Use Cloud Services for the Perfect Follow-Up

Last week I broke down my step-by-step tips for how to network and pitch while at conferences, events, and talks. No matter what line of business you’re in, there’s always people to pitch who can help your business or with whom you can create mutually beneficial partnerships. But let’s say you’re just back from a conference, or even better, about to go to one. After you’ve gotten the pitches right, and met all the right people, how can you best make sure you nail the follow-ups to your benefit?

Enter the cloud. There are a variety of cloud-based technologies that can help you manage the data you’re taking in during these events and help you sort it back out when you’re done. While you may have little more than a smartphone with you when you’re interacting with people at these events, using the cloud you can automatically sync everything that comes in with your desktop computer back home. Today I’m going to take a look at some of my favorite ways to use the cloud to make sure you capture all of the data from an event and turn that into an actionable plan for you to work from.

1. Put Business Cards in the Cloud

Every day you’ll be grabbing (and, hopefully, handing out) dozens of business cards from potential partners, potential clients, or even just people you’d like to see again. But by the time you’re back in your hotel at the end of the day, never mind by the time the conference is over, you will surely have forgotten why you took some of those business cards and all will be for naught.

If you’ve already standardized your personal note-taking on Evernote like I have then the best option would be to use Evernote Hello. Far more than just a place to capture business cards, Hello captures people, interactions, notes, meetings, and helps you build a rich history of when you’ve seen someone before and what you discussed. This way, when you run into someone at a conference, you’ll know exactly what you discussed the last time you saw them.

Read the rest of this blog post at AT&T’s Networking Exchange blog.

24-hours into #iPadWeek: I’m an idiot. Also, email saved the day!

My new office set-up: got my iPad wrapped in soft, brown leather inside the Brookstone Keyboard Pro case.

If you’ve been following along, yesterday I found out that my MacBook Pro is going to be in the shop for longer than I expected and that I’m going to be working from my iPad all week. Last night I decided to try and get ahead on some of my work and started drafting a blog post for the site when I realized that I needed some screenshots from a website that doesn’t work on the iPad.

“No big deal,” I thought to myself, “I’ll just borrow my roommate’s computer for a minute.” So I hopped on his laptop, took a few screenshots, copied them to a USB flash drive, and walked back over to my iPad to plug it in. A brilliant plan except… why did I think that iPad’s have USB ports?

As I said in the title of this post, I’m an idiot.  Read More

Evernote Hello Offers a Quick Way to Remember People

Evernote touts itself as the “remember everything” service that lets you store all kinds of information and access it anywhere. Now you could do what I do when I am working a room at a networking event and snap pictures of business cards using one app, and then have that app export the cards to Evernote. Or, you can try out Evernote Hello for iPhone that lets you build a quick profile of people you meet so you can remember more about a person other than just how cool you think their business card looks.

In short, EN Hello helps you remember people you meet by adding an image or two of the person, contact information like phone #, email & Twitter handle, and a location where you met, or pull contact info from a meeting scheduled on your calendar. All this information is stored in Evernote and you can choose to send your contact information when you meet someone. Keep reading to find out how to use this great new service. Read More

Evernote Peek Adds Virtual Cover for all iPads

Doing a presentation/pitch using your iPad or iPad 2 can wow your potential clients. Prepping for a presentation in the lobby while waiting for your preso to start can be nerve-racking. Evernote makes cramming studying a little easier with the combination of Evernote Peek and an Apple Smart Cover for the iPad 2.

That’s cool if you bought the iPad 2. If you decided to squeeze a little more time out of your iPad “Classic”, Evernote has decided to bring Peek to your device as well by updating the app with virtual smart covers that bring all the cool Peek features to the iPad, sans the $40 Smart Cover accessory. Read More

Productivity Tip: Use Siri to Email Notes to Evernote

If you haven’t noticed from my last couple of entries, I’m a serious Evernote user. It’s starting to take the place of several services I use personally and professionally.

I was one of the suckers fanboys enthusiasts with an iPhone 4 who went out and got the iPhone 4S. One of the first things I did was mess around with Siri – the voice assistant that only (and by only I mean legitimately) available on the iPhone 4S.

I will admit that after a while, the Siri craze started to wear off. It’s cool to do voice to text, set reminders and calendar appointments with Siri, but the bulk of my mobile experience is using social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. So it was cool to find tips on how to use Siri to send Tweets and Facebook updates using Siri.

Again, I’m a heavy Evernote user, so when I got a tip on how to use Siri to email notes to my account, I immediately tested to see how it works. It’s fairly simple too. Read More

Organization Tip: Use @myEN to Sends Tweets to Evernote

I use Evernote to save just about everything. The most important feature to me is no matter which device I use, I know all my notes will be synced up for access anywhere, even on the web.

I say “just about everything” because I was still doing some wonky stuff when it came to saving tweets to view later in Twitter. Sure, I could save them using the built-in favorites feature, but that’s only for messages in your timeline.

If you want to send tweets you compose to Evernote, there is an underrated feature that lets you do so by adding @myEN (My Evernote) to a tweet. It can be anywhere in the tweet and it can be a public tweet/reply or a Direct Message for your eyes only. As long as it’s there, your tweet will be sent to your default notebook in Evernote. Keep reading to learn how to set up this awesome feature. Read More

New iPod Touch – Business Productivity Tool?

One of the many announcements during this week’s Apple event was the fact that the popular iPod Touch will now come in white, will get the iOS 5 platform, and the price has been reduced to $199 for the entry-level 8 GB version.

Now that sounds all well and dandy for the parent looking to get a gift for their tween… they can download apps that will let them txt message with their friends who are too young to have a full-blown smartphone. Said tween will also be able to play games, listen to music and movies, etc. without destroying their family’s wireless minutes. All in all, at $199 the iPod touch is a great gift, and is now a better value than ever.

But allow me to present another option for the iPod Touch – it can double as an outstanding mobile business productivity device.  That’s right, with the help of the 400,00 titles strong App Store, you can turn a “fun and games” device into a business expense. Read More

Evernote is iOS 5 Ready, Offers Additional updates

Since the Small Biz Go Mobile team loves Evernote, the nice folks over there sent me an email letting me know that the latest update brings the note-taking, web clipping, “remember everything” app up to iOS 5 code.

But that’s not all that was included in the update. Evernote now makes it easier to edit text as well. Better simplified text and font handling are just some of the text editing features in the latest update. Evernote also brings the ability to edit content in notebooks that other Evernote users have shared with you. This only works if you’re a premium user, but this gives you the ability to edit a note and all user’s get your latest updates across all their devices. Read More

ifttt makes social media a breeze

Social media is a big part of any modern marketing campaign.  However, managing social media properly can mean a lot of time-consuming work.  It’s one thing to have a solid plan, but the real work comes with the day-in, day-out hands-on implementation of this plan.  There are lots of products that claim to automate this process, but they’re all missing a key thing: variety.  You can set your tumblr to auto-update to your twitter, and your twitter could update your facebook, but this creates a single monolithic, repetitive structure.  So, how do you add nuance to your social media plan without adding complexity and hours to your day? Read More