January 28, 2010 – 10:46 pm
There are countless ways to share and collaborate on documents online. However, many of us still need to email files, and why not, it’s quick and easy. Usually. The problems start when you try to email things like presentations or documents containing images which can be huge.
Try out www.yousendit.com which allows you to send files of up to 100mb for free. This can be done from the homepage with no need to sign up, it’s super quick and easy. Recipients then receive an email from You Send It giving them a link from which to download the file. It’s perfect for occasional use.
If you regularly send large files then you might want to consider subscribing, there are various levels of subscription with added benefits which allow you to send files of up to 2gb to multiple recipients, track who has downloaded the file, etc, etc. There are also additional security features such as delivery receipts, certified delivery and password protection all of which can be used on a pay as you go basis.
It’s a good service which offers flexible pricing – definitely worth checking out.
Other similar services include www.dropsend.com or www.sizablesend.com. There are plenty of others out there and they all offer a certain amount of free file sending (usually with size limits).
January 27, 2010 – 10:52 pm
People often ask what sort of tools we use for working virtually. As I spend most of my waking time online (yes, it’s sad I know, I should be out in the fresh air running or something) I’ve built up a reasonable list in the last few years. These are my top five tools at the moment.
1. Google Calendars – Yep, it’s an oldie but a goodie. Google calendars are really versatile, so easy to use and they seem to do just about everything you want to do with them. You can access them from anywhere with an internet connection, send out invites, share your calendar, schedule recurring events, get a countdown time to your next meeting, get SMS and email reminders for events.
2. www.smartsheet.com – When we started using this site it took a while for me to get into it. Now it seems that every time a new project comes up I think “ah, we could do that with a smartsheet”. It allows you to create and share online spreadsheets that are so flexible you can use them for just about anything. We use them to keep track of tasks and projects amongst ourselves and also with clients. They completely take away the need for endless emails back and forth with attachments. Anybody who is able to view the sheets can instantly see what the status of tasks is and you get an email notification when any updates are made so you don’t miss what other people are doing.
3. www.timeiq.com – We used to each have a desktop timer for recording time on client projects. It used to mean that at the end of the month I would have to get everyone’s timesheet and waste time collating into one report for clients. With Time IQ we keep all our timesheets online so it doesn’t matter if we are working on our desktops or our laptops we can still record our time as we work. When it comes to the end of month reports it’s a 2 click process to pull together all the info I need to bill clients. It’s not free but it’s low cost and the time it has saved me is more than worth it.
4. www.dropbox.com – This is a great file sharing tool, it’s so convenient to sync and share files and you get up to 2gb of online storage free.
5. www.popfax.com – I rarely need to send or receive faxes, probably once every 2 or 3 months. so it doesn’t make sense to have a fax machine cluttering up my office. I use this service which provides an online fax number with a geographical prefix. People can fax from a regular machine to your number and it just ends up as a PDF in your inbox. You can also fax documents straight from your PC to any fax number.
January 22, 2010 – 5:47 am
A recent study by the Alliance and Leicester indicated that 33% of small business owners are working more than 50 hours a week and 15% over 65 hours a week. It’s confirmation, if you need it , that running your own business is very hard work. But if you’re working 65 hours a week on an ongoing basis, you have to ask yourself – why? Is it simply because there is so much work to be done? Or because your business is undergoing an incredible growth phase? Or is it because you can’t quite bring yourself to delegate as much as you should? If the answer to any of these three is yes, then you might be able to find a more sustainable work pattern by either delegating more if you have staff, or outsourcing some of the things that are taking up your time. Most business owners find it hard to let go of things but the reality is that if you want your business to succeed you simply can’t do everything yourself.
So if you’re slogging away putting in a 12 hour day everyday, then take half an hour out to list some of those tasks that are taking up your time. Then take a look at the list and consider what you could realistically have someone else do for you. It might not be easy starting to delegate, but start small and build up some trust with those carrying out the work for you and you should gradually find that you feel more comfortable handing over tasks or projects.
December 7, 2009 – 9:43 pm
I’m a huge fan of Google and gradually it seems to be taking over my working day, rather than logging straight into Outlook in the mornings, I’m logging straight into my Google account. Here I check my own and client calendars, check my emails, create maps to go with client itineraries, get distracted, etc. Now I’ve started using Google Reader as well and it’s great.
Go to www.google.com, click on ‘Reader’ and get started. All you need to do is subscribe to content updates, or ‘feeds’. To do this click on the ‘Add Subscriptions’ icon on the top left of the screen and type in the url of the site you want to subscribe to. If there is an RSS feed from the site Google will automatically add it to your subscriptions. The other option is to subscribe directly from the site you want to follow by looking for the orange RSS icon. Now instead of browsing the web seeing if there’s anything new on my preferred blogs and sites, I can just log in to my Reader account.
It’s also a great way to store articles that you want to keep or refer to again. If you come across something you really like, just tag it with some appropriate words and then you can quickly find it when you need it.
November 2, 2009 – 9:03 pm
I recently experienced excellent customer service and it amazed me. It’s a sad reflection of today’s wired world that we are all so accustomed to automated responses and shoddy customer service that when we do get served right, it is a unique experience.
This particular experience was unique from beginning to end. I started off only wanting to change my internet provider but ended up switching my home phone service and adding digital T.V. From the time I talked to a real person who actually gave me her name and a guaranteed install date, to the charming individual who came round to do the work, I felt happy to be giving my business to this company.
If you run any kind of business dwell on this – the customer may not always be right but customer service should always be done right. It’s not just about the service you provide and the price point, it’s increasingly about the approach and attitude of your staff. So forget the vision statements and lofty goals; if people are giving you money to do something for them do it nicely and make them happy about handing over their cash.
November 1, 2009 – 9:21 pm
I’m a big user of Skype, despite it’s many detractors I find it’s pretty good for the majority of my outgoing calls and I love the IM facility on it as well. So I’m always delighted to find nice little extras to go with it. Recently, I’ve needed to record a couple of phone calls and I found this little add on www.pamcorder.com which records Skype calls of up to 15 minutes duration for free. Download it onto your desktop and from there it’s super simple to use.
October 29, 2009 – 9:35 pm
I often find that the wonderful world of the web can be far too distracting. You know how it is, you make a quick visit to the BBC site to catch up on the news and the next thing you know it’s midday and you’re reading about how starfish control their body temperature (they pump up with cold sea water before exposing themselves to the sun). Like all good procrastinators I also find that I like to do this sort of displacement reading when I have something unpleasant to do, like my VAT return.
So in an effort to be more productive, I’ve taken to the Pomodoro technique, which is basically the concept of working in short 25 minute focused sessions. I find it works really well and you can get a tremendous amount done in what seems a relatively short amount of time. You can find out more about this at www.pomodorotechnique.com .
If you’re not so keen on this idea but would like to know if you are wasting time online, there are plenty of ways to find out. I like Manic Time which just
tracks the active windows on your PC and gives you a detailed breakdown of where your day has gone. It can make interesting reading.
October 29, 2009 – 9:28 pm
The Royal Mail strikes have been causing havoc recently for small businesses. All very annoying. However, it’s a good opportunity to look at your processes and see if you could do more things online and dispense with the physical paper.
I’m convinced the physical bill that arrives in the post is fast becoming a thing of the past. Most businesses now offer the option of electronic billing and payment can be made via internet banking. Much easier than writing out cheques, putting them in envelopes, sticking on stamps. If you’re still receiving paper bills and paying with cheques, perhaps it’s time to review your procedures. Likewise with your outgoing invoices. Most clients would probably be more than happy to receive invoices by email and you would save money on postage costs.
Businesses that don’t start bringing their payment procedures into the digital age will soon be forced to do so anyway. The Inland Revenue are phasing out paper VAT returns and payments starting in 2010.
It’s a no brainer right? If you’ve got a small business website then you probably have a contact form on it. It makes it easy for prospective clients to get in touch and if they’re browsing your site already the chances are they are interested in your services.
All sounds good so far, qualified leads coming right to an email inbox of your choice from your website contact form. Great. That is, of course, as long as you remember to actually check that inbox. I say this because in the last few weeks I’ve contacted no less than six smallish businesses via their contact form to enquire about services I’m interested in. I like using web contact forms – they’re quick, easy and I often don’t want to go to the hassle of picking up the phone and calling their offices and getting put through to their sales department, etc. However, out of those six enquiries I’ve had one response. That was to say they no longer provide the service they have advertised on their website. So that was a good waste of their time and mine.
I was really surprised by the lack of responses, why on earth would a business leave enquiries unanswered? Especially in these tricky financial times. Are they not checking their emails? Do they have the enquiries set up to go to some unmanned email inbox? Or are they just doing so well they don’t need my business? Your guess is as good as mine. I don’t think it’s the last option as in fact two of the companies I was contacting were fairly large estate agent firms – you’d think they’d be desperate for the business at the moment. It seems not.
At One Hour PA any enquiries come straight into my inbox, so I don’t have to check anywhere else. Occasionally one will go astray into junk mail, but by enlarge I’m confident we respond to all the enquiries we get. (Except of course those ones where people want us to help them transfer millions of US dollars from the account of a high ranking government official in some never heard of country – honestly, are people still falling for this junk?).
So, if you haven’t had an enquiry via your website contact form lately, you might just want to make sure that you know where those enquiries get sent and that someone is actually checking them.
As I’ve said before – we love Google calendars! For a free online calendar it really takes some beating. Here are five great things you can do with it:
1. Invite attendees and let Google keep track of responses. When you create an event in Google calendar on the right hand side of the screen you’ll see the option ‘Add Guests’, click on this and it’ll take you to a box where you can type in the email addresses of those you wish to invite to your event. This can be anyone you have an email address for, it doesn’t have to be just other Google account users. Click ’save’ and Google will prompt you to send out the invitations. It’s as simple as that. Invitees then receive a neat looking invitation with the option to decline or accept. They can also submit an accompanying message if they wish and there’s a specific option to add any companions. So if they are coming +1, they can let you know this. Google will then add the +1 into your total event numbers. To check on your running total of attendees just click on the event description in your Google calendar and all the details will come up. Who has responded, who is still outstanding, who is coming with a companion, who has declined, your total number of confirmed guests, etc. It takes a lot of the headache out of organising events and large meetings.
2. Set up reminders. If you’re the forgetful type you can automatically set up Google calendar to send you reminders before upcoming appointments. To set this up click on the ‘Settings’ tab when you’re in your Google calendar account. From here click on the ‘Calendars’ tab and you will see the notifications section. Just follow the steps on screen and Google will then send you reminders of your upcoming events to your mobile. You can choose to receive 10 hours or 10 minutes before the event, it’s up to you.
3. Create a task list. You can now create different tasks and list in Google calendar. Just click on ‘Tasks’ on the left hand side of your calendar and it’ll expand the task list window on the right hand side. You can create different lists of tasks, e.g. personal and business. If you choose a due date for your task it will also show up in the calendar header on the correct day. It’s simple, as a good task list should be. You don’t want to spend so much time categorising your task lists that you don’t have time to do any tasks.
4. View different time zones. If you do a lot of business overseas then a really handy way to keep the time difference visible in your calendar is to go into ‘Settings’ and simply add your additional time zone. These will then display side by side on the left hand side of your calendar.
5. Share your calendar. This is really easy to do and very handy for teams. Just click on the ’settings’ tab on your calendar homepage. This will give you the option to ‘Share this calendar’ click on here and you will need to enter the email address of those people you wish to share your calendar with. You can also choose whether you give them full access and the ability to edit your calendar, or whether you want them simply to be able to view. You can even just let them see when you are busy but hide the details of the exact event. So you can choose different, appropriate levels of access for those you want to share with.
Of course if this all sounds very good but you just don’t have the time to get your Google calendar set up. Well, One Hour PA can probably help you with that!
|
