Simplifying the lives of busy entrepreneurs.
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Email Management: Don’t Let Email Run Your Life
January 16th, 2009
If you are anything like me, you are bombarded with email. In particular, you get messages from clients, spammers, friends, family and associations or groups of which you are a member. Without proper preparation for such a massive amount of email, you might find yourself swimming in emails. Email was created to be a tool to save you time, but if you can’t find an effective way to organize it, you will most definitely be losing time to it instead of gaining time from it. The following are some ideas that will help you use your email program to save time:
-If your email’s spam filter isn’t doing a good job catching unwanted emails, check its settings. Usually in your email options, there will be junk email settings. Set the protection to a higher level. This should take care of at least a little more of the unwanted spam. If you have your email set to a high level already and are still receiving lots of spam, consider getting spam blocking software. Googling “stop spam” or “spam blocker” will give you a large list of options from which to choose.
- Consider setting up an autoresponder. An autoresponder can handle a great deal of general questions that you get on a regular basis. All you have to do is set it up once and your message(s) can go out hundreds or even thousands of times. Autoresponders are also great at sales, so to speak. They do all the work for you. When someone opts in to your list, you can set up your autoresponder to send a series of messages in a specific order at set intervals.
- Save commonly sent email messages as signatures. Signatures don’t only have to be actual signatures. You can save whole email messages as signatures and name them accordingly. For example, if you commonly follow-up with individuals you have met at your local Chamber of Commerce meetings, you could title your signature “follow-up” and save a message such as:
“Dear Mr. X,
It was such a pleasure to meet you at the last Chamber meeting. I hope that we have a chance to speak again at…”
Of course you would have to change details such as the name the email is addressed to, along with other more specific information, but the template will be ready within a few clicks of your mouse.
- Read and respond to emails at set intervals throughout the day. Checking your emails as they come in is most definitely a common mistake that people make. Stopping the work you are doing to check emails is extremely inefficient. Your tasks will take much longer to complete if they are subject to constant interruptions. Set a recurring reminder on your email calendar to check emails 4 times per day. Only check and respond when you are scheduled to do so.
- Separate your emails into folders. Just as you organize your documents into folders on your computer, so should you with your email. A good organizational system will make it much easier to find what you need when you need it. You can also set up rules in some programs so that your email gets automatically sorted as it arrives.
- Color code your emails. Some email programs such as MS Outlook allow you to color code your email based on certain criteria, such as who it’s from or the subject. This will allow you to more easily differentiate between important and insignificant emails. For example, if you color code all of your client emails in red, then you will easily be able to see them within a sea of emails.
Email is a great tool if it is used properly. When it’s not, it can have a very negative effect on your time management. By learning to implement even a few of these simple steps, you can become a more efficient email user and stop losing time to a technology that was meant to save you time.
Read More »To Blog, or Not to Blog
January 7th, 2009
I’ve finally joined the ranks of the thousands of people on the web today who Blog. I’ve been wrestling with the decision of whether or not to start a blog for quite some time. It wasn’t that I didn’t realize the benefits of blogging. I knew it would increase my search engine visibility, it would give me a place to demonstrate my expertise in certain areas and, over time it would encourage trust in me by my readers, giving me increased credibility and ultimately perhaps gain me a larger clientele. I knew the reasons for blogging, in fact, they were the same reasons I’d given to clients when telling them why they should be blogging.
So, with all the benefits known to me, why should I be holding back you might be asking? Quite simply, it was out of anxiety. I was worried that I would run out of things to say. How could I possibly come up with fresh material week after week, month after month? And, when would I find the time?
Finally, when speaking with a friend about my struggle with blogging, I was told, “You know, it doesn’t have to be a masterpiece.” And for some reason, those simple words struck a chord with me. I realized I had been grabbing and holding on to any pessimistic fear that I had about blogging in order to convince myself not to do it. Instead of focusing on the good that would come of it, I was allowing my inner-negative voice to control my actions. Finally coming to the realization that my blog didn’t have to be perfect and acknowledging that there is a myriad of topics that I could write about, I bit the bullet and decided that the benefits are too great to ignore any longer.
So, this is the first post of many in a blog that will focus on simplifying the lives of entrepreneurs. My first resolution of 2009 is in full swing: inner-negative voice ignored and positive thoughts heeded. I hope you will join me for the ride.
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