Wednesday 27 December 2017

Effectively Manage Your Outreach Campaigns for Multiple Clients & Teammates

Having to manage multiple clients, outreach campaigns, and teams can be stressful. But it is also usually a good sign.

It means business is doing great.

Luckily, Ninja Outreach helps alleviate the burden of managing multiple team members and projects so you can enjoy the benefit of growth without the hassle.

From prospecting, to outreach, relationship building, and campaign management - we’ve got you covered.

So with that in mind, read on as we walk you through the different methods you can use within the app to help you manage multifaceted campaigns.

How to Organize Different Campaigns Into Lists

Before anything else, you should have already integrated your email with NinjaOutreach.

Also, make sure you’ve already invited your team members to collaborate with you on certain projects.

Done?

Let’s start.

First, always group your prospects into lists.

That way, you won’t mix up prospects for Client A with prospects you’ve gathered for Client B, or prospects for a tech survey and prospects for a fashion roundup.

Also, when it comes to creating your lists, you should have a designated pattern of file naming to keep everyone in your team on the same page..

It’s obvious enough, but in the midst of a ton of work, this simple fact is something most busy organizations tend to forget.

You can’t have Team Member A naming one list according to the date of a deadline while Team Member B names lists according to client name, can you?

It’s simple, actually.

When you’re doing prospecting for Client A, save your prospects into a list and name that list accordingly.

If you’re prospecting for a particular campaign with a particular deadline, then give it an easily identifiable name.

You can always view the status of your various campaign projects by going to Lists > Lists of Prospects

To edit prospects in a particular list, go to Prospects > Lists of Prospects, then click the prospect list you’d like to review.

Clicking the name of the list will take you to the Your Prospects section, where you will be able to review the prospects or modify other data in that list.

Clicking the trash button of a prospect card will remove that prospect from your list.

Clicking the edit button will let you modify any other data related to that prospect such as tags, notes, contact info, URLs, etc., while clicking the person icon will let you update your relationship status with the prospect.

If you click on More properties, you can modify more of you prospect’s data in this expanded section below:

Clicking on either of the tabs in the prospect card will expand the card to display the data related to each of those tabs.

Clicking the Profile tab will show SEO and social media metrics.

Clicking the Relationships tab will show the relationship history with the prospect. (More on this later.)

Clicking notes will show other instructions related to the prospect that can’t be condensed into tags or relationship labels.

If you have a website URL saved in your prospect’s card, clicking RSS will show the RSS feed of this website, or its latest posts.

You can also select multiple lists at once, for example, all the lists belonging to one client.

Next, let’s take a look at how you can keep multiple teammates on the same page for projects you handle together.

How to Effectively Collaborate with Teammates

According to a principle coined in the ‘70s, adding too many people to a project could ultimately end up slowing it down.

This principle is called Brooks’ Law, and it was originally applied to software project management.

Evidently, this also applies to most collaborative projects.

But if you need to accomplish bigger things for more clients, you can’t subsist on only one team—let alone one person.

So if you’re to hire more people, how do you work around these aforementioned project management setbacks?

Our answer: Try to leave as many points of reference for each other as you can.

To alleviate that, we allow notes, tags, and relationship statuses in the tool.

Tags are labels attached to a prospect for the purpose of easier identification.

You can use these tags to help you get more accurate and filtered search for prospects such as tags for niche, location, or prices ($50-$100, $100-$200) that the influencer charges.


Ex. Blogger, Influencer, Executive, etc.

Relationship Status shows a relationship between you and a prospect. It can depict your relationship history with a prospect, but should ideally be used more to indicate where the prospect sits in relation to the campaign itself.

Ex. Emailed, Replied, Followup due (3, 7, 14 Days), Clicked a link, Blogger agreed to guest post, Left a comment on their blog, Shared post on Twitter, Contact with blogger - Skype/phone, etc.

Notes are things that can't really be explained in a few words and therefore don't make good tags or relationships.

So, there is an area reserved for these custom descriptions in each prospect card that you or a teammate can type in.

Ex.
Do not contact this prospect in the next two expert roundup campaigns. He is asking for a high
sponsored fee. He prefers to contribute on guest posts.

Do not contact this prospect in the next product review campaign. She is not interested in this kind of campaign because she thinks that is a complete waste of time.

Tips on using Tags, Relationship Statuses, and Notes

Tip 1. Define tags and relationship status nomenclature across all team members so everyone is using the same keywords/terms otherwise to avoid confusion.

Tip 2. Create a general document for reference where all the different 'types' of tags and relationship statuses are defined.

Tip 3. When starting a new campaign, clear the previous relationship status so that the outreach coordinator starts fresh.

Tip 4. Do not clear any global definition tags that apply to the influencer in any case, such as tags like Blogger, Influencer, Tech Journalist, and the like. Delete things that change like prices, location, or response deadlines.

Now, imagine this scenario:

You’ve just finished an outreach campaign and you’ve already gotten some replies.

One of the prospects has agreed to publish a guest post from you, and wants you to send some topic ideas and outlines by a certain date.

Another team member is in charge of content, so you have to leave her this information.

So, go to the Lists > Lists of Prospects tab, and choose the list that this prospect belongs to.

Hover over the prospect’s card and click Notes. This enlarges the card and lets you type your notes into the input field.

For example, you can address your teammate (let’s call her Hannah) and say something like: “Hey Hannah, this blogger has agreed to let us guest post in his blog.

He wants us to send him some topic with outline ideas by [date].

If you click enter, NinjaOutreach will save the notes and even record the date the note was made and who made it.

So now, you’ve successfully left instructions for your teammate, Hannah.

As soon as Hannah becomes available, she can access it on her own time without you having to wait for her or get pulled out of a new task you’re working on just to brief her.

But before you leave this task, there’s something else you should know, and that’s how to update Relationship labels.

How to manage Relationship statuses with prospects

NinjaOutreach has a few ways of filtering prospects.

Let’s start with two: The Relationship label, and tags.

The Relationship label lets you add a tag to define the progress of your relationship with a prospect.

Have you already sent an email to this and this prospect?

Has this and this prospect already replied, declined, agreed to your proposal? Is this prospect completely fresh?

For some things we automatically handle it, such as contacting the prospect by email.

But other things like agreements / negotiations need to be manually added.

We offer many built in options, and you can also create custom Relationship statuses.

Tagging is used mostly to assign a category to your prospects.

Is the prospect an influencer, a blogger, a journalist, an agency?

When is the deadline to submit an article to this prospect? What niche are they in?

These are just some of the attributes you can tag using the Relationship label and tags, which of course are fully filterable.

To know more about how our filters work, follow this link.

Now, let’s look at a scenario where you can apply Relationship labels and tagging filters.

Let’s say you’ve submitted your guest post and your prospect has since published it.

Once a development like this happens with any prospect, you should update your Relationship label to reflect the progress.

To do that, go to your prospect’s card, click the down-facing arrow at the upper right hand corner of the prospect card, and choose the right Relationship label.

In this case, choose “Blogger published guest post” from the dropdown.

You can also do this in bulk for for multiple prospects. So if, say, two (or more) prospects agreed to accept your guest post, just click the boxes at the upper left corner of each prospect’s card.

Once you’re done ticking the boxes off all prospects you need to include, click the edit button at the top (not the edit button in the prospect cards).

Go to the Relationships section, open the dropdown, and choose the correct Relationship label. Click save.

How to manage Relationship labels of your prospects.

Let’s move on to another scenario.

The time is right, and you’re ready to send your second batch of outreach messages to your newly added prospects.

How do you do that without including the ones you’ve already contacted before?

A quick way to do that is to use the quick alerts button (lightning bolt when setting up an auto campaign).

Click Outreach Mode > Autosending > Schedule a Campaign

Choose the correct prospect list you want to send your outreach emails to, the email address you will use to send your emails, and your preferred email template.

As you go through the campaign setup process, you’ll see a lighting bolt icon below Step 4.

Toggle the bar to the left if you don’t want to include prospects you’ve previously contacted, and to the right (the bar will turn green) if otherwise.

How to manage your ongoing campaigns, how to use filtering in inbox, and how to manage contact history with prospects.

Final words

So now you know how to use the features we specifically built to help you get through common scenarios you may come across while using NinjaOutreach.

If you encounter anything new that this tutorial may have failed to cover (although we doubt it), our Customer Support Ninjas are always available to help.


Hazel Mae Pan is Content Manager for NinjaOutreach. She is in charge of content writing, co-editing, and developing the strategy for the NinjaOutreach blog.

The post Effectively Manage Your Outreach Campaigns for Multiple Clients & Teammates appeared first on NinjaOutreach.



source https://ninjaoutreach.com/outreach-campaigns-team/

Saturday 23 December 2017

#SproutChat Recap: The Ins & Outs of Webinars

Webinars can be an effective method for reaching new audiences and providing new leads for your sales team. But how exactly do brands take on webinars? In this week’s #SproutChat, we covered reasons for hosting a webinar, logistics for partnering with guests and best practices for keeping an audience engaged.

Provide New Leads With Webinars

Webinars are traditionally used as a demand gen tactic that provide new leads to sales teams. As a social media marketer, you can always add a social component to boost engagement.

Keep It Engaging

The last thing that you want as a webinar host is having attendees drop off before the midway mark. Find a cadence that sets an engaging environment for attendees, either by soliciting questions or encouraging conversation on social media.

Establish Relationships

Go beyond keeping your audience engaged and partner with other companies that are adjacent, but non-competitors, to co-host a webinar. Tap your advocates or community members to create more of an intimate feel that feels more like a panel than talking heads.

Utilize Contact Information

Knowing what to do with contact information post webinar is important. Rather than just hand them off to your sales team think about the best way to start communication as to keep the conversation going.

Join us next Wednesday, December 27, for a fun Sprout Social themed #SproutChat at 2 P.M. CT. Until then be sure to join our Facebook community to connect with other social media folks.

This post #SproutChat Recap: The Ins & Outs of Webinars originally appeared on Sprout Social.



source https://sproutsocial.com/insights/sproutchat-ins-outs-of-webinars/

Thursday 21 December 2017

How to Find Guest Blogging Opportunities for Your Roundup

Starbucks was just a popular local joint in Seattle. But when celebrity influencers were consistently publicized going around tinseltown with their Starbucks drinks in tow, the cafe became an international symbol.

This phenomenon rings just as true in the blogging world.

Yes, your content should be 10x quality—but all this could be wasted effort if you don’t have the right influencers giving you a significant leg up.

When a Moz community influencer gave our app a mention, that sent us a ton of traffic, hundreds of signups, and is still one of our top referral traffic sources to date.

No big marketing budget, no large PR stunts.

Just the raw, simple power of influencer marketing.

As the saying goes, you see, success in the blogging world relies not only on what, but also largely on who you know.

So in this tutorial, I’d like to talk about how to get those high-power guests and experts come to you.

And how you can use NinjaOutreach to help speed up this process.

How to identify your ideal blogger influencer list

As you research deeper into your target niche, think about the blogs you frequently read and bloggers you look up to.

I’m sure if these are your top go-to resources, you can recall their websites off the top of your head.

Next, install the NinjaOutreach Google chrome extension and integrate it with your web app.

Once done, simply visit your favorite websites and blogger accounts, then use the NinjaOutreach Chrome extension to add them to your NinjaOutreach list.

Prospecting with NinjaOutreach

Of course, you can’t just stop with a few of your favorite influencers.

You need to add to your list.

Say you’re looking for influencers in the digital marketing niche.

To do that, start with the NinjaOutreach Prospecting > Social Influencers tab, which combs through Twitter and Instagram accounts.

Here, you can filter your results by number of followers.

Enter your niche keyword, “digital marketing,” and hit search.

Add any prospects that fit into your list.

You can also do the same search in the Prospecting > Find Leads tab. In this tab, you can filter your results to by name, location, number of shares per post, domain, and page type.

You can also choose to display only the results with available contact info.

Again, add any prospects that fit into your list.

Note that you can also use advanced search operators within the NinjaOutreach search platform.

If you’re still short of prospects, you can head straight to Google and use varied combinations of your keywords + advanced search operators.

Enclosing your keywords in quotation marks ensures an exact match from Google, while preceding a word with the - sign excludes any results that contain this word.

In the example below, you can force Google to show exact match to digital marketing but will not include any results that have to do with strategy for beginners.

  • “[Your niche]” -[Word you’d like to exclude]
  • Ex. “digital marketing” -beginner

In the next example, you can use multiple keywords in a single search by using OR.

Enclose them in quotation marks for good measure, to ensure you don’t get any random results.

  • “[Your niche]” OR “[Another keyword for your niche]”
  • Ex. “digital marketing” OR “digital marketer”

If you find results that fit, import these to your NinjaOutreach list.

How to build a relationship

Once you’ve finalized your prospect list, it’s time to start building a relationship with them.

You can start this via a more traditional route: sharing the influencer’s content regularly and tagging them.

Another thing you can do is to leave thoughtful comments on their blog.

Not the generic (and honestly, increasingly irritating) “great post!” comment, but one that asks relevant questions and adds something to the discussion.

For example, this comment below in response to Brian Dean’s honestly awesome post.

This lengthy comment got a just-as lengthy response from the intended influencer, Brian Dean.

Once you've done these things for a while, maybe for a week or two (in more dedicated cases, they wait at least a month or two), it’s time to start your outreach.

But a stern warning: your first outreach is not the time to pitch anything yet.

Focus on building your relationship first.

Instead of immediately asking for a handout, here are things you can do:

Ask to feature them in an expert roundup

Ask to feature them in an interview

Ask for their input for a blog post you will write on a topic that is their expertise.

Invite influencers for a video call/interview online.

You can also add the influencer to a public Twitter list.

If you found a really great article of theirs via the Prospecting > Most Shared Content tab, you can add it to a resource page in your website then send them an email about it.

You can also write a blog post with a different point of view to an influencer’s trending article and call their attention to it once you publish by sharing on social media and tagging them, or sending an email.

To stand out even more, you can also send a personalized, video message and tag them on Twitter.

As you do this, track the reactions you do get, and update your relationship label with each prospect accordingly.

Managing your outreach templates

Another stern warning with pre-written templates: don’t just send them as is.

Take the time to review and modify your templates so each one you send is personalized for each influencer.

Most bigger influencers receive tons of emails a day, so they will be more discerning with the emails they read.

Make it worth their time and not like an obviously mass sent outreach message.

As Ahref’s Tim Suolo said in his blog post about doing outreach right, those sorts of bad emails will go straight to the trash bin.

Once you’ve finalized your templates, it’s time to set up your campaign.

Read these tutorials to learn how to:

For follow-ups, we recommend setting up at least two automated follow-up messages for prospects that don’t reply.

To monitor how your campaign is doing, if anyone’s opened it yet, read it, or responded, go to Inbox mode.

Of course not all will respond favorably to your outreach, but just remember to update your relationship labels to track how your campaign affected your relationship with your prospects.

Here’s how to manage your relationship statuses on NinjaOutreach.

Keeping track of your interactions with your prospects will help keep you from making any embarrassing communication mistakes later that could cost you some goodwill.

For example, if one prospect has agreed to give you a quote for your blog post, you can update the relationship label and notes to say so.

This way, you won’t make the mistake of sending the same request again.

Any edits you make to the prospect card will be recorded by date, so you’ll know exactly where you’re at and when any changes happened.

Promoting with NinjaOutreach

Now, there are two scenarios: in this first scenario, your target influencer has given you the time of day to reply and issued a quote.

You’ve written your blog post/expert roundup/editorial using material your influencer prospect has provided.

Don’t just stop there.

Promote this content in every avenue you can think of and tag your influencer in it.

Not all in a day, but one at a time.

For example, send them an email that your content is done and that you’ll be posting and tagging them to your post on this date.

Then, on the publish date, post your content on your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter—whatever social media account is relevant to your niche—and tag them in it.

Wait for a reaction. If you don’t get one, try another avenue like posting on forums related to your niche such as Reddit or Quora.

In the marketing niche, you can post in Growth Hackers, Inbound.org, etc.

If it elicits a reaction there, you can email the influencer again with a screenshot to, say, an ongoing debate about the article featuring them, then mention something like:

“Hey! The article I wrote where I quoted you [link] is causing some debate in the comments section of [link to comment thread using the name of platform as link text].

The debate is getting kind of heated and I think the audience would probably get better insight if you could weigh in.”

One more thing

Not all influencer relationships begin online.

Sometimes, you can actually meet and network with influencers in physical events, such as trade shows, workshops, or conventions related to your industry.

When you do meet your people, always start with an interview request or relationship building activity such as a casual, meaningful conversation about an article of theirs that you’ve read, questions about it, a different point of view, etc.

If you do get lucky, you can get their contact info and add manually to your NinjaOutreach list.

Just go to Lists > Lists of Prospects,

then choose the name of the list that you want to add your new prospect to.

Click the add prospect button in the top right corner of the app to manually add a prospect, then fill in the details in the pop-up form. These details will then be saved into a new prospect card.

After the event, you can then send your new lead an email or social media post to thank them for their time, then end with an opening to follow up.

Here’s an example template from HubSpot.

And of course, don’t forget to keep updating your relationship label in NinjaOutreach list as you go.

Build your relationship from there and remember: don’t even think about pitching anything outright.

The rule is this: Always do something for the influencer first.

That’s how a Moz influencer ended up sending us tons of business. We provided the best help we could when he needed it, not pressuring for anything in return, and things fell into place.

So do your research. Write that blog post featuring everything you’ve learned from your talk with him/her. Write it well. Promote it. Tag your influencer.

For all you know, if you do things right, an influencer might just promote you naturally and you didn’t even need to ask.


Sources:
Blogger Outreach by SmartBlogger
Find the Most Shared Content & Who Shared Them
How To Find Influential Guests For Podcast, Interview, And Post With Ninja Outreach
How To Find Bloggers In Other Countries With Ninja Outreach
How to Find Affiliates for Your Business

The post How to Find Guest Blogging Opportunities for Your Roundup appeared first on NinjaOutreach.



source https://ninjaoutreach.com/guest-blogging-opportunities/

Wednesday 20 December 2017

How to Get Things Done With a Remote Team (Do Better)

Steve Jobs is famous for the quote “Real artists ship.”

He was referring to the fact that everyone has ideas, but real artists deliver on them or ship them, as he put it.

According to the folklore at Apple, this was a favorite saying meaning you have to have the guts to actually deliver when it's time to deliver.

While we haven’t yet defined a set of core values at NinjaOutreach, if I had to start with something, this would probably be near the top of my list.

What I’d like to do is explain first, why, fundamentally I believe we have an uphill battle with “shipping” and what we can do to change that.

First, Why Does Shipping Matter?

While it may seem obvious as to why shipping matters, I think it’s worth reiterating.

There’s too much credit given to things being 50% done, or 99% done.

In fact, I really think ‘Done’ and percentages between 0 and 100 should never be allowed to be together; like raisins and cookies - fine on their own, but terrible when combined.

Done is binary - it’s a 1 or a 0 - something is Done or it’s Not Done, and nothing in between ever matters.

  • Users don’t benefit from a feature that’s half done.
  • The business doesn’t benefit from an asset or a redesign that’s 99% done.
  • Employees do not get credit for almost completing a lot of tasks.

Therefore, we must start prioritizing done over everything else.

We must starting thinking that it’s better to finish something that is low priority, but near completion, than to switch gears to start a higher priority issue from scratch, only to the switch back later to finish the original thing, and delay the finish date of all tasks.

So, How Do Things Get Done?

Have you ever thought about how things actually get done?

Consider a project that, in total, should take around 8 hours to complete.

Theoretically, it could be finished in the following ways:

1 Individual works 8 hours in one day and ships it at the end -
Time to complete: 8 hours

1 Individual works 1 hour per day for 8 days
Time to complete: ~168 hours (7 days * 24 hours)

The difference in the two scenarios is 160 hours - think about what can happen in that time?

In our business about 100 people sign up a week.

If this was an onboarding feature, or a welcome video, that’s 100 people that could have been impacted - but weren’t!

This scenario, by the way, is sort of the best case scenario, as it only involves one person fully in control of their time.

Imagine what happens when another person in a different time zone is thrown into the mix, as is usually the case for anything of significant value.

For example, consider a hypothetical product feature that is going to take the following amount of time:

  • 16 hours of development
  • 1 hour of bug review
  • 2 hours of bug fixing
  • .5 hours of a final review

Let’s assume 8 hours days, which in and of itself, is a bit of a stretch. In an ideal world, if a developer worked two full uninterrupted days, the feature was reviewed immediately, and then the following day the bugs were fixed, combined with a final review, this feature would take about 2.5 days to launch.

But here’s the thing:

  • Uninterrupted days rarely happen
  • Bug fixing and reviews are rarely immediate
  • People in different time zones rarely match up coincidentally
  • Weekends happen
  • Work, spread over a long period of time, takes longer as you naturally have to catch yourself back up

As a result, what typically happens is something like this:

  • Day 1 - Developer works on the feature for 3 hours
  • Day 2 - Developer works on the feature for 6 hours
  • Day 3 - Developer works on the feature for 1 hour
  • Day 4 - Weekend
  • Day 5 - Weekend
  • Day 6 - Developer works on the feature for 6 hours
  • Day 7 - Developer works on the feature for 2 hours extra to account for the fact that working on a feature for over a week requires additional time to think, remember, get in the zone, etc
  • Day 8 - Reviewer is busy with other project so no review gets done this day
  • Day 9 - Review takes place, bugs are listed
  • Day 10 - Developer fixes bugs
  • Day 11 - Weekend
  • Day 12 - Weekend
  • Day 13 - Final review takes place and feature is launched (maybe)

The result is something that resembles closer to two weeks as opposed to two days.

Mind you, this could easily extend even further, if for example, the product development cycle decides to change launches to being only once a week (something we are planning on doing), which would extend this another 5-7 days.

If you think this is only an issue related to product development - think again. This scenario could easily exist between two marketers, a marketer and a designer, a marketer and an external client / contractor, etc.

Now imagine how it might look with 3 or more people involved...I think you get the idea.

The difference between 13 days and 2.5 days is what I call ‘space’ and it’s virtually the enemy of businesses in general.

Our goal is the minimize it at all costs, because despite the fact that all people are working and making progress on some tasks during this time period, the end result is that typically the most important / high value tasks (which often involve multiple people and take the longest), are getting done the slowest.

Considering that the value of something is measured over its lifetime of being live - that’s a lot of lost value.

The Problem With Remote Team And Space

The paradoxical nature of business is that the more people get involved in a project, the slower it goes.

Overall, of course, the net output of things getting done is usually higher, but with diseconomies of scale.

That is to say, that doubling the people working rarely doubles the amount of things that get done - instead maybe it’s something like 1.3x.

It’s no wonder why I feel that we as a company are operating at the slowest pace we’ve ever been.

Startups, in theory, are supposed to be agile and to get things done much quicker than large bureaucracies like Microsoft.

This is because there are less hurdles that are needed to get something approved, implemented, etc.

The exception to this are remote startups - which operate notoriously slowly. Here’s why:

  • Different time zones make it difficult for everyone to meet. A meeting that could happen today, instead, has to be planned out several days in advance. Sometimes, people can’t even sync up to plan to sync up!
  • Instead of hopping on a call, peoples’ default is to leave chats to each other, or notes on a Trello card. This is useful when the person is not around, but often ends up creating a game of “phone tag”, in which basically notes are left to each other over and over.

Consider just a few things that are still unfinished at NinjaOutreach:

  1. The eBook task, which was started in December
  2. The redesign of the services pages, which was started in January.
  3. The influencer marketing place, which was started in March
  4. Implementation of the new onboarding flow, which probably should have taken 3-4 days and is now on week 3.

To name but a few of the many tasks in our Trello board that are overdue or have had to have their dates changed so as not to look so behind.

But really, just about every task has some sort of unnecessary space in it - which to some extent is normal and to be expected, but I think we can do much better.

How To Get Things Done Faster

So, what’s the solution?

Well, here’s a few things you can and should do to quicken the pace at which things get done.

Act Immediately

The best thing you can do is always to act immediately.

If we just discussed a task, or we just finished a meeting, and the next steps are clear and they involve someone else, then immediately act on reaching out to them, setting up a time, or getting an understanding of their current bandwidth / schedule.

Don’t wait!

Schedule Meetings As Often As Needed And In Advance

Be quick to schedule meetings. Remember, you don't need someone’s permission to schedule a meeting with them.

The extra communication to confirm a good time just creates unnecessary space.

If you can’t get ahold of someone via chat then just send them a calendar invite for a time that is convenient for you and appears reasonable for them given their time zone (keep it 9-5), chances are they can be flexible enough that, with advanced notice, they can make it happen.

Additionally, you can follow up in chat to let them know about the invitation and throw out some optional times they can reschedule to in case it doesn’t work.

Then schedule meetings with Mark and I to discuss progress on a particular task, which will hold you accountable to getting things done in a timely manner and hold the other person accountable on delivering.

The key to effective meetings are to

  • Keep them short
  • Only involve the necessary people
  • Have a clear agenda

If you do those three things, have meetings as much as you need.

Think Ahead

Let’s say you know you’re going to have a meeting with myself or Mark and that a decision will likely come out of that.

Instead of waiting for that decision to happen and then saying,

“OK, now what?”

Think about whether or not you can schedule the next step beforehand.

For example, even if you don’t know what the decision will be, you might already know who it will involve, which is enough to get you started and scheduling that meeting in advance.

Hassle People

Look, internally I understand that no one wants to be “that guy” - the guy who is always bothering people asking when something is going to be finished, etc.

Although, I think just about everyone could stand to be a little more of a “that guy” than they are currently being.

Regardless, for the few people that often go outside of the internal team aka to work with Hau, or something related to business development, or a freelance designer or writer - then it is not just OK, but encouraged to be “that guy”, because ultimately it is your responsibility to get things done and make sure your work is prioritized by everyone who is involved.

That guy might be annoying, but he gets shit done.

Launch Smaller

Getting large projects done is hard because they’re large - but what if they were smaller?

While it might not be possible to ship an incomplete ebook, there are certain tasks, particularly with product development, that can be shipped in parts.

Think of things in terms of the MVP - Minimum Viable Product, aka the smallest, acceptable form in which something could reasonably be shown to the end user or partner.

Use Your Calendar Wisely

Remember the example I gave about the 8 hour task that could be done in 1 day or 8 days?

As best as you can, try to block off as much time as possible to complete tasks.

Think about tasks as being made up of miniature milestones, and for a task that involves multiple people a typical milestone is a handoff to someone else, such as a designer or a reviewer.

Therefore, if you need 4 hours to work on something to then be able to hand it off to someone else, block off those 4 hours on your calendar and then immediately hand it off to the next person.

Combine that with scheduling a meeting with them to set the expectation of when they should be handing it back to you.

For example, say:

Person A works on the service pages mockups for 4 hours, hands them off to Person B, and immediately schedules a meeting 2 days later to meet and discuss her designs.

Is much better than

Person A works on the services designs for an hour a day for four days, then hands them off to Person B.

Person A prioritizes them low, because no one has told her otherwise, and gets them done after 4 days of partial work combined with a weekend.

When she’s done, she leaves a chat message to Person B about having a meeting, and he comes online (when she isn’t) and leaves another chat message saying that these times work for him, after which she comes online (when he isn’t), and says that none of those work for her can he do this time, after which he comes online and says yes, and they meet.

So, Now What?

If you haven’t gathered - getting things done is really important.

It’s probably the thing we can work on the most and also the thing that will have the largest impact on getting the business from here to there in X time vs. 2x time.

So, take a hard look on what you’ve been “working on” for a long time, and think about what you can do to get that done asap.

a remote team leader who gets things done

How can you eliminate space in your workflow?

Remember, the year ends in a few more days - what do you want to be able to say you’ve accomplished?

 

The post How to Get Things Done With a Remote Team (Do Better) appeared first on NinjaOutreach.



source https://ninjaoutreach.com/remote-team-management/

11 Facebook Marketing Tips That Will Leave Competitors in the Dust

Social Media Contests in 2018: Do They Still Work?

Friday 15 December 2017

#SproutChat Recap: Staying up to Date With Social Trends

Social media is a constantly fluctuating landscape and it can be difficult to keep a finger on the pulse of it all. It’s important to stay on top of these trends so that you can effectively update your own strategy along the way.

In this week’s #SproutChat, we talked about participants favorite and most often turned to resources when it comes to staying up to date. From Twitter accounts to news outlets to finding inspiration—we covered a few ways to help you from becoming dated in marketing.

Keep Tabs on Social Media Focused News Outlets

This week’s participants chimed in with great resources for social media focused sites and blogs that are fast to release news and can have an impact on your marketing efforts. Be sure to bookmark some of these so you can always know what’s around the corner.

News on the Go

Email lists and podcasts are great ways to gain insights while on the go. Whether you’re commuting by car or public transportation these resources can step in and help you grow anywhere, anytime.


https://twitter.com/netvantage/status/941045718051155971 https://twitter.com/LucasVandenberg/status/941045464518070277

Inspiration Is Everywhere

It can be easy to fall into a creative rut as a marketer especially when you’re working in a fast-paced field like social media. Try to take some time for yourself and step away from your work to find inspiration. Scroll through your Twitter feed or go for a walk around the block to disconnect from incoming emails and messages.

Join us next Wednesday on Twitter to talk about the ins and outs of webinars. Until then be sure to join our Facebook community to connect with others in the industry.

This post #SproutChat Recap: Staying up to Date With Social Trends originally appeared on Sprout Social.



source https://sproutsocial.com/insights/sproutchat-staying-up-to-date/

How To Write A Professional Business Email

Emails are important. They can notify us about the things and the deals we don’t want to miss.

They allow us to communicate without staying glued to our screens all the time.

We are free to reply whenever we want.

There’s only one problem: Most people receive too many of them.

Sure, you can unsubscribe from most of your mailings, but there’s still a chance you’ll get more emails than you can handle.

This is why email writing is so important. If your goal is not to craft an email that recipients will send to the Trash folder immediately, you’ll have to work hard.

Most of us write emails because we want to achieve something - get a job, offer a deal, make an impression, network or solve business problems.

In order to achieve this, make sure that your email is well-written and polished.

How do you do such a thing? By following this simple guide I want to offer you.

So if you want your emails to look as professional and polished as possible, here’s what you should do.

1. Remember What Your Main Goal Is

Even if you’re writing a follow-up email, you have a goal in mind - to thank the recipient for something, to remind them of something, and so on.

Just like I’ve said above, your email always has a purpose, though you might not have a clear definition of this purpose at the moment.

That’s why before you even start writing, ask yourself, “Why do you I to write this letter?

What do I expect from the recipient?

If you don’t know the answer, this could mean you probably shouldn’t be sending an email.

After all, not all emails actually need to be written.

But if you do know the answer, think about it a bit.

The purpose of an email generally affects its structure.

For example, if you’re cold emailing an influencer about the possibility of a collaboration, you might want to go straight to the point.

But if you’re trying to convince a prospect of the superiority of your product over the competition, you might need to provide some additional data first.

2. Start With a Greeting

An email obviously should start with a greeting, but how should this greeting look like?

That’s one of the trickiest things in business email writing.

You always need to be polite even if sometimes you also need to be less or more formal.

So let’s see how informal and formal email greetings could differ.

Informal ones usually start with «Hi» or «Hello», followed by the recipient’s name.

They are appropriate in cases when you meet the recipient regularly and call them by their first name.

Formal greetings look similar, but there’s one significant difference: You have to use last names and titles.

If you don’t know the recipient well and you don’t call them by their first name in real life, it’s always safer and wiser to start with a formal greeting.

If you don’t know their name, you can refer to them as «Sir/Madam» or use the name of their department (like «Dear Design Department»). «To Whom It May Concern» also works.

Remember that every word in the greeting should start with a capital letter.

A greeting also has to be followed by a comma.

It’s pretty much similar when it comes to addressing groups of people.

Your relationship with them dictates the style a lot: If you know the group well enough, even «Hi Everyone» or «Hi Team» will do. If the group is small (five people or less), you should address them by their first names in that case («Dear Anna, Brad, and Mark»).

If you don’t know the group well enough, an informal greeting should look like «Dear Colleagues», «Dear Design Department», and so on.

3. Tell the Recipient About Yourself

In some cases, the recipient knows who you are and remembers you well.

An example is when you’re writing to a colleague.

In such a case, you can skip this part.

However, if the recipient doesn’t know you at all or there’s even just a slim chance that they might not remember who you are, you should tell them about yourself.

Sometimes, you need to introduce yourself even with the people who know you.

Examples are if you changed your email address or aren’t sure the recipient would recognize it.

When telling recipients about yourself, state your name and provide additional data that would help the recipient to either recognize you or understand who you are.

The company you’re working for, your position, the place where you’ve met, the person who initiated the contact between the two of you - all these can be used as supporting data.

The important thing here is to keep it simple.

No need to write too much - a sentence or two will do.

4. Explain the Purpose of Your Letter

In most cases, the recipient doesn’t have much time to read your email.

This may sound harsh, but that’s true.

That’s why after you tell them about yourself (or skip this part when emailing people who know you well), move right to the point of your writing, letting them know the purpose of your letter.

Maybe you’re writing to ask for a favor, thank them, or apologize for something.

Maybe your goal is to ask for clarifying information or to provide some.

No matter what it is, explain the letter’s purpose as clearly and briefly as you can - using only a sentence or two, if possible.

Remember that a business email should always be as precise as possible.

By writing a short, very specific email, you show the recipient that you value their time, which is very important in business.

5. Be empathetic

Empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes.

It might seem unnecessary or at least not important enough in the business world, yet it is important if you want to make an impact through your emails.

Moreover, empathy can instantly make your emails better.

To achieve this result, analyze your writing from the recipient’s point of view.

Ask yourself how another person would interpret your overall message, or even just a certain sentence.

If you receive a similar email, how would it make you feel?

Of course, you cannot predict the exact reaction.

But keeping the recipient in mind when crafting your emails will help you improve your writing.

Moreover, being empathetic isn’t exactly hard.

Just try to remember that most businesspeople are very busy (which means no long emails unless absolutely necessary), appreciate compliments (so include some in your email, just don’t overdo it), and like to be thanked for their work and efforts (that’s why writing a follow-up is often a good idea).

6. Work on Your Signature

Sometimes, you’re not sure whether to include an introduction or not.

Sometimes, you know that you should include one but worry that it would take too much of the email’s space, distracting the recipient from the main point.

In this case, it’s better to work on your signature, adding all the necessary data to it.

This way, your signature keeps the main body of an email as short as possible.

It will also help you avoid misunderstandings (in case you’re writing to someone who remembers you very well).

A proper signature for business emails should contain your name, your job title, and a link to your website (or your company’s website).

You can also add links to your social media and a short line about your job.

Pro Tip: If you are using NinjaOutreach then adding custom email signature is very easy.

7. Ensure That Your Email Is Polished

The details matter as much as the content of an email.

Before you hit «Send», ensure that everything is okay: that a signature is included, your email has a subject line, and so on.

Ideally, you should proofread your email manually.

But if you’re pressed for time, at least consider running it through one of the many online spellcheckers.

Remember that if you want your email to look professional, check it for mistakes and typos.

It’s also a good idea to send a copy of an email to yourself if your email client doesn’t do that by default.

This way, you’ll always have a record of when you sent the email, who the recipient is, and so on.

While it does seem dreary and challenging, email writing is easy to handle. Sure, you need to pay a lot of attention to the details and stick to the business writing rules and etiquette.

However, the more often you do so, the easier it will become.

That’s why I hope that these tips make the process easier for you and help you craft stunning emails.


My name is Christina Battons, and I’m a creative writer and content strategist from LA. Currently, I write for various sites. My posts address topics about self-education, writing, motivation, and professional development. In my spare time, I prefer to read novels and crime thriller stories. Feel free to follow me on @battonschristi to ask questions or see my works.

The post How To Write A Professional Business Email appeared first on NinjaOutreach.



source https://ninjaoutreach.com/write-professional-business-email/