Bonus Episode: More online tools

If our show on online tools just made you want more, you are in luck! Following up on Episode 7, we have a bonus episode with even more resources and tools to help you with your small business.

Colleen Wainwright - Books & bookmarks!
Colleen Wainwright brings together online and offline business resources. It’s all about Books and Bookmarks.

If you live in a major metro area, check to see if your library provides an online database. If so, you might be able to place holds on items you’re interested in or even have them shipped for free to your branch.

Library ELF is a free service that emails you updates on your library holds and checked-out items, letting you know what you have checked out and when it’s due (or overdue, if you ignore your alerts!). Great for avid readers who are less than perfectly organized. There’s a huge list of libraries whose systems are compatible, and if you can’t find your library but can ascertain that it employs one of two major proprietary systems, you can have it added. While you can’t renew your materials directly via ELF, the emails provide a link that will take you to your library’s page, where you can.

Half.com a division of eBay, offers many books at dramatically reduced prices from individual users. Best of all, they have a wish list you can create where you specify the minimum condition and maximum price you are willing to pay. When an item comes up at your price (if you don’t find it at the price you’re willing to pay), half.com will automatically email you an alert.

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking system that utilizes tags that I use to keep track of stuff I want to come back to. I also use it to maintain lists of stuff I need or want to do: toRead, toBuy, toListen, etc. Bonus nerdery: there’s a Java applet you can drag to your toolbar to make posting pages easy, although I recommend the Firefox extension del.icio.us Complete (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2354/) if you’re a Firefox user.

Ben Yoskovitz - Online advertising for Small Business

Benjamin Yoskovitz talks about how to advertise your small business with Google, and how to find the best keywords with WordTracker and target your advertising for maximum results.

Becky McCray - How to make the most of online directories
Becky McCray explains how your participation makes a difference in creating better online directories. So get out there and leave comments, reviews, and ratings! She mentions these podcast directories:

• iTunes
• allpodcasts.com
• feeds2read.net
• gigadial.net

Music for today's show from http://music.podshow.com.

Episode 7: Online tools for small business

Jon Swanson - What makes a tool useful?
Jon Swanson, the Entrepreneurial Chicken, shares some philosophy on what makes a tool actually useful.

Becky McCray - 1 tool to get smarter and 1 to share your smarts
Becky McCray, of Small Biz Survival, shares one tool to help you get smarter about managing your business, Will It Fly?, and one tool to help you share your smarts with other small business people, the SmallBusiness.com wiki.

Ben Yoskovitz - 3 online tools for managing your business
Ben Yoskovitz, of the Instigator Blog, reviews 3 online tools that can help you better manage your business. Two are lesser known, but can be quite valuable, and the third is a more recognized application. StikiPad is a wiki-based tool for collaboration and documentation. WebCargo is used for transferring large files easily and quickly. And GoToMeeting is for web meetings online.
Download Ben’s handout.


Chris Brogan - 9 tools Chris uses to manage his online business
Chris Brogan shares the online resources he uses for running Grasshopper New Media. Here’s his list:

• Blogs- Chris likes Wordpress
• Wikis - for example, PBWiki. We used it to build PodCamp.
• Google Calendar. here.
• GMail here
• Skype. here.
• Gizmo Project. 37 Signals for info. Check out BaseCamp, Campfire, Backpack, Writeboard, and more.
• Writely. here
• Technorati. here, for ego-surfing by setting up Watchlists.

Christopher S. Penn - The Financial Aid Podcast
Christopher S. Penn, of The Financial Aid Podcast, drops by with his 40 second pitch for his site. It’s another great online resource.

Ted Demopoulos - Your own website as a resource, and your competitors’
Ted Demopoulos, author of two books on blogging, asks some tough questions about your own site as a resource, and your competitors’ websites as well.

Laura Allen - Email, the ultimate online resource
Laura Allen, co-founder of 15SecondPitch.com, shares her favorite online resource, which is plain old fashioned email. She shares her love affair with email --5 tips to make email your best marketing tool EVER--plus three bonus online resources that you may not have heard of yet.
Her tips include:
5. Keep your email short. 3-4 sentences is ideal.
4. Establish an authentic connection.
3. Do you homework. When you contact someone via email, make sure you know a little bit about them.
2. Have a specific reason or goal for why you are emailing them.
1. Follow-up, Follow-up, Follow-up, some more!
Sites and people referenced:

• Podcamp Boston
• Podcamp NYC
• Lifehack.org
• Odeo
• Jigsaw.com
• Blogger
• Freeconferencecall.com

Tune in next week for Building Client Relationships!
Music for today’s show from http://music.podshow.com.

Episode 6: Organization

This week’s show is all about getting organized, from to do lists, to your workspace, to quick tips. The segments are:

• Really Simple To Do Lists -Ted Demopoulos, the author.
• To Do Lists Go High-Tech - Benjamin Yoskovitz, the Instigator.
  Download Ben's handout
• Organizing Week by Week - Becky McCray, I'm the Small Biz Survivor.
  
• 5 Strong Organizing Tools - Chris Brogan, the Grasshopper.
• Touch Everything Only Once - Heidi Miller, the Shameless Self Promoter.
• Organized in 60 Seconds -Steve Rucinski, the Small Business CEO.
  Download Steve's handout
  
• Advice from a Closet Slob -Colleen Wainwright, the Communicatrix.

Episode 5: Delegation

This week's show is all about Delegating, with a bonus segment on the Multi-Million Dollar Pitch.

The Multi-Million Dollar 15SecondPitch–How to Ask for Millions in under a minute
Laura Allen, co-founder of 15SecondPitch.com, teaches you how to get comfortable asking for millions by using the simple 15SecondPitch formula. Laura shares an actual pitch where an indie film-maker is looking for millions to create a film with an A-list actress as the star.
Laura is also offering a free pitch assessment for GBSBS listeners! Simply send your pitch (no matter how rough it is!) to laura@15SecondPitch.com and she'll send you some suggestions to make it SIZZLE! Even if you never need to ask for a million dollars, you'll still learn valuable tips for pitching your current business succesfully! After all, everyone needs to work their way up to creating a multi-million dollar pitch.

Ten Ways to Delegate Without Hiring
Becky McCray has ten tricks up her sleeve to help even the one-person business to delegate, all without hiring. If you already have a team, think about these ten ways to boost your effectiveness without having to expand your payroll. You'll find more of Becky's small business writings at Small Biz Survival.
Download Becky's handout.

Six Steps to Delegate Effectively
Benjamin Yoskovitz talks about the necessity for small business owners to delegate. As much as we'd like to control everything, we can't. So small business owners must become experts at delegating, and Benjamin offers 6 steps to follow in order to do so successfully. Ben has a new small business blog, the Instigator Blog.
Download Ben's handout.

Delegation in a Virtual World
Today many of us delegate much more to outside service providers and partners than we do employees. How do we do this effectively? Steve Rucinski uses the three C’s to help make good decisions. Take a listen and learn more! Steve is the Small Business CEO.
Download Steve's handout.

The Entrepreneurial Chicken: What can you really delegate?
This week, the Entrepreneurial Chicken Jon Swanson shares what parts of your business to delegate to the people you hire.



Music for this Week
Music for this week's episode is all provided by Uncle Seth, a podsafe band from Canada. You can listen to (and purchase) their great music at http://music.podshow.com
Uncle Seth- A Little Bit More / My Eyes / If I Laugh / Little Pieces / 13 Cloud Song / Out of My Face / and of course, "You Don't Need An Ipod"

Episode 4: Customer Service

Everyone has strong feelings about customer service. We all have stories of really bad service, and a few shining examples. Try this at your next party or cookout: ask the other guests about a story relating to customer service. You'll certainly hear lots of passion in either way.


Heidi Miller
Heidi gives us perspective based on Dr. Stephen Covey's 5th Habit: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood. Among other gigs Heidi had in the past, one was as a motivational speaker, and she worked with customer service clients.
Heidi can be found at Talk it Up!

Steve Rucinski
Steve Rucinski gives us part 1 of a two part series on advisory boards. He explains the value of the expertise of advisors, the benefit of their business contacts, and all the reasons that an advisory board for a small business is better than a standard Board of Directors.

Steve's site is SMBCEO.COM

Ben Yoskovitz
Providing great customer service is essential for small businesses to survive and be successful. One of the key benefits to providing great customer service is cultivating customer loyalty. Ben Yoskovitz provides us 4 ways of providing great customer service with an eye towards developing customer loyalty.
Ben provides a great handout for his presentation here
Ben can be found at IGotNewsForYou.com

Colleen Wainwright
Our new contributor, Colleen, gives us some advice about some of the better tricks one might use to improve their customer service offering. She hints also about a story of bad customer service involving the worlds largest online bookseller. You can email Colleen for that story.
Colleen Wainwright is an L.A.-based designer-writer-speaker who started calling herself "the communicatrix" when she hit three hyphens. When she's not yakking about business-y stuff for GBSBS, she yaks about all sorts of stuff at Communicatrix.com


Chris Brogan
Finally, I talk about Experience Management: Taking your customer into the story of your business. How do you engage your customers in a way that they walk away from your business with a great impression of the experience they had with your product, service, or brand?
I'm all over the place. Stop by [chrisbrogan.com] to learn a bit more about your temporary host.



Music
These tracks were used for background music:
rye soto with Cool Jam
SmilinCynic with Trippin Out My Head
Jeff Shields - Groovalaicious.
Alamantra with Surf Babe