Communicate!

Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

Remember Me? (Free Tools to Help You Track Relationships)

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When you’re building relationships with donors, clients, customers, or business partners, a good memory helps.  But research shows that we can only really keep track of 150 relationships on our own.  Beyond that, we need tools.

You can turn tools you have, right there on your desktop or on the web, into your relationship management system.  All it takes is time.

Microsoft Outlook

You probably already know you can store addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, web page URL’s, and the company and job title of each person you know in Microsoft Outlook.  But did you ever:

  • Use the Search function to find all the people in your Contacts who work at a particular company, or who have a specific title, or whose email address ends with @NameOfTheirOrganization?
  • Add photos so that you recognize them on sight?
  • Use the notes section to store research you did on them?
  • Check your email to and from that person to remind you what you talked about last?
  • Search the Calendar to see when you met with them last?
  • Use the Tasks section of Outlook to remind yourself to talk with them again, or send them something, or do something for them, by a certain date?

Google

If you live in the Googleverse, you can do a lot of the same things that an Outlook user can do, and more.

  • Aside from the usual Contacts information, you can record birthdays, nicknames, how their name is pronounced, and the names of their spouses, children, and other relationships–including the name of the person who referred you to them.
  • Instantly see whether you are on Google+ together, and the Circles to which you have assigned them.  Easily click over to Google+ to see what they’ve posted there.
  • Follow people’s YouTube channels if they have them.
  • Set up a Google search for that person’s name so that anything that appears on the web about them will show up in your Gmail box.
  • Easily share documents with that person without worrying about whether the email bounced, using Google Drive.

LinkedIn

On LinkedIn, other people do a lot of your work for you.  If you connect with me on LinkedIn, you will find not only my contact information but my Twitter handle and my website information, too.

I put those up.  I also posted:

  • Summary of who I am and what I do
  • Experience
  • Projects I have worked on (with links to the end results, and the names of people who worked on them with me)
  • Professional courses I have taken
  • Languages I speak
  • Skills & expertise
  • Honors & awards
  • Education
  • Interests
  • Organizations

People have recommended me, and I have recommended them, and both types of recommendations are right there on my profile.  LinkedIn will also show you the LinkedIn groups I belong to, the people I follow, and the people who have connected with me.  Now you know more about me than my mother does!

But how am I related to you?  Next to the Contact Info tab on my profile is a tab marked Relationship.  There, you can write notes about me,  set your self a reminder in relation to me, write down how we met and who introduced us.

Use whichever of these tools feels most natural to you, and you’ll never have to wonder again.

5 Ways Google Apps Can Benefit Your Company

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by Rebecca Thompson, CLR Virtual Connection

Google Apps are a full suite of applications that reduce IT costs for businesses and nonprofits. Hardware and software costs are expensive, especially when you’re first starting out. IT costs can drain a business’ start-up revenue or a nonprofit’s slim reserve, so here are five ways Google Apps can benefit you.

One Free Email Alias 

Just started a website and don’t have an email server? If you have a virtual private server (VPS)–meaning that someone else is hosting your website on their own server in a space dedicated just to you–but you don’t have email service for the website, Google Apps provide an answer. 

You can use Gmail as an email alias for your domain, having email forwarded from your domain (www.yourcompany.com) to a Gmail address. Users see your domain as the sender and receiver, but the email is actually managed by Gmail. Using Gmail makes it much simpler and cheaper to host an email server for your new business or cash-strapped nonprofit.

Google Docs for Office Files

Most companies need a way to create word processing documents and spreadsheets. Software such as Microsoft Office is expensive. Google has the Docs application that lets you create documents “in the cloud” instead of on your own computer hard drive.  How will this help you?

  • You can use these applications with any operating system including Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac or Linux.
  • You can store these documents on your Google Drive. That make it easy to share the documents with other Google users.

Keep Appointments with Google Calendar

Gmail and Google Calendar work together to ensure you keep your appointments. Google users can send appointment requests or notifications to your Gmail, and you can save those appointments to your calendar directly from the Gmail notification. When the event is about to happen, you will receive a reminder in your email inbox. You can also connect Gmail to your smartphone, so you receive reminders even away from your desktop.

Create a Quick Website with Google Sites

Google Sites is a web solution for people who aren’t familiar with website coding. Google Sites includes a website creator that makes it easy to set up a web presence online. You can incorporate your Google account into Google Sites, so you always have access to edit your website, even from a smartphone or tablet.

Google Drive

Google Drive is one of the latest Google Apps. Google Drive is cloud storage, and it works directly with your Google account to save and share documents.

You can also use Google Drive for collaboration. When you need to share a document and get feedback from clients, share the document with the client and allow him or her to make edits. These edits are saved in the cloud, so you don’t have to worry about tracking changes. You can also share these documents with others, and distribute them on the web without any extra installed software.

And More

For more complex Google Apps integrations, you need a programmer. Google Apps has many API applications you can use to integrate Google software with your internal software. This includes Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics and Gmail. Use these open applications to give your business a competitive edge or customize reports and software to work with your nonprofit funders’ requirements.

Rebecca Thompson

Rebecca Thompson

About the author:

Rebecca Thompson is the Social Media Strategist at CLR Virtual Connection.

She started her business so that she could combine her administrative skills with her love of social media to help her clients proactively manage the social presence of their business.

Know Your Audience Better, On a Budget

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“What’s that guy’s name again?”

“Where does that woman work?”

“When did we last speak?”

When you’re building relationships with donors, clients, customers, or business partners, a good memory helps.  But research shows that we can only really keep track of 150 relationships on our own.  Beyond that, we need tools.

You can spend tens of thousands of dollars on a really sophisticated customer relationship management system.  (Well, you can if you have the money.)  But suppose you’re a grassroots nonprofit organization with a limited budget.  How do you keep track of all the people you want as your supporters?

Use Tools You Already Have, For Free

You can turn tools you have, right there on your desktop or on the web, into your relationship management system.  All it takes is time.

Microsoft Outlook

You probably already know you can store addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, web page URL’s, and the company and job title of each person you know in Microsoft Outlook.  But did you ever:

  • Use the Search function to find all the people in your Contacts who work at a particular company, or who have a specific title, or whose email address ends with @NameOfTheirOrganization?
  • Add photos so that you recognize them on sight?
  • Use the notes section to store research you did on them?
  • Check your email to and from that person to remind you what you talked about last?
  • Search the Calendar to see when you met with them last?
  • Use the Tasks section of Outlook to remind yourself to talk with them again, or send them something, or do something for them, by a certain date?

Google

If you live in the Googleverse, you can do a lot of the same things that an Outlook user can do, and more.

  • Aside from the usual Contacts information, you can record birthdays, nicknames, how their name is pronounced, and the names of their spouses, children, and other relationships–including the name of the person who referred you to them.
  • Instantly see whether you are on Google+ together, and the Circles to which you have assigned them.  Easily click over to Google+ to see what they’ve posted there.
  • Follow people’s YouTube channels if they have them.
  • Set up a Google search for that person’s name so that anything that appears on the web about them will show up in your Gmail box.
  • Easily share documents with that person without worrying about whether the email bounced, using Google Drive.

LinkedIn

On LinkedIn, other people do a lot of your work for you.  If you connect with me on LinkedIn, you will find not only my contact information but my Twitter handle and my website information, too.

I put those up.  I also posted:

  • Summary of who I am and what I do
  • Experience
  • Projects I have worked on (with links to the end results, and the names of people who worked on them with me)
  • Professional courses I have taken
  • Languages I speak
  • Skills & expertise
  • Honors & awards
  • Education
  • Interests
  • Organizations

People have recommended me, and I have recommended them, and both types of recommendations are right there on my profile.  LinkedIn will also show you the LinkedIn groups I belong to, the people I follow, and the people who have connected with me.  Now you know more about me than my mother does!

But how am I related to you?  Next to the Contact Info tab on my profile is a tab marked Relationship.  There, you can write notes about me,  set your self a reminder in relation to me, write down how we met and who introduced us.

Use whichever of these tools feels most natural to you, and you’ll never have to wonder again.

Spending Money to Save Time

Free is not always the best price.  Using Outlook, Google, or LinkedIn as your CRM takes work.  If you want to send a series of emails to a person over a period of time, it would be a lot easier if you could automate the process.

Idealware has posted an excellent article, “10 Things To Consider in a CRM.”  If you are considering buying software, read the article first.  Then ask yourself: what is it worth to this organization to know everybody the way we know our best supporters?

 

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