Favorite Phone System Program: RingCentral
February 27, 2006
This is the last in a series in which I’ve discussed favorite software for running my business efficiently. The first post in this series was Favorite Email Add-In: GTD.
Favorite Phone System Program: RingCentral
I have a toll-free business number that serves me and my clients in a number of ways. With clients who are dispersed geographically, I offer the benefit of a nationwide toll-free number. And the number gives me flexibility and my clients the ability to reach me because I use the accompanying software program to forward calls to wherever I am during the business day—to my cell phone when I’m traveling, to another office number when I’m on-site somewhere for a stretch, or to my home phone on days I work from there. I don’t need, therefore, to pay for a separate phone line at the various places that might serve as my office on any given day. With the money I save there, my [tag]toll-free number[/tag] is very cost effective indeed.
I could choose simply to pay for a toll-free number and leave it at that. But these days, for very little cash outlay, I can get an 800 number and a host of companion services that essentially imitate a full-blown phone system, such as PBX, without the equipment or high cost. Some of these same services are available with a local phone number as well. And I can control that system from the web, anywhere I can get Internet service, by subscribing to a service that makes their software accessible online.
I’ve experimented with or researched a number of different phone system programs and services, including Kall8 and GotVMail. Both of these are good services worth a look and I’m sure there are others equally good. I’ve been using RingCentral for about a year now and they just keep getting better. Their software interface has gotten cleaner and easier to navigate and they keep adding features that create additional value for me. The reasons I’m with [tag]RingCentral[/tag] include:
- Reasonable rates per call and reasonable rates for the supporting services.
- Ability to change settings on the fly, either from any computer with Internet access or any telephone.
- Voicemail, call forwarding, and call “find me” services that are part of the basic package.
- Integration with Micosoft Outlook if I want it.
- Voicemail message alerts in my email inbox or via text message to my cell phone.
- Fax number that’s the same as my toll-free number and sends faxes as .pdf files directly to my inbox.
- Multiple extensions (helpful for managing large projects).
- Call answering rules with settings I can edit for calls coming in during business hours vs. after hours.
- Automatic billing to my business bank account if I want it.
- Helping you build a honed mailing list of people interested in what you have to offer.
- Automating the delivery of information to your clients and prospects, including vacation notices, documents, e-courses and the like.
- Allowing you to send out information on a specific date or in a specific sequence without having to be at your computer to do so.
- Staying in compliance with spam laws, something that’s a bit trickier to manage effectively to do if you’re sending out emails via distribution list.
- They have a five-year track record of excellent service to companies large and small.
- Everything about their site says “professional,” something not true of some of the other programs out there.
- The interface is pretty straight forward and masterable without a great deal of technical know-how.
- They have super customer service and support and make it clear that they’re available to help whenever needed.
- They offer a ton of easy customization features.
- I can use their software not just for autoresponse emails but also to broadcast the feed from MediatorTech, making it available by email to those of you who don’t have or want a feed reader.
- No technical knowledge required.
- What you see is what you’ll get.
- Don’t worry about hosting.
- I use it very frequently—in some cases, multiple times daily.
- It makes something I do easier or more efficient.
- It has an interface that’s intuitive to me—I didn’t have to spend hours upon hours learning to use it
- It’s cost effective—the dollar cost has been returned to me in multiples as result of time savings or increases in income.
- Educate
- Entertain
- Emote
- Engage
- Earn
If you’re interested in services like these, I recommend you take a test-run with the 30-day trial that most of them seem to offer. Take advantage of a temporary 800 or local number that you only give out to a few people as you experiment with the features and software interface.
This is the end of my short series on software I love for managing my business. Do you have software that really wows you and helps you manage your practice efficiently and effectively? I’d love to hear about it…leave a comment below!
Favorite Autoresponder: AWeber
February 24, 2006
This is the third post in my short series about favorite software programs that help me do my work more effectively and efficiently. The two previous articles in this series were Favorite Email Add-In: GTD and Favorite Feed Reader: Onfolio.
What Is an Autoresponder?
Autoresponders are software programs that send pre-written replies to people who send a message to a particular email address. Any of you who have signed up to receive my articles via email (see “Get Articles by Email” link in the right-hand navigation bar) received a reply from me via an autoresponder.
Autoresponders are useful for building business in a number of key ways, including:
I’ll be writing more about autoresponders in the future. In the meantime, I recommend Yaro Starak’s great little article, Email Autoresponders.
Favorite AutoResponder: Aweber
After experimenting with several autoresponse programs, I settled on Aweber and couldn’t be happier with their service (in the interest of honest disclosure, if you subscribe to their service after referral from me, I get a commission–and that tells you how pleased I am with their service). There are, of course, lots of autoresponse options out there and I recommend you experiment a bit to find the one that’s right for your needs and budget (just Google the term autoresponder to find a bunch of them easily); many of them have free 30-day trial offers. The reasons I chose Aweber are:
My account costs about $20 per month and the value to me, in terms of time-saving and relationship-building, easily covers this cost.
Next up in this series: Favorite call management service and software.
Free Web Page Creator from Google
February 24, 2006
Google’s added another free service to their host of other offerings. The latest is a web page generator, [tag]Google Page Creator[/tag]. [tag]Google[/tag] touts the free online tool as “easy for anyone to create and publish” web pages in minutes. They add,
I wanted to try it out before letting you know about it, but they’re experiencing such high demand for access to the tool that they required me to put my email address in a queue for notification of availability. You can put your own name in the queue by visiting the Page Creator main page. I will try it when I can and let you know about that experience.
RSS 101
February 22, 2006
Here’s a terrific little primer on RSS. What else do you want to know about it? Let me know (post a comment below or email me) and I’ll do a post or two on those topics.
Favorite Feed Reader: Onfolio
February 22, 2006
This is the second article in a series that began with Favorite Email Add-In: GTD, Part 1. Today I’ll discuss the [tag]feed reader[/tag] I use to read feeds from blogs and news sites.
My Favorite Feed Reader: Onfolio
If you’re not yet familiar with terms like RSS or newsreaders, you may wish to read my companion article, RSS 101, which was also posted today. Feed readers, also known as [tag]news aggregators[/tag], are software programs that collect, organize and deliver online content from news feeds.
It seems like new feed readers are coming online almost weekly these days, each one with a slightly different tweak. Some are browser-based, meaning that you open up your Internet browser to view them. Some work within your e-mail application, such as Outlook, pulling your RSS feeds into that application so you don’t have to open up another piece of software. Some are free and some carry a small monthly fee for advanced features. If you’d like to be overwhelmed by the choices available to you, check out Google’s News Reader Directory.
Feed readers are pretty personal choices, influenced by desired sophistication level, browser- or email-integration preference, and how well they match the way your brain works. I’ve tried a bunch of them, including NewsGator, Pluck, and Bloglines, all of which have something good to offer and I’d recommend you try out.
After a lot of experimenting (which I’ll continue, no doubt, as new readers come out), I’ve settled on Onfolio and have been using it for about 10 months now. [tag]Onfolio[/tag] is browser-based and integrates nicely with Firefox, my browser of choice. I like the simple interface that lets me subscribe to a feed with a single click, organize my feeds the way I want to, save feeds or content from feeds in folders for future reference, set certain feeds aside for future reading, and check for new feeds on a schedule I set. I can open or close Onfolio with a single key-stroke.
My only complaint is that Onfolio seems to have a problem with CNN. Now perhaps that’s an editorial comment on Onfolio’s part, but it’s a weird little bug. If I click on the title of a CNN feed item in Firefox, Onfolio causes my browser to freeze and the only choice is to close the browser and re-open it. I can right-click and open a new tab without problems, so I’ve just gotten used to using this work-around. And Mac users, sorry, but Onfolio isn’t built to work with the Mac operating system and according to their website, they have no current plans to add that capability.
What feed reader do you use and why do you like it? What, if anything, do you dislike about it? Leave a comment below!
Up next: My favorite autoresponder program.
Favorite Email Add-In: GTD
February 20, 2006
Note: There is an update to this post at Manage Email Overload with ClearContext
I’m providing some short-term consultating to a mediator working to grow her business. She’s currently selecting software to run some key aspects of her practice and the other day she asked me, What’s your favorite software?
Over the coming couple of weeks, I’m going to run a series of short articles that answer that question. I won’t focus on software you probably already know and about which much has been written–Internet browsers, word processing, financial programs or the like. Instead, I’ll write about some types of programs that are less familiar to many folks. They may not all be unfamiliar to you, of course. And while they may not all be the best choices for you, I’ll share the software I won’t do without and why that’s so.
In considering which software earns rights to inclusion on my favorites list, I decided to define “favorite” by these criteria:
Favorite Email Enhancer: [tag]Getting Things Done[/tag] [tag]Outlook Add-In[/tag]
I use Microsoft Outlook to manage my email, calendar, client database, and to-do lists. I’ve tried other packages and just keep coming back to Outlook because it does it all in one interface that works for the way my brain works. But it was missing something. I wanted my project lists, clients lists and numerous emails associated with those to be more integrated and easier to locate quickly.
I experimented with Avidian Prophet and ACT!, and while they’re good at what they do, but I found them too powerful or cumbersome for my needs. And they weren’t quite providing the glue I was looking for. I tried Nelson Email Organizer (NEO) and liked it a great deal—but it required me to open it as a separate program outside of Outlook, which ended up as a deal-breaker for me.
Then I found the Getting Things Done Outlook Add-In. The add-in uses some of the key practices made famous by David Allens’ book, Getting Things Done
The [tag]GTD[/tag] Outlook Add-In gave me the glue I was looking for, helped me stop cringing at the number of emails in my inbox, and put a system in place that made Outlook not just good, but great. And it doesn’t crash or cause my system to lock up. I suspect the software’s somewhat more intuitive to use if you’ve read the book, though the product website explains the concepts in a nice online tour.
Next up: My favorite news aggregator.
Beyond an Online Brochure: 5 Purposes for a Business Website
February 17, 2006
Mediators know all about the benefits of clarity and conscious purpose for resolving conflict effectively. Yet, when it comes to our websites, we fall down on the job a bit. Too many ADR business websites show lack of clarity on the site’s purpose.
Yes, sure, general marketing is one purpose. That’s probably not enough to focus your content in a way that prospective clients can differentiate you from every other mediator out there. Beyond “general marketing,” what are you trying to achieve with your site?
In The Ease (E’s) of Blogging, Devin Reams identifies 5 primary purposes for blogging. I think it’s easy to extend his thinking beyond a blog website to any business website:
I encourage you to take a look at Devin’s article, where he goes into a bit more depth on each of the 5 E’s. What purpose, beyond general marketing, do you see for your website? Does it achieve it? Ask 5 honest friends to look at your site and then tell you what they think the purpose is. If there’s not a match, then you’ve gotten some excellent information from which to re-work your site’s content.
How to Choose Your Website’s Colors
February 15, 2006
You probably recall the color wheel from elemantary school art class. I just shuffled around in a drawer and found the one I was given way back then. I’m not sure why I kept it…but there it is, cardboard and battered, having weathered many a geographic move.
If you’re contemplating a [tag]website[/tag] or already have one and could use a refresher on selecting a [tag]color scheme[/tag], you can be a little more high-tech with your color wheel these days. Here are four good, free web resources:
Ye Olde Colour Theory: A primer on complimentary, analagous and triad colors. Be sure to scroll down far enough to read the section, “Using color to create rhythm.”
Colour Scheme Chooser: Choose a base color you think you want, then use this online tool to generate color schemes around that base. The tool provides html code (to use in your web design software) for the recommended colors.
Color Scheme Generator: A similar tool to the Colour Scheme Chooser, but with a different interface. The authors call it an online generator of color schemes and palettes to create “good-looking and well balanced and harmonic web pages.”
Web Color Schemes: A list of color schemes used by well known and not so well known websites. You can click to see how those schemes actually look on a blog or other website.
Links Roundup for February 2006
February 13, 2006
A roundup of recent links likely to be of interest to MediatorTech readers:
Tasteful Marketing: Creative uses of blogs to draw traffic to your site.
Google Copies Your Hard Drive: About Google Desktop and the potential risk to consumer privacy.
The Problem with Hosted Blog Platforms: Should you get your own domain name or use a free hosted service?
Blogging Risks: Advice about the dangers of personal information on your website.
Build a Business Network with LinkedIn
February 11, 2006
In a recent article on Mediate.com, I suggested that tapping into online [tag]social networks[/tag] may create the kinds of connections that help build practices: “Social networks are the big technology buzz for 2006. While the jury’s still out as to whether the more than 200 social networking sites have anything to offer beyond buzz, they do seem to have potential for business networking and referrals. SNAs (social networking applications) can help you connect with people who share an interest, have a business need, or have some other purpose that links you. It’s the six degrees of separation idea, online.”
LinkedIn is one of those SNAs. While I’ve been a member for a couple of years, I’ve not bothered to do much with it. I think I’ll start experimenting and see what happens.
If you’re unfamiliar with LinkedIn and how it can be used, take a look at LinkedIn in Three Steps and be sure to visit the “read some examples” link at the foot of that page. I also recommend Dave Taylor’s recent primer, Getting Started with LinkedIn. In addition to advice for creating your own free account, he provides two creative examples of the ways that [tag]LinkedIn[/tag] can be used.
If you’re a veteran LinkedIn user and have some usage examples to share, I hope you’ll leave a comment here!
