How you use email with your social media matters. When you do not deploy this simple strategy, you will find yourself frustrated by an overwhelming number of notifications. Do it right and you will be able to function with less distraction as you work .
The Problem with Email and Social Media:
You have enough problems running your business without having to worry about which email is important and which is either unimportant spam or is directed at something other than your business. It’s an easy enough process, although not everyone does it.
In today’s fast-paced on-line world, far too many people want everything right there in one place and for the average internet user, that’s probably OK. For a business, however, that’s probably not your best bet. You certainly don’t need your company in-box flooded with offers of new drugs or the latest fashions or anything else. You also don’t need a birthday with from Uncle Eddie showing up in a business meeting. So what do you do?
The Solution for Email and Social Media
Keep it all separate. Create a Gmail, Hotmail or Outlook.com account for emails that don’t pertain to the business. When you visit a website that you have no intentions of returning to, but one that requires you to leave an email address, go ahead and leave this separate address, knowing that your primary business email in-box won’t be filled with free offers or anything else you don’t want to see or need right away.
As a business owner, we need to ability to clearly define an email that requires some sort of action, be it quick, or simply soon, and that which requires no action at all. Having clearly defined email addresses gives us that ability because only business-related emails go to that address. Even husbands, wives and children have their email go to a separate address. Business is business.
It’s not just spam we have to concern ourselves with. Today, if you want to get ahead of the competition, you have got to be on social media. It makes no difference if you use, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any of the other multitude of platforms to get your message across, you have got to be there. And being there means advertising and messages, that you neither want nor need in your business mail box. So keep it separate. It’s a strategy that will pay dividends as you grow your business.
It’s vitally important that you check your business email several times a day. You have to know what’s important and what can wait. Social media platforms can usually wait until you have time to catch your breath and look at them.
[Social media tip: Create a separate address for your social media accounts. Keep business email free of notifications.]
Things we can do today with your Email:
- Set up a separate email address for social media
- Use Gmail, Outlook.com or any other on-line service
- If you own a domain, you can set up a separate email using your own domain
- Use Outlook to set up all the email addresses on your computer for ease of viewing. There are several filters you can apply to help you sift through it all.
It is almost a prerequisite that a business have its own domain. Having important business mail go to @hotmail.com or @yahoo.com is neither professional nor secure. It’s fine for social media requests but for business, you need your own .com or .ca.
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