As a location-independent freelance writer and editor, I run my global business almost totally online and in the cloud. Yes, my business is global, because I and my team have clients all over the United States and in eight other countries (and too many time zones to count!). My team is located in four states. We work on Macs and PCs; and communicate by Skype, text, iChat and Google Talk, and email.

All of the apps I use to run my business have to be multi-user, online, integrated with each other, easy to use and easy to learn, and inexpensive. I started this series with my post about Freshbooks, the online invoicing and time tracking application. Freshbooks is usually the first app I check every morning–keeping up with who’s paid me and who still owes me money! The very next app I work with every day is what has become my favorite CRM (customer relationship management) app: Batchbook.

Batchbook, an app by Batchblue Software, calls itself a “social CRM” for good reason. It smoothly integrates the most popular social networks (including Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and LinkedIn) with each of your contacts and even imports their pictures onto each contact’s wiki page. You can also integrate RSS feeds from your favorite blogs. You can actually use your Twitter account within the app itself: reading and retweeting, of course, but also you can instantly add the author of a tweet into your contact list and make a task or event for that contact right from within the Batchbook app.

Along with meeting the first two important criteria for me–online availability and social networking–Batchbook has several other great feature sets that made me finally choose it as my preferred CRM app (and I’ve tried just about all of them!):

Contact Management: Batchbook keeps track of all of your contacts and even syncs with your Google or Google Apps contact list. In the app, you can tag your contacts, share them with your team, build mailing lists and databases with ease, and create powerful filters through the “Super Tag” functionality.

Communications and Deal Tracking: One of the things I love best about Batchbook is how it seamlessly creates and updates a wiki page for each contact that links every communication, task, and event you’ve had with that contact. You can forward emails (and all attachments) into Batchbook and create to-dos; if you receive an email for a contact not yet in your Batchbook contact list, the app creates a contact for you. You can quickly add and manage your sales pipeline with the deals module and the special sales Super Tags, and since Batchbook integrates with Freshbooks (here’s my Freshbooks affiliate link), you can see all payments received with on your contact’s page.

To-Dos and Events: While Batchbook is not a full-fledged project management app, it works great for solo practitioners and very small teams who don’t want or need a huge application. You can set up projects for each contact and keep track of all tasks related to that project. Batchbook includes a calendar that you can link to your GCal or iCal so that all of your tasks, events (milestones), and communications are all in one place. You can set up email reminders or set up a feed to alert you to what’s on your plate. Even if you think you’re not “in sales”, you ARE constantly selling and re-selling your services to prospects and clients. Batchbook incudes a special sales module to help you and your team keep track of leads, deals, and communications.

Search and Reports: Batchbook’s Lists and Reports feature allows you to make customized lists and reports based on advanced search strings and tags. Your reports can be exported and/or printed. Batchbook is integrated with MailChimp to simply your email marketing campaigns.

Web Forms: Batchbook has customized web forms that you can use for lead generation; the information captured is added directly into your Batchbook Contacts which you can also sync back into your Google Contact List.

Integration Partners: Using its API, Batchbook seamlessly integrates with many other SaaS (software-as-a-service) online apps: in addition to Freshbooks and MailChimp, you can also link Google, Google Apps, shoeboxed, zendesk, rapportive, Tungle, and Eventbrite.

Support: Batchbook has a full suite of webcasts, new customer “on-boarding”, screencasts, FAQs, user forums, and email support to assist you in learning and using the app. All support is FREE.

My last criteria is price: One of the things I love most about online apps is the scalable cost. By paying a monthly subscription fee instead of a purchase, you can pay more or less every month depending on how many users you have. For Batchbook, cost ranges from US$14.95/month for 1 user to US$149.95 for up to 50 users.

Some may say that if you keep an app for a long time, the monthly fee quickly adds up to more than you would pay for a one-time purchase. But it is important to remember that both support and updates are FREE forever, and you receive several GB of storage for your files, as well. You can also cancel your subscription at any time, and your data is always securely backed up.

Do you use online apps? What are your favorites? Let us know your “app thoughts” in the comments section!