How To Manage Newsletters

1st December 2009

My last post advised you how to manage your emails better, but you’ll find them much easier to manage if you make sure you’re only having to organise emails that you actually want!

How to manage newsletters

When I work with client’s email addresses I see that they have a lot of newsletters or Social Media updates popping into their account all day. This either distracts them or they just get deleted.

Unsubscribe?

I like to keep abreast of new developments myself so I subscribe to people that I feel give me valuable and relevant advice. The key word here relevant – if you constantly delete a newsletter halfway through reading it or even as soon as it arrives because you find it dull, unhelpful or constantly unrelated to your interests then unsubscribe!

Quite simple you’d think, but it’s amazing how many people delete a newsletter instead of taking less than 10 seconds to unsubscribe from it. It’s only going to appear again  so it’s best to deal with it now. You may feel a bit guilty unsubscribing, but these people aren’t friends and they’re not going to track you down to demand why you’ve dumped them!

Select your receiving account and who you subscribe to

You should ensure that the newsletter is arriving in the correct email account – if you’ve set up a new email address solely for newsletters then take the time to change your subscription details as they come in to the old one. It can feel like a chore, but it doesn’t take long and once they’re all done you’ll be really happy you bothered.

I also review my newsletters frequently – there can be quite a few experts that write in your field of interest, so select the ones that you like the most instead of subscribing to all of them. If you’re not going to read them then they’re a waste of everyone’s time.

Newsletters shouldn’t just sit in your inbox once you’ve read them either. Either go to the web page and clip them into Evernote ordelete them. It’s also good practice to have a website login and registration email folder which will spare you the hassle of the whole ‘forgotten your login details?’ rigmarole later.

3 Email Management Tips For a More Productive Inbox

21st November 2009

I know that many of you have issues with email management, so here’s 3 simple tips for managing your systems better and ensuring that your emails don’t start to get one over on you.

How to manage your emails

Tip 1 – SEPARATE YOUR ACCOUNTS

As a Virtual Assistant I have a tonne of emails flying around from different clients plus the various other things I’m doing so I use different accounts for different activities:

Work Account – My info@munro-pa email address is solely used for business activity only. Once read and dealt with, all my emails go in folders which include Admin (with sub folders for receipts, login and registration details, my website hosts, etc) and my clients who each have their own folder. I like to keep this account as clean as a whistle and import it into Gmail so I can use it’s amazing productivity features.

Business Newsletter Account – I also have a Hotmail address that I use to sign up to business newsletters and for LinkedIn updates. I don’t want 5-10 newsletters per day clogging up my work account and making it harder to see my more important emails. Because I always use this email address just for newsletter,  if one arrives in my work account I know I didn’t sign up for it!

Personal – I use another Gmail account purely for friends, family and other personal newsletters such as Cineworld, Ancestry, Waterstones etc. I can switch to this account from my business account without having to log out which is a great Gmail feature.

Tip 2 – BE RUTHLESS

You have to be absolutely ruthless with emails or they will take over. I never have more than 5 or 6  in my inbox and they’re only ones that are in progress.

I label these emails ‘Waiting On’ or ‘Action’ and once an email has been actioned I then either delete it, archive it, or put in a folder. I’m stunned when I see inboxes with hundreds of emails in them and imagine they must make the owner quite overwhelmed and stressed to see them.

TIP 3 – RECORD THE SENDER

It only takes a minute or two but when you are entering business contacts, take a minute to put them into a group and to write in the notes who the person is and where you met them. It sounds obvious but it’s easily forgotten and, if you’re wanting to export them later, it helps to know who that person is and if they should be on the export list at all!

There are other ways in which you can make life easier for yourself which mainly concern the actual emails you have coming in. Because I don’t like to make my posts too long, I’ll cover that one another time!

If you found these email management tips useful then subscribe to receive updates to your inbox as soon as they’re posted!

Evernote Review

4th October 2009

Some people are naturally organised and, (for my sins) I’m one of those people. I have however, just discovered a new website called Evernote that has made me reach the pinnacle of organisation, and I’m so impressed with it that I wanted to tell you how it works.

Now I’m possibly one of the last people on the planet to hear about Evernote, but if you’ve never heard of them you should check them out because I think they have an incredible app.

What is Evernote?

Evernote is a free website, you download the marker to your toolbar and when you open up the site you have the option to create ‘notebooks’ which are basically folders. For example I have notebooks for social media, crochet, travel, things I want to buy, food and drink, marketing and a few others. The point is that I can use it for both personal and business and manage them both easily.

When you see a web article you’re interested in, you don’t have to bookmark or favourite it (where you’ll never look at it again) any more, you simply click the Evernote symbol on your toolbar and choose to either clip a section (such as images, recipes etc)  or to save the whole page.

You then decide which ‘notebook’ (folder) you want it to go in, change the title and add tags all from the little pop-up window. You press Save and it saves to your account.

The best thing is that it also syncs to the Internet, your smartphone and any other computers you use so you can check out your notebooks at any time.

They also assign you an Evernote email address so if you like a bottle of wine, you can take a photo of the label, email it to Evernote then you can then check what it was when you’re in the off-license! You can take a photo of a poster of an upcoming concert, upload your Christmas shopping list, or notes then access them from wherever you like – pretty cool!

I am really impressed with this site and use it a lot. There’s lots of feedback on their blog from people who tell you how they use it and it was incredibly easy to upload and use. I send things to it all the time and now I am pretty much bookmark free.

I think it would make a big difference to the way you organise your personal, family and work life due to the ease of use and the ability to sync with your phone. I also did some Intenet research and nobody has a bad word to say about it which really is remarkable.

Evernote is amazing – and they’re not even paying me to say so!

If you found this Evernote review useful then please subscribe using the box at the top right to receive updates straight to your inbox!

How to Use Twitter For Your Business

7th August 2009

How to use Twitter For Your Business

It’s no secret that I think Twitter is an amazing business tool. I use it to keep up to date with news, technology, clients, events, and trends; but I’ve also seen how important it is to other companies and how they have created revenue from it.

In a nutshell, Twitter is a free micro-blogging service that enables you to send and read updates called Tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters, displayed on your profile page and delivered to other users (known as followers) who have subscribed to your account. If your followers think one of your posts is interesting or valuable, they may then ‘Retweet’ it to their followers – a kind of word-of-mouth recommendation.

You can use different applications to post messages such as TweetDeck (my preferred platform) Seesmic, Hootsuite, Dabr, or various smartphone apps. You can also send your posts, pictures and videos, (again, from your phone if you wish) to your Facebook account or have a Twitter stream enabled on your blog, website, LinkedIn page, or to some of the many other Social Networking sites out there.

What can I use Twitter for?

Build and maintain your brand and reputation – Your posts are you; they’re a reflection of your business processes, ethics, standards and methods. If you speak authoritatively and enthusiastically about your specialist subject then you will gain a reputation for ‘knowing your stuff’ and people will take you seriously and want to do business with you.

Develop new product ideas – There are over 6 million people on Twitter which is a lot of people to bounce ideas off! You can ask people what they think: ‘this logo or that one?’, you can post surveys or questionnaires and lead people back to articles on your website or blog. Twitter provides a huge free market research resource at your disposal.

Gather information on yourselves and your competitors – With the facility to search for keywords, you can see what people are saying in real time; if they are having an issue with your service or product then you can fix it immediately. If they’re having an issue with a competitor then you can not only ensure that you’re not making the same mistakes but have a clear opportunity to turn their unhappy customer into your happy customer.

Raise awareness of products and events – Twitter is a great way to let the local community know what you’re doing. Whether you’re telling people about an upcoming event, posting pictures or videos of past events or releasing an update or press release – you can get that information to hundreds of people in one go. You can showcase your new menu, promote a current offer, or run competitions – and it costs you nothing!

Create a relationship with your customers or clients – some companies are finding they do most of their communicating via Twitter rather than email. This is because you can have a real-time conversation with clients, give them service updates, clarify points, and let them know what’s going on. It’s also a brilliant way of being a ‘real’ person to a customer. People do business with people, so if they feel they know you, they are more likely to recommend or work with you.

Keep abreast of industry developments - If you read newsletters, magazine articles or industry blogs then simply follow them on Twitter instead. You use an application to sort them into groups and you can see in real time what’s happening as it happens. This ensures you’re always abreast of the latest industry developments.

Although all of these points go towards ensuring that you are seen as a market leader and specialist in your field, Twitter is useless unless you engage. This means you have to seek out like-minded people to follow, you have to post, and you have to be active or it doesn’t make any sense.

Just as using it well can generate amazing results, if you don’t know how to use it properly then you could actually damage your brand. It’s very important to add value to Twitter and not just take from it; you do not want to be seen as an incompetent or worse… a spammer!

Not sure how to use Twitter for your business?  Then find out what it’s all about, what to say, when to say it, and who to say it to by taking my Twitter Training session.