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| Tool: |
Google Trends: Trend-discovery and Trend-Tracking Tool |
| URL: |
google.com/trends |
| Key benefit: |
Being able to discover new trends and opportunities and stay ahead of the game. |
| Tip: |
Discover how popular certain products, product categories, people or events are. You can also use the tool to compare interest for up to five products or concepts. The underlying assumption here is that the trends can be determined based on what people search for on the Internet. The more searches for a particular product, the higher the interest or demand. The tool can also be used for SEO / e-commerce purposes in order to discover the keywords (phrases) with the best web sales potential.
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| Price: |
Completely Free! |
| Cyri: |
One of Google’s biggest values is its market intelligence from analyzing their search requests. Now your business can share a piece of this with Google Trends! It’s great for exploratory market research. I like the Excel export feature. Score: 8/10 |
| Ivan: |
I wish we had this tool a decade ago; we used to pay thousands of dollars for this type market intelligence. Score: 9/10 |
| Tool: |
Type with me: Online collaboration tool
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| URL: |
typewith.me |
| Key benefit: |
Empowers your team to collaborate remotely without having to take the time to sign up and register for a service. The first user just clicks to create a new document. This creates a unique URL that can be shared with other participants who can go to and see whatever the others have typed or they can join in as well with typing, editing. You can set up so each author shows up in a different colour. You can also chat on the side while collaborating on your document or meeting.
Note: This tool is based on the open source Etherpad, the popular service Google acquired but then discontinued with its launch of Google Wave. Etherpad is a lot easier to use than Google Wave though and luckily the open source community has resurrected the tool via Typewith.me! |
| Tip: |
Once you have finished a collaboration, use the Export feature to convert to a crisp PDF file, Microsoft Word document or other formats. This will be give you instant “minutes” of your meeting that can be shared with participants.
You can save revisions as you go so you can go back to a previous revision at any time or use the cool time slider to travel back in time to see the historic content. This can also be used to get a sense of the flow of the meeting or discussion. |
| Price: |
Completely Free! |
| Cyri: |
This is a really handy tool for a quick online collaboration. The only potential drawback is it is a public document that is created so doesn’t have the protection features of a more sophisticated collaboration tool like Google Docs. Score: 7/10 |
| Ivan: |
Works very well for a quick online meeting, brainstorming, or document creation, especially when some or all participants are located remotely and have different platforms, software, familiarity with collaboration tools, etc. Score: 7.5/10 |
| Tool: |
Google Forms: Web-based surveys and other data collection
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| URL: |
docs.google.com |
| Key benefit: |
Enables you to collect data from customers or others using Web forms… works great for online surveys. The best part is it’s easy to use, no web development or database skills required! |
| Tip: |
Try using Google Forms for quick surveys where you want to poll your customers, employees or other stakeholders. Instead of conducting long surveys that your customers may not want to complete, you can collect in shorter bursts with Google Forms, gradually building up a better profile of your customers. Just include the form link in an email then check back later for the survey results.
You can use Google spreadsheets to analyze your resulting data or if you prefer export to MS Excel 2007. Google Forms is great alternative to tools like Survey Monkey and Zoomerang that start off free for limited use but soon start costing you money! |
| Price: |
Completely Free! |
| Cyri: |
It used to be you would need someone with some database and web development skills to collect data from forms on websites… Google Forms opens this functionality up to the masses! It’s one of the lesser known gems in the Google Docs toolkit. Score: 8/10 |
| Ivan: |
This is perfect for small businesses conducting market research. Easy to use and unlocks powerful insights. Score: 9/10 |
| Tool: |
Google Wave |
| URL: |
wave.google.com |
| Key benefit: |
Great new tool from Google. I will try to describe it in two words only: HOSTED CONVERSATION. According to Google, Google Wave is “an online communication and collaboration tool that makes real-time interactions more seamless — in one place, you can communicate and collaborate using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.” Learn about this brand new tool from Google by viewing this 8 min. video. The key benefit to me is that we will now be able to easily TRACK our communication with different people on various projects/subjects on one single “wave”. You can review the evolution of any communication and rewind waves with the playback functionality, to see what happened, and when. |
| Tip: |
Use Google Wave for many different reasons. Here are a couple of examples: (a) to stay in touch with various participants in certain project; (b) to manage multiple projects; (c) to share files; (d) to chat; (e) to work together on some documents; (f) to store information; (g) to track and document progress…Note: Google Wave is still not available for public (for now it is available only to those invited) |
| Price: |
Free |
| Cyri: |
What does Ivan think? Check back shortly. |
| Ivan: |
Many say that Google Wave will create a “revolution in communication”. In any scenario, it looks like this tool will be one of the most important new communication tools since the invention of e-mail. The tool is still imperfect, so I will give it 9 for now. |
| Tool: |
Keyword Popularity Estimator by Google |
| URL: |
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal?defaultView=2 |
| Key benefit: |
Just like Yahoo! tool described earlier on this blog, this keyword tool helps you identify the most popular keywords. This is extremely useful when designing your website, naming your website pages, doing SEO (search engine optimization) or when buying keyword ads. Even more importantly, the tool can help you estimate the online demand for your product or service. |
| Tip: |
Let’s see how you can predict your online demand and even sales by using this tool. Say that for example you want to promote your restaurant in Vancouver. According to Google, there were app. 201,000 searches for “restaurant Vancouver” last month. Assuming that you are on top of search results (through paid ads or through SEO) and assuming that as a result 1% of people will click on your link and land on your website, this will bring you 2010 website visits via Google. Say that out of those only 1% will actually become your customers. This comes to app. 20 new customers every month through Google only! You may want to account for Yahoo and Bing as well, simply by increasing Google’s results by app. another 50% (see below about Google’s search share). These are VERY rough estimates but at least they can be used to identify your initial sales targets! |
| Price: |
Free |
| Cyri: |
What does Cyri think? Check back soon! Score: N/A |
| Ivan: |
Google’s tool is a bit more accurate than Yahoo!’s Keyword Popularity Estimator. In addition, it is more relevant, especially having in mind that Google alone accounts for almost 70% of the total search. Score: 10/10 |
| Tool: |
Twitter
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| URL: |
http://www.twitter.com |
| Key benefit: |
“Microblogging” tool that helps you stay connected with your clients and other organizations or individuals that you want to “follow” |
| Tip: |
Use Twitter to brand yourself / your business and position yourself as the leader in your field. Present only very useful content: great news, insights, tips, URLs or other relevant information. Then start following others, broadcast your Twitter page on your website, in your e-mail signature and other advertisements, and the followers will come. |
| Price: |
Free |
| Cyri: |
What does Cyri think? Check back shortly. Score: TBD |
| Ivan: |
I must admit I did not “get” Twitter when I first heard about it from my students (!) about two years ago. I thought this would be just another way to waste one’s time. “Not for me.” However, it turns out that Twitter can actually be used quite effectively not only to stay in touch with friends, but also to brand pretty much any business. Oh, check out my page on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Ivans_Law  Score: 10/10
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| Tool: |
iGoogle
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| URL: |
http://www.igoogle.com |
| Key benefit: |
Great tool to help you stay on top of all new trends and industry news |
| Tip: |
Start your day with iGoogle: review all important industry news before you leave home. Receive updates from carefully selected websites and blogs. |
| Price: |
Free |
| Cyri: |
What does Cyri think? Check back shortly. Score: TBD |
| Ivan: |
Customize your iGoogle page to receive RSS feeds from all the leading magazines and authorities in your field. Highly recommended tool if you pretend to educate or consult others. Score: 10/10
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| Tool: |
Google Documents
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| URL: |
http://docs.google.com |
| Key benefit: |
Great tool to help you upload, edit and share your documents online |
| Tip: |
Use this tool to upload your important documents and take them along “with you” wherever you go. No need for memory stick any longer. You can access your documents anytime, anywhere… (no wonder this is called “cloud computing” : the documents go along with you like a cloud) |
| Price: |
Free |
| Cyri: |
What does Cyri think? Check back shortly. Score: TBD |
| Ivan: |
This tool is great for team work – here are several ideas how/when to use Google Documents: a) To keep track of team’s progress b) To keep track of billable time (”time log”) c) To collaboratively create a business plan, report or any document d) To upload your documents that you might need during important meetings outside of your office…Score: 10/10
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| Tool: |
Google Site Optimizer |
| URL: |
http://google.com/websiteoptimizer/ |
| Key benefit: |
Try A/B Split testing or multivariate testing to optimize your website |
| Tip: |
Start out with the easier A/B Experiment and once you feel comfortable with that, move on to the Multivariate Experiment. If you don’t feel comfortable copying and pasting the HTML code into your test and control pages, ask an IT support person to help out. |
| Price: |
Free |
| Cyri: |
In a way there is no such thing as an “optimized site” since it should be an ongoing and continuous process of experimentation. Google Site Optimizer makes it easy to plan, implement and see the results of your web testing so you can be sure you are on a path towards continuous improvement! Score:7.5/10 |
| Ivan: |
What does Ivan think? Check back shortly. Score: TBD
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| Tool: |
AWStats log file analysis |
| URL: |
http://awstats.sourceforge.net/ |
| Key benefit: |
Get accurate results for your website analytics |
| Tip: |
Page tag web analytics programs (e.g. Google Analytics) are handy and provide a rich graphical interface but they don’t always capture the complete picture as accurately as a true log file analyzer. Try using both… AWStats and Google Analytics then compare the difference. For large sites where analysis speed is critical, try checking out Webalizer. |
| Price: |
Free |
| Cyri: |
This is regarded as the top, free, log file analysis tools. It’s accurate plus still has a user-friendly graphical interface. You will find a gold mine of data from your log files and AWStats is my top choice. Score:9/10 |
| Ivan: |
What does Ivan think? Check back shortly. Score: TBD
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