Friday, October 23, 2009

How Quickly Should You Try Out a New Tool or Resource? - Do It Immediately

There are many good resources out there for getting ideas about how to improve your ongoing online marketing efforts. One of my favorites is the podcast Marketing Over Coffee, whose hosts discuss several new or ongoing topics, usually related to search engine marketing, web analytics, or social media. A few weeks ago, their discussion about Gigadail led me to write an article about the virtual online podcast directory I made.

In this week's show they did it again. They casually mentioned that Google Docs allows you to create an online form that you can use on a site or a blog. While I was listening to the podcast, I went to check it out, and created a form by the time the show was over. I then put it in the AirSafeNews.com blog, and let Twitter and my mailing list contact my audience.

I've been using Google Docs for a while, and this capability was always right there under my nose, but I didn't notice it until I heard it in the Marketing Over Coffee podcast. This is another example of just how rich the online environment is when it comes to having free and useful resources all around us. The least you can do is try them out whenever you come across one that looks interesting. You can start by taking the survey.

Trying combinations of new services
Sometimes using a single new tool may not be enough. One example was given in the How-to-Bet.com where it described how Gmail, Google Reader, Google Alerts, and Delicious to keep up with news and events on a particular topic, while at the same time saving bookmarks, files, and other information on services that could be accessed from anywhere online.

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