I’ve seen Evernote around but never turned myself on to it, until recently. A fellow marketing friend I meet through Digg and Facebook, Scott Bradley recently pushed me to give this a try. Well, I look at his success story and say to myself, “Why not, Scott’s using it so it must be good.” I’ve been using the free account during my test run and I got say that I’m loving this.

What is Evernote

Simply said, It’s a virtual notebook for taking notes and collecting information for later use. Organize it how you like and what fits your needs. Everybody thinks differently, this tool leaves it open for you to organize and tailor it to your practices.

Everything you capture is automatically processed, indexed, and made search-able. If you like, you can add tags or organize notes into different notebooks.

It’s hard not to simply blanket this tool as a way to store any type of information for any type of need. But I’ll share how I utilize in my life and business.

How I use Evernote

The biggest challenge for me is remembering every idea that comes in my mind as I drive, work, eat or play. I usually come up with an idea at the wrong possible time for me to jot it down. Immediately after signing up for an account, I downloaded the iPhone app. I carry my phone where ever I go. It is rarely beyond 10 feet away from me. The beautiful thing about the app is your notebook notes two-way sync between your online account and your phone with no hitch. It has never crashed once. This feature sells me alone. I do web design, website hosting and this blog is my hobby on the side. This tool has done a great service to me in both areas of my life and business.

For my web design business it has helped keep me organized with my thoughts, ideas, and inspiration that I have come across. I store links to websites, screen shots and notes from meetings with clients. Keeping a notebook open for each client provides a painless way to keep tabs of all the promises that I make :^D Driving down the road, I may receive a phone call from a client. When the phone call is finished I can easily go into the iPhone app and add myself a note of the conversation that took place. 5 seconds later my note is synced with the server, viewable from the internet at my desk.

When I started my blog a week ago, plenty of brainstorming had to happen before hand.  Storing all my thoughts, design and ideas in my “Blog” notebook was a cinch.  One of the hardest thing to do with your blog is to continually provide content. There is nothing more difficult than to think up a topic on the spot when you know new content needs to be published to keep readers interested. With my Evernote I’m able to keep all my blog posts ideas in one place. I do a lot of thinking while I’m driving down the road and then, all of a sudden, an idea for a post pops in my head. This idea easily gets added to my “Blog” notebook in Evernote. Beautiful thing!  Now, when its time to construct a post for the blog, you can go through your notebook and pick an idea that was previously stored.

Additional Features

Location based notes is built in to the system. As you can see on the provided screen shot there are notes that I made right on a major highway in my area. This is a road I travel everyday and where my ideas pop in my head the most :^D

Note Tagging is another great feature in Evernote. Tagging is a way to give keyword identification of notes. I can tag a blog post idea with “marketing”. This will allow me to make a quick search of all the notes that are tagged with marketing. An easy way to find specific types of notes through out your notebooks.

There is a premium verision of Evernote which gives you a little more functionality and features.  Right now, I haven’t had the need to upgrade.  But if you would like to compare the free and paid versions you can look at them here.  If you need help getting organized with you links, thoughts, and projects, Evernote is a great way to get started.  Check it out!

Do you use Evernote?  How do you use it?