Agency 2.0: tools for living the dream
I’m essentially a little agency, helping businesses (mostly B2B, sometimes B2C) with their marketing efforts. I have been lucky to gather some cool tools over the past year that helps me with my work. In an effort to share methodology and resources, here we go (in no particular order):
Google Calendar: before I synched my life seamlessly with my iPhone and Mac; my schedule lived on Google Calendar. I was able to get alerts delivered to my Blackberry of appointments, and could be in touch with my calendar from any PC connected to the internet.
Benefits? Access and freedom.
Drawbacks? It was too hard for me to figure out how to add events to my calendar from my Blackberry, so for me it was not as seamless as my current system.
Attensa Feed Reader: With Attensa’s free RSS feed reader, I set up persistent searches for each of my clients in Attensa (who’s also a client). Attensa watched 18 different search and tagging engines, and every time any client was mentioned, I’d have the mention in my mailbox. I also have my favorite blogs’ new posts delivered to me, which meant I never have to go out and search for MOCC’s latest musings, they’re delivered right to me.
Benefits? Awareness and accessibility - I knew they were mentioned, and the context in which they were. Attensa also sent feeds to my Blackberry, and when I had read the feed there and deleted it, it would be deleted from my Outlook feed as well.
Drawbacks? None, really. It just worked.
SnagIt - the coolest screen capture tool for the PC that allows you to easily snag and edit your screen captures. I loved it so much, I paid money for this one (there’s a 30-day free trial that’ll capture your heart). I found it to be extremely helpful in illustrating information as I was collaborating with my clients/vendors and (especially) my tech support resources. They’ve enhanced it so much that it’d automatically send screen shots to Word, PowerPoint and Mail immediately.
Benefits: it made putting illustrations in Word a dream. And it helped me show, rather than tell.
Drawbacks: it’s not available for the Mac - as far as I can tell.
The SEO Book - another tool I spent $79 on. This is a great book with fantastic resources for search engine optimization. I’ve constantly used it as a resource for my clients.
Benefits: he keeps it updated with the newest information; and offers plenty of free tools on his site without requiring any expenditure.
Drawbacks: I wish I had time to read all 400+ pages of it.
I think you can try SeoQuake, seo toolbar. It can analyze any indexes you may need including keyword density on a page. https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/3036/ - for Firefox.
seoquake.com - for IE. It works even with Baidu
and check out seodigger.com - reverse SE index.
Thanks for the tip. I’ll have a look - I really appreciate suggestions like this.
Cheers!
Janet
What, no Twitter?
Seriously, though, if you haven’t already - check out Freshbooks - nice time-based billing system for independent agencies such as yer good self. They’re not a client (although I know the boss there) - just a darn fine tool: http://www.freshbooks.com/
/m
You’re right Michael - I’ve never been able to figure out how Twitter might work. Although if I follow you long enough, perhaps I will understand mo’ better.
Thanks for the tip about Freshbooks. I will check them out as well.
Cheers!