Websites for Small Business

1. Websites for Small Business Steve Holt, Director of Instructional Technology Center & Web Services

2. Communicating w/ customers • www.constantcontact.com • Emailing your customers with product promotions, tips & tricks, etc • www.tatango.com • Group text messaging • www.eyejot.com • Software-free, online video messaging service • www.webex.com • Online video conferencing

3. Saving money • www.youconvertit.com • www.zamzar.com • Don’t buy that expensive software just to create files you need, convert it! • Office 2007 PDF plugin • Acrobat is expensive, so create PDFs for free with Office 2007 • www.yousendit.com • Send large files via email for free (100 MB) • www.tucows.com • Freeware and shareware

4. Saving money • http://skype.com/business/ • Make calls to anywhere

5. Traveling smart • www.jiwire.com/ • Look for free WIFI spots around the country • www.yapta.com • They monitor your flights for you • www.bing.com/travel • They predict if ticket prices are going to go up or down • http://www.atmlocator.info/ • ATM locator

6. Get information • www.whitepages.com • www.switchboard.com • www.google.com/reader • Let Google monitor key words for you and they’ll notify you via email • http://zip4.usps.com/zip4/welcome.jsp • Find zip codes • www.bennetyee.org/ucsd-pages/area.html • Find area codes • Text 46645 (googl) for anything

7. Managing finances • http://quickbooksonline.intuit.com • Manage your business finances online. Allow multiple locations to use it. • www.mint.com • Free service to manage your finances, consolidate all your online finance accounts, track your investments, manage your bills, manage your budget

8. Get Help • www.protonic.com • Free tech support for your technology problems • www.calculator.com • Free online calculators for just about anything • www.sprouter.com • Look for others that might be doing the same thing that you are doing

9. Increasing productivity • www.microsoft.com/word • www.microsoft.com/excel • www.microsoft.com/powerpoint • Watch tutorials, learn something new, get help • www.gethuman.com • Don’t waste time on the phone • www.logmein.com • Connect remotely to your computers • www.google.com/docs • Collaborate together

10. Be conscious • www.freecycle.org • Get rid of stuff you don’t want, find stuff you need… for free!

11. Protect yourself • www.mozy.com • www.fileqube.com • http://skydrive.live.com/ • Free online file storage • www.10minutemail.com • It only works for 10 min. • www.google.com/latitude • Find out where your employees are

12. Make money • www.google.com/adsense • Ads get placed on your website by Google and you get $ every time someone clicks on them • www.google.com/adwords • Google creates an ad for your business and places it on other websites

13. Market with social media • www.youtube.com • www.vimeo.com • Video speaks louder than words • www.facebook.com/pages • Use the ‘fan pages’ feature to connect with your customers • www.involver.com (apps for your page) • www.twitter.com • Real-time updates for your customers and supporters. Use as a help-line.

14. Social media inside • www.yammer.com • Allow your employees to collaborate and share • www.socialtext.com • Allow your employees to collaborate and share a little bit more

15. QUESTIONS?Steve Holtsholt@utm.edu731-881-7609www.utm.edu/itc