A few years ago I bounced between two different computers and learned quickly how much I depend on my bookmarks. I kept trying to look up my bookmarks on the computer that DIDN’T have them and would feel like I was going crazy. Luckily, I was introduced to delicious.

The name Delicious sounds enticing and is a fun experience to use. Create an account on Delicious.com and you can start saving your favorite webpages and sites instantly. One of the best features of Delicious is how you can “tag” pages. This means you an add a descriptive word, for example, I’m always on the search for great small business resources. If I run across someone’s blog post about a great tool, I can tag or label it “small business tool” or “business resource” or even more specific like “time tracking tool”. I can also add a description of the page to help me remember why I’m bookmarking it (my memory can be a little fuzzy at times, aren’t we all!)

These bookmarks are public (you can check if you’d like them private) but since they are usually public, you can search on these tags and see what other folks are tagging for their bookmarks and find some high quality information and tools for your blog, newsletter, or just finding precious information.

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You can even categorize your bookmarks and share them specifically with friends, collegues, or clients. I’ve done this meeting with a client to help brainstorm what they wanted their website to look like. I had bookmarked a few sites I thought would reflect their design look and feel. It was very handy to login into my Delicious account on their computer and not have to worry about using my laptop. Delicious makes our lives easier.

Let me know if you are using Delicious or if you have a different social bookmarking site you prefer.

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• MailChimp, the email tool for savvy businesses

If you are gonna pick a email newsletter service, get the chimp.

I’ve worked with a bunch of different email newsletter systems, some having nifty features, but my favorite is Mail Chimp.

It might be how friendly and easy it is to use. It might be the cute Monkey who greets you every time you login. Here’s just a few of the awesome features:

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-it has tons of tutorials to help you get started
-when you first sign up, you can try using it for free if you have under 100 subscribers
-they have free live chat and email support
-they promote best practices for your email lists which includes building an organic list and ALWAYS getting permission to use anyone’s email address
-lots of great tracking tools to see who opened your newsletter
-helps you test what your newsletter will look like with other email software such as Outlook, AOL, and many more

Read about more reasons to check them out (if you weren’t already convinced). I was sold after using it for a client and will continue to suggest it as a great tool for freelancers and small businesses. Be consistent and start an awesome Mail Chimp newsletter today!

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• Are your bookmarks wireless?

Wefollow.com is an online Twitter directory that makes it easier to search for famous folks and celebrities. My first impression was, why would I follow celebs?

If you are new to Twitter, find a few folks you respect, for example, journalist from NPR or an author you respect. The power of Twitter is that by following them, it allows you to have a very unique dialogue with these folks. If you reply or direct message them, it’s much more powerful than emailing or phone calls. You can also get insight into what they are into or what’s going on in their lives. It’s also fun to see who else is watching them, you might find some other great people you want to follow.

Wefollow also ranks tweeters and let’s you know whose getting more followers, whose moving up in the ranking and whose moving down.  You can type in keywords to find specific people, for example, if you type in “seattle”, Pearl Jam are the top tweeters!

This is a great tool is you want to start following Though Leaders on subjects such as small business, marketing, coaching, it just goes on and on. Overall, it’s fun tool that keeps it simple.

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• Sock it to Marketing: Interview with Carrie Atkinson