User Friendly Techie Info!

This is ME & Beth Z.  Photo courtesy of Beth Z. - Your Nerdy Best Friend.

As most of you know, I’m not the most “techie” inclined.  In general, rather than spin my wheels, I go to my friend and tech expert, Samantha.  I recently attended a leadership conference hosted by the City of Corona and I got the best info from a woman, Beth Ziesenis, who calls herself “Your Nerdy Best Friend”.  Truth be told, I attended this conference primarily to hear Beth speak and she did not disappoint.  She can rattle off app after app and detail the costs and pros of each app.  Amazing!

Here are my take-aways from her talk on apps and her book entitled “Upgrade to Free” that would work well for promotion of either a profit or non-profit business: 

• Fiverr.com – Freelancers  will charge you only $5 for your quick project.  For example, get your logo animated
•  iStockPhoto.com – Professional stock photography at $1+ per photo, to use for brochures/fliers.  Also check out:  PhotoXpress.com (free options), Fotolia.com (some free) and Flickr.com/creative commons
• Tagxedo.com – Create a graphic using the words from your Twitter account (fun!)
• Gimp.com – Photoshop competitor
• SpotLike.com – creates a professionally looking QR code for your Facebook Page
• RememberTheMilk.com – to do list
• Animoto.com – create a video from templates – just add your own photos, audio and text ($19.95/year)
• MailChimp.com (Free up to 2,000) or ConstantContact.com ($15/month) – email services with pre-made templates

Other websites/apps that I have used recently (or plan to use soon) that are helpful to business/blog promotion are:

• AddThis.com – creates the social media button panel for a blog and is super user friendly!
• VentureBox.com – organizational tool, you create the systems (I am going to use it for my scrapbooking customer base and sort by “Customer”, “Potential Customer”, “Project Only Customer”.”
• Instatext app for iPhone – creates custom text images that you can save to your iPhone and post on your blog

I hope you find these sites helpful and are not overwhelmed.  If you can do me a favor and leave a comment below on any sites YOU like or help to increase your business productivity I would love it.  OR, you can tell me what sites you tried out from this list above and the benefits you enjoyed.  If you comment, you will be entered into a drawing for a FREE ONE HOUR CONSULT with me on 50 photos that you would like to get into a scrapbook!  

Happy Scrapping!

- Rina