by Monique Hodgkinson

Now that the holidays have passed, we can clear our minds and focus on events and activities that are coming up in the new year. For many businesses, January is a slow month, which makes it an ideal time to work on promotions. Start by making a list of events that you participate in or would like to participate in this year. Bring out your calendar and start reserving the dates for these events. Make sure to add significant milestones onto the calendar. Next, think about how much time you need to prepare for each event, and clearly mark this time on the calendar, too.

Whether you are planning a  meeting, promoting an event, or just wanting to share information with others, there are free tools online that are really useful.

Here are five tools that I use regularly to help promote my clients’ products and services:

Eventbrite is an online ticketing and event management service. Through this easy-to-use site, you can post information about your event, set your ticket price, and track the ticket sales. After the initial set up, you can easily integrate payments through PayPal and Google Checkout. Publishing an event to Facebook is a simple click of a button.

Evite allows you to create custom invitations to events. Each invitation asks the recipients to respond, telling you if they will be attending the event or not. This is great for business or personal events because you can quickly get an idea about the attendance in advance.

Google Calendar allows you to not only keep your own calendar online, but also allows you to share it with others via e-mail or via a button that you can include in an e-mail or post on your Web site. The calendar functionality is similar to Outlook, and it’s a great way to schedule meetings online.

Yelp is often thought of as a place to comment on businesses, but it is much more. Yelp also allows users to create events, lists, and bookmarks about businesses or events that interest them. The messaging service is a forum for members to interact, while sharing opinions and recommendations.

Yahoo Local allows businesses to register in its online directory. As with Yelp, users can post comments and recommendations, and through Yahoo’s Upcoming site, users can also post events. While not as fully integrated as other tools, Yahoo Local still gets significant traffic to the site.

Remember, even if you have a fantastic business, if you don’t plan carefully and promote that business, you may find that you are not keeping your customers’ attention. Use what’s available to keep your business growing.

Monique Hodgkinson is the founder of Screen Caffeen, a company that specializes in building online strategies and solving customers’ challenges on the Web. From Web design to social media marketing, Screen Caffeen will wake up your online presence.  Visit screencaffeen.com or call 650-740-1491.