With today being May Day, I decided to share business tools that could help you get to your pay day. I am sharing these tools as a way of providing business owners with suggested tools to help you run your business proficiently. The tools that will be suggested for you will cover a variety of topics and will help you streamline your business processes.

Image: sxc.hu

For those of you who don’t know, May Day is May 1st and actually is the host to many international celebrations. One of which is the International Workers’ Day which pertains to the the establishment of the 8 hour work day. Although many may not know but this holiday got it’s start in the Americas.

To help under more about how it all came about, I wanted to share an excerpt from an article on the Workers’ of the World website,

In the late nineteenth century, the working class was in constant struggle to gain the 8-hour work day. Working conditions were severe and it was quite common to work 10 to 16 hour days in unsafe conditions. Death and injury were commonplace at many work places and inspired such books as Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and Jack London’s The Iron Heel. As early as the 1860’s, working people agitated to shorten the workday without a cut in pay, but it wasn’t until the late 1880’s that organized labor was able to garner enough strength to declare the 8-hour workday. This proclamation was without consent of employers, yet demanded by many of the working class. [Read more]

With all of this in mind and in celebration of International Workers’ Day of May Day, I thought it would be helpful to provide business tools that can help you reach your pay day as an entreprenuer. Tools that could help you shorten your work day but at the same time give your the same amount of creativity and pay day.

Today’s Business Tools Picks:

• Social media management:
  • Flock: browser that integrates social media + email management + internet browsing + RSS feeds all in one
  • FreeTwitterDesigner: allows you to personalize your Twitter background
  • SocialMention: a social media search engine that searches user-generated content such as blogs, comments, bookmarks, events, news, videos, and microblogging services
• Financial management:
  • Mint: to help you analyze your personal and business finances, you should check Mint out because it allows you to compile financial data from different sources into one location so that you can monitor your finances.
• Collaboration management: includes tools that can help you map out your business, manage your teams or manage your processes.
  • MindMeister: is a collaborative online mind mapping tool - you can capture your thoughts and share them instantly with friends and colleagues.
  • PBWiki now PBWorks: Online Collaboration and Project Management that is perfect for small businesses and small teams/groups in larger companies looking for an easy, secure way to collaborate at work.

Taking your business to the next level using Facebook tools/applications is something that business owners should add to their business plan. Facebook has tools/applications such as fan pages and profiles that will allow you as a business owner to enhance your online presence using their Web 2.0 tools.

Image: Facebook.com

Just keep in mind that as you grow your presence on Facebook how you will use Facebook applications. Below are some questions that you need to answer in order to determine how you will  use Facebook.

• Will you incorporate your personal environment in with your business presence?
• What Facebook application do you need to use (poking doesn’t have a business value and should be counted)?
• Do you have enough information to complete your profile that will share information about your business?
• Are you open to strangers wanting to become your friend on a social network?
• How can you enhance your business using Facebook?
• What are your goals for your business when using Facebook?

The video below goes into more details about how you can use Facebook to enhance your business online presence. Please share your feedback about the video and how you use Facebook to develop your online presence.

Allowing your business to constantly evolve is a process that affects the programs you use to run your business. Although Web 2.0 has been around for a while, there are still new programs appearing on the scene and you can incorporate this technology into your business. Check out Go 2 Web 20 website options of software available to you.

For those who don’t know, the definition of Web 2.0 according to Tim Brady via O’Rielly Radar is…

the era when people have come to realize that it’s not the software that enables the web that matters so much as the services that are delivered over the web. Web 1.0 was the era when people could think that Netscape (a software company) was the contender for the computer industry crown; Web 2.0 is the era when people are recognizing that leadership in the computer industry has passed from traditional software companies to a new kind of internet service company. The net has replaced the PC as the platform that matters, just as the PC replaced the mainframe and minicomputer.

The image below is a representation of the outcome from the Web 2.0 conference that was held in 2001 and hosted by O’Reilly and MediaLive International. As you can see, it has different areas that reflect ways you can strategically incorporate Web 2.0 into your business website.

Image courtesy: www.oreillynet.com

So what’s your Web 2.0 strategy? Have you incorporated it into your website so that it is intuitive for your web visitor? There are many examples of how you can do this. Such as incorporating Feedburner into your website if you have an RSS feed. This allows your website visitors the opportunity to signup to be notified via email that you have added content to your website. It is also one of the many Google products that you can incorporate into your business.

Please feel free to share how you have incorporated Web 2.0 strategies into your business.

I don’t know who Nancy Pelosi and the House of Representatives have doing they’re public relations, but did you catch her YouTube video which was created to kick off the House’s new YouTube Hub?

Here’s the video, just in case you missed it.

I feel bad for the Speaker of the House. A Rick Roll? Really?

It’s so old - and got even older after Macy’s tried to do the same thing at their 2008 annual Thanksgiving Day parade.

Nancy, if this was your (or your PR people’s) idea to look cool, hip and with the times, you’ve made a big mistake.

The Speaker doesn’t need to resort to using a Rick Roll. She’s smart, she’s eloquent. And she’s the most powerful woman (at least on paper) in American history. I understand she wanted to show she had a sense a humor. But why does she need cats or Rick Astley to help her?

What do you think? Was this a good move -or poor judgement?

Media used to be a solid thing: newspapers, TV, radio.

Now, with the Internet, and Web 2.0, it’s all beginning to blur. I’ve seen it. You’vve seen it. And now, someone has quantified it.

Ketchum and the University of Southern California Annenberg Strategic Public Relations Center recently released thier survey results which says that media isn’t quite as solid as it used to be. And because of it, target markets are fragmenting.

Shannon Nelson (the other great PR Shannon, who happens to be from Pierce Mattie) tells us that education and creativity is key in helping PR firms and their clients reach these fragmented markets.

I couldn’t agree more. But I’m finding a lot of people resistant to admitting that they need to really get to know who they are targeting on an (almost) intimate level. Probably because that takes a lot of work.

One suggestion I have is to create an perfect client/customer profile, that is create a bio for that one perfect customer, including what their daily routine is like.  Then, it will be easier to find him/her and reach him/her directly.

I know some might argue with this, but I think social media is a PR tool. One, that when used correctly, can really create brand awareness and publicity.

JeanAnn VanKrevelen recently listed her 2009 predictions for social media, and I agree that the ones she has highlighted make sense.

I also think it will be used by journalists to monitor trends and hot news stories. That means that a savvy public relations professional will also be monitoring social media to find the trends and lead the trends as the experts to the media.

Plus social media is cost effective, so it’s obvious to take a try at it next year.

And before you think I am saying to drop other public relations tools, think again. Like anything else, social media is ONE tool in the toolbox, and you need several to build a brand!

There’s been a lot of chatter this weekend about how many PR agencies are closing their doors, or at least cutting their staff.

Many are pointing to the economy, but I have an additional answer: social media.

As I wrote last week, many PR people are still doing public relations they way the learned it in college or from their first mentor.

That’s wrong. Here’s why?

A recent study from the Society of New Communication Research showed that 57 percent of respondents feel social media tools are becoming more valuable. They pointed to the fact that  consumers are using them more and more as communication tools, especially blogs, online videos, podcasting and social networking.

PR practitioners (and colleges that teach PR) must start incorporating the new media as part of their tactics.

Web 2.0  is about connect people to people in a more direct way (at least for PR folks).  What better way is there to get immediate impact than reaching a target market directly?

Image credit: the scottish_podcaster, on Flickr