Managing your mail, before it manages you

A few weeks ago, my sister discovered an email informing her she’d won an Honorable Mention in a songwriting contest. The email was a year old. She suffers from what so many other internet users do: email clutter. It can take over an inbox and consume hours of productivity. It can also prevent us from reading important notices (like that long-passed contest) or bills, which may have negative financial implications.

For small business owners and non-profits, this can especially affect the bottom line if you’re not responding to customer inquiries in a timely manner. There is an annual Clean Out Your Inbox week every January, but it’s never a BAD time to get back on track to managing your email flow. Here are my tips: [Read more…]

2012 London Olympics, and how big events can help even the smallest organization

I spent much of the past two weeks working on a new website design for Tsunami Swimming. I originally designed their first website back in 2003 using frames, re-designed it in 2005 with some help from Dreamweaver, and finally launched a powerful, SEO-ready and social networking-savvy Joomla! site last weekend.

While I worked on the Tsunami website, I kept one eye on the 2012 London Olympics. Not only am I a huge fan of the Summer games, but as a life-long swimmer I couldn’t turn away from action in the pool! Of course, that helped immensely when it came time to write good content for Tsunami’s site. Being able to experience something as awesome as the Olympics this year is a tremendous help when it comes to writing compelling copy. Tsunami needed their audience to get excited about the sport, and what better way than to share stories of success by Team USA?

[Read more…]