Business Productivity
Zoho CRM: Manage Your Business Information Online for Free
Apr 1st
While most online CRM software providers offer very limited or no free versions, Zoho continues to offer a full-featured Customer Relationship Management software that is free for up to 3 users.
Arguably one of the most valuable of Zoho’s online productivity applications, Zoho CRM allows you to organize and manage all of your sales, marketing, and customer service activities for your business. Their free edition has an abundance of functionality that is more than sufficient for many entrepreneurs, start-ups, and small businesses.
Read more details in my article at MakeUseOf.com: (Read More)
4 Easy Steps To Promote Your Business On Facebook
Mar 22nd
Most businesses and professionals have gotten the message that Facebook can be a powerful channel to promote their products and services, engage with customers, and strengthen their brand.
Given its community of over 400 million users and climbing, it’s no wonder why most major businesses and brands now have a presence on Facebook.
However, many self-marketers are a little uncertain about how to begin. Here are some practical, first steps to help you get started promoting your business on Facebook. See the rest of my article at MakeUseOf.com: (Read more)
Manage Your Internet Reading List
Feb 11th
As a follow-up to my article “Tools to Organize Your Digital Life“, I wanted to share a tip on how to create a reading list to manage all those web items that catch your eye but you can’t read immediately (like maybe this article?). As we are tweeted and buzzed from our growing social networks, we stumbleupon many articles or links that we think we might digg. However, we often don’t have the time, nor is it usually productive, to read them at the moment we happen to find them. So, how can you remember to revisit these links later … without leaving a lot of tabs open that will clutter and slow down your web browser? You don’t simply want to save them along with your other bookmarks. You’ll likely just forget about them, and you don’t even know yet if they are items you want to keep. More >
Tools to Organize Your Digital Life
Jan 18th
Everyday we find more and more online sources of news and information that we would like to connect with to stay informed. The challenge is keeping up with our favorite news columns, industry journals, and blogs as well as our friends, family, and colleagues … not to mention maybe a few celebrities, tv programs, and products. While bookmarking sites like Yahoo! Bookmarks and Delicious make good reference tools, they don’t actively notify us of updates. Most websites provide the option to sign up for updates and newsletters by email, but this can make your inbox more difficult to manage (and you still often have to visit the individual websites to see the full content). If you are an email subscription junkie, you should use Filters to organize your mailbox. In most mail applications, you can setup filters to automatically sort your incoming mail into folders based on email address, subject line, etc. This keeps lower-priority emails out of your inbox, but easy to find.
Almost any person, place, or thing you may have an interest in following has a presence on Facebook and Twitter these days. Many professional, educational, and industry organizations have pages or forums on LinkedIn. There are also numerous other niche communities for specific interests including music, photos, and recipes. While these sites enable you to connect to a large number of people and organizations, the downside of most of these networks is that you have to continually monitor your real-time information streams and filter through them to find the items of most interest to you, which can be time consuming. More >
How to Shop for a Multifunction Printer
Jan 9th
I recently received a question on “Ask Craig” about how to shop for a multifunction printer. These are very popular and useful machines that are available today in a multitude of shapes and sizes. Around the turn of the century, “all-in-one” printers were available only as small, desktop machines. If you needed something for more heavy office usage, you needed to buy separate machines for copying, printing, and faxing. As printer manufacturers began noticing that offices of all sizes could use multifunction printers, they started to offer them in larger, more robust varieties. Additionally, copy machine manufacturers added network printing and scanning capabilities to many of their products, making multifunction available for even enterprise and commercial use. Whether your office is large, small, or at home, the idea of a machine with multiple uses may be appealing, but with so many to choose from it can be hard to know where to start. Here are a few areas to consider before you shop: More >
