Its FREE but Powerful!

Of course we all know there are a lot of FREE tools out there that can help make your work easy. So, I wanted to point out few tools that I think easy to use and anyone can take advantage of when you roam the social web or interested in analytics behind the web. 

First Stop, Bitly

This is a utility that allow you to shortern your URLs so you can easily add them to your emails, blogs and especially tweets. For instance, bitly can shorten 

THIS 

INTO

To use Bitly, all you have to do is to go to bitly.com and paste the URL that you want shorten. This can come in very handy when you need to add a URL to a tweet or Facebook page.

Second, Google Analytics (GA)

This is a great tool to learn whether your a web developer, someone interested in web analytics, or actually anyone with a facebook fan page or a website and want to learn how to best reach people you want to reach. 

This is a quick introduction video on what GA does. 

Let me give you an example that you can relate to. let’s say you are promoting an event and you want to understand what are the best ways to reach your group members. You posted the event on your webpage with information on what is the event, where, and when is it. Then you also sent out a tweet with a link to your website telling "hey we have an event and check out more info about it via this link". On top of that, you also sent an email with the link to your website. Wouldn't it be great if you can find out which medium reach more people? With the GA URL builder tool you can find out the answer.

Like any free web tool, it’s not the tool itself but how creatively you use it. Here are few places you can go to get more information about GA and tips on how to use its features. 

1. Google Analytics Introduction can give you information about how it works, what are the different privacy settings available. 
2. Google Analytics Training and Certification has great collection of free video course on what is digital analytics and documents on how to setup GA on your website. This link will be more helpful if you are building a website and want to figure out how to add GA, and this link will be helpful if want to be introduce to the digital analytics.  
3. If you think this is a skill you want to develop GA Youtube channel is a great place to start. Google have created a series of webinars that is intended for people with E-Commerce and marketing background. 
4. Youtube is a great place to learn more about how people use GA. For instance, there is this is a great video about navigating through reports by Scott Bradley
5. I am sure you can find number of paid courses as well. Great thing is paid courses have more structure that can help to learn the tool step by step and you can be sure of the credibility of the content. I personally found Google Analytics Essential Training course very helpful.
6. Koozai Youtube channel is a great resource for tips on how to use different GA features. They also have a great collection of videos on how you can use social media tools.

Finally, CamStudio

CamStudio helps you record your screen with or without voice. This works great whether you are trying to demonstrate a software on your screen or if you want to record a PowerPoint presentation with a voice over. Here is a quick tutorial that teach you where to download CamStudio and how to use it. 

Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions. I'll try my best to answer or direct you to a good reference.