I’m dubbing this week Tools Week on the Awakened Voice Blog. That means I plan to write about the tools that can help business become more social on the web.

I define a tool as a piece of software that you can host on your own domain. This is in contrast to the many services that run solely on their own domain. I call WordPress a tool while WordPress.com is a service.

Tools are important because they typically provide the user much more control than a service. And I’ve found that businesses value control over the look, feel and function of their social presence on the web. What tools provide in power and flexibility they do give up in terms of simplicity and maintenance. Services are typically quicker to set up and a lot easier to maintain. How much you want your business to rely on services because they are easier depends on a lot of factors including your budget and technical expertise.

I’m a big believer in businesses utilizing social web tools that run on their own domains. And while cost and expertise can be important factors for some businesses there are plenty of economical options for creating your own unique social presence on the web.

No tools are more powerful and economical than Open Source tools. Open Source tools are free to use. The best Open Source tools also have vibrant development communities that are free to extend these apps in any way that they can think of.

The tools that I will write about this week can change the way that businesses think about developing their own presence on the web. The features and functions available now via Open Source tools were previously only available via custom developed solutions that cost many thousands of dollars just to design and build. The costs for maintaining or (heaven forbid) altering custom developed tools could also put a serious dent in the wallet of a business.

Times have changed considerably over the last few years. There’s still money to be spent on implementation, styling and maintenance of social web tools. The difference now is that there’s no built in license or maintenance fee to weigh down your implementation budget while many upgrades you desire may already be present via free extensions or plugins.

Take a few moments to research and experiement with the great tools I’ll point you to this week. Knowledge of their existence may just change the way you think about the possibilities for your presence on the web.

[tags]Social Media, Open Source, Tools[/tags]