Hello,
My name is Todd Whitesel. I’ve been a writer/editor for the past 13 years, and have writtenfor many magazines and websites, sharing my passion for music, audio, the outdoors, travel, and cooking. Additionally, I’ve been blogging for several years and have developed a strong interest in WordPress and blogging in general, as well as Internet marketing, social media and SEO.
I’ve decided to take a little detour from the normal marketing articles to write about one of the necessary evils of business: staying on top of a constant deluge of email. Being a pretty tech-y guy, people ask me how I manage my email. I happen to use Google Apps to manage my email, but more importantly, I use all the power tools available to sort, label, tame my unruly inbox.
No matter what email system you use, whether you use webmail like Yahoo!, or Gmail, or a desktop client like Outlook or Thunderbird, your email system probably has these advanced tools. They’re easy enough to learn, and they will save you tons of time and emotional strain if you embrace them.
One of the easiest things to do to to stay on top of your email is to keep your inbox empty. This may seem foreign (especially to those who have 6500 unread emails in your inbox), but the zero inbox is very cleansing for your short term memory.
Now, just because an email isn’t in your inbox doesn’t mean it’s gone forever: quite the opposite. It just means that that email has been triaged for attention later.
Want to learn to attain the zero inbox and email sanity? Just follow this one simple rule:
“If you can’t answer it immediately, delete it, archive it, or put it in a folder.”
Business people using social media often have return on investment on their mind. Which is understandable, considering how much time social media takes. It’s easy to invest tons of time online without getting any results (if you don’t invest that time wisely).
In the past, I’ve written about some Twitter tricks, like overcoming Twitter politeness and using Twitter as a followup tool. These methods are great for indirect twitter marketing: they help you create long term relationships. Ultimately, these long term relationships are where most of your leads are going to come from.
For those who want to try the direct route every once-in-a-while, there is a way to find people looking to buy. The way to do this is to use Twitter Advanced Search.
Unless someone makes their tweets private, everything on twitter is open and searchable by the public. This has a great benefit for salespeople looking to enhance their prospecting using Social Media. You can find and connect with people at the very moment that they express interest in your product or service.
Here’s how it works:
Editor’s Note [N. Rosener]: I have been a long-time fan of the Victory Auto Service’s Facebook page. In a world of boring company Facebook pages, theirs stands out because they understand how to actually talk to their customers. I asked Stephanie Gutierrez (the mastermind behind the page) to share her advice on how she brings her unique voice and tone to the page to represent the company brand. Here’s what she had to say:
What could possibly make people want to connect with an auto repair shop on Facebook? I mean, car repair is only so interesting. I only think about car stuff when I HAVE to. In fact, I think about car repairs the way I think about my dentist – put it off as long possible! Why would I want to read about it on Facebook?!
Exactly. Let’s be realistic that this is how a lot of people think about vehicle maintenance and repair. We’re a “have-to” business.
What do I mean by that? Well, there are “want-to” businesses, like restaurants, clothing boutiques, techie gadget stores – places where people buy luxury items that they don’t necessarily need, but they want. Then, there are “have-to” businesses like the dentist, the doctor, and …the auto repair shop. You don’t usually save up to buy something fun at a “have-to” store. You pay for something you know you need.
There are the “want-to” and “have-to” companies on Facebook, too. Many of the “want-to’s,” people love to engage with – recipe pages, coffee houses, eco-friendly stores…and then there’s us. Yet the Victory Auto Service & Glass Facebook page has more than 700 fans and an engaged base that interacts regularly with our posts.
How is this possible?
One of the tenets of providing outstanding customer service is to personalize your approach for every client. When you add a personal touch, the client realizes that they are getting individual attention, and that your company has adequate systems in place to provide that personalized care.
In the online world, the easiest and most effective way to create personalized content is to create a custom online client portal on your site.
At Tech Nick Consulting, we’ve just rolled out a new client portal on the website to do just this: provide a place online to create a customized client experience.
Best of all, this client portal system is built on top of WordPress: it’s a snap to implement on top of an existing blog. I’ve customized the experience to make the portal user-friendly and visually inviting.
Want a tour? Take a look at the video below to have a tour of the new custom client portal by Tech Nick Consulting.
Want to take the client portal for a spin? You can log into the democlient account by clicking on the client portal login link, and using the following credentials:
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