Successful Blog

Cool Tool Review: Toggl

by

Todd Hoskins Reviews Tools for Business

cooltext451585442_tools

Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools and products that could belong in an entrepreneurial business toolkit. He’ll be checking out how useful they are to folks who would be their customers in a form that’s consistent and relevant.

Cool Tool Review: Toggl
A Review by Todd Hoskins

I have a confession: I am an obsessive tracker and quantifier. As much as I love art and language, I find some comfort and satisfaction when numbers tell a story. Perhaps this explains my love of baseball and its box scores, or why I love web analytics. For over a year, I experimented with assigning prioritized value to daily tasks, tracking my success or lack thereof. I stopped when I realized my creativity was being hampered by my desire to improve my average weekly scores. I was looking down too much, not looking up enough.

Still, tracking, whether it be your blood pressure, web traffic, or time management can be valuable information. Toggl, a time tracking tool, makes it easy to capture this information. If you bill by the hour, you should definitely be using some type of time tracking tool. Even if you don’t, it’s a useful exercise to check in for a week or a month and see how you spend your time. (The book Lifelong Activist makes a strong point that time tracking is an important measurement in personal development, and offers great tips on interpreting the results and implementing change).

Toggl can be installed or run on about any platform. It’s simple – a running clock that allows you to assign projects and clients to time spent. Start the clock. End the clock. But you do have to remember to do this with every project transition. Of course, there are pretty charts and graphs, especially useful if you have the whole team collaborating on various projects.

toggl

Word of warning: If you impose time tracking on employees who are not billing by the hour, make sure you jointly establish some reasonable expectations. It’s not good for the soul to feel like every minute is being monitored. Nor is it good for the soul to play the workplace role of hall monitor. For example, in an eight hour workday, you may expect web developers to spend 6 hours on specified projects.

There is a free version. The paid version, starting at $5 per month, has more features. For a team, it may run up to $100 per month. A good value for the information you receive.

Summing Up – Is it worth it?

Enterprise Value: 3/5 – Good programming tool, but doesn’t replace the elegance of Pivotal Tracker

Entrepreneur Value: 3/5 – Freelancers gain credibility when they can show their client when hours were worked

Personal Value: 3/5 – Commit a week. See what you learn. With the iPhone and Android app, you don’t have to limit your tracking to work. How much TV do you watch? Time spent wiith kids?

Cool Tool Review: Creative Commons

by

Todd Hoskins Reviews Tools for Business

cooltext451585442_tools

Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools and products that could belong in an entrepreneurial business toolkit. He’ll be checking out how useful they are to folks who would be their customers in a form that’s consistent and relevant.

Cool Tool Review: Creative Commons
A Review by Todd Hoskins

Open Field by kathrynstar at DeviantArt http://kathrynstar.deviantart.com/art/Open-Field-20924389
Open Field by kathrynstar at DeviantArt http://kathrynstar.deviantart.com/art/Open-Field-20924389

Creative Commons is not a tool, but it’s important for every blogger, editor, and author to understand the licenses made possible by the non-profit founded nearly ten years ago. It makes the world a better place for both businesses and artists by enabling the free and easy use of creative materials.

If you are a business looking to include photography, artwork, or even music in your printed materials, ads, or website, you may want to contact a stock photography house. But if you’re a small business or individual working on a tight budget, it makes sense to find works available in the commons.

You can do a metasearch directly on the Creative Commons website. For example, if you want some imagery of an open field to illustrate an aspect of your business, choose your keywords, and search. Once you find an image, you can download it and use it with the restrictions provided by the license. The most typical license allows reuse with attribution, meaning you need to acknowledge the person who created or obtained the original work.

Here’s some helpful tips for giving credit to the author and publisher:

Creative Commons Attribution

It is the spirit of the web that makes Creative Commons great – that we can share, mix, and give credit to the people who influence, assist, and improve our own business and creative pursuits. For white papers and any creative materials that you or your company create, consider putting it out in the Commons as well. It may create some visibility, but more importantly it makes you more of a participant in the exchange rather than just a buyer and seller.

Summing Up – Is it worth it?

Enterprise Value: 4/5 – There are many places to source creative materials (I love Veer), but it also is valuable to know and use Creative Commons and participate in the larger community.

Entrepreneur Value: 5/5 – No attorneys needed. Period.

Personal Value: 5/5 – Never before has so much material been available to mix and reuse. Have fun and share.

Photo

Cool Tool Review: Chartbeat

by

Todd Hoskins Reviews Tools for Business

cooltext451585442_tools

Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools and products that could belong in an entrepreneurial business toolkit. He’ll be checking out how useful they are to folks who would be their customers in a form that’s consistent and relevant.

Cool Tool Review: Chartbeat
A Review by Todd Hoskins

If you’re not using web analytics right now, you need to be. When Google Analytics launched as a free service a couple years ago it allowed publishers and bloggers of every variety to know where web traffic is coming from and what their visitor trends are. It doesn’t matter whether you are a blogger with five subscribers or an eCommerce company. In it’s simplest form, it’s a copied and pasted line of code that requires no technical skills to set up.

Site visits and metrics such as time-on-site provide you with information. But visits don’t necessarily convert into sales, customers, or loyal readers, and time-on-site may be skewed by bathroom breaks and open browser windows. The information becomes valuable when it is actionable.

Here’s where Chartbeat has an edge. But warning: it’s addictive. Real-time statistics detailing what people are doing on a site right now has prompted me to change content on the fly and see how people react. Though it can be sheer entertainment, the real value is in being able to understand what is compelling to your readers.

Measuring traffic has long been a tantalizing trap. Counting people, whether it’s a political rally or eyeballs in advertising, is something we all immediately understand. How many visitors did we get yesterday? In our store? On our site? But there’s lots of ways to get people in the door or get them to click on a link. The key is bringing the best merchandise (content) to the front of the store, and then continue to either source more of the same, or take the time to educate the visitor on why something deserves to occupy prime real estate. Traffic is necessary, but engagement has often been ignored.

Oh, engagement. What a disputed word. With Chartbeat, they are getting more frequent “pings” from the visitor in order to understand what is happening multiple times per minute instead of the one ping like the doorbell announcing, “Someone’s here!” Engagement then can be captured, for example, with scroll depth. Is the visitor quickly viewing content and moving on, or are they taking time to scroll down the page.

On what pages is this occurring?
Where is the traffic coming from?
Where are they going?

Take a look for yourself:

For $10 a month, this is a steal. If you’re hesitant, get Google Analytics set up, and then sign up for a free trial with Chartbeat as well. Compare and let me know what you think.

Summing Up – Is it worth it?

Enterprise Value: 4/5 – Even Fortune 500 companies are using Chartbeat in addition to Omniture. There’s an API as well.

Entrepreneur Value: 5/5 – Want to be nimble? Web analytics are necessary.

Personal Value: 2/5 – Google Analytics is usually good enough unless your a geek like me.

Cool Business Idea: Credit Unions

by

Todd Hoskins Reviews Tools for Business

cooltext451585442_tools

Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools and products that could belong in an entrepreneurial business toolkit. He’ll be checking out how useful they are to folks who would be their customers in a form that’s consistent and relevant.

Cool Business Idea: Credit Unions
A Review by Todd Hoskins

I’m taking a break from reviewing tools this week to provide some thoughts on where to put your money as a small business owner.

Like many Americans, I’ve had some frustrating experiences with megabanks prior to the Great Recession. Since 2008, it’s been awful. Not just tight lending, but terrible service has been rampant. Too often the power to please customers has been taken away from local branches and consolidated in a corporate call center.

The greed of banking institutuions has been well-documented, which is one reason I encourage everyone to explore the not-for-profit option of credit unions.

Credit unions are member-owned, meaning profits go directly towards improving the products, rates, and service for member-owners, instead of appeasing stockholders. Unions, corporations, and government entities often have their own credit unions.

The other reason I support credit unions is they are community-based. In addition to sponsoring Little League teams, attending neighborhood festivals and fairs, or donating time or money to local organizations, credit unions provide another way to root your business in your geographic community. Even if you’re not selling products or services to people and businesses in your vicinity, there is great value in supporting and being supported by the other entrepreneurs and merchants in your area.

My credit union serves a few neighborhoods, and with less than 10,000 members, is relatively small. But the service is personal, and they also provide education and assistance to immigrants, young people, and those trying to establish themselves financially. So, the local businesses that “bank” with the credit union are actually improving the neighborhood around them.

You can check for credit unions in your area here.

I’m curious what other alternatives are out there. An online bank? Who do you trust with your money?

Cool Tool Review: Bit.ly

by

Todd Hoskins Reviews Tools for Business

cooltext451585442_tools

Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools and products that could belong in an entrepreneurial business toolkit. He’ll be checking out how useful they are to folks who would be their customers in a form that’s consistent and relevant.

Cool Tool Review: Bit.ly
A Review by Todd Hoskins

If you’ve been cryogenically frozen for the past two years, the discovery of URL shorteners would be confusing. Why are there all these nonsensical domains appearing on Twitter, Facebook, and even in email?

Prompted by the 140 character limit, the early URL shorteners (we’re talking 2008) served an important purpose – freeing space for you to get more words and letters into a tweet. You want to share Lady Gaga’s controversial Alejandro video, for example, but simply sending the link is not enough. You want to offer your endorsement, commentary, or related questions (and for this video, there are many). Shortening the URL gives you the chance to do this. Otherwise, the link itself will take up half of your tweet characters.

So, thank you SnipURL, urlBorg, Cligs, is.gd, Su.pr, TinyURL, Ow.ly, and all the others for allowing me to add my two cents.

There is also a business utility to URL shortening, and Bit.ly remains the leader. Bit.ly and it’s companion service J.mp (which I use) shorten nearly 5 billion links per month. Why are so many people using Bit.ly? First, it has been Twitter’s default shortener. But also, Bit.ly offers analytics on your links that can be endlessly fascinating and valuable to your business.

When advising clients on their microblogging efforts I start with two main focal points:

1) Accessibility of your voice (warmth, personality, interactivity, humor)
2) Relevancy of your content

Bit.ly analytics can give you real-time and cumulative feedback on the relevancy of content. Are people sharing what you have shared? Are they clicking on the link? What types of content do your readers find compelling? What conversations take place around these links?

Once you have an account and shorten a URL, either with the Bit.ly sidebar or at their domain (also Tweetdeck has Bit.ly integrated), you can track and manage the links to see when and how often people have clicked through, as well as the ratio of the traffic you are driving compared to the rest of traffic monitored through Bit.ly.

bitly

You also get posts and tweets that have used your shortened URL, so you can see who else is distributing the content and in what context. It’s a great way to discover influencers and fans. Don’t fall into the trap of measuring your online presence based on click-throughs, but it is a fast way to learn and adjust for the content your company is creating or distributing.

One more note . . . I will also use URL shorteners within emails sent to clients. If you send an email to five colleagues, for example, and want to see not only how many people are reading what you have highlighted as important, but how often that email has been forwarded, Bit.ly provides an easy way to see whether the article you recommend is being digested.

Summing Up – Is it worth it?

Enterprise Value: 5/5 – Dashboard and branded short links with Bit.ly Pro

Entrepreneur Value: 4/5 – Improve your content. Inform your voice. Analytics help.

Personal Value: 3/5 – Effective replacement for bookmarking (Like a site? Article? Shorten it and it will be archived.)

Cool Tool Review: Highrise

by

Todd Hoskins Reviews Tools for Business

cooltext451585442_tools

Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools and products that could belong in an entrepreneurial business toolkit. He’ll be checking out how useful they are to folks who would be their customers in a form that’s consistent and relevant.

Cool Tool Review: Highrise
A Review by Todd Hoskins

Liz reminds us, “Relationships are everyone’s business, and every business is relationships.”

How are you keeping track of your business relationships? This is the purpose of CRM – Customer Relationship Management. CRM is a broad category of software, encompassing anything from fancy address books to sales forecasting and client invoicing. But essentially, CRM is understanding who are the people and companies important to your company. Sidenote: I hate the “M” in the acronym. What customer (or anyone for that matter) wants their relationship managed?

Nonetheless, the people you and your employees know are one of the single most valuable assets to your company. It is essential to develop a database of contact information. It’s a bonus if you also can encourage your employees to include correspondence records and organize their to-do’s in one central place. This way, if one of your employees leaves the company, you can instantly see where they left off and what needs to be done.

Two months ago we looked at Rapportive, a very simple social CRM tool. Rapportive is great for giving you context to who you are corresponding with, and where to find them online. But it currently only offers individual accounts. For businesses, you need something more.

I recommend Highrise. Highrise, developed by the trailblazing software renegades at 37signals is just enough without being too much. If you’ve read this column before you know I appreciate simplicity in design and usability. Highrise shines here.

There are a handful of add-ons that can make Highrise into Salesforce.com lite. The basic product allows you to easily enter names, companies, tags, contact info, social network locations, and notes. You can assign tasks to yourself or others. You can also set levels of permissions so your junior associate doesn’t have your board member’s cell phone.

The pricing is relatively cheap, starting at $25 per month. (Also, a 30-day trial is free regardless of company size). We are all waiting for a customized Android and Blackberry app. iPhone app is available.

Summing Up – Is it worth it?

Enterprise Value: 2/5 – more options for business integration with Salesforce.com or Sugar CRM for SaaS. Or maybe your stuck with Oracle.

Entrepreneur Value: 5/5 – must-have. The hard part is getting your employees to use it consistently.

Personal Value: 0/5 – an online address book or an old fashioned Rolodex is good enough