Essential Tools - Business Blog Wire Style

One of the first blogs I subscribed to when I first started this blog was Easton Ellsworth’s Business Blog Wire. Easton is the man behind Blogtipping, SOAP your blog, and many other great blogging ideas. Easton is also an editor for Know More Media, a blog network focusing on business topics.

For this week’s edition of Essential Tools, Easton was kind enough to share four of his essential tools:

• Google Docs and Spreadsheets - Easton uses these constantly to collaborate with Know More Media team members and to consolidate and update his personal plans. Because his documents are online, he can edit them from any computer. Also, they are automatically saved every minute, so he doesn’t lose any important work.
• SurveyMonkey - This survey management tool makes it super easy to create online surveys and use them for any purpose you like. He just used SurveyMonkey to manage over 120 responses related to the SOAP blogging tips exchange program he ran last month.
• Paint.NET - Coupled with Stock.xchng, this makes photo finding and editing free and easy. Use a combination like this and you’ll rarely have difficulty finding images for your blog or fixing up screenshots to put in a blog post.
• Camtasia Studio - Makes screencasting easy and fun. Easton has used it to make several training screencasts for the KMM bloggers and he loves it. Well worth the price.