Sales & Marketing Authority, Bestselling Author & Business Motivational Speaker

Like most of you, I receive hundreds of emails every day, and even after I’ve deleted all the spam from my Inbox there’s still loads of emails hanging around day after day, week after week. Suddenly you realise that your email account is full to bursting and you’re struggling to find the important information in all of the backdated emails you’re hanging on to.

There are some real benefits to purging your vast sums of emails every now and again, mostly for your own sense of organisation and control. Not only can your important emails end up being lost in the vast sea of contact you’re holding on to, but you may also end up becoming backdated when trying to respond to all of the contact you receive every day. Starting afresh can help refocus your efforts and ensure that your email account doesn’t simply become a filing cabinet for every last email you have ever sent or received.

There are two ways you can declare email bankruptcy. One is to close the account in question entirely and open a new one, whilst the other way is to simply delete everything up until a certain date. Closing your account entirely and starting again takes far less time and hassle, but this may not be possible for some – so clearing the account up to a certain point is a great way of spring cleaning your emails and regaining some structure and organisation.

If you think you have reached a point where you need to purge all your emails and start again, then here are a few issues to consider before you press the almighty “Delete All” button and dismiss them all for good. 

It may be worth considering going through your account and moving any important emails into a safe folder – although this is completely dependent on the amount of emails you have been hording and how much time you have to dedicate to this. Usually this will be something you do as you go along, but it’s possible you may have missed something so double check if you can. 

A great way to look for important information is to search by name. You should be aware of who your most important conversations are held with in general and this should help you find any vital emails quickly without having to wade through them all.

It’s also worthwhile sending out an email to all of your contacts, explaining that their emails have been deleted and asking them to contact you again if they are still waiting for a response. Hopefully, you’ll have managed to respond to the majority, but in case you have missed anything important this should help you catch it the second time around.

When you feel like you’ve done all you can to ensure that you haven’t lost any important communications, it’s time to press “Delete All” and wipe the slate clean. Now, doesn’t that feel better?

Once you’ve cleared your account of all unnecessary items, you need to start to reorganise your email system so that this doesn’t have to be a monthly occurrence. A great tip for gaining more control over your email account is to immediately set up separate folders alongside you inbox, such as Colleagues, Clients, Leads, Important Info etc.

Then, when you start receiving emails again you can begin to file the important ones away into relevant categories – leaving all the irrelevant correspondence in you inbox to be deleted at the end of every week. Make it a ritual on a Friday afternoon, before you power down and leave the office, to file the important emails and cleanse the rest. These five minutes a week will save you having to shut down and start again several times a year.         

Remember, the “Delete All” button is a last resort to help you reorganise your workload, so in future make it easier on yourself to keep on top of things and prevent the necessity for declaring email bankruptcy at all.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

(Image by Nokhoog Buchachon)

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert - Motivational Speaker

So you’ve been working hard all year to increase your social media efforts and maintain a solid online presence for you and your company, and you’re now at a stage where you want your social media interaction to run automatically and become an on-going and long-term activity.

So, what can you do to give your social media strategy longevity in 2012? Here are a few tips to help you consolidate your social media activity for the New Year and beyond.

1. Stop saturating and build your brand

Once you have really got to grips with using social media as a business tool it is very easy to overdo your efforts and start to saturate your social media platforms with lots of content, from each department of your company, and for each separate product or service that you offer. Whilst you might think this gives you a broader reach and a better web presence, you are probably just confusing your followers by making it too overwhelming to receive all the content you are putting out there.

So instead of saturating your social media platforms, start branding all of your company’s departments and products or services under one main name. You can still keep separate accounts for marketing, management, sales etc but ensure you only have one contact from each department and include the company name in all of their usernames. This will help to consolidate and group together your team and products under your main company brand.

2. Post for the platform, not for your own benefit

Each social media platform is different. The way your followers use Facebook in comparison to the way they use Twitter is different, and the reasons some of your audience chooses to interact with you on LinkedIn rather than on Flickr will be different as well – they are looking for different content and are expecting different interaction with you depending on which platform they are using.

You probably already know how to use each of the platforms for your own benefit, but use 2012 to really tune in to what your followers want from you on each platform.  If they’re friends with you on Facebook then they probably want to see a more personal side of you, if they are following you on Twitter then they probably expect regular and consistent updates about your new content and if they have connected with you on LinkedIn they are clearly looking to engage with you in a more professional way.

Consider what each platform is used for and research the way people on the site interact and then tailor your involvement to these conforms – you’ll be amazed at the results.

3. Schedule your posting in advance

It’s always good to think about what you’re going to say before you say it, and the same rule applies with posting. Is what you’re posting really relevant? Will it be of interest to anyone? I would hope it would be otherwise why would you be producing it – but it doesn’t hurt to ask the question every now and again!

Scheduling posts in advance also stops you from overwhelming your followers with massive amounts of content, or ignoring them completely due to the fact you’ve had no time to create anything that day. If you schedule a weekly or daily plan for what you will be posting about and what content you will be distributing on which platform, you will soon find you have a nice on-going structure for each site making the whole process much more automated and easy to follow.

A great way to schedule social media sharing is to draw up an editorial planner at the start of each month, which gives you a chance to plan the bulk in advance and then add in more topical updates at times when you have less scheduled content going out. This will give your followers enough to keep them interested and ensure you don’t overwhelm them with information and scare them off.

The best advice I can give you for 2012 is to reassess where your social media campaign is at currently and where you would like it to be by this time next year – then simply put actions to your words and make it happen. Ask yourself these questions:  If you were a follower of your company on each platform, what opinion would you have of them? Are you getting what you hoped you would from engaging with them in this way? And is there more they could do to keep your attention? Then make 2012 the year you give your social media plan real depth and long term value.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert – Motivational Speaker

In today’s service economy, you are not judged by the piece of machinery that your factory makes. You are judged instead by what we can expect from you in the future. And the way best way to indicate to your customers that they can expect great things from you in the future is by building trust with them.

Which begs the questions, how do you build trust? You build it by offering value-add, by providing valuable products and services to your customers. You also build trust by managing relationships. In the hustle and bustle of today’s world, it is often the second part that suffers.

Making Promises

Everybody make promises that they never really follow through on. From the simplest of things, like mentioning to a friend that you found a recipe online that you think she’d like, to the much more complex, like promising to help a colleague design their website. We all make promises that we fully intend on following through with, but then the world gets in the way, we forget, and the promises go undone.

If you give your word to someone and then don’t follow through, it damages your trust with them, and it damages your relationship. Nowhere is this more true than with your customers.

One Simple Trick

Start by taking a small notebook. This can be a physical notebook, or it can be a note on your iPad or cell phone.

Now, every time you make a promise to someone, every time that you give them your word that you will do something, write it down in your notebook. Then set aside a time each week, say Saturday afternoons, when you’ll go through that notebook and follow through on all the promises that you made over the week.

This applies to everything. Whether you mentioned in passing that you would send an interesting article to a colleague, or you told your son you would go play a game of basketball with him over the weekend. Follow through on every single promise that you made over the previous week.

The best part about this is that since most people forget to follow through on their promises, you will look especially good, and people will stop and take notice of the fact that your word is your bond.
Start with your personal relationships, and once you get in the habit, it will automatically follow you into your business relationships.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert – Motivational Speaker

With Remembrance Day come and gone for another year, it was fantastic to hear that this year’s Poppy Appeal had set a target of raising £40 million for our service men and women who are currently serving abroad, as well as for the veterans of past conflicts and their families.

Last year the appeal raised £36 million but this year organisers are hoping to smash this record by applying some very modern techniques to help boost the Poppy Appeal tradition.

To mark the 90^th anniversary of the Poppy Appeal, the charity has moved full throttle into the modern age of online interaction and are hoping to appeal to younger generations through their involvement with social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.

The Royal British Legion, who are behind the Poppy Appeal, have this year decided to enhance their traditional campaign of selling poppies in places such as big shopping centres and on the streets of our towns and cities, by moving online into the virtual world in an attempt to raise more money and awareness for the cause than ever before.

Supporters can now purchase their poppies online by logging on to the RBL’s interactive forum “Shoulder To Shoulder”, uploading a photo of themselves to the site, purchasing a virtual poppy to pin to their picture and adding a special message to their image. This option seems to have really appealed to the public, as the site has had nearly 18,500 pictures uploaded of people with their virtual poppies to date .

The public can now purchase downloadable Poppy Appeal wallpapers for their computers and add support buttons to their websites which link back to the RBL Poppy Appeal homepage. 

The RBL has also taken their Poppy Appeal into the realm of social media and now have a Facebook page, a Twitter feed and a Youtube channel where supporters can gain to-the-minute updates on the campaign and share and contribute with each other in this online space. The campaign is even fronted by a virtual blogger called Poppy, who is the face of the appeal online and posts regular blog articles to the “Legion Live” forum for supporters to read, share and contribute to. 

With over 11,300 Facebook likes, nearly 12,000 Twitter followers and well over 520,000 views of their videos on Youtube it seems like the campaign has taken on a whole new lease of life. Although official figures for the total amount raised by this year’s Poppy Appeal have yet to be confirmed, it is obvious to see what a huge impact this first outreach via social media and other online platforms has made to the campaign.

It’s great to see such a well-established and long-serving organisation as the RBL looking to more modern and interactive methods to engage with the public and help raise awareness and funds for their cause. Personally, I feel this really shows just how important and influential social media interaction can be when you want to get your message out there and ensure that it is heard on a massive scale. The internet and social media is the way forward, so ensure that you are not missing out on its benefits when it comes to your business’ next big campaign.  

(Image by Paul Simpson)

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant – Sales Expert - Motivational Speaker