For example one day I was standing at a graveyard ceremony during a funeral and my cellphone started ringing. Fortunately it was a ring, and not one of those musical ring tones. I had thought I had turned it off before entering the funeral home, which is what I would normally have done. I obviously hadn’t. The phone ringing at that place and time was one of my most embarrassing moments.

There needs to be some cellphone etiquette. There are places where you really should turn the cellphone off, such as when you are attending a funeral or going to church. Do you really need to have your ringing or vibrating phone while you are trying to woo a prospective client?

And there are those places where you should have the phone on vibrate, which in my mind is almost anytime that you aren’t either in your own home or office.

There are places where you really don’t need to be talking on the phone, such as in a movie theatre or even at a table in a restaurant. There’s usually a lobby area where you can take an important call. Although at times I do wonder how important that call may be. It seems as if no one any more can make a decision and anything without picking up a cell phone and placing a call. “Honey, I’m at the grocery store and would you rather me get beans instead of tomatoes, the tomatoes don’t look very good.”

How many have turned to the fellow next to you, who you thought might have been asking you a question, only to discover he is deep in conversation on his cell phone.

I guess the one good thing is now if you are walking down the street talking to yourself, people will think you are just on the phone.

Let’s look at some of the common terms:

Tweep:
This is a user of the network. As soon as you create an account you are a tweep and those who you follow are also tweeps.

Follow:
When you sign on to receive messages from people, you follow them. You also want tweeps to follow you.

Followers:
These are the people who are following you and want to hear what you have to say. Followers can be picky, since some don’t care what you say, while others are very interested and don’t care about mundane stuff. Followers can and probably will come and go. Followers are one way. You can follow a tweep, but that doesn’t mean they follow you. They have to follow you.

Tweet:
These are the messages you put onto the site for you followers to read, Messages are a maximum of 140 characters.

@(UserName)
This is used in a tweet when referencing another user. By doing this you create a like to that user that is clickable by your followers. Friends and business associates will often do this to help increase traffic to each other.

RT
Let’s say you see something from someone you are following that you think would be of interest to your followers. This is called a retweet, or rt.

DM
Direct Message. Use this to send a message to another user that only that person can see.

FF
Lately I have been seeing this on Fridays and I have just discovered that it means Follow Friday. Followers will post on Fridays and tag their friends and associates. This is used as a way to recommend others as a large referral mechanism. Usage is FF@(UserName).

#(term)
This is called a hashtag and has been used as a way to identify a certain topic and be able to quickly follow associated messages by inserting the # in front of the term or word or phrase (if no spaces are used).

Take a look at twitter and decide whether you want to make it a part of your Social Media Marketing Plan. With this you now have a bit more understanding of the site.

This site can be followed at twitter.com/SMBTechTips and I can be followed at twitter.com/SteveGAtkinson

How recent have you done one of these? Or do one before the end of the year?

Email:
Use Reply All when intending reply only to the sender.

Send a list of email address embedded within the body of the message to someone who may be collecting addresses. Or send a private email address to a person that the address owner would rather not have it known.

Send an email referencing an attachment, without adding the attachment.

Be reminded that the attachment was not attached by a person who you are trying to impress.

Telephone:
Think that the telephone is muted and say something you don’t want the other party to hear. Or say something inappropriate.

Accidentally conference two parties together.

Erase a voice mail message that holds important information, more than likely it’ll be important contact information.

Start leaving a voice mail message to someone only to discover you are actually talking with the person.

Leave a message or adding to the message on someone’s voice mail thinking that you have been disconnected, but not.

Energy:
Turn the lights on in the supply room, forget to turn it off only to find that it was left on for the entire weekend. Worst a long weekend.

Wonder why the office is cold, use a space heater only to find that the thermostat was blocked from getting room air.

Cellphone
Forget to turn the ringer off on the cellphone before entering an important meeting and then have the phone ring. Worst case, heading a meeting and requesting that everyone silent theirs only to have yours ring.

Forget where you are while talking on the phone and talk about important or private information where others can hear.

Stop in mid conversation with someone to answer your cellphone without an apology.

Have a person respond to something you said while talking to the cellphone. Or respond to another person who is on their phone.

While there’s not a way to completely eliminate any of these things from occurring, by taking a second to think and not rushing can help.

If you needed to ask a question of your supervisor, you dropped a dime or a quarter or two into a payphone and called the office, hoping they would be at their desk. If they weren’t, you made the decision yourself and moved along. If you were good you already knew the answer even before asking the question.

As time passed communications got easier and for the roaming employee more like a leash. First there were the one way pager. You received a message to call a telephone number and off you went to find a phone to return the call.

For a short period of time, the same time as mobile communications, the car phone, was developing there were 2 way pagers. You could receive a message, in 2 way paging it was usually a text question and you could returned an answer with one of the pre-programmed messages. 2 way pagers were much cheaper and more reliable than a mobile cell phone.

Mobile phones first were in the car and then in a portable device that resembled a brick. And as we progress in technology, instant communications became easier.

But it seems to me that at times as communications became more instant, people became less able to decide something without having another opinion. It developed not only in the work arena but also at home. Many times I have heard a husband or a wife call the other partner while in a grocery store asking whether a substitution was acceptable.

Decisions are made as a team or by the supervisor. Original thinking by a lower level employee was no longer commendable, but became insubordination even in middle and lower upper management.

One would think that with instant communications issues can be resolved quicker and with a better outcome. However, at times I wonder if with instant communications it takes longer and the decision may not be the correct one. The farther the decision maker is from the situation, the less that person considers the personal customer service aspect of the decision.

So I will ask.

Is Instant Communications Good or Bad?

What is your opinion?

2) Content is the most important element in a website.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is an ever changing environment and no one other than those developing the Search Engines know the formula to getting to the top. There are basic steps to making a Web site friendly to search engines such as adding description and some key words to meta tags and giving each page an accurate title based on this. Having the correct content is key. Content is text since Search Engines do not see text within graphics.

3) Keep your website up-to-date.
Nothing will turn off a viewer more than a Web site that has old and out dated information. Making changes to your Web site not only gives returning visitors a reason to come back, it gives Search Engines a reason review your pages.

4) Expensive doesn’t make it good.
Every Web site developer has their own idea of what makes a good site. Some think that the flasher the better while others may think a plain black on white site is good enough. Your Web site is part of your company image and should relate that image to the visitors.

5) A Web site is part of the Marketing Plan.
Do you have marketing materials? It’s not a bad idea to base a site on these materials so that you have a common visual element to your customers. If a potential client has a piece of printed advertising and the Web site is vastly different than the printed material, that possible customer may think they’ve gone to some one else. When printed materials have a drastic change it’s also time to change the Web site.

6) They will not come unless they know about it.
Too many times businesses will create a Web site and then let it sit idle. Place the Web address in all marketing materials including the business card, the invoice, letter head and envelopes.

Auto Attendant
Many businesses uses these. They are without an doubt a cost saver. A business doesn’t have to have a call taking receptionist. Just let the automatic voice answer the telephone and with a short menu of command they are directed to where they need to go.

However many businesses have Auto Attendants that are useless or just confusing to the caller. After listening to the commands was that 1 for John at Sales? Or maybe it was 2. Or I was looking to reach Jane and she’s not mentioned. That’s because she has replaced John, but the Auto Attendant was not changed.

Or after the list of items were given, but none of the options seem to be the one the caller wants.

And then there’s the problem when each and every item takes the caller to another menu or a Voice Mail Box.

Voice Mail
It has become a to common practice for some people to always have Voice Mail answer their calls. Or to give their caller no idea on when they may be receiving the Voice Mail and having their call returned. I’m sure many of us have place a call to a person, leave a message, or two or a dozen only to discover two weeks later that they had just started their two weeks vacation.

Some of these problems can be resolved simply by using common sense. Answer the telephone with a real person who can make a quick decision on the right place to direct the caller. If an Auto Attendant is necessary, check its options and correctness. Always check after any type of office change.

Change the Voice Mail greeting as often as needed. For some people that may only be a few times during the year. An office worker who is at the desk just about every day and the call only rarely goes to Voice Mail and when it does the call is returned within the hours, may only need to change it when they are on leave.

Others may need to change it a few times during the day.

Then again the business can, and really should have a Telephone Usage Policy that is in place and followed by all.

Do you …
Use the same password?
Many of us create one password and use it everywhere. Once the password is discovered by a scammer/hacker then it can be used.

Have personal information as part of your password?
Many of us use our children or pet names or other personal information as part of the password. A hacker can and will be able to discover this information and use it to decode the password.

Use a real word?
There are software programs that can go through everyword in the dictionary until the the right password is discovered.

Write the password down and keep it close to the computer?
Yes, it’s not a good idea, but we all seem to do it.

Password Best Practices
Since many places allow passwords that are case sensitive, use both upper and lower case letters in the password. such as: PaSSworD – Note never use password, or common sequence of letters (abcdef) or numbers (12345) as a password. Those are the most common ones.

Have special characters and/or numbers as part of the password.

Use initials of a phrase that is easy to remember.

Use different passwords for everything.

Marketers are coming out of the woodwork telling you which Social Media platform SMB’s should use as well as how you should be using them.

We are in a quick changing world. Everyday there seems to be something new or a change in the old ways. Social Media is one of these quick changing items. Spending the time to understand, learn and use Social Media may just not be practical. Not worth the investment. And that’s alright.

With traditional media, whether it’s print, TV, Radio or others, most of the time is place up front. Putting together the advertising program and preparing the copy. Once it’s out there, it can run unchanged for as long as you want.

Social Media is mostly real time. It can not stay stagnant. One thing you can not do is open an account of one of the Social Media sites, put together a page and expect people to visit it. They probably won’t and if left alone, those who have visited will stop coming back.

Opening an account is just the first step in a long process. But just like any other trip once you open the door and take your first step, you must know where you are heading and how you plan on getting there.

Plan on spending some time on the site everyday, and during a time when those who are interested in your message are there to hear it. Remember Social Media is mostly real time. And give them information they want to hear. Slamming them constantly with a ‘buy this’ message will probably do one thing. Drive them away.

There are many Social Networking sites available. It will probably be a waste of time to try to work them all. So you need to be a little prep work to decide which one, if any, is the one for you.

Knowing your market and what they will tolerate will direct you in how to use Social Media. Each of the sites are different and have a different type of follower.

Gearing towards the teen market?
In general they don’t twitter, nor are they a big user of Facebook. Their social media seems to be more in the direction of one-to-one text messaging, YouTube and to a lesser degree MySpace.

Gearing towards the aging market?
Facebook is reported to have on average over 50 percent of their new members being over the age of 50. Many of these new members are women.

Looking for Business to Business contacts?
LinkedIn is used by business professionals from around the world.

A friend of mine, Michael Angelo Caruso a Personal Development speaker, has termed Facebook as the new White Pages and LinkedIn as the new Yellow Pages. I’m not sure I totally agree with him. Facebook may be turning into the new White Pages, but I see LinkedIn more as the new Business-to-Business Yellow Pages. Facebook Pages seem, to me, to be closer to the new Yellow Pages.

This is the first on a series of articles on Social Media.

I firmly believe that Business E-mails should be treated exactly like a business letter, following the same format. Although I will admit that not all emails sent to business associates are business emails. The majority of these Pet Peeves are in these non-business e-mails.

Here are a few of my E-mail Pet Peeves:
• Forwarded e-mail from friends, relatives or busness associates passing along jokes and false or misleading information.

• Forwarded e-mails that have been forwarded multiple times showing the email addresses of all of those that it had been forwarded to.

• Receiving an answer to a question either through a new email or by reply without the question.

• Being BCC: on an e-mail without clear indication that the email was sent to someone else.

• Being part of the To: line when in reality the e-mail was CC:ed to you.

A simple email Signature will have your Name, Title and Company name such as;

Steven G. Atkinson
Owner/Chief Consultant, E/S Technology Consulting

But it should have a lot more. Let people know how to get in touch with you. Put your telephone number on it so they can give you a call. You could also add your mailing address as well.

But you can go further. If you have a website and all businesses should have a website, add it too. While we are talking about having a website, your email address should have your business identity and not a generic one such as @yahoo.com, @gmail.com or @aol.com. A customer who has a question may feel more at ease sending it to @YourBusiness.com than one of those listed.

Now adding your telephone number and website to the email signature it looks like this;

Steven G. Atkinson
Owner/Chief Consultant, E/S Technology Consulting
443 480-4999
www.estechnologyconsulting.com

To make your web address clickable in many email programs, simply add http:// to the beginning of it.

But there is actually more that you can add to the signature. You can use your signature as a way to promote a special, a new product or service.

My usual eMail signature looks like this;

Steven G. Atkinson
Owner/Chief Consultant, E/S Technology Consulting
443 480-4999
http://www.estechnologyconsulting.com

SMB Technology Tips – http://smbtechnolgytips.com

While you are at it, why not add your twitter page. Don’t have a twitter pager or wondering what is twitter? Twitter is a Social Media site that is gaining ground within the business community. It’s becoming a way to instantly contact those with who you do business.

Follow me on Twitter at Twitter.com/sgatkinson

Or this site at:
Follow me on Twitter at Twitter.com/smbtechtips

Now whenever you send a email your are promoting your business in a friendly, inexpensive and professional manner.

© Steven G. Atkinson – All Rights Reserved