During the 41st Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Annual Legislative Conference, Congressman Hansen Clarke of metro Detroit hosted a panel entitled, “Social Media and Entrepreneurship” on September 23, 2011. One of the action items from the panel was to create a ‘Social Media + Entrepreneurship Resource List’ that entrepreneurs could use to grow successful businesses.
Contained in this blog post is a resource list of third party apps, blogging, financial, calendar, and mobile tools that entrepreneurs can utilize immediately.
Third Party Applications – Social Media/Status Updates/Listening
These apps allow you to review listen online and post updates to multiple social networks via your desktop or mobile device.
- Hootsuite – HootSuite helps organizations use the social web to launch marketing campaigns, identify and grow audience, and distribute targeted messages across multiple channels. http://hootsuite.com
- TweetDeck – http://tweetdeck.com
- Social Mention – Social Mention allows you to easily track and measure what people are saying about you, your company, a new product, or any topic across the web’s social media landscape in real-time. http://socialmention.com
- Addictomatic – a multi-platform buzz dashboard – http://addictomatic.com
- Blogpulse – a tool that searches blog posts for specific mentions – http://www.blogpulse.com
- Trackur – Trackur is a social media monitoring tool designed to assist companies and PR professionals in tracking what is said about brands on the Internet. http://www.trackur.com
- Seesmic – Seesmic CRM Brings Salesforce to the palm of your hand http://seesmic.com
Online Financial Tools
- Crowdrise – Crowdsourced Funding Tool: http://crowdrise.com
- Freshbooks – Online invoicing and tracking device: http://www.freshbooks.com/
- Go Fund Me – Crowdsourced Funding Tool: http://gofundme.com
- Kickstarter – Crowdsourced Funding Tool: http://kickstarter.com
- Paypal – PayPal is an online payments and money transfer service. http://paypal.com
- Square – Mobile credit card payment system: http://squareup.com
- Harvest – Easily Track Time, Send Invoices and Run Your Business. http://www.getharvest.com
Mobile/Virtual Working
- Dropbox – Online file storage and sharing: http://dropbox.com
- Skype – Skype is a software application that allows users to make voice calls over the Internet. http://Skype.com
- Using iPad as a Phone – GVConnect App converts your ipad into a phone – http://www.gvconnect.com/
- Basecamp – Basecamp is an online project management software that enables online collaboration http://BasecampHQ.com
- Evernote – Evernote allows users to capture, organize, and find information across multiple platforms. http://www.evernote.com
- Grasshopper – Grasshopper allows small business to sound more professional and streamline communications. http://grasshopper.com
- Yammer – Yammer is an enterprise social network, providing a secure way for employees to communicate, collaborate, and share information. http://yammer.com
- Sign My Pad – Sign My Pad is a tool that allows you to sign and annotate PDF files. No more printing documents to sign and fax them. http://autriv.com/
Blogging/Website
- WordPress – Web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog or http://wordpress.org
- Blogger – Blogger is a blog publishing platform http://blogger.com
- SquareSpace – Completely managed environment for creating and maintaining a beautiful website, blog, or portfolio. http://www.squarespace.com
- Tumblr – Tumblr is a re-envisioning of tumblelogging, a subset of blogging that uses quick, mixed-media posts. http://www.tumblr.com
- Central.ly – Central place to let companies promote themselves online and on mobile. http://central.ly
Events/Calendars
- Startup Weekend – Startup Weekends are 54-hour events where developers, designers, marketers, product managers and startup enthusiasts come together to share ideas, form teams, build products, and launch. http://startupweekend.org
- Meetup Groups – Groups that organize locally around specific areas of interest. http://meetup.com
- Plancast – Calendar typically for tech or social media type events – http://plancast.com
- Eventbrite – Eventbrite is an event organizing calendar/tool which is a great resource to identify conferences and workshops. http://eventbrite.com
Google Account
Creating a Google account provides you access to a suite of products, listed below is a sample listing of some of the available products.
- Google Plus – Google Plus is Google’s social network. One of the best business features that Google Plus currently offers is the hangout feature which allows you to conduct video conference calls with up to 10-people and integrate YouTube videos for FREE. http://google.com/plus
- Google Docs – Create and share your work online and access your documents from anywhere. Manage documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. http://docs.google.com
- Google Checkout – Google’s payment service. http://google.com/checkout
- Google Voice – Free voicemail – http://google.com/voice
- Google Alerts – Online reputation notification system. http://google.com/alerts
