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From NetWorks! Boise member Tom Gay – The Alternative Board – Boise

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Outlook and Gist – This Baby May Have Legs

I have written a number of articles in the past about Gist which is a social media aggregator with some very cool features. In fact, from an information gathering standpoint, it compiles probably the most complete dossier on any of your contacts that I have yet encountered. This would include your email correspondence, social networks, news feeds, the works. However, while Gist is very good about collecting information, as a standalone product it is not so good at creating it. By that I mean, I’m not going to use it to generate emails. I don’t know that you cannot do that from within Gist but, looking at it, I don’t think that you would want to anyway. To me, email has to be an integral piece of any product that is going to pass muster as a Social CRM. In my mind, you flat cannot get away from that critical need.

I have also integrated Gist with SalesForce.com and it does make that well-recognized CRM a  much more social media friendly product. Unfortunately, I don’t much care for SalesForce’s email capabilities either, at least when you try to combine it with Gmail. This brings us to Outlook. As much as it pains me to say this, from the standpoint of a pure email client and contact manager (note that I did not say CRM), Outlook is pretty tough to beat and it may be getting tougher.

I have been using Outlook for the past several years as my email for a company that I am winding down my association with. As such, I am more inclined these days to use it experimentally. I have also had it loaded with Outlook’s Business Contact Manager add-on which supposedly turns it into a CRM. Personally, I would dispute that claim. About a year ago I did discover Xobni for Outlook and this is a superior add-on that originally just made Outlook better and now it not only makes it better, it has also added social network capabilities. Xobni has also issued a beta invite for their BlackBerry app. While I have both a BlackBerry and an invitation, I am not ready to go there quite yet. I also recently looked at the LinkedIn add-on for Outlook using Microsoft’s new “Social Connector”. Not ready for prime time and, at least for now, it connects with LinkedIn only. On top of that, it slowed down my performance fairly dramatically so that app only lasted about 3 days.

I became aware that Gist had a plug-in for Outlook some months back but decided against installing it as it apparently looks at Outlook’s “Contacts” folder vs. it’s “Business Contact’s” folder. Using Business Contact Manager (BCM), that created a problem. So yesterday. I exported all of my Business Contacts out of BCM as a .csv file and then imported them back into the Outlook “contacts” folder. I was then able to uninstall BCM completely and start fresh. Loading the Outlook plug-in from Gist was a painless affair, actually it is very well done, and it then went right to work cataloging my contacts and it did this very quickly while working entirely in the background.

Before we get into the details, if you have been to this site before you will know that I make no claims in regard to being the expert on anything. Rather, I have a robust curiosity of all things networking related. I also have the attention span of a 3-year-old, rarely find something that maintains my fascination for an extended period of time, and I have yet to find anything (at least in this field … CRM’s) that I really and truly love. Rather, I like to bring worthy products to your attention and then let you figure them out (smile).

Having installed Gist, I took a look at my screen and found that I now had two sidebars that were right next to each other, Xobni and Gist. They did not seem to conflict but the visual was killing me. So, in order to give Gist the best look, I uninstalled Xobni. During that process I completed a survey about what I thought of the product and why I mas deleting it. One of the last questions it asked was “Are you aware that you can use Xobni without the sidebar?”. Roh? I have since put it back on and will keep it in reserve (smile).

There is a lot to like about Gist and you know what? I think that I like this Outlook interface even better than going to the actual Gist site. The reason is probably pretty simple. Gist automatically identifies the contact I am working with in Outlook and the pulls up that contact profile only. What follows are some of the things that I have instantly found to be attractive (some of these may be available on Outlook 2007 only which is what I have):

• Not only do Gist profiles pop up when I am looking at my inbox, they all pop up when looking at my contact records.
• When I am writing an email, Gist recognizes who that is going to and conveniently pops up that person’s profile.
• If there are multiple people mentioned in the “to” or “from” fields it pops them all up.
• The profile is very complete including a Google map if an address is detected.
• It seemed to work well in displaying someone’s Twitter stream and it does tell me if we are connected on Twitter, FaceBook, or LinkedIn.
• It appears to display email conversations from both my Gmail and Outlook accounts and that is pretty sweet in itself.

What I have either not figured out or find lacking:

• It will show me that we are connected on Twitter, FaceBook, and LinkedIn but unless it has also identified a link, it will not allow me to go to those sites. And, it does not always find a link. How can it know that we are connected yet not know the link? Hmmm.
• The Twitter stream works well but I have yet to see anything in anybody’s FaceBook stream. Hmmm.
• There is no stream for LinkedIn updates.
• You can not retweet or reply on items in their Twitter stream while you can do this with Xobni.

Some final thoughts… I have been using Gist for sometime now and I do want to comment on the people behind the product itself. They have proven themselves to be consistently outstanding in the following areas:

1. Do you have a  customer service question or a problem? They will be right on it and they do follow through.
2. They are very good at keeping their customer base informed of new enhancements and new uses for their product.
3. They are very active on Twitter, monitor their brand closely, and seek to engage directly with folks who have a demonstrated interest in their application.

The bottom line is that the folks at Gist …. get it. The other bottom line is that they have been pretty upfront that they will be looking to monetize this service. I wonder how, when, and how much that will entail?

That will do it for today. Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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New Social CRM Add-Ons for Outlook, Gmail, & Your Inbox

And they won’t cost you a dime (smile). It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. I’ve jumped into doing the networking thing full-time and that has been fun. All three of our groups are growing and I have some pretty significant projects that I am collaborating on that will make our groups even better. Additionally, after a “training” absence of over 20 years, I will be conducting a workshop on Social Media Basics in conjunction with Action Coach and which is being sponsored by Key Bank. This occurs on March 18 and you can click here to learn more and/or to register.

It has been some time since I have done any posts on social media applications so let’s get caught up a little in that area ……

Social CRM:

Outlook decided this past week that they had better get jiggy with the program and introduced something that they call “Social Connector” which right now only connects with LinkedIn although they did announce plans to also do so with FaceBook and …MySpace? MySpace? Maybe I’m missing something with that (smile). Oddly, nothing was said about Twitter. It’s fairly obvious that the folks over at Microsoft want to offer something of their own to compete with a fantastic existing add-on … Xobni. This also struck me as being somewhat unusual in that LinkedIn already offers its own “LinkedIn Toolbar for Outlook”. At any rate, I did load the application and was pleased to see that it did not conflict with either my existing toolbar or my beloved Xobni which, by the way, has started to roll out its beta application for BlackBerry. I did receive an invitation for this but am moving away from Outlook and more toward Gmail so have chosen to pass on that at least at this time.

At any rate, Microsoft’s new social connector does show promise. Unlike Xobni, it will search on all email addresses identified in the “to” and “from” fields on any given email. It also activates when using your contact list. And, it slowed my computer down significantly while it seemed to constantly be searching for this information and seemed to never want to give up. There was some confusion in early information released about this product as being available for Outlook 2010 only. I use 2007 and you simply need to download a 32 bit utility to facilitate the interface first and it loaded up and worked fine. At least, as fine as it seemed to work. Me, I’m sticking with Xobni which already offers FaceBook and Twitter in addition to LinkedIn.

Gmail keeps getting better and better as email but it is worthless as any kind of CRM let alone a social CRM. I did run across something interesting last week called Rapportive which bills itself as a slick new Social CRM tool for Gmail. While I’m not convinced of that claim, it certainly is way better than nothing which is what we have now. The article does make comparisons to Xobni but the reality does not even come close. The “Social” segment of this is that it will search networks and then show you a profile of that individual including their photo, titles, and links to a variety of sites including FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more where it is able to identify that individual’s membership. The “CRM” part of this is …. Are you ready? A notepad for each contact. My level of enthusiasm overwhelms me (smile). It is fair to say that I understand this application to still be in beta but, it does seem to have challenges identifying all networks that this individual may belong to (or even the individual themselves) and my guess is that this is caused by the fact that a lot of people use different email addresses with their different networks. Xobni, at least, does try to help you identify accounts correctly in this occurrence by suggesting several profiles that may be the person you seek. Rapportive also lists the contact’s age and I am not sure where it is getting that. I have also seen where it seems to drop 10 years from your actual age when it does this reporting.  At my advanced age, and for that single feature alone, I am nominating Rapportive for “Best New App of 2010″. LOL.

Social Network Digests:

A lot of folks have found Feedera to be an invaluable tool and I would be counted among those. This past week I found a new tool called Nutshell Mail and this one of the coolest applications that I have seen in a good long while. What makes this neat is that it integrates with, and monitors all of, your major social networks and then emails you a digest of their latest tweets, updates, status updates, etc. and you have a tremendous amount of control over what type of information that you wish it to send you and how often you wish that to be delivered to your inbox. The interface is beautiful and interactive allowing you to initiate things like retweets and comments directly from the email itself. It also tells you who has chosen to unfollow you on Twitter since your last email update and will allow you to return the favor. Get this …. when you choose to unfollow someone who has already dropped you like a bad habit. it creates a tweet for you to send out that looks something like this “@xxxxx When you look back at the ruin that your life has become, you will regret the day that you chose to unfollow @craigmjamieson“. I laughed so hard I almost wet my pants!

Well, that’s about all the time I have for reporting right now but that’s o.k. because I have probably overstayed my welcome with you (smile). Thanks so much for visiting!

Craig

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Lunch & Learn Promotion – Multiple Campaigns Can Get Complicated

As I dive further into the promotion of our Lunch and Learn event, things seem to be getting more and more complex. This condition is particularly aggravated by the fact that I am approaching this task in a multi-pronged format which includes: an event on FaceBook; the same on LinkedIn; a separate registration page on another party’s website; my impending direct mail campaign (more on that below); and whatever the hell the guy that is actually organizing this is doing on his own (smile).

I will say this, I have been pretty pleased with the results thus far. When last I looked, about 10 people had either expressed a very strong interest in attending this workshop or had already signed up. Most of these folks I know already which, in itself, is even more outstanding. I have also heard comments like … “We attended another workshop like this but it was put on by a bunch of young nerds. We think we would relate better to you.” I have decided to rename this event .. “Old Guy Teaches Social Media”. LOL You can register for the event here.

While attacking promotion from multiple angles just seems to make sense, managing it is creating a wee bit of a nightmare for me. As mentioned before, I am extremely sensitive to what I perceive to be the “spam-like” activity that often goes on in social media. Most of it, I am quite sure, is purely innocent. However, some examples would be:

• I accept your friend request on FaceBook and you immediately reward me by inviting me to your events on a daily basis, asking me repeatedly to become a fan of your page, and continuously suggest that I become a fan of other pages that I have never heard of. All of this prior to even saying “Hi”.
• You send me stupid gifts that I never asked for and ask me for even stupider gifts in return.
• Right now on LinkedIn I am being frequently invited to join a particular group, and this is by a bunch of different people, that I already belong to??????

This tells me that you think that, because we have connected, we are now best friends despite the fact that you have never attempted to contact me directly and … in the case of the LinkedIn example, you obviously don’t do your homework. On top of that, your invitation messages are typically completely automated which indicates that absolutely no thought was put into my selection other than to maybe check off my box along with 100 others. Even if you are sending a bulk message or invitation, and there are times when this is appropriate, at least please take the time to customize your form letter and show me and others a little of your personality. Thank you!

With this is mind, yesterday I sent out some specific invitations via FaceBook. I had already done this the day before via LinkedIn. I did not want to spam folks via FaceBook with the same invitation (basically) that I had already sent via LinkedIn, therefore, I needed a list from LinkedIn to crosscheck before sending. You would think this would be easy and you would be thinking wrong. LinkedIn event management is very quirky. For one thing, you can not cancel (delete) an event. Lame. You can see who is coming or who has expressed interest but if you want to get a list of who you chose to send your invitation, I could only figure out one way. Go to your sent box and find the invitation email and then expand the “send to” list to reveal the names and then copy and paste that into Word and format it however you like. How convenient.

Armed with this list from LinkedIn, I was then able to carefully send invitations out via FaceBook to those who had not already received them. And, at least FaceBook will generate a list of these for you. Now it was time to once again break new ground in my learning experience … direct mail. This has been on my to-do list for sometime but that time had not yet arrived. As I was getting ready to choose between Constant Contact and iContact, somebody on FaceBook had asked about this recently and a comment was left for that individual to check out MailChimp. The comment also included the word “FREE”. Naturally, that got my attention (smile).

MailChimp has a totally free account that will allow you to have up to 500 subscribers and send up to 3,000 emails per month. For me, and particularly right now, this will be more than adequate. From what I can tell, it has all the goodies. Here is a comparison of features vs. the competition. Is it the most intuitive of the software that I have used? No. Especially not for somebody like me who hates to follow directions. The first thing you need to do is create your list. Ideally, this will come from folks who have “opted in” via your website. I did not have that luxury so I chose to upload my contact list and then edit that later. MailChimp is very specific about the “do’s” and “don’t’s” involved in using lists and I did appreciate that education. So, with all that in mind, I uploaded by Gmail list and found that 2/3 of it was rejected due to syntax errors. This means a missing or incorrectly formatted email address. Groan, more work for me to do. This, however, turned out to be a huge blessing …

All the addresses I really cared about were there. Now all I needed to do was delete from the list those that I did not want to use. I ended up deleting about 200 and had to do so … one at a time. It took me hours. There is no method that I could find that would allow you to check off boxes on the ones you did not want and then do a group delete. And, it’s not just “delete, delete, delete”. Each deletion requires a confirmation and then it takes you back to the start of the list and it displays 25 names per page so you have to continuously page forward. Thank God you can have multiple list and you can replicate an existing list.

You can also filter your list by criteria (they call this segmenting) but I’m not so sure that you can save a segmented list. At any rate, by using a master list, you can add tag words to a category field for each contact that would allow you to segment in that fashion and send out an email campaign to that segment only. For example, NetWorks! members will have “networks” as a tag in that category field. You can have multiple tags and then “segment” based on a search where that field “contains” the tag you are wishing to filter by. I was able to do this, create a test invitation, and then send it to myself at two different email addresses. And, it worked! Tomorrow I will “categorize” each contact, compare this list against my LinkedIn and FaceBook lists to make sure I am not “spamming” folks, and then proceed.

Final thoughts. I have all of these people who have supposedly signed up or expressed interest via LinkedIn or FaceBook events but have no idea of whether or not they have gone to the website to actually complete the registration process. This registration page is not mine and I need contact the owner, the actual event organizer, to balance the lists. Of course, a lot of this would not be an issue if I controlled all of this myself. You can bet your bottom dollar that this will be the scenario on my next workshop of seminar. Oh, can you guess what promotional method has generated the highest return thus far? LinkedIn. Go figure (smile).

Thanks for visiting!!

Craig

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Lunch and Learn Promotion – My Money Meets My Mouth

As a recap of my previous post … I have been asked to facilitate a “Lunch and Learn” for a member of our NetWorks! Boise Bing group: Roger Hawk with Action Coach. While this is actually not my event, I have also been asked to help promote it. The topic of the workshop is “Social Media Basics” with an emphasis on business related applications.

Here is where this becomes interesting … While I have written numerous blog posts on how to do this using social media, I have never had the occasion to actually do one myself. NetWorks! Boise is a closed organization and by invitation only. Therefore, events have never been needed or, for that matter, suitable. This workshop is an entirely different animal.

So, here is what I have done thus far ……

• A good deal of my communication is via email. I use Gmail for hosted accounts via Google Apps. Gmail’s standard signature line capabilities are abysmal however, by using a FireFox add-on called WiseStamp you can do some pretty cool stuff like … adding a link to the event to my signature line itself which is automatically inserted on all sent mail.
• Of course, I have blogged about the workshop. My blog posts are automatically fed to my profiles on FaceBook, LinkedIn, and my individual group sites which are based on a Ning platform. Whenever I develop a post on this site, that post is automatically sent out via Twitter. Additionally, I have dedicated a text widget box on the sidebar of this site to an image of the event flier that also serves as a hyperlink to its registration page.
• Naturally, status updates to Twitter, LinkedIn, and FaceBook have been sent simultaneously to all three sites by using Ping.fm. Furthermore, my blog updates are also read by TwitterFeed and tweets are automatically created and sent out via two Twitter accounts. Changes to status updates on LinkedIn will also show up in the weekly email that LinkedIn sends to all members showing updates within your particular network.
• An event was created on FaceBook and direct invitations will be going out tomorrow. I should mention that I am very sensitive to what I consider a high level of “spam-like” activity on FaceBook in regard to invitations to events and Fan Pages. Therefore, these invitations will be very targeted. This event was published on my friends’ walls.
• A similar event was set up on LinkedIn and targeted invitations have been sent on that and through LinkedIn. Additionally, links to the event were posted on two local LinkedIn groups that I belong to that would be suitable for this event.
• I have never done any direct email marketing so this seems like a good opportunity to give it a try. It has been on my “to-do” list. I will be looking at Constant Contact, iContact, and MailChimp for this application.
• As the event itself is being booked though Action Coach’s site, I will not be looking at tools like Evite or Eventbrite at this time. You can register for the event here.
• I will continue to promote the workshop in the time remaining prior to actually holding it.

True confession time …. I have not been what I would call a huge “connector” on any social media site. I have 116 “friends” on FaceBook, 222 “connections” on LinkedIn, and 1,469 “followers” on Twitter. I have done a terrible job with my Fan Page. Who would want to be the fan of a group that they may not be able to participate in? I continue to struggle with the “quality” vs. “quantity” question. In this instance, an “open event”, there is certainly a case to be made for “quantity”. Still, and I am even more embarrassed to say this, of all of these connections there are actually very few that I really “know”.  I am a very strong believer in “direct engagement” and will be doing my best in the immediate future to do much more of this with my existing connections. In this regard, I will continue to maintain a strong bent toward “quality”. The folks are already there. I just need to reach out.

Thanks for visiting!!

Craig

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Social Media Basics Lunch & Learn – March 18, 2010

Roger Hawk who is with Action Coach and is also a member of our Bing group has asked me to conduct a “lunch and learn” workshop on Social Media Basics. I’m pretty pumped about this because I feel that I can provide a somewhat different approach to this increasingly common subject matter. Please click on the image below and right to learn more ….

I’m not sure how folks are doing this type of thing these days but this will be a “hands on” practical event. Sure, we’ll talk about the “why” but, even more so, we will talk about the “how” and how to do it without having to devote your entire life to this pursuit. Participants will also leave with a complete workbook of the session. If you’re going to do something than you had best do it right. Go big or go home.

Some 20 plus years ago I was in the business of creating and conducting workshops and seminars primarily in the areas of selling techniques. This also included teaching salesmanship at the university level. My sessions were consistently rated 9+ out of 10 by those who attended. We’ll soon see if some of the old magic remains.

I did announce this on Twitter and FaceBook yesterday and received a reply from one gentleman on Twitter who asked me “How are you planning to promote this?” That would be an excellent question as, while I have blogged about how to promote events using Social Media, I’ve never actually had to do one. NetWorks! Boise is a closed organization so events have never been appropriate. On the other hand, Sales Results LLC will be holding events that will need to be promoted in this fashion. Therefore, and while this is not actually my event, this presents an excellent opportunity to put my research and writing to work. In retrospect, I think that the message I received on Twitter amounted to a loaded question …. “If you are going to teach on this subject, we would like to see you demonstrate your understanding of the process.” Ooooooh. Fair enough. Game on.

In coming posts I will be discussing the steps that I am taking to get the word out about this workshop. While I will not have the ability to directly monitor some of the results, I should be able to get and give a fairly good assessment of what is working and what is not. Certainly, this is amateur hour but we have to start somewhere.

Thanks for visiting and please click on that image to check out the event. I am told that if enough of you sign up, I won’t have to pay for my own lunch (smile).

Craig

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