Can You Really Deliver Customer Service This Great From Your Home Office?
You’re not going to believe how great this solution is for your home office! With the addition of one little plugin to your blog, you now have a closed-loop online customer service system for your business.
The Comments Must Flow
I recently implemented the Disqus system on HomeOfficeWebTools.com to manage and track blog comments, as you can see below this article. Checking the Disqus blog for updates, I posted a reply to a note on the Disqus blog and got a reply within 30 minutes via email from Daniel Ha, addressing my concerns. At 10:30 pm.
The time of day and the response time caught my attention. Excellent customer service, for which I commend both Daniel and Disqus.
The thing that really caught my attention was a little note at the bottom of his email that said,
You may reply to this email to post your response.
Intrigued, I replied to the email, then decided to click the breadcrumb link back to the original comment on the Disqus blog. Lo and behold, guess what I found! That’s right! The entire conversation was posted with threaded comments on the original blog post!
Three things immediately came to mind:
- The method of contact no longer matters.
- The conversation is accessible from both the website and your inbox.
- The comments flow in both directions!
I know that this is just a simple example of RSS in action, but I’ve never seen it packaged so perfectly nor work so seamlessly.
Why This Matters
The point is, using Disqus removes several steps from the process of responding to blog comments, making it that much easier to dialog with your customers and fans. All you have to do is post a note to your blog then let the conversation unfold in the one place you already use as the central hub of your business: email.
Your customer service dialogs become valuable blog content, giving you more fodder for humans and search engines alike.
Bonuses
- You can eliminate your site’s contact form and exclusively use your blog for customer contact.
- Your comments follow you around online, freed from the blog to which you originally replied
- Your Disqus community page generates a link back to your website. Great for search engine rankings!
My existing WordPress comments imported with no difficulty, but your mileage may vary if you have a huge database with thousands of comments and posts to import.
Comments do stay synchronized on Disqus and your WordPress blog, so even if the service goes down, your database is still intact and site visitors can still comment without interruption.
What’s not to like?
What You Need to Do
Take action on this right now. Do not wait to do more research or read other people’s opinions. Click on over to Disqus, create your account and install the plugins or code as directed. Take some time to fill out your profile and tweak the various settings to your liking.
Man, I love technology, and you are going to love the various ways you can now use comments to deliver great customer service.
Subscribe to Home Office Web Tools now for free, automatic updates. -
Tags: customer service system, blogging, business blog, home office
5 Ways to Leverage StumbleUpon for Small Business Owners
If you run a small business, chances are you are too busy managing loose ends to have time to test all the newest social networking sites that have sprung up in the wake of MySpace and YouTube.
Here’s one for you that will help you sift through the barrage of gar-bage websites out there: StumbleUpon.
From the website:
StumbleUpon discovers web sites based on your interests. Whether it’s a web page, photo or video, our personalized recommendation engine learns what you like, and brings you more.
After you register, complete your profile by telling StumbleUpon your interests. Install the StumbleUpon toolbar in either Firefox or (blech) Internet Explorer, and hit the “Stumble!” button. The service will deliver a page in its system that someone with similar interests as you has blessed as good.
The Benefits
In order of increasing value, here are 5 ways you, the small business owner, can leverage this powerful social networking tool to help your business.
- Discover interesting websites, photos, videos, etc as inspiration for blogging or writing topics. As you Stumble! and rate sites, StumbleUpon will learn about your preferences over time and send you more and more relevant content.
- Bookmark your Stumbling history for later perusal. StumbleUpon will keep track of what you like and don’t like, and allow you to drill deeper into topics that interest you. Use this for future reference when writing blog posts.
- Network with resourceful people online. Being that it is a social network, StumbleUpon is great for finding other people who share your passions and can provide solutions to your problems. You can find and follow people whose opinions you have grown to trust.
- Create a resource of useful websites and tools for your clients, patients, or customers. You can provide your constituents value by getting them to become a fan of yours on StumbleUpon and regularly sending them content you think will interest them. Great way to keep yourself relevant to them.
- Promote your own blog or website, increasing your online exposure. You can add your own content to the StumbleUpon database to benefit from some of that social networking mojo. As long as you push your own stuff in proportion to your other Stumbling activity, you can see develop consistent traffic from the service.
More Strategies and Tactics
I’ve been taking a course put together by Caroline Middlebrooke called StumbleRush. It’s a free, multi-part e-course that I recommend you take a look at, because it details several strategies for using StumbleUpon to promote your blog and website online.
In fact, it was Caroline’s gentle guidance that inspired me to experiment with StumbleUpon and sold me on its value to my online marketing efforts.
Take a look at the course, start Stumbling, and let me know how you make out in the comments.
Tags: social networking sites, Caroline Middlebrooke, recommendation engine, internet businessSeries: Google Liberates the (Shared) Home Office, Part 2-Google Calendar
This post is the 2nd in an ongoing series about how web-savvy home office types can free themselves from their businesses one step at a time using Google Apps. Topics I’ll discuss in the series include:
- Read Google Liberates the Home Office, Part 1-Gmail
- Google Calendar to manage scheduled actions and commitments
- Staying current with Google Reader
- Research and note-taking with Google Notebook
- Google Docs as THE alternative to Microsoft Office
Google Calendar is the single most useful tool for any home business owner, and gives specific advantages to husband and wife teams. Here is how I arrived at that opinion.
My wife and I were running 3 separate businesses between us. I also held a part-time job with a wildly varying schedule, which I wrote down on tiny slips of paper and brought home. We were also busy parenting a toddler and a baby.
Needless to say, scheduling our life was just ridiculous!
I used my little slips of paper, she used her Palm Pilot and sometimes iCal on her Mac. Pretty primitive setup, I’ll admit, and it did not allow us to manage our lives in any meaningful way.
We needed a solution that would:
- Show different colors for each individual (and grouping) in the family
- Allow both of us to view and edit the schedule without a bunch of B.S.
- Send reminders when and where we can best use them
- Display the most current version of the ever-changing family/office schedule
Google Calendar Delivers the Goods!
After way too much research into desktop software packages that would satisfy these goals, I decided to give Google Calendar a whirl. And boy, am I glad I did!
Google Calendar has a simple interface that displays all your events with colors assigned to each person or group. Adding an appointment is as easy as clicking any open space on the calendar or using the “Quick Add” feature.
Check.
Sharing a calender with a coworker or partner is simple yet sophisticated. As you create a new calendar, edit the calendar settings and type in the email address of the person with whom you want to share. Make sure you enable “Make changes AND manage sharing” if you trust the other parties. If not, either fire them or set a more appropriate access level from the four options. Your choice.
Share your calendars and set your permissions correctly, and it will be like your personal calendar software is installed on every computer in the world. Access and edit anywhere. I love this!
Double-check.
Of course, what good would your calendar be if you had to constantly remember to look at it? Google Calendar’s killer feature is SMS text reminders so you can relax your mind and focus on taking action in your business.
You can also do this by email, but SMS is the most convenient and useful because it delivers me the reminder wherever I am on a device that I always have on me: my phone.
Triple-check.
And the fourth requirement in the list above—always having the most up-to-date schedule information—is handled readily by the fact that all of this calendar mumbo-jumbo resides on the Internet.
Check. Check. Check. Check. All requirements met!
Google Calender is a robust, convenient solution for any business you run out of your home, and liberates the home office family from a nightmare of schedule management.
So, step two in your journey to liberate yourself from your home office may be to migrate to Google Calendar. You can start here by creating a Google Account. Also take a look at Google’s Getting Started Guide.
Let’s dig deeper!
What is your favorite Google Calendar feature? Let me know in the comments below.
Tags: small business owners, liberate, freedom, google
Command and Conquer Your Home Business Projects with Mind Maps
Probably the biggest challenge with running my own home business is wearing all the hats all the time. I switch constantly from sales guy to marketing guy to writer, videographer, copy editor, strategist…ad nauseum.
Truth is, I can’t do it all, and I can really only do a few things really well.
Maybe you’re in the same boat. Have you started using virtual assistants yet? This blog will eventually dive in to outsourcing at some point, but for now I’m going to suggest that when you are finally ready to hire some virtual assistants to help share your hatload, the following strategy will help you keep it organized.
“Now what was I just doing?”
Managing a print shop, mail room, and fleet of copiers for a busy hospital for almost two years, I interacted with 900 or so people daily. It took me too long to come to grips with the fact that “INTERRUPTION” was the nature of the job. How frustrating!
So I had this idea of creating a personal bookmarking system where I could just push a button to pause what I was working on, switch hats, and pick up from there. Like a “Life Tivo” or something like that. The idea was that I could just hit the chapter marker and resume work as soon as I dealt with the current interruption.
But since I didn’t really know how to hard wire functioning electronics into my cerebral cortex, I fiddle-farted with dozens of tools and techniques that might approximate this idea of personal task bookmarking.
From simple to-do lists to complicated GTD programs, I never found that perfect tool to get me back on track when I derail for one reason or another.
But in my quest to find this über-tool, I started playing with a concept I picked up from Sterling and Jay from Internet Business Mastery. It’s called Mind Mapping, and it will forever change the way you run your home office.
What Mind Mapping Is
A mind map is a simple galaxy-shaped diagram used to display words, ideas, tasks, or other items in branches radiating around a central thought or phrase. You start with a main thought, then hit a shortcut key to create a subtopic branching off from the original. Hit the shortcut key again and add information about that subtopic. You can add unlimited branches and sub-branches to fully develop the main idea, then go back and organize your work via drag-and-drop.
It’s like an outline, only visual.
You can think of mind mapping as a brainstorming tool that visually connects ideas together, showing you how different concepts relate to each other. Ever see a crime movie where the detective is pouring over a chart with pictures, news clippings, notes, etc connected by strings? That’s mind mapping, and it really works to help you solve problems.
But let’s use that illustration as a jumping off point for what we can do with mind mapping. Here’s a short list of what I’m currently using mind maps to accomplish:
- Taking notes during a presentation or online course
- Breaking down tasks into GTD-style next actions
- To-do list and task management
- Writing blog posts
- Project management
And I’m just scratching the surface with this list! Any project that requires me to plan and execute anything will eventually reside within a mind map.
There are several desktop mind mapping applications, including MindJet, FreeMind, and NovaMind, each of which are each fine programs, but two problems make them undesirable:
- Each of the programs is desktop-based rather than online, meaning they are totally useless to you if you are away from your computer. (does that ever happen?)
- They focus so much on whiz-bang tricks you can do to pretty-up your mind map that it is easy to waste time playing instead of just doing what you need to do—outline, plan, organize, and write.
Now, what would HomeOfficeWebTools.com be without an online solution? Contradictory at best, and quite possibly hypocritical!
The best online mind mapping app I’ve found is called Mindmeister. It offers a streamlined feature set geared more towards getting ideas on “paper” as it were, than in beautifying what’s already there.
In fact, I exclusively use Mindmeister for writing content and then sometimes import into NovaMind for polishing. The interface is minimalist (in the good, non-Microsoft Word way), and the keyboard shortcuts work pretty well. Useful Features:
- Remote Brainstorming: Share any mind map with colleagues and collaborate in real-time online.
- Status icons are visual badges you can apply to individual branches for quick reference.
- Export your content in a variety of ways, the most useful of which is PDF. (This feature is only available to paid subscribers, and was the main reason I chose to pay rather than leach.)
- Offline Mode, using Google Gears technology, means I don’t need an Internet connection to continue to do my work. Because of this, I can build my business systems and checklists around mind maps and access them at any time from my desktop.
- “Get Related Info” in the information tab allows me to highlight a word in the map, click on one of three buttons for del.ico.us, wikipedia, or Google, and gives me all sorts of related content to help article research and brainstorming ideas. Awesome!
Introducing the Project Dashboard
Here is where Mindmeister earns its chops—the killer highlights that a home business owner can leverage for organizational bliss! Use these features together to create a self-contained management document that I call the Project Dashboard:
- File Management: You can upload relevant project materials, like MS Word files, PDFs, images of all sorts, Excel spreadsheets, etc, so everything is accessible within a single click
- Clickable Links: You can add live email addresses, URLs, and links to other Mindmeister maps, tying in all resources for your project
- Lightweight Task Management: Assign priority, track task completion, due dates, and delegation from within that document.
- Shared Mind Maps: The final cog is that you can share and edit your maps with anyone across the globe, even if they’re not a Mindmeister user.
Put this all together, and you have a single, entirely self-contained document that tracks your projects, encourages non-linear thinking and brainstorming, and centralizes all the resources for your business or for individual projects. Guess what I’m using to manage virtual assistants and outsourced projects?
You guessed it! The Project Dashboard.
Mind mapping really has changed the way I manage my businesses and my projects, and I know you can benefit by using this valuable tool.
There are indeed some quirks to the system, and we will talk about those at a later date. For now, check out the resources below to further your knowledge about mind mapping, and sign up for an account with Mindmeister.
Once you get the hang of it, you may find the free version anemic—the six-map limit and the inability to export into other formats is limiting. I’m using the Premium package, which costs $49 or so for the year, or roughly $4.00 per month, and I’m getting much more than my money’s worth.
What uses of mind maps have I missed? Have you already done what I’ve suggested here and mind mapped your business?
Let me know in the comments below this post.
(In the interest of transparency, the link to Mindmeister is referral link, so signing up that way will help this blog…and possibly your karma. Enjoy!)
- Check out Sterling and Jay’s video Getting Things Done With Mind Maps from Internet Business Mastery.
- Learn more about mind mapping software at the Mindmapping Software Blog.
Series: Google Liberates the Home Office, Part 1-Gmail
This post is the first in an ongoing series about how web-savvy home office types can free themselves from their businesses one step at a time using Google Apps. Topics I’ll discuss in the series include:
- Using Gmail as the first step towards getting my home office out of my home and accessible anywhere.
- Google Calendar to manage scheduled actions and commitments.
- Staying current with Google Reader
- Research and note-taking with Google Notebook
- Google Docs as THE alternative to Microsoft Office.
So let’s start with Gmail. For years, I held onto my beloved desktop email software: Mail.app on Mac OS X. The usual Apple polish combined with incomparable integration with the computer operating system itself was enough for me to overlook some of the limitations not shared by other programs.
So I kept using Mail.app until I began to be continually frustrated because I couldn’t get to my mail while out of the office. Since my iMac resides comfortably within the confines of my home office, I had to physically be in front of the machine to access my email, and frustration ensued whenever I was out and about.
I did a little dance with Yahoo! Mail several years prior and got burned in a mystical lost-password-lost-email-account situation. It was an endless loop on which I wasted many hours, trying in vain to recover data locked up within Yahoo’s merciless servers.
Enter Gmail.
When Yahoo! trashed my email account, I was just using it as a throwaway email address to sign up for webisites that required such things. I thought Gmail would serve the same purpose, but as I began to use it, several features stood out as quite useable:
- Emails are stored in a conversation-like display by default, meaning I could easily follow ongoing email discussions and refer back to them effortlessly.
- Tons of storage: almost 7 gigabytes of email storage available, growing all the time.
- Integrated instant messaging lets me talk to my friends with Google accounts from within Gmail.
- Amazing spam filtering: I NEVER get spam in my Gmail inbox. Never.
- Google Search built-in: this allows me to search through both emails and archived chats with lightning speed.
So Gmail began to grow on me–very quickly, in fact–so I decided to make the jump to an all-web-based-email. Gmail is my killer web app because it works, simply and elegantly, consistently, and from whatever computer I can put my hands on.
Of course there are some limitations and less-than-desirable interface elements. As a Mac aficionado, I prefer the elegant, aesthetically pleasing interaction with technology that Apple delivers. So the circa-1998, flat, HTML-ish look and feel of Gmail was a little off-putting at first, and seemed out of place in my glass+aluminum polished Apple world.
But what Gmail lacks in elegance and polish, it makes up for with usability. The web app gets out of my way and let’s me do what I need to do. I don’t have to roam around, wondering where in my folder structure I placed that all-important registration email with all the passwords. Now, I can find it faster by searching for it.
A few other things to be aware of:
- As is Google’s usual modus operandi, Adsense ads are served along the right side of the screen, relevant to whatever information is contained within the email. They’re unobtrusive, but they’re there. If this bothers you, a desktop app may be your best bet. I don’t have a problem with it, and some of the ads are actually useful.
- I have some misgivings knowing that Google has indexed my “private” email, but I’m willing to trade that off for the usefulness of Gmail. This is one of those leaps of faith that we all have to take from time to time, and Google’s history of trustworthiness allays my fears to the extent that I can use their fantastic service without any difficulty.
So, step one in your journey to liberate yourself from your home office may be to migrate to Gmail. You can start here by creating a Google Account. Also take a look at Google’s Getting Started Guide, then print out the cheat sheet of Gmail shortcuts.
These actions will take you one step closer to freedom from your home office shackles. Please let me know in the comments how you use Gmail in your day-to-day operations.
Tags: google, virtual home office, home office worker, home business owners