Social Media Marketing

Web 2.0 has spawned many great tools for the freelancer to make running a business simple, quick and easy to manage. Below are my picks for various categories:

Time Tracking/Invoicing
Freshbooks with Tick
- Freshbooks offers a low cost way to manage multiple clients for their specific projects, and make sure you bill for your time correctly. Invoicing, estimates, time tracking, expenses, clients & team, and branding. Manage up to 3 clients for free, then it goes to $14/mo for up to 25 clients.

With the free Tick add-in, you have a timer that integrates to record time spent on a project. No more writing it down on a Post-It note. Don’t lose precious billable hours (and minutes) because you forgot to look at the clock when you started. Once you complete the project, all the activities roll up in to your invoicing which can be issued via email and paid via PayPal. Easy to use, gracious interface.

Project Management

Basecamp – If you don’t know about Basecamp, you are so missing out. Host a single project for free, and then pricing starts at $12/mo for 3 projects. If you ever tried to learn Microsoft Project (it’s a nightmare for the average project), then this is the solution you wanted.

With a simple interface, you add up to 99 other users who can access only the projects for which you grant permissions. Either on your team, a client, a business partner – it doesn’t matter. It’s all web-based with a secure log in.

Start off creating to-do lists, sharing files in a single location, host discussions on the write board, and building out milestones to populate a calendar that is the first thing you see when logging in. You instantly see what’s happening in the next 14 days, and Basecamp sends you reminders 48 hours before a to-do is due.

With a free account, test it out and learn how to best use for your group.

Lists
- I survive by my to-do lists. blist is a to-do list on steroids. With many types of lists already built, find one that meets your needs, copy it and go.

You can manage projects including assets, due dates, statuses and subtasks to completing activities.

Did I mention it’s free?

The interface is polished and fairly intuitive as well.

blist is one of those “Try it and you’ll see” tools/sites that I recommend to people.

Online Calendaring

Famundo – I am only just starting to test Famundo but a big plus is that it has Outlook calendar synchronization. For my social groups this is a simple way to publish events and make sure people are involved.

It includes to-do lists, agendas and files…sort of a simplified project management tool but with an emphasis on placing the who/what/where/when front and center.