Despite the rise of different forms of communication, email remains one of the most important methods of messaging for personal and business use.

In 2017 alone, there are roughly 3.7 billion active email users across the globe. This figure is expected to still rise to 4.1 billion by 2021 – that’s half the world’s current population. It will remain the main tool in team collaboration globally. A lot of employers count “good business writing and email skills” as an important requirement before applying for a position in their companies.

Email writing skills is paramount not just for you but for the entire team as a whole. For this article, you’ll learn how you can make your emails better and write them more effectively to improve your communication and ultimately, make your team work together like a well-oiled-machine!

But first – we need to understand why it matters.

Why Excellent Email Skills Makes for Better Teams

On average, most employees will spend over ¼ of their time (almost 11 hours) in their entire work week reading, replying and crafting the right emails and coordinate with the people at the other end of the thread.

A lot of our time is invested in coordination and collaboration. By improving our communication with our team members, we can spend less time in making mistakes and more time getting things done. A well-crafted email will help people capture and understand directions easily. You’ll also avoid unnecessary back and forth for points of clarifications.

The key is to avoid information overload and make the entire process less painful. You don’t want your team mate (who may be working remotely) to come all the way to you just to clarify what you just sent right?

In the following email writing tips, we’ll be discussing how you can ensure readability, prevent back-forth and improve accountability within your team.

Let’s begin!

Hack #1: Assign tasks easily by identifying the 3 Ws

When writing an email – make sure it captures the 3 Ws which is mainly – Who, What and When.

Be upfront on WHO the email is for and from. Be transparent so that the receiving party will understand if they are to take action or not. This is done by your email header or by clearly pointing out which part of the email body the message is for. Indicate it clearly by placing them in the “TO” section. Don’t forget that “CC” or “carbon copy” denotes that the email recipient is just copied in the mail but is not necessarily expected to take action.

Next, say WHAT you want to say. Be very direct to the point and avoid the mambo jumbo. By being succinct, you’ll not only make it easier for the recipient to read your email, you’ll also find that your writing is punchier and has more impact. Specify the necessary requirements that you want. Be clear on the action point that the other user has to do. The key guideline here is to answer in advance all and any questions the receiver will have in mind. Make it very detailed oriented if necessary.

Lastly, be on point on WHEN you expect the action point is needed to be accomplished or what is your expected date of reply. Have timelines and set timings. If you can, indicate a time table on what needs to be done. The intent is to ensure that the other party understands how urgent one’s email that comes in. This makes each side accountable for the deadlines you need. Make sure that you get a confirmation from the other party that they are aligned with the timings you shared. Don’t just expect that the other party will take it into consideration. Get a resounding “YES” or adjust accordingly.

Here’s an example that ticks all the boxes:

Hack #2: Use “If-Then” statements

Do you find yourself in a constant stream of unending discussions? If you find yourself getting sucked into a long, stressful, ping-pong barrage of emails – end it with an “If-then” statement. Don’t treat your email like a usual chat thread. If-Then statements anticipate the other sides need and allows you to fast track your conversations.

For example, look the at email response below:

Use “If-then” statements to prepare back-up plans, clear out any confusion and finalize decisions. Being proactive ends the conversation and makes it more efficient.

Hack #3: Use media tools (images, videos, screenshots)

Show them instead of telling them. By using media tools such as images, videos and screenshots, you’ll be making it easier for the other party understand what you mean. For example, if you want to give very specific technical questions, it’s better to include a visual of how it’s done. If you want someone to take note of an important interview, send them a YouTube link.

Highlight important matters using media but ensure that you don’t overload it too much. Heavy emails take longer to send and receive. If you need to send out huge files, use WeTransfer, Google Docs, OneDrive etc. These tools will make it easier for the other recipient to open your emails and avoid them from landing in SPAM. Keep it tight and light.

Hack #4: Present options and define your recommendation

Don’t ask too much questions or worse – don’t ask open-ended questions. This is the worse culprit of indecision and makes your emails look like a debate regional competition. When you need to get an approval, present options and highlight your recommendation. Express your reasons for giving out that preference. You need to highlight good points and why your vote of confidence speaks to your decision.

Hack #5: Create templates

Your emails don’t have to be unique all the time. You can make a template. This will make your email process faster and easier. Do this for weekly and monthly updates or status reports – anything repetitive. By saving up email formats, you’ll be spending more time working than sending out routine and expected emails. Here’s an example below of a well-crafted status report:

If you want to take it up a notch, use delay delivery. It allows you write your emails now and just send them at the appropriate time when needed. It allows you to send emails when the other side is really expecting them and are most likely to read them.

Lastly, if you’re out of the office, take advantage of auto-reply to craft an Out-Of-Office (OOO) notice. When writing an OOO notice, be clear on your leave dates and who will be the next person who can fit in your shoes. This gives the other side an expectation that you won’t be able to answer your emails during that period. In short, it gives you insurance in case of urgent requirements. Here’s some examples of those emails you can copy.

Hack #6: Why follow-up is more important

Nothing is more frustrating than sending a well-crafted and written email – only to receive no reply! Don’t hesitate to email them back. Follow-ups are crucial to get the recipient’s attention and call them out what needs to be taken next. A great follow-up email gets the other user on track and back on the keyboard to write a response. Here are some great templates that you may use to get started.

Hack #7: Make it scannable

Make it easy for other people to review your emails by keeping everything organized. Don’t just write them in paragraph form. Identify opportunities to make everything concise and scannable. Use bulletpoints, subheadings and white space to give bigness to certain words and phrases. Draw attention to important deadlines and action points by using highlights, font colors, bold or underlines.

Sometimes, email formation makes the entire email readable even though there are too many things you are trying to say or get feedback from.

Similarly, never-ever use acronyms. Spell them out as much as possible. Don’t make any assumptions that the other party understands what you are saying.

Hack #8: Review and Rewrite 101

Make sure you review your emails at least once before sending it. Do a standard content check. Review facts, spelling corrections and clarify unclear details. Don’t depend on the recall function to save yourself. At the onset, avoid sending an email that you haven’t reviewed.

While you should try to avoid lexical or grammar errors in your email, not everyone is super knowledgeable when it comes to language. If you’re not confident with your writing, don’t hesitate to ask for help from professionals, for instance, from Ivory Research or some other expert services.

Takeaways

So, there you have it! Keep these hacks in mind so you can develop amazing emails that make it easier for your team to communicate without the stress and delays. Open communication makes for amazing results. Similarly, using the right tools like Fleep can make this happen. Fleep makes it easy for you to communicate easily and it also synchronizes with other communication tools like email. Want to communicate with your team easily? Sign up for Fleep now!

Happy writing!

Further Reading:

• How to Write a Professional Email
• Team Communication Strategies of top CEOs and Leaders
• Make E-Mail Great Again

The post Email Writing Tips – Improve Your Email Writing Skills for Better Team Collaboration appeared first on Fleep Blog.

You’ve clearly identified the next steps and what needs to be done. You copied the proper teams involved and placed a big “URGENT” sign on the subject knowing that you need an immediate response.

Finally, you hit send. You’re waiting for feedback for the items you need to close today.

And then…nothing. The following day, you still wait for a reply and there is barely anyone who opens your emails. You’re totally ignored.

All too familiar? You may be wondering – what went wrong? In this article, we’re going to cover why your emails are being ignored and how you can fix them.

Reason #1: Long Winded Emails

Most of us like to make our emails comprehensive. Our natural bias is to put a lot of information and share beyond what needs to be shared.

If you’re churning out more than 200 – 500 word emails to your recipients without them asking for it, it’s giving too much.

Most of the time those emails only contain 20% of what we truly need. Super long emails are bad for business. Writing too much “tasks” and content can hurt your message. It can divert the receiver’s attention from the core of your message.

Sending long winding emails does not only hamper you, it also affects your recipient’s time. Imagine spending an hour or two on a very detailed email only to arrive at a “yes and no” response. You not only waste your time, but also waste your recipient’s time which he may have dedicated to other causes or work that is highly urgent.

The Fix:

Keep it short, sweet and to the point. To manage everyone’s time and make your emails more hard-working, cut your email length. Most of us either skim or scan emails anyway. Highlight key points and use bullets for easier review. The easier your emails look, the more likely they’ll be read and replies to. This goes well with the 2nd reason.

Reason #2: Too Complicated To Understand

Aside from sending long emails, another thing that most people do is to make emails too complicated.

They make use of acronyms which may not be understood by the other party. Their emails are full of jargon. They have details that are not pertinent to the recipient. This can be your worst mistake.

A complicated email generates more questions and leads to unnecessary back-and-forth feedback. This is usually the case for big organizations with huge hierarchies. Similarly, the more complicated your emails are, the more people will start ignoring them because they take a lot of time and energy to address.

The Fix:

Keep it simple (,stupid). Avoid sending emails that require too much effort from the end recipient. Simplify words. Don’t assume the other party really understands the jargons you talk about. The best way to do this is to think that your emails will be read by someone new to the table, so simplicity is key. Lastly, a strategy is to use “if-then” statements. This will help you provide alternatives to the options you’ve set forth and make the option selection easier for the recipient.

Reason #3: Not personal and not relevant

Another reason why your emails don’t work is because they make an impression that they don’t matter to the recipient. You are either sending too many emails to many people at once without having it addressed to them, or your email is too standardized which means that you issue just generic emails. When you do that, your emails are most likely not read since they won’t be relevant to the person who received them. Worst case scenario: this could hurt your email deliverability and your emails can start landing in spam. Similarly, when you CC too many people in an email that is not aimed at them, your email will likely be ignored in the future.

The Fix:

Be specific. Create tailored messages or emails to one person or a specific team. Don’t email general instructions if it’s not necessary. Similarly, your emails communicate better when they are fitted to the audience who will receive them. Ensure that all the words you type and create are relevant to the person who will receive it.

Reason #4: Win-lose emails without any compromise

When your email and communication is a win-lose situation, it will be ignored. This means that your email will only serve you and won’t help the other party in any way. The problem with this type of emails is that it is one-sided. Focusing on your own self-interest will likely be the reason why your emails are being ignored. It shows total disregard for the other side of the table and only addresses your needs. Compromise and negotiation is taken out of context and there is no wiggle room or concern for your recipient.

The Fix:

Focus on the other side by starting and ending with the word – “you”. The key in communication and business writing is to address your recipient or reader’s self-interest. Begin the 1st paragraph in the email by including “you” – you need, you asked, you wanted etc. The intent is to highlight the other party, what they can get out of the email, and what will happen if they take the action point. End your last paragraph with “you” as well and stress what your reader/recipient will get from what you said. Win-win situations don’t get ignored.

Reason #5: Does not demonstrate any credibility

Trust is an important thing. If you don’t earn the respect of your colleagues, they will doubt and won’t believe in what you say. This is something that plays out in email as well. Credibility is another thing that matters well in communication. You want to be able to convince the other side that you are telling a truth. One of the mistakes people make is to exclude reference that highlights your credibility. It matters since you want to show that you’re a person of value or status.

Now this is more relevant for bigger organization where everyone doesn’t know everyone. And also if we’re talking about reaching out to new people that we don’t know outside of our organization.

The Fix:

Find ways to highlight your credibility without overdoing it. Humbly highlight a previous success, testimonial or awards you’ve won. You can do this by linking out to a well-designed personal website via your email signature. A good email signature is necessary when you want to highlight important points such as your position, company logo, phone number and other ways that will help the recipient with information that will present you as a credible source. This fix also works well with the next reason why your emails don’t work.

Reason #6: No branding or recognition

Branding and recognition doesn’t just apply to marketing strategies. It also applies to communication and your email. Without proper branding and recognition, your emails are more likely to get ignored. Proper and consistent branding makes your email easily recognizable and makes it less prone to be ignored.

The fix:

Add your company logo or business logo. Now, this really depends who you approach and how. In a corporate world it’s usually suggested to a logo in your signature. Customize your email colors with the ones you use for your business. Be consistent in terms of fonts. Don’t hesitate to use visuals to say what you mean. Branding and recognition is important because it adds to your credibility and builds your reputation through visual identity.

Reason #7: No value and doesn’t add up

Nothing is more ignored than an email that doesn’t add or give anything of value. Email inboxes of your recipients get filled up and flooded with incoming messages every day. You want something that demonstrates or is an actual resource so that they feel like reading and responding to it. An email should be worth a person’s time. I mentioned this repeatedly in the article as it’s important that you cater to the interest of the other party. It has to add up.

The fix:

Your email should encourage social participation. They should be focused on getting a reply. So thinking about asking questions (don’t over-do it however) and avoid vague sentences that doesn’t really add anything to the core message. The email should fit the subject and be intended to achieve its objectives. Do you want to get approval? Get feedback on certain aspects? The email should get it done and this is where value is created.

Reason #8: Improper timing

As they say, timing is everything.

The moment you send your email is a crucial to whether you will be ignored or you will have a response. Let’s say it’s Friday and you know that your manager will be going on a long weekend and won’t be able to answer until next week. You have an urgent email that needs addressing but you’re only able to send it now. It’s 6:57 pm. Very likely, the email won’t be answered.

The fix:

Solve improper timing by identifying the right time to send your emails based on your recipient’s behavior. You need to understand what time they usually view their emails or when they usually check them. If this is for someone within your team, you can do a simple observation of when they would usually reply. If it’s someone outside your team, a general rule is to open emails after 12 pm. Then, send another one if you didn’t garner a response after 24 hours or a few days depends how urgent is the matter. After 24 hours, an email’s chance of being opened drops below 1%. Follow-ups will bump your email forward in the inbox and these are more likely to get replied.

Reason #9: Sending too many emails

If you’re sending way too many e-mails and aren’t able to put your full thoughts into one email, you’re likely to be ignored and after a time placed in a different folder. Sending too many emails is as bad as sending too long ones. It shows that you are unconcise and indecisive. It can overwhelm the recipient when they get dinged all the time. At the same time, another reason is when senders resend new email on existing long content that includes past conversations. Imagine the sludge of emails that you’re sending through the pipeline.

The fix:

As much as possible, only send emails that you deem important or valuable. This is also in line with the importance of adding and providing value. When you don’t over-bombard the recipients of your email, they certainly take notice and treat your emails with respect.

Don’t hesitate to create new email threads – especially when the other party doesn’t need to be aware of past/previous conversations. The key here is to just keep tabs on previous agreements on a folder in your inbox. That way when you need to reference past discussions, you’ll just attach them and your email won’t be filled with unnecessary clutter.

Reason #10: Your emails are not mobile friendly

Mobile matters now more than ever. As more and more people use mobile devices in answering their emails, what you send should be optimized for this platform. Although regular text based emails tend to be mobile-friendly out of the box most of the times these days. However, not seeing emails properly can still happen from time to time.

If you’re lucky, you’ll get complaints from people such as “I don’t see the image on this e-mail”, “I don’t see the attachment” or simply some of the text is missing. If you’re not lucky these emails will just be ignored.

The fix:

Test your emails on a different smartphones and understand how your e-mail client renders inline images, font sizes etc. See how it looks or if its readable. This also gives good references when making your email shorter, given the limited screen time offered by smartphones.

Reason #11: Your subject lines don’t work

Your subject line is one of the biggest factors in affecting your email open rates. According to Convince&Convert, 35% of email recipients base their decisions in opening an email solely on the subject line. If your subject lines suck, they won’t work. An inefficient subject line doesn’t tell the recipient what the email is all about, it doesn’t address the recipient and it can’t convey urgency and curiosity.

The fix:

Make the subject line the summary of what you are trying to say. Imagine the subject as the first message that your recipient receives. One strategy is to highlight the action point the respondent will need to take in a parenthesis and put the important highlight after it – for example:

Subject: “(For Feedback) Contact Information Needed from you” – in this subject line, it’s simple enough to understand that you need feedback on some vital contact information.

Also when reaching C-level managers putting their name into the subject line might work. These people have usually big egos and they want to read about themselves. This is more experimental approach, but if the polite way doesn’t give results, then try this.

Takeaway

So there you have it!

You now have an idea on why your emails don’t work and what effort you need to address them. Remember, the key is to make your emails simpler, easier to read and have more weight.

Emails must be credible and indicates your reputation. they have to provide good value to respect people’s time. Focus on the impact of your words to make your email more hard-working. As much as possible, avoid long emails. If there are things that will merit a long discussion, don’t do it via email. Use another platform, schedule a video call instead.

If you need consensus for a group decision, don’t hope to get everyone’s commitment via email. Secure it through a group chat and then formalize the agreements via email. Lucky for you Fleep can do all that for you and your business. It can help you communicate easily across multiple teams and it integrates with email so everything is in one place and you can communicate effortlessly.

Want to communicate with your team easily? Sign up for Fleep now!

Read more about email communication:

• Email writing tips
• How to write a professional email
• How to world busiest people use email
• 4 ways email is killing your productivity

The post 11 Reasons Why Your Emails Get Ignored appeared first on Fleep Blog.

One hour of planning saves four hours of execution. Being organized and having your team on the same page can be the key contributing factor to your success. Once your team works at its best efficiency scaling up your marketing and sales efforts becomes fun.

In this article, I’m going to introduce you to some of the best tools to grow your small business.

The best part?

You can get started for free with most of them.

Let’s dig in.

Collaboration

#1 Fleep

Naturally, you would see Fleep team communication chat app in this list.

Why?

Fleep is one of the best team chat apps out there and it’s super easy to get started with. It has wonderful native features like task management, ability to pin messages and share files within each conversation. This makes it one killer team collaboration app.

Fleep works right out of the box and doesn’t have any complicated on-boarding process.

The best part?

You can start using it for free.

The main advantages Fleep has over its competitors like Slack, Microsoft Teams and Flock is unlimited chat history. You can have as many messages within your team as you want and they’ll always be there.

If your team grows and you need more features like team management and additional disk space for your files, then you can upgrade at a competitive price of €5 for user per month.

P.S. Here’s a list of alternative chat apps you can try out, should you not want Fleep as your main team chat. I would love to get your feedback though if that’s the case. Comments are wide open, don’t hold back.

#2 Google Drive

It doesn’t matter what type of business you run, you need to manage your files and you need cloud storage. Sending files back and forth over e-mail with colleagues is not how new small businesses should run their things these days.

Keeping your documents in the cloud and having the ability to collaborate and edit them together with your team in real time helps you become more productive and gets more work done.

Now, the reason why I love Google Drive over OneDrive, DropBox and other similar cloud solutions is the richness of the features Docs, Sheets, Forms, Slides and other tools offer within Google Drive.

Google Drive is free to start with. The free version comes with 15 GB free space which is more than DropBox offers as of writing this article. Moreover, you don’t need to break the bank should you run out of disk space and need the upgrade. The pricing is definitely a lot more favorable for Google Drive when compared with Dropbox or OneDrive.

Pro hack: create a new Google account for your business and assign it to be the owner of all the files. This is how you save space and when you do need to upgrade you only upgrade one account for your entire company.

#3 Google Calendar

(source: lifewire.com)

Being able to plan and then execute your daily tasks can play a crucial role in your business.

Now, while regular task lists are all fun and great, I’d recommend using your calendar as a to-do list. Plan out all activities, not just meetings, throughout your day. Dedicate chunks of your time to execute them. This way you’ll always know what you can achieve during the day and what you can’t. This is a great way to keep you focused and motivated.

Obviously, Google Calendar isn’t the only calendar out there. However, if you already went with Google Drive it would be easy to use calendar with the same account as well.

Pro-tip: Plan time for “unforeseen activities” in each day. I usually have set my 9-10am as “reactive to anything” and just before I leave the office I also like to spend 30 minutes on responding to some emails, chats etc. Other times I ignore instant attention grabs and only focus on what I had planned in my calendar.

#4 Trello

Sometimes you need more than your day to day task management with calendar.

That’s where Trello comes into play.

Trello is a free to use tool that helps you visualize different task flows you might have. It can be your sales funnel, marketing experiments testing board or scrum-like process flow for your development team.

The best part about Trello? It packs a ton of value for free.

As an alternative you can consider Asana, Jira, …

They are all somewhat different in the way they look, but the functionality is very similar. If you just want simple day to day task management, then you can also stay with Fleep tasks and get the job done.

#5 Toggl

When things need to be precise, a time tracking tool comes in handy. If you’re working with clients and you’re billing based on the hours you spend then you need a tracker.

Time tracker can also be used as a team motivator. Make everybody see how much time everyone spends on doing similar tasks and have competitions in your team to be either the slowest or the fastest worker.

Even if you’re not billing for your services based on time you actually spend, it’s quite useful to track this for yourself to see where you spend the most time and what is your actual hourly rate.

As an alternative you can try out Time Doctor.

Finance

#6 Freshbooks

When it comes to accounting and invoicing, Freshbooks is probably one of the most known software out there.

Don’t spend your time on composing these perfect looking word document invoices. There’s a better way. With Freshbooks you can send your invoices, track them and also make the process of reminding clients about overdue invoices a lot more comfortable.

On top of that, your customers can take your invoice and immediately pay it with their credit card.

Freshbooks isn’t free, but I figured since you’re sending out invoices and making money you probably don’t mind spending the price of few cups of coffee per month for it.

#7 PayPal

Another simple tool to start collecting money from people is PayPal. You can either add buy buttons into your landing page or send out invoices directly from the platform.

I like PayPal mainly because of its ease of use and setup.

Either you want to collect recurring fees from your clients or simply validate your new startup idea with a simple add to cart button on your landing page – PayPal does all that. It’s perfect for business in any size.

Marketing & Sales

#8 Moosend

Moosend is an award-winning Email Marketing and Marketing Automation platform that has managed to incorporate a user-friendly interface with advanced features in one platform that will not break your bank.

It offers an intuitive drag-and-drop campaign editor where only your imagination can stop you from creating that perfect newsletter!

Additionally, Moosend offers real-time analytics and advanced list segmentation across all of their plans. This way, you can always be sure that you target the right audience.

Finally, Moosend offers a “forever free” plan for up to 1,000 subscribers that allows you to send unlimited email campaigns which makes it a great MailChimp alternative. And if you exceed 1,000 subscribers, Moosend offers subscription plans for as low as $10/month alongside with great customer support via live chat, email, and phone calls.

#9 EngageBay

The need for a fully integrated and affordable CRM is a no-brainer if you are a budding business or startup. But not all options out there offer the best value for money.

EngageBay is one exception.

EngageBay is an award-winning marketing, sales, and customer service platform with integrated CRM.

You can track, follow up, and close deals quickly with the visual deals pipeline and insightful reports. You can automate your sales processes and workflows using a wide range of automation features. There’s seamless integration with Zapier, LinkedIn, Gmail and Outlook 365 among other apps for getting all the work done from one dashboard.

EngageBay’s drag-and-drop landing page builder is super easy to use and comes with automation and templates. With the software’s A/B testing, you can optimize your landing pages for the best possible result.

EngageBay also lets you add fun to your work environment by gamifying the sales process with targets and leaderboards.

Also, you can manage your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts directly from the Social Suite. You can arrange your accounts into ‘Streams’ and capture leads using intelligent social listening. Fantastic, isn’t it?

EngageBay offers a forever free plan for up to 15 users. This includes contact management, autoresponders, email campaigns, and up to 1,000 branded emails a month.

#10 Google Analytics

All businesses today should have a website. I mean what business doesn’t have a website? (It’s a rhetorical question)

For marketing people it might seem like common sense, but if you never had a full-time marketing person in your team or you’re still starting with your venture then you might overlook the importance of having web analytics.

Whenever you launch campaigns or do something to get people to your website, you need to analyse your results. Firstly, it’s important to know your visitors’ intent and also to see what they are clicking on the website and where they might be getting stuck.

#11 MailChimp

E-mail marketing is still by far one of the best marketing channels. It’s cheaper and has great ROI. However, if you’re not segmenting your database of customers or leads, you’re not fully taking advantage of it.

To get started I’d suggest setting up a MailChimp account. Once that is done sync it up with your website. This allows you to capture e-mail from your website and start sending them valuable content until they are ready to buy.

The great thing about MailChimp is their competitive pricing. Up to 2000 contacts is free, which is one of the best offers on the market.

#12 HubSpot

When it comes to your CRM, HubSpot is probably the most comprehensive solution for a business in any size. HubSpot features aren’t free nor are they cheap. However, you can get started with the CRM functions for free. Plus, you can add on various HubSpot integrations to maximize the value.

Why would you need a CRM, you might ask?

Great question. To be honest not all businesses need it. If you have a SaaS product, for example, or you just work with a lot of end consumers and you don’t necessarily need to keep a track record of activities with your customers, then using CRM like Hubspot might not make sense.

However, if you’re in B2B sector, having a CRM can really make or break your business. Hubspot also has sales funnel functionality in their core CRM. Your sales person or team can track the progress of your leads and you can estimate your earnings from new leads. It’s a wonderful tool.

#13 Drift

Let’s talk about live chats.

There are multiple options to choose from. My second best suggestion would be Facebook Messenger live chat. However, with Facebook Messenger we have to assume that the person who wants to chat has a Facebook account. Who doesn’t these days, right?

I recommend Drift over Facebook because of the way it looks. If design and customization isn’t huge for your business, then you can choose from other options on the market. Drift doesn’t have fancy bot automations in their free plan, like you would be able to do with Facebook Messenger, which is not great, but if you’re just starting out then it might not even make sense to start automating your communication immediately.

Live chats in general are becoming more popular. People spend more time on websites and they want super fast, high quality customer service on the spot. If they don’t get an answer from your website they will leave. Offering a live chat to them can retain a lot of the people who otherwise might just leave. I definitely recommend taking advantage of this.

#14 HARO

This is more like a community rather than a tool. Nevertheless, if you haven’t heard about this you’re probably going to fall in love.

HARO brings together journalists and sources (potentially you). It helps journalists to find new interesting people who can help them in writing an article. On the other hand if you’re looking to get PR for your business and you don’t want to hire expensive agencies or freelancers, then this is where HARO helps you.

You need to create an account and subscribe yourself to relevant topic feeds. You’ll start receiving emails every day of journalist queries. If there’s anything that resonates with you, take 30 minutes out of your busy daily work and draft up a pitch for that journalist.

Your pitch should reflect the query. Sometimes journalists want to get expert opinions, sometimes they want to do interviews with the founders. You shouldn’t overly promote your business, that’s never going to work. But be genuine and give valuable insight. You’ll get a backlink to your business and power PR mention.

These journalists sometimes write to media outlets like Forbes, Techcrunch, Mashable etc. If these are places where you’d like to get mentions of your company as well, then start monitoring the HARO feed like I am.

#15 Qwilr’s business proposal creator

This business proposal template lets you compile proposals that actually bring you business. You can customize the design, content and make it a professional and stunning piece to impress your clients.

Even more, you can get notified when your client views the proposal and enable them to accept the job in just one click.

Other tools I recommend

Apart from the free tools for small businesses I listed above, there are some paid tools that I also recommend testing out for your business.

The reason I recommend them is that the value you get for a small investment is absolutely worth it.

#16 Google Ads

If you’re still starting out your small business you have probably two problems – little money to invest and not enough customers.

You need to be smart about picking your marketing channels. My absolute favourite is getting search traffic to your offers and blog. Now, there are two main ways of doing that. You can either put together outstanding content and build backlinks to it. Essentially this is the SEO (search engine optimization) process. It takes time. Impact is big, but to get there you need patience.

What I recommend to start with is search ads. Commonly run through Google Ads (formerly know as Google Adwords).

With Google Ads you can show your offers to people when they are searching for it. It’s a great marketing channel as people are already looking to solve a problem they have or buy a product they need.

Buying banner advertisements on different websites might not be very targeted and you could just burn money without much return. I’ve personally seen very good results with Google Ads. Google often runs campaigns for new advertisers as well. Usually, you’ll be offered $40 – $100 credit after you’ve spent your first $10. This depends on your country where your business is registered.

#17 Mailshake

Another wonderful tool for your sales team or just relationship building in massive scale. It works well with your Gmail account and makes cold email automation a breeze.

All businesses are built on new relationships. Sounds like an obvious business quote you’ll find on your motivational posters.

It’s true.

If you want more business you need to build new relationships.

Make a list of all the businesses/partners/clients you want to build relationships with. Write awesome e-mails that you’re going to send them. Generally, it’s recommended to keep the emails short, sweet and to the point.

Moreover, don’t forget to write follow-up emails. These are probably the most important emails as people tend to ignore first emails from strangers. With my second email I usually just ask one question – “I just wanted to check if you got my last email?”

Short emails work really well. Forget about writing long pitches and highlighting features of your product.

Takeaways

There are a lot of free tools for small businesses that help you run things smoothly. Some low priced tools can really make a difference in terms of saving you time. As a small business owner, your time is your most valuable asset. If there’s something you can outsource or delegate and focus your time on things where you provide the most value, then you should take these opportunities every day of the year.

We will be updating this article now and then, so feel free to bookmark this and visit it again in the future to get new ideas of what tools to use for your small business.

Further Reading:

• Best Slack Alternatives
• 14 Team Communication Quotes to Inspire Your Team
• How to Improve Team Communication

The post Free Tools For Small Business appeared first on Fleep Blog.

Unfortunately, it’s not cut and dry for most of us. A lot of workplaces don’t operate this efficiently. Personal misunderstandings, endless back-and-forth discussions and backlogged teams all result in stress and project delays. This is where effective team communication strategies come in. Implementing one can keep all stakeholders aligned with your targets and provide a structured way of communication with each other. It allows information to travel freely across the group and reach the right people at the right time. Team communication is one of the secrets to building great teamwork.

With this, you may be asking yourself, what are the best team communication strategies?  We looked at the secrets of how the most successful leaders and CEOs engage their employees and inspire their team to move forward.

Here are their top team communication strategies:

1. Elon Musk, Tesla Motors CEO: Have an Open Door Policy

By Heisenberg Media (Flickr: Elon Musk – The Summit 2013) via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

Elon Musk has always been a master communicator. Whether it’s done for his Twitter followers or his annual meeting with shareholders, the Tesla CEO has used a variety of techniques that relays information to other people in a no fuss way. Here’s an example. In an internal memo to employees, Musk highlighted the importance of keeping doors open and organizational barriers for communication flat:

There are two schools of thought about how information should flow within companies. By far the most common way is chain of command, which means that you always flow communication through your manager. The problem with this approach is that, while it serves to enhance the power of the manager, it fails to serve the company. Anyone at Tesla can and should email/talk to anyone else according to what they think is the fastest way to solve a problem for the benefit of the whole company. You can talk to your manager’s manager without his permission, you can talk directly to a VP in another dept, you can talk to me, you can talk to anyone without anyone else’s permission.
– Elon Musk

In a traditional setting, business communication should go through proper channels. Often, this means relaying your message in a chain of command and through layers and layers of people that are not privy to that information anyways. The problem with this type of strategy is that there can be significant delays and there is always information that gets left out and context gets thrown out of the equation entirely. By the time you get your answer, it’s all watered down.

To you Mr. CEO, I say, tear down the walls standing the way of effective communication! The best way to solve this is to have an open-door policy where everyone is free to communicate with each other regardless of position or tenure. Having this in place allows people from your team to ask the right questions, express concerns or issues and propose ideas without fear from being drowned in the sea of bureaucracy. Keeping doors open empowers your team members to make decisions for you and it builds trust and independence. Making accessibility a challenge for everyone sets the tone that we should only work around our silos and be confined to our internal work flow. That should not be the case.

Removing obstacles in communication allows for everyone to be more agile and solve their problems before raising them in the next team regroup. An easy way to apply this is by bringing everyone on-board a flexible messenger app like Fleep and making the boundaries for communication more relaxed.

2. John Flannery, General Electric CEO: Practice the Rule of 3 Within Your Team

Photo courtesy of the Economist

When John took over the helm at General Electric, he made it abundantly clear to the company’s 300,000 employees what needs to be done and accomplished. In a letter to the team, he said:

I have a relentless focus on three things – customers, team and execution/accountability.
― John Flannery

If you’ll notice, Flannery didn’t highlight 10 or even 5 initiatives. John Flannery knows that people can only carry and pick up 3 or 4 key messages. The best way to get your team members to remember and follow things is to be precise and specific in what you want them to do. Giving and relaying too many action points and next steps often confuses your team and our cognitive understanding cannot process too many ideas at once. This is what researches refer to as “cognitive backlog”. The best way to solve this within your team is to foster the rule of 3. By boiling down everything into just 3 key points, you’ll avoid the fluff and just focus on what matters to people.

3. Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook: Share Your Views In A Nonthreatening Way

Photo courtesy of Facebook

Sheryl Sandberg is an exceptionally insightful leader. So it is not surprising she is also an excellent communicator. One of the key team communication strategies she shared in her book “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead” reflects on how even in business, there’s rarely one absolute truth. Which is why we need to communicate our views in a nonthreatening way:

I learned that effective communication starts with the understanding that there is MY point of view, (my truth), and someone else’s point of view (his truth). Rarely is there one absolute truth, so people who believe that they speak THE truth are very silencing of others. When we realize and recognize that we can see things only from our own perspective, we can share our views in a nonthreatening way. Statements of opinion are always more constructive in the first person “I” form. The ability to listen is as important as the ability to speak. Miscommunication is always a two way street.
― Sheryl Sandberg

Sharing your views in a nonthreatening way is necessary so other people in the room wouldn’t feel put down, silenced. Even more, it shows that you listen and hear what others are saying as well. In this way, no one will feel discouraged from speaking up in the team, fostering the kind of team culture where effective team communication “just happens”.

4. Jack Stahl, Revlon CEO and Former President of Coca Cola: Provide Constructive Criticism Without Demoralizing

Source

Stahl understood the importance of providing constructive feedback early on in his career. But he learned this not as a leader but as a member of the team. His observations on how his superiors would handle errors and failure became the cornerstone of his leadership style when he took over the position of President in Coca Cola. In an article for Harvard Business Review, he outlines the ways he manages to give effective feedback. One situation stands out the most. For a while, he was the lead project manager of taking a company public. His primary task was to develop a prospectus on the operations and finances of the company:

One evening about a month before the prospectus was due, my boss–then the CFO of the company–sat in with my team to review our progress. I thought everything was right on track, but he painstakingly pointed out that there were about 187 holes in the draft document: critical financial information that was still missing, even the phone number of the new company we were forming. We spoke about the need for me to be more focused on details and to follow up consistently with my direct reports to make sure things were getting done. At the end of the conversation, I was worrying about my own future. [But] He went out of his way to reassure me that my missteps weren’t fatal, that he still valued and supported me, It made me understand that when people feel valued, they can hear difficult feedback without being demoralized by it. Instead, they feel motivated to change.
― Jack Stahl

Feedback is necessary to make sure that mistakes are avoided again in the future and your team members understand what needs to change. Remember that constructive criticism should remain constructive. To make feedback more effective, make it clear to everyone in the team. Be detailed and concise on what needs to happen moving forward. At the same time, accept criticism as well. Effective team communication is about giving everyone the opportunity to speak out and give each other the tough love they need.

5. Sam Walton, Walmart Founder and CEO: Be Truthful and Honest to Your Team Members

Photo: Louie Psihoyos/CORBIS

No one understands the value of being honest like Sam Walton, the head of retail giant Walmart.  In his autobiography “Made in America” Walton explains how he believes that it’s important to treat team members like co-owners of the business. He does this by sharing a complete overview of the current status of the business or any project. He knows that by doing so, he will encourage them to suggest solutions to problems and discuss opportunities that can bring them growth:

Our very unusual willingness to share most of the numbers of our business with all the associates … It’s the only way they can possibly do their jobs to the best of their abilities—to know what’s going on in their business. … Sharing information and responsibility is a key to any partnership. It makes people feel responsible and involved …. In our individual stores, we show them their store’s profits, their store’s purchases, their store’s sales, and their store’s markdowns.
― Sam Walton

This is by far one of the most effective ways to bridge the communication gap in the workplace. Honesty builds trust in the team. The key here is to be as open and transparent as possible. Don’t make your employees feel like things are being hidden from them. While there will always be sensitive information you cannot divulge, it’s better to be clear why some information is not being shared. Give your employees the assurance that they can be honest with you without any pushback and ask if they would do the same thing to you. Mutual understanding and belief in one another can be beneficial to any professional relationship. The most effective managers and leaders know how to relate and understand their employees. This involves admitting to failure or lapse in judgement. Taking steps to owning up mistakes you have done can show that everyone is susceptible to mistakes and gives you a sense of humanity that your employees value.

6. Seth Godin, Top Author and Entrepreneur: Create an easy and relaxed environment

Photo by Joi Ito (Seth Godin) via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

While achieving business goals is paramount to your success, smart business leaders understand that your team member’s personal convictions matter as well. Being able to inspire and make your employees feel confident about the decisions they are making can lead to less confrontations and more opportunities to discuss anything openly as needed. Seth Godin has always believed that leaders have the accountability to boost their employees’ regard for themselves and empower them to use their ideas:

Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.
― Seth Godin

When aligned with the company’s spirit, personal goals and values enable people to do more. In keeping with this, it’s important to allow interactions within the workplace that foster this kind of alignment. Set informal meetings with your team members via coffee breaks or lunch outs. It has been shown by research that conversations over coffee or lunch promote healthy communication and encourage open discourse on ideas.

7. Jess Bezos, Amazon CEO: Disagree and Commit

By: Steve Jurvetsonderivative work: King of Hearts via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

Healthy discussion is the cornerstone of great team communication. It fosters and allows your team members the opportunity to air out violent reactions or responses to certain decisions that the team plans to take. It’s no secret that there are dissenting opinions across each and every one of us when it comes to how to attack a certain problem or issue. In order to get things done, you must be able align everyone in your team and keep them committed. Compromises are a part of this. Jeff Bezos has recognized the value of compromise, as he wrote to shareholders about disagreeing and committing last 2017:

We use the phrase “disagree and commit.” This phrase will save a lot of time. If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there’s no consensus, it’s helpful to say, “Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?” By the time you’re at this point, no one can know the answer for sure, and you’ll probably get a quick yes. This isn’t one way. If you’re the boss, you should do this too. I disagree and commit all the time. We recently greenlit a particular Amazon Studios original. I told the team my view: debatable whether it would be interesting enough, complicated to produce, the business terms aren’t that good, and we have lots of other opportunities. They had a completely different opinion and wanted to go ahead. I wrote back right away with “I disagree and commit and hope it becomes the most watched thing we’ve ever made.” Consider how much slower this decision cycle would have been if the team had actually had to convince me rather than simply get my commitment.
― Jeff Bezos

Using this phrase actually cuts the time it takes for everyone to decide and curtail what would have been an endless back-and-forth. It’s also a way of showing support to everyone regardless of your own personal views.

8. Steve Jobs, Apple CEO: Build Your Team’s Communication Capabilities

By Matthew Yohe via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Taking workshops and lessons on communication can be great at improving your team’s capabilities. Even if you set the rules or implement a certain strategy, people may still go back to their old patterns. Having regular trainings will make your team more adept than ever before. Steve Jobs knew this well. The top tech CEO was known for being tough on his employees and team members but has always advocated that the role of a leader is to make them the best that they can be:

My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better.
― Steve Jobs

Communication training doesn’t just underscore the way we converse and communicate with each other. It could also cover important skillsets that can improve your business, like presentation skills, business writing and team management. They can be quite expensive but the benefits can match it when you see your team communicating like clockwork.

At the same time, developing your team’s capabilities in communication is also about highlighting their key strengths. Each and every one of us communicates differently. There are people who would prefer emails to face-to-face meetings. Some would be more adept when they are done via auditory means like a phone call. Others via a personal chat message on a team chat platform like Fleep. Check and see which type of communication works well with your team members. Luckily, Fleep allows you to communicate with everyone regardless if they still want to keep using email, video call or messenger format.

9. Sophia Amoruso, Founder of Nasty Gal: Setting expectations and managing roles

Photo courtesy of Mend

Another effective way of communicating with your team is being clear on what is required from them and what are the roles that each one will do from the very beginning. If you communicate clearly what you need from your team and why, they have a clear direction on where to go. Girl boss Sophia Amoruso captures this well:

Communication is really important. Being proactive with communicating out, but also creating an expectation that your team will communicate back, and making it clear how that should happen. Explaining not just what you want to do, but why you want to do it is really important, because people want meaning.
― Sophia Amoruso

I’ll bet that no one will finish a project or do their work on time if the tasks that are given to them are not clear. Ensure that the entire team understands their scope of work. Round-up the team each week to check on their status reports, ask the right questions and address any concerns they may have. Make them aware of their responsibilities.

Designing Your Own Team Communication Strategy

There you have it! You’ve finally discovered some of the tips and tricks that top CEOs and business mavericks use when they engage with their team members. While these strategies are helpful, it’s equally important to set your own course. As I’ve said earlier, every team is unique and so your team will work differently than others. You are the only one who can bet which strategy will work for you. So, here are some practical tips for developing your own team communication strategy:

1. Decide on the best channels for team communication
   It’s probably smart to choose a tool that is meant for team communications, and leave phone calls for urgent matters, consumer apps for personal life. So you may consider using a team chat app, like Fleep. Unlike other team chat applications, Fleep is an open network and integrates well with email. It’s a vast open network that allows you to contact anyone, anywhere regardless of what device they have! You can also give out tasks – being clear on everyone’s job and pin important messages that they need to remember. You can even work and organize your contacts into project teams for easier collaboration and discussion. It gives you and your team members the power to make communication easier and less stressful.
2. Manage expectations with rules and guidelines
   Once the team is prepped and the chat is up and running, it’s time to set some ground rules. This helps manage expectations for communication, like whether people have to respond quickly or if asynchronous communication works better. Or when and how often the team would need to meet. You may also want to set the tone for your team with some guidelines of participation – allowing ideas to run through brainstorming without passing judgement or ensuring that no one interrupts when another person is speaking etc. All of the rules should be agreed on by everyone.
3. Determine roles
   Have everyone agree on their roles and responsibilities. Be clear on the designations and who have decision making power. In this way, everyone knows what is expected of them – and whenever there is a disagreement, it is clear who has the right and responsibility to call the shots.
4. Have a system for resolve communication issues
   When communication issues rise (as they most certainly will), strive to address them immediately. Have the team leader or other decision-maker serve as the mediator. The first step in addressing such issues is to evaluate if any rule has been broken. Be clear on what your system is for resolving issues, and make sure everyone involved in the issue comes to an amicable resolution.

Takeaways

Taking advantage of these tips can help align your team’s goals and improve communication across all levels of your organization. It creates a stress-free environment that is helpful to the success of the project as whole. Communication is always made easy by being open, honest and transparent with one another. Using the right tools, like Fleep, that allow for transparency in the team is great for that too. Treat your team members like family and they are bound to do the same for you.

Want to communicate with your team easily? Sign up for Fleep now!

Further Reading:

• 14 Team Communication Quotes to Inspire Your Team
• Why Expressing Emotion Really Matters in Messaging
• Team Building In A Virtual World

The post Team Communication Strategies: How Top CEOs and Leaders Communicate With Their Team appeared first on Fleep Blog.

It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about personal or professional relationships here – no one can do without effective communication.

In order to build better relationship with your friends, family, clients or employees you must hone your communication skills.

Team communication in particular is important to master. For a team to function effectively, there must be open channels of communication.

In this article we’ve put together some of the best inspirational team communication quotes to inspire your team to have better conversations.

Alone, we can do so little; together we can do so much.
- Helen Keller

In almost any team that’s bigger than a few people, there is someone who prefers to work alone and have as little interaction with others as possible. This is fine as long as all the committed work as a team gets done. However, active participation from everybody spurs ideas and resources (team members effort) can be used more efficiently and therefore things move faster.

In teamwork, silence isn’t golden, it’s deadly.
- Mark Sanborn

#1 rule of team communication is that everybody should be able to voice their thoughts and ideas. When you feel like some of your team members aren’t contributing enough to the discussions, then try to understand the real reason behind this and possibly solve it. Collectively discussing ideas always brings more on the table than doing it solo.

If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.
- Henry Ford

There’s nothing better than having your team on the same page and moving towards the same goal. That’s why we suggest keeping meetings short, concrete and frequent.

The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.
- Babe Ruth

We see this a lot. People have their own preferences and some group of people and departments like to handle communication on their own terms. Often, e-mail is used for communication across teams. Fleep is built to help you manage all your team chats and cross-team conversations on one platform so that you could play together and play good.

The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.
- Peter F. Drucker

And not only hear. Only a small percentage of what we say is received via our voices. Nonverbal communication is the single most powerful form of communication.

Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Hopefully, every team-leader has had these moments where everything is moving. The wheels are turning and progress is being made. Getting people more effective is through self-motivation. Getting things done fast and off your tasklist is definitely satisfying and motivating for lots of people. This can only happen when information moves fast and between the right people. That’s something we aim to achieve with our collaboration software.

Communicate in a respectful manner – don’t just tell your team members what you want, but explain to them why.
- Jeffrey Morales

Having a sense of purpose in your actions is important. You’ll always come off as someone good to work with when you let people know your motives.

Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.
- Plato

One of the most powerful skills to master as a team player is to know when is not the time to talk about your dog or iterate thoughts of others just because sake of talking. We’ve all been to one of these meetings where someone just keeps talking about something that was covered already. Be wiser, listen carefully and respect the time of your team members. Complement each other, don’t compete for attention.

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
- George Bernard Shaw

Never assume people understand you the way you convey your ideas. This can be especially harmful in text-based environment, where there’s more room for interpretation. Additionally, if we’re talking about text-based group conversations, we cannot assume that everybody understood the message the same. If you don’t get a response to your idea, ask for feedback or try break it down to smaller pieces.

Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you now.
- Jim Rohn

We, humans often think with our emotions and feelings. That’s not a bad thing at all. If we speak with passion and great enthusiasm, we inspired others to follow. Having enthusiasm is contagious and gets your team going faster.

There is only one rule for being a good talker – learn to listen.
- Christopher Morley

Everybody has their own style, but nothing beats being respectful for your peers. Try to be someone who adds value to the conversations and not someone who grabs the attention.

I have always believed that technology should do the hard work – discovery, organization, communication – so users can do what makes them happiest: living and loving, not messing with annoying computers! That means making our products work together seamlessly.
- Larry Page

Well, the founder of Google sure knows what he’s talking about. Technology is a wonderful helper to make our lives more simpler. If you’re not using any project management and/or collaboration software for daily conversations a task management – you’re missing out.

Any problem, big or small, within a family, always seems to start with bad communication. Someone isn’t listening.
- Emma Thompson

Businesses and teams are like families. They need to co-exist, get along and generate outcome (in business it’s new products, revenue, campaigns etc). The closer together they work, the higher is the chance of success. That means having fluid conversations.

To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.
- Anthony Robbins

We all come from different beliefs and have different perceptions. Therefore the way we send and receive information varies greatly.

We hope that these team communication and motivational quotes will inspire your team as well it has others. If you want to increase the productivity of your team, consider signing up for Fleep – it’s free to use for as long as you want.

Further Reading:

• Team Communication: the ultimate guide and strategies to improve team communication
• Why Expressing Emotion Really Matters in Messaging
• Team Building In A Virtual World

The post 14 Team Communication Quotes to Inspire Your Team appeared first on Fleep Blog.