Successful Blog

Cool Tool Review: GiveForward & ChipIn

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Todd Hoskins Reviews Tools for Small Business

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Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools and products that could belong in a small 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: GiveForward & ChipIn
A Review by Todd Hoskins

It’s difficult to ask for money. Whether it’s making a pitch to an investor, raising funds for a cause, or getting through a personal financial crisis, it’s uncomfortable and humbling to look someone in the eye with open hands and say, “Please.”

I missed out on a class trip to England years ago because I couldn’t sell enough pizza discount cards. Door-to-door pleading was not as effective as I hoped, so I went to school while my schoolmates went to Buckingham Palace. Lesson learned. Money is more easily earned.

Thank you, Tim Berners-Lee for the Internet, which in addition to providing knowledge, community, and a living for many of us, the WWW makes fundraising a whole lot simpler.

There are two primary reasons a business would want to raise funds online. First, as an alternative to sourcing angel investments. Grandpa and your rich friend Gretchen could indeed be angels, giving you the head start to get a business up and running, or reach the next phase of growth. In the world of peer-to-peer financing, Prosper has been democratizing business investments for over four years now. If you have friends and family who support your initiative, why not avoid the cost and hassle of interest rates and term sheets?

The second reason a business would get into fundraising is to bring awareness and money to a cause. It’s a good business practice (and human practice) to be charitable. Donating time and/or funds to a community development project, for example, ties a business to the community. It’s also appropriate to announce, “We care about this. Want to help?”

There are two tools I recommend that can help you ask for help. GiveForward and ChipIn are both simple and inexpensive, serving slightly different purposes.

GiveForward features a page. ChipIn features a widget. If you need to tell a story, make a case, provide some background, and allow comments, then GiveForward is the right choice. If you’re hoping to receive single donations in the hundreds or thousands of dollars, GiveForward is going to provide more peace of mind to the donor.

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ChipIn is better used for “crowdfunding,” encouraging your reader base or network to chip in a few dollars. It works with PayPal. The widget is not pretty, but it’s very visible on your blog or site.

Summing Up – Is it worth it?

Enterprise Value: 2/5 – some custom development would be appropriate for larger businesses

Entrepreneur Value: 3/5 – show your passion, whether it’s for your business or a cause

Personal Value: 4/5 – for soliciting or researching donations, sites like GlobalGiving and GiveForward are important

Cool Tool Review: Expensify

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Todd Hoskins Reviews Tools for Small Business

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Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools and products that could belong in a small 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: Expensify
A Review by Todd Hoskins

I have a shoebox of receipts, and a file folder for business expenses. How often do I spend time rummaging through the box for lost receipts? I’m embarrassed to admit.

Pain and expense reporting go hand in hand. The scanning, the spreadsheets, the documentation, the mileage log . . . you get the idea. Expensify completely changes this experience from painful to painless (and paperless to boot).

Imagine this . . . you get an email receipt from a hotel or airline and you forward it to an address that automatically uploads a copy awaiting your categorization (think TripIt). Or, you take a client to dinner and while emptying your pocket the next morning you simply take a photo with your phone and send it on its way (think NeatReceipts). You can also log a cash expense via SMS (think taxicabs). Finally, directly import your business credit card account and your reporting is being updated as you incur expenses (think Mint). These are just a few of the many features and services offered by Expensify. The days of the shoebox are numbered.

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They have done their research. As someone who has submitted, approved, and paid expenses in the past, I can’t find any holes. Better yet, it’s free if you are having expenses submitted by two or less people. More than two, it’s $5/month per person.

The beancounters and procedural police are taken care of as well. Expensify also provides additional support for the entire expense reporting workflow on their site – after submitting a report, the boss can approve the expenses online and the finance person can provide reimbursement electronically via direct deposit. Additionally, Expensify offers tight integrations with QuickBooks™, FreshBooks, Google Apps, and Salesforce.

Summing Up – Is it worth it?

Enterprise Value: 5/5 – currency conversion + customized policy mgmt

Entrepreneur Value: 5/5 – saves money and time

Personal Value: 0/5 – do your mileage log elsewhere, use Mint

Hate PowerPoint? Try Prezi!

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Todd Hoskins Reviews Tools for Small Business

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Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools and products that could belong in a small 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.

Refresh Your Presentation Skills (and Tool)
A Review by Todd Hoskins

I hate PowerPoint.

The tool itself is not the primary problem – it’s all the bad habits that have proliferated in business including too much text, too many slides, and the worst of all, reading a deck verbatim to an audience.

But, sometimes PowerPoint is necessary. If you must use it, I recommend absorbing Garr Reynolds‘ work at Presentation Zen.

For the rest of us who are free to be creative and experiment with new tools, I enthusiastically encourage you to check out Prezi. It’s well designed, simple, and will make any presentation not only more tolerable, but more memorable and enjoyable.

With PowerPoint, you use a template and create slides. Then you proceed through the slides (often with snazzy or annoying effects) in a linear fashion. With Prezi, you create a map populated with words, images, charts, video, etc. Don’t let that intimidate you. Really, you take all the stuff that you may want to use, get it out there, and then create groupings and a path.

Once you figure out the “zebra” navigation, it’s very easy. The flash technology animates the path you create within the map. Here’s an example:

About perspective… on Prezi

Prezi highlights its “zoom” for good reason. The spatial relationships and animation allow the presenter to capture the big picture, drill into details, and show the connections between concepts. It’s not just theater, it’s effective.

It’s free, as long as you don’t mind the Prezi watermark and keeping your presentations public. Premium subscriptions start at $59/year and allow you to work offline and have increased storage capacity.

Summing Up – Is it worth it?

Enterprise Value: 5/5 – worth the 15 minute investment to learn

Entrepreneur Value: 5/5 – look sharper, break the bad habits

Personal Value: 1/5 – make a movie, not a presentation

Cool Small Biz Tools: PollDaddy – Need a Poll on Taxes?

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Todd Hoskins Reviews Tools for Small Business

cooltext451585442_tools

Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools and products that could belong in a small 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.

Survey Says . . . Polldaddy
A Reveiw by Todd Hoskins

Ask for feedback. Ask for feedback. Ask for feedback.

It’s so important, I wrote it three times. I was reminded of this wisdom recently when I asked a circle of friends for some input regarding transitions in my personal life. The responses I received were surprising, and multiple people thanked me for the invitation to share what been unspoken for months or years.

Not every customer will volunteer his or her opinions on your service, product, or brand experience. A simple, “How are we doing?” or “What could we do better?” can yield a library of rich information.

So, Problem #1 is getting the feedback. Problem #2 is dealing with the data. PollDaddy can provide assistance on both fronts.

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Most people love to share their perspective, some openly, some anonymously. Also, they love to compare themselves to everyone else. This is what ESPN learned when they created a poll at ESPN.com. This led to a featured tab, additional interactive programming, and widespread promotion on television as well as radio. The polling was driving traffic. When they promoted their polls, visitors flocked to vote and compare.

I have used SurveyMonkey in the past to systematically gather feedback. It’s a great tool as well. What I love about PollDaddy is the ability to do email surveys, plus polls embedded in a blog, distributed via Twitter, or within social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, or Ning. For both SurveyMonkey and PollDaddy, the service is free for up to 100 responses. Annual subscriptions are very affordable at $15 to $75 a month. When the responses have been collected, PollDaddy provides reports that can be easily downloaded into a number of formats.

Polls are valuable for getting a quick read on more of a day-to-day basis. You can adjust your tactics based on questions like, “Was this helpful?” (PollDaddy also has a ratings feature for this). For bloggers, it’s insightful to poll your readers’ intentions for reading your blog: Inspiration? Community? Information? Get a feel for their background – professions, demographics, and interests.

The non-intrusive and entertaining aspect of a poll also makes it a great way to inject humor into your brand. A balance of asking questions to learn, and asking to be creative, silly, or human will win points with customers and readers. Don’t take it too seriously.

Surveys can provide more in-depth assistance for developing your strategy. I have asked customers to rank strengths and weaknesses of a client’s service, and asked them where clients should expand their products and businesses. It is important to keep the surveys brief (under 15 questions usually), and minimize the number of open-ended questions. While providing the most unbiased responses, too many open ends will result in a low response rate.

Polls and surveys are no substitute for real, natural dialogue. They are imperfect, but they both show that you care and give you valuable data to make decisions. This leads us to the final issue.

Problem #3 is being responsive to the data. PollDaddy can’t help you with that. When you ask people for input, their expectations increase. It doesn’t mean you need a redesign, a new feature, or more promotions. But your customers will expect you to respond – either with actions or words. Thank them for their participation. Send a note to the responders who were most impassioned. And, when possible, make public what you learned.

Summing Up – Is it worth it?

Enterprise Value: 4/5 – continuous feedback is as important as large-scale research

Entrepreneur Value: 5/5 – cheap, easy, and brings you closer to your customers

Personal Value: 2/5 – if you want to raise your geek flag, go for it

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Thanks, Todd! You can find Todd on Twitter @ToddHoskins

Thanks, Todd, I think it might be time for a poll around here.

What do you find polls useful for in the work that you do?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

Register Now!! for sobcon-vmc

Cool Biz Tools: Brizzly

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Todd Hoskins Reviews Tools for Small Business

cooltext451585442_tools

Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools and products that could belong in a small 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.

Pick Your Client, Any Client by

Todd Hoskins

Although Twitter has worked hard to improve the user interface at twitter.com, it is worth the time to choose a client for your desktop and mobile use. Like Microsoft Outlook or Thunderbird seeks (and often fails) to improve email productivity, Twitter clients offer more tools and a better user experience.

The most popular desktop clients are TweetDeck, HootSuite, and Seesmic. Some of he most popular mobile clients include Tweetie (iPhone), Echofon (iPhone), Twidroid (Android), and UberTwitter (Blackberry). Increasingly, developers of desktop applications are making mobile apps as well and vice versa.

I currently use none of the above. For my small business purposes, I chose Brizzly for desktop and Twikini for my Windows Mobile device. I would prefer to avoid the topic of Windows Mobile 6 (and my wireless contract), so let’s look at desktop web applications.

Brizzly is a browser-based application, which means there is nothing to install. The app has a clean interface with inline maps, photos, and video. With embedded media, infinite scrolling, and auto refresh, my stream requires very little clicking. It’s all there when I “dip in” for a bit.

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Importantly, applications like Brizzly allow you to handle multiple handles or accounts at once. This is where the difference of needs between applications for the enterprise and smaller businesses becomes most pronounced. An enterprise may need the ability to elevate, forward, share, or archive a tweet or conversation. There are fee-based applications for this. An individual user may be perfectly satisfied with twitter.com. For small businesses there are good free options in between.

I need to be able to find the relevant people and conversations and participate seamlessly without logging out and logging in of accounts. Saved searches, easily accessible bios, and a well-designed user experience are essential to me. Brizzly does this well.

Brizzly could improve with better management of contacts and followers (Seesmic’s latest version is impressive on this front). As customer service becomes more commonplace on Twitter for all sizes of companies, Brizzly may need to conservatively add CRM features. Let’s hope they stick with simplicity.

Summing Up – Is it worth it?

Enterprise Value: 1/5 – try CoTweet, PeopleBrowsr, or HootSuite

Entrepreneur Value: 4/5 – new iPhone application as well

Personal Value: 4/5 – also integrates with Facebook

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Thanks, Todd! You can find Todd on Twitter @ToddHoskins

Which clients do you use? What would it take you to try a new one?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

Register Now!! for sobcon-vmc

Simple Social CRM Tool: Rapportive

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Todd Hoskins Reviews Tools for Small Business

cooltext451585442_tools

Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools and products that could belong in a small 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.

Rapportive
A Review by Todd Hoskins

If you do not use Gmail for personal or business use, sorry, this review is not for you. Please come back again next week. If you do have a Gmail account, or your business utilizes Gmail, install the Rapportive plug-in. Believe me, it will be worth it.

Why?

Rapportive removes the ads on the right column of your Gmail page, and replaces them with the social network information of the person sending you an email. This is simple social CRM, immediate information on where to find and interact with friends and customers outside of email. A field to take notes. And, it’s free.

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The latest tweets, job information from LinkedIn, and geographic location all help provide context. For a salesperson, entrepreneur, executive, or customer service representative, the value of getting information right within your browser saves time, can help you prioritize responses, and allows you to know more about your customer than their email address. The notes section is handy for recording birthdays, kids, and conversation cues.

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Takes less than two minutes to set up. Privacy concerns are minimal because Rapportive only has access to your contacts, not your Gmail password. (Thank you OpenID). The Rapportive extension is available for the Firefox and Chrome browsers.

Summing Up – Is it worth it?

Enterprise Value: 3/5 – more complex CRM’s are available, but this is simple if you have corporate Gmail.

Entrepreneur Value: 5/5 – Bridges the personal and the professional and saves time.

Personal Value: 5/5 – Did you know Johnny had a Flickr account? Now you do.

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Thanks, Todd! You can find Todd on Twitter @ToddHoskins

I’ve installed the plugin. It’s not perfect, but it’s already way more useful than the ads it replaces!

What about you? Have you used it? What do you think of Rapportive?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

Register Now!! for sobcon-vmc