There are a lot of great mailing list services out there and it can be overwhelming to choose one for your business. I personally recommend MailChimp for all of my clients’ mailing list needs. MailChimp has some great advantages with their service that I think you’ll find beneficial to your business. Here are some reasons I recommend MailChimp as my mailing list of choice.

1. Great Support – MailChimp is fairly easy to use right away and they also have some great support online. Not only do they have written tutorials, they also have video tutorials for many things as well. It’s important to me when I use the service if there’s great support back it up. MailChimp definitely has that!

2. Free Option – I think it’s important to have a free option for most services that you use within your business. You need to be able to try it out and see if it’s a good fit for your business before you jump in and invest your resources. MailChimp offers a fantastic free option that lets you start your mailing list without investing before you need to. Of course the services they offer with their paid accounts are even better and worth investing in, however you’ll do fine with the free option as you’re starting out.

3. Beautiful Email Templates -You want your emails to look good. They’re one of the major faces of your business and the way you personally connect with your customers. MailChimp offers beautiful templates that are easily customizable to fit your brand. MailChimp emails always look crisp, fresh, and fun.

4. Fun – Speaking of fun, MailChimp is a fun service to work with. You’ll notice right away a nice, smiling monkey named Freddie in the corner of their site when you login. As you schedule your campaigns, Freddie cheers you on, which brings a smile to my day. You can tell they want to bring a fun user experience to their customers and that is definitely something I want to encourage with services that I back!

Ready to start your mailing list but don’t have time to invest in setting it up? 
I’d love to help!

This post includes affiliate links. I only tell you about products and services that personally recommend for your business. The thoughts and opinions stated are my own.

Your name is one of the most valuable parts of your business. It’s how your customers refer others to you and what you are known for. It’s important to keep track on what is being said about your brand by others. One easy way to keep track of your brand is by utilizing free Talkwalker Alerts.

There’s nothing that can hurt a business more than missing an important meeting or deadline. In today’s ever connected business world it’s important to have an easy to access calendar that you can trust. Google Calendar is a great option for a calendar that will help you stay on track while you grow your business.

Google Calendar is free with every Google account. If you have a Gmail account, you already have a Google Calendar account that you can use. Having all of these services connected under Google means you only have to log in once to have your information at your fingertips.

Google Calendar gives you options for your scheduling. You can easily schedule appointments on your calendar without filling in a ton of fields. For example, if you’re meeting with George at 2:30 pm tomorrow, you can type “2:30 PM tomorrow Meeting with George at Office”  in the Quick Add feature and it will be scheduled.

Did your appointment move? Simply drag and drop your event to a different day to change it on your calendar.

If you need something a little more in-depth, Google Calendar also offers recurring appointment options as well so that you don’t have to enter your regular Friday meeting each and every week.

Google Calendar lets you easily collaborate with others. If your meeting is with someone else, it’s easy to add their email to the event and invite them to add the event to their calendar. If you’re looking for even more collaboration, Google Calendar also lets you share your calendar with others. This is is a great option for working together with a virtual assistant. I use this feature with many clients.

Google Calendar will remind you of your events.  A calendar is useless if you don’t remember items on it. Google Calendar gives you options for each event or calendar that allows you to set up text, smartphone, or email reminders when you want them. You can also have Google Calendar send you a daily schedule with all events scheduled for that day in your email.

Looking for someone to help you manage your busy schedule? I’d love to help!

Your customers are an essential part of your business. If you don’t keep your customers serviced and happy, you won’t have a successful business for very long. One of the best resources I’ve found for helping my clients manage their customer data is Streak, a free Gmail CRM plugin.

I use Gmail exclusively to handle my email needs (as do almost all of my clients), so Streak fits in perfectly to my daily workflow. You must be using the Chrome browser to install and use Streak, but I’ve found it’s an easy install and works great not only on my Windows laptop, but also my Chromebook. The disadvantage comes if you are using a computer that does not have the Chrome browser installed. I have ran into this issue before, but haven’t found it to be a large deterrent or drawback in my experience.

Within Streak, you can create customer “boxes”, which allow you track any sort of data that you are interested in. You create the categories that you need, so your unique business is not stuck with default categories that are not necessary for your business. The possibilities to use Streak really are endless.

As you open an email, you can add it to that customer’s box. Once this is done, you are able to enter information about the customer’s account, assign a task to a team member (who will also be able to see the email when you add it to the box that is shared with them), or set reminders. Reminders are emailed to you, which is incredibly useful, considering you can see who you need to follow up with even on a non-Chrome device like your smartphone. I love the reminders option and use it on a daily basis to make sure to follow up with customers in a timely manner.

Streak is a great resource for you and your team to stay on top of customer service and retention.   I highly suggest you give it a try and see how it can help your business grow!

Not sure how to best utilize Streak for your business? I’d love to help!

It’s vital for business owners to be able to collect and analyze data regarding their website visitors. Without knowing your audience and their reaction to your website, it’s impossible to know if your efforts are making impact for your business and translating to money and growth. It’s not necessary to spend a lot of money to gather this data, you can use a great free resource, StatCounter, to collect this information for your business.

StatCounter uses HTML code that you install within the code of your site. The code is invisible to your visitors, but gathers great data you can use immediately to understand how to make your website the most effective at reaching your audience. You view stats by visiting their homepage, which gives you dozens of options for looking at your visitor data. The top categories I look at first are recent visitor activity, recent came from, and visitor path. The visitor map is also a lot of fun, as it shows a full map of all of your recent visitors.

StatCounter is free, but there are great paid options if you want even more information and saved data. While there are other free visitor tracking options, like Google Analytics, I prefer StatCounter for my frequent check ins. I feel it does a great job of giving me the information I need without a lot of extras. You can use Google Analytics and StatCounter together on the same site if you want to see which works best for you. Collect your visitor data and make great insights about who your customer is and how to best reach them!

Looking for help analyzing your visitor data? I’d love to assist!

  I LOVE LastPass and the ease it gives in storing and sharing passwords. In this video I share the process of how to share your passwords securely with LastPass. I hope it helps you as you grow your business!

Do you need help with your business? I’d love to help your business grow! Contact me today to schedule a free business consultation.

As an entrepreneur, you have to juggle a lot of information. Each new online resource comes with new login information to remember. With increasingly more complicated password requirements, it can become nearly impossible to remember all of the different information you need just to complete a day’s work. You don’t want to jeopardize security by remaining logged in, but you don’t want to waste valuable time remembering and logging into each website. I’ve found a great solution that I think will help your day go much smoother: LastPass password manager.

LastPass stores all of your passwords securely in the cloud, allowing you to access all of them by using one master password. You can access your passwords via their online website name the “Vault”, through their smartphone app (premium feature), or via their browser plug-ins. A wonderful additional feature is the ability to share your account information with other members of your team, without actually giving out your password information.

LastPass has a great free option, which allows you access most of their features and get a feel for the service. The free option allows you to save and access your passwords with no restrictions. If you decide to go premium (currently $12/year), you will be able to create shared folders, access your passwords through your smartphone, have multifactor authentication options, and remove ads.

I have loved using LastPass for the last several months. I found it easy to import already saved passwords from my browser, add new passwords, and access those passwords when needed. It’s not only helped me in my business, but also in my personal life as well. There are just too many passwords these days and I’d rather use my mind to grow your business. I think you’ll find LastPass a great FREE resource that will help you as you grow your business!

I offer LastPass shared services to my clients free of charge to handle passwords for their business needs.
Looking for a virtual assistant to help free your time and grow your business?
I’d love to help!

This post does contain affiliate links, which means if you sign up I benefit as well. I am not connected with LastPass in any way and all opinions expressed on this site are my own. 

Even if your business is based online, it’s still important to have a phone line where you can be contacted if needed. It’s no longer necessary to purchase a second phone line or give out your personal cell phone number for your business any longer. Thanks to Google Voice, you can get a free phone number to use for your business.

Google Voice is a free service offered from Google. Using your free Google account, you can create a phone number which can be forwarded to another phone line. My Google Voice number is forwarded to my cell phone, for example, but you could also have your calls forwarded to your virtual assistant. You can also answer on your computer through an internet connection. You can even receive text messages through this number, which can be received and responded to online if you choose.

I’ve used Google Voice since the start of my business and I’ve found it to work great for my limited phone needs. There is a bit of trick to figuring out what settings work best for you regarding how you want it to ring your phone. I suggest testing it with a second phone to feel comfortable answering your Google Voice phone calls. Once you have your settings where you are comfortable, you’re ready to go.

Save money and frustration that you can use in other areas of your business with this great FREE resource – Google Voice!

Need assistance setting up Google Voice for your business? I’d love to help!