Inbound Marketing With Google+

February 12, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

We are always exploring the edges of our approach to help our customers with their inbound marketing. The exploration and work is always a craft to refine. One of the areas which is continually growing is our use of Google+ in our client inbound marketing services. You can find our AscendWorks page by clicking here. We are growing this area in several ways to keep connected with a broader audience. Here are some of the strategies which will unfold over time:

  • Growing conversations. There are some wonderful conversations going on. We are monitoring and looking to engage. Our Google+ Company Page is meant to connect with the ongoing streams of conversation online.
  • Helping us grow. We can share our own explorations and capture those quickly in our research. As people provide feedback or reaction it helps us to understand what is in demand and what is irrelevant. We have opinions. Those viewpoints can be pushed on to help us get sharper in our thinking and approach.
  • Create a journal. It’s always neat to look back and see what is happening over time. As a team, we are all connected to be able to make posts. This can be used for seeing our progress on projects over time and our thinking evolve. We put out a lot of content with regards to advice, ebooks and white papers. Google+ affords us the opportunity to keep a journal of thoughts and see the timeline from a convenient vantage point.
  • Getting real. One of the things that our customers love is that we tell them the truth. They depend on this. We want to be real. We don’t want to get caught in hype or gimmicks. It’s about results. We can share our thoughts and journey along the way with candor.

If you haven’t joined us yet, click the sidebar link to find our AscendWorks Google Page and let us know you are connecting. We’ll add you to our circles and try to bring value to you over time in your own inbound marketing strategies. See you on the plus side.

 

Filed Under: Blog, Google Apps, Inbound Marketing ·

Using Google+ For Support

February 1, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

Google+ is continually being explored for its many use cases. One of the less commented opportunities is to serve your customers with support. Every new customer or prospect can be added to a new circle called “Clients,” “Customers,” or “Support.”

You now have a specific area to share knowledge, best practices or anything you wish to support your customers with. There are numerous benefits for capturing your support content within the Google+ platform:

  • Social value. Content which points back to articles on your site can continue to drive both social and SEO value. They invite opportunities for +1′s.
  • Knowledge base. Email is a one-to-one, private conversation. You open up the conversation by broadcasting to a larger audience. Furthermore, the history can be searched and explored for past answers.
  • Tribe building. Your customers can be part of a select audience that receives special advice, insights or offers. It revolves around your content that you provide ongoing in a private circle. It is a forum with benefits.
  • Thought Leadership. Posting your content and sharing it with a select group continues to position your leadership. Share insights that help to benefit your customers – increase their health, grow their business or help them grow. It is a platform that allows you to provide value.
  • Interactivity. The dialogue around a problem can be expanded to benefit a group and commenting back and forth creates passion, clarity and resolution to challenges everyone is facing.

There are lots of different systems for building support or help desk systems. However, consider using Google+ and explore the use case. The platform itself has intrinsic leverage comparatively. It makes it easy to stay connected and to deliver ongoing service and loyalty for those that pay you for your products and services while getting real feedback quickly.

What do you think?

Filed Under: Blog, Google Apps · Tagged: , , ,

Google Apps Calendar For Setting Appointments

January 27, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

Google Apps has a feature which many may not be are of in the Google Calendar area. You can set appointment slots for your customers, partners and co-workers to use as part of a self-service process. This can prevent the back and forth associated with trying to pin down a time and coordinating with a busy schedule.

Recipients are able to find an open slot based on the availability of your own calendar. You set the time slots and your appointment function is associated with a url that you can distribute via your web sites, landing sites, inbound marketing campaigns or simply by email.

You can see the screenshot above to start the process. When making a new Google Calendar appointment, select the function for Appointment Slots. The wizard there will help you create the url with appointment times that you want available for anyone seeking to make an appointment.

Here are a few strategies to take advantage of this Google Apps feature:

  • Sales Meetings. Make it convenient in your sales follow-up to set a time to meet with a prospective customer. You can edit the meeting with online conference call information later.
  • Support Calls. If your customers are having issues, you can have a landing page for them to set up their own calls based on your own limited availability times.
  • Office Hours. If you have visiting times as part of your management, teaching or professorship, you can set office hours this way. If the time is taken, then it will not be made available.
  • Training On New Systems. To help drive success and adoption of technologies and process, you can send a calendar invitation with your appointment slots. This allows your team or customers to train when it is convenient.

Think strategically about how to incorporate this feature in your own workflow and process. It is powerful for automating the flow of your knowledge work.

How can you use this in your business?

Filed Under: Blog, Google Apps ·

Scalability With Google Apps

January 9, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

Moving your team from a server to the cloud allows you to go faster.  The interchange of data, managing that data and leveraging the data becomes easier.  The friction between a piece of software talking to a server, as opposed to direct access to a service that is always on, has completely different business impacts.  The former has failure points, requires setup and shut down of users, and is much more challenging for outside access.  The knowledge worker of today can be working from anywhere, anytime in the latter situation.

Managing systems is not a part of our business.  It is a cost, not a benefit.  We want to be in the business of making money, getting things done and promoting our brand.  The more a system becomes transparent to our execution, the more we can focus on what matters.

In the Google Apps world, we get to live in the new reality of executing and communicating in real-time.  The system can scale to allow for virtual workforces and accessible, secure information access.  Teams today rely on an integrated architecture in Google Apps to focus on business problems and get away from the IT issues of the past.  The measure of a business’ success can arguably be about its scalability and ability to adapt to change.  Your systems today afford you the opportunity to pace with the demands of the new economy.

Perhaps you want to grow and feel the friction from old systems. Why continue to settle for old ways of doing business? Commit to a cloud strategy and use Google Apps to launch your core communications systems for growing your team and providing the balance of security and flexibility to grow.

If your systems could help you grow, what would it look like?

Filed Under: Blog, Google Apps · Tagged:

How We Integrate Google Apps With Salesforce

January 4, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

Google Apps and Salesforce.com are two of the leading cloud computing software vendors in the world. We have partnered with both and customize these systems around the processes of specific businesses based on their requirements. As we advise our clients on technology, process and systems, we always want to keep in mind the questions about cloud computing and what these systems mean to an organization. The following will help you understand our approach and how Google Apps and Salesforce.com are strategic for your team.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing may be a techie term for some, but it has had widespread conversation and adoption. In a nutshell, it is software that runs on the web. You don’t have to install anything. Open your web browser (Google Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer) and you just login to your system. For an organization, you are working within an environment with your team, specifically.

The advantages are:

  • You don’t have to maintain an IT person
  • You don’t have to upgrade
  • You don’t have to maintain uptime
  • You can focus on getting things done
  • Someone else manages the functionality and feature enhancements

As an advisor to your organization, we focus on strategies that help you grow your business. Cloud computing is strategic because:

  • It gets you out of the IT business and reduces overhead costs – people, hardware and software.
  • When you hire people, there is no installation. You can turn them on instantly.
  • When you fire people, you own the data. You can turn them off instantly.
  • You can hire people that live and work anywhere around the world.
  • You can collaborate in real-time with people in one secure system.
  • The system is secure. Your team has to have a login
  • You pay a subscription. This helps cash flow. It’s a service like your cell phone bill.

As an overall strategy, you want to control everything, but own nothing. The headaches are outsourced, the expenses are amortized. The old model was that you had to build such heavy duty software yourself. Now you can use it as a service and let someone else spend cycles figuring out how to innovate and improve. The world moves so fast today and software obsolesces quickly. It’s a good strategy to use cloud computing as a service for your business goals.

Google Apps And Collaboration

We have a lot of content about how to use Google Apps specifically in our blog. We partner with Google to implement, consult and support our customers on this remarkable platform. There are millions of businesses using Google Apps from single consultants to Fortune 500 firms. In the old days, getting another person set up on email often meant downloading Outlook, hooking it into an onsite server or using a VPN connection. It all took time and infrastructure.

Google Apps changed this. You can do many things to grow your business now that are easy:

  • Hire a person halfway across the world and have them running in less than five minutes
  • Share out key sales and marketing collateral quickly and easily
  • Collaborate on documents in real-time
  • Use online documents instead of having to buy Microsoft Office for everyone
  • Have a ready knowledge base to share out with new team members
  • Chat in real-time with anyone from any device – computer, tablet or mobile – anywhere

Your team is connected. The software is continually being improved and  you are using it to manage your business from anywhere, anytime. There is a simple annual user license fee of $50 per user per year which you order here. There is a massive amount of storage, so you can save everything.

We train and show you how to use the system strategically to grow your business and drive business processes. Furthermore, there are many other integrations, strategies and uses that can be extended as you continue to use the system to help you serve your customers better, drive speed in your company or make more money.

Salesforce.com Process Design

Salesforce.com is a system that can be customized specifically for your business. Though there are millions of users, everyone’s system is different. There are different fields, communication templates and records. The system can be programmed with logic and triggers based on rules that are defined.

Our team at AscendWorks works with clients to define the requirements, bring clarity to business processes and implement them elegantly in Salesforce.com.

Salesforce.com is a platform as well. It integrates with thousands of other applications. Thus, you can extend its use over time as you continually refine how you do business.

For your team, you have an effective way to manage what is happening in real-time. Everyone has access to customer, deal or custom records. As information is captured, you can see your sales pipelines, project work or inbound leads. Your team members can also execute from one common framework.

We help you to use Salesforce.com to increase productivity, make more money or support new business processes. It becomes a critical asset to your business as your team relies on each other and the information in the database records.

Integrating Google Apps And Salesforce.com

Not everyone integrates both Google Apps and Salesforce.com. We have various ways to bring the two together that help you align your team and grow your business. Your processes will be designed largely in Salesforce.com. Your knowledge and productivity happen in Google Apps.

Some of the ways the two systems can serve your organization are:

  • Sharing Google Docs within a Salesforce.com Opportunity record
  • Having a central FAQ section that is searchable and accessible
  • Logging inbound and outbound emails in customer records
  • Making appointment scheduling easier
  • Supporting customers with ready knowledge

Your team members have a login for their Google Apps and Salesforce.com systems. They can be working around the world, at a cafe or in your office. Regardless, your business is running in real-time on the web. Your challenge becomes making it clear and easy for how you want to create the customer experience and get things done efficiently.

We hope the explanation helps to orient you and envision the possibilities for using these two powerful systems. The costs are subscription based – $50/user/year for Google Apps and $65/user/month starting for Salesforce.com.

Feel free to post any questions in the comments below. We want to help educate and enlighten. Thanks.

Filed Under: Blog, Google Apps, Salesforce · Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

Google Apps For Group Coordination

December 28, 2011 by · Leave a Comment

Organizations that want to solve the problem of communication and collaboration with team members in many locations would be well-served by the cloud architecture in Google Apps. There are some practical reasons for such a strategic choice in this platform. Here are a few:

  • Easy setup. If you have new members being added, they can be set up in minutes. The administrative burden is light and you have complete control. There is not any software to manage their email, documents or calendar system.
  • Secure sharing. When a new person comes on board, they need direction. You can keep a knowledge base of information in a secure Google Site and Google Docs. They can access this from anywhere with a web browser or mobile device and login.
  • Instant collaboration. Your team can connect via Google Chat instantly. This allows quick access and builds teamwork as problems are being addressed and questions can be asked in real-time as they come up in the course of work.
  • Leadership. You can effectively manage and lead your team regardless of their location. An internal blog can be set up as well as specific knowledge sharing. Use group emails for specific communication distributions with different segments of your team.
  • Closing access. We live in a high turnover economy. You can instantly turn off a member and ensure your systems and data are preserved. This provides freedom to hire, fire and manage departures easily and quickly.
  • Business process. Everyone can get on the same page and execute your business processes. You can also integrate Google Apps via programming to other third-party programs to manage the flow of data.

Cloud computing on Google Apps makes the web the workplace. The balance of security, productivity and collaboration are within one tightly integrated environment.

Think through the challenges of your organization and consider the possibilities of being fully cloud-based.

What could the possibilities be?

 

Filed Under: Blog, Google Apps · Tagged: , , ,

4 Google Apps System Review Tips

December 22, 2011 by · Leave a Comment

User AdoptionA team working in Google Apps is comprised of a bunch of individuals. The advantage of Google Apps is that everyone is collaborating and executing within one system. However, over time, each user may not be using the system in the most efficient or ideal way for the highest levels of success.

Knowledge work comes at us fast and furious. As business cycles naturally slow, you can take the time to review best practices for your Google Apps system to increase each user’s adoption. Here are a few items which are worthy of review:

  1. Keeping a zero inbox. Help users adopt shortcut keys and develop the habit of a zeroinbox mentality. They can move their email to action quickly and keep their mind free to be ready for whatever is coming at them. Furthermore, this avoids clutter.
  2. Collaborate in Google Docs. If users are keeping documents locally rather than in the cloud, show them the steps and benefits for uploading and creating Google Docs. They can easily share and modify documents in real-time with other team members to ensure there is a relevant and fresh library for ongoing use.
  3. Sharing knowledge in Google Sites. If people are keeping information for themselves, they are depriving the overall team of their value. Knowledge sharing in a Google Site which is searchable and a repository for best practices, FAQ’s and specific problem solving saves cycles for problem solving and serving your customers. Drive the behavior if it has been lost or start it anew if it needs to be started.
  4. Working in real-time. Demonstrate use cases for Google Chat and mobile device usage. Provide guidelines for etiquette and how to work collaboratively wherever and whenever a person is working. This helps for problem-solving issues as they happen and driving team dynamics.

You may have launched your system with the right training and expectations. However, over time, users may fall into their own habits. Reviewing best practices for your organization after users have become familiar can align your team to desired behaviors and increase your productivity. Fill the gaps and use natural business cycles to drive further adoption.

How can these tips help your team?

 

Filed Under: Blog, Google Apps · Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

Google Apps And Business Process

December 12, 2011 by · 2 Comments

Google Apps is a platform which is able to transform a business locked within a network or outdated business processes into a cloud business. Your organization gets the balance of accessibility and security:

  • Accessibility: Users can work from anywhere and collaborate instantly with the rest of your team. Your documents, schedules, intranet as well as your email live within a corporate cloud environment. Building your team with talent anywhere, anytime access is a strategic business advantage.
  • Security: Your IT is simplified. User access via secure password access limits their permissions to information, documents and calendars. In our free agent economy today, when a user no longer needs access, they can be instantly turned off. Administration of your organization is easy and the level of control allows for building a robust security environment for your mission critical information.

Business Process

The business processes need to be executed by your team in a predictable, easy and organized way. Google Apps can bring together your team to collaborate quickly and fluidly. Knowledge work is fast moving and requires a system that helps everyone get information and provide information to help get things done quickly. In our consulting work, we work with clients to enable their business processes by focusing on:

  • Mapping the business process. Collaborating with the leaders and managers of a business, the specific steps that a team is to execute in selling, marketing and servicing a customer provides a template for how information should flow. Setting up a knowledge base to keep everyone on the same page helps align everyone.
  • Customizing the environment. There may be third-party apps or a customization of the different Google Apps tools that need to happen. The work needs to be done according to the process maps set up.
  • Alignment, training and leadership. Users need training and leadership as they get used to new processes and interfaces. This may be a transition for an existing organization between 2-4 weeks. An internal champion who evangelizes and drives the change management process needs to be identified to help drive adoption.

Working in Google Apps in the cloud helps to scale your business. It has the combination of accessibility and security for the modern business to drive speed and clarity for everyone.

What business processes would be helpful to automate for you?

 

Filed Under: Blog, Google Apps · Tagged: , , , ,

Google Spreadsheets As A Management Scorecard

December 6, 2011 by · 1 Comment

MANAGEMENT
Managing the performance of your team or partners can be challenging if the debates are around qualitative information. Yet, we often base our judgments on subjective criteria such as likability or appearance. This leads to ambiguity around success.

It can be difficult to get true metrics from a sophisticated database on sales performance, support responsiveness or customer satisfaction. One of the ways to keep control and transparency in a business relationship is to create a scorecard. This can be done between individuals or organizations as a way to measure success towards a mutual goal.

Google Spreadsheets is a great way to keep a management scorecard to measure and track metrics. We all know about the flexibility and power of creating spreadsheets based on the computations and data relationships custom for a situation. Thus, in Google Spreadsheets, your ability to create rows and columns of data makes for a way to record what counts in your business relationships. Here is what you can do to create better agreements and accountability:

  • Agree on what success means.  Whether it is a revenue number by a certain date, customer conversions or a response time, be sure that there is agreement between you and your customer, employee or partner. If they are not bought in, then there will not be a relationship between the desired actions and what you are tracking.
  • Create the template.  Lay out your Google Spreadsheet with columns and rows for where the data will go. Create areas for equations that summarize the information. Be sure to test the tool to ensure that everything works.
  • Use charts and graphs. Now integrate a chart or graph with the data to show progress and visual indicators of the data. This is powerful for communicating what is happening in a snapshot. Be sure that any goals are also reflected to show the gap between today and the goal.

After your spreadsheet is set up, share it out. It is secure in Google Apps and is now a place for private communications and accountability between you and any others that need to be on the same page.

Have regular meetings around the scorecard and data to review how to get to the goal. You may have multiple spreadsheets to manage your vital business relationships. It removes the ambiguity and focuses everyone on the facts.

What kind of scorecards would be valuable for your work?

 

Filed Under: Blog, Google Apps · Tagged: , , , ,

Google Sites Blogging With Announcements Page

November 28, 2011 by · 3 Comments

Within Google Sites, you can create a type of page which is called Announcements.  This is a powerful tool for helping to align your internal team or a select external team.  It is secure, private and integrated into your organization.

While public blogs can be accessible by everyone, a blog within your Google Site can be a way to nurture, inform and inspire a team.  A login is required by your team member for access.  Here is how some of our consulting clients have implemented strategies for business growth:

  • President’s Thoughts.  Leadership is key to business.  Aligning your team around your thoughts helps everyone get on board with vision and strategy from the top. Having your CEO or President share their thoughts on the business with transparency opens the dialogue. Comments can be left by readers for collaboration.
  • Product Blog. As projects around products are ongoing, the context and progress can be documented by a team sharing their wins and struggles.  This helps to keep everyone anticipating and in tune with what is happening for an impending launch. Post-launch content can shift to customer reactions and user requests for improvement.
  • Customer Stories. To help everyone in your organization see the context of a product or service, the various use cases can be documented and published as a separate blog. Various functions within your company can use this as a resource to improve how they serve the customer.
  • Teamwork Highlights. Creating heroes from your team is another way to drive recognition within your organization. Capturing the concrete accomplishments of various team members within a blog dedicated to your teamwork helps to reinforce positive behaviors and results.

Your Google Sites are part of a larger way of coordinating a growing organization. Using internal blogging is a form of leadership via a convenient and accessible communication channel. Consider how your company would benefit from getting on the same page.

What do you think?  Feel free to comment below.

 

Filed Under: Blog, Google Apps · Tagged: , , ,