photo by oreoKoockee on PhotoBucket.com

I must be crazy! Anyone who’s ever worked with me will find this post at least mildly amusing if not ironic. My emails tend to be strongly worded and free with unsolicited opinion. I’ve occasionally hurt people’s feelings and certainly talked down to them.

I also tend to know when I’ve done so. And, like any repentant sinner, I’m working to remedy my shortcomings. Who better, then, to suggest ways to make email simpler, more effective, and more humane? And so, without further ado, my best research and business wisdom on how to use email more productively and how to know when to walk away . . . or pick up the phone.

Set Up an Account (Address) That’s Strictly Business

Don’t use your employer’s email address, or your personal one. If you blog, and have your own domain, you can set up an extra e-mail and give it unique name (dissimilar from other ones in use at this same URL). In lieu of your own domain, ISP providers such as GoDaddy or 1&1 also offer email-only plans. Even cheaper, and just as effective, is Gmail. The point of this exercise is to set up an address that handles, separately, any new business you generate via social media or your own email marketing campaigns. Your email address is an important part of your brand.

Use Your Branded Address to Generate and Track New Business

Unless using Gmail, choose an email application for sorting your contact list and creating special groups or subgroups of recipients. Part 3 of this series described email applications in some detail. Create a signature for yourself, with your full name, business name, and links to social media. You can even insert your logo, with a hyperlink to your homepage or blog. Check out Personal Branding Blog‘s great post on how to create an email signature.

Look for Opportunities to Mail to Your List

If you’re not quite ready yet to publish a regular e-mail newsletter, at least make an effort three or four times a year to send something useful to everyone you’re in contact with. Perhaps a series of links relating to developments in your field of interest — or, alternatively, theirs. Learn the ins and outs of your email application of choice and, if possible, personalize to each recipient. At a minimum, place all your addressees in the blind cc field, so you’re not revealing other people’s identity to people they don’t know. Save all your mass mailings in a folder, with the date or subject of the mailing so you can check later to see who you mailed to. Pay attention to the “bounce backs.” Validate and correct the addresses you can — delete the others, or move to an “inactive file.” The second best reason to mail regularly to your entire list is to keep up with the people you’re following.

Make Every Mailing the Best It Can Be

Whether a mass mailing, or an individual, purpose-driven one, here are some tips to make it as effective and considerate of your reader as you can make it.

• Punch up your subject line — try to make it descriptive and enticing to the reader. Don’t ever leave it blank, and avoid generic lines like “important news” or “that file you requested.” Give them a clue why you’re writing and what you hope their response will be. For example: “Decision Needed. Cover design selection due Tuesday.”
• Write “pyramid style,” with the most important information at the beginning, lesser supporting in diminishing order of importance. TRY to keep the message to three or four paragraphs. Break long emails into smaller ones, grouping your topics, or at least number each topic and bold the key point so the reader can scan.
• Avoid attachments — particularly for unsolicited mailings. Paste the content into the body of the message or insert a link with description of the content.
• Never write while you’re angry. If you feel you’ve been wronged or misunderstood, take a break from it (for at least 24 hours when you can) and, if possible, follow up with a phone call next. Sometimes we misconstrue a tone or “hidden agenda” from the written text that was not intended. Try to clarify the issue in person or over the phone. At a minimum, give it some time. If you find yourself going back and forth with someone over the course of two or three messages, take it from me: the medium’s no longer working for you.
• Break the bondage. If your profession or workload allows it, set two (no more than three) times a day you’ll check email. Ignore altogether the ones you get on your smart phone — unless you’re away from the office when you normally check. I’ve found I get a lot more done during the day, and once you tell your senders what your typical routine is, most will be fine with it. In some cases, in the midst of a deadline perhaps, this may not work all the time. But it’s worth a try.
• Auto-sort your messages. Most of us receive lots of different kinds of mail: RSS feeds, work mail, personal or organizational etc. Email applications let you create rules so that all mail from a particular sender or URL gets posted to the folder of your choice. If you set up rules for everyone you normally hear from, you’ll be able to see (and check) at a glance only the ones you expect are “short fuse.” And read the rest at a more convenient time.

This ends the Optimize Your Small Business series. Take a look at the other topics, below. Let me know what tools you’re using in your own practice, or what you think of the advice.

• Part 1, a Backup System That Works
• Part 2, Best Basic Apps
• Part 3, Rethink Your Email System
• Part 4, Build a List and Check it Twice

All the apps we discussed (Google Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird) have the capacity to build a fairly robust master mailing list as well as sub-lists for specific targeted audiences. If you anticipate doing a lot of email messaging campaigns, a database program like Microsoft Access might work well for you. A popular and easy to use alternative is Batchbook by BatchBlue Software. Batchbook comes with a one-month free trial, followed by pricing plans from $120 a year up. You can also build a list in a plain old spreadsheet (Excel or Google) and import that list into your email program of choice. Be sure to leave a comment here, if you have other programs or systems to recommend.

The point of the exercise is to think beyond customers, beyond sales. Ideally a good number of people you add to your list are or will be customers. You’ll assign them an appropriate category, below. But part of what social media has taught us is that we’re all connected in one way or another — and connecting in new ways all the time. Any good business is built on relationships. But we also build relationships to enhance our own and others’ quality of life. We’re starting from a “pay it forward” viewpoint — NOT what each of the people on your list can do for you.

Two cautions. This will take awhile, but the time you spend will pay rich dividends. Second, look for opportunities along the way to drop a line to some of the people you haven’t heard from in awhile. This helps you validate the entries, and nurtures the friendship. A simple note will do, no need to put together an elaborate business message.Now let’s build that list.

• Start with everyone you presently know how to reach by email. Whatever program you’re using, take the time now to assign each name a category. Categories might include family, an organization you belong to, alumni association, client, or prospect. You can fine tune the categories later; but the more time you give this step, the more useful your list will be.
• Sort the list, alphabetically by surname, so when you begin entering biz cards, next, you’ll know if you already have that person on your list.
• Add your business cards — for all the people you can still remember who they are or think they might remember you.  Enter ALL the data you want to keep off these cards while you’re at it. Then throw the cards away or stash them in a big binder, in plastic sheets made just for this purpose. Some clever people have scanners to do this for them, like Dymo’s CardScan. If not, gut it out, type them in. The point here is to build a list you can USE in your business — and flipping through dozens of cards or pages of cards is not an efficient system.
• If you’re a member of any organizations (business, religious, civic) you probably were given a directory — or have access to an online one. Take the time to review those directories, name by name. Anyone you can picture in your mind, whom you can imagine being part of a general body of friends and associates, add them now. You can build on those relations in numerous ways — once you’ve become aware of them. And the synergies you discover will make your and their life richer.
• Include ALL your social media contacts (LinkedIn ones particularly) for whom you have email addresses. And again, assign them a category.
• If you’ve been to any conferences, dig back through the program and any mailings, to see if there were presenters or attendees you’d like to keep up with. Add their names and whatever you remember about them into your list and then spend a few hours some weekend looking for them on Google (or their company’s web site) tracking down an email address or telephone numbers for them.

Don’t forget former employers and also competitors or potential competitors. Reestablish contact with those you may have lost touch with and resolve or move past any awkward partings. We never know who we might want to work or collaborate with somewhere down the road.

This should get you started. I’ll wager you end up with at least a few hundred names. Depending on your categories, some of those people you’ll be in touch with a lot more often than others. But you’ve identified them and, in our final installment, we’ll look at ways to use these names to build your business.

You may also want to visit these other Optimize Your Small Business articles

• Part 1, a Backup System That Works
• Part 2, Best Basic Apps
• Part 3, Rethink Your Email System

cartoon by stressmaster 5000 on PhotoBucket.com

This post is aimed at small business practitioners who are looking to become more effective in their daily practice. For today, we’ll talk about basic email applications, and how to handle your Inbox. The next post in our Optimize Your Small Business Series will be about how to build a quality list and the third on tips for using email more effectively.

If you’ve been in business for awhile, you’re muddling through with something already. Here’s a way to make a new start and work smarter in future.

Best Day-to-Day Email Applications

Despite all the reported threats over the years, I used Microsoft Outlook for a good long while, because it came with Office 2007 and I’d paid for it. I liked that it had a calendar and task list I could keep open all the time. I liked that my data resided on my own system and not the Internet. But, under Microsoft’s new pricing scheme, I can’t affordably update Office 2007. So, over the last few months, I’ve been experimenting. The solution I landed on is Mozilla Thunderbird, by the great developers who brought us Firefox. Two new add-ons sealed the deal for me: Lightning, is Mozilla’s new calendar add-on for Thunderbird, and appears to have all or most of the same capability as Outlook. ThunderBrowse, the second add-on, allows you to view links within an e-mail without opening another browser.

Most everyone else in the world is using Google’s Gmail, and for good reason — it gets the job done, with power and options to spare. A lot of colleagues and bloggers I look up to recommend Gmail, and it’s consistently well reviewed on any number of business and technology websites. Gmail, when paired with Google Docs, is particularly well-suited for calendar and document sharing and will surely be a good bet for many of you. For people, like me, who want the capability of downloading to their own computer or laptop. Gmail offers an offline option. It also comes with some new bells and whistles, such as Forgotten Attachment Detector and Wrong Recipient Detector. Oh man, those two features alone are almost reason enough to change!

An Inbox That Works

Anyone with a strong desire to find a new way of organizing all aspects of their business, to include e-mail, would do well to check out any of the following three branded systems, which are pretty much the gold standard these days in terms of business organization. All three have an online web presence, videos, and a book out or on the way.

• Getting Things Done, by David Allen;
• Inbox Zero by Merlin Mann, of 43 Folders; or
• Keeping Your Inbox Empty, by Stever Robbins, the Get It Done Guy.

What works for me is an amalgam of those, and it only works as well as I use it. I try to empty my Inbox every day by sorting it into the following folders:

• Action — items I still have to follow-up on in some way.
• Projects — a big folder with a few, very few, folders within it — for major projects I’m working on, plus one for family, one for an organization I’m active in.
• RSS/Newsletters — which are set up to automatically feed into this folder.
• Junk — most caught by Thunderbird; I check periodically to make sure someone didn’t get sent there by mistake.

Putting the Two Together

• I TRY to look at emails only twice a day, mid-morning and late afternoon. Sometimes I get pulled back in more often, but I’m working on it — and any progress at all is a victory here.
• I TRY to handle every piece of email only once. I read it and, if relates to an event or meeting, I enter it in my calendar. Right then. If possible, I toss the message after that. Or, for reference, may move it to one of the project folders, under Archives.
• I review items in the Action folder at the end of every workday, and again Sunday night.
• I look at RSS feeds & newsletters once or twice a week; usually while I’m watching TV.
• I don’t use project management software except for very large client projects. My program of choice is Basecamp. Thunderbird’s Lightning comes with a simple task manager that, in combination with the action folder, keeps me relatively straight between big projects.

NOW, let me hear from you! What’s working well for you in your work place and what cool stuff have you found the rest of us need to know about? Conversely, what is driving you crazy?

Next time: we tackle the challenge of building a database and some basic email tips and tricks.

Meanwhile, check out the other posts in this Optimize Your Small Business series:

• Part 1, a Backup System That Works
• Part 2, Best Basic Apps

image by Adrienne Mierzwa on PhotoBucket.com

Is the “cloud,” like Bali Hai in South Pacific, calling to all of us? I wanted to make this post mostly about Internet-based applications — freeware and some “freemium.” As it turns out, I’m not sure cloud computing works for every small business scenario. Mainly the choices are between software you access online or software you buy and install on your own computer. Think about it: think about the times you’ve lost Internet access versus the times you’ve been on the road and away from your office network. What are the biggest issues for you right now? Where are your capability gaps?

The main thing to ask about any free software is: what’s the catch? Are they just offering it to us free for awhile and, when we’re all hooked, they’ll decide to up the ante? Or, for the “free,” we have to put up with a lot of ads from companies who underwrite the free part? For these apps we do embrace, I recommend we all have a Plan B — because sometimes “free” turns out to be “too good to be true.” At a minimum, if you visit a prospect app’s Web site and you see a big flag that says “free 30-day trial,” you need to investigate what the rest of the year will cost you and analyze the return on investment (ROI).

Let’s take a look at some specific tools for small business and my personal favorites in each category — some are free, some aren’t. The ones that aren’t free, however, are well worth the price.

Office Suite (documents, spreadsheets, presentations)

For small businesses, the best alternative to Microsoft Office is, hands down, Google Docs. It offers the three basics: word processor, spreadsheet and presentations, and quite a lot more as well. Like Office, Google offers calendar and e-mail programs and collaborative file-sharing. These programs, Calendar for example, are incredibly adaptable. You can set them up for multiple projects or clients and sync to your mobile phone. From working with a few client teams using these tools, I’m a convert. In fact, I’m a zealot!

I bought my last computer, however, before I had those choices. I needed a full-bodied office suite and chose Microsoft Office 2007 Professional. I bought it as much for Access and Visio as for the basics: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. And it has served me well. But here’s the deal: there is no “upgrade” for Office 2010. For me to get the latest release of programs I bought three years ago will cost me $499. (Or only $399 if installing onto a new computer.) My plan is to enjoy the functionality of Office as I begin to phase into Google and these other great applications.

Productivity

A lot of things fall in this category. These are my favorites.

For time tracking, I like Toggl. For the basic product, five or fewer users, this time-tracking software is free. If you run a slightly larger operation, a variety of plans are available from $5 to $79 a month. I’ve found this program to be a real eye-opener for me in terms of how I think I spend my time versus how I really spend it. If you want to track, professionally, all your workday activities, this tool will help you identify all your billable activities and all the time you waste as well.

Looking for inspiration? Start tracking all your article ideas, business brainstorms, Web sites you’d like to emulate in Evernote. Here’s the caveat: Evernote may lure you with “free,” in order to tempt you into a paid subscription later. Maybe the paid subscription is worth the money. For me, still a licensed owner of Microsoft Office, there’s an alternative: OneNote. OneNote loads with many Office suite configurations. If so, use it. It’s synchable, it has many if not most of Evernote‘s capabilities, and you can still access your data when, on those rare occasions, your Internet connection fails. At a minimum, do your research and then decide for yourself. I find the programs very similar. I’m attracted to Evernote for its cachet but continue to use OneNote because, frankly, I’ve already paid for it and it’s “almost” identical in functionality.

For anti-virus protection, without a doubt, my money’s on AVG. For the last year, I’ve had one PC on Norton (for $40-some a year) and two laptops on AVG for free. My protection, the number of reportable incidents, is essentially the same for all three. And, given a choice between free and $50+ a year for the same protection, which would you choose?

Meeting

Gag me with a spoon — whether it’s real-time, in-person or “virtual,” they wear me out. But, if they’re as unavoidable in your world as mine, here are two great tools to cozy up to. Skype. I was not an early adopter of this software, but I’m now an avid convert. Skype affords the opportunity to video-conference and, the secret of success in this medium, you get to set the ground rules. Do so — then use it. I think you’ll find, as I do, that sometimes video conferencing saves you (or your client) money and (if so) what’s not to like?

If your meetings involve white boards or complex charts and schedules, you maybe need to check out Go To Meeting. The sweet thing about this software is you can share documents, on screen in real time, with whoever you’re in a meeting yet. This is, however, one of those applications that’s free for the first 30 days and then it’ll cost you. Some $468 a year. Fortunately, up to now, I’ve been invited to other people’s meetings, and have been spared this outlay. If you’re in a lot of meetings, looking to save some travel dollars, $468 may not seem that high a price to pay. It’s a great product if you can afford it.

Internet

We’ll talk about e-mail next time. But for now my, and most smart people’s, Internet browser of choice is Mozilla Firefox. Given all the assaults on Internet Explorer (and other Windows applications) this is a no-brainer. Firefox delivers the goods without a lot of bugs and glitches and — a hint for next time — it’s sister app Thunderbird for e-mail is not too shabby either.

PDF Creation

Four or five times a week, I fax a document to someone or send them a .pdf file. I use Adobe Acrobet 8.0 because I’d already paid for it — before I’d identified viable alternatives. If you’re still on the fence and deciding, check out Cute PDF. It’s gotten great reviews from a number of freelancing and small business Web sites. It’s available as freeware or a slightly more robust version for $49.95 a year. Either way, it’s probably cheaper than Adobe’s barest-bones version of Acrobat.

Project Management

I learned project management functions (tracking, planning, etc) in Microsoft Project. And, frankly, someone will have to pay me a lot of money to ever get me to use it again. Project’s newest competitor is Basecamp. It too comes with a free 30-day trial and then goes for $288 to $1788 a year. If you manage a lot of projects (event planning, publishing schedules, etc) with tons of moving parts, this software will more than pay for itself. It is SO much more adaptable and user-friendly than Project, there is not comparison. If you later need to “graduate” to something more robust, I’ll be surprised. In any event, the sojourn through this application will not be a wasted exercise. You’ll be smarter and more efficient in all your planning exercises (to include your day-to-day time management) and in how you think through the components of a project.

Business Bookkeeping

A lot of people I know and many more online are talking about FreshBooks for their invoicing and billing. They offer a free version that may be sufficient for your needs but this isn’t a full-service accounting program. Another online program getting a lot of buzz is FreeAgent, which has more capability and goes for $240 a year. Or you, like me, can buy a copy of QuickBooks Pro for $159 and use it for longer than a year. With QuickBooks Pro, you can have up to 5 authorized users and access over 100 custom reports. This is one instance I have trouble seeing why anyone would pay more for less product, other than needing an Internet-based product accessible from varying locations. If so, you might want to look at QuickBooks’ online version. It comes in two editions: the Basic for $120 a year (2 users, 40 reports) and Plus (4 users, 65+ reports) for $420.

Social Media

To be continued. This is an entire topic in itself — not so much an “essential” building block for small businesses. Later, guys. I promise.

Meanwhile, here are some other great small business resources.

• Cool PC Apps: the Top 50 PC Applications for Freelancers, from Freelance Switch
• The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Web 2.0: Top 25 Apps to Grow Your Business
• The Five Best Small Business Software Applications

Be sure to check out Part 1 of this series, below. And then let me hear from you! What tools are you using that weren’t covered here? What challenges have you not yet cracked the code on? Someone out there is bound to have the answer.

• Part 1, a Backup System That Works

photo courtesy of NightRPStar, Roman Pinzon_Soto, from Flickr Creative Commons

Recently I decided, for my small business to thrive, I needed to get a lot smarter. Specifically, I needed to quit avoiding new technologies and embrace them. Or at least figure out which ones fit my lifestyle and business model. I also needed to focus on sound work practices and some old-fashioned technologies like a manageable file system. Here’s the best of what works for me, some things that didn’t work at all, and some links to take you further. This series will cover:

Best Backup System

• Delivering Happiness — SlideShare of Tony Hsieh Keynote Address, 2009 South by Southwest Interactive, 14 March 2009
• When Common Sense is a Startling Revelation, by Russ Somers, Austin, on the Egghead Marketing blog
• Personal Branding Interview: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, by Dan Schwabel 23 March 2009, on the Personal Branding Blog

Or, at least, House of Blues has one and, from my sense of the culture, it may extend beyond my own hometown. In a little over two hours on Thursday, I watched HoB Houston squander an opportunity to provide some 90 to 100 communicators and marketers with a WOW! experience in customer service.

Each of those patrons has reach and influence to steer a boatload of corporate and non-profit business to the venue. Was this an isolated incident? Perhaps.

No need to belabor the minutae here. B-4-U-Eat, Houston, is full of hair-raising tales — in addition to the people I talked to while we waited for our cars. One had attempted to buy Gospel Brunch tickets, only to be sent to three different locations in the enormous, three-story facility — and never got the tickets. Pricey valet parking ($10) is offered with no signage or verbal cue to alert the customer the service is cash only. Those carrying only plastic are directed to an ATM machine that charges $3.75 (in contrast to the $2 – $2.50 charged elsewhere around town).

All of this leads me back to Zappos’ Tony Hsieh at the recent South by Southwest, describing his company’s singular focus on providing every customer with a WOW! experience, every time.

If I were coaching HoB’s manager and staff, I’d make these suggestions — based not just on Zappos but on dozens of successful hospitality providers as well:

• Stick to what you do best. Low lighting, loud music and bar service can create a great vibe. Do “tamer” daytime business events really fit within this company’s culture?
• Don’t nickel-and-dime staffing requirements in a customer-service industry. $$s spent on attentive,  professional service delivery trump marketing $$s any day.
• Don’t roll out a new service until it’s been thoroughly rehearsed, timed and tested. ‘Nuff said.
• Train your people; anticipate the questions. If every person on staff can’t answer the simplest inquiry, you’ve failed at customer service.
• Run to the problem. Better yet, identify a problem in formation and head it off.
  
• Acknowledge a difficulty and fix it. Offer remedies and bust a gut to see the customer — every customer — goes away happy.
  
• Ask for feedback. Hard to provide high quality service without some mechanism for measuring customer satisfaction.

In House of Blues’ defense, I don’t know how strongly the organizers of this event officially conveyed their dissatisfaction to the management. Nonetheless, I came away wondering whether this company realizes what an opportunity it squandered . . . and if it even cares.