Your newsletter is not about you

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve come across too many email newsletters that are just screaming “look at me, look at me, look at me”. Even though it is your newsletter, it is not about you. It is about your reader.

We, your readers, are not interested in the details of you or your business, we are interested in things of interest to us and what you can do for us.

So, if you send out email based newsletters to your clients and subscribers (because of course you don’t just send them to anyone who you happen to have an email address for) remember these are the key things that make or break your mail out.  It needs to be :

• Personal
• Relevant
• Anticipated

March 2009 Wallpaper

For the past 12 months I have been creating computer wallpaper images for each monthly edition of The Calm Space.  By combining a wonderfully evocative image from Amy Palko (or myself) and graphics with the calendar for that month, we were able to create something that was both beauitful and practical.

From March I’ve decided to release some of my images (often of beach scenes) with a monthly calendar here at Working Solo.

This month, as the hottest days of summer start to fade, I’ve got an image for you to load onto your computer to remind you of summer days past.  “Watching-Waiting” was taken at Wanda Beach in Sydney’s southern suburbs and speaks to me of anticipation, friendship and patience.

You are able to download the calendar wallpaper, 1680pixel x 1050 pixel version, here.
Note:  This image is covered by Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license.

Have a good March!

New Virus Might Come Via Your USB

There is an ever constant threat to computers (PCs in particular) from viruses and trojans created by people who feel the need to be disruptive and/or clever.  One of the latest is proving to be a challenge is Downandup, Downadup, Kido!, or Conficker (all the same thing) and it is coming to a computer near you in an interesting way …. via a USB drive.

Christopher Hull over at Yahoo’s tech blogs gave an overview yesterday of the virus, how it might show up on your computer and what to do about it.

Keep a watchful eye out, be careful of what you load onto your computer and make sure you have backups.

How to Work Solo and Sustainably at the Same Time

Every time I open the newspaper lately there is another big corporate company making commitments to sustainability and carbon neutrality.  These commitments are both good policy and good marketing.  But do we soloists and small business owners need to leave the sustainability statements to the big guys?  I think not.

So here I am to put out the Working Solo sustainability policy statement and at the same time challenge each of you to commit to and announce your own policy.

Sustainability Statement
Working Solo is committed to running a business that is both socially and environmentally sustainable.  We will seek to minimise and, if possible, avoid adverse effects on the natural and social environment.  Our services will reflect the needs of our clients, our community and be delivered in a way that means our staff, our services and our business are around for the long term.

Environmental & Sustainability Objectives and Commitments
We will:

• actively manage water, energy, paper and resource consumption throughout our office;
• commit to recycling and waste management and to the purchase of recycled products where possible and within reasonable cost boundaries;
• use environmental criteria when choosing prospective suppliers and the selection of products for all operations;
• utilise 100% green energy for our office;
• offset all emissions from business activities and operations and use suppliers who also do the same;
• ensure that we meet or exceed any relevant environmental regulations where we operate;
• volunteer our services and expertise to environmental and social situations and organisations that will represent the same sustainability principals and ethics or Working Solo.

Now it’s your turn … what are the commitments that you and your business make to a more sustainable business environment?

If you are interested in one of the sustainability projects we have recently supported you can visit the FMCG Sustainability Institute.  We were happy to create their website and are providing ongoing web and technology support.

How to Confuse Your Website Readers with Underlines

Is your website a game of “which link is a real link?” Do readers try to click on what they think is a link only to find that it is actually just underlined text?

If so PLEASE go and fix it now!

Over the past few weeks I have been coming across many sites that have been underlining text for emphasis (here is the real link to the last one).  There are many other tools that you can use to add emphasis to words – bold and italics for example.  When it comes to underlining words that is now an accepted web standard to indicate a hyperlink.

This is a simple thing that you can do to increase the readability of your site, limit the confusion (and link hunt) of your readers and improve the standards compliance of your site.

QUESTION:  What are the things that websites do to confuse you?

Facebook accused of privacy violation – again!

Late last year I dipped my toe in the deep water that is Facebook. It was interesting to catch up with friends I hadn’t contacted in a while but that’s as far as the interest went for me. After a while the idea of being “poked” or receiving “wall comments” held little appeal.

A couple of times I went to install an application and received a warning that the application would transfer my details to a third party. When it asked me was I OK with that I always pressed cancel; something was ringing those alarms bells and felt not quite right.

Last week after months of neglect and disinterest I cancelled my Facebook account.

Today I read that my concerns with privacy were not ill-founded. It has been reported today in the Sydney Morning Herald that a group of Canadian students have filed an official complaint about Facebook.

In a complaint to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, the University of Ottawa students said the popular US-based site sends users’ personal information to third parties for advertising and marketing activities without the users’ knowledge or consent.

If you, your business partner or even your kids are a member of Facebook then take this warning as one more reason to be very, very careful with the details you share on Facebook (and other social networking for that matter).

What to Do When They Cut Your Connection

So you’ve got a backup plan for your computer data (you do don’t you?) and you have started using SaaS services to ensure you have access to your business information from anywhere. But what plans do you have in place for the day that some bright spark takes to your telco’s infrastructure with an angle-grinder or back-hoe?

Thousands of services on the Telstra network were effected when vandals managed to cut 2 fibre optic cables in Sydney’s west on Saturday. Many businesses and homes they are still without service. The Sydney Morning Hearld is reporting that -

About 5000 western Sydney homes and businesses remain without phone, internet and cable television services after vandals cut a Telstra communications cable.

Even though this type of incident doesn’t happen everyday, it is not a one-off occurrence. Almost 20 years ago when I was working for Telstra someone with a big grudge and even bigger angle-grinder stepped into a communications tunnel in front of a major central Sydney telephone exchange and proceeded to take down tens of thousands of services. There are also numerous tales of cables being dug up during roadworks, general construction and even whilst laying other cables.

So what would you do if you came into work this morning and their was not telephone, internet, eftpos terminal …? Use your mobile? Ever thought how mobile phone traffic is carried across the network?

” … there are still thousands of customers without services like phones, Foxtel, internet, businesses without Eftpos and several base stations are still not working for mobiles …”
-Warwick Ponder, Telstra spokesman from SMH article [my emphasis]

So that area can forget about using their mobiles as a backup, unless they decide to do business away from the out of action base stations.

The chances of you not having communications are not restricted to Telstra customers or Sydney. Char Polansky at Essential Keystrokes had to deal with a hi-speed cable outage just a couple of weeks ago. Char asked readers of her blog for suggestions to get around not having communications. My suggestion was that she develop a relationship with another small business where she could set up her laptop and work from their premises (this is my suggestion to everyone by the way).

What would you do if you couldn’t communicate digitally with the world?

BTW – Go and have a look at my article in the latest edition of The Calm Space. It has a suggestion that might be useful during short term outage.

How Highrise Works for Working Solo

Yesterday in the Linkedin BloggersYahoo group, Karen Ferrero asked a question about Highrise.

I am looking into some lightweight and user-friendly CRM packages for
my individual use. I really like Basecamp and see some good reviews
on Highrise. Can anyone with some experience actually using Highrise
give me their opinions on it? I would really appreciate it.

I dropped Karen a quick message back saying I loved Highrise and that I would fill in more details offline if she was interested. Stephen Collins from Acidlabs quickly jumped in and asked me to share more of my Highrise story with the group.

I’d actually appreciate you telling us all a short story of how you use
Highrise and for what purposes. I think those of us that don’t already
use a CRM system will gain a lot and those that do might gain
additional insight. I would certainly appreciate you sharing your
experiences.

So instead of just sharing with the Linkedin Bloggers Group I thought I would share with you all how I use Highrise and the difference that it has made for Working Solo.

My Highrise story starts in October last year – I was using Outlook for emails and contacts but having been a previous user of ACT is was looking for something a little more (but not as muc of the full CRM offering that ACT provided). I’d been using Basecamp for projects since earlier in the year, was very impressed and decided to give Highrise a go.

The export/import process for my contacts from Outlook to Highrise was a breeze. I then set to work allocating tags to each of my contacts. I love the flexibility that tags give me to sort contacts on any range of things – clients, suppliers, friends, family, colleagues (many of my contacts fall across multiple categories). I can also add tags for things like “referred by Sue” and then count up all the wonderful people that Sue referred to me and send her a person thank you note. The tags have allowed me to be a lot more efficient when finding information and people.

One of the things that I love the most is being able to see every contact’s history on one page. I can see their co-workers, an photo (I like to upload an image in particular for my clients so I get a more personal feel for them), contact details, images or files, and even bio information. Saves me time hunting things down in different places.

I also love the ability to use Highrise to track emails to and from my contacts. I’ve set up Outlook (yes I still use Outlook as an email client) with rules so that when I receive and email from a person in my contact list a copy of the incoming email is sent to my Highrise dropbox and filed next to the email address of the sender. If I’m in Highrise and click on the contact’s email address Outlook will open a new message with the recipient’s email address in the to field and my Highrise dropbox in the bcc field so that I can have a copy of the sent email filed against the contact’s record.

Even though I do an email backup to my external hard drive every Friday evening, using the Highrise dropbox option has been a great back-up alternative. I have peace-of-mind knowing that Highrise has all my emails to and from my clients, suppliers and major contacts covered even if the external hard drive has a problem (I don’t really need to worry about all the miscellaneous emails anyway).

As I use Basecamp for tracking to-do’s relating to the business I don’t really use the task option in Highrise for anything else except some personal reminders and tasks. It is great that I can see at a glance the tasks that are group under the headings of Today, This Week, Next Week, Later. I can see that changing though as I start adding extra team members to Working Solo. Instead of sending emails regarding things or people they want me to follow up, they will just be able to send me a follow up task instead.

The other thing that makes Highrise cool are the Cases. I have set up Cases for each of the internal Working Solo projects that I’m working on (client projects are tracked through Basecamp). This allows me to keep a track of all notes, communications and information relating to that project without having to check across multiple contacts.

Now all I want to do is find someone who can write me some hooks to link the API for Highrise to some of my other favourite SaaS applications like Campaign Monitor and Saasu.

All in all Highrise is a perfect fit for the way that I work and run Working Solo. 37Signals (the company that created Highrise) are quite clear that they don’t design their applications to be all things to all people, but it is a perfect for for this working solo business owner (soon to be team working solo??)

So … I hope this has answered Karen and Stephen’s questions about how Highrise works for me. If you have any questions or want to share how Highrise might work for you then just leave a comment.

4 Ways to Wreck a Good Newsletter – Part 1

With blogs popping up all over the place you could be forgiven for thinking that the good ‘ole email based newsletter is dead. Don’t be so hasty to jump to conclusions like that. Email newsletters, especially HTML based ones, are alive and kicking. But not all newsletters are good ones. Over the next week I’m going to share a few examples on how to wreck your newsletter campaigns.

Wrecking Ball #1 – Getting branded a Spammer

You did the right thing and got explicit permission to email people your newsletter … that’s all you needed to do in order to not be a spammer? Yes but no but yes! The great guys at Campaign Monitor recently quoted a recent survey by Q Interactive and MarketingSherpa that had some numbers that really got my attention.

“underscoring consumers’ varying definitions of spam, respondents cited a variety of non-permission-based reasons for hitting the spam button, including “the email was not of interest to me” (41 percent); “I receive too much email from the sender” (25 percent); and “I receive too much email from all senders” (20 percent).”

20% hit the “report spam” button if they feel they’re getting too much email in general??? Wow, what’s a poor business to do when all they’re trying to do is some basic?

Well the first, and most important, thing that you can do is be relevant. Put yourself in your subscribers shoes and ask “what is it about this newsletter that is useful for the reader?” Unless you are writing from their perspective and making it relevant to them you may as well save your time.

In the Campaign Monitor post, Mathew Patterson makes another good suggestion to avoid being caught in the spam trap -

“Finally, a clear permission reminder and prominent unsubscribe link will make it easier for a subscriber who is no longer interested to unsubscribe rather than reach for that spam button.”

Unless you are relevant your readers won’t open your newsletter, will unsubscribe or at worst they’ll the hit the dreaded spam button. So what are you doing so you aren’t compared to processed meat?

Website Review – My Day Off

This week’s site review is the was the website of the week last week at Blog Whammy ….

website : My Day Off
url : http://www.mydayoff.com.au/

This site is written by Anne Maybus, the owner of Beauty Banquet. My Day Off is a resource blog that provides you with tips about kicking back and relaxing as well as stories that are designed to tickle the funny bone.

suggestions for change :

• The About link is currently giving an error as there is no page there. Fixing this would be the number #1 suggestion. People want to know more than just the information you provide, they want to know who you are. Remember people do business with people they like.
• My #2 suggestion is to change the permalink name from the generic (http://mydayoff.com.au/?p=247) to a link that has the post name (also know as the post slug) as part of url. This can be done in Wordpress (the platform that My Day Off uses) via the Options Menu. Having keywords in your url can improve the search engine optimisation of the site.
• The About page error is going to a generic “404 Error” page. Consider adding your own customised 404 page.
• Remove the “by admin” author information under the Post Heading or change your username to something more meaningful.
• I would suggest that you move away from the username of admin (to generic and to easy to hack into).
• Fix the problems that are stopping the site from validating (why validate?)
• Add contact information and/or link to contact page above the fold. How would someone contact you if they particularly liked what you had to say (or wanted to send you a sample to review on the blog).
• The RSS Feed link is not labelled well and will not be obvious to people who don’t know what the orange box means. You should have a more user friendly description like “Subscribe to RSS Updates” and the option to “Subscribe to Email Updates” should also be provided. Feedburner can help you with this and with managing all aspects of the feeds and subscriptions to your blog.
• Change the name of the “Uncategorized” category to somehing more meaningful.

Keep up the great work Anne and keep providing us with some tidbits that help make the world of the WAHM and small business woman a little lighter.

If you have any feedback on the site or questions about what I’ve had to say then just join the conversation in the comments.

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