Amid the Noise and Haste

Top Ten TypePad Traffic Tips

TypePad publishes their list of Top Ten Traffic Tips to help drive traffic to your blog.

There's no such thing as too much traffic. You could read SEO blogs until your eyes fall out but the truth is you don't need a PhD in statistics to build your blog's traffic. It's pretty simple, really. To help you out, we've got the top ten things we tell our best friends to do for their blogs:

Tip #1: Post More Often

Tip #2: Turn On Google Sitemaps

Tip #3: Invite Compliments with Favoriting

Tip #4: Build Your Following

Tip #5: Share Posts to Twitter and Facebook

Tip #6: Optimize Your Post Titles

Tip #7: Harness the Power of Twitter

Tip #8: Add Email Alerts

Tip #9: Follow Others

Tip #10: Reach Your Followers' Followers with Reblog and TypePad Micro

via everything.typepad.com

Twitter Takes a Step Toward Commercial Accounts

Businesses have been using Twitter successfully for awhile now (see Dell article from the NY Times).  Now Twitter is one step closer to a business model for making money off of this.  NY Times just published "Twitter Takes a Step Toward Commercial Accounts" where Anamitra Banerji, manager of commercial products at Twitter discusses their progress:

Twitter 101 is the first step toward doing that. “If you intrinsically see some value in Twitter, you will want to pay more to get more,” he added.

Twitter unveiled Twitter 101, a series of Web pages and a downloadable slide show that explain what Twitter is and how businesses can use it, along with case studies of a few companies that use Twitter.

It remains to be seen how long it will take for twitter to launch a paid model, but this is certainly a step in the right direction.  If their services provided added value for businesses it just might work.

Email Directives - simple tips to curtail volume and communication issues

I have been working with a team of people at my company to identify the issues we have been having with email.  They revolve around two things:  communication, or lack thereof; and volume (400 emails by lunch??).  Today we launched the training identify 10 Email Directives to enforce throughout the company which are simple to follow, easy to implement, and if they work right, should make a huge impact on volume and communication.

Here is what we did.  I think this may be helpful to a lot of companies, both large and small.

1. I put together a team of forward thinking people representing each department.  This helped build a network of individuals who could also become evangelists and tutors as the program was rolled out to the entire company.
2. We had brainstorming session to discuss and identify what was causing our email issues and what directives we could easily put in place to help.
3. We narrowed down the list to the top 10.
4. I put together training slides and a presentation to walk everyone through each directive and included peer training tips so everyone would be included in the process.
5. I launched the training.

To give you an example of some of the directives we chose to include, he is a sample, in no particular order:

Use the Rule of 3:    If it takes more than 3 emails to get something done, pick up the phone or get up and go talk to the person.  Recap the discuss

 No Blind Forwarding:    "See below" means nothing.  Recap a forwarded email to provide all information at the top so the receiver doesn't have to scroll or infer what is meant from the previous messages.

Manage Your Email Folders:    Schedule time daily or weekly to go through mails in the inbox, sent folder, deleted folder and archive folders.  Delete what isn't needed.  Organize messages and folders.

No Gratuitous CC or Reply All:    Know who you are sending a message to and why.  A person in the To line is supposed to act on the message.  A person in the CC line is being copied as an FYI.  Don't just add everyone to CYA!  Be selective.

"Communication delivered is not the same as communication received."

I received an email this morning from a vendor who had to issue a me aculpa.  They had sent a previous announcement with errors and with unclear information.  In the email I received today they stated "Communication delivered is not the same as communication received."  It made me think.

We don't always here the message that is being delivered.  More commonly we hear what we want to hear, or we hear what we think was said, but because it wasn't communicated effectively the message became skewed or misinterpreted.  This can happen in personal or business relationships.  It can happen with verbal or written communication. 

Communication isn't easy, and different mediums exist.  Some of the connective threads for good communication across any meduim include: clarity, listening well, and being concise.