nicole42n7: web internet marketing

Yesterday, Dawn announced she’d be moving on from Outspoken Media. It was hard to see in print, but Dawn stuck with us through an incredibly exhausting year and earned a spot in this family regardless of where her career takes her. We thank her for everything she brought to Outspoken, all the long hours and the work ethic that never ceased to impress. She’ll be missed.

With Dawn’s departure there were questions raised, especially since her announcement follows on the heels of Rae stepping down as CEO. Over the past two years Outspoken Media has experienced a tremendous amount of growth. That growth came in many shapes and sizes, and with the hard work and trust of many individuals. It has been exhausting, difficult, scary and, at times, absolutely insane. It’s also been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life to date.

As the company grew on performance reports and ledgers, Lisa and I have grown as individuals. Did we do it without any bumps along the way? No. Did we do it without any help? No. But did we do it with a fire in our bellies to keep Outspoken Media our number one priority no matter how often our significant others, family and friends asked us to please shut the computer down? Yes. Business isn’t always fun, but the challenges make us better professionals and, I would like to think, people.

I am proud of what Outspoken Media has accomplished as a brand, a business and a service provider. It’s our baby and to the answer your questions – yes, we’re here to stay. We may not have the same names as when we began, but like any new business, if we cannot overcome inevitable obstacles gracefully and quickly, we didn’t have much going for us to begin with.

We’ve built something special and we will continue to grow this business in the New Year with the help of our team and clients. Now also seems like an appropriate time to welcome in two new faces to Outspoken Media. Well, at least new to you. They’ve actually been part of our family for a while now. They’re two women who joined our team and showed us how important team is to business. They complete us and in 2011 will be the other half of Outspoken Media.

Sabre Angelique Sarnataro

Internet Marketing Specialist

Sabre serves as one of our Internet marketing specialists and came to Outspoken with a strong background in traditional marketing. She’s worked in promotions, broadcast advertising and print marketing, also delving into freelance web design/development and social media consulting. She has the core belief that every person should print the definition of “honest” to their mirror, not only to remind them of its varied meanings, but to inject it into their everyday lives. She believes a good marketing approach will always include passion, personality and honesty.

Clients will love her because she attacks their projects with passion, creativity and a unique voice. We love her because she’s a tough Italian, outspoken, and has no shame when it comes to the amount of frosting one requires to assemble a gingerbread house [still a sore subject around the office]. She’s also slowly working to increase Lisa’s pop culture knowledge, which we all really appreciate. Her knowledge, her fire and her spunk make her a perfect complement to Outspoken.

Michelle Lyttle Lowery

Senior Content Manager

After serving time in both the United States Air Force as a cryptologic linguist (no, seriously) and Corporate America, Michelle serendipitously fell into Web writing, and hasn’t looked back since. For more than 20 years, Michelle parlayed her love of language into successful writing and editing pursuits. A self-described word nerd, she loves reading and books, and thinks grammar and etymology are fun. She speaks Spanish and Russian conversationally, and could probably get around Paris and Berlin without too much trouble. Since September 2008, she’s been honing her skills as a Web writer and editor, and learning the art and science of SEO, and Internet marketing.

Clients will love Michelle because her uncompromising personal expectations, honest writing, and versatile style and voice. We love Michelle for her excitement, her desire to dig in and get her hands dirty, and for occasionally sending emails so amazing they make us giggle and/or cry. Michelle currently resides in South Carolina so, sadly, she’s not in the office with Lisa, Sabre and myself. But that doesn’t stop us from bugging her via video Skype chats.

Just like any new company, this past year has been a lesson in smart hiring as we opened up our new Troy, NY office. However, with the addition of Michelle and Sabre, we’re confident we got it right.

To date we’ve been mostly a virtual shop with Lisa and myself working out of our apartments for the better part of the past two years (wee, no pants Friday!). It worked well when it was just us, but as the team grew we saw the effect that working virtually had on morale. As a result, we’ll only be considering candidates in upstate New York for (most) future positions. Yes, Michelle telecommutes, but she’s an exception due to her level of awesomeness and how well she vibes with the team. There’s something to be said for working in an office together with group coffee runs, late night client deadlines and maps for industry domination in 2011.

With that, we hope you’ll join us in welcoming Michelle and Sabre to the team. We think you’ll agree, they live up to the Outspoken Media legacy. We also want to thank the community for their support. The messages Lisa and I have received over the past few weeks have been nothing short of amazing. Thank you.

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

In an informal class='blippr-nobr'>Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter poll, we asked our friends working at or running small and medium-sized businesses not what they could do for the class='blippr-nobr'>Internetclass="blippr-nobr">Internet, but what the Internet could do for them.

We heard responses that ranged widely, running the gamut from social media marketing tools to internal team communications. Here’s a list of great resources for SMBs that meet some of the most pressing needs you experience as a business owner or entrepreneur.

Best of all, every single one of these tools can be used free of charge (some have paid options for larger businesses or for those that need more features). And all of them are web-based; that means you won’t have to install software, worry about cross-platform compatibility, take up any of your own system’s resources or have to leave work when you leave your own PC.

If you have other tools you love using that you think other SMBs could benefit from, please let us know about them in the comments.

2 Internal Chat Tools

When you want to get your employees or clients together to brainstorm, make decisions or simply run your business, instant messaging can be a huge time-saver — especially if you’re working with a distributed team or out-of-town clients and vendors. While we love programs like class='blippr-nobr'>Skypeclass="blippr-nobr">Skype for business chat and conference calls, it may not be installed on every machine you have to use. These web-based group chat programs solve that problem.

Zoho’s web-based chat client allows you to create and chat with groups. You can easily share your desktop with co-workers, and you can integrate your calendar for quick appointment or meeting scheduling. Best of all, Zoho’s IM service also supports all kinds of IM clients, including Yahoo and class='blippr-nobr'>AIMclass="blippr-nobr">aim.

Another good online group chat service is Gixaw. With this service, you can create a unique URL for chatting with your group. You can share files, create multiple “rooms” for different projects or departments, and even search through chat history.

2 Task Management Tools

As your business and number of employees grow, you may need a central place for delegating tasks, monitoring progress and ensuring everything gets done correctly and on time.

HiTask is a free, web-based task management tool perfect for SMBs. It has a user-friendly, easy interface for your to-do lists and for team or project management. With HiTask, you can work on recurring events, make assignments, sort tasks based on priority and more, all within a simple drag-and-drop UI.

Another great task management tool is RememberTheMilk. Don’t be fooled by its homemaker-ish name. This web app has been widely acclaimed over the past several years, and it works for individuals as well as small teams. RTM integrates with class='blippr-nobr'>Gmailclass="blippr-nobr">Gmail and Outlook, and the service has mobile apps for class='blippr-nobr'>Windowsclass="blippr-nobr">Windows, class='blippr-nobr'>Androidclass="blippr-nobr">Android, iPhone and BlackBerry.

8 Social Media Marketing and Monitoring Tools

One of the categories SMBs ask for the most help with is social media. You need to quickly and easily keep an eye on what people are saying about you; more importantly, you need to participate in the social media conversation yourself, without drowning hours upon endless hours bouncing around various websites.

There are three great tools we’d recommend for pushing out updates to a variety of sites at once. All three have free, web-based services, and they’re great for working with teams, too. Depending on your specific needs and tastes, you could try out Hootsuiteclass="blippr-nobr">HootSuite, Seesmicclass="blippr-nobr">Seesmic and TweetDeckclass="blippr-nobr">TweetDeck.

If you want to see what people are saying about your company, your product, your location or your vertical in real time, try searching for relevant terms on Collecta or SocialMention.

You also have options for network-specific monitoring tools. To see how your tweets are performing, try CrowdBooster. And remember, Twitter’s official analytics product is coming soon, too. For Facebook, use that social network’s Insights dashboard for your business’s Facebook Page.

3 Bookkeeping Tools

When it comes to keeping your finances straight, there are also several free, online tools just right for SMBs.

You can try Numia.biz, accounting software made just for recording and processing small business transactions, including accounts payable, accounts receivable, bank balances and more. It also gives you forms for invoicing, purchases and bank reconciliation and allows you to set up customers and vendors.

The desktop version of QuickBooks is a standard feature of many SMBs. This web-based version of QuickBooks is free and perfect for the new or smaller business. You can use QuickBooks Online to create invoices, pay bills, track expenses and more.

Finally, MoneyTrackin’ is a free web app for simply and quickly tracking your revenue and expenses. You can also share budgets and collaborate with many people together on the same account. MoneyTrackin’ lets you control as many accounts as you need to and tag your transactions; the service is also available as a handy mobile web app.

5 Cloud-Based File Hosting Tools

For sharing and storing large files, class='blippr-nobr'>Google Docsclass="blippr-nobr">Google Docs will allow you to share a wide range of files — including PDFs, spreadsheets, images and much more — free of charge for the first 1024 MB. And believe us, it can take quite a while to get to 1024 MB of content. Google Docs files are easy to keep private and easy to share with others, including clients and team members. Plus, you’ll have a relatively stable company on your side, which isn’t necessarily the case when the startup hosting your files gets bought by Facebook and shuts its doors, for example.

However, if you’d rather go the small-web-company route, there are lots of options for moving large files around the Internet.

If you just need to e-mail a large file to another person, try YouSendIt, which lets you e-mail a link for downloading files up to 2 GB. If you’d like to permanently or semi-permanently store rather than just e-mail your files, you could try Esploded, which lets you create a free account, upload your files and create groups for sharing files. There’s also Dropboxclass="blippr-nobr">Dropbox, FilesAnywhere and Box.netclass="blippr-nobr">Box.net, all of which offer free and paid memberships, just depending on your business’s size and needs.

3 Hiring and Applicant-Tracking Tools

Last of all, as you grow, finding and hiring great new staff members becomes increasingly important and requires more of your attention — and likely greater organization.

Zoho Recruit is free for one person to use. It lets you schedule interviews, add and manage candidates, store resumes and publish job openings from within a simple but robust dashboard.

SmartRecruiters is hiring software that helps users create job ads and post them all over the web, including major job boards and social networks. You can consolidate all your applicants in one place, prescreen them online, share the best candidates with your co-workers or executives, schedule interviews and even rate the candidates all from within the app.

iKrut is an interesting free recruitment system. You can build your own recruitment microsite quickly; from there, you can list all your current job openings on this new career portal. Candidates visit the microsite to upload their résumés and cover letters for you to review. This all also allows for interview scheduling and organizing references. Microsites can be branded to match your own website, and the system has built-in messaging.

More Business Resources from Mashable:

- 10 Ways Business Leaders Can Turn Ideas Into Execution/> - 7 Tips for Building a Better Branded App/> - 9 Web Tools to Keep Your Business Running Smoothly During the Holidays/> - 5 iPhone Apps For Avoiding International Business Faux Pas/> - 7 Tips for Succeeding as a Social Media Strategist

Images courtesy of class='blippr-nobr'>Flickrclass="blippr-nobr">Flickr, in order of appearance, by danox, inlinguamanchester, esther17, tsevis, nhankamer, takashi, socialisbetter.

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Thursday, January 6, 2011

web internet marketing