Insightly allows you to upload and save files directly to Insightly, and we also have allowed you to link your Google Drive Docs and Files in Insightly under contacts, organizations, opportunities and projects.Today we’re debuting the ability to link your files from both Dropbox and Box into Insightly under contacts, organizations, opportunities and projects too if you use either of those services.It’s a very simple process and will be instantly familiar if you already use the Google Drive integration. First click the icon under the files tab for the service you wish to use – either Box or Dropbox, as shown below.
After you click the link, a popup from either Box or Dropbox will be shown and you can select the files you wish to link, and they will be saved to Insightly under the links tab. Dropbox allows you to search for files to link within the popup, but Box does not have this capability. Box allows you to select folders to link to as well as files, but Dropbox will only allow you to select files.
After choosing the files from Box or Dropbox, those selected files will be linked and visible under the files tab for that contact, organization, opportunity or project, as well as in the history and dashboard.
The permissions for who can see linked files remains with Dropbox or Box, so to enable other users of your Insightly to see the files after clicking the links, you will need to set the appropriate permissions in either Dropbox or Box to enable that. If you would like more information on these two integrations, see our help articles at: http://help.insightly.com/en/how-do-i-link-to-my-dropbox-files/ and http://help.insightly.com/en/how-do-i-link-to-files-stored-in-box/
Today marks the second annual CX (customer experience) Day created by the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA). While it’s great that a day is being dedicated to this important topic, the truth is that business professionals should be thinking about customer experience daily. After all, happiness within a customer base should be measured by satisfaction. Below are a few tips on how you can create an organization where the customer service and experience is the number one priority.
Listen to and Learn about your Customers
Not every customer is the same so there is no one-size-fits-all customer experience. Take the time to learn about your customers, ask them questions and listen to their answers. Let them tell you about their obstacles, needs, learning and communications preferences, and more so that you can relate to their responses and tailor the customer experiences accordingly.
Personalize the Experience as Much as Possible
After you’ve taken the time to listen to and learn about your customers, take what you learned and put it into action. If you know your customer prefers to be contacted at a specific time then try your best to accommodate his schedule. For example, if you know he has kids to bring to school in the morning and he asks to schedule a meeting, don’t schedule it for 8 a.m. Recognizing and adhering to preferences, even in a small way, can go a long way in building a better customer relationship and experience.
Learn from Your Mistakes
No one is perfect, and not every customer experience will be either. In order to make the best of a bad situation, learn from it and when something goes wrong, address it head-on. Ask the customer what happened and how you can make it better going forward. Otherwise, it is a missed opportunity to make your customer service better. In fact, Dimensional Research found that poor customer service obstructs revenue growth and marketing effectiveness. The 2013 study found that 66 percent of B2B and 52 percent of B2C customers surveyed stopped making purchases from companies after a bad customer service experience. You don’t want this statistic to define your business. Ask for feedback and act on it; it will help you understand your customers better and avoid losing customers in the future.
So as you go about your business today on CX Day, and every day for that matter, try to keep these tips in mind. For more advice, check out the interview with our own Lynn Tsoflias, VP Customer Success at Insightly, in Direct Marketing News on how to keep customers satisfied.
Last week we posted ‘How to Find that Sweet Social Media Spot for you Audience‘. So we thought we’d follow up with some social media etiquette tips because once you find your sweet spot, you want to make sure that you approach it the right way.
Social networking has taken hold like never before and along with providing the proper content, one must know the right way and the wrong way to share, present, and push the content, which can all be referred to as social media etiquette.
How to be Facebook Polite
Facebook is 42% male and 58% female
Currently has 757 million daily active users
The average Facebook user has 250 friends
Canada is the most active country on Facebook!
Consider that it’s okay to update several times a day, but to space out your posts to every few hours. When you do post remember that Facebook is a social forum so respond to every comment good or bad.
The Pareto Principle also referred to as the 80-20 rule, states that for many events 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. This applies to Facebook as well, so entertain and inform your audiences first, sell to them second.
Facebook is all about engagement, so post entertaining content regularly and make them feel welcome on your page.
Twitter Tips
Twitter is 35% male and 64% female
Has 100 million daily users
46% of Twitter users tweet once a day
Twitter is the mother ship of hashtags, so use them to your fancy but use them well. Respond to question and comments as quickly as possible, like most social platforms Twitter is about engaging. Don’t use all your characters so that your followers have space to retweet you. Keep it positive! Avoid sharing too much personal information; Twitter should be about relevant information that engages your followers. Twitter is there for quick and easy conversation, so keep your updates short and response times even shorter!
Google Plus
Google Plus is 63% male and 37% female
Always +mention users when commenting on their posts, and when sharing a post add your own comments to it first.
Compartmentalize your followers with Circles so that you can share targeted content to the correct groups. Aside from Circles, Google also offers the ability to format your posts. Take advantage of this and use it for style.
Instagram
Instagram has 75 million daily users
1.2 billion daily photo likes
46% male and 54% female
Don’t ask people to follow you, its unprofessional. Keep your posts clean and avoid selfies, food, and family photos. If you want people to engage with your photos, engage with theirs. You get out what you put in. Use hashtags appropriately.
LinkedIn
120 million daily users
1.2 million products and services on LinkedIn
37% male 63% female
First and foremost on what separates LinkedIn from other social networks, is that its primary purpose is to serve professionals in a professional setting. So keep your posts industry-related. Use groups as place to contribute information, not as a place to promote your company. Personalize your connection requests, this isn’t Facebook, tell them why you’re connecting.
Pinterest
16.1 million daily users
20% male 80% female
Always link back to the original source and remember to give credit! Don’t use images that have nothing to do with your clickthrough content to get more pins or clicks. You don’t want to come off as a spammer. Pinterest is about curating content, but the most important thing on Pinterest is to make sure your links are in order, whether they lead to your own content or someone else’s.
Now that you know your manners on social media, go forth and socialize! What about you? Do you have any social media tips to share? Insightly includes fully integrated social media information on your contacts.
About the Author: Ivan Serrano is a web journalist and infographic designer from the Golden State. He specializes in social media, global business and technology. Ivan also loves to practice his photography and watch as much “Bay Area” sports games as he can.
Recently Google announced in Google Drive for Work. At Insightly we’re excited by the security, visibility and control that this offers our Insightly for Google Apps users. The ability to quickly and easily add files to support general customer information helps users better engage with their customers. However, while one of the main benefits of a CRM is collaboration and information sharing, there is always data and information that might be sensitive and should not be available to all users. This new ability to control attached files with audit reporting and security controls will be a welcome update to our users that want to have the best of both worlds — the ability to collaborate and implement file privacy where appropriate.
Social media has taken the world of marketing by storm, and many small businesses have been left scratching their heads, not quite sure of how to take advantage of what this new medium has to offer them. If you find your company in such a position, there is no need to fret., because transitioning your marketing efforts might be easier than you think! That being said, there are a few ideas you should keep in mind before diving into the deep end.
Don’t Advertise Products, Boost Your Brand
Many businesses who are new to the social media world will often make the mistake of solely advertising or promoting their products and services via social channels. While it’s acceptable to advertise every once in a while, those who are following your brand want to see more than what you have to offer. Engagement is a huge deal nowadays, and if your brand’s social media resembles anything like nails on a chalkboard, you’ll likely end up losing followers faster than you can gain them.
The idea behind social media is simple: be social. Relate to your audience as much as possible. Post engaging images, videos, and gifs to grab your followers’ attention. Do your research online and talk about trending topics. There are hundreds of ways to engage with your audience!
While ROI is certainly an important factor to consider when evaluating your brand’s social media efforts, only focusing on selling products and services through these types of channels could be a death sentence for small businesses. Instead, focus on selling the concept of your company and make every attempt to be as social as possible with your fans and supporters. If you build a community of supportive followers, they will likely choose your brand based on brand loyalty alone. This is where the advantages of social media really come into play.
Pick the Right Platform
Not all platforms are created equal. Depending on where your audience is most likely to be found and what type of content you want to share in order to build an audience, you might want to consider putting more effort into your social media strategy on specific sites:
Twitter
● Focuses heavily on short text messages (140 characters max)
● Uses hashtags to organize content
● Includes video and image options
● Frequently used to promote links
● Call-to-action very important within community
● Often used to communicate with companies
Although other sites might be one-stop-shops for many perusers of the internet, Twitter serves a very important purpose for other reasons. Though this platform does offer image and video features, they are not utilized as much as they would on other sites, like Facebook. For quick, real-time updates, Twitter is ideal for real-time marketing, news, and events.
Twitter Tip: Because business Twitter pages are easily accessible to the site’s users, it’s important to note that many customers often use Twitter as a means of getting into contact with other businesses if they are experiencing issues or have comments. The quicker you are able to respond, the better!
Facebook
● Typically used for catching up with friends/family
● Strong focus on presentation of news/articles
● Uses hashtag in much the same way as Twitter
● Posts can link to other business pages within text
● Includes group creation to help build fan base
● Paid ads blend in seamlessly with other content
As one of the top social media sites on the web, Facebook is essentially the home page for millions of users. Unlike other sites, Facebook’s personal users (aka: your audience), enjoy utilizing this site to stay up-to-date with their friends and family.
Because there is little room for free advertising, a brand shouldn’t be taking the same approach with Facebook as they would with Twitter. When it comes to getting your content seen on this channel, you need to make sure that it’s shareable– content that Facebook users would want to share with their friends and family as well.
Facebook can be effectively used for a B2B audience as well. Like boosting a personal brand on Facebook, content will play a very important role in your marketing strategy. While we would love to be generating leads all the time, aiming for posts that create buzz, customer satisfaction, and engagement is key to continuing and expanding lead generation.
Google Plus
● All Pages have a Page Rank on Google
● Circles allow you to create devoted groups
● Frequently used for live Google Hangouts
● Similar to Facebook, used to share text/images/videos
● Strong community building opportunities
● Wide selection of tools connected to Google services
Google Plus has proven to be a very valuable social media tool over the past few years. In addition to the many services that you can make use of as a member, actively sharing and being a part of the community will get you noticed. One of the most incredible tools available via the social site is Google Hangouts, which allows you to start a live video chat with people in your circle and groups. Some companies have used this feature as a means to reach out directly to their customer base and address their every concern. Google Plus has also proven to be excellent for B2B marketing.
There are many more social media sites out there, but if you’re trying to figure out where to start, these are the three you need to consider above all others. If you’re looking to connect with your customers, you may want to focus on the capabilities offered through Google Plus and Twitter. If you want to build communities and be a part of the everyday life of your customer, a website like Facebook might be just what you’re looking for.
No matter which site you choose to focus on, remember to focus on your audience first and make them a priority over monetary gain. The end game here should not be to make direct sales, but rather to create long time customers who will keep coming back for more because they know they can trust you. Keep that in mind and you are sure to see success.
If you have experience with these and other social sites let us know which ones work for you.
About the Author: Megan M. Ritter is an entrepreneur, gaming enthusiast, and online journalist from California. With a background in social media marketing, she enjoys researching, implementing, and sharing her strategies in her writing. Follow her on Twitter to find more of her writing.
When you run a small business, it’s hard to know where to invest your marketing dollars. Which marketing strategies are the most valuable properties? Don’t roll the dice and wind up breaking the bank. Instead, follow around the board to learn which strategies can help your small business gain the competitive edge. Take these stats and tips into account when developing your small business marketing strategy—and you’re sure to get the most bang for your buck!
If you’ve already tried some of these strategies, let us know how they are working out! If you have your own strategies/tips, let us know what they are.
Marketing has changed and evolved over the last decade, even for the small business owner. While advertisements might have been the best method for garnering new business in the past, content really is the present and the future for the average small business.
However, many small business owners don’t really understand the best ways to employ content on their website, blog or even their social media pages. If you know you fall into that group you’re not alone. Use these tips to help you get the most out of the content you create and post.
Photo courtesy of Flickr
Use Your Calendar
As a business owner, you already use a calendar to keep track of everything that you do, from meetings to payments to simply scheduling deliveries and pickups. However, many business owners simply don’t create a calendar when it comes to the content that they’re going to create and post.
A content calendar is something you need to employ. If you’re like many small business owners, your number one complaint about content marketing is that it takes too much time. By creating a calendarin advance, you’ll always be ahead of the curve, and adding your ‘content due’ dates to the Insightlycalendar is a snap.
If creating content is difficult for you and you don’t want to use an outside source or writer, you need to make sure that you’re at least a handful of posts ahead at all times. That way if you miss a self-imposed deadline or get behind, you’ll still have content to post when readers and customers expect it.
Posting your content at regular intervals, whether that’s every day or once per week on Friday, is essential for loyal readership.
Consider Trending Topics
Generating ideas for your content can be difficult, especially if you work in a business that doesn’t seem to lend itself to content marketing. However, there are ways to find topics for posts, even if they aren’t directly related to your business, at least at first glance.
One of those ways is a process commonly referred to as ‘newsjacking.’ Simply put, ‘newsjacking’ is the process of finding a trending topic in the news or on social media sites and gearing it toward what your business does.
Even commenting on news topics in your area or region can help generate content and stay on the radar for people interested in your business. You may not be able to have every post directly related to your business, but you can include your company name and get people reading, which will expose them to your business and your other pieces of content on your blog or website.
Surveys are More Effective than You Think
When most of us think about consumer surveys we think about annoying phone calls that always seem to start right about the time we sit down for dinner. However, when it comes to the internet, consumer surveys aren’t as maligned and are considerably more effective than you might think.
Creating a simple survey can also help you understand how your customer base feels about a certain topic, which can help you create content in the future for other posts.
When it comes to creating effective surveys, it’s best to keep them short and sweet and ask the most important questions first. A progress bar can also help keep individuals being surveyed from starting and not finishing.
Summary
The content you create is becoming more and more important each day, and if you want to succeed and grow as a small business, you’re going to need to employ it effectively. These basic tips can help get you started, but as usual, quality content is the most important factor.
Follow these tips and give your readers and customers something they’ll appreciate and be able to use in their daily lives and you will have created a successful marketing campaign, all without spending an arm and a leg on advertisements. Do you have any tips of your own to suggest? About the Author: Owen Andrew is a journalist and tech enthusiast who enjoys his morning black coffee while attempting the crossword puzzle. He has written for numerous publications, both in print and web format. As of late, he’s enjoyed researching and writing on all-things eCommerce and entrepreneurship. We hope that you enjoy this article and find it useful.
It isn’t uncommon for small business owners and entrepreneurs to misjudge the benefits of maintaining mobile connectivity, especially when the bulk of online work is generally done on one device. The growing popularity of the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement, however, means that more and more small business owners and employees are beginning to understand how mobile maintenance can boost small business. How have the two entities – mobile connectivity and small businesses – turned into such firm friends? Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has a lot to do with it.
CRM and Small Business Mobile Devices
In order to maintain their customers, small businesses have developed many strategies to enhance CRM; one of the most helpful tools so far has been cloud-based computing. Cloud-based computing allows many employees of the same business to collect information and store it in one, virtual space. This information, for example, a customer database, is then accessible by all those employees with the approved network permissions. Most modern CRM strategies are based on a similar type of database.
So where does the “mobile” connectivity part come in? It already has. Employees with mobile devices can connect to a network and input or extract data as needed instead of making endless notes and crowding around the computer to file it away later.
Mobile Connectivity, Service Industries and Website Maintenance
The benefits of mobile connectivity vary depending on the type of small business. For those in the service industry, mobile connectivity makes for better online CRM because it is possible to keep clients up to date in real time, whatever service is being provided. Customers give their trust more easily to companies who answer their queries quickly and concisely.
Small businesses are also becoming more savvy about Internet marketing, which requires regular maintenance. With various devices connected via mobile access, businesses can maintain their mobile and traditional web pages. In addition, CRM strategies are further enhanced by the ability of entrepreneurs and small business leaders to read and respond constantly to customers’ messages and share company or product information.
Mobile connectivity is all about communication and the spread of information that is crucial to daily business. The more time passes, the more mobile Internet networks resemble the office phone of the 1990s – irreplaceable.
Insightly users on paid plans have the ability to sync their Insightly contacts with their Google Contacts if they have a Google account, and we heard from customers that the sync system was too complex and sometimes unreliable. We listened, and today we’re shipping a new contact sync system with some great improvements in speed, scalability, simplicity, and safety for your contact information and we wanted to let you know about these enhancements. One of the biggest improvements is you no longer have to select individual contacts to sync, and you no longer need to choose which type of sync – the Insightly contact list you have available to you is now copied into your Google contacts and kept up to date with changes automatically and in real time.
Simplicity and Control
Sync is now much easier to configure. Administrators have the ability to turn on or off contact sync for all their users under the system settings, and each user also has the ability to enable the contact sync feature if their administrator has it turned on for all users.
Real-Time Contact Sync from Insightly to Google Contacts
When you turn on contact sync, all the contacts you have access to see and change in Insightly will be automatically copied to your Google Contacts list, and tagged with the label of “Insightly-Contacts” so you can distinguish them from all the other contacts in your Google Contacts list. Any time someone updates contact information or adds a new contact to Insightly, that data will be copied over into the Google contact list in real time, and when someone deletes a contact from Insightly, that contact will also be removed from your Google contact list.
Mobile Sync Connectivity
For those users that add or update contacts on the go, Insightly has great native mobile apps available for free for both Google Android and Apple iOS phones and tablets. When you update or add a contact on your phone using either of the apps, those contacts will also be updated in your Google contact list too if you have this new Google sync turned on.
Reliable and Scalable
Lastly we have re-engineered the sync system to be more reliable and scalable. We went to great lengths to make sure that the system works and contact information gets copied over in a timely manner no matter how many contacts you manage in Insightly. We update the user interface in real time so you know how many contacts the system has left to sync up and what the current count is. We also added a re-sync button so you can choose to have Insightly resync all contacts for you immediately in the event you inadvertently remove or change the Insightly contacts in your Google contact list.
If you want to try out the new and improved contact sync feature yourself, you can turn it on under User Settings > Google Sync.
Marketing your business is a year round effort, and every business person, from the small company owner to the CEOs of major corporations know it. However, the way you market to your customers should be changing with the season, not staying the same all year long.
The reason you need to change your marketing efforts in the Summer is because people’s priorities shift with the weather. It might sound silly to think that people are only thinking about fun in the sun, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that it really is a priority for many people to take some time to relax or go on vacation in the summertime.
Here in the US it’s summer, but no matter when summer arrives in your region, try these simple summertime marketing principles to keep your small business growing.
Keep Your Message Fun
No matter what type of business you have, there’s a way to make your product seem more fun. Perhaps you can change the colors of your marketing materials to summer ones or create new ones that use summertime elements like the beach. This will serve as a subtle attempt to relate to the customers. Your emails to your customers can explain how the product either improves Summer for the customers, or allows them to get out and enjoy the Summer. Be light-hearted and encouraging. Even if you sell office supplies, you can make your message fun by telling customers that better, more efficient office supplies means less time behind a desk and more time with their toes in the sand.
Make Mobile a Priority
More and more people are accessing websites through their smartphone or tablet, and with the high number of people traveling, mobile engagement is more important in the summer than any other time.
A Mobile Website or a mobile application is more essential than ever during this time of the year. Mobile phones are more than handy tools, they’re lifelines, so people are much more likely to be carrying one around while traveling than a laptop. However, if there’s one thing that a phone doesn’t do as good as or better than a laptop, it’s surfing the web. Consider having a mobile site designed in order for customers to navigate your website with ease and convenience and not forever having to zoom in and click buttons with pinpoint accuracy. Customers will inevitably be more impressed and satisfied.
Have a Summer Sale
It might sound obvious to have a summer sale as a way to get people interested in your product, but a lot of people really do feel like the summer months are a time to celebrate and enjoy themselves. With vacation and travel on the menu, Summer is prime time for people to binge on shopping; it’s necessary and a perfect excuse to do so even if they’re not traveling! The simple fact that you’re having a sale to celebrate with them will be enough of an incentive to get them in your store, browsing your website or talking to you about your services. Never underestimate the power of a sale!
Strengthen Internal Relations
Another thing to remember about summer is that it’s an ideal time to improve internal relationsbetween people in your office because of the more relaxed atmosphere. While that might not sound like an immediate way to boost your marketing efforts, improved relations have been proven to make people work harder and care more about how the business is really doing. Take the time to host a barbecue or take employees out for lunch. Use the enjoyable summer months to strengthen your marketing efforts from the inside out.
Run a Summer Contest
Like a sale, almost every customer likes a contest if they can get something for free. Best of all, because it’s free, you don’t have to modify your product message. Examples of a summer contest could include a prize for the best beach photo or even a kid’s story or poem about summer. What you choose doesn’t matter too much, just make sure it applies to your client or customer base and isn’t too difficult for people to submit. You might even think about entering anyone into the contest who likes your summer contest on Facebook or who signs up for your email list thus also building a connection and potentially an enduring relationship with the customer.
If your company doesn’t sell a summer product, don’t sweat it, you can always give something summer-appropriate away like a barbecue grill, patio furniture or even a summer vacation if you have the means to do so.
For a small business, summer doesn’t change much as it’s always running, but the customers are what keeps a business afloat, and in the summer, their priorities tend to change dramatically. Children are out of school and on summer vacation, and we’ve all been there… that’s what kids live for. The customer will be changing things up during these glorious three months, so small businesses need to do so as well.
About the Author:
Owen Andrew is a journalist and tech enthusiast who enjoys his morning black coffee while attempting the crossword puzzle. He has written for numerous publications, both in print and web format. As of late, he’s enjoyed researching and writing on all-things eCommerce and entrepreneurship. We hope that you enjoy this article and find it useful.
