You are focusing on your website, your finances, your employees, your customers, and your brand and hoping you can make good decisions every time.

Unfortunately, with all the directions small business owners are pulled, it can be difficult to put enough time and attention into branding. However, branding is one of the most important aspects or your business and can have a great deal to do with the first impression you give your prospective customers.

A big component of a first impression is how you answer the phone when a prospect calls your business. Many small businesses try to get by on the cheap with a less-than-professional phone system and unfortunately this can damage first impressions. Here are some things I see a lot that can be problematic.

1. Using your cell phone number as your business phone number. Even if you are a solopreneur, this is not a good idea. Everybody can tell when they are calling a cell phone, especially when it goes to voice mail and gives a standard mobile voicemail greeting. It gives an amateurish impression to callers and signals that you are a one-man shop. There is nothing wrong with being a one-man shop but drawing attention to it in this way is not ideal.

2. Answering the phone with “hello?” and nothing else. If I’m calling a business, I expect the person answering the phone to say the business name followed by a professional greeting. If I’m calling a direct line or have just been transferred, it’s fine to leave out the business name but I would expect to hear the person answer by name. It’s professional courtesy and helps set the right tone for a business conversation.

3. A “general” voice mail box. When you call a business and no one answers, do you sometimes get a “general” voice mail box and no other options? Do you trust that leaving a message will result in a response? Neither do I. First off, get a receptionist (or a good virtual receptionist service). The best case scenario is that callers will get a real person every time. If you don’t have a receptionist, at least offer an auto-attendant that will let the caller find the right person to leave a message for.

4. A line that does not accept voice mail. This is even worse than the “general” voice mail box. Occasionally when I call a business and no one answers, I will be sent to a greeting that tells me not to leave a voice mail because it will not be checked. Really? This is just plain rude. Everyone is busy and if I have to make time to call back in hopes of reaching someone, I’m likely to move on. I’ve found that medical offices are frequently guilty of this.

5. A cheap VoIP service. Voice over IP is great and has come a long way. However, it can still cause some issues in voice quality and can create a noticeable delay in two-way conversation, as well. For this reason, it’s not ideal to rely on Skype, Google Voice, or other free services for primary business lines. If you’re going to go the VoIP route, it’s better to invest in a professional VoIP solution that will give you clear audio and reliability. Few things are more frustrating than trying to close a business deal while struggling to communicate with your customer over unreliable phone lines.

It doesn’t take much effort to create a professional phone experience for your callers but it can make a big impact on the first impressions they have when calling. At SpinWeb, we’ve found that a great team of receptionists + iPhones works well for us. It pays to think about how professional your business sounds when someone calls.

However, one of the most difficult aspects of blogging can be getting ideas. Blog ideas can come from many sources, including customer interactions, current events, and industry news. However, another great way to get blog ideas is to simply use Google’s new instant results feature.

The way to use this is to start typing in keywords that are related to your industry, and then see what Google fills in for you. For example, lets say you run a food blog and you are looking for ideas. Here are some examples of searches you could do:

By simply typing “eating out” on the search box, you are presented with some long tail keyword options that could turn into blog topics. Here is another example:

By simply starting your search with “food”, you get some instant ideas that can turn into great titles. For example:

• “Food network recipes: what they don’t tell you on TV”
• “Food pyramid guidelines: an interview with three local nutrition experts”

By starting your blog title with these search terms, you are aligning your blog topic with phrases that people are actually searching on, which increases your chances of being found via a Google search.

If you get stuck and can’t come up with a topic for your next blog, head over to Google and throw some words at it that are related to your industry. You may find some great ideas that could also improve your SEO.

The CMS Expo, held in the Chicago area, is a fantastic conference for web and marketing professionals that focuses on Content Management Systems, as well as online marketing strategies. The two audiences that typically attend are:

1. Website design and development professionals
2. Marketing/communications professionals who want to learn more about online marketing

Because of this great mix of technology pros and business people, it is called a “Learning and Business” conference. In my experience, it is just the right mix of both.

The CMS Expo features tracks centered around many of the leading open source CMS systems, like Drupal, Plone, and Joomla. Additionally, there will be some new faces at this year’s conference, including my friends from Accrisoft who represent my favorite CMS: Accrisoft Freedom.

In addition to the technology tracks focused on the various CMS systems, other business-related tracks focus on social media, SEO, blogging, usability, design, and more.

The event is full of great people, and a perfect mix of business and fun. Whether you want to further your skills in your particular area of expertise or you want to learn more about Content Management Systems or online marketing, the CMS Expo has something for everyone. The early bird discount ends February 1.

I hope to see many great folks from Indiana there! Give me a shout if you are going.

Though I’m a big fan, not everyone is willing to commit to following all the steps in a true Inbox Zero system. I frequently fall off the wagon myself and have to talk myself back into a happy place of email zen at times.

However, there is one simple technique from this system that you can implement immediately and easily, and which will likely make life easier. It’s called “offline mode”.

Most modern email programs (like Apple Mail, Outlook, etc.) have a setting called offline mode. When your email program is set to offline mode, no new mail will be fetched and your inbox will not get any bigger. When this state is enabled, you are now free to casually scan, process, and reply to email without feeling distracted by incoming mail.

I first thought of this a few years ago while flying. Many airlines now offer wifi during flight but for the most part, flying used to mean being totally disconnected. I would take my laptop on the flight and I began to notice how productive I was during the flight. I was able to reply to lots and lots of email because I was not distracted by incoming messages. It was also fun to get online after I landed and hear the satisfying “whoosh!” of 50 messages being sent off all at once.

Placing your email program in offline mode simply simulates that same experience and productivity gains but with the added bonus of allowing you to use the web and other tools at the same time.

Try this simple test: before you close your email program, set it to offline mode each time. Then, when you open it next time, commit to answering or processing as many emails as you can before setting it back to online mode. Keep this up for a week and see if you begin to get better control of your email.

I would love to hear your comments below!

Each company did at least have a website but they were all vague, sparse, boring, or all of the above. They did not even clearly say “we make iPhone apps” and did not display any previous work or screen shots.

It got even worse when I went to their contact pages. I did not see a single phone number, address, or in some cases even an email address. Most just had a simple contact form.

Though I did fill out the contact forms, I was feeling a bit worried. Were these legitimate companies? Could I trust them with my client’s money? Would they do good work? My client wants someone local – are they even located in Indianapolis?

My client is a multi-million dollar manufacturing company and I need to be able to refer them to someone with confidence. So far I was not sure if I had found the right company.

Then, I got another referral on Twitter from Paula Henry. She referred me to AppDar. When I went to AppDar’s website, I was sold. Here is why:

• They have a beautiful website that makes them look like a real company
• They showcased actual screen shots of previous work
• They clearly state what they do: “We develop iPhone applications”
• They are active on Twitter and display their Twitter conversations on the website (I can find them to talk to them)
• Their contact page has an email address, physical address, and phone number

In short, the guys at AppDar made it easy for me to trust them. I called and left a voice mail and I got a call back within an hour. I asked some questions and learned more about their previous work. I am now going to work with them to develop an iPhone app for my client.

The image you present online, the message you communicate, and the ease of contacting you make a huge difference to your customers. Make yourself easy to do business with.

The reason I disagree with Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook’s chief operating officer referenced in the article) is because no one seems to talk about how communication habits change as we get older. The typical argument behind the “email is dead!” bandwagon is that the younger generation does not use email because they are on Facebook instead. While that may be true, let’s fast-forward 5 years. Right now, that 17-year-old is probably not on email as much as Facebook. However, what happens when that same person is now 22 and is looking for a job after graduating from college? How will she communicate with potential employers? Probably email. When she lands a job, what is one of the first things she will receive? Probably a company email account.

What we’re also forgetting is how tightly email is still integrated into the authentication process on various websites. How do you log into Facebook? With your email account. Many websites use email as a username and all of them require an email address to register. Email is still the universal inbox for many people and will remain so.

Will the next generation communicate differently than today’s professionals? Absolutely. Will they stop using email and conduct all business over Facebook? I doubt it. Email is still fast, efficient, proven technology. Great email marketing firms like Indy’s ExactTarget know this and are seeing fantastic results from utilizing email as a marketing medium. At SpinWeb, our own email newsletter is a significant component in our communication strategy.

Let’s stop jumping on the “email is dead!” bandwagon and instead learn better ways to use it effectively. I would love your comments below.

The CMS Expo is a learning and business conference devoted to Content Management Systems and website services. It features a number of tracks centered around business and technology themes. The five tracks at this year’s conference were Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, Plone, and Business. I’m still working on getting them to feature my favorite CMS next time. The first four tracks were specifically focused on the respective CMS featured while the business track covered marketing, research, best practices, social media, and other business-specific topics.

I gave two presentations for the business track: “7 Habits of Highly Effective Websites” and “Twitter for Business“. Both went very well and got great feedback. It was a great crowd and I had lots of excellent questions and discussion.

Here is what I liked about the CMS Expo:

• Everyone was extremely friendly and outgoing
• The speakers were great
• The conference website was very useful and well done
• The facility (Hotel Orrington) was excellent
• The organizers really put on a great event with lots of networking
• It is expensive, which means higher-quality businesses in attendance (yes, I liked this)

The only thing I didn’t like so much was the fact that everything tended to run late so I had to cut both of my sessions a little shorter but this was a fairly minor issue.

I attended some great sessions on Google Analytics and market research and had a great time meeting new people. Those who are more interested in technical tracks, especially related to one of the feature open-source CMSs, would find the material very valuable. I poked my head into a few of these sessions and also noticed lots of positive Twitter chatter about these tracks. Many of the speakers at the CMS Expo were original founders and developers of some of the CMSs represented.

The attendance at the 2010 CMS Expo was around 400 and and it also included a full group of great exhibitors who did a fantastic job of marketing themselves and contributing to the environment. They were even giving away iPads! I was also interested to see so many speakers and attendees from far away places, including France, and Norway.

The climate of the conference was definitely one of fun, learning, and helping others and it was a pleasure to be a part of it. John and Linda Coonen (CMS Expo founders) did a wonderful job and I look forward to next year’s event.

If you work in marketing and/or technology, consider attending next year’s CMS Expo. It will be well worth your time.

Google Apps is truly a replacement for Microsoft Office. When I tell people this, they are sometimes very skeptical, which is why I do a whole seminar on the topic to shed more light on the subject. A business that makes the jump to Google Apps will have invested in an infrastructure that includes email, calendaring, document management, video conferencing, and contact management that competes with Microsoft Exchange at a fraction of the cost. Let’s take a look.

Google Email: Powerful Alternative to Exchange

The email in Google Apps is the Gmail that we all know and love. However, Google Apps lets you brand your email with your company’s domain name to ensure that it is professionally branded. Nobody wants to use consumer email for business, right? Google Apps is Gmail for business, and includes some additional features like customized spam filtering and attachment policies. It also includes migration tools that make it easier to migrate from Exchange. Email can be accessed via the web, email client (like Outlook or Apple Mail), and mobile device. The default quota for each user is 25GB, which is very generous.

Additionally, the spam and virus filtering in Google’s email is truly the best in the industry. I rarely see false positives and most unwanted email is caught and filtered. Moving to Google Apps truly eliminates the need for third-party filtering solutions.

Calendaring Like the Big Boys

The calendaring features in Google Apps are amazing. Organizations can schedule meetings with both people and resources (like conference rooms, projectors, etc.) with only a few clicks. Team members can also view other employee schedules and see free/busy information very easily. This makes scheduling meetings within the organization a snap. Meeting reminder can be sent via email or text message and are customizable by each user.

A Full Office Suite in the Cloud

I get really excited about the Docs feature of Google Apps. Most organizations use Word, Excel, and PowerPoint as their default office software. This means installing the software on all computers, as well as supporting and maintaining it. This can get expensive. All this can go away with Google Docs. Organizations can now store all documents in one place and organize them in some very smart ways.

The nice thing about Google Docs is that it eliminates the frustration of “who has the latest version of that document?” With Google Docs, all documents are created directly in the system and there is only one copy of any given document at all times. Employees can collaborate on documents and make changes and all revisions are tracked so that you can always roll back to previous versions and see who did what.

Organizations can place their entire library of documents on Google Docs and go 100% paperless since you can upload any file type. It will either be converted into a editable Google Doc or simply stored on the file server. Google Docs give you a file server, shared drive, and office suite all in one with no hardware or software to worry about.

Get Personal with Google Chat

Another nice feature of Google Apps is the video chat feature. Any employee with a webcam can engage in a video conferencing session with another user to make collaboration easier. The quality is excellent and you can even conference with other Google users outside your company. It’s not as fancy as some of the enterprise video conferencing solution but it works very well and is a great solution for most users.

The Mobile Workforce

All of the functions in Google Apps work very well with mobile devices. My iPhone calendar is synced seamlessly with my Google Calendar and I can pull up any document on my phone, as well. I can even edit documents from my phone! What this means is that I can carry all of my company documents with me everywhere I go. Yes, that’s correct – every document in my company is now accessible on my phone. Email also works seamlessly and makes it very easy to communicate on the road.

The Security of the Cloud

One of the best selling points of Google Apps is the fact that it requires no investment of hardware to run. Everything is hosted in Google’s data centers and the interface is encrypted with SSL. This not only saves a lot of money, but makes your organization much more flexible. Virtual employees can join the system from anywhere, moving offices becomes much easier, and your data is much safer than it would be in your office. I like to joke that our office could burn down tomorrow and we might not even notice because our systems would continue to operate.

A Smart Choice for Organizations

The business version of Google Apps costs $50 per user per year and can be set up very quickly. I’ve activated accounts and had my clients up and running within days. If you are experiencing communications pain with your current system, would like to go paperless, need to collaborate better with team members, or simply would like to start saving money on your office software, I would encourage you to give Google Apps a try.

Please let me know if I can help. I would love to hear your experiences with Google Apps, as well, so please leave a comment below!

At SpinWeb, we create sites on the Accrisoft Freedom platform. Freedom is a CMS that is a bit unique and has some very nice benefits over some of the other players. Indianapolis seems to be a WordPress town and I see a lot of companies using it as a website platform. There is nothing wrong with WordPress and in fact my own personal blog and speaking site is built on WordPress. However, Freedom has some distinct advantages when it comes to usability, depth of features, and support. I enjoy the fact that we are unique and utilize Freedom as our platform of choice, especially for larger organizations that demand more than the open-source platforms can typically provide.

A Content Management System with Support

One nice thing about Freedom is that it is fully supported and maintained by Accrisoft. There is a dedicated development team that is getting paid to create new features, extend existing modules, and turn customer feedback into a platform that empowers organizations to communicate online. Accrisoft is a great company and I have had many great conversations with CEO Jeff Kline about the future of the platform and about online business in general.

Freedom’s codebase is pushed out from a central server that ensures that every install is consistent. With many open source platforms, the typical model is to set up 50+ different websites that are all using different plug-ins, versions, and hacks which then becomes a nightmare to maintain as an agency. Freedom allows SpinWeb to support and maintain an indefinite number of websites without worrying about inconsistencies between them. Because all the software is hosted in the cloud, our clients have no need to worry about installing software on their computers. They can simply log in and go to work. Additionally, we can upgrade our clients’ websites in a matter of minutes when new versions of Freedom are released.

Outstanding User Interface

Freedom also has an excellent user interface. While some of the open source platforms can be confusing to end users, Freedom presents a clean, simple interface that makes it very easy for non-technical people to manage their websites.

Extensible Modules for Email, Forms, E-commerce and More

Freedom provides a number of powerful modules that integrate seamlessly into other parts of the website. For example, Freedom includes a built-in Email Marketing module, which gives website owners a complete private Email Marketing solution built right into the website. It includes templates, scheduling, subscriber management, and delivery statistics built right in. It also pulls data from other modules so that marketers can send campaigns to lists generated from other parts of the site, such as event registrations.

The Forms module in Freedom is extremely powerful and rivals many of the standalone form builders available today. With Freedom, non-technical website administrators can build complex (or simple) forms for applications, event registrations, donations, and lead capture all with a few clicks. That form data can then be processed and exported in a variety of ways or even integrated into the shopping cart for advanced e-commerce applications.

The built in shopping cart in Freedom also allows businesses to deploy an integrated e-commerce solution on their websites and sell products with minimal effort. This can also extend to event registrations, allowing organizations to sell registrations to events and accept credit card or e-check payments online.

Freedom has built-in modules for Blogs, Event Calendars, Press Releases, Podcasts, Forums, Directories, RSS, Affiliate Programs, Billing, and Polls, to name just a few of the other options in the system. Additionally, most modules can integrate with the leading social networks, which means that website updates can automatically get pushed directly to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Freedom is a very secure system. Not only is it a well-tested and hardened application, but it also has an excellent multi-user management feature, which allows multiple website managers to have different roles and levels of access. It also has a Workflow module, which allows editors to approve or reject changes before they go live.

Membership Organization Sites

I would be remiss if I did not also highlight Freedom’s excellent solution for member-based organizations, such as associations. Freedom’s Membership module allows member-based groups to manage a complete database of members and allow those members to maintain their accounts and make updates via the web. The module also allows member billing, CRM, marketing, and communication. Businesses can also use it as a customer database and in fact SpinWeb’s entire client database and billing system is managed via Freedom, complete with email invoicing, recurring billing, and online payments.

As you can see, one huge advantage to using Freedom is that everything is in one place. Before working with us, many of our clients were using different tools for email marketing, e-commerce, blogging, event registration, web content, and membership management. After switching to Freedom, they love the ease of use and efficiency (not to mention the cost savings) of having everything in one place.

Search Engine Optimized Content Management System

Freedom is also very search engine friendly. Freedom-based websites use “HURLs” (Human-readable URLs) which means that content can be indexed by search engines much more easily. HURLs help boost a website’s rankings in search engines and also look much better to humans than the typical database-driven URLs in many other systems. The HURLs in Freedom are completely customizable.

As an authorized Accrisoft Solution Provider, SpinWeb is able to deploy websites extremely quickly and with consistent quality every time due to our standardization on Freedom. Our clients love the ease of use, powerful integration, and level of control that they now have when managing their websites.

If you haven’t seen Freedom in action before, let me know and I would be happy to provide you with a demo.

However, what about using social networks for CRM? Sure, social media is all the buzz right now and sometimes very effectively used as a marketing medium but how about using it more systematically and tracking your customer relationships using these networks? I’ve presented some ways here that you can use the “big three” networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) for CRM.

1. LinkedIn has a feature called the Profile Organizer. This tool lets you categorize your contacts into folders, add notes and additional contact information, and even search for references to find people who worked with a particular contact. The Profile Organizer is part of the LinkedIn Business account, which costs $24.95 per month. With the Profile Organizer, you can categorize your contacts into clients, prospects, suspects, etc., and communicate with them via LinkedIn as well as track major updates in their professionals lives.

2. Facebook offer a pretty simple way of categorizing your contacts, as well. Simply create a friend list and place your clients in that list. You can then set privacy options for that list, as well. You can create lists for different industries, or separate them into prospects and clients. The nice thing about Facebook is that it gives you a rich window into the lives of your contacts, which lets you start conversations more easily. It also makes it easier to share valuable information with your clients and keeps you visible to them.

3. Twitter recently added a lists feature that allows you to create unlimited lists in which to categorize people (and companies) you are following. This is a great opportunity to create a list of your clients and then periodically track what they are posting so that you can comment, re-tweet for them, and stay aware of the goings-on in their lives and companies. Less information is passed through Twitter but it offers another nice real-time view into personal and professional events. Of course your clients actually have to be using Twitter for this to be useful

Can social networks replace standard CRM software? Maybe in some cases, but more often I can see them supplementing your core database. Social networks give us an extended, organic database that updates in real time with information that can be very valuable to account managers and sales professionals. Why not take advantage of this and use social networks to stay more connected to your customers and provide better service?

So how do we keep up with all the conversations? Here are three things you can set up in a matter of minutes to start monitoring conversations about your brand.

1. Utilize Google Alerts. This is probably one of simplest but most effective tools available for brand monitoring. Google Alerts allows you to create keyword specific alerts that will email you each time content appears on the web that contains those keywords. Since my company name is SpinWeb, I have an alert set up to monitor the word “SpinWeb”, which means I get emails every time my company is mentioned on the web.
2. Set up alerts on TweetBeep. TweetBeep is a free service (for up to 10 alerts) that monitors conversations on Twitter and then sends you emails listing all the tweets containing your keyword. An alert set up for “SpinWeb” sends me a daily (or hourly, if I prefer) email containing all tweets talking about my company. This makes it easy for me to selectively jump into conversations that interest me.
3. Scan social networks with SocialMention. This service tracks over 80 social networks for your keyword, including Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc. SocialMention also has some nice additional features that monitor strength and influence of conversations.

If you’re looking for a super-easy way to get started with brand monitoring via social media, spending a few minutes setting up these three tools is a great place to start. It will automate your efforts and keep you alerted to what’s being said about your company. You will also find that it strengthens your online relationships because you are able to actively participate whenever anyone is talking about you, and that’s great customer service.