yourself” series, I’ve taken a minute to put together a list of the tools that I use daily. These are tools that help me manage my relationships, manage the Phibble website, or allow me to save time by spreading my message quickly.
OK, let’s get into it…
1. Tweetdeck (http://www.tweetdeck.com)
Tweetdeck is an application that allows you to listen and post to several social media websites. You can create colums that lets you sort and manage the streams and
information that matters most to you. It supports Twitter (multiple accounts), Facbook and MySpace.
2. TubeMogul (http://www.tubemogul.com)
If you do video, TubeMogul saves you a bunch of time. You upload your video once to TubeMogul, and they will put it on all of the other
video sites like YouTube, Viddler, etc.
3. WordPress (http://www.wordpress.org)
There are two versions of WordPress, hosted (wordpress.com) and self hosted (wordpress.org). WordPress is the most popular blogging platform and you can
download the software and install it on your own website. WordPress has add-ons (called plug-ins) that let you extend the functionality of the platform, which lets you
create almost any kind of website you want. To give you an idea of it’s power, this site is built entirely on WordPress.
4. Bit.ly (http://www.bit.ly)
Bit.ly is a URL shortenr that allows you to take long web site addresses and shorten them so they fit into your micorblogging posts like Twitter, and
Facebook status updates. Bit.ly also includes some pretty good analytics so you can track click thru’s.
5. Thunderbird eMail with Fox Clocks & Lightning (http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/)
For email I use Mozilla Thunderbird. I manage about 6 different email accounts with Thunderbird and just like FireFox (which I use as my primary browser), Thunderbird allows you to use plug ins which lets me customize it for my needs. I use two plug ins every day. The first is Fox Clocks. Fox Clocks lets me know what time it is anywhere in the world which is useful to me because I interact with people all over the world. The other is called Lightning. Lightning is a calendaring/task management application that acts much like any other, but is embedded into my email so my events/tasks are always visible to me.
5. RSS Feeds and Google Alerts
To be effective, you need to listen – get the pulse of what’s being said about you and your industry. I use four methods to listen; email newsletters, rss feeds, Google Alerts and Social Media Web Sites. Each of these tools carry a different listening tool, and which tool you use is personal preference. Many use Google Reader for RSS Feeds, but I prefer Yahoo. Google Alerts is a great feature of Google News that lets you set up Alerts on topics you choose that get emailed to you daily (or when they find a match). Make sure you set up an alert for both your name and your business name.
What tools do you use? Let us know in the comments.
