Here are 5 great sites that help you market your business by sharing your past and current documents.

I have used all but one of these document marketing services yet all of them can improve your market potential by uploading documents that you have already created. All of these services will also allow you to create searchable Tags for your documents. The best part is that each of them give your documents an outlet to more exposure to an audience that would not have seen what you have to offer on your own.

1. Sideshare.net

SlideShareis the best way to share your presentations with the world. Let your ideas reach a broad audience. Share publicly or privately. Add audio to create a webinar.

Here is an example of a presentation I created and uploaded to slideshare.net

Docstocis the premier online community to find and share professional documents. Docstoc provides the platform for users and businesses to upload and share their documents with all the world, and serves as a vast repository of documents in variety of categories including legal, business, financial, technology, educational, and creative. All documents on Docstoc can be easily searched, previewed and downloaded for free.

Small Business Lessons from Barack Obama - Get more Business Plans

Here is an example of a pdf file on Docstoc.com

Scribdbegan with a simple observation – there are billions of documents sitting siloed on people’s hard drives. By making it easy for people to publish their documents to the Internet, Scribd has unlocked this treasure trove of information.

Here is an example of a document on scribd.com

Here is an example of a pdf file saved to issuu.com

Gazhoo(“Gazhoo”) is an innovative Content Marketplace that allows users to search, buy, and sell documents. The site will initially focus on Reports, Term Papers, Business Forms, Legal Forms, and Market Research Reports. All documents are User Generated Content and uploaded solely by users. Given it’s open marketplace nature, Gazhoo will intrinsically maintain quality content and low prices.

You can use Slideshare mainly for your PowerPoint presentations. Scribd and Docstoc a very good for uploading your pdf files. Both Scribd and Docstoc have a document viewer that will allow you to embed the pdf file right into your website or blog. Your readers could then read the document right on your website without having to install adobe reader. Issuu is more for those who want to highlight a pdf file as a online magazine. Gazhoo is best for those of you who want to market and then sell your documents.

So if you have an old PowerPoint presentation, an e-book or just a report that highlights your expertise in your business, I would not hesitate to upload them immediately to one or all of these services.

All the best

JB

Its like ebay, meets Lendingtree, meets match.com. Thats how I would describe Prosper.com where you can borrow up to $25,000 for your business-related needs. At Prosper, people who want to borrow money connect with people who want to loan money. That’s right, loans without a bank.

Why use Prosper?

Solopreneurs and Small Business people know that getting your business funded by traditional institutions like banks or even venture capitalist is not easy. Prosper gives us all another alternative to raising capital via the untraditional way of the Internet using Web 2.0 technology.

All the best

JB

I read an interesting blog post today from Senior writer at Fortune magazine Adam Lashinsky’s Go West Blog. His post, titled “Will Twitter Make It?” gave me a lot of food for thought. Adam is addressing the question many of us are curious about when it comes to Twitter’s business model. Adam is also asking the question why should he and other business people use Twitter.

I myself have had a Twitter account for almost a year now but never used it because I, like Adam couldn’t see why business people would frequent this micro blogging service. I also had to fight the misconception that Twitter was only for those with SMS mobile devices. I fought the urge to Tweet long and hard until my good friend and Social CRM Expert Brent Leary told me how blogs like Mahalo drove major traffic to their website using Twitter.

Driving traffic to my website and blog was something I was definitely interested in doing. I then renewed my Twitter account and have been Tweeting both from my computer using the Twitter application, TweetDeck and with my cell phone using Jott, the voice recognition service. Marketing my business, my blog and myself through Twitter, or “Twarketing” has now been added as a focal point to my current business strategy.

I now have my Tweets show up on my blog using Twitter Tools. I automatically respond to followers and schedule future Tweets with Tweetlater. I even track the links in my Tweets using Tweetburner. Last but not least I do market research on products and services using Summize, which was just purchased recently by Twitter.

I believe that Twarketing will eventually drive those of the more mainstream to become users of Twitter. Early adopters like Maggie Mason who was the 448th person to sign up for Twitter, according to Twitterholic, are already seeing the fruits of their labors. Maggie currently has 6,458 follows and has parlayed those followers into traffic to her MightyGoods blog. Mighty Goods is a shopping blog and one of Time Magazine’s Top 50 Cool Sites of the year.

Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama holds the number two position on Twitterholic with 56,183 followers. The Blog Barack20 credits Twitter as one of the many social media networks that helped Mr. Obama win the Democratic nomination for President.

I believe Twitter will make it. I believe Twitter will develop a profitable business model. I also believe I have an idea of how Twitter can use a current advertising model for one of their revenue streams.

I will look to share that in a future post.

Brent Leary, I think you may have created a Twonster..;-)

All the best

JB

There are a lot of great tools to keep you in touch with your social and professional network. Most of us use the computer, Jott gives us the power to do the same thing using voice recognition on your cell phone . Jott allows you to send emails to yourself, send email and text messages to your list of contacts, and send messages to different web services like Twitter, Blogger and Google Calendar. Jott will listen to your voice commands and turn you words into text to then be displayed as though you had typed the message yourself.

Most smart phones like the Apple iPhone and the Sprint Instinct have application that can give you some of the same kind of access. Jott uses voice recognition to let the rest of us who still use non-smart phones the same capability.

All I have to do is call the Jott toll-free number and my voice does the rest. The main reason I use Jott is to help me send reminders to myself when I am on the road and don’t have a pen handy, but it can do so much more.

Here is an example of a Jott I sent to my email address

Sent with my voice via Jott:

We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to our selves and our posterity do ordain…

Listen to Jeffrey’s Message

As you can see Jott was able to pick up words that are not that easy to pronounce let alone catch by voice recognition software. If your message is a bit long Jott will generate a link to the audio recording of your message that you can retrieve from the Jott website.

I also use Jott to update my Google Calendar and have just started sending post to my Twitter account.
Jott can help you keep up to date with your favorite blog by allowing you to hear the written words instead of reading them.

Jott lets me hear up to date blog post from Tech Crunch, Mashable and Barack20 when I don’t have the time to get to a computer to read it. If your blog feed is not on the Jott Feed list you can add it and give it a name that will be easily identified when speaking it into your cell phone.

The Jott service is currently FREE to all their users. Their is a quick setup on the Jott website that you walk through in order to store your contacts, groups, feeds and web links. Once that is done you are ready to Jott.

Jott gives busy Solopreneurs and Small Business a voice controlled way to communicate with their social media, emails, groups, blogs and up date their calendar. All done with with a non-smart cell phone.

The Jott service is currently FREE to all their users. There is a quick setup on the Jott website that you walk through in order to store your contacts, groups, feeds and web links. Once that is done you are ready to Jott.

Who do YOU want to Jott?

All the best

JB

Image via Wikipedia

The jury is still out with the new Facebook Redesign. I took a look at it 2 days ago and at first glance thought it was Good for the most part. Its now wider than it was before and not as congested.

Current Facebook

New Wider Look Facebook

I also did a search on the comments of the Twitter community on the Facebook Redesign and got some interesting results. Although I liked and was comfortable with the old look I did think there was some room for improvement. Only time will tell if Facebook made the right decision. One thing I do know is that even with the changes Facebook is still the fastest growing social network on the Internet and most Solopreneurs and small businesses would be wise to design their own strategy to take advantage of its success.

I would really like to hear back from you on what you think of the Redesign. If you have not seen the new look just log in to your Facebook account and click on the link below.

http://www.new.facebook.com/

All the best

JB