Sometimes, I go on Twitter to share information. I push some of it through my @chrisbrogan account. I have a more “pure” feed at @broganmedia.

Other times, I go on Twitter to connect with people and build/strengthen relationships. I go on there to read what they’re saying. I spend a little time “showing up,” because in business, just showing up is important.

Part of what I do on Twitter – maybe most of what I do on Twitter – is work-related. Even if I’m chit-chatting, it’s because that’s part of my job, part of my role as someone in the space. This is the important thing to think about.

I’m not there because I’m taking a break. I’m not there because I’m bored. I’m not there because I’ve got some extra time for a phone call or to check out your video. It’s still part of my job.

Now, I’m not complaining when I say this. I’m explaining. I’m telling you that what I’m doing looks quite often like it’s leisurely. But it’s not. And there’s a lesson/opportunity in explaining all this.

Business isn’t always about the sale. Business isn’t always (is it ever?) a straight line. Business is sometimes a conversation long before I need the sale. Business is sometimes just connecting to stay on the human side of the fence.

And leisure isn’t always how we use these tools.

A Request

Here’s something new that happens:

1. You email me.
2. You then tweet me to tell me you emailed me.

Doing this right after emailing me just eats up more cycles of my time. My inbox happens to increment just fine. No need to tweet or use other communications channels to underscore your contact with me.

Acceptable: a few days after you sent it, if I’ve not yet replied, then you can check via any channel you want.

Not as acceptable: the double-tap.

Your Take

How do you see it? How are you using these communications channels? What’s working or not for you?

The idea for this post came from a conversation I had on Google Wave with some smart friends.

Seth Godin doesn’t use Twitter actively. He chooses not to open comments on his blog. However, he’s a really fast responder to email. He’s jumped on the phone with me the few times I’ve needed something from him without any fanfare. He just doesn’t need Twitter or blog comments as a point of contact.

My primary email inbox is stuffed full of people requesting stuff from me. My contact form, which is much easier for me to use, because my executive assistant, Diane, helps me with it, would be a much better place for me to spend my time.

I like Twitter, and it helps me build relationships. Thus, I spend a lot of time there. I kind of like Facebook (slow convert), but the 5000 person limit vexes me, plus I use it as a kind of personal place, where I talk a bit off the cuff.

When I look at it, I’ve got too many points of contact:

• Google Voice / Phone
• Email (primary)
• Email (for New Marketing Labs )
• Email (a private account)
• Contact Form
• Blog comments
• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Google Wave
• My Blog
• Tons of other social networks
• In person at events

Here’s the rough order of which ones are making my life better:

• Twitter – serendipity, friendship, some business
• Contact form – lots of business
• Google Wave – where I’m planning my future
• Blog comments – lots more interaction than email
• Email – once I sort it, some business, and relationship-building
• Facebook – a little bit. I like feeling personal there.

So what do I do? Connecting is part of my job. It’s how business happens. It’s how I stay connected and accessible. And yet, I think I’m too connected. That’s a lot of points of contact. Think about manning all those phones, so to speak. Think about managing all those interactions in all those various formats across all those various tools.

As a business, how do YOU do it?

What’s the value of being THAT connected?

And if I were to trim it all back into just a few spots, would it help, or would it bottleneck?

I’m not writing this for us to think about me. I’m writing this for us to think about us. I’m writing this for business people who are wondering where to put their time, who wonder why everyone’s spreading themselves all over these platforms, and who are wondering what comes next when we’re all this plugged in.

I thrive on contact. I’m drowning in it. It’s not my problem. It’s a modern world problem.

What’s your take?

Social Media Time Management

The way I’d do it is to break it up into 4 chunks, and then you decide the amount of hours to devote (2 hours a day is a minimum for MOST efforts).

• 1/4 for Listening – Start your day by listening and finding what the world is saying about you, your competitor, your marketplace, etc. Need help with listening? See grow bigger ears. In this space, I also count reading (reading other people’s blogs and other online materials).
• 1/2 for Commenting/Communicating – Spend time commenting and replying back to people on the various channels where they reach you. If that’s Twitter, email, or wherever you hang out, fine. In the commenting timeframe, I also include sharing. Be sure to tweet links to great articles, use StumbleUpon, Delicious, Facebook share, and all the other various tools that help people find the good stuff. In Google reader, a simple SHIFT-S gives an article a whole lot of new potential fans. In here, I might also add the act of linking in and connecting with people on various networks.
• 1/4 for Creating – Your efforts in content creation are every bit as important as your connectivity and communication. This might include blogging, making video or audio, creating email newsletters, and anything else you’re building to contribute something to the space. It might be posting those event photos in Flickr and on Facebook. Whatever it is, creating content of some kind should take up 1/4 of your social media efforts, as this is the way you get found. Search engines thrive on new content. Humans seek out new material. The more you can be helpful, the better your opportunities.

Your Mileage May Vary

It doesn’t necessarily have to be this mix, but if I gave you that as a starter method, you’d know what to do with some of your time, right? You’ll note that there’s a lot to get done in that time frame. You’re busy. It’s not like you’re in the typing business (that’s me). If you had to cut a little bit of something, maybe it would be in creation. You might salvage a few minutes in there. Just realize that sacrifice in any area takes away from the balance of your opportunity to build a system that gets you results.

What’s your take on this? How would you change the mix? Could you see this overlay into your other communications (be that marketing or whatever) efforts?

For more information, see also How to Prioritize Your Social Media Efforts for a larger framework.

photo credit Aaron Geller

My Email Contact Form

So, I went to Google Docs and started a new form. File>New>Form. I put in the categories that you see when you see my contact form. Then, I save the form with a template. Finally, I wrote a new WordPress page called “contact” and embedded the form into it (copy/paste level of difficulty).

On the back end, I get a spreadsheet. The sheet has the following categories from left to right:

Timestamp
Name
Email
I’m Contacting Chris Because
Phone
Brief description of what to tell chris
Anything else
Chris’s Notes
Diane’s Notes (my assistant)

I open this spreadsheet, and everything you send on the form shows up there. I then scroll through each request, and either give Diane instructions on what to do next, or I reply myself, depending on what is requested. When I’m done with things, Diane moves the handled requests to an old spreadsheet for storage.

The #1 contact type that I ignore: press releases. Why? Because they’re so rarely about my community.

The #1 contact type that I answer: speaking requests and other consulting needs.

In between, I answer as many personal emails as I can, and if I can’t get right back, I ask Diane to at least contact the person and tell them that I saw the message and that I appreciate the support.

Now that’s how I handle what I’m getting in. Let’s talk about some more tips for mail you send out.

Sending Email That Gets Answered

I got a lot of good feedback on what to do and what not to do with emails. Mixed into that are things I didn’t cover well the first time. Oh, and I’ve covered this before in great detail.

Subject lines matter. In an earlier post, I recommended these as starter advice:

• DECISION NEEDED: Picking the corporate logo today
• SCHEDULING: Check Tuesday, Wednesday, or Friday
• PROMOTION HELP: Looking for some blog and Twitter love
• [chrisbrogan.com] seems offline. You might want to check.
• MICROSOFT DEAL: Should we take it? (from JYang@yahoo.com)

Of course, you can pick whichever way seems to make sense to you, but do you see how those pop out at you? The ALL-CAPS is maybe extreme, but maybe not.

More on brevity. It’s amazing how effective I am at answering emails that are spit out in short lists. I got this from Jon Swanson, who sends little list emails to me now and again. Here’s what I mean:

Chris,

1. We have you arriving at 10:40AM. A driver will be there with your name on a placard. His name is… His cell is…
2. Do you want to go back to the hotel or right to the event?
3. We don’t have your presentation up front. Will you be using your laptop, or can we load your preso onto the show computer?
4. We have your check. Should we give it to you before or after you speak?

——–

I get about 3 or 4 emails like this every day. I answer them right away. Think about it: plow through your 2000 word missive or respond to these rapid-fire questions? I’ll take B any day.

Are there times when you need more? Yes. At those times, I just reply and ask for more. MORE OFTEN THAN NOT, this is enough.

Bring every email closer to DONE. Try to make every email definitive. If you’re planning a meeting, put out three or four days and dates. For the most part, emails should exist to inform, move ideas around, and then stop. (Most times. Conversations are different, obviously.)

What Else?

What else will you tell people about how to manage email? What else should we cover?

Photo credit pink sherbet

The thing is, we’re all busy. We all have tons of email. We have no time to get it all handled.

But what will you do to get your email answered (for the most part)? I’ve got a few thoughts, and this relates to some of what Julien Smith and I talked about in Trust Agents. If you want to improve your chances of an email being answered by someone (like me), here are some thoughts and ideas. I’m hoping you add yours to the comments.

This applies more to the business sense of email, not personal. If I know you, it’s okay to email me. Just forgive me that I’m having trouble drowning.

Get Your Email Answered

1. Brevity. I have no time for huge rambling emails. Lead with what you need from me. Fill me in on the backstory (if you feel you must), and then end again with what you need from me. (Most imporant part: lead with what you need from me).
2. Connectivity. If you talk with me on other platforms (like comment on my blog or talk with me on Twitter or Facebook), then I’m much more likely to know who you are.
3. Skip the flattery. PR types: starting with “I love your blog” and then pitching me something I could care less about is a bit of a mismatch. You clearly don’t understand my blog if you’re pitching me stories that don’t relate to what I’m doing.
4. Get right to it. Most emails have about 200 words of throat-clearing. Feel free to just be brief and to the point.
5. Make it mutually beneficial. It’s very nice that you want me to help you get attention, but it’s rare that this does anything for me. Is there anything you’re going to do for my community to make this more worthwhile for them to care about you?
6. Make every email about resolving to a close. I hate open-ended emails. Examples: “what would you like for lunch tomorrow?” Instead, how about, “I’m thinking about either tapas or Korean BBQ tomorrow. Do you have a preference?” One makes things close faster. The other makes the message linger.
7. Give the right lead time. Asking me for something today is probably not going to happen. Asking me for something in three months is going to be forgotten. Think more in terms of two weeks for a typical response, or two or three months for something involving travel. Make sense?
8. Equip a trust agent. It’s easier to get some kind of response by having someone who knows your target person introduce you.

What else? What else do you think will help?

By the way, since I started my contact form, I’ve found that I *love* responding to information that goes through it. It resolves to a Google spreadsheet, and I can bang out several dozen answers a minute on the form. Just a data point.

I look forward to your thoughts.

Photo credit bobster855

The conference business is essentially a triangle. One one point are speakers (or content). On another point are the audience. On the third point are sponsors. That’s the conference business in the simplest of nutshells. It’s also not far from how magazines run. It’s a very basic and simple business construct that you can look at and understand the frame.

A consultancy is essentially a solutions and services business. The way to win seems mostly related to how to build replicable menus of services that a sustainable client set needs executed repeatedly and profitably. Keep value high, keep costs reasonable, maintain excellent client relations, manage the margin, and you understand the basics of the business.

Blogging and media making have several ways to be considered. My blog is an informational blog, that hopefully equips several of you to do new things, or to think about your own efforts differently. The business shape of my blog is to make connections, build community, and translate some level of lead generation into business value for me. Thus, I don’t advertise a lot. I don’t push for pageviews. I don’t have all kinds of gimmicks to get you to click through more and more hoops. That’s what blogs that hope to be media properties do.

When thinking about social media tools and how you’re looking to implement them in organizations, be sure to understand the frame of what you’re doing. Are you helping a company onto Twitter to build lead generation? Are you implementing a Facebook fan page and a blog for lead generation? What are the parameters of what you’re doing? How do you align them with the business goals of the company? And how will you lay the simple framework so that you can then build and remove components and complexities as the project continues?

This seems simple, and yet, it’s part of what many of us forget to do. There are lots of reasons to get into using certain tools and services. Understanding the mindset behind where we’re headed is important, and aligning your efforts to a framework of thought is a strong way to improve your chances for success.

What do you think? Have you given your projects thought like this? How else would you advise people to improve their business thinking?

Photo credit, Jonathan Gill

I had a great talk with David Garland from The Rise to the Top, while I was filming his TV show in St. Louis, and he talked about how powerful saying “thank you” was to people. There’s a video at the end of this post about his experience with it.

For you, though, I want to take this moment to say thank you. I am at the start of a very hectic season of touring, speaking, and traveling to see clients, and I am also managing the experience of putting out this book, and I am very grateful for you. I’m grateful for every message, every comment, everything you say to me. I am so humbled by all the kindness that you show me.

Here’s David talking about his experience:

Communication Tools and Levels of Interruption

Email – Email is probably the simplest of communication tools. It is the lowest level of interruption. The person receiving the email can choose to read it whenever he or she has a moment. It can usually be collected from multiple touchpoints and devices, and there are many ways to handle it. It can be any length (though I prefer brevity). Let’s call this Level of Interruption 1.

Tweet – Twitter is a great service for communicating, provided the other person is around and not flooded by other tweets that might push your message off the screen and downstream. It’s wonderful for fast, back-and-forth interactions. It’s not good for if you need something urgently. For instance, if you need a question answered by a co-worker immediately, don’t use Twitter, because it’s too easy to ignore. This is Level of Interruption 2.

SMS/Text Messaging – Texts are a good way to reach someone for fast, important information gathering. They are also disruptive in that they loudly push for an interruption of what’s going on in the other person’s life. They are far more intrusive than an email or a tweet. Used properly, texts are a great tool for managing what’s urgent, especially because the other party can delay the answer a moment until he or she is at a better place to answer. But again, texts are interrupting. This is Level of Interruption 3.

Phone Call – Phones have been around forever, but the way we use them has changed a great deal. How often do we reach someone’s voicemail instead of them? (If you call me, VERY often.) Phones force a one-on-one interaction, and are very disruptive. They also require the most focused of attention. For that reason, phones are Level of Interruption 4.

So What?

I don’t think we consider the method we use to connect with people. I don’t think we weigh whether or not the message would best be served by a text instead of a phone call, a tweet instead of a text, etc. The various methods of connectivity have their pluses and minuses, and it’s up to you to determine:

1. How important your message is.
2. How quickly you need a response.
3. How willing you are to interrupt the other person.

When you know the answers to the above, you might start thinking about how you connect with people differently. There are, of course, many other variables we could add to the mix, too. Why use Facebook or LinkedIn mail when email would suffice? (The answer most people give was because they were “in system” and it’s easier to use the built-in tool.

At most, what you should consider after reading this is: what’s the best tool for the job I’m attempting?

What do YOU think about it? How do you view the various communication tools? Have you been on the receiving end of messages you felt could’ve come to you differently?

Business communication is all about this. People write things all the time in such a way as to make them seem more important. Well, I’m sorry, but I have to call bullshit on that practice.

We’re human. Talk with us like we’re human. Eschew obfuscation. (get it?)

Business value is not in big words. It’s in big understanding. We confuse this all the time. We forget that we’re not writing for ourselves (unless we are), but instead, we’re writing to be understood.

I am not in the rocket science business. I’m in the business of achieving success for myself, my clients, and my army. Every insight I attempt to equip you with on this site comes from the extrapolation of what it can do in your hands.

I’ll leave rocket science to NASA.

Photo credit, the EVER amazing Steve Jurvetson

I had no intention of misleading people with my satirical attempt.

My pledge to you, hence forth, is that if I’m telling you about something here, I’ll write from the perspective of positive improvement.

Because I have NO memory, please remind me if I ever blow this. I’m human. I get sad and frustrated and stuff.