Online planning tools can keep you organized, connected and extremely competitive in your industry. When you’re assessing which tools you’ll employ there are a few simple questions you need to ask yourself:

• What all do I need to accomplish?
  What’s my current process?
  Are there tools that can get me there faster and more efficiently?
  How do I get’em?

It’s really not rocket science; it’s a matter of time and thought. Figure out what’s going to be in your and your clients’ best, short and long term, interests. If you have to, like so many of us have done, reinvent the wheel every time you sit down to produce content, it becomes a drain, a gamble with inconsistency and can hamper your growth. Developing a great plan will allay all of this!

Online Planning Tools

• What are they?
  How do you use them?
  Where do you get’em?
  Pros and Cons

What are they?
Online planning tools, in a very basic sense, are just that, tools to be accessed and used online/the Internet for the task of planning. You can use them to flesh out and catalogue your thoughts, ideas, etc. They’re great applications that have much more functionality and future uses than they modestly tout on their sites. They’re mind mapping applications, calendars, notebooks, etc. that give you freedom from being chained to a given location. You just need and Internet connection.

How to use them
You can use your planning tools to

• brainstorm your vision, objectives and goals,
  map your resources, connections, etc.
  design your collaborative efforts

Where to get them
There are literally hundreds of sites/applications that can be used as online planning hubs. Here are some of the places to grab your tools to get you started:

• Mindmeister.com
  Google Calendar
  Google Docs
  Livescribe

Pros and Cons
Pros:

• Unlimited possibilities
  Access anywhere there’s a connection to the Internet
  Ability to instantly share and collaborate ideas and implement action

Cons:

• Unlimited possibilities
  Opportunity to lose your focal point
  Slight learning curves

With everything there are pros and cons, so I’ll sum this all up in a nutshell statement. Keep in mind the pros far outweigh the cons here. When you start any planning process on or offline you’ve virtually got an endless road of possibilities and your vision and plans can be as broad as you fathom. As you can see, that is both a pro and a con. The caution here is to make your strides directed so you can keep on track and stay focused with actionable, measurable steps moving you toward your desired results.

Remember, whether these tools work best for you or you prefer another set of online planning tools, start by answering your preliminary questions: What all do you need to accomplish? What’s your current process? What tools will get your there the fastest and more efficiently? How do you get’em? And finally... How do you use them?

As always it’s been my pleasure sharing these business building ideas with you. Until next time...