Many of you are struggling with a decreased, anemic budget, or perhaps you’re thrown into marketing because your department has been downsized and you’re wearing 5 hats. You need cheap and easy resources to help you do your job and juggle all the plates in the air without breaking the bank.

So on a related note, I recently spoke to a group of people who attended an affordable housing conference put on by the NC Housing Coalition. I promised to share some budget-friendly resources with them, and thought everyone would like to see the Link Love list on steroids!

Business Tools

• Email Program / List builder / Contact manager: www.mailchimp.com
• Inexpensive, Great Quality Printer: www.gotprint.net
• Project Management Software: www.worketc.com
• Promotional Products that donate 5% to local charity of your choice:  www.adsparkpromos.com
• Reliable & Cheap Promotional Products: www.adcomarketing.com
• PR Monitoring through Google Alerts: http://www.google.com/alerts
• Free Online PR Pitch Listing: www.pitchengine.com

Online Business Listings

• These are the links you should think about getting listed on to make sure you’re visible and able to be found when your consumers are ready to make a buying decision!
• Local Google Business Listing:  www.google.com/local/add
• Bing Business Listing: www.bing.com/local/
• Affordable Housing Listing: www.socialserve.com/
• Online Business Review site: www.yelp.com
• Social Check In App: www.foursquare.com
• Open Directory Listing with big link juice: www.dmoz.org

Graphic Design

• Free Stock Photos: www.sxc.hu
• Inexpensive Stock Photos:  www.shutterstock.com
• Photo Editing Software:  www.picnik.com
• Free Fonts that can be used online: www.fontsquirrel.com
• Free Funky Fonts: www.dafont.com
• Font Finder: www.whatthefont.com

Web Design & Content Building

• Domain Registration: www.namecheap.com
• WordPress Themes so you don’t need to learn HTML: theme.wordpress.com/themes
• Easy Blog Builder: www.posterous.com
• Very Inexpensive WordPress Themes: www.eleganthemes.com and www.themeforest.net/
• Community or Intranet Builder: www.ning.com
• Website, Social Media & Inbound Marketing Grader: website.grader.com

Social Media

• Social Media Manager:  www.hootsuite.com
• Social Media Research: www.socialfresh.com  and www.socialcrush.com
• Blog on Inbound Marketing:  www.blog.hubspot.com/
• Best Practices of How to Create a Social Media Policy: www.socialmedia.biz/social-media-policies/best-practices-for-developing-a-social-media-policy/
• How to Write a Social Media Policy: www.inc.com/guides/2010/05/writing-a-social-media-policy.html

What did I miss? What free or cheap resources are your favorites?