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Tag Archives: Productivity
Seven Reasons You Might Not Want to Work from Home
Working from home has become increasingly popular in the last few years. For solo entrepreneurs and micro-business owners a home office has often become their primary business location, whether by necessity or choice. There are many good reasons to work from home. No long commute, no office overhead, no distracting co-workers, no having to get dressed up for the office.
Working from home does have its downside, though. There are definitely some logistical problems and challenges to having your home as your office. Commercial office space can offer benefits that a home office may not. Here are seven reasons you might want to consider an office away from home.
You don’t have to worry about whether your clients are allergic to cats. Meeting with clients when you work from home can be a real challenge. Not all of your clients will love the dog like you do—and the dog may not love them. Sure, you can meet at the local coffee shop but how certain are you going to be that there’s a quiet table available or that it won’t be full when you schedule that 2 p.m. meeting? Having your own office space will assure you of a quiet and professional space to meet with clients.
No distractions. When you work at the office, it’s pretty rare that someone will be interrupting you for a game of Candyland or a peanut butter sandwich. You aren’t likely to need to stop working to investigate that funny noise coming from the ice maker or to run someone to a friend’s house. When you have a commercial office for your business, it’s easier to focus on work and leave the distractions of home at home.
No crumbs in the keyboard. It’s not likely your admin will be eating peanut butter crackers at the computer, spilling their crumbs and their juice on your keyboard or leaving sticky fingerprints on the mouse. Not having to share the computer with your son’s homework or your spouse’s to-do list can really increase productivity and cut down on computer repairs.
Kids make lousy IT techs. There isn’t always ready tech support available when you work from home. Your son may be a whiz at setting up the video game console and your daughter may be able to text like crazy, but how much help will they be when your network goes down or your hard drive crashes? Many service providers charge a premium for home visits or mileage for a trip to suburbia to repair your computer. And where will you keep that equipment, anyway? A laptop and printer don’t necessarily take up much space, but what about a copier, a scanner or other office machines that speed up production and make life easier? Having an office space with your co-workers where you can share the cost of equipment and have ready access to technical support makes the work day go so much easier.
No one will color on your proposal. Oh, whoops? Was that an important paper, Mom? Having a private space of your own means not having to worry about your office supplies ending up the medium for your kids’ artistic endeavors.
More family or free time. One of the big reasons people choose to work at home is they think it will give them more family time. Recent studies show the opposite is more often true. With work right there staring you in the face 24 hours a day, it’s easy to get sucked into taking care of “just one more thing.” When you leave your work at the office—the one not at the kitchen table—you can come home and focus on your family.
Your own office—really. In many homes, private office space just doesn’t exist. Are you working in the guest room? Or do you set up at the dining room table? Having a commercial office means not having to quit early because you’re having dinner guests or put a project on hold because the in-laws are coming for a visit. An office of your own means you can work how you need to without worrying about what’s going on outside the office.
How about you? What are your ups and downs of working at home or not working at home. Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.
Improve Your Twitter Experience with Lists
Does Twitter sometimes move too fast to keep up? Do you feel like your favorite Tweeters get lost in the stream?
There is an easy solution that will help you keep up with those you most want to follow and interact with on Twitter: Twitter Lists
Lists are a built-in Twitter feature that allows you to sort and categorize those you follow. Using Twitter lists, you can organize your Twitter stream in a number of ways:
Sort who you follows by industry, by location, by relationship, by activity level. There are as many ways to use Twitter lists as there are people who use them.
When you create a Twitter list, you have the ability to view only the tweets of list members, making it much easier to keep up. If you are using a Twitter management program such as Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, you can actually display several lists at one time, manage and update them from the program.
What are some of the other benefits of Twitter Lists?
Find targeted followers.
You can look at any Twitter user’s public lists. Take a look at the lists of the influential people in your field to see who they have listed. You can find some great follows this way that you might not find any other way.
Next, look at who has listed you. Skip the lists titled things like “new followers”. If it’s a list that targets your interests or your niche, take a look. They may follow some people you should consider following, too.
Keep up with people without having to follow them.
Ideally, you want everyone you follow to follow you. Welcome to real life. It rarely happens. There are sometimes influential people unlikely to follow you back. You can include them on your list without following them and unbalancing your follower-following ratio.
You may also have people whose tweets you’d like to see from time to time, but not every day. Listing them without following allows you to see them only when you want.
Now that you know why you want a list, how do you create them?
Go to your “Lists” page in Twitter. You can get there, either by going to your Profile page and clicking on Lists, or using the dropdown menu under Profile in your main navigation.
Click Create List. Give your list a name—not more than 25 character—and then give it a short description to help you—and other Twitter users—know what it’s about. Decide whether you want it public or private. Public lists are accessible to anyone on Twitter; private lists are visible only to you. Be careful with your public lists—remember that EVERYONE can see them, so don’t make lists with names like “jerks” or “bad business people” or you may find yourself on the receiving end of some bad Twitter karma.
To add someone to a list, click on the list person icon to the right of their name and select “add to list.” You can do this whether or not you are following them. Then select the list you want from the menu that pops up or create a new list on the fly.
And making a Twitter List to organize your favorite and most important follows is just that simple.
To see list creation step-by-step, watch this short video.
Two Quick Steps to Increase Productivity Now!
Would you like to painlessly boost your productivity today? Here are two simple ways to improve your productivity, save you time and give you a little clarity.
#1. Clean off the top of your desk or workstation.
Really. Remove everything from the top of your desk. Leave the computer monitor and the phone. You don’t need to mess with those—that will make more work. But everything else needs to go. No matter how critical you think it is to your work life, take it off your desk.
Dust your desktop and your monitors and clean the phone. Wipe the phone down with an alcohol wipe; get all the grime and dirt and germs off it. Once you’ve done that, look at all the stuff you took off the desk. Yes, the piles, the pens, the sticky notes, the business cards, the mail, etc., etc. Give it a quick sort and figure out what you really need.
For me, critical desk items would be my pen cup (empty out all but your favorite and most-used implements here—the spare pens can go somewhere else), my notepad, my timer (find out why here), my sticky notes and my water bottle. That’s it.
I really don’t need the canned air, yesterday’s mail, the memory cards that need reformatting or the Chinese Fortune Sticks. Are those stress balls and Kid Meal toys really helping you get more done? If not (and you know the answer is no), find them a new home.
Now, doesn’t that look better? Doesn’t that feel better? Do this at least once a week and you’ll find that you are working better and thinking more clearly.
#2. Clean out the drawers.
Confession: I have computer desk; it has no drawers (yes, that is my desk in the picture and all the workspace I have). That’s one of the reasons my desk top gets messy. What I do have is a set of rolling drawers that sits next to my desk, but it’s just out of reach. Since I don’t have a dedicated office where I can keep everything, most of my office supplies live in the basement store room so the drawers have become my portable office for things I need on a regular basis.
When I am tidying up in a hurry, or when my kids don’t want to take something back to the basement, it gets stuffed in my drawers. As a result, they end up cluttered and messy and full of stuff I don’t need. Giving the drawers a quick clean out can produce some amazing finds.
Let’s do this one drawer at a time. Open the drawer, take EVERYTHING out of it and wipe down the inside. Turn it upside down over the wastebasket if you need to and get all the little cruddy stuff out. Look at the contents you have taken out and decide what really needs to be there. If it isn’t something you use regularly in your work, consider finding it a new home.
Yesterday my desk gave up two tape measures, a flashlight, an empty tape dispenser, some colored pencils, a compass (the math kind, not the Boy Scout kind), three checkbook covers and some other junk. It may not seem like a lot, but my drawers aren’t very big. If you have larger drawers, put a drawer organizer on your shopping list. My favorite—especially for the pencil drawer—is a silverware divider. They are just the right size for most desk drawers and the perfect for sorting writing implements.
Take a look at what you got from the desktop and the drawers. Throw away the trash and the broken stuff and then get rid of everything that isn’t helping you be more productive. Your kids’ art supplies and homework tools can go into a labeled bin in the closet that they can access when they need it. Receipts and other forms should be filed in your file box or cabinet.
If you keep in or on your workspace only what you currently need, you’ll find your workday going more smoothly, you won’t waste time trying to find things, your productivity will go up and your stress level will go down.
What’s your biggest productivity challenge or your best tip?
Please share your thoughts in the comment section below and let’s all get more successful together.
Do Your Little Kittens Keep Losing their Mittens?
Mine do–and it drives me crazy.
We live in an area where winter gear is more than a wardrobe accessory.
When I found eight gloves on my daughter’s desk–and not a matching pair in the bunch–I knew we needed a better way to keep track of all the hats, scarves, gloves and other winter clothes that seem to be draped over every chair, spindle and doorknob in our home.
I thought about putting bins or shelves in the front closet or letting their little fingers and noses turn blue and fall off, but none of those ideas went over well. I really wanted a solution that would be simple and seasonal. After all, we don’t’ need storage bins in the front closet in summer and that would just invite clutter to pile up.
And then I was at the store one day and found this.
For just a few dollars, I found this great over-the-door shoe organizer. I was looking for one with the pockets for each shoe, but this one–designed for pairs–works even better. There are enough pockets for each family member to store a hat, scarf and gloves in, plus extra pockets for heavy-duty ski (or shovel-the-front-walk) gloves.
I didn’t have to build shelves, find room for bins or make any permanent changes to my closet. When winter’s over, I can store it in the same bin as all the winter gear.
We have come to use shoe organizers for many things at our house. We’ve never used them for shoes, but they are handy for all kinds of other things: art supplies, hair accessories, neckties, jewelry. See-through small pockets and the ability to put them on the back of doors, utilizing otherwise unused space, makes these perfect for organizing.
Next year, I might even write names on the flaps so there’s no question about whose gear goes where.
How about you? Have you got a favorite organizing tip to share or an organizing challenge you’d like help with. Please leave your ideas, questions and suggestions in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
Use Gmail Filters to Organize Your Email & Increase Productivity
Do you spend too much time on your email? Would you like to cut that time way back and not miss any important emails.
You can! If you use gmail, today’s tutorial is just for you. Learn how to create filters that will automatically sort your incoming emails into the folders of your choosing, so you can easily see what’s important and what can wait.
By the way, if your email is through your domain, you can still use gmail to read and process it. If you’d like to learn how, leave me a comment below and I’ll let you know when the next tutorial is up.
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Use a Journal to Boost Business Success
Do you journal?
You should.
Keeping a journal will help your business be more successful.
Having a daily or weekly record of your business growth helps you keep track of new ideas, measure your progress, celebrate your successes and analyze your flops.
What is journaling? Journaling is simply the act of putting thoughts or ideas onto paper. There are many ways to do it, but for our purposes, I consider journaling either using pen and paper or typing on the computer. Audio and Video journals serve a different purpose and aren’t as effective for business journals as writing is.
Write down ideas, record your successes and your failures, write about your challenges and how you handled them. A journal is a great place to analyze and note what went right, what went wrong and what you would do differently next time. Don’t waste time beating yourself up but if you need to vent, it’s better on paper than yelling at your partner or kicking the dog.
What’s the difference between a business journal and a personal journal or diary? A personal journal is just that—it’s where you write about your daily life, your kids, your vacation, current events and the price of milk. A personal journal is for the story of your life. Your business journal is the story of your business. It’s a place to brainstorm, to analyze and summarize meetings and events, and to plan strategies and assess your progress (or lack of).
Writing down thoughts and ideas frees your mind from having to remember everything, enabling you to focus on creativity and running your business. Having a written record of your progress helps you see patterns, organize your thoughts, find your passion, and see changes and refinements that will improve your business. Writing can help boost your creativity. It can be an outlet for emotions you aren’t comfortable sharing with others. Writing can give you clarity. I often find that a problematic situation becomes less so when I can put everything down on paper and then review it more objectively.
Write daily if you can. You don’t need to write a lot. Set aside 10 minutes at the end of each workday to journal. If not daily, write at least twice a week and whenever the thought strikes. Writing about things while they are fresh in your mind will give you a more accurate and complete picture of your life and your progress.
The beauty of journaling is that you can do it anywhere, anytime. I carry a small notebook with me wherever I go. I never know when I’ll need to jot down an idea or when I’ll have a few free minutes that I can spend journaling. Ideas that have made their way to my journal are not always implemented right away but I have found inspiration when I read back through it at a later time.
Do you journal? How do you do it and how has it helped your business? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.
Worry–the Wasted Emotion
Today I spent considerable time waiting at the doctor’s office. It wasn’t my idea; I got a call requesting my presence for a medical test. When they were quite insistent that I do it today instead of waiting for an opening at a more convenient time and location, my initial reaction was to worry. That probably makes me pretty normal. I think that would be most people’s reaction.
But yesterday was a busy day and I had a lot of things going on, including an outing with friends. After hanging up the phone and giving myself a few minutes to process the information and run through all the possible “worry” scenarios, I decided that I needed to put this aside and not make it the focus of my day.
It remained a distraction for a short while, but as I focused on what I needed to do and on my friends and their lives, it gradually faded into the background. I spent my evening hosting a group of teenage girls for a game night at my house. That was a great distraction; I spent all evening laughing and joking with some great people and sharing in their joy instead of introducing unnecessary worry into their lives.
By the time I got up this morning, it was simply another item on the to-do list. Even as I sat in the doctor’s office with a long wait, I realized I really wasn’t worried about the outcome. I brought along my current reading (book review to come soon) and was able to focus on my reading. I noticed that wasn’t the case with the other patients around me who were there for the same test. Most of them had brought someone along to wait with them, and I observed as they fidgeted and paced and whispered anxiously to their companions.
It was then that it really hit me what a wasted emotion worry is. Worry does not benefit us. While a little worry might be seen as helpful, such as when we concern ourselves enough to prepare well for a job interview or an audition, worrying about things that may or may not be–or may or may not happen, has no benefit. If we are concerned about the likelihood that something might or might not happen, rather than worry and fret, we need to do what we can to ensure the desired outcome. When there is nothing we can do, we need to learn to let the worry go. Worry can have a negative effect on our health. It can cause the same physical reaction as a physical stressor, including an increase in adrenaline production, headaches, stomachaches, sleeplessness, shortness of breath, inability to concentrate and a rise in blood pressure, among other things. Continuing to worry means allowing these symptoms to take up permanent residence in our bodies leading to a suppressed immune system and opening us up to more health issues.
So, how do we banish worry? Worry, or more appropriately concern, is a normal human emotion. We all experience it at some point, but that doesn’t mean we need to invite it in and give it a permanent home. We experience excessive worry when we allow our concern to grow beyond manageable limits. Here are a few strategies I’ve learned that help me keep unneceessary worry at bay.
Address the issue – In my case, it meant following the doctor’s suggestion and doing something right away. I got a clean bill of health on the spot. If I’d followed my first inclination I would have been waiting over a week for the appointment, giving my well-developed imagination ample opportunity to think up every negative scenario. The quicker you address the source of your concern, the quicker you can resolve it and move on with your life.
Do Something – This really goes along with the first one. If there is something you can do to alleviate your worry, do it. Make a phone call to check on that person you are worrying about, make that doctor’s appointment, finish the paper or article you need to write. If you can’t address the issue, find something else positive to do. One of the ways I deal with the stress of worrying is to tackle my project list. I find physical labor distracts me from other issues and the garden often looks much better when I take out my frustration on the weeds. Exercise helps, too. A good brisk walk, a bike ride or a swim can all relieve the tension that worry creates in your body and mind and help you relax.
Eat Healthy — A good, healthy diet allows your body to receive what it needs to function properly. Over eating or under eating both have negative effects on your system. Indulging in unhealthy “comfort foods” may actually compound the effects of worry, since they are frequently high in fat, sugar and caffeine. Speaking of caffeine, it’s good to limit your caffeine consumption in times of stress and worry as it stimulates the nervous system and can lead to increased adrenaline production, something worriers really don’t need more of.
Help Someone Else – Doing something positive for someone else often puts our own worries into better perspective–or at least gives you the opportunity to help alleviate someone else’s worries and really does make you feel better. When Gordon B. Hinckley, the president of the Mormon Church was a young missionary in England he worried that he wasn’t effective and was wasting his time and his family’s money. He spilled out his worries in a letter to his father who wrote back, “Forget yourself and go to work.” Focusing on someone or something else means you aren’t focusing on your worries.
Talk to Someone – Often the best thing we can do for our worry is to just get it out in the open and get it out of our system. Having a support system, someone who will listen and help you refocus, and just knowing that you aren’t carrying the load alone can all go a long way toward relieving your worries.
Prayer & Meditation – Sometimes there isn’t any real way to address the issue fully. Turn your worries over to God or to whatever higher power works for you. If you’re a religious person, you are probably familiar with the passage of scripture that reads “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28). It really does work, but you’ll have to exercise your faith. Meditation is also a wonderful way to clear your mind. These techniques don’t involve forgetting about your troubles, but rather acknowledging them and then clearing your mind and focusing on the present moment to invite in positive thought instead. If you don’t know how to meditate, check out this site for some helpful tips to get you started.
So, how about you? How do you deal with the stress and worry in your life? Please share your feedback, thoughts and strategies in the comment section below.
Become a Mind-Reading Marketer
I’ve been busy digging into a new book this week. I am an avid reader–and that’s probably an understatement.
I have a whole shelf in my bookcase dedicated to business books. It’s not the time in my life to go back to school and get another degree, so I’m busy learning all I can from successful business people and authors.
Read Their Mind is my latest addition. It showed up in my mailbox a couple of weeks ago and I’ve already read it once and going through for the second time with my highlighter and my idea book.
Of all the business books I’ve read, this one really cuts to the chase and gets to the point in plain, straightforward English.
There’s no magic bullet, no secret key to success in business. It’s all about learning to listen to the needs of the marketplace and specifically to the needs of your target customers–and Read Their Mind tells you just how to do that.
I LOVE to know what people are thinking. I like to know why they do what they do–and in the business world, if you don’t know what your customers are thinking, well, you might soon be looking for a new job.
Read Their Mind couldn’t have come at a better time for me. I recently took over a blog from someone else and I’m just finishing up the process of redesigning, updating and relaunching it to become the incredible successful resource both its founder and I have envisioned.
On top of that, I’m putting the finishing touches on a new photography venture that will be launching in the next few weeks (need terrific, professional, affordable images for your blog or website?–stay tuned–you’re going to LOVE this). I finished Read Their Mind just as I was developing a market research survey for my new business (if you have 5 minutes to spare, please click here and take the survey) so I was able to tweak the questions to make sure they were really giving me the information I need.
Now, being the giving, sharing person I am, I am sharing my success with you. If you click on the link below, you, too, can get this great and amazing book by the always informative and ALWAYS entertaining Sandi Krakowski for FREE. Here it is: http://www.arealchange.com/blog/read-mind-book-tour .
So, go get the book, read it, apply it and come back and tell me how great it’s made your business. And if you’ve already read it, share your thoughts in the comment section below.
And if you found this helpful, please use the buttons below to tweet or share it with your network.
____________________________________________________
Marie Leslie is the chief Creative Genius at Marie Leslie Media. With 30 years experience as a professional writer, editor and photographer she has had work published in many regional and national magazines. Marie currently writes and teaches about business and social media, helping people to understand and make use of the ever-changing internet. She offers social media training and set up, including blog set-up and optimization as well as blog writing & social media management services.
Posted in Steps to Success, The Bookshelf
Also tagged books, business success, how-to, marketing
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Kin U Reed This?–A Short Guide for Writing on the Web
Good writing is critical to a successful business. Whether you are writing a letter to a prospective client, updating your website or blog, or posting to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, your writing presents your business image to the world.
Have you thought about what your writing says about you lately? Does it tell new visitors to your website, blog or Facebook page that you care about your business, that you take pride in your work and that you can provide them with a high-quality experience? Or does it tell them that you’re just too busy to be bothered?
As part of a very large project I’m working on, I’ve had the opportunity to read more than 1000 blog posts in the past week from a variety of different writers. While nearly all the blog posts had great, interesting information in them, the difference in quality was astounding. Some were well written and laid out, with proper punctuation, capitalization and paragraph separations. Others reminded me of my children’s grade-school writing exercises. You know, the ones where the kids are told to write continuously about anything, without stopping and without regard to grammar, spelling or punctuation for 15 minutes. Personally, I think that’s a bad idea–unless they’re allowed to go back afterward and correct those things–but that’s another topic for another day.
A blog post is not a giant text message. A blog post doesn’t need to be Pulitzer material, nor does it need to be written to the standards of your 12th-grade term paper. It’s okay to write conversationally in your blog; it’s okay to take a few liberties with convention. If you’re a business blogger, your standard of care does need to be somewhat higher than a personal blogger. In either case, though, there are a few basic rules of grammar and punctuation that really do need to be followed if you want people to read your blog more than once.
- Sentences should begin with a capital letter and end with a period, question mark or exclamation point.
- “I” should always be capitalized–unless you’re e.e. cummings.
- Paragraphs are good things. They break up big blocks of text into visually and mentally manageable sections and keep your blog post from looking like a dissertation.
- Contractions require the use of appropriately placed apostrophes.
- Spell check is a good thing. Use it. It is not, however, a substitute for proof reading. Do that, too. If you’re really bad at it, find a friend, an employee or even a virtual assistant to proofread your blog posts, web updates or advertising pieces before you publish them. If you’re mentioning a person or company by name, spell it right. Take the time to double check the spelling of names, places and companies. It increases your credibility immensely.
- Figure out what it is you want to say before you publish your post. It is perfectly fine to make an outline for blog posts and longer articles to make sure you cover all the critical points. Rambling blog posts that roam from subject to subject lose the reader’s attention and result in a hasty exit from your site.
- And, finally, my favorite piece of journalism school advice: never use a two-dollar word when a 50-cent word will do. Using big words and lots of jargon doesn’t make you look smarter. Writing posts that your readers can understand will. Avoid technical jargon and terms generally used only by insiders in your industry.
I could include many more writing rules for you, but the point of this post is just to get you thinking about what you’re putting out on the web and hopefully help you “up” your game a little bit. Do you have any writing rules you find critical for your business? Anything that drives you crazy when reading other blogs or websites? Please share your thoughts and feedback in the comment section below.
And if you found this helpful, please use the buttons below to tweet or share it with your network.
____________________________________________________
Marie Leslie is the chief Creative Genius at Marie Leslie Media. With 30 years experience as a professional writer, editor and photographer she has had work published in many regional and national magazines. Marie currently writes and teaches about business and social media, helping people to understand and make use of the ever-changing internet. She offers social media training and set up, including blog set-up and optimization as well as blog writing & social media management services.
8 Reasons to Use Gmail
I have a Gmail account and use Gmail for all of my business mail. If we’ve emailed, you probably don’t realize this because my email address is marie at marieleslie.com. Gmail doesn’t show up anywhere in my emails unless I choose to send from my Gmail address. I’ve been through several email systems in the nearly two decades since I got my first email account. I’ve been using Gmail for six years now and it has been the best.
I’ve had email accounts with all the major providers. I use them infrequently, one for strictly personal email (you know—my family, my kids’ schools, etc.) and one for junk. I use it for junk because I can’t keep any contacts in it; I think it’s the most hacked email provider on the planet and I don’t want to subject any friends to hack spam.
Why do I love Gmail so much?
Gmail has the Best. Spam. Filters. Ever.
I NEVER find ads in my inbox for male enhancements (for whatever reason I only get emails with male things; go figure), email with vulgarities in it or garbage. I do get daily notices that my accounts have been compromised at banks I’ve never heard of, but those only appear in my Spam folder. And unlike some other email providers I’ve used, I didn’t have to set up the filtering myself.
Gmail automatically uses my domain email.
Gmail allowed me to set up my email to automatically receive email from my domain (yes, it’s forwarded from my webhost) and to have every outgoing email automatically show as coming from my domain. Six years ago, no online email provider did it that simply. Even when I send from my phone, it still shows my domain email as the sending address. I don’t have to remember to select it every time I send an email. I can even choose to have outgoing emails sent from any number of different addresses if I want to.
Gmail can be accessed from any computer and from my phone.
Without jumping through hoops or going through complicated procedures, I can check my BUSINESS email from any computer and from my phone and I can access old emails as well because it all stays on the Gmail database. This also means I don’t ever download any potential virus-containing emails to my computer. For what it’s worth, I do download and store important emails and information that would kill me to lose if something happened to my email. I’d do the same thing if I were using Outlook and it downloaded my mails. Backing up everything important is just smart business and part of my business routine.
Gmail has an awesome labeling system.
I like things orderly. I don’t like messy inboxes any more than I like a messy desk (my pet peeve). Not only can I organize emails into neatly labeled folders, but Gmail actually has a filtering system that I can combine with those labels to have it automatically sort my incoming mail to make my mail-checking so much easier. I’ll be posting a tutorial about this in the next few days if you want to know how it works.
Gmail makes it easy for me to see what’s important.
Gmail has nifty stars and other symbols that I can use to label emails. My other account allows me to flag things with a little orange star when it’s important; Gmail gives me several different colors of stars as well as exclamation points and other symbols. I use them to mark emails for different purposes. Different colors of stars have different meanings for me as well as using colored exclamation points for degree of importance or urgency. When I can’t tend to all my email at once, it’s a great way for me to know what I need to come back to later and in what order.
Gmail has a cool group-by-conversation feature.
I love that Gmail keeps emails with the same subject together. When I’m having an ongoing conversation with someone, I can see the entire thread start to finish. I don’t have to waste time hunting down old emails to refer back to something that was discussed in an earlier email. If you don’t like this feature, you can turn it off.
Gmail has an easily customizable signature.
I can create a signature, with multiple links if I want, to go at the bottom of every outgoing email. I can even create a different signature for each outgoing address I use. Yes, I am aware that most other providers allow signatures. Gmail’s works for me.
Gmail connects easily with other apps.
I can use my Gmail account to quickly and easily sign in to any number of other online apps that I use. It just makes my life easier to have a Gmail account that is connected to everything, like my Google Voice, Hootsuite, YouTube and Flickr accounts so I don’t have to remember as many passwords.
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Marie Leslie is the chief Creative Genius at Marie Leslie Media. With 30 years experience as a professional writer, editor and photographer she has had work published in many regional and national magazines. Marie currently writes and teaches about business and social media, helping people to understand and make use of the ever-changing internet. She offers social media training and set up, including blog set-up and optimization as well as blog writing & social media management services.
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