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.

On the road, in the air, on the train or wherever I need to get work done as long as I have these bunch of tools then I’m good to go – What do you use leave your tips/tools in the comments?

My top ten tools I use on the road and why they are useful to me and possibly to you

Evernote (evernote.com)

Evernote allows you to keep track of everything in your life and put it into notes – its like downloading your brain to your computer – never forget anything again. With Evernote there is a Mac, PC, iPhone, Android and Web application available to use where by all you do is capture the information you want to save and its there for life.

So for example you can

• take a picture of something you want to remember and email/upload it straight to evernote
• write a note detailing something you want to remember, bread, the milk, your printer model for ink, shopping list whatever and then tag it!
• record an audio clip of a meeting, voice notes, tag it email it or upload in the application itself and its there
• Tweet @myen to let evernote know you want to store a tweet maybe it has a link/image in it

Why is this useful? I follow the GTD (getting things done) method of working and I have an inbox, next action and reference notebooks inside evernote and with their excellent search that will identify words on scanned in documents I can find anything I need very very quickly through hundreds and thousands of documents in seconds.

Remember the milk (rememberthemilk.com)

Having to-do lists are very common no matter if they are on paper, notepad on the computer, a web app or a desktop application – remember the milk is the killer to-do application online that allows you to create and manage unlimited amount of lists VERY quickly and easily.

As with all applications listed here its free to use with a pro account available (freemium model) with the pro giving you access to a windows mobile, blackberry and iPhone/iPod Touch application to manage your tasks on the go which is a must! I have around 30 different lists setup at any one time and I shall one day go over these lists on why they are setup so well and useful.

Try out remember the milk and see how you can manage your to-do items so much better – there is also integration with Twitter – tweet new to-do items and it will be stored and when they are due Remember the milk will tweet you!

Dropbox (dropbox.com)

Dropbox is an amazing application that has fantastic uses the simple version of what it does is its a online file store / backup software that gives you 2GB of free storage – which is great that is plenty for most people to store all their documents and photos and there are pro accounts with higher storage levels should you want/need it.

Heres the good bit though not only can you access all these files through a beautifully designed web application but the software you install on your PC/mac which intelligently decides which files depending on usage and size gets uploaded first will keep a copy in a syncronized folder on your computer for you. Meaning the second you update that file and save it – its gets saved, stored and secured back in your online backup.

But wait there is more…Install the same dropbox application on another one of your computers i.e. maybe your laptop, partners computer, your iphone(!) and all those files will be sync’d across ALL the devices/machines without the need for you to tell it to backup or sync. Edit, save and its copied straight away to all your machines! Never loose work again!

Oh and to save time from downloading the files from the online storage if your machines share the same network – it syncs across the network too which makes it lightning fast!

The is probably THE most important app I use on a day to day basis. Working from my personal laptop on a file, close it and on my work machine that file is there instantly! WOW

Drop.io (drop.io)

This service allows you to create small “drops” for free 250mb in size where you can upload files and quickly send the short link to a client for example which will allow them to download say a pdf or audio file you may need to send them quickly for review/approval.

Any time you need to send files too large for email (typically 10 – 25mb) then using drop.io is a great choice. I use this when sending large files to clients such as zip files with images or large chunk of documents etc.

Google Apps (google.com/a)

Google mail (gmail) was a breakthrough in email UI when it come out all those years ago now and in recent years Google created Apps for Domains which allows any domain to use Gmail/Google Mail as its backend – so rather than having Microsoft Exchange (costs money!) Google allow you to use their system completely FREE. There are hundreds of thousands of businesses small and large using this as their email system now.

I use it religiously not only does it have my email but it also gives you a calendar and contacts database of which all keep in sync with my blackberry and iphone (blackberry needs Google application installed to keep in sync) without any hitches.

Fantastic offering and all businesses should use it instead of ever paying for email services OR using crap like horde or the like for their email systems.

What do you use for your tools? Any tips leave them in the comments.

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.

If you are interested in the first event which happened in October 2009 and this second event then you can find more information including all the slides (yesterdays slides to come) over at my company website by clicking here.

The most common question I get asked is WHICH SOCIAL NETWORK SHOULD I USE?

The answer is simple – ALL OF THEM being at least a presence on them all is important maybe you dont focus all of your energy into all of these networks but having a presence there is important as your target niche isn’t in just one place – they are spread across facebook, twitter, myspace, bebo, flickr, hi5, tagged, tuenti and the thousands of other social networks out there.

So whats the Buzz in the social networking plane lately?

Well Google in their infinite efforts to monetize, improve search and improve the way we communicate have released BUZZ.

Google Buzz has gained a lot of attention since its release only days ago bringing approximately nine million posts and tens of millions of views in its first two days alone! Many people especially those on networks such as Twitter and Facebook slated Google for its efforts with Buzz for its lateness to the game and lack of privacy features.

We are still only in the first few days of Google Buzz but without a doubt its going to be a very important part of the Google plan as it ties in with mobile, email and desktop very tightly – mobile being the key part of Buzz which allows you to post updates just like other social networks to all your friends only this time your network expands A LOT quicker and is built on so much more importance the contact and communication between the entities of your network.

Every single person who has a Google Mail / Gmail address  with their Google Profile automatically has a Buzz account now that is a HUGE start to a social network to have that many registered users from the start with a system that integrates so tightly with your own email inbox!

What are your thoughts on Google Buzz? Friend me up on Google Buzz http://google.com/buzz/seanpriceiboxsecurity

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

The three pages we would like you to review are as follows together with some examples of the three things for each page you could let us know we may need to improve on or could make the site better for you:

The Home page (http://crystal-jewels.co.uk)

1. The home page needs more content
2. Site navigation needs improving
3. Images need to be clearer

The Tiara category page (http://crystal-jewels.co.uk/categories/tiara.html)

1. You would prefer there to be less text
2. Bigger images
3. Better descriptions

The Alexandra Tiara (http://crystal-jewels.co.uk/products/alexandra.html)

• There needs to be more text for the product
• The price is too high / too low
• More images and bigger to see the quality of the product are needed

Once you have three things for each page – send us an email to comp@ibox-security.net with your suggestions and which of the following prizes you wish to claim if you are selected at random as the winner of our competition.

The prizes can be chosen as one of the following:

• Your choice of any piece of jewellery from the Crystal Jewels website
• A £75 Google Adwords Voucher
• A Years free website hosting with iBox-Security

Competition ends on the 26th February and a winner will be chosen on the 28th – announced on here, on Twitter.com/iboxsecurity and Twitter.com/Crystal_Jewels1

The event held last year aptly named “Wired Weston” at The Royal Hotel in Weston-super-Mare had a great turn out and proved to be a great chance to network with like minded people and talk about business moving online in a town which is very much sat in its old ways.

This February 17th at the Royal Hotel sees the Chamber of Trade and Commerce come back with their 2nd part of the event with “Wired Weston II” – (I wish they would call it “Revenge of the tweets”) where by this time the event will touch on content from the previous event briefly and then move deeper into how you can benefit greatly from using Social Media on both a personal and business branding level.

My talk this year will be approximately 30 minutes followed by Q&A and I would love to answer as many questions as possible. If you are interested in coming along to the event please visit the Weston chamber of Trade & Commerce website, a buffet and refreshments will be provided, no pushy selling to join the Chamber, come along and learn, ask questions and network.