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Posts Tagged ‘iPhone’

Social Media Time Schedule

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

I get asked all the time, “What is your schedule for checking in with social media?” I guess if enough of you are interested, it’s worth me writing about.

My typical day looks something like this:

1. Wake up and pummel brain into activity with reading light fiction (works better for me than coffee)

2. Read blogs in Google Reader and check Twitter (if I have time)

3. Write blog post for the day (and maybe tomorrow if the next day looks particularly crowded). I check my @1to1Discovery mentions at this time and respond if needed. Some days, this is my only Twitter check-in.

4. Head off to a meeting (client or one to one)

5. Eat lunch (preferably at home) and catch up on Twitter or blogs

6. Race off to afternoon meetings.

7. Exercise after meetings and before any evening networking events

8. If there’s no evening event, touch social media again, this time mostly fun stuff. It’s important to catch up on the latest Doctor Who news and fanfiction.

I do try to get to meetings early and check Twitter on my iPhone. In 15 minutes, I can catch up on the important stuff.

Since social media is part of what I do for a living, I probably spend more time on it than many. And even I’m not on it all day.

By the way, you’ll notice I didn’t mention Facebook. I do check Facebook, but it comes in through Tweetdeck with my Twitter stream, so I don’t always think of them as separate.

I do try to space out my social media activity, but if you follow me on Twitter, you’ve probably noticed I tend to tweet in bursts. That’s because I’m on in bursts. I’ve started to use Hootsuite to schedule some of my tweets, especially ones that aren’t time sensitive. But I never delay retweets. Those go out as I see ‘em.

One thing that helps me from spending too much time is to check social media between other appointments. If I know I have only 15 minutes, I’m a lot more efficient than if I have two hours in front of me.

I hope this was helpful. Social media is an effective way to grow your business. And you can engage in the media without it becoming a second life.

Anyone else have good tips to share?

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Tags: blogging, iPhone, social media, task management, time management
Posted in Time and Task Management | 3 Comments »

Updated Evernote Review

Friday, March 12th, 2010

Several months ago, I wrote a review of Evernote, and I very much liked the program. In fact, I like it so much that I’ve discovered new ways to use it, and I wanted to share my observations.

First, if you didn’t read the earlier review, Evernote is a cross-platform program that allows you to capture and access information in multiple places and across multiple devices. Captured items can be tagged and organized into different notebooks.

When I was writing the social media proposal for my restaurant client, I did some research on how other restaurants were using social media. I organized all my research in Evernote. I clipped web pages, imported .pdf files and wrote my notes. When I finished the proposal, I imported it into Evernote. When you sign up for an Evernote account, you even get an Evernote email address. This allows you to forward or bcc your Evernote account on emails. Truly you can keep everything associated with a project in one place.

You can tag notes as To-Do items, which allows you to use it as a task manager as well. If I didn’t love Action Lists for my iPhone so much, I would use Evernote as my task manager. But imagine being able to aggregrate everything from a project: emails, notes, websites, task lists, etc in one place. No more fumbling from one folder, computer, etc to another.

Your on-line account syncs to every device using Evernote, so I can get to all my files from both computers and my iPhone. Evernote works on most smartphones, so you can have it with you all the time.

I use it to jot down blog post ideas, clip and save websites, write reminder notes and keep work-related documents. If I’d really been thinking on my last trip, I would have saved my itinerary and other electronic trip documents in Evernote. Next time!

I’ve been meaning to keep a journal for years. Everytime I start, I end up stopping because I haven’t found a good way to keep the journal up to date on my portable device and computer. Not a problem any longer. I set up a “Journal” notebook in Evernote. Now I can write at my computer or on my phone, and the same information is in both places.

Anyone else use Evernote and want to share your experiences? Any questions for me about how to use Evernote to better manage tasks and documents?

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Tags: iPhone, task management
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Tweeting via a Twitter Client vs. on the Web

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

I’ve been fielding a lot of questions lately on how to interact with Twitter. The Twitter website is the obvious place to start, and it covers most of the basic functions, but you are missing out on some nice features.

If you are checking Twitter on a mobile phone, using the mobile site has gotten a lot better. You can now check your mentions and favorites from the mobile site. Even a couple of months ago, all you could see was the stream of people you were following. However, you still can’t check lists on the mobile site.

The better Twitter apps do give you access to lists, which are one of the best ways to manage your time on Twitter once you are following more than 100 people. Without access to lists on the mobile website, you are losing out on one of your best time management tools.

If you see a tweet you like and want to retweet it, you’re limited to the new retweet style on the website. Lots of people (myself included) hate the new style because you can’t edit the retweet before sending. It’s nice to add your own endorsement to a retweet. Most Twitter clients (for both computer and phone) allow you the option to edit before sending.

What’s the best client? It depends. I use Tweetdeck on both my phone and computer. It’s free and gives you everything I’ve mentioned above. I also use Twittelator on my phone. Why two clients? Tweetdeck moves between lists and saved searches faster. Twittelator allows more options with a tweet. The one I use depends on what I need to do.

HootSuite is supposed to be an excellent client, especially if you want to schedule tweets or easily manage multiple Twitter accounts. They also have an iPhone app. I’ve not used it myself, but people I know swear by it.

Tweetdeck and Hootsuite allow you to manage your Facebook account in addition to Twitter, which keeps multiple social media accounts in one place. Good time management!

Twitter via the web isn’t a bad way to start with the service, but in my opinion, if you want to use it seriously for business, you’ll want to move to a client as soon as possible.

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Tags: iPhone, social media, time management
Posted in social media | 1 Comment »

Foursquare. Is It Worth It?

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

For a couple of weeks, I was seeing Foursquare updates on my Twitter stream. Everyone seemed to be “campaigning” for mayor. What the heck?

I was very happy to ignore this new fad until I read this article on why small business should take a look at it. Having just started with a new client (a restaurant), I recognized the possibilities when I read the article, and I decided I needed to hit the campaign trail.

For those of you who don’t know, Foursquare is a game. It’s part social media, part geo-tagging, and I think I just ran out of parts. It runs on the three major smartphone operating systems (iPhone, Android and Blackberry).

As you travel about, you check in at various places, using the GPS feature of your phone for the app to find you. Warning. Sometimes I’ve found it to be more than a little off when finding me (like it thinking I’m in DC when I’m actually in Arlington). When it does find your location, it pops up a list of possible locations near you. If your location doesn’t exist, you can add it.

Checking in gets you points. If you have friends on Foursquare, you can compare your points to theirs. Competition! If you check into a location more often than everyone else, you become the mayor.

There are badges to unlock, and the app doesn’t tell you how to unlock them, so there’s some mystery. It’s very cool when a new badge unlocks!

Why should you care? Well, it is a fun game (and it’s free). But you were probably looking for more than that. If you are a service business, you might not care. But if you are a retail business (especially a restaurant), you might care a great deal.

It’s all about customer loyalty. You can register your business with Foursquare (free right now), and offer specials. Those specials will pop up when Foursquare finds your location. Imagine a number of restaurants in an area. Yours has the only special listed. If it’s a good deal, you’ll attract more business than your surrounding competitors.

You can also offer loyalty specials (every 10 check-ins gets something). This encourages people to keep coming back.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Still not sure? Download the game. Play it for a couple of weeks. You’ll come up with some good ways to use it for business, I’m sure.

Anyone offering specials? Let us know in the comments. I’ll check in and check you out.

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Tags: e-marketing, Giving, iPhone, Relationship building, social media
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Coffee House Tech Trends

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

As we move to the end of the year, I wanted to share an observation of technology and how we are using it.

Anyone who knows me even a little bit knows that I spend a lot of time in coffee houses. It’s where I meet my clients, prospects and people I network with. I am also a people watcher, and a gadget freak, so I like to see what gadgets other people are using.

Last year and very early this year, I saw a lot of Blackberrys, laptops and some netbooks. Those appeared to be the mobile productivity tools of choice.

As 2009 progressed, I saw a change. I now see fewer laptops and Blackberrys. What I see now are more netbooks, iPhones and other brands of smartphones.

It’s actually surprised me how the number of Blackberrys has dropped off. It’s a good mobile tool, but based on my unscientific measurement, it seems to be losing ground to the iPhone and other smartphones. I expect to see more Android-powered phones next year, especially as long as Verizon continues to not have an iPhone. People seem to like the touch screen phones, and the Blackberry Storm has not taken off here. I see it, certainly, but compared to the iPhone? No comparison.

The switch to more netbooks does not surprise me. More portable is better. Hence my recent netbook purchase. Most of the work done in coffee houses seems to be web browsing, basic word processing, email (and watching YouTube videos). Netbooks perform those functions very well.

What did surprise me until I thought it through was what I perceive as a switch from netbooks to iPhones and the like. Note the work I mentioned above. iPhones and many other smartphones perform most of those functions very well. Word processing is the only one where a computer is clearly better, but I have written plenty of documents on my phone, so it certainly can be done.

My observation is, of course, in the Washington DC area. Anyone from another location have observations to share? Is this an “inside the Beltway” phenomenon, or does it extend elsewhere?

Oh, just one more observation. While I was in Disney World last week, I noticed that while iPhones certainly were present, they were scarcer than the DC area. It might have had something to do with the fact that the AT&T service was horrible in the Orlando area. I couldn’t get 3G at all in the parks, and even my Edge connection was sluggish at best. I used to think all the complaints about AT&T were unjustified. The service in the DC area is quite good. Now I see that my experience here is hardly universal. Another reason to stay put for now.

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Tags: iPhone, networking on the go
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Review: Evernote

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

Sometimes you don’t know you need something until you stumble across it.

I’m pretty well organized. When I come up with an idea, I write it down, usually in my iPhone. Until recently, I was using either the Notes program that came with the phone or Action Lists for iPhone. Notes works pretty well, but I admit, I forget to look there sometimes. I check Action Lists religiously throughout the day, but it’s really a task manager, not an idea manager. I found I had to keep things very short, and sometimes I’d go back later and have no idea what I had been intending.

Then Evernote crossed my path in a tweet. It’s a dedicated note-taking application that can be used and synchronized with a number of different platforms. Of course, there’s a version for the iPhone. And Windows, Mac, Blackberry, Palm Pre and others.

Now I can make a note on the iPhone and sync it to my computer. So I have it exactly where I need it. Mostly, I use it to make notes of future blog posts and ideas for my book. If I am writing on my computer, I pull up Evernote on the computer. If I am on the go, I pull it up on my phone.

But that’s not all! It also can be used as a web-clipper. If I see a website I want to review later, I can clip it, and the text will show up on my phone the next time I sync. That allows me to easily review content when I don’t have a good connection to the Internet, or if I’m just impatient and don’t want to wait for a web page to load.

If you need to keep track of ideas (speakers, authors, bloggers, etc), and you need access to your content in multiple places, I highly recommend checking out Evernote. Did I mention that it’s free? There’s a paid version, but I haven’t needed it yet.

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Tags: blogging, iPhone, task management, time management
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Taking Back Your Time with Social Media

Friday, November 13th, 2009

Yesterday, I talked about how social media time management needs to start with looking at your goals, tools and strategy. Today, I’ll show how those three items influence where you spend your time with social media. I’ll close with some practical tips I’ve discovered along the way.

Again, I’ll use myself as an example.

My goals are to learn about social media and to build a following/fan base for promoting my book when it’s published. My strategies are giving back, adding value and meeting new people. How does that affect how I spend my time?

I skim a lot of the content that streams by. I’m looking for a few things: interesting topics to pass on or retweet, cool people to follow and stuff I’m interested in. Things that jump out at me? Networking, iPhone, social media, netbooks, economic news, small biz advice and funny stuff. I mostly ignore quotes, though attributed quotes will catch my eye if I like the author. Posts on these topics are most likely to meet my strategic needs of finding interesting people or content to pass on.

I also look for the names or avatars of people I know often post good stuff. My eye will slow down when I scan past them.

Do I miss stuff by scanning? Sure, but I can’t take the time to read in detail everything that goes by. I’m pretty ruthless to stick to the topics or people who will advance my goals. Everyone else goes by at top speed.

That probably raises the question of how do I decide who to follow? I follow people who are likely to advance my goals. And if someone I start following doesn’t post things of interest to me, I drop them. That puts me firmly in the camp of someone who does not auto-follow everyone who follows me. It’s a choice I made, and others make a different choice, but I made it to be true to my goals and strategy.

If you follow me, you probably notice that I tweet in bursts. That’s because I find blocks of time to engage. I deliberately plan to get to meetings 15-20 minutes early. Then I pull up Twitterific on my iPhone and scan my stream. I abuse the “favorite” function to mark things to review later on the computer. Scanning is easy on the phone. I can burn through 100-150 tweets in 15 minutes. Actually reading content is much faster on the computer, and that’s part of how I manage my time.

I turned off the “notify by email” function when I am followed or direct messaged. Until I did that, I was wasting a ton of time reading and deleting those emails. No more!

I only check who is following me a couple of days a week. In the early days, I checked several times a day and scanned for who to follow back. Now I’ve learned that the great majority of people who follow me are bots who will unfollow me in 24 hours or less. Fine, I didn’t want to waste my time with them anyway. Waiting for them to unfollow me saves time. Oddly enough, my rate of actual follower accumulation has increased, not decreased since I started that.

And I review regularly who I am following. If someone is wasting my time, I unfollow. My time is precious. No need to waste any of it.

I hope this has been helpful. Anyone else have any tips to share? Looking forward to them in the comments!

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Tags: iPhone, social media, time management
Posted in social media, Time and Task Management | 2 Comments »

GTD on the Go

Friday, October 9th, 2009

I wrote about GTD yesterday as a way to manage overwhelm. Not surprisingly, several of my clients regularly experience overwhelm, and I have worked with them on implementing the process. A common question arises. “How do I do this on the go?”

One of Allen’s principles is that you need to have your system with you at all times. If you think of something, you need to be able to write it down. Can you use scrap paper? Sure, but then you have to remember to copy it later.

A smart phone is a great place to keep your system. For those who haven’t read the book, you need two things: a calendar and a project/action list. I started GTD on my Blackberry using the calendar program and Memopad. I had all my action items and project lists in Memopad. And my dated items in Calendar.

Now I use my iPhone and a program called Action Lists It’s designed to easily implement GTD on the iPhone, and they update it frequently with improvements.

But you don’t need a fancy program to keep your action items with you all the time. A small notebook will work for you paper and pencil folks. Any phone that has a Memo program will work. The important part is consistency. Capturing everything on the go will keep you focused and on track, allowing you to be more effective in the same amount of time.

If you haven’t yet read the book, do so. It’s well worth the time.

Anyone have any GTD on the go stories to share?

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Tags: GTD, iPhone, task management, time management
Posted in Time and Task Management | 1 Comment »

Managing Overwhelm

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

I realized it had been a while since I have posted on Getting Things Done, the excellent book on time management by David Allen.

Last week, I was feeling overwhelmed by everything I was trying to get done, meetings I had to attend, clients to coach and presentations to make.

One of Allen’s main points is that you have to capture everything you need to do: business and personal, tasks and appointments. Anything you haven’t yet captured will take just a little bit of your mental and emotional energy. Multiply that by the number of things you haven’t captured, and you have a real drag on your energy and creativity. And that’s exactly what had happened to me.

I sat down and started capturing everything in my head that hadn’t yet made it into my personal GTD system (by the way, Action Lists for iPhone). It didn’t take long, no more than 10-15 minutes. I organized them into next actions and projects. As soon as I was done, I felt lighter! I was able to get on with the rest of my day feeling I had everything back under control.

Try it the next time you are feeling overwhelmed by life and work. And don’t forget to share your stories.

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Tags: GTD, iPhone, task management, time management
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