1. CRM - contact and lead tracking, sales and contact management, sales pipeline management and forecasting, customer service and business management. Keep yourself organized! Free version available from www.freecrm.com, from $7/mo at www.sugarcrm.com
2. Market Research – Google Alerts is a “must-have” clipping service. Set up your favorite key words and www.google.com/alerts finds and delivers articles about any subject of your choosing to your inbox every day. Watch for news and mentions of your own company, your customers and your competitors. Free
3. Creative Design – Want a design for a new logo, brochure, website or business card? Go to either www.crowdspring.com, or www.99designs.com, upload your requirements, run a contest and pick your favourite. You pick the purse size, I’ve seen contests get dozens of great results for only a few hundred dollars.
4. Marketing Collateral – Want fast eay printing?  Upload files for brochures, business cards and stationary. These companies, www.overnightprints.com and  www.vistaprint.com, will  print and ship – too easy.  vistaprint.com is also available in Canada at www.vistaprint.ca
5. Permission-based Marketing – create and send opt-in newsletters, deliver and track blog posts and updates to customers, prospects and colleagues. www.campaigner.com starts at $10/mo, www.constantcontact.com starts at $15/mo
6. Accounting – track your time and expenses, manage contractors, send and manage your invoices, totally on-line, getting rave reviews. Join the wave at www.freshbooks.com, pricing starts at $15/mo
7. Conference Calling – when you need to convene a meeting (and look professional doing it), you can get free reservationless conference calling at www.freeconference.com
8. Remote PC Access – for those times when you need to get to a file on your computer but your computer is in your office and you’re not. www.gotomypc.com starts at $20/mo
9. Long Distance Calling – www.skype.com offers free or very low cost long distance calling (works best with headphones), and it can also do conference calls
10. Project Management – web-based project management software that marries time tracking and task management in a collaborative online space with powerful reporting.  www.myintervals.com is $20 for up to 15 projects
11. Taking orders/selling stuff – the dead easy way to accept credit cards on your website, www.paypal.com only charges you when you sell, a transaction fee up to 3% of sale value
12. Keeping track of it all – make notes on anything on the web or on your computer using www.evernote.com and have these memory joggers available (and searchable) at any time – free
13. Sending really big files – www.yousendit.com – for when you need to send a really big file that your customer may not be able to receive otherwise, or when you absolutely need to know a file reached it’s intended recipient – yousendit has a pay as you go option or plans from $10/mo
14. Virtual Fax – if you deal with Fortune 1000 companies you know how they love their faxes. www.efax.com lets you receive faxes in your email account instead of on a fax machine – way more convenient. You can also send scanned docs as faxes using the same service. Starts at $17/mo
15. On-line Meetings – www.dimdim.com makes your meeting almost as good as in-person and much less expensive than airfare. Use it to deliver synchronized live presentations, whiteboards and web pages and share their voice and video over the Internet. Free and $20/mo options
16. Virtual Receptionist – an Internet voicemail system accessible by phone, email, or the web. an auto-attendant that acts as your virtual receptionist. You can create virtual mailboxes for your employees and enjoy voicemail call forwarding, call transfers, call routing, voicemail notifications, and much more…. www.my1voice.com from $10/mo
17. Transcription – For those people who just hate to type but love to talk, you can record your messaging, upload it to www.speakwrite.com and receive a typed doc back via email in about 3 hours.
18. Sharing your thoughts – absolutely the best way to publish your powerpoint presentations on the web and share them with others – www.slideshare.com is free
19. Document sharing and collaboration – my personal favorite, docs.google.com allows you to upload word or excel files and work on them collaboratively with selected people. Takes all the hassle out of emailing docs around for comments. – free
20. Running an event? Use www.eventbrite.com to create a webpage for your event, accept and manage registrations and even publish who has RSVP’d. Free if your event is free, 2.5% of ticket price for paid events.

Over 60 people from the Marketing Executives Networking Group MENG and my great group of Twitter friends contributed to this list and once we were done there were at least 2 services I hadn’t heard of (but have since tried and enjoyed). How about you? Which ones are new to you? Which ones do you love? Which ones are we missing? If I get enough comments, I’ll do a Part II.

Logically I know I was reading a description of what XZY company does, emotionally all I heard was “Blah Blah Blah”. I had no idea what this company did, none! Be honest, you’ve done it too right? Read something and had absolutely no idea what the product was or why you might benefit from buying it. You’re probably like most of us, who don’t admit this for fear of looking dumb or uninformed.

How easy it is for many marketing people I know to pump out words, they can jump right up and start writing, often on their first day on the job or project. Their words simply flow onto the page, looping into just the right sized paragraphs, nicely spell checked and usually containing an abundance of the latest buzz words.

These words turn into product brochures, web sites, press releases, white papers and blog posts, and prolific marketing writers are praised for their ability to “produce” and “deliver”. They measure their clicks and down loads and honestly believe they’ve done well.

I beg to differ.

In 1868, writer Mark Twain said “Anybody can have ideas–the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.”

In an age where attention spans are shrinking, and 140 word sound bites are all you are allowed on marketing vehicles like Twitter, it is once again time for writing less to become a valued marketing skill.

Writing less actually requires more work, not less, but here are 10 tips to help you along.

1) Start with what your company does and describe your company’s focus in no more than 3 words. Yes, you heard me correctly – 3 WORDS, not 30 and not 300. Mine is “Results-based marketing”. Disney’s is “innovative story telling”. Coca Cola’s is “liquid refreshment”.

2) Before you start writing your next piece, write a summary using less than 100 words. Make sure you don’t cheat – less than 100 words, and then make sure that these words support the 3 word focus phrase you came up with in point #1.

3) After you’ve done your summary, go back and highlight the one thing that you want your reader to remember after reading your piece. If you can’t find the one thing, go back and rewrite your 100 word summary.

4) If your document is going to be more than 500 words, write an outline before you start to keep your thoughts organized – your readers will thank you for it.

5) Use simple words. If you make software, say you make software. The people who like software will want to read more. If it takes me an entire paragraph to figure out that you make software, even if I like software, I won’t be reading it. People don’t like their heads to ache when they read and they don’t like feeling stupid because they can’t figure out what you are saying.

6) Once you’ve written your piece, cut at least 1/3 of the words out. The best place to look is the first paragraph, for some reason it’s usually the weakest. If you can’t cut your precious words, ask a colleague to do it for you.

7) Count how many times you used your product or company name or the word “we” , if it’s more than once in every 500 words, ask yourself if you are writing about you or for your reader. For every statement you write, answer the question “what does this mean for my reader”.

Find a way to add words that complete this sentence “what this means to you is…..” after every statement you make.

9) Let your words sit before you finalize them. It’s amazing how much easier it is to edit your work after you’ve stepped away from it for a day or two.

10) Go back and chop some more – yes you can do it!

I won’t tell you how long it took me to write this blog post and it’s still not even close to crisp enough, but I hope I have hunted down and eliminated anything resembling Blah, Blah, Blah. If not, I hope you’ll tell me!

I like examples, especially simple ones that you get right away. My simple mind perhaps? Whatever the reason, because I have been researching successful B2B uses of Twitter lately I thought I would share this example of how Twitter helped at least one company make a sale.

It all started with a tweet (once upon a tweet?) from someone I follow.

I hadn’t heard of crowdSPRING so I checked them out. Now it turns out that I was a few days away from using their competitor 99Designs (who by the way I had used before with great results), but hey, if my colleague who I respect was using Crowdspring, perhaps they were better yet?

So I replied to him

And here is where it gets interesting. I did not hear back from him but within 5 minutes I got tweets from both 99designs and crowdSPRING, literally seconds apart.

Clearly they had staff running an ongoing search for any mention of their company, and both took the opportunity to try to influence my buying decision – good on them!

Takeaway #1 – every company should be using Twitter to search for opportunities to react to people who are shouting out that they are interested in their products.

It’s also interesting that while my tweet clearly referenced 99designs, I shortened crowdSPRING to cspring, which means they were searching, not just for their company name but for at least one variation of it – really smart.

Takeaway #2 – search not just for your exact company name but for variations on it, especially abbreviations.

Lastly, as I read their tweets it also occurred to me that a new skill is required from salespeople – pitch your product in no more than 140 characters, but more on that in a future post.

Both companies reacted quickly and well and I did end up buying a service from one of them, you gotta believe the ROI on that tweet was huge! You don’t need many people like me to justify using Twitter, at least for this purpose. By the way, I am curious – which one would you have picked based on the tweets from the companies?

The real question is “Should we switch or is this case a case of fixing what ain’t broken?”

I believe there are (at least) seven good reasons for using electronic data capture instead of paper. Some are more important than others, depending on the type of event, the audience and the type of data you are collecting.

1) Better Security
This is important! Data captured at events can include names, addresses, e-mails, bank account information and social security numbers. Consider the legal and public relations risks of misplacing or losing this information as the paper containing the data follows its processing route. Read my blog on this subject. A trustworthy partner can provide this service for you, storing the encrypted information on a locked down data capture device. This means that even if someone could access the data, it would not be decipherable. The data remains secure while it wings its way over a wireless network and to your end client’s customer relationship management (CRM) system.

2) Improved Accuracy
The accuracy of what information on paper depends on two things: the willingness of a consumer to provide the correct data, and the ability of the data entry person to read and understand answers provided. Electronic data capture uses software intelligence to improve accuracy by auto-populating city, state and country based on zip or postal code to prevent entering information that conflicts with answers to a previous question, and so on. Features such as spellchecking ensure open answers make sense, and that only one response is selected if that is what is desired. Software can also apply logic to ensure answers conform to a format that improves accuracy, for example, e-mail address format, date and age (where a minimum age is required).

3) More Complete
Some forms are confusing to consumers and, consequently, are abandoned.  An incomplete survey is often as useless as no survey. Intelligent electronic surveys can show the user only the questions that make sense and can insist on complete answers to some or all questions before allowing the user to continue.

4) Fewer Risks
Paper surveys are mobile by nature. They travel from the hands of those completing them, to event staff who collect and store them, put them in envelopes and ship them out. Sometimes they go home with the event staff at night. This kind of data collection is a challenge to track and enumerate. Missing surveys might represent a security breach if they contain personally identifiable information. You may have promised security in exchange for information. If a survey is not completely legible, you may not be able to uphold this kind of a promise. At the very best, this damages your brand. In the event of a contest or sweepstake, it may even result in a legal liability.  Properly completed electronic surveys ensure every record is captured on a secure device, tagged and delivered to a database with a full audit trail throughout.

5) Fast Processing
Before you can act on survey data, you must be able to access it. This usually means keying in or scanning a paper form. It can take weeks to deliver paper forms to a processing centre and enter information into a database. In contrast, an electronic system makes every survey record available to you within seconds of information being entered on a device. You can follow up with the survey taker before they have even left your display. Acting quickly improves your chance of success.

6) Editing Capability
It is almost inevitable that after you have designed a survey, printed it and shipped it, that “somebody” decides a last-minute change is essential. This not only takes time, but costs money – rush fees, for example. Worse, sometimes it becomes apparent only when people start using the form that some of the questions are unclear or confusing. Making changes at this point might be impossible. With the right electronic survey partner, changes to surveys are expected and welcomed. People rarely react exactly as we expect. Making changes to an electronic survey on location is often as easy as a few key strokes.

7) Storage Capacity
One of the worst possible scenarios for an event marketer is running out of paper forms and losing potential leads. It can be trying to spend time running from location to location ensuring there are enough paper form supplies. Electronic data capture maintains an almost infinite “paper” supply. Each device can store thousands of surveys securely and then co-ordinate their delivery to a data entry facility. With the right partner, your electronic surveys are seamlessly delivered to your client or to your servers using wireless networks and freeing up your event staff.

When all is said and done, except in a very few cases, I truly believe electronic data capture is the way to go but I also acknowledge it has its downsides. I’ll blog about those shortly.

I truly believe that it won’t be long until using paper to capture personal information will be forbidden, first by financial institutions, and later by all credible organizations. Here’s why…

In Dec 2008, paper forms belonging to an Oklahoma business that handles home loans were found strewn along a fence line not far from the company’s headquarters. These documents included some customers’ account numbers, bank and personal account holder info, wire transfer numbers and much more. Yes it was an accident, simple human error but it continues to cause huge PR problems for the company, and it is certain that the loss of customer confidence will have a financial impact for a long time to come.

It’s not a big stretch to imagine how paper lead forms used at events to capture consumer contact and other info might also be misplaced. Given the type of data most of us collect at events, the loss of the leads would be the least of your worries!

Consider for a moment how many different people handle your paper leads and how it’s impossible for you to know for sure that none of have gone missing. Replacing paper data capture with electronic data capture minimizes the probability that this could happen to you, effectively eliminating the hundreds or thousands of pieces of paper containing personal consumer information – papers that must be gathered up and transported to a data entry location.

But moving to capture data electronically is not the final answer.

Also in December 2008, Hewlett Packard reported that a laptop computer was stolen from an HP employee. It contained personal information about some of the company’s employees, including their names and social security numbers. The computer was protected with a username and password.

Not good enough! If you are using electronic devices to capture personal information about consumers make sure the vendor has secured the devices. They should at the very least encrypt all consumer data stored on the device so that even if the device is stolen, nobody will be able to “see” any personal information stored there.

Lastly, the data captured on those devices has to get from the devices to you, and it’s journey can be fraught with opportunities for data to go amiss. In the ideal world, nobody should be able to get the data off the units, it should only be sent (encrypted) over a network (wireless or wired) and the system should ensure that it can only be delivered to one destination.

You might think that once the data is off the devices and at your service provider that all is well, but the need for diligence continues. In September of 2008, mortgage firm Countrywide experienced a security breach. A former employee was arrested and charged with stealing sensitive personal information from Countrywide’s computer files and selling it to mortgage brokers to be used as sales leads. The FBI stated that as many as 2 million people may have been affected! Ensuring that your Data Capture vendor has rigorous system and process security measures in place is critical to your protection.

In summary, replacing paper data capture with electronic data capture can significantly minimize the risk of consumer information being lost or stolen but it is imperative that you pick the right data capture vendor to work with. The right vendor is someone who has a clearly articulated Data Security Plan that addresses physical, system and process security measures to protect your data, someone who has an audit process in place who can track each piece of data collected to prove that they all reached their intended destination, and someone who has a defined Information LifeCycle Management Plan to ensure that all your data is managed corrected and deleted when you want it to be.

Unfortunately horror stories of breaches are all too common, see www.nymity.com for just a few examples. Most companies take action far too late – better to act now to prevent a problem than to have to react if you vendor partner simply didn’t know how to protect a very important asset for you.

It’s easy to extend lead capture to bring something special, that extra value, that can make the difference between a good event and a great event. Using technology-based interactions with event visitors, you can get so much more with little additional effort or cost.

Here are the top 6 reasons you should invest in electronic data capture systems for your next event:

1) Simplifying event registration
If you’re running the entire event, registration is a necessary part of planning but it’s often the most painful. A customized web-based registration for pre-event registration can be combined with on-site registration and/or recognition system to register and track event attendees as they come to the event and even as they move around the event.

2) Learning what’s on consumers’ minds
Knowing what consumers are thinking sure beats guessing when it comes to positioning a brand for success so why not ask them and record their answers? Engage with consumers in such a way that they’ll be happy to provide their thoughts and opinions to you, and if you capture this electronically you can instantly and easily analyze the results and turn them into recommendations that will be statistically sound. Slice and dice the results so you focus only on the “right” segment for your brand at that moment in time.

3) Getting consumer permission to starting a brand relationship
It’s difficult these days to get consumers to opt-in to receive more messages from your brand. Use incentives in creative ways to do just that, from delivering valuable content to sweepstakes, instant win draws, drive to store coupons, incentive coupons, photo marketing and more. Match the incentive to the event and the audience to get the highest opt-in rate imaginable.

4) Measuring how you’ve changed consumer opinions for the better
If you can demonstrate that consumers are more willing to buy, or more aware, or more interested in your brand as a result of the event you are well on your way to demonstrating a positive ROI. Take the time to quantify this – either before and during the event, or even before and after the event.

5) Touching consumers with the best ongoing messages
The best relationships are those where communication is relevant and interesting. Here’s your chance to capitalize on what you now know about your event visitors and to follow up to maintain and grow your relationship. Send email or SMS messages that speak to what you know about the person, their likes or dislikes, when they plan to buy or offer them something to win them back from a competitor. Creating relevant conversation is easy when you know so much about them.

6) Measuring return on event investment
The perfect ROI shows a correlation between engaging with a brand at an event and making a purchase as a result. It may be as simple as showing you how much likely the event visitor is to buy your brand’s product or service or as sophisticated as incorporating sales data and demonstrating exactly who bought what and how many as result. ROI is king when it comes to getting your next budget approved.

Those who get it will win. Going that extra measurement mile will make all the difference when the time comes to allocate budget for the next year’s programs.