Ten Tools I Use Everyday

I was reading something the other day about business people not making the most of the tools they have that can make their lives easier, and it started me thinking about the tools I use and probably take for granted every day.

So here is my top ten tools list - maybe some of the will help you out too?

1) Shortkeys - http://www.shortkeys.com/

Shortkeys allows me to store macros of things that I have to type out every day. So for example, instead of having to type out “299 Steps to Website Heaven” every time, I have a “299 shortkey”. I also have shortkeys for different links I use a lot, my signature file, address details, and messages that I send regularly (for example welcome messages to new clients, or monthly report messages). There is a Shortkeys Lite version, but I use the Pro version which I believe I bought for about £18 ten years ago!

2) Twitterfox / Twhirl - http://www.naan.net/trac/wiki/TwitterFox / http://www.twhirl.com

Lots of people use Twitter, and lots of them give up or let it fall by the ayside because it’s a chore to keep on visiting the Twitter homepage and posting tweets. I have both Twitterfox and Twhirl - both allow me to update my Twitter status, and read replies, direct messages and tweets from people I follow, without having to visit the twitter page at all.

3) Zoho CRM - http://crm.zoho.com/crm/login.sas

There are 6 of us on the main NikkiPilkington.com team, spread across 4 different households and 2 different countries. Zoho allows us all to access the same info and keep up to date on what is happening with a client or prospect. That way if someone calls me, I can access their notes and see what any of the sales team has said to them, and know more about their situation. I can also find out their account balance with us and any conversations relating to invoices and payment.

4) Google Webmaster Tools - http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

Every client that signs up with NikkiPilkington.com is registered for a Google Webmaster Tools account - this allows me to check on a regular basis which phrases they are being shown for that we may not have targeted in the first round of search engine optimisation, whether there are any errors on the sites, where their links are coming from and more.

5) Clicky / Google Analytics - http://getclicky.com/36192 / http://www.google.com/analytics/

Google Analytics is a great free tool for analyzing visitors to your site - you can se where they have come from, which pages they have looked at, and lots more. It’s fantastic and I check it for myself and various clients every day. The only issue I have with it is that it doesn’t track visitors in real time - you have to wait until the next day to see stats.

Clicky tracks in real time. I can make a post on Ecademy or other places, and withing seconds I can see the people clicking on the links to get to my site. I can see which pages they have looked at, and even more interestingly for me, I can see the links in my articles that they are clicking on - so when I posted Using Twitter for Business part 2 - Ten Ways to make your twitter Life easier, I could see visitors clicking off the article to check out the various things I had recommended. It’s a paid service, although there is a free trial, and even the paid version is not expensive.

6) Web CEO - http://www.webceo.com/cgi-bin/go/clickthru.cgi?id=NikkiPilkington

I only recently acquired this software, after becoming a little disappointed with Internet business Promoter. How I wish I had found it earlier! Not only are it’s search engine positioning reports much more compact and easy to follow, it has so many other features built in. Site Monitor allows you to monitor the up and response time of your website, and emails you weekly with a round up. You can set it to run ranking reports regularly and email them directly to you (or in my case to my customers). You can run reports on your Pay per Click campaigns. All in all I wouldn’t be without this software now.

7) Google Alerts - http://www.google.com/alerts

In this day and age it’s important to be on top of news and views in your industry, and when the industry is online marketing, things change constantly. A few well set up alerts allow me to receive emails the minute anyone mentions mine or my clients’ names online, as well as a whole host of other keyphrases that I have set up. This allows me to see trends, to troubleshoot for clients if necessary (our online reputation management clients in particular need a quick response) and more.

SEO Book Keyword count / Wordtracker - http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools / http://www.wordtracker.co.uk

Both of these are vital to me in order to give my clients and potential clients details of searches done in their industry. All too often clients come to me with phrases that they want to be on the front page of Google for, but when we do the research, it shows that no-one ever searches for those phrases. It’s no good being number one on Google for a phrase if no-one ever looks for it, i’m sure you’ll agree!

9) Aweber - http://www.aweber.com

I run various mailing lists, both for my own company and for clients - and this is the best tool I’ve found so far. Not only can I set up unlimited auto responders if I wish to do so, but I can also send out newsletters and mailings, and find out the response rate, click rate and more. There’s even a handy checker built in that will tell you whether or not your mailing is likely to set off spam filters, which is handy in my industry as there are lots of spam emails going around regarding SEO.

10) Google Checkout - http://checkout.google.com/

I’ve never really been a fan of receiving money by Paypal, but it was once a necessary evil if you didn’t want, or couldn’t get, and account from Worldpay or another online merchant account, and if your ‘friendly’ bank manager decided that taking money on the Internet was like sleeping with the Devil himself.

However, since Google Checkout came out last year, I’ve been much more impressed. if you spend enough on Adwords there are no credit card processing fees, it’s easy to install, and you can email invoices just the same as Paypal. The money appears in your bank a couple of days later, not 30 days like Paypal, and all in all it is a much more pleasant experience. They also have their own fraud checks, which kick into action when the payment is made, and tells you not to ship goods / services until you have received the all clear, rater than giving you the money, you ship the goods and then paypal clawing it back from you as it was a fraudulent transaction.

So, there you have it - I hope some of these are helpful to you.

(Disclaimer - some of the above links are affiliate links - in various cases I could get kudos / points / about 4pence if you eventually go on to buy fro these companies. If that bothers you, feel free to strip the affiliate links out.)

Nikki Pilkington