If you’ve got a Blog, a News letter is also a great way to deliver your existing blog articles, after all, your social media fans have seen your articles, so why not everyone else?

We’re big fans of iContact and MailChimp, these are both leaders in their field, however they’re not the only packages of this type, there are a good many others.

How much do they cost?
Email marketing is a competitive industry and things change often as the services constantly try to one-up each other. As of this writing, pricing for iContact and MailChimp is not identical, but it’s close enough that it probably won’t play a factor in your decision in most cases.

However, if you have less than 2,000 subscribers and send less than 12,000 messages per month, MailChimp is free. You’ll pay $29/month ($24.95/month with an annual discount) for an equivalent plan from iContact. This might make the choice clear enough that you stop reading now and click right over to MailChimp, but there are other things you may want to consider.

MailChimp

MailChimp’s “less is more” approach results in a less intuitive user interface. In many cases, you are shown only what MailChimp thinks you need to see to complete the current action (e.g., creating a campaign). That said, once you’ve figured it out, it’s very logical, just not what you’d expect at first.

We often build templates for MailChimp, and as far as we’re concerned one of its biggest strengths is that we can define editable areas, so with the right layout, it’s very easy for our customers to be productive, very quickly. Why is this such a big deal?
Well, many of its competitors have a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor that gives you full control of the content and layout of the email. But this comes at a price, and often results in broken layouts and hours of frustration spent lining boxes up. MailChimp’s approach with pre-defined editable areas, avoids this problem well.

MailChimp has many alliances with other software packages such as SalesForce, so if you’re looking to add email marketing on to a well recognised package, then MailChimp is the most likely to fit the bill.
Getting email addresses in to the software is easy, however watch out for MailChimp’s policy on generic email addresses such as info@, enquiries@, sales@ etc. If you’re importing email addresses from an existing source, these will be ignored.

MailChimp offers spam checking for paid accounts as well as an Inbox Inspector, allowing you to see your campaign in 30+ email clients as well as check for spammy content before you send, on a pay-as-you-go basis.

iContact

We generally find iContact much easier and more logical to use. It’s simple, intuitive and tidy, but watch out for the editing area. You have full control over the content and layout of the email, which can in some cases end up in disaster and needing some knowledge of HTML. Sometimes, if you’re not confident with all things IT, you may prefer the less is more approach of MailChimp.

iContact lets you edit inline, right in the message, so you can see what it looks like as you do it. With MailChimp, editing opens just that section in a new window so you lose the context of the whole message.
By displaying more on the screen, iContact allows you to get to pretty much whatever you need whenever you want to. Though the navigation is more complex than MailChimp’s, it’s also significantly more intuitive.
Importing email addresses is very simple, as is sending, previewing, spam checking and testing emails.

What they do the same
In both applications, messages can be sent immediately or you can schedule them to be sent later and both offer the ability to post to Facebook and Twitter automatically.
Both have multiple contact lists and can handle different campaigns with different sending email addresses.

They also allow you to imbed a subscription form in to your website that subscribes interested readers straight in to your mailing list. Want to see one in action? Go to our website www.fl1group.com and sign up for our newsletter at the bottom of the page and see for yourself.

So, which one is better?
The two services have very different looks. Whereas MailChimp’s is a very minimalistic look and feel, iContact takes a more direct approach, displaying more information and options, but in an organized way.

Based on this high-level review, if you’re a low-volume sender and cost is your primary concern, MailChimp is the way to go. You’ll get used to the interface after sending a few campaigns.

If you have lots and lots of contacts and send them lots and lots of messages or if you want to jump right in and start using the tool right now with the least amount of frustration, iContact might be a better fit for you.
Both MailChimp and iContact have loads of other features that might make one or the other a better option for you. If you’re interested, there are a lot of side-by-side reviews of these and other email marketing services on the Internet as well. Be warned, though, the results vary a lot between reviews.

Since MailChimp has a free plan and iContact offers a 30-day free trial, why not try them both and decide for yourself?

Caroline joins us who will be taking care of our marketing and administration. She will also be dealing with all the seminar and workshop bookings.

Some other bits of exciting news, following on from the success of our workshops last year we have added lots of new dates for 2012 – check out our Workshops page for more details. Amongst our old favourites we have a couple of newbies including our workshop run by Paul Simister from Paul Simister Photography, that will provide you with simple and effective tips on taking pictures for your website.

We kickstart our run of workshops with our popular Search Engine Essentials workshop. This is running on Tuesday 14th February 10.30am to 12.30pm and is almost fully booked so if you are interested in learning the techniques to get your business to the top of Google ranking then hurry and book your place now.

For a list of all our free workshops please click here.

After much demand we have decided to write a NEW Social Media Seminar. This is in a different format to our workshops in that it is longer, and more detailed. It will give you a greater understanding of Social Media and explain the different technologies involved. The cost of this seminar is £50 plus VAT and includes refreshments and networking opportunities. Places are limited so please book early.

Many don’t really know what the bills propose, or what we stand to lose. If you are not worried about SOPA/PIPA, then for the next four minutes, watch this video (by Fight for the Future).

The recent SOPA-related boycott of GoDaddy was all over the news, with many people expressing their outrage over the possibilities of SOPA, but when I ask people about SOPA and its sister bill in the Senate, PIPA (Protect IP Act), many don’t really know what the US bills propose, or what we stand to lose.

This video is without doubt one of the best summaries of what the new Bills propose and how it will impact the internet the whole world over:

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo

Here are a few pointers based on the software we’ve used and worked with over the last 12 years.

Being a guitarist, I liken choosing a CRM to being like buying a guitar.

You’d have heard of all different makes and models, and somewhere in the back of your mind you might dream that buying a Fender Stratocaster will suddenly make you play like Eric Clapton, but in all honesty there’s no substitute for walking in to the guitar shop and just trying out as many as you can. A Strat worked for Clapton, but that’s not to say it will be a good fit for you.

I know talking from personal experience I bought my dream bass guitar last year, paid a handsome sum of money much to the envy of my colleagues because it was the instrument my idol played for years. A marvellous instrument that it was, but it just wasn’t me. Much that it did the job superbly, it was the wrong sound and fit for what I do and no way as well suited as basses I’ve got that cost 10% of the money I paid. The moral of the story is; had I have sat and tried it out first, I’d have realised straight away it wasn’t going to work.

Likening that analogy to CRM systems, we bought Sage Act some years ago, based on my previous experience and its reputation.

It was an utter disaster, and didn’t work at all well for the infrastructure we had at the time. Had I have tried it, I would have realised, but in earnest I didn’t and we suffered as a business for it.

With CRM software they’re all much the same, they’ll all do what you want and plenty more besides.

They all have:

• Be Web based (this is the ideal arrangement for so many small businesses)
• Different pricing models, often per user/per month
• Company record database
• Contact details based on Contacts for a Company
• A way of grouping Contacts
• Status that you can assign to Contacts, so you can track your relationship
• Flexible Reporting
• Most have a task list and scheduling
• Most have Workflows
• Most have Document Storage and Management
• All have Contact Notes and History
• Some will integrate directly with your email service
• Many have an email marketing module built in
• Most will connect with external email marketing packages such as iContact and MailChimp
• Some with have a Web-to-Lead style feature that will connect to your website
• Some level of data import and export

These are the core features and the ones that I think are must-haves for most businesses.

My advice would be to try them all out and see what you’re most comfortable with.

• Salesforce for example is one of the market leaders, but many find it unwieldy and over-complicated to use.
• Zoho is another good system I’ve heard good things about.
• SugarCRM is open source (so free) it used to be buggy, but I believe has come a long way.
• Microsoft CRM is a true Microsoft Product fitting the 80/20 rule. It does 80% of what you want out of the box, but if you want that last 20% that’s really useful, it will take 80% of the time and cost. Most people I know who use Microsoft CRM hate it or love it but have had to spend the cost of a new car on it customising it.
• Sage CRM is Sage’s mid-tier cloud based offering. No experience of it, however I have worked on getting website data in to it via a Web-to-lead interface which has had to be developed especially via a third party specialist. I can’t imagine for a second it was a low cost exercise for what so many others do straight out of the box.

One thing is for sure; if you invest time and choose something you’re comfortable with, it will be a long and happy relationship and the software will undoubtedly grow your business.

Choose software you’re not comfortable with but you chose because it’s got a well known name, and you won’t use it and it will end up being a bottomless pit of time and money that will hinder your business.

If software isn’t simple and intuitive to you, it won’t be simple and intuitive to staff and out-workers you may have. If this is the case, it will end up being a chain around your neck, your staff will resist using it and you’ll end up acting as first line technical support which will take you away from what you really should be doing.

Finally, if you have a Smartphone, investigate synchronisation with your iPhone/iPad/Android/Blackberry. There may be an App for your CRM as there so often is when many other products.

Final questions are; data ownership. Who owns it and can you export it?
If this service is terminated for whatever reason, where do you stand?

Links in to your accounting system may also be a consideration at some stage.
Many provide links to Kashflow, QuickBooks or Sage. Don’t get too hung up on this though as more often than not who you’re billing isn’t always your primary contact that you’d have in your CRM. Bear in mind that most CRM packages are sales and marketing focused, whereas your accountancy software isn’t.

Need more help? Give us a call on 01727 739812.

This update fixes the issue. Note that the vulnerability is in the protocols themselves, and Operating System’s other than Windows are affected too. You may want to install the patch quickly, due to the relative ease of intercepting traffic on wireless networks.

There are a number of known issues with the patch, and you may find that some sites no longer work once you have installed it.

This protocol is typically used by online shops and websites that are specially secured.

For more information, visit http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2643584

Not only have we been building websites that build your business, we’ve also been making babies…well Ali has! Ali became the proud father of a baby girl (Zainab) this month weighing in at a healthy 2.8 Kilos!

Jason’s been playing with other parents in the Camp School Band, to raise money for Camp School.
They raised a record breaking £3,200 this Christmas, so if you want to see Jason dressed up as school boy, now’s your chance!

On a work front, we had a lot of fun at the Business Startup show in Earls Court last month along with Adrian Dixon and his superb ViduCall product.

We’ve also being working on some great new WordPress functionality that takes event booking and using Google Maps to a new dimension.

Finally, we’re proud to announce we’ll be running more Workshops in the 2012, so you if you want to make sure you get a place, book yourself on a Workshop now while we’ve still got places.

See you next month!

The update also demotes one of the complainants to the European Commission, Microsoft-owned Ciao, which will almost vanish from many searches as a result of the downgrading.

Many voucher and discount sites have also been hit by the wide-ranging changes. So have some so-called “content farms” such as Ehow and Mahalo.

We’ve also seen websites we work with hit where the subscribe content from a third-party website or are using affiliate linking. Initial research seems to suggest that the publisher of the affiliate program isn’t effected, more the affiliated website that refers to the source website.

For more details visit: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/pda/2011/apr/13/google-panda-uk-update-winners-losers

Our Workshops have proven to be so popular we’ve added three more to the series and recruited some experts in their fields to talk about their areas of expertise. Why not take a look and book any you find of interest.

Being a musical bunch and always interested in raising money for charity, we’ve teamed up with the lovely girls at Rickmansworth’s estate agency Sewell and Gardner to play at their Chorleywood Stock event. Chorleywood Stock is a live music event in Chorleywood on Saturday October 8th set up to raise money for Oxfam. If you want to see Alex’s band Brocker and Jason’s band The Kings of Langley, why not come along and take a look.

See you next month.

Let’s be honest: we hated Google Wave. If we’re really, really honest, we didn’t even understand Wave. No-one did.

What is Google+
Google+, was launched by invite-only in beta, and is designed to destroy those awful Wave memories.
Google+ is clean. It’s smart. It has widgety Circles that you can waste hours creating and deleting again. And it will, in the coming months, attach itself like a limpet to every other Google service you use (including Picasa Web Albums and Google Search).

The Google+ feature that’s causing the biggest stir is Circles. With Circles you can create groups using a downright gorgeous dashboard, where dragging contacts from the top of the screen to cute blue Circles at the bottom becomes an addictive way to waste an hour or two in itself.

You can create as many Google+ Circles as you like, and call them anything you wish. Your contacts cannot see which Circles they’re in, and each contact can be in multiple circles. And when you delete a Circle, it conjures a cute vanishing animation that’ll have you deleting for the sake of it.

Streams are Google+’s very own Facebook Newsfeed – the stuff being shared by the people in your circles, be it words, pictures, videos or links. In truth, the Google+ Streams are not as easy to scan-read as Newsfeed – although the Stream page itself is a clean enough design, the accent on comments can make it confusing to chew through at a single sitting.

Sparks are the Google+ newsfeed channel, which you fill either by choosing one of the pre-sets (cycling, fashion, films, football), or by running a search (and it auto-suggests categories as you type). It all works, too, although the end result is a rather sterile (albeit clean and usable) experience.
Google+ has a profile much like LinkedIn and Facebook. Your profile is where you can upload pictures, details about yourself as well as other information.

The fine control of permissions within Google+ demands that you think quite hard about which Circles (or the world at large) can see what.

Google knows that this is an issue, so has built in a ‘View profile as…’ search field – you can then check that Amanda in accounts can’t see your worst indiscretions, posted in a moment of thoughtlessness.

Is it a Facebook killer?
Google+ is good; very good in fact. It’s clean, it’s simple, it works.

The Circle feature has certainly got Facebook reacting with changing the way that list are used and by making content more permissive. It’s fair to say though, that the recent changes by Facebook to adapt Lists and permissions in a more Google+ driven style have been far from well received.

As for should Facebook be worried? In my opinion, no, or at least not yet.

Facebook is a far richer and more advanced platform, that said, Google+ are just beginning with their most successful Social Media platform yet, so ask that question again in a year, and the answer will almost certainly be different.

Bit.ly

Bit.ly is just a URL shortening service right? Wrong! A free Bit.ly account will give you access to a dashboard where you can shorten and share links to multiple Twitter accounts. You can also see the stats for any Bit.ly links you share through your dashboard and plug your Bit.ly API key into Tweetdeck, Twitterfeed, or Seesmic to get stats for links you share through those applications as well. As an added bonus, you can even create your own custom short domain to match your brand so you can have branding similar to Mashable’s on.mash.to and Amazon’s amzn.to custom URLs.

Buffer

Buffer is deemed the smarter way to tweet. It allows you to simply schedule your tweets to be spread throughout the day so you don’t go through a reading spree and inundate your followers with 20 tweets within an hour. You can also get great analytics on your tweets which will help determine what your audience loves, or doesn’t, out of the content you share as well as the times of day you get the most action on your tweets.

CoTweet

CoTweet, is considered a Twitter marketing tool for companies who want to engage, track, and analyze conversations about their brand. The free version allows you to manage your Twitter accounts, collaborate with multiple users, track clicks and limited analytics, schedule tweets, keep conversation history for 30 days, and more. The enterprise version (starting at 1,500USD a month) allows integration with Salesforce, advanced user roles and permissions, workgroups, and full analytics.

HootSuite

HootSuite is one of our favorites as far as Twitter management is concerned, and is also quite popular amongst the social media elite including @chrisbrogan, @tweetsmarter, and @tamar. It is a freemium tool, meaning that you can use the free plan if you have fewer than five social profiles to manage. But the Pro version for unlimited social profiles including enhanced analytics isn’t too steep at only 5.99USD per month.

Paper.li

Paper.li is a unique application that allows you to collect tweets and curate them manually or automatically in a newspaper-style format which can be automatically shared daily on your Twitter account. This app is a great way to collect the top tweets from your followers, people on a specific Twitter list, or even anyone who mentions a particular #hashtag. It does drive a nice bit of traffic to sites mentioned by top users, so while some people may not like to be mentioned, others greatly appreciate it!

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is a desktop Twitter management tool. It has features similar features to HootSuite in terms of creating columns to organize your Twitter activity as well as the ability to send longer messages using their Deck.ly service which creates a shortened URL that directs followers to the rest of your tweet beyond 140 characters. I love the interface of this one, but since I use multiple computers, it makes more sense to use a browser-based application instead of one you have to install on a local machine.

Twitterfeed

Twitterfeed allows you to add RSS feeds (yours and others) to be shared automatically through your Twitter, Facebook, and other social media accounts each time there is a new update to them. You can customize the tweets to show the title of the new post, the link (shortened by your preferred URL shortener), and even add a RT @username or via @username so you let the blogger know you’re always tweeting their posts. It’s a great way to curate content for your audience automatically, but just be careful that the blogs whose feeds you use always publish quality content.

SocialOomph

SocialOomph is another freemium service used that allows you to schedule tweets, track keywords, extend your Twitter profile, and much more with an unlimited amount of accounts for free. If you choose to go professional for 29.97USD, you get additional features such as Facebook scheduling, tweet via email, have others update via email, manage DM spam, broadcast DMs to all Status.net followers, and again, much more. Plus, for an additional 3.97USD you can automate following those who follow you and sending welcome DMs to new followers.

Triberr

Triberr is an invite only community that allows you to join “tribes” of like-minded bloggers in order to expand your reach on Twitter. Simply plug your RSS feed in and members of your tribe will tweet each new post. As a member, you can set yourself up to do automatic tweeting of other member’s posts or manual tweeting when you have reviewed and approved of the posts. I personally just copy my Triberr tweets into HootSuite for full scheduling control.

Visibli

Visibili is a free service that lets you create a custom sharing bar that goes with any links you share through their service. This custom share bar can have your name and social sharing icons as well as links to your website and even a Tweet button which recommends your Twitter accounts and Facebook Like button that connects to your fan page. It can be connected to your Tweetdeck or Seesmic desktop apps, installed on your blog for outgoing links, and installed as a bookmarklet on your browser bookmark toolbar as a quick way to share with your customization at the top of every link!

What Do You Use?

Now it’s your turn. What Twitter apps do you use to manage and update your Twitter account?
We’d love to know, so why not add a comment and tell us?