When I think of “traditional” project management tools, thoughts of Gantt charts and highly detailed project schedules come to mind. But today’s web-based project management software tools are capable of offering much more than these traditional methods of monitoring projects.

Web-based project management software means that members of your team can access the tools and interact with other project members online. They are often a “software as a service,” which includes hosting of the project management tool for your business. I recently reviewed a slew of web-based project management tools in search of one that would meet my business requirements. The tools reviewed consisted of both paid and open source options.

Purposes

If you are searching for a suitable project management option, I would recommend firstly identifying your business requirements, as each tool offers features that are suitable for different purposes. Some common uses for project management software include:

• Managing Resources - If your company hires staff, freelancers, or virtual assistants, a project management tool will help your business to manage its resources more efficiently. If your business has multiple staff performing similar tasks, a web-based tool can effectively distribute the same message to a group. It can remove the need to repeat the same messages to your staff multiple times by email. And with the ability to view each other’s comments, staff can learn from one another.
• Project Task Management – These tools should help your business to manage different projects and to track the tasks and time spent on individual projects.
• Collaboration - These tools often have a collaborative element and therefore team members can interact and communicate easily with each other. This approach is useful for generating ideas and brainstorming, for problem solving, and to communicate the status of projects so that the handover of tasks between members can be completed. Collaboration through project management tools can also extend to dealing with clients and suppliers.

Other Issues

Other issues to consider when selecting an appropriate project management tool:

• Initial costs – Both paid and open source options are available. Find a solution that fits your budget.
• Ongoing costs – Some options have an initial outlay to purchase the software, followed by a regular monthly fee.
• Scaling - As your business grows in terms of team members and possibly the number of projects being undertaken, it may need to upgrade its project management software tool to increase data storage, and allow access to more features.
• Other “Nice to Have” Tools - Your business may have a feature in mind that it would like in a project management software tool. For example, an online whiteboard would be useful for brainstorming ideas with others or to work together to solve a problem.
• Support - Assess the technical support provided. This may be via a forum or help desk facility. Having access to an active forum run by the developers is useful for solving technical issues as you learn the new project management software tool.

Project Management Tools

Here is a run-down on some popular project management software tools for managing online projects and for coordinating virtual teams.

Basecamp

Basecamp by 37signals is one of the most popular tools for managing projects online. Projects can be managed through a shared dashboard, complete with the ability to upload and share files, send messages, document milestones, create to-do lists, and track time spent on projects.

One of the benefits of Basecamp is its friendly user interface. It can also be synced with other 37signals tools like Highrise (for managing your contacts), Backpack (for organizing your business), or Campfire (for chatting with group members).

Basecamp is a good option for those looking for a friendly project management interface and collaborative elements.

RescueTime

Rescue Time has the ability to track your time and that of other team members, with no data entry (a time saving in itself!) through a tracking application installed onto your computers.

It’s well suited for those with a focus on time management and for companies who want to improve the productivity of staff and help reduce distractions. It provides detailed graphs to show trends in work productivity.

Due to its automatic tracking, Rescue Time is especially good for managing outsourced staff without being overtly intrusive.

Clocking IT

Clocking IT is an open source project management software tool. It has a moderately friendly interface and is useful for creating to-do lists, for creating multiple projects, and for assigning different levels of access to users. It offers collaboration features like Wiki, chat, and forums, and is available in multiple languages.

Clocking IT is a good option for those on a budget and who need the usual project management functions.

Vtiger

Vtiger is an open source solution focused on customer relationship management (CRM). It can help your business to manage the activities of your sales team (e.g., management of accounts, leads, and sales). Users can also opt for the paid Vtiger CRM on Demand, which stores your data on Amazon secure servers.

Vtiger is suited to those who need a CRM to manage their customer sales function and team.

ActiveCollab

ActiveCollab is another popular project management and collaboration tool suited to both small businesses and corporates. One feature of ActiveCollab that appeals is the ability to set up the software on your own server. This feature will allow your business to have greater control over its activities.

ActiveCollab provides good documentation on using the software from the perspective of a user, administrator, or developer. It also has an Invoice module as part of its tool.

ActiveCollab is a solid solution for those who want to have greater control over their project management software.

CentralDesktop

Central Desktop has all the essential features of a web-based project management tool – the ability to manage projects, share online documents, and tools for team work (e.g., create Wikis, blogs, and forums).

For an additional monthly fee, it also provides a service to host online web meetings and conferences.

Plans range from a free option up to an enterprise solution. Date storage is limited for the free plan or low monthly plans.

CentralDesktop would be a good project management choice for businesses who want extra features like online web meetings.

Summary

There is an extensive range of project management software tools available on the market, each with its own particular range of benefits and features. Work out the requirements for your online business first, and you will be better placed to decide on which particular software suits your own needs. Keep in mind that as your business grows, it can always upgrade your project management software to suit its changing business requirements.

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In fact, every day, around the world, millions of entrepreneurs decide to go for it – even though they don’t have multimillion dollar backers.

If you can’t find funding for your business, or if you’d rather go it alone, and build your company from the ground up the hard way (sounds crazy again, but many people do) then you’re going to have to learn to bootstrap!

What Is Bootstrapping?

Most seasoned entrepreneurs out there will know exactly what the term bootstrapping means. It’s the process of building a business from the ground up, with no outside funding.

The term comes from an old story about Baron Munchausen, who used his own bootstraps to pull himself up – similar to the self sufficient nature of the bootstrapping entrepreneur.

Why Is Bootstrapping a Good Idea?

When you first start dreaming of becoming an entrepreneur, chances are you are imagining hordes of financiers battering down your door to offer you money. That’s unlikely to happen, but even if it did, it would not come without a price.

You see, when you accept funding, whether it’s from an angel investor, a venture capital firm or a traditional bank, they’re going to want to have some say on how things are done. That means less autonomy for you, the entrepreneur, to build the business you’ve been dreaming about.

With all that money at your disposal, you’re also unlikely to ever learn the true innovation, invention and budgeting that a real entrepreneur needs to understand in order to keep a business going when times are tough. Make no mistake, it’s a fact of life, and of business, that sometime, things will go bad. If you bootstrapped your business into being, rather than accepting funding from the outset, you will already have the skills to navigate tough times, and come out looking great!

Bootstrapping Impresses Investors

All ideals and romanticism aside, however, chances are, at some point, your business will need funding. If you, the entrepreneur, can stand in front of potential investors, and show them exactly how you built your business from the ground up, with no outside aid, you’re far more likely to impress them than if you’d simply used other people’s money to create your company.

Going to a group of potential investors having bootstrapped your business into success only proves to them that you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur, and that you can do the same with their money. Nothing is more likely to make them take a risk than that!

How to Bootstrap

If you can’t find funding for your business, or don’t want any, then you’re probably going to need to bootstrap. Here’s how:

• Start small. We’d all like to take on big contracts, open fancy stores and drive a luxury car. However, when you bootstrap, you have to start small, and work your way up. Choose manageable first goals, and achieve them. Then use those profits to fund the next, bigger project, and so on, until you reach your long term goal.
• Learn to cut costs. Entrepreneurs who bootstrap their businesses are the masters of cheap. They find cheaper ways to do anything, whether it’s taking the subway to a meeting, or hiring equipment rather than buying it. Bottom line? There’s a cheaper way to do anything. Find it.
• Get creative. Bootstrapping successfully requires you to find creative ways to make the money you need to start your business. Sell something; offer a separate service on the side to make extra money, freelance for a while in parallel to your business, or pawn something if you have to. When entrepreneurs bootstrap, anything goes!
• Understand that when it comes to bootstrapping, determination is everything. It’s not easy. Often it’s not fun. But if you keep at it, there’s no chance you won’t make something of it.

Famous Bootstrappers

Of course, you may be feeling a little down in the dumps about having to bootstrap. If other entrepreneurs can get funding, why can’t you? Don’t be. There have been plenty of people out there who have made their fortunes using just such a strategy.

One of those is the famous entrepreneur and author, Guy Kawasaki. Then there is Bill Gates, who started Microsoft with very little money, and of course, the boys at Google. In fact, some of the world’s best known brands, and most successful companies, were founded with little more than a good idea, and the will to succeed.

All the more proof that you don’t need lots of money to be an entrepreneur – you just have to be willing to take that first step into the unknown.

As a successful, under-30 serial entrepreneur, Gary Whitehill’s game-changing endeavors have been featured on television and in magazines and newspapers across the nation. Read more about Gary here.

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Update: Commenter Bruce Hoffman contacted TuneCore about this issue and received this response: “Thanks for writing! Not only will Ping have ‘People’ accounts, but it will also have ‘Artist’ accounts that allow musicians to upload and create their own pages featuring their pictures, videos, tour-dates, music recommendations and a lot more. We were fortunate enough to speak with Apple today to begin working on getting the first TuneCore Artists Ping accounts set up. We will be able to get more and more TuneCore Artists set up over the next weeks as Apple works to authenticate and set up Ping Artist accounts for the millions of artists within iTunes.”

Plenty of criticism has already been directed towards the new social network that’s baked into iTunes 10 — Ping — with an emphasis on the user (not to mention rumblings about a fleeting Facebook integration). But there’s one contingent of users no one has really mentioned yet: the bands, many of which are still unable to get in on the action as of this afternoon.

Immediately after hearing about Ping yesterday, I sent out a flurry of e-mails to band friends, urging them to, “Get on this now!” Everyone was stoked, ready to replace their MySpace pages with revenue-making destinations on the brand new iTunes social network. However, when they logged in and tried to figure out how to create said page, they were met with confusion.

I spoke with Eric Victorino, of the band The Limousines, and he said he spent 30 minutes trying to figure out how to set up a page to no avail. And this is a band with music already available on iTunes. I also spoke with PR people who represent some other popular bands, and they were unclear as to how to get their bands on the service as well.

Bands usually don’t have direct contact with iTunes — musicians distribute their jams through services like TuneCore which then deal directly with iTunes — so perhaps this degree of separation is the issue. We’ve reached out to Apple to ask how a band goes about getting a page on Ping.

In the meantime, I remain unimpressed with Ping — unable to follow bands that I actually like. Currently, iTunes recommends I follow 14 bands, all heavy hitters like U2, Diddy and Lady Gaga. Yup, no Phoenix, The National or Arcade Fire (all indie bands of the less-than-indie persuasion — I wasn’t expecting Jeffrey Lewis to be up in there yet, anyway). No wonder iTunes was so off with its recommendations — none of the bands I like are currently on the service. I can follow Katy Perry, though:

Still, you can “Like” and “Post” a band’s album via the “Album” page, and check out some concert listings as a result of Live Nation’s recent partnership with Apple. In the example below, Mashable’s Christina Warren can show how much she digs Guster, despite being unable to follow them:

Now that doesn’t mean bands can’t get in on the action by creating a run-of-the-mill user profile. It seems that Ben Folds joined up this a.m. I followed him. As did more than 200 others. Too bad it’s not really Ben Folds. I know because I asked him this morning whether the profile was real and he replied, “Probably not legit.” We’ll probably see more faux artist pages popping up in the future, unless some kind of verification process is introduced. (That’s not really an uncommon issue. Facebook is crawling with fakes. Still, doppelgangers are doubly confusing when dealing with a new service.)

Yesterday, scads of publications — including Mashable — heralded “Ping as a potential “MySpace killer.” That doesn’t seem likely, however, until the service manages to make itself more accessible to the bread and butter of any music discovery service: the musicians.

MySpace is easy to join and is an admittedly simple way to get your music out there. It even recently introduced new profiles for artists, as well as the capacity to feature up to 25 songs on one’s profile. That’s a ton of music, and, come to think of it, something that Ping lacks: the ability to listen to full, streaming songs. Thirty-second clips aren’t going to do much for music discovery when it comes to bands in the “lesser-known” realm. (A musician friend even joked last night that he would have to compress all of his songs into 30-second dance jams if he wanted to get his tunes heard on Ping.)

Yes, Ping emphasizes the music fan’s experience — the experience of sharing music with friends and benefiting from their tastes — but how is one to expand one’s taste when access to less mainstream fare is so limited? Yes, we imagine iTunes will expand the service to more musicians as the days wear on, but we feel that in order to grab the populace at the onset, the experience of following and interacting bands should have been richer at launch.

More About: apple, itunes, music, Ping

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• Follow Mashable Entertainment on Twitter
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So maybe it’s time to ask — are you in over your head? Unfocused? Are you simply doing too much?

Some businesses have taken the opposite tack in the downturn, stripping down their company to the bare essentials. They’re staying laser-focused on what matters most to their customers, creating bare-bones products or services. Then, if demand dictates, they might add one feature or two.

This has the advantage of keeping marketing very simple as well. In this time of pinched marketing budgets, that can be a real plus.

On the technology side, the do-less idea dovetails with the trend toward lean startups. Shrinking technology-development costs have translated into tech startups either seeking smaller venture or angel funding rounds, or just bootstrapping all the way to profits. Many can get a basic version of their software ready for customers, and are just putting it out. Then, customer feedback may help them gradually add features or alter the audience or direction of the product. 

Companies have been sharing best practices in the lean-startup niche through Lean Startup Meetup Groups, of which there are now more than 50. >

When sales go down, some companies tend to go a little bit crazy. There’s a frantic scramble to find something, anything, that might generate more sales. Business owners start 10 new initiatives at once, try to capture three different new target markets, or expand to five new cities in a quarter. 

All of which can add up to scattered energy and the inability to do even one thing really well. And that can turn off customers and make sales go down even more.

What’s your recession survival strategy? Is your company doing more, or have you streamlined and focused in on doing less? Leave a comment and let us know.

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Business Logos on Google Maps

Google calls this “sponsored map icons.” Businesses can pay to have their logo show up on Google Maps, replacing Google’s generic gray graphics. There’s no doubt it stands out amongst the otherwise bland colors, but that may not be the case when a lot of businesses are putting their logos on the map.

For now, this is only available to a limited set of U.S. companies “with multiple locations and a well-known brand.” But it doesn’t seem too much of a stretch to see this expanding into something that any local advertiser can do. AdWords users who target locally have already been able to show an icon when their ad appears on the map. Today, if you’re using Google Tags, the yellow icon shows next to your red map marker … so you have to assume Google can and will make Sponsored Map Icons more widely available. And that could be a good thing for local businesses with a recognizable identity/logo.

Product Inventory in Search Results

Google’s been doing this on a limited basis for a few months now, but just this week expanded it for wider adoption. In Google’s search results, the red map marker shows up with an “In stock nearby” message.

In order to take part in this, there are some technical/feed-related guidelines that have to be met. There’s help documentation you can read, and an interest form if you want to apply to get involved.

Two interesting announcements this week, signs of things to come, I believe.

This is a post from Matt McGee’s blog, Small Business Search Marketing.

Google Dangles Carrots in Front of Small Biz Owners

Related posts:

1. Google’s “Local Business Ads”
2. Google Maps Adds User-Generated Content
3. Google Maps has a new Onebox Display

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Thinking the above message must be spam, the folks at The Inn at Mount Snow in West Dover, VT, immediately logged onto their Facebook account, where they were promptly confronted by the following message at the top of their Page:

Definitely not spam, and according a statement provided by Facebook to Entrepreneur magazine, it’s intentional.

“With millions of Pages on Facebook, we rely on our automated systems to help us best categorize them as Business or Community Pages,” said a Facebook spokesperson. “As you can imagine, when sweeping through Pages of this volume our automated systems are not perfect, and occasionally some Business Pages are miscategorized as Community Pages.” (Note: See the e-mail message above for Facebook’s own definition of a Community Page.)

To correct this, Facebook has created an appeals process that helps business owners recategorize their Pages if they believe Facebook’s automated system has made a mistake.

If your Facebook Business Page has been improperly recategorized as a Community Page, follow these steps to appeal the decision:

1. Visit Facebook’s “Request for Page Category Review” page:
2. Enter your Page name (use the exact name as it appears on your Business Page).
3. Enter your Page URL (ex. www.Facebook.com/TheInnAtMountSnow).
4. Indicate your role in administering the Page in question (employee of the company, one the Page’s official Admins, owner of the business, etc.).
5. Describe the Category under which your Page resides. This part may be tricky because, let’s face it, who remembers the exact category and sub-category they entered for their Business Page upon creating it? Choices include local business; brand, product, or organization; and Artist, band, or public figure.
6. Click the Submit button

How long it takes for someone from Facebook to review your appeal is unknown. Research for this story indicates some businesses have waited more than two months, during which the official category status of their Page did not change.

One thing’s for certain. If you receive or see a recategorization message from Facebook, don’t ignore it. And while no one knows for sure what makes Facebook’s automated systems flag a Business Page as being miscategorized, taking the following steps just might avoid it happening in the first place or speed along the appeals process:

1. Secure a Vanity URL for Your Business Page: At the time they received Facebook's recategorization notice, The Inn At Mount Snow's Facebook Page URL was: http://www.facebook.com/pages/West-Dover-VT/The-Inn-At-Mount-Snow/130852016965?ref=ts. While there's no way of telling for sure, Facebook's automated system may have viewed "West-Dover-VT" as being more of a Community Page attribute than a business attribute. As I point out in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Facebook, Facebook allows Business Page owners to request a specific URL for pages. Rather than live with the Facebook-generated URL (as in the example provided above), you can tell customers to find you on Facebook at facebook.com/YourCompanyNameHere (which is what The Inn at Mount Snow has recently done). Learn more about Facebook URLs (called User Names) at www.facebook.com/username.

1. Update Your Business Page: Customers and others –and maybe Facebook’s automated system for categorizing pages–have a reasonable expectation that your business’s Facebook Page is going to be kept up-to-date, and the number-one way of doing that is to create and post a consistent stream of status updates. One update per day is ideal, but if you can’t do that, one every other day should suffice. Moreover, keeping the dialogue related to your business may also prove to be beneficial to avoiding recategorization.

1. Continue adding fans: Facebook’s automated system for recategorizing Business and Community Pages may rely on fan data or demographics to determine whether your page is related to a business or a cause. And if your fan base isn’t growing, that might be one flag among many that your Business Page should be classified as a Community page. Whenever it’s appropriate to do so, promote your Facebook Business Page, both on- and offline. In addition, post status updates and notes that are worthy of your fans commenting, liking and sharing your information with others both on and off Facebook. Here again, fan activity–especially a lack thereof–may be a flag to Facebook’s recategorization system.

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Looking back, my contrarian bet was a pretty smart move. Not only did my Brooklyn brownstone double in value over the next eight years (I sold it in 2003), but it served as collateral for the credit line that I used to take my company public in 1999. My brownstone also served as a home office for my growing company as well as a great place to raise my two daughters. And thanks to the tax deduction that the government gives for mortgage interest, I was able to own my own home for less than it would have cost to rent a house and an office.

Of course, that was then and this is now.

With housing prices still falling in many parts of the country and home
sales plunging now that the government’s tax credits have expired, home
ownership may not be such a great deal for entrepreneurs and
small-business owners any more. If I had tried a similar strategy today
with the income and assets I had back then, I might have found that A. I
couldn’t sell my house in Florida for anything close to what I paid for
it B. I couldn’t get a mortgage on my Brooklyn brownstone because I’d
be considered too risky a borrower and C. I couldn’t get a credit line
for my company because I would have had no stocks, bonds or other liquid
assets to pledge as collateral.

Traditionally, business
ownership and home ownership have gone hand in hand. Because shares in a
privately held business are generally illiquid and the business may not
kick off a whole lot of cash after paying salaries and expenses, home
equity has long served as the kind of rock-solid asset entrepreneurs
have used to obtain loans and credit lines to grow their companies. With
millions of homes now “under water,” many business owners have little
or no home equity to put up as collateral.

So, if you’re running
a business and don’t currently own a home, does it make sense to buy
one rather than continue renting? After all, there are still some pretty
incredible deals on the market, and mortgage interest rates have hit
new lows.

I think you should consider it, provided you can answer “yes” to the following questions:

1. Will
   you still have enough capital and cash flow to run your business once
   you’ve handed over the down payment and started paying your mortgage?

2. If
   you or your spouse has to relocate within the next five years, will you
   be able to rent out your house for enough to cover your mortgage
   payments?

3. Can you use the house as a home office and/or storage facility in addition to a place for you and your family to live?
4. Does
   the house have a spare bedroom, carriage house or “mother-in-law’s
   apartment” that you can rent out for extra income in case you need it?

5. Is
   the house and lawn small enough that you and your family can take care
   of it without the help of a landscaper, handyman, etc. that you’ll have
   to pay?

I think you see where I'm going with this.
Long-term, I think that home ownership still makes sense for
small-business owners for the same reasons it always has. Short-term,
you need to treat a home purchase no differently from the way you'd
treat an investment in your business–and that means focusing on cash
flow, not kitchen cabinets.    

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Now days you would be so lucky to find a niche where you can pay under $ 1.00/click. What I am saying is that the days when small advertisers could gain visibility (at least in the paid results) on Google are over. Small advertisers don’t have a budget to “test” keywords, landing pages, offers, etc… For a small, local businesses, $ 250/month is a lot of money!

The problem is that over the past 10 years, the competitive landscape has gotten much more saturated. There are bidding wars between advertisers to push their ads towards the top. I know, I know…Ad Quality Score plays a factor in how much you pay per click, but I’ll tell you something, if you have deep pockets and are willing to pay a lot per click…Google will put you at the top. So when push comes to shove, the big brands and large corporations with the bigger budgets, are the ads that are still going to be showing.

The Solution

So what can small, localized business do? The good part is that there are so many new and innovative ways you can drive traffic to your site. Just to stay focused on Paid Search, you can try newer ad platforms like Facebook Ads and MyAds (Myspace Ad Network). Facebook Ads in particular has been getting a lot of attention recently because the CPCs are reasonable, you have a ton of awesome targeting options, and…oh yeah…Facebook gets a ton of traffic!

To the Small-Business Owner: Don’t let Adwords put a bad taste in your mouth about paid search. Paid search can still be a valuable marketing tactic; you just need to find other outlets that can still drive quality traffic at lower costs. I would strongly recommend to keep your mind open to other paid search techniques. It may be that you can drive the same amount of traffic that Adwords would bring you, with Facebook and MySpace ads at half the cost.

Using best practices to increase ROI:

• Create relevant landing pages
• Use strong call to actions
• Use free content as a means of lead generation
• Use promotions and timely specials to entice user action
  

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Why Small Advertisers Can’t Use Adwords Anymore!

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P Number 1:  Product

The end-result.  In the Internet world, we’ll call this the user’s interaction with the website being promoted.  I want to look at it this way for sake of including all types of websites, not just ecommerce sites.

This is where conversion fits into the marketing mix.  There’s no sense in wasting link building efforts or on page optimization work if the end result of this leads the user to a junky place.  So many clients want their pages to be at the top of the SERPs, yet aren’t willing to make changes to their website that make them worthy of high rankings.

P Number 2:  Price

How much do you spend on your website and it’s promotion?  The numbers that float by my screen sometimes astound me.  People and companies are spending a lot on search marketing.

Forrester has predicted 3.1 billion dollars to go to social marketing by 2014, but that’s only 1/10th of what they think is going to search marketing.  These are some big numbers, there’s no doubt about it.  Take a peek into your competitors search marketing and search marketing spending  habits.  Are you in the same ballpark?

P Number 3:  Place

This P, also known as distribution, applies to how the first P (targeted website) is delivered to a potential consumer.  Are you getting a lot of direct traffic?  Where are you in the SERPs?

Where are your back-links hanging out?  It’s essential to understand your market coverage.  How often are your keywords being searched?  A neat tool to check trends of keywords is  Google Insights. Don’t waste money in keywords that aren’t of interest to users (duh!).

P Number 4:  Promotion

Let’s refer to packaging, here.  I’m talking meta description and title tag.  While these aren’t on-page factors, per se’, they are so important to search marketing efforts.  Don’t blow these.  Inevitably, like a kid at Christmas, Googlers & Bingers will pick the box that most looks like the best present.  The Red Rider.

Note: This post was written by of Kim Greuel of SlingsotSEO Zach represents here at SEJ

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

The Four P’s of (Search) Marketing

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