But at what point do you draw the line, are you including all the necessary information, are you including too much information, are you ensuring that your customers/subscribers are able to forward the message to a friend easily enough should they choose and most importantly are you giving them a clear and easy manner in which to unsubscribe from your newsletters should they want that and are you respecting that choice?

Most of all are you even paying attention to the goings on and responses you are getting from your customer base as surely they are of the most important to you when you send out an email newsletter?

Recently I have been received email newsletters from a fairly reputable online forum to which a long time ago I subscribed to their newsletter to keep on top of certain pieces of news, however now I find that the information has run dry, not what im after and have found alternate avenues to source better information.  Now I have followed through several pages in order to unsubscribe from their newsletter and every one that forms part of the same network of sites, yet week after week I continue to receive them. Thankfully Gmail has a nice way to filter and delete automatically such emails but still this begs the question, are you simply not listening or reacting well enough to customers requests in order to maintain a larger email list and broadcast count?

Whats more after countless attempts to unsubscribe, each time saying that it had been successful the other day I received yet another and this time I had an auto-responder to say I no longer wanted to receive this newsletter and go a response to say “thank you very much for your entry into our survey, your results have been very helpful and we shall contact you soon to verify your answers”. Ok at this point several unsubscribes, emailing the list owners and even auto responding surely this should now be enough.

So for anyone who has used or continues to use email marketing which by the way is a fantastic avenue to bring old customers back, keep in contact and for many of our clients bring in a lot of revenue then at least remember to keep on top of your responses, clean the data, ensure its up to date and your email campaigns are effective, trackable, measurable and overall not being spam sent out no matter if you have 10 or 10,000 people you are contacting.

Ensure you have quality content, things people are actually interested in when they registered to join your list. Do not sell your lists to 3rd parties and do not throw useless information/advertisements at your customers if they are not interested in such things.

Remember there is a lot you can do with emails, A/B split test campaigns, spam test, design test, monitor results to see their effectiveness and so much more.

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Even though I preach so much about having excellent relationships with your audience and your customers – which I constantly strive to do and hopefully from the great feedback I get I actually accomplish 99% of the time. Recently I discovered an action I took as part of my business although seemed right at the time not through being greedy, lazy, inconsiderate or any of the other usual pitfalls businesses fall into when they commit an error but simply because I thought it was the right thing to do meant that I lead my business down a route that was incorrect and as a result made certain errors become more apparent and more of an issue than should have been.

Although I do not wish to disclose the errros I have commited – what I do want to say is that this has caused damage to my business and personal brand both of which I pride myself on and it takes just that one small error and it doesnt matter whether you damaged your brand in the eyes of a single person, a single business or an entire country – damage is damage.

Hopefully things can be rectified and patched but as always its so crucial to remember that making a slight mistake really will damage your brand equity. So next time take an extra few minutes to decide on various factors and stages of a product line, project milestones, that new magazine design layout, whether or not you should change the way that image looks in photoshop, how you approach someone in person or online and how you interact with the world on a daily basis.

Keep working hard people and everything you are trying to achieve will come true.

Every day I speak with customers and potential leads and ensuring that the customer service not only my company offers but myself on a personal level is the absolute best I could offer, as much as possible I go out of my way to visit and interact with my customers and actually give a damn about what they do not only in work but if personal life comes into play then that too because there isn’t a brick wall between personal and business life especially when it comes to caring about your customers. Far to many people but up barriers between their work and personal life and in some cases rightly so and some areas they are needed but knowing that if someone is going through a tough time then its really not the best idea to be chatting and trying to sell them your service.

Today I have had to deal with several fairly large companies to get some information and details changed and the manner in which this was achieved was nothing short of a 2 hour conversation for something that should have taken 10 minutes. Not because their systems were down, i was asking the impossible, there was a queue or things weren’t being put across properly but simply the cultural difference and bias bought upon them with the culture and expectancies of their company forced them to act and play out a scene that was really not needed at all.

When it comes to customer service for your business five things I think are crucial and these play a big part especially with social media:

1. Make sure your message is coming across as clearly and accurately as possible so that what you are saying does not offend or irritate the customer
2. Do not try and brush the customer and their concerns to one side quickly without properly attending to them just in order to get through more work or more enquiries
3. Word of mouth has always been a powerful tool – 1 bad customer review is worth a lot more when told to friends and family than 1 good review is and whats more with social media tools such as twitter, facebook, linkedin then this word of mouth has been increase a million fold – don’t damage your brand equity
4. Don’t rely on just your own knowledge when tackling a problem – if you need the help of co-workers or even the public – USE IT instead of being stuck or giving advice/information that may not be beneficial
5. The customer is always right, right? If they are embrace this and even display this knowledge through social media tools whereby should a customer praise, make suggestion or just ask for help with something promote these ideas and show the community you are listening. Should the customer not be the happiest person and are having problems with you – you better believe they will slate you through social media outlets – what do you do? Connect with them – engage and try your best to resolve the issue.

Make sure the way you communicate and engage with your customers not only through social media but on a day to day basis isn’t closed and restricted – caring is key – its not all about the money.

Without a doubt their are endless benefits that running your own business can bring you and your loved ones besides financial benefits however there exists downsides to a business and this can seem far worse than they truly are until you are out of the ditch.

Once you have figured out the basics of your business plan, worked out your start up costs, running costs, cash flow and sources of finance, developed your marketing plan and started to “get going” with your new business certainly within the first year and most likely for the first three years you may run into the following problems and these are things that people and books often forget to tell you.

• Your business will swallow more money than you expected at the start
• You will spend far more time and energy than anticipated getting it rolling
• Your first year will most likely make a loss
• You will become far more stressed out than you imagine
• You may loose friends because of your dedication or out of their jealousy
• Your second and third year will probably make a loss
• You will become depressed from time to time
• You will need a good support network of friends and family to rely on
• Having other time commitments such as job or family will make things VERY difficult but if you are sure about your product then you will succeed

Don’t feel bad, depressed or want to give up on doing what you love if you do come against these problems. Remember there are always ways around them and that the first three years are often the most difficult. Don’t loose faith in yourself, your product or your service.

How did you feel or how are you currently feeling with a new business? Leave a comment or tweet me on twitter.com/seanprice

If you offer a service or product don’t hard sell people will not follow you to hear you rant about how great your product is all day that said if your product/service is something they may be looking for then at that point in time by all means suggest it.

Be honest and true to your audience because if you don’t you will not only hurt your brand but you could damage others. If you have competitors don’t bash them with comments or tweets, don’t actively promote the fact that the competition have not got the reach you do and so belittle them it’s just not professional.

Something that has annoyed me slightly recently is an action @bradburton has just started which is a hashtag of #RTbomb whereby in his own words “Doing really offensive tweets and then put and RT @ofsomeudon‘t like b4 #RTBomb” something that I personally think is very unprofessional – the idea of a RT (rewteet) is sending a message someone posted on their Twitter stream and displaying it to your followers. Now if you are (even jokingly) editing and posting an offensive tweet by pretending its from the original person then this is hurting brands the examples Brad did were not particularly harmful but misleading non the less and could damage brands.

RT @dannyrowe Apple Taxi’s of WSM announce FREE piece of fruit with every trip. To help with the 5 aday. #RTBomb

RT @noredbraces Can you help? I’m actively looking for a #socialmedia expert to help my business #RTBomb

@lanternphoto: RT @BradBurton just joined BNI, looking forward to my first meeting Tuesday. #RTBomb

RT @Tesco due to lower footfall due to weather we are discounting 25% off all items on purchases over £30 plz RT #RTBomb

You can see some of the #rtbomb / #rtbombing going on here

Im all for fun and joking on twitter but retweeting users with these changes could well be damaging and hope that professionals do not attempt to take on this unprofessional hashtag.

Well MASSIVE AMOUNTS of snow has hit the UK and by that I mean a couple of inches in most areas! Apparently we have ran out of salt/grit for the roads and the whole country has shut down – what a terrible excuse for a lazy day in. But we love a day off right!

Today brings perfect oportunites – not to stay in bed this morning, not to lazy around on the sofa watching Jeremy Kyle – but to grab that extra time to hustle some more on what your passionate about. If your fed up or unhappy even the slightest in your current job and want to do something you love – do it.

There is plenty of time to develop that new idea you may have and nurture your new business venture whether that be after-hours – once your home from work spend a few hours on it – don’t just leave it for the evenings of a weekend if your passionate about it and want to be happy – WORK.

Today the whole country is on lock down it would seem and snowed in – WORK – put your head down and get hustling on that thing your passionate about. If its starting a new blog – get drafting some ideas to post and do, if your starting a new business work on that, whatever it is your passionate about and want to do in life in order to be happier do it today!

Don’t make today “another snow day” where you have laid around in bed – get up, be active and crack on with your project.

Well first of all what are projects?

There are two general types of projects I will cover: Professional and Personal.

Projects are S.M.A.R.T - did you know that?

S – specific, significant

M – measurable, meaningful, motivational

A – agreed upon, attainable, achievable, acceptable, action-oriented

R – realistic, relevant, reasonable, rewarding, results-oriented

T – time-based, timely, tangible, track-able

Professional projects may consist of various things depending on your situation and career but it may involve taking on a new position in the work place, training someone, building a new web application, developing the internal systems or follow up last years enquiries.

So personal projects are similar they are things that need to be managed, kept on track and measurable these vary between maybe planning a Wedding, planning the birth of your next child, looking for a house, choosing your career path, writing a CV and cover letter to send out or whatever it is in your life that requires more than a couple of thoughts to process and achieve.

So how exactly do you manage multiple projects efficiently?

The answer – find it right here but on a serious note dealing with either multiple projects or multiple choices in which project to take on board can be difficult so here are five tips on how to manage this better:

Decide what factors will influence you in taking on a new project

Typically this would be financial influences more money or cheaper to take on, but for others the influences could be emotional satisfaction or beneficial to others that could improve their lifestyle.

Don’t be afraid to fail

Its all about progression and doing the best you can without worrying about failure too much – it is of course a concern but if you worry about failure and not achieving perfection then you will inevitably fail.

Have a trusted system and method of managing your projects

This does NOT mean using fancy web 2.0 todo lists that track your every move in the project or huge Microsoft Project files all of which take longer to keep updated than actually spending time working on the project. Use a system that could be as simple as pen and paper which works best most of the time as its physical and manageable remember its easier to strike off something on a piece of paper than it is to login to that cool web app and tick off the todo item and then change the colours of the status and then setup the blah blah blah.

Collaborate don’t shut yourself in

Working on your own can be great – shut out annoyances, remove the office noise, get more done ….. right? Well yes but often in projects no matter how small or large you will often need someone else to collaborate with that doesn’t mean they take all the glory, take over as “project leader” or even affect majorly the outcome or course of your project. But having a second mind to bounce ideas off, brainstorm, converse and use for testing or reference. They may never know they are part of a larger project but people can be very useful for no matter what project personal or work that you are developing.

Its all about the end – isn’t it?

Don’t focus on the end of your project otherwise you will never get there – even worse if you are tracking and working on multiple projects you will be so concerned with fixating dates, milestones and how perfect the end result will be that the actual project will never move forward or progress further.

“How do you manage projects either single projects or multiple at the same time either personal or professional ones?” @seanprice

Last year was all about investing in yourself, learning and developing yourself during the recession this year is where it all comes together and you can push that great idea you had or market that product that last year you couldn’t find the resources, niche market or time and attention to.

There is no excuse in 2010 to not start pushing that great idea and getting a huge start on what you need to get done it doesnt matter if its a business idea, new project /current project to get going or a change in your personal life – don’t hold back, don’t worry about failure – move forward and do it.