5 Web Based Tools I Can’t Live Without

If you are anything like me, I can’t imagine a life or business without social networking, and tools to simplify my operations and life. By now most of us are using social networking well to improve our businesses and networking, but I can show you a few tools you may not have heard of to simplify the process and make you work better.

I have over 23,000 followers on Facebook, and over 21,000 on Twitter. And sure, it’s not all been tricks. I dedicate a day a week to find better ways to connect and network, and try and engage my followers with content that is relevant and interesting. But I do have some time-saving and useful tools to help along the way.

Here are some of my favourites.

1. Rapporative Works inside Gmail or Google Apps. When reading a mail item, your right hand side bar shows information on the sender, including their Facebook profile, LinkedIn profile, Twitter account and recent tweets! You can add them on these accounts, with one click inside your email, and even reply to tweets. It’s an absolute must have for me, I use this at least 20 times a day. Not only does it keep you networked well, but it’s recent, they’ve just sent you an email as they receive your invitation, so the reason is fresh in their minds!

2. SproutSocial A fabulous tool if you like to manage a few social networking profiles at once. Sync your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts (and supports numerous pages and accounts on these sites). SproutSocial will show you recommended people to follow, or unfollow, you can search who is talking about you or your brand and add them, and you can pre set auto posts – great for reoccurring reminders like weekly events you want to promote automatically!

3. Xero We use Xero for accounting. I’ve tried a lot of online accounting programs in the past and have stuck with Xero and don’t see us moving. You can invoice from your iPhone, set up auto bank and PayPal feeds, set up rules for reconciliation (which is great when you have regular invoices / payments) so when it comes to BAS time – it’s a simple task. Plus the invoicing is beautiful. Super easy to use too!

4. MyGuestlist I use MyGuestlist for all our database needs. Easy to use program to store all your contacts, whether clients, guests, press, fans – separate databases into interests, locations, age, sms or email, categories. In fact, the team at MyGuestlist can help you structure your database just how you like. So you can at any time send a targeted email or sms to exactly who you want. It’s also easy to create sign up forms for both the web and Facebook! My favourite part – every time a guest signs up, you not only get an email, but you can click and become their friend on Facebook – right from your email!

5. Tweetdeck A great deal of people are using Tweetdeck already, but are they using it well? There is much more to Tweetdeck than meets the eye. It’s not only a tool to enable you to post across Facebook and Twitter accounts at once, but if you, like me, want to constantly find people who are interested in the same things- or conversing about them in real time. With Tweetdeck I have usually a minimum of 10 columns on the go. One searches the word Burlesque, another searches Sydney, another searches Jac Bowie. If we are running an event with a # like #missburlesque, I set a temporary column up for this. My columns are forever changing to keep up with what’s relevant and what we want to promote. This is also another great tool for the iPhone.

I’d love to hear about what tools online YOU can’t live without!?

xx JB