Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Very useful post. A great set of valuable tools there, much appreciated.

I was wondering how do you get started with blogging. Is blogging something you like doing.

A great set of tools. Thanks.

John,

This is a great list. I have a couple of suggestions for both CRM and pdf output.

First, as far as CRM is concerned, I have moved from ACT to SugarCRM. SugarCRM (http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/) has both commercial and OpenSource (http://www.sugarforge.org/) flavours, is web based and is much more easily managed over Sage ACT-- not to mention the advances throught the very active developer community.

Second, regarding pdf conversion. Pdf995 is a must have, but if you are constantly wanting to convert MS Word Documents into pdf files why not leave Microsoft and their pricing schemes behind and try OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org/). Once the open source MS Office clones were a far cry from easy to use and learn, now OO is nearly a perfect clone, little learning curve, if any and, guess what a little direct-to-pdf button in the toolbar beside the print button.

As always John, keep on posting.

All the best,

Jay

I have a small business of my own, so I'm always ready to learn about the tools that can help me to promote my company. I'm mostly interested in the tools that are not very expencive, cause I cannot afford to pay hundreds of dollars. I prefer web-based tools as they make the business mobile, I guess. That's why your post is very helpful, thanks! The only thing is I already use Wrike http://www.wrike.com/for project management. Actually I'm starting to use Wrike even for managing and collaborating with my HR manager, Marketing manager and my assistant. You should definetely have a look at this tool. I'll be interested to hear your opinion. Thanks for the post once again!

John -
Great post! There are tools here I was not aware of. Thanks for sharing them. I have two other tools that I love for business productivity.

Have you ever sent an email with a web page link that is so long that it wraps on the page? Check out www.tinyurl.com -- they take your really long links and convert them to tiny links that are easy to reference. I have used them below so you can see how they look.

Another tool we love allows you to find anything in 5 seconds or less on your computer. You use the search function just like you would on Google or other search engines, but it looks at your hard drive rather than the internet.

We also love Paper Tiger! It is a tool that will allow you to find anything in 5 seconds or less that is physical -- paper, cds, software, you name it. We use it both at our office and home and recommend it to a lot of our clients.

Lastly, we use NeatReceipts to help us manage all of our financial receipts, documents that we don't need physical copies of AND all of those business cards that you get at networking events. It will even read the information off of the card and store it in a database that can sync with outlook.

Innovation and creativity are clearly the by-products of the work environment you place yourself in each day. When your assets are intellectual property it is even more important that you invest in a home work environment that generates as much innovation and creativity as possible. Once I decided to purchase modular office furniture for my home office my business has been on a very positive trajectory.