Do you change your business to suit your tech tools? Or your tech tools to your business?

As you start to embrace technology within your business – whether it’s a new email marketing system or web based accounting package – it’s easy to feel unsure about whether you are making the right decision.

Perhaps you have a website built on flash by your teenage son. It’s looks beautiful – and it didn’t cost you anything apart from a month’s worth of washing when he was back from Uni – but it can’t be found on Google (Flash can’t be viewed by search engines, hence its inability to get found!).

Perhaps you are feeling pretty chuffed with your free shopping cart system. You’ve not shelled out any cash, but you are getting frustrated with setting up your new workshop. You’ve now delayed the date three times because you can’t the system do what you want it to.

Sticking with the wrong tools?

How many tech systems are you sticking with just because you haven’t got the time, energy or mental capacity to work out if there is a better system out there?

Is it better to keep using the same systems and just fit your business around them? Better the devil and all that, especially when you are not paying out much for them. But when certain tools and systems are stifling our creativity and growth, then surely it is time to change.

Email marketing systems are one of those tech tools that it is easy for a small business to out grow. When I first started using email newsletters in my business in 2004, I went with Constant Contact. It was – and still is – a great newsletter system. But even with the recently added new features, it still isn’t an email marketing system to support selling products and programmes online. It misses the power of a decent autoresponder system.

Autoresponders are my number one recommended web tech marketing tool. They allow you to put your online relationship building in to turbo drive. So when I started using 1ShoppingCart for my workshop and ebook selling, I was able to start building a set-and-forget marketing system. But I loved Constant Contact’s email newsletters so much that I stuck with them and ran both systems side by side for more than 18 months.

When enough is enough

Cracks started to appear. It wasn’t a surprise. I was running my email campaigns on one system and starting to build my customer list on another. When someone unsubscribed on one system, I had to manually check that they were taken off the other! Duh!

Finally I took one of the leaps of faith, sucked in my breath and got it sorted. Delegating the project to a Virtual Assistant was the key to success.

5 years later and the change of email marketing system happens again. Not part of my big plan, but this time it was 1ShoppingCart that was stifling my business. No matter how hard I tried to understand why, 1ShoppingCart refused to work their recurring payments with PayPal. One off payments, not a problem. But monthly recurring payments for my Web Tech Club membership site, nope!

I came up with a sticking plaster (Completion NOT perfection!). Send new members directly to PayPal. It worked beautifully with Wishlist Member (the WordPress membership plugin that I use), but my VA still had to manually add new members to 1ShoppingCart to get the system to work. I could have stuck with it. No one seems to notice this sticking plaster. But I knew it could be better. I knew people wanted to use their credit cards, rather than just their PayPal accounts. And even though I could do this with PayPal Website Payments Pro, it still wouldn’t work with 1ShoppingCart.

Plus my other big problem was that I couldn’t use the 1ShoppingCart affiliate programme. Without the orders coming through the system, affiliates would have no way of the system allocating their recommended members to their account. And when you have person after person asking you how to sign up to your affiliate programme because they love your product so much, it can get you down when you have to admit you can’t offer one!

Turning away business because your systems can’t offer it?

So here where these web tech tools were, helping me run my business. But stifling it all the same. It had to change.

I could have gone down the merchant account route, but after an awful experience of trying to get Worldpay to work with 1ShoppingCart the previous year, it was 1ShoppingCart that had to go. My tried and tested shopping cart system that I had recommended to my clients for the past 5 years was on it’s way out.

I’ve ended up with Premium Web Cart and Aweber (PWC doesn’t offer an email marketing system so you have to set up a system such as Aweber along side). The system is still not fully set up, but finally my affiliate programme can be launched very soon.
It’s not easy. I am not advocating changing your email marketing systems – or any other web tech tool – just for the sake of it. But if you are “making do” just because you haven’t got the time, energy or mental capacity to change it, make the time, energy or mental capacity to do it.

I know I may well be giving you a huge project to think of here. However, what would be the difference to your business this time next year, if you did change one of your web tech tools?

Web tech tools can make us more productive and increase our marketing power, but when certain tech tools stifle our business, then surely its time to invest and change.

One of the great things about web tech tools and communication today is the choice of mediums and platforms to use.  There is really no excuse for not being about to reach out your target audience and building your business brand.

But to every positive, there is often a negative.  Too much choice gives you too many options.  And if you are using lots of different mediums to spread your message, it can take over your working week.

Email, phone messages, texts, tweets, Facebook messages, LinkedIn connections, Ning forum updates … the list can go on and on and on.

Seth Godin blogged about this recently in only the way Seth can – short and sweet and challenging the way we are often proud of our busy-ness.  And I know I’ve fallen in to this trap time and time again over the years.

After all, we can’t create more time.  And there is no such thing as time management – only managing ourselves.

This is why I have started this year as I mean to go.  I’ve finally found a to-do tool that actually works for me.  Remember the Milk has been around for a while now but having had a play over the Christmas break, it looks like this baby may actually help steer my ideas in to practical “get-it-done” activity every day!

I recommend you take a look, especially if you are a smart phone user.

I’ve given myself daily, weekly and monthly tasks to do.  It’s going to take a few days to work out if I am being realistic or not.  But the important thing is that I have acknowledged how important my social media communication is, so have put aside up 90 minutes a day to be productive with this.  Rather than cut it out for “wasting my time”, I’ve given it priority … but in a structured way.

So, what about you?  How do you manage your busy-ness?

The problem with tweets is that they only last about 3 or 4 hours at best.  Once tweeted, they disappear down the Twitter feed, never to be seen again.

Yes, using the Favourites feature is a great way of highlighting your favourite tweets – both tweets from others that you find useful, plus tweets of your own.

But after a few days or weeks, they too disappear down the list.

Since launching my Web Tech Club, I’ve been getting some lovely tweets from my club members.  And it just didn’t seem right to let these disappear in to the Twitterverse.  So I thought I would share a simple little copy and paste job that I have done on these tweets.

Here’s what I have been doing and if you want to give it a go, then give it a go!

I’ve been screen grabbing a copy of the lovely tweet, using them as an image and then adding them to newsletters, web pages and even to my Facebook Page welcome note.

Each tweet has its own unique web link.  Click on the time/date link to open up the tweet in a new browser window and then use a screen grab tool such as Snagit or Jing to create a jpeg image.

This jpeg image can then be used in any document, webpage or HTML email format you like – just as you would any image or photo.

Have a look at my Facebook Page as an example.  Or here are a few below.

So, don’t let your lovely tweets go to waste.  Save them as an image and use them in your marketing material.

UPDATE 7th November: I’ve just checked out the latest update for the wordpress plugin “Twitter blackbird pie” which allows you to embed a tweet in to your wordpress blog posts and pages.  tI didn’t work well a few months ago, but now it seems to work rather nicely now.  Here’s an example below:

[blackbirdpie id="1302049895485440"]

If you are using the new Twitter interface, just make sure the “#!” in the url link is removed as it doesn’t work with this – best to use the ID of each tweet which is the big long number you see in the url after the word “status”.

The other benefit of this plugin is that it gives your readers a direct link to the tweeter you’ve credited (although I do note, the link doesn’t give you an option to open in a new window which is something I would prefer to offer).

I still think the safest and best way to keep your most favourite tweets is to screen grab though.  Tweets do disappear over time and although this is a fun, quick and easy way of adding a tweet to your wordpress site, it only works whilst the tweet stays alive.  And for those of you not converted to WordPress yet, then this plugin obviously won’t help you ;o)

I love my tech tools so I am always trying out this, that and the other to see how different web based tools work for small businesses.

Many seem great to start with, but then the novelty wears off and before long I have forgotten my login details and never go back.

But there has been one web tool that has become an integral part of the way I do business.  And that tool is Tungle.

Working from home, most of my 1-2-1 client consultations and sessions are over the phone or via skype.  And setting up times to speak has always been a game of email ping-pong. Quite often if a client has taken more than 3 or 4 days to get back to me, the times I have suggested have already been confirmed with someone else.

I had dabbled with a few online diaries but most were too clunky.  And for many of my clients who just weren’t as tech savvy as I was (hence why they work with me!), some of these systems would actually work against the process, rather than improve it.

But then I stumbled on Tungle.  I can’t remember where I saw it first.  But having used it now for the past two months, it has not been integrated in to my business processes.

The other person doesn’t need to sign up for the service.  It is a simple click and drag application.  Plus it works really well on my iPhone as an app!

At the moment it is still a free service – although I am sure there will be a subscription tier coming in at some point – so it’s worth checking out if you schedule lots of meetings and still like control of your own diary.

Here is the link:  http://www.tungle.me

There is one negative I have to point out though.  The Tungle confirmation emails have occasionally got caught up in client’s spam filters.  So it is worth confirming the time yourself, too (I only needed to get caught out once when a client hadn’t expected my call, even though I had confirmed it via Tungle.  As it got stuck in her spam filters, she hadn’t realised I was able to confirm a time and thought I had ignored her suggestions!)

Let me know what you think.

(Quick note – I have no affiliation or business interest in this tool.  Just wanted to share something with you that works for me)

SocialToo, a useful management tool for your social media accounts, has just announced on its blog that Twitter has requested they take away the auto-unfollowing feature.

Up until now, SocialToo subscribers could set their Twitter account to automatically unfollow people when they unfollowed you.   Sounds like an efficient way of managing an account, doesn’t it?

On the SocialToo blog they say they added this feature because “when I auto-follow, some times later on those people unfollow you again”.  The point being that as Twitter has set out a ratio to ensure you are only follow people in proportion to the number of people who follow you back, it allows you, the Twitter user, to keep adding more followers who keep following you, and dump the ones who don’t.

Doesn’t that mean that you are only in Twitter for the follower numbers? 

My take on follower numbers is that they are nothing more than Emporer’s Clothing if you are using Twitter to help promote your brand online.

Yes, the number of followers is a useful indicator of how “popular” you may be and give you one measurement of how “popular” you may become over time, but just because someone follows you, doesn’t mean that they read or act on your tweets.

Tools like auto-unfollow are incredibly useful for those of you who just want to focus on numbers but for most of you reading this, I assume you like to use Twitter like I do – follow people who interest you, engage with you and you learn from.  And not follow people just because they are following you or you want them to follow you back.

Noise is not helpful in your day-to-day lives.  But conversation and engagement is.

Which is why I think it is very interesting that Twitter itself has taken a stand against auto-unfollows and asked third party applications, like SocialToo, to remove it.

What do you think?

There is an awful lot of advice out there (me included!) that talk about automating Twitter; talk about being able to schedule your tweets using devices such as TweetLater; talk about automatically updating your Facebook postings with Twitter.  All of which save you time to be able to spend so that your marketing is working more effectively for you.

But doesn’t this automation actually go against what Twitter is all about?  Twitter to be used as a conversation tool?

During the proactive times of my business, I schedule my tweets on a Monday morning, using a system like Tweetlater.

One of these scheduled tweets  a couple of weeks ago, included this recommendation as a tip and somebody came back to me with a tweet “Yes, but this automation is all very well, but isn’t Twitter about conversation and not automation?”

Great point!  Being totally automated on Twitter is extreme and I wouldn’t recommend it.

But by automating some of your tweets throughout the day and week, these can actually help generate your conversation.

You can’t be on Twitter 24 hours a day; you’ll go mad!  And you would probably drive your business to the ground.

But by having certain tweets giving out tips and information when you are not actually live on Twitter can actually help people respond back to you and start a conversation.  When you do log back in to Twitter, you can respond back and have that two-way conversation.

So is Twitter about automation or about conversation?

It is about both.  You need to automate some aspects of Twitter to be able to remain sane, to be able to develop it and drive it forward as a marketing tool for your business.  But if you automate too much it becomes lose the power because Twitter is about conversation, it is about replying and about building relationships.

Your thoughts and opinions: How much do you automate on Twitter? Or do you use Twitter for real-time tweets only?  Leave your comments in the comments box below.

When you go looking for something on the web, the first place you probably go to is good old Google.  Whether you want to find an answer to a burning question, a local website designer or the best cleaning product for that red wine stain on your carpet, Google tends to be the first point of call.

But have you ever used Twitter search?

Whether you use twitter or not, there is no doubt that Twitter is being used by millions of people across the world today tweeting about everything from what they had for lunch today to what their latest business tip are.

Those 140 character text-like webpages are being published by their thousands, every second of every day, giving anyone who wants to know the very latest thoughts, links and ideas of every conceivable topic you could think of.

But what does that mean to you?  How does all this information have an impact on you and your business?

What all this information means is an up to the second account of what is being said about, gossipped about, moaned about and raved about the very topic of what you are basing your business on. 

Let me give you an example:  A nutritional therapist specialises in helping people eat more healthily so they can lose weight and feel slimmer.  This person wants to put together a group coaching programme to help ladies get in to shape before their summer holidays [yup, you know what I mean don't you, ladies - that thought of getting in to a bikini can send shudders down your spine, can't it!!]. But before the programme gets put together and launched, the nutritional therapist needs to do a bit of market research to make sure the right content is included and there are potential clients who would buy this programme.

One easy and simple way of finding out what people are talking about right here and now is to go to http://search.twitter.com/ and type in a key word or key phrase relating to what you want to find more about. 

For this particular nutritional therapist, they could try a range of phrases such as “fat day” or “lose weight + holiday” [you can see the results for this phrase here: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=lose+weight+%2B+holiday ]

So, don’t just rely on Google for the latest search results – especially as Google only shows what has been indexed by Google, rather than what is actually published on the internet – check out what people are tweeting about.

Do you use Outlook to manage your emails?  If so then you may be interested in knowing about a little tool called Xobni. 

It’s free to download and was created to manage your outbox far more effectively through speedy searches and giving you the ability to track email conversations on one page.

But what really floats my boat about Xobni is it’s interaction with Facebook and LinkedIn.  With each new email, the person’s profile shows up on the right hand side of your screen and you have the ability to click directly through to their facebook and linkedin account. 

Why is this pretty cool for your business?  Rather than spending your time randomly connecting with people in each of these sites, why not connect with people you already know?  It’s a great way of building your online network quickly and easily.

Why go out searching for new friends when you probably have plenty to connect with right on your very doorstep!  You can find out more about this cool tool at www.xobni.com