Friending, following, replying, wall posts; a constant stream of communication seems to overflowing into our lives. We read magazines, hear radio, watch pundits, everyone is talking about being social and connecting with their audience. As a business we don’t have an audience, we have customers, we have clients. We’re told we should be on Twitter, [...]

As an office manager you know effectively implementing new procedures is critical. New procedures are implemented to improve results and efficiency. Say there is a procedure that takes 5 steps but it can be done without doing step 2 and 4, so they are eliminated, now you are left with a 3 step procedure that [...]

A clients’ perception of a staff influences their expectations of a business. These tips should help with improving a client’s perception of your staff. Mark twain once said “Clothes make the man, naked people have little or no influence in society.” Presentation means a lot and it is important to constantly maintain and improve a [...]

We all remember when email was such a novelty and was hardly useful, but now we seem to depend on email for almost every communication need. When email is used for every style of communication, some people find inboxes filling with short emails between staff members. Many staff members will also use email as a [...]

Nothing gives me the heebie jeebies more than the thought of losing our business data. I was in Dallas in the middle of June at a conference when I got a call from one of our staff members, he was standing outside our office and saying “The front door is smashed, we’ve been broken into.” [...]

Spring has arrived and you know what that means. Clean out the shed, trim the bushes and repair the sprinklers. Yes, I woke up to the beautiful sound of birds chirping and the site of blue skies and oh yeah, the “honey do list.” If you are a home owner you know all too well [...]

Before hiring a consultant or making internal decisions concerning technology, it’s important to understand and document your network environment. Doing so will help eliminate frustration and save money. So, when beginning this evaluation, there are some things to take into consideration: control, location, equipment, and software. Working with networks is all about control. It’s important [...]

LinkedIn, the social network for business people and can be more beneficial than Facebook and Twitter for a business owner. LinkedIn is a social network with profiles, groups, events, and discussion boards designed for professionals to network together. A LinkedIn profile can be broken down into five main sections: a synopsis, a summary of what [...]

This is a post I’m sharing from my friend Chris Brogan. Originally published on chrisbrogan.com and in My Office Today print edition 2009. Chris Brogan is an eleven year veteran of using social media and both web and mobile technologies to build digital relationships for businesses, organizations, and individuals. Chris speaks, blogs, writes articles, and [...]

While technology affords us new learning opportunities like webinars, webcasts, and video conferencing, the art of personal interaction and the benefits of sharing in common groups are being lost. Nothing can replace the feeling of sharing goals, ideas, and solutions with those who understand our problems, frustration, and needs.While we need the large conferences and [...]

One way to empower productivity is internal instant messaging. There are a lot of benefits to internal instant messaging, like improving communication, and archiving historical data. Internal messaging prevents outside access to your network. This improvement in communication comes from the ability to talk to other people in different areas of the office. This also [...]

Recently my wife and I became “empty nesters” and I have been reflecting on some of the neat things my kids brought into our home besides the high volume and constant activity. A couple of things that our youth forced into our homes were MP3′s, iTunes, the social media craze, and phone texting. With some [...]

I just got another privacy notice from one more vendor in the mail. When I think of how easy it would be to steal my mail and my confidential data spreading everywhere it makes me nervous, and yet another notice arrives in my mail and this one has my entire credit card number on it. [...]

Did you know that every time you hold a staff meeting more than half of what you have said has already been forgotten before the meeting is over? If you’re wondering to yourself why your staff members have forgotten so much information, you might be surprised that it has more to do with human nature [...]

Many owners have considered removing such luxuries as the “coffee break” to help curb lost productivity. There is a guilty culprit to lost productivity, and it’s not the coffee break. The following will describe a workplace environment we know all too well. In a firm that has multiple staff members, delegation and management for the [...]

There are many traditional methods for transferring confidential data like email, online storage, mail, pickup, and an online service. But with the advent of increased bandwidth more businesses are choosing to take their client’s confidential data online. Putting client’s data online comes with many challenges and choosing the wrong solution can put your practice at [...]

There are many ways to communicate to those in our department, office, our clients, and vendors but it has become increasingly difficult to manage the most effective ways to communicate. Here are some of the most common problems and best practices to have more efficient communication. Let’s take a look at the many elements to [...]