Mar 05, 2011
Posted by Mike in Small Biz,Tips
0 Comments
5 Geeky Little Tools For Small Businesses
There comes a time in the life of every blog, when the inevitable “best tools” post is written. Welcome to that post.
I work with a lot of small businesses here at Brunswick Media Services; consultants, retailers, personal chefs; and one of the great things that comes from each of these relationships is that we often wind up talking about running our small businesses. We may be in different lines of work, but there are some things that are universal from one small business to the next. Below, is a collection of some of the tools I’ve shared with/found through my clients.
- Google Chrome Browser
Browser preferences can ignite a firestorm sometimes. It’s a changing from Coke to Pepsi thing for some folks, we get it, but change can also be a good thing. This is specially true if you’re running a slightly-less-than-cutting-edge computer. The Chrome browser is fast, stable, and has a number of extensions available that really come in handy. (We’ll talk about one of those in a bit.) As a web design company, we like Chrome for it’s compliance with web standards, but also its clean, uncluttered layout. If you haven’t already done so, give it a try, it’s free, what to you have to lose. 
- NewsSquares for Chrome
I LOVE this app! A little background: I read a lot of blogs, a LOT of blogs. When Google introduced Google Reader a while back, I was in heaven, all of the RSS feeds from the blogs I read in one place, awesome! A few months later, and the shininess wore off, and the enormous number of unread articles seemed unconquerable. Maybe the text only layout works for Robert Scoble, but for me, I missed the graphic nature of visiting each blog, if only there was a visually interesting in-between. That’s what NewsSquares is. It took a few hours of using it to get the full hang of it, but now that I’ve been using it for a few weeks, I can’t live without it.Keyboard shortcuts? It uses the same ones as Google Reader, so “n” goes to the next article, the spacebar pages down through an article, or on to the next if you’re at the end of one. If you’re reading an article on a blog you’re not subscribed to, it adds an “Add to NewsSquares” link in the right-click menu that automatically subscribes you to that blog’s RSS feed. It’s really increased the speed I can go through feeds in a visually appealing way. You need to be using the Chrome browser, and have a Google Reader account to use NewsSquares, but since all three are free, price isn’t a barrier. Give it a try.
- Square
Square is a revolution in credit/debit card processing for small businesses. Started by Jack Dorsey (one of the creators of Twitter), the Square reader (free) plugs into your iPhone or Android phone and allows you to accept credit cards from your clients at an amazingly low fee. There are no merchant accounts or 3rd party processors needed, and from what I’ve seen, the fees blow traditional cc processing methods out of the water. While I don’t use Square as often as I would like, it gives me the ability to accept credit card payments - Dropbox
(The link above is an affiliate link, which will give me extra storage space on Dropbox if you sign up through it)
Of all the geeky little tools on this list, Dropbox is the one that has saved me more than once. Having a Dropbox is like having a 2Gb drive with your important files, available wherever you have internet access. Picture this: I’m giving a proposal presentation to a potential client. The presentation I worked on for hours is safely on a thumb drive, which I conveniently left plugged into the desktop back at the office. Fortunately, I had saved it to my Dropbox folder, and was able to download it to the laptop like i had planned it. Saved me from an incredibly embarrassing gaff.
Scenario 2: I have a client who needs to update a graphic on their website on an irregular schedule. Sure they could email it to me, and I could upload it when I was able to, but since it’s a time-sensitive thing, we use Dropbox. The link to that graphic on the site is to the image in the client’s public Dropbox folder, so when they change the graphic, all they have to do is save the new file over the old one, and the site is instantly updated. No messing with FTP or content management systems. Simple (and free!).
- Klok
Keeping track of hours worked on a project can get kind of hairy if you’re working on multiple projects for multiple clients. There are quite a number of time tracking packages out there, but many of them are so complex, and/or cumbersome, it’s hard to use them on a regular basis. Enter Klok. It’s a simple, intuitive time tracker that’s flexible enough for my needs, and keeps me on the up-and-up when tracking billable hours.
Don’t keep track of billable hours? I have a client that uses it to track the time she spends doing certain tasks like accounting, blogging, or using Twitter on her computer. Each week she can see exactly where her time went. Useful, and there’s a free version, although the $15.99 pricetag for the full version is pretty sweet.
So what are you favorites? Let me know!
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