Four Amazing Resources for Finding Blog Topics
Let's face it, people have more options than they know what to do with when it comes to subscribing to blogs. How on earth can you keep things interesting day-in and day-out without blogging yourself into the poor house with all the time you spend researching? How do some bloggers constantly find something great to talk about?
Answer: They use some great tools.
Blogging and creating great social media content is not about knowing everything, it's about being resourceful. It's about letting others do most of the heavy lifting for you, and then putting your own spin on things. Here's four great resources for finding fascinating topics to blog and tweet about no matter what your subject matter may be.
StumbleUpon - Just pick a topic you want to chat about today and click the stumble button until something catches your eye.
AllTop - Find out what's hot right now on just about any topic you can imagine.
SmartBrief - Get daily email updates on hot topics in your industry.
Google Alerts - Setup email alerts on a daily or weekly basis to find out what's ranking at the top in Google for certain topics each day or week.
-Dusty.
How to Lay Claim to Your Social Media Presence
Don't let someone else lay claim to your precious profile or screen name.
If you're even just thinking about getting into social media and have an established brand, business, or screen name, it's high-time you laid claim to your profiles. Much like reserving a desired URL for a website, you need to reserve your desired social media accounts. So here's a simple web application for doing just that.
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- Visit namechk.com.
- Enter your desired profile/screen name into the search box, and NameChk will show you whether it is available on 70+ of the largest social media sites.
Voila! Now you don't have to worry about being stuck with some lame screen name with weird abbreviations, numbers, and special characters. Not to mention the resulting heckling from your online compadres.
Oh, we'd do it too,
-Dusty.
Online Payroll Calculator
One of the less riveting things about being an entrepreneur is having the joy of managing one's business finances. Good times. Part of this includes managing payroll, which can be a bit tricky especially with all those wonderful federal and state laws. Luckily, there's some free tools available out there to simplify things, and keep the IRS gods appeased come tax time.
PaycheckCity.com offers three free calculators for salary, hourly, and W-4 calculations
Just fill out the form and away you go. Everything should be so simple.
-Dusty.
Fantastic (And Free) Time Tracking Tool
For those of you looking for a simple, inexpensive, and easy-to-use tool for time tracking, I have to say that Paymo has been great for me.
My wife and I are both small business owners and use this tool regularly for time tracking. It's:
- Really easy to use and setup.
- Fairly priced at only $4/user/month (free for up to 3 users per account)
- Has simple, visual reporting.
- Is web-based
- Has a simple desktop time tracking widget that syncs w/ the website portal.
You can also use it for invoicing. You can see an overview of the product here. Paymo Product Tour
Thought I'd share. Quite the handy little tool.
-Dustin.
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