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Resources for Starting an Online Business

August 11th, 2011 | Posted by martinbrossman in on-line Business Tips

Business networking sites:

www.linkedin.com – must join – business networking group, free for basic service

www.comeoninside.com – on-line free business networking for businesses within your area code

 

Social networking sites & related resources

Facebook.com – free online community where you can create a business page

Twitter.com – microblogging platform that can promote your business as you give value

www.search.twitter.com – For searching posts on Twitter by subject

Bit.ly – URL shortener with analytics

GooglePlus – google.com/+ free online community by invitation, similar to Facebook

www.HootSuite.com – Manage status updates for several sites at once: Twitter/Facebook/Linkedin

 

Selling Products or Information Online

1shoppingcart.com—add a shopping cart to your website or open an e-commerce store

Kajabiapp.com—create private membership site for your content and sell access to it

 

Social bookmarking :

stumbleupon.com, Digg.com, delicious.com, sharethis.com – allows users to bookmark blog posts and share them with others

 

Blogging Sites:

Blogger.com – Google’s Blogger site – easy to use and can add adsense

WordPress.com – High flexibility blogging resource — can add to your own website

Feedburner.com – Add your blog site to for statistics & distribution

www.blogcatalog.com – Place to list your blog

socialspark.com – place to get others to blog about you or your product

 

Blog Readers / News Aggregators:

bloglines.com – a program to keep track of blog, podcast or any RSS feeds

feeddemon.com by NewsGator – a downloadable reader

 

Tracking your presence on the Web

www.google.com/alerts  – A free service to keep track of the appearances of you or your business on the Web ( use quotes) || www.trackur.com – a more extensive fee-based version

www.SocialMention.com – Free for finding out about conversations in social media

www.infousa411.com – The directory for many directories!

 

Directories:

www.google.com/places/ – Free, make sure you claim your listing

www.infousa411.com – The directory for many directories!

 

Keyword research: gkwords.com and Google.com/trends

 

E-mail marketing

ConstantContact.com—popular e-mail marketing at monthly rate

Icontact.com— another widely used e-mail marketing service, monthly rate

Aweber.com—opt-in email marketing system, monthly rate

MailChimp.com—send out up to 12,000 emails per month free

 

Self Publishing

www.Lulu.com, www.createspace.com & www.CafePress.com

 

Press releases:

www.pr.com and www.prleap.com – free press release sites .

Fee-based services: prsurvival.com, prweb.com, BusinessWire.com and www.prnewswire.com

 

Video:

YouTube.com – allows for your video to be viewed without paying for the hosting

Vimeo.com – a low cost hosting site for longer videos. http://www.footagefirm.com/

 

Photo/ Photo Sharing:

Flickr.com – method of sharing photos with friends & family

Picasa (picasaweb.google.com ) – Google’s own photo-share

Photos and Audio: Bigstock.com & iStockPhotos.com / ccmixter.org

 

Useful Blogs & Podcast:

http://blog.pronetworkingonline.com/ – My blog

www.chrisbrogan.com – Social media guru… has great info on his blog

www.CreateBusinessGrowth.com – Blog about useful info on building your business

www.InquireOnline.com – my podcast with something you can use today.

Blog.lindacraft.com – Linda Craft and Team blog – example of a good business blog

www.marketingpilgrim.com – Andy Beal’s blog

http://usinglinkedin.wordpress.com – Help with using Linkedin

 

Other:

EzineArticles.com, hubpages.com, www.squidoo.com – place to post or submit articles

www.craigslist.org – Free classifieds & more

 

Information and services including Social Media Consulting:

www.ignitesocialmedia.com & www.connectiveinsights.com – Social Media www.ProNetworkingOnLine.com (my business site)

 

Terms to know: Blogs, Podcast , RSS feeds, Blog Reader / News Aggregator,

Social Media, wiki, forum, mashup, social network, widget, vlog, Microblog & Avatar

www.wikipedia.org—a contributed knowledge base where you can look up these terms

 

List compiled by: Martin Brossman – Martin@CoachingSupport.com , (919) 847-4757 – My latest book: Social Media for Business: The Small Business Guide to Online Marketing – available on-line at TheSocialMediaForBusinessBook.com

On Facebook: http://www.FaceBook.com/MartinWBrossman See all my training at http://www.ncsmallbusinesstraining.com

 

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