Hello,

I’ve had a ‘cherry’ good response to last week’s free online resources and tips that I may try to make this a consistent blog event.

I look for resources which not only help business owners improve productivity but those benefits which offer greater exposure and publicity. I have also decided to expand this selection to include ‘fun stuff’; namely sites that entertain without being terribly distracting.

Cherry Face

www.helpareporterout.com Looking for ways to get your name and business recognized? Do you want to be quoted in major publications? Help a Reporter Out, also known as HARO, is a venue set up by celebrity blogger Peter Shankman to help reporters find material for article topics. Once you sign up at Shankman’s site, he sends a morning and an afternoon email listing of topics which reporters wish to address. Shankman organizes reporter queries with contact information so it is very easy to click on a topic for reply and then quickly send your expert advice to the inquirer. If your thoughts are deemed worthy and are published by the reporter, this can only mean greater exposure for your own business. Several of my clients have been quoted and published in books, major magazines, newspapers and online sites through HARO. (It can be a little tedious going through the email topics each day…which is why hiring a virtual assistant to do that for you is tremendously useful. Whether you do it yourself or hire someone to scan the topics for you, the public relations exposure from this public relations opportunity is priceless.)

http://www.15secondpitch.com/new/ Has anyone ever asked you want it is that you do for a living and you’ve replied with, “I’m a speaker” or, “I’m a publicist.” This type of a response does not always elicit great interest. If you are attending a networking event, people really want to know what it is that you can do for them. 15secondpitch is one of the neatest sites for creating an elevator speech, which is a short speech that you would give to someone explaining in brevity exactly what it is you do and what it is that you can do for them. Follow the prompts in the 15secondpitch link and the end result is a speech you can practice and fine-tune to use the next time someone asks you, “What do you do?”

http://www.echosign.com/ Aiming for a paperless office? Bogged down by paper contracts, expensive postage rates and the lag time waiting for a client to return a signed document to you? Enter EchoSign. This is an exceptional electronic signature program which is great for sending contracts electronically for legal signatures. Sign up free for 5 transactions per month. Once a contract is created, upload a document to the EchoSign site where a signed copy can be sent to the client and returned to you with the client’s signature. Contracts can be stored and tracked in EchoSign for future reference allowing for a completely paperless sign, copy and file system.

http://www.hulu.com/ Hulu enables you to watch popular TV shows and movies online. There are no downloads required and there is no charge. This is not a YouTube-type site, rather this is a comprehensive directory of TV programming offering good quality reception. Quoted from the site itself, “Hulu has thousands of videos and movies from Fox, E! Entertainment , MGM, Sony, NBC and many, many more. Popular shows like The Simpsons, The Office, House, Firefly and others are archived and made available for audiences. They are all archived and you can view the content by genre, or alphabetical order, or by doing a search.”

My Hours http://www.myhours.com/ This is a time management, timesheet, time tracking solution. It enables you to track your work time, projects you work on and tasks you perform. It is web-based and can be used from any location at any time.

Pandora http://www.Pandora.com – If you like to work to music this is a great site to set and forget. It will play your favorite songs from any number of genres you choose. Nothing to download and no cost to the user.

RoboForm http://www.roboform.com/ Is an online program for managing, filling in, encrypting and generating random passwords. This is a great tool if you handle multiple client websites. RoboForm saves website passwords into Passcards. Then RoboForm can automatically fill in login information from these Passcards. RoboForm can save secret text snippets such as ATM passwords or lock combinations in to what is called Safenotes. Once registered, there are videos to take users through every aspect of this useful program.

I’ve got plenty more useful sites to blog so please check back next week for more.

 

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