GaGa Over Google - Part 3

Check out Part 1 and Part 2

John wrote-up Google's latest news on Google Apps for your Domain. I previously pointed to the hosted Gmail solution I've been using in Part 1 of this series. Essentially, Google is now providing their email, calendar, and a couple of other tools for businesses.

One of the things not mentioned there is Google Notebook. Google Notebook is a great way to capture and synthesize your thoughts from the comfort of the web browser.

Some people consider Google Notebook a competitor to other social bookmarking tools like Delicious. But it really can be much more than that if you think about it as a "notebook".

I've been using it to collect my thoughts, store what Web services and products I want to review, and even preparing for phone calls.

Google Notebook works through a Firefox extension - an IE extension was also recently released. Give it a try and get more organized.

Cold E-mailing, SalesGenius, and Start With A Lead eBook

I reviewed Brian Carroll's book back in June and as such, turned to him about a question regarding prospecting tools somewhat recently. My question, does "cold e-mailing" work?

Brian pointed me to this thought by Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies (and fellow DTM Contributor):

So does e-mail cold calling work? Yes. If done correctly it can be a highly effective tool in today's market. Here are some guidelines to follow to do it right:

1. Personalize every message.
Decisions makers must know immediately that the e-mail was written just for them. Mention your research. Highlight a triggering event. Reference a referral.

2. Tie your message to their business needs.
Don't talk about your company, products, services or solutions. Nada! Not one word about this. Instead, focus on their issues, concerns, problems and challenges.

3. Keep it short and sweet.
You have less than 20 seconds to capture the decision-maker's attention. After the first couple sentences, they decide if they'll delete it, forward it or respond.

4. Make it readable from the preview window.
Most people do a quick scan of their messages in the preview window before opening them. If your message is longer than this, make it shorter.

5. Start a conversation.
Your goal is to engage decision makers in an online discussion. In order to do this, they have to give them something they can respond to. Ask a question, invite them to a webinar, see if they'd be interested in an information resource on your website. Focus on creating the dialogue.

Cold e-mailing can be more effective if you have additional tools in place. One that recently caught my eye was SalesGenius. SalesGenius provides a way to track e-mail to see who has and who has not opened it. They include a nifty Outlook plugin too.

If you are looking for ways to generate leads, Brian's book is full of great tips. He's also made an eBook freely available for those interested.

GaGa over Google - Part 2

In Part 1 of this series, we looked at Gmail - now, we turn our attention to Google Calendar

Google Calendar is a very simple yet feature rich web based calendar. It makes tracking, adding, editing, and sharing events quite easy to do.

There are two elements in particular that make Google Calendar a winner in my book - multiple calendars and sharing calendars.

I've actually setup different calendars for the different parts of my life. I have one for work and personal but then more specifically a calendar for particular clients and certain personal activities (e.g., I work with the college students at my church and have a calendar dedicated to that).

I also have the ability to subscribe to other public calendars (e.g., there was one for the World Cup) and uncheck a calendar if I don't want to see it.

For some of the calendars I mentioned above, I've shared them with specific people. Google Calendar offers several shared options, including making it view only. The sharing option is particularly helpful if your team is remotely distributed.

If you are a small business without an IT department or Outlook Exchange Server up and running, GMail plus Google Calendar is a very nice alternative (and from my perspective, it's actually preferable).

Windows Live Writer - Your Friend in the Blogging Age

There's been some pretty bad press about Windows Live Writer ("WLW") - the new blog editor recently released by Microsoft. Minus one very annoying yet short-lived initial start-up issue, I think it's quite a useful and polished tool.

For starters (and on a sidenote), I think people generally like to bash Microsoft, so the criticism is to be expected - although it really is not warranted in this case.

I've looked extensively at blog editors (for Windows PCs) and to this point, really have not been satisfied. My preference has been w.bloggar and I still stand by it as a great tool - but I immediately became a fan of WLW (for Mac users, Om Malik makes a point, which I cannot verify but assumed to be true - MarsEdit is a great blog editor "close to perfection").

There are a number of things to like about WLW, including a robust spell checker (you may wonder why the others have struggled to get that right). One of the neatest things though, is writing in "Web Layout" mode. Essentially, WLW pulls in the style of your blog and let's you view the copy you are writing the way it will actually appear on the site. The "Web Preview" takes that a step further and shows you your blog with the new content, as if the post were actually published.

The one small issue you will experience with the start of WLW is that it will publish a test post onto your blog. In many instances, it will clean that up for you - but be sure to check both your blog and RSS feed to manually delete it, in the event it wasn't removed.

Don't be fooled here, WLW is doing some very innovative things and PC users should be very happy with this great tool.

The New New Internet - Web 2.0 for Business

You may have noticed a little badge in my sidebar for The New New Internet (TNNI). TNNI is a Web 2.0 Conference coming to the East Coast - Tyson's Corner, VA (just outside of D.C.) - on September 20th. I'm particularly excited about it for two reasons: 1) Its focus is to help businesses understand Web 2.0. 2) It is s just down the road from my house (quite convenient!).

There really haven't been too many conferences like this one. Many tech conferences occur out on the West Coast and are specifically geared towards geeks and early adopters. TNNI is specifically looking to educate individuals and organizations alike about the exciting unfoldings of the web and how they impact business.

If you are interested in attending it, I'm happy to inform you that I can pass along a $50 discount to you - just use the promo code "technosight" when you register. I've written a bit more about the event over on my blog, including speaker info and what the day will look like. You can also access TNNI site here.

Hope to see you there!

GaGa over Google - Part 1

Google continues to land the big deals and innovate some of the most useful web apps. They just won a huge deal with Fox Interactive, becoming their preferred search provider for a number of Fox Interactive Media web properties - and that includes the behemoth MySpace.

While I don't always agree with Google and their policies (or politics for that matter) on a variety of issues, they really have created some very useful web applications, which I use frequently each day: Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Notebook.

Gmail

Gmail is a different approach to e-mail. For starters, Google essentially made the e-mail wars obsolute when they began offering 2 GB inboxes. Previously, MSN and Yahoo! charged users for premium inbox upgrade packages that weren't even half as large.But the main difference is through what Google calls "conversations", labels versus folders, and archiving over deleting.

Many folks don't get labels at first. The concept is actually pretty powerful because it's virtual as opposed to physical. An e-mail can have multiple labels like "to-do" and "project-x" versus simply existing in one folder.

The idea of archiving exists due to the size of the inbox. Instead of deleting an e-mail, simply archive it. If someone responds to that e-mail, it automatically gets moved from the archive back to the inbox.

That happens because e-mails are thought of as conversations instead of individual messages. All messages belonging to a single e-mail thread (same subject line) are shown in one window and one entry in your Gmail inbox and that helps keep the inbox a little more tidy.

Gmail also offers integrated chat and for those wishing they could use it to host the e-mail for their domain, hosted Gmail is in testing right now.

You can sign-up for Gmail by requesting an invitation code through your SMS enabled phone.

Next time: Google Calendar