It’s the time of year when most people turn their minds to resolutions for the new year. Gym memberships balloon, the bars empty and yoga teachers get a glut of inquiries as people resolve to better themselves.

Alas, by February, the gyms are likely to be empty again and the bars to be full as the world’s natural equilibrium is restored. But there are some lasting resolutions that you can make to help you make better use of technology and clear more time for yourself to go to the bar. After, of course, you spend some time in the gym.



> Revitalize Your Customer Marketing

Top of our list of new year’s resolutions this year is to revitalize your customer marketing. You can do that by using a dedicated customer relationship management service — such as San Francisco-based Salesforce.com Inc.’s namesake offering (www.salesforce.com) or Chicago-based 37Signals LLC’s Highrise service (www.highrisehq.com) — to categorize your prospects and monitor your communications with them as you attempt to move them along the sales pipeline and convert them into revenue-generating clients.

Also, consider sales and marketing campaigns using email — as long as you’re courteous and allow your recipients to opt in, of course, rather than simply sending emails intrusively.

Meanwhile, services such as Seattle-based Eyejot Inc. ’s namesake offering (www.eyejot.com) allow you to send videos by email to clients, with regular updates on market activities.



> Go Paperless

It’s 2011. We were all meant to be wearing silver suits and being served drinks by robot waiters at this point, weren’t we? If we’re not there yet, we can at least get rid of our paper, which, after 3,000 years, is probably past its “sell by” date.

So, consider a scanner that can digitize documents and business cards. Phila-delphia-based the Neat Co. ’s NeatDesk product (www.neatco.com) features scanning software and a small, powerful desktop scanner to help you tame the paper monster. Services such as San Francisco-based Dropbox Inc.’s namesake offering (www.dropbox.com) also will scan your receipts for you, making yearend accounting easier.

> Get Your Blog On

How do you go the extra mile when you’re marketing? How about engaging in social media? A blog allows you to discuss in depth the issues that matter to your clients and enables you to demonstrate your expertise, thus keeping people on your side. A savvy financial advisor will post regular updates on market events as well explanations of basic issues.







@page_break@WordPress (www.wordpress.org) is one of the better-known blogging platforms. For maximum flexibility, however, it is best to host your own blog.

Don’t stop at blogging, though. An account on San Francisco-based Twitter Inc.’ s namesake website (www.twitter.com) can not only drive readers to your blog posts, it also can keep you at the front of people’s minds. Twitter is a viral medium in which smart posts can easily be spread to many people that you don’t know. This creates useful opportunities to gain new clients that you may not have run across otherwise.



> Increase Your “Info Throughput”

Knowledge is power, especially in markets in which you’re moving around large portions of your clients’ money based on what you know. Your business will no doubt have its own portfolio-tracking systems, but you can always do better when applying technological solutions to general newsgathering.

Really simple syndication (RSS) newsreaders, such as Mountain View, Calif.-based Google Inc.’ s Google Reader (www.google.com/reader), will help you to track lots of news sources at once, but they can often be dry to read because they focus on consolidating news into list form. Consider an advanced news aggregator such as Feedly (www.feedly.com), which will help you consolidate your news streams into a newspaper-like format. Furthermore, the service can use your Google Reader subscriptions as sources.



> Clear Your Inbox

Email has to be the biggest drag on executive time ever invented. The “joke” email lists, chain letters, spam mail, the newsletters that you don’t want anymore and the irrelevant emails copied to you as part of conversations you don’t want to be a part of will quickly clog up your inbox. Consider getting your inbox to zero by ruthlessly pruning all emails.

Implement filters to get rid of unimportant emails; unsubscribe from newsletters that you don’t need; and filter important emails — say, from clients or prospects — into specific folders. Try www.inboxzero.com to aid you in this task.



> Go Mobile

It’s time to unchain yourself from your desk, if you haven’t already. A smartphone that lets you access email quickly during downtime is a must. If you’re using a laptop, considering opting for a smaller, more streamlined model that will be easier to haul from place to place.

And if you had a particularly profitable year in 2010, it’s worth considering a tablet computer such as Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple Inc.’ s iPad. The ability to read the news and work on documents quickly and easily is a godsend when you’re waiting for clients in the coffee shop. IE