Are you considering being a Road Warrior or working from a Virtual Office or both? Many companies are making the switch to having more employees work from home in order to reduce office expenses or to have local representation in regions throughout the country. The widespread use of laptops and the availability of Wi-Fi have made the transition easier to make the switch. Here are a few inexpensive or free tools that are essential for the productive virtual office:
- Skype Account: This free web conferencing service provides users the ability to chat live via webcam or just voice.
- Headset: A quality headset w/microphone is fairly inexpensive and free up both hands
- DropBox: This online service allows users to drop files into virtual web based storage in order to share documents without having to e-mail the files.
- Yammer: Think of it as your internal company twitter network with updates shared among your workgroup
- Evernote: Need a virtual Sticky Note? This is it. You can add e-mails or web pages and access it from your mobile device
Working from home is a great way to conserve energy, reduce traffic and increase productivity. Using the tools listed above will increase your ability to contribute at a high level while freeing up a little time for your favorite things to do.
Tags: virtual, office, tools, free, web, laptop, best, top, list, rank
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The world of micro blogging is in full force. Being able to communicate in 140 character messages started with the early versions of text messaging and continues on Twitter. If you are just getting started or ready to take your Tweets to the next level then here is a list of five tips to consider:
- Define your niche: What space do you want to own? Some provide insights on topics like sports, celebrities, or even cats. You are not limited to that topic but as the old adage goes "If you do not stand for something then you stand for nothing". Who are we to judge? Paris Hilton has made a fortune standing for nothing. We still recommend having a theme for your Twitter space.
- Link it to Facebook: Twitter has many different apps that make updating multiple places fairly simple. Connecting both applications allows you to post to Twitter every time you update your status on Facebook. There are many ways to pull in updates into many other social networking sites like MySpace also.
- Use a Twitter Tool: There are many excellent programs to assist you with managing you Twitter accounts - Yes - multiple accounts. You may have one for business and one for personal but will need different e-mail addresses to manage both. We currently use HootSuite to manage our accounts. It allows you schedule posts, shrink URL's, shrink pics and more. For a list of top Twitter tools visit FasList.
- Follow your Followers: Using tools like Social Too is great for managing your followers to keep growing your base. Over time you will find that a few of your followers are annoying but let that pattern emerge and selectively stop following. Several programs also assist with managing spammers. Having that management on autopilot is excellent.
- Use Twitter on a mobile device: Using Twitter on an iPhone is a great experience due to apps like Twitteriffic. This app allows you to log-in with ease and view multiple accounts, re-tweet interesting stuff and e-mail out the best tweets. Excellent for killing time in an airport or waiting room. We definitely do not recommend using Twitter while driving, it is a distraction.
Hopefully you have picked up a tip or two to assist you new micro blog - What is the next Facebook or Twitter? That is the question. Enjoy.
Tags: twitter, top, free, list, best, tweet, ranked, followers, apps, tools
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