Overwhelmed with the amount of information, apps, and new solutions coming at you? I know I am! Call me silly, but some of the items I mention today may be old news to many, but with so much information out there, who can really keep up. Unless you are Douglas Karr or Kyle Lacy – which by the way, I am convinced they don’t sleep!
I’ve started using some new organizational tools to keep all of the details in check. Here are just a few that I find helpful:
Delicious: Okay, okay, I know many of you reading this may already know about Delicious. I’ve known about too, but until the world of social sharing evolved, it never had as much impact. I love that I can bookmark and tag away and no matter what computer I am on, where I am at, I always have my favorites right there. Not to mention a quick and easy place to find all of those links I want to remember. Like a recent blog post, a webinar invite, or even an article.- Picnik: Again, marketers are creative people and we have to be able to design in a pinch. I can design when needed, but when I want something quick, simple, and easy…I choose picnik! Especially for those projects you want to spice up a bit without a lot of brain power. Their interface is very easy to use and again like any web-based app….you can access your pics anywhere.
- Feedburner: By now I am sure you are thinking, what rock has she been under? Not so much….remember, I am a busy marketer juggling it all A-Z! I need quick, I need simple, and I need to get back to it when in a pinch. While I have always known and loved feedburner for the RSS capabilities, but I just recently learned of the ability to embed an email form in your blog as well. And then the metrics, very cool that I will have all of these tools all within my Google platform everyday.
- Google Apps: I don’t want to sound like a Google devotee because like so many other marketers I have always been bewildered by them just trying to improve my search. However, at Delivra, we all work from Google Apps for everything and while I’m sure the cost savings are huge compared to any desktop software, I am impressed with the various applications from mail, calendar, sites (which we love!), Documents, you name it. Now I know it isn’t perfect, but the accessibility and the fact that it doesn’t crash once a day has me sold.
- SmartSheet: This is probably the only app that many of you may not know about. I love SmartSheet as I am a constant list maker. How else do I keep track of the thousands of things I do everyday? In any event, the application helps me manage multiple to-do’s where I can rank them by priority, share with others, make edits anywhere, print or access wherever I might be.
There you have it, five simple tools that keep me from succumbing to information overload. If you are a time starved marketer or simply time starved, incorporate some of these tools into your bag of tricks and you will be able to manage the load with the greatest of ease. If not, consider them new hyperlinks to what you already know and love.
I prefer Diigo to Delicious although Google Sidewiki is starting to get my attention for its annotation capabilities which are similar (thought NOT as powerful) to those of Diigo.
Cool short list Carissa. It shows in a nutshell the different platforms we all marketers need to get our stuff done. I'm checking out SmartSheet. Like drthomasho, I'm also preferring Diigo to Delicious because you can make notes to the pages. Tags are not bad, but with Diigo I can use both tags and "stickies" on the pages to focus on one section of the whole saved content. See you again soon! –Paul
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