Andy's Idea Factory

Reprinted from the Shift Network If you're a Gmail user, you may have noticed a new "tabbed inbox" system that is being phased in now and we wanted to give you a quick update about it so you can continue receiving all the exciting and transformative offerings you've come to the Shift Network for. Basically, Google has split your inbox into 5 separate inboxes and created tabs across the top labeling each "Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates and Forums. The problem is... they've also decided that THEY, not YOU, get to choose which emails go into which new inbox tab, unless you tell them otherwise. What does that mean? A lot of emails you've asked to receive will end up under the tab marked Promotions, even though they're valuable content and you've specifically asked to get them. Pretty much all emails from bloggers and other websites and people you subscribe to are being lumped into the "Promotions" inbox automatically, where you may...

The online tools I teach to small business owners are the ones that are most inexpensive (or free!), stable, reliable and most importantly, always improving.  I look for applications that have the same priorities - making online marketing and communication easy for business owners. Today's blast from MailChimp is a perfect example. The headline: Every 4 weeks we launch new features.  An online tool can't get more up to date than that.  I have half a dozen clients using this program, and knowing they all got that email today too made me giggle.  What a proactive little monkey! It takes me weeks, sometimes months, to share the plethora of online gifts that I love with my clients, but in brief, here are some of the wonderful tools (in order of  why I appreciate them) that I use for my own businesses, which to me, speaks volumes when I learn from the my own online gurus. In this fast and vast technological age, we are all students just keeping up with the p...