Handy Web Tools for Entrepreneurs

TripIt

Now, if you travel fairly regularly, I’ve got just the thing for you:  It’s a Web site called TripIt.com, and it promises to keep track of all your travel plans.  And, really, it couldn’t be simpler to use.  Just forward the confirmation emails from your flight booking, car rental, hotel and so on to plans@tripit.com. 

TripIt.com (Click for larger image).

It’ll organize all the information into a handy, one-page guide, and it’ll email you back with details on how to log into your newly created account. Oh, by the way, it’s completely free. 

I’ve been using it for a while now, and it really is great because not only is all the booking information in one place, it’s also stored online. If I forget to take any of the paperwork, I can access it online from anywhere in the world.  Check it out at TripIt.com.

Key Compete

Here’s a handy tool to shortcut the process of learning what keywords are best to use in a pay-per-click marketing campaign.  If you want to try it out, go to KeyCompete.com and simply enter a keyword there that relates to your business in the search box at the top of the page. 

KeyCompete.com (Click for larger image).

It instantly finds other companies’ pay-per-click campaigns and shows you the keywords that they’re using.  So you save a lot of time and money in trying to identify the best keywords for your business — because the software will just tell you. 

The free trial on the site gives you access to five sample results but the paid options open up the floodgates with hundreds or thousands of keywords for every search that you do.

BigPosters

If you need a large poster — perhaps you’re speaking at a conference and you want to place a sign outside of your session to draw attention to the subject of your seminar, or maybe you’re doing a presentation and you want people to be able to see your visuals from the back of the room — well, then you’ll be interested in this nifty Web resource, BigPosters.com.

BigPosters.com (Click for larger image).

BigPosters.com is exactly what the name implies: The company will create different prints or posters for you — as few as one or even as many as a million.  They can do this in various sizes and they can laminate them. They can also mount them on everything from foam board to corrugated plastic or to even thicker material that will stand up to wind and abuse and whatnot. 

The company offers the standard sizes that you can order, but they can also do custom sizes.  So if you’re in need of posters that can to be mounted on several different types of materials at a fairly low cost, then you might want to check out BigPosters.com.

You

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ll find lots more marketing tips and resources from Andrew Lock in our Small Business Essential series,

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Andrew Lock is a self-described maverick marketer and the creator and host of Help! My Business Sucks, a free, weekly Web TV show full of practical marketing tips, advice and resources to help small businesses “get more done and have more fun.”