{!date dayname+0}, {!date long+0} Dear {!firstname_fix} Well, at long last it has started raining here...! Whoopee...! The grass will start to get greener and I can stop worrying about a hosepipe ban..! It hasn't rained around these parts for over six weeks and the reservoirs are only 80% full. It is only when we start to lose something that we realise how important it is. For instance, the other day I was with a client who had managed to delete all their email contacts from their newsletter list. Gone. Kaput. It was only then he realised how valuable the list was - and it begs the question, how do you backup your online data? Last week I mentioned the need to have backups, but much of our data these days is not in our direct control - it is "in the cloud". So, do you keep your Tweets safe? Or your Facebook contacts? What about all your Gmail contacts? What if it all went belly-up? I use Backupify (se: http://www.backupify.com) which provides 2Gb of storage for things like your Gmail, Facebook and Twitter data - free of charge. It backs everything up and sends you emails with the links to the backups, all automatically. Brilliant.
YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED: How do we keep track of our online work? I was asked this at a meeting I spoke at during the week, when someone said there was so much to do online these days, keeping track of it all is nigh on impossible. After all, they said, there is all the usual work of a business, but now there is content generation, social media, online research and a whole host of additional activities which need doing. It is true there is all this extra work to do and one thing I have discovered is that many people are now reducing their online activity because it leads to higher workloads. But that is precisely the wrong thing to do; as the economy shifts, more and more online activity is going to be essential. If you can't cope now, just imagine what you will need to do in five years time? Five years ago you probably were not using social media. In five years from now you'll be doing things online for your business that you can't even imagine at the moment - AND doing all the existing online stuff AND doing all the "normal" business activity you need to do. So, having some kind of productive system where you keep track of everything - no matter where you are - is going to be essential if your business is to move forward online. No more sticking of heads in sand...! The time has come to do something about it...! Firstly, get yourself an account at Evernote (see: http://www.evernote.com). You can get a free account, but I'd advise paying for a "Premium Account" which allows you many more features at a mere $45 a year. Evernote is what it says - an ever present notebook. But it is more than that. It can capture web pages, it can store audio and you can add to it from a host of devices. It even recognises your handwriting which it then indexes automatically and allows you to search your hand-written notes as a result. Evernote lets you create notebooks for all kinds of categories, to tag your information and sort it and search for it by keyword. It can find words within your PDF files, for instance. In fact, if you just dump everything you ever need into Evernote, you'll be able to find it again no matter what the format is. For instance, I have an Evernote notebook that keeps notes from the books I have read - no more going back through the books themselves to find out the information. I also have a notebook that saves all my downloaded ebooks and white papers. I can then search for a topic and it will find that subject within a range of different downloads. I've got a notebook that stores graphs, charts and data - which I can then copy and paste into other documents as I need them. It is an entire library of my online work. Recently I started using Livescribe (see: http://www.livescribe.com). This is an amazing device which is a combination of a digital pen and an audio recording device. As I take notes the pen records the audio of the meeting; if I am with a client I get a recording of our conversation as I write notes, or if I am at a conference I get a recording of the speaker's talk whilst I jot down reminders of what they say. But - here's the clever bit - the pen knows which bit of audio is associated with which word in the notebook. All I have to do is click on a word and it will replay the relevant part of the conversation to me. And guess what - Livescribe integrates with Evernote meaning that when I have been to any meeting the notes and audio are available via my Evernote notebook which means I can replay the audio or read the notes wherever I want. That's because Evernote is also available in a range of mobile applications - so I can access a host of data at any time, from any place. By using a combination of Evernote and Livescribe I can manage and keep track of my online and offline work all in one place, easily and without it being time consuming. In fact, it saves me time.
WHAT I LEARNED THIS WEEK: Negativity does not help Earlier this week I was running a workshop for a group of family doctors. In the not too distant future the administration of healthcare in the UK will be handed over to consortia of GPs. Not only will they have to run their surgeries, but also they will be responsible for multimillion pound budgets for the commissioning of healthcare services in their area. It is a daunting task for them. But what was interesting was their positive attitude - they all wanted to get on, improve things and seize the opportunity with both hands, in spite of the massive task ahead. It was enlightening that they have felt weighed down for years by the negativity within the health sector itself. Often being told by healthcare administrators not to use the media, to avoid contact with journalists and to keep well away from social networks. The theory from the health department appears to be that it will all lead to chaos if health providers got too close to their clients. Must keep their distance and all that. Yet what was clear from these doctors was that they wanted to increase their closeness, they wanted to shout about the positive work they were doing and to talk about the brilliant successes the health sector provides every day. Maybe at long last, having been told to keep their traps shut for so long, they now have the freedom they clearly wanted for a long time. It just struck me that it is very similar to my work with businesses. Every time I find people in companies who are given the freedom to "go public" and communicate using all the tools and techniques available, what results is an immense outpouring of positivity. It seems that the naysayers and doom mongers within companies are not protecting the firms they seek to help, but are actually damaging things by fostering so much negativity. So, from now on I'm only ever going to be positive in my office - that's just me and the cat, by the way, but you get my drift...!
THIS WEEK'S "MUST BUY": Livescribe Pulse Smartpen
To find out more about this product visit: http://uklik.me/livescribepulse
AND FINALLY: FFrom this week's blog... Email beats Facebook in online marketing Everywhere you look these days there is advice on social media marketing; you can hardly move for all the media coverage of Facebook and Twitter. Indeed, you would think that is all there is to the online world if you had just landed here from another planet. Recent research might make you think otherwise. A study conducted by the social saving company Eversave shows that the second most important reason people use Facebook is to... Read More About why email is better than Facebook: http://uklik.me/ihlRNC
Kind Regards
Graham Jones Web:
grahamjones.co.uk Tel: +44 118 336 9710 If you no longer wish to receive this newsletter than you can delete your name from the mailing list by clicking this link: {!remove_web} Affiliate Links: Some of the links in this newsletter are affiliate links providing me with a small commission when you purchase the item. However, I only use affiliate links for products which I personally value. |
