Entrepreneurs and business owners have to strategize and plan ahead for their business on the go a lot of the times. Ideas could come at any time to us. It could be whilst commuting to and from a meeting, whilst grocery shopping or anything else that we might be doing and it’s important to capture these ideas for later when we have time to come back to them.

Mind mapping is a great tool to help capture these thoughts graphically, quickly and clearly. There are a lot of both online and offline mind mapping tools available that are either free or paid. One in particular that stands out is Mindmeister.

Since Mindmeister is an online tool, users can create, manage and share mind maps online and access them anytime, from anywhere. In brainstorming mode, fellow MindMeisters from around the world or in different rooms can simultaneously work on the same mind map and see each other’s changes as they happen. This is great if you have a team working on the same project!

Mindmeister offers both free and paid versions and allows you to create your mind maps online giving you the ability to access your thoughts anytime and from anywhere. They even have an iPhone version of it.

Some of the features of Mindmeister include:

Free Version

• Have up to 3 mind maps
• Share and collaborate mind maps
• Import maps from Freemind and MindManager
• Export maps as image in PDF/RTF
• Publish maps to blogs and websites

For the Premium Version – $4/month

• You get all the features of the free version above plus
• Instead of 3 mind maps you get unlimited mind maps
• Export maps to Freemind and MindManager
• Add file attachments  to topics
• Create and edit maps offline
• Full SSL encryption
• Search in maps
• Advertising free, logo free exports

The also offer two other paid versions for Business and Academic for $6 and $15 per month respectively with additional features. You can learn more about Mindmeister by clicking here.

Twitter is such a viral way to connect with prospects and existing customers that many businesses are incorporating Twitter as part of their marketing strategy to promote a product or service. Businesses tend to have more than one person participating in the conversation on Twitter and that    can become difficult to manage.

Now there is a solution to the problem in HootSuite.

HootSuite is a professional Twitter client that allows you to manage multiple Twitter profiles, pre-schedule tweets, and measure your success. It’s the ultimate Twitter toolbox!

Some of the key features of HootSuite include:

• help your images go viral
• track statistics – show not only summaries but individual tweet statistics
• a company or organization with more than one contributor can be managed easily over various Twitter accounts
• create groups and embed columns
• automatically feed your RSS to your Twitter stream
• HootSuite with Ping.fm allows you to update your Facebook, WordPress, LinkedIn, and more
• schedule Tweets
• click on the search bar and locate current trending topics, search keywords and monitor your brand
• report spam
• and much more!

Some companies that are using HootSuite to manage their Twitter presence include: National Geographic, Disney, Fox, People Magazine, Dell, Huffington Post, TMZ, US Army, MSNBC and BET to just name a few!

HootSuite is currently free. All you need to do is go to HootSuite and sign up for your free account.

As much as there is a multitude of social media sites outhere, there equally seems to be a great deal of tools to help you figure out what’s going on with your brand names, reputations, etc etc. So we’ve picked a few of the best free apps to help you measure, monitor and generally navigate your way through the social media forest.

1. HowSociable? – A simple, free, tool that can measure the visibility of your brand on the web across 22 metrics http://howsociable.com
2. TweetScan – search for words on Twitter http://tweetscan.com
3. TweetMeme – View the most popular Twitter threads occurring now. http://tweetmeme.com
4. Addict-o-matic – A nice search engine that aggregates rss feeds, allowing you to quickly see the areas where a brand is lacking in presence http://addictomatic.com
5. Posterous – Posterous is the dead simple way to put anything online using email. http://posterous.com
6. Viral Video Chart – Displays top 20 most-viewed video (1, 7, 365 days). Includes view counts and charting.http://viralvideochart.unrulymedia.com
7. Pixelpipe – Upload photos, video, and audio files once through the Pixelpipe Media Gateway and distribute your content across over 100+ social networks, photo/video sites, blogs, and other online services. http://pixelpipe.com
8. eKstreme – is a keyword research tool with one simple aim: to find out who’s talking about a certain keyword.http://ekstreme.com/buzz
9. Keotag – making it easy for you to track if someone tags a page using your company or product name.http://www.keotag.com
10. Social Mention – search aggregation for various sources, from blogs to social sites. http://www.socialmention.com