Social networking has become the buzz word for everyone including business.

Like it or not, it is becoming a part of the workplace, but should sites like Facebook be used and how?

Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites at the moment and it seems that ‘anyone who is anyone’ can be found there.

Is it ethical to use Facebook to check up on existing or potential staff?

Are you losing productivity to staff being logged into a site like this?

Are they just chatting inanely about their private life or is information about your business at risk?

Facebook is often used as a gossip avenue, and work gossip is nothing new, but it used to be restricted to hallways, staff rooms and telephones.

It can be surprising what people will write on these sites, especially in the heat of the moment.

There have even been many cases of employees losing their jobs through Facebook. There is no accounting for stupidity really – imagine calling in to work sick, then writing on Facebook that you are hung over or have a hot date and have chucked a sickie! Well it happens around the globe and is likely to continue to happen.

What about putting your business on Facebook?

This is becoming increasingly popular and could be a very innovative idea.

However I would strongly recommend that before you do this you analyse – why would I do it, who will look after the profile, what would I want broadcast about the business, how does it fit my business plan, who will become our friends and how much paid time will be needed to keep the page updated? No point in having a Facebook page that is not updated often, people expect regular updates there!

There are a host of brilliant web tools out there for business, but don’t just use them all simply because you can.

Technology does not guarantee you will become organised!

You need to USE the technology in order to achieve this.

For example, one thing I used to find with a paper diary was that some days I got so busy that I forgot to even look in the diary once I left home in the morning - the day seemed to take on a life of it’s own and run away with me.  I was often heard to mutter “it’s not good enough for me to write things in my diary - I have to look in it too…”

This brings me to one the my favourite features of electronic diaries and lists - the ability to set an alert on them.  I can even set multiple alerts on a single entry!

So firstly I had to get into the habit of putting every little thing into my iphone calendar and putting the appropriate alerts onto them.  Secondly I need to carry it with me at all times (an alert can only get my attention if I have the phone with me doh!)

Seems simple, but once I got into the habit of really putting everything in there I have found the tool to be absolutely incredible - if an alert goes off but my schedule has changed, I am reminded and then I can simply change the time on the item, say put it to an hour later or whatever and automatically it alerts me again at the right time.  That used to be a huge issue for me - my schedule changing during the day could cause me to totally forget things to do that I was carrying in my head.

Another fantastic feature is recurring events.

It used to be a ritual that at the end of the year I would have to go back through my old diary and begin transposing certain events into my new one - birthdays to remember, monthly meetings etc.

Now I can set an ‘all day event’ for someone’s birthday and tell the calendar to make it recur every year - I don’t have to do anything else!  I can have it alert me a week before the date even to remind me to organise a card or to meet up for coffee or whatever.

I attend a few monthly meetings and the calendar allows me to set for example the ’second Tuesday of the month’ as the meeting date and set it up for every month.  I love that then there is no chance of getting the date wrong for any month.

I use a setup for all of this too that backs all these things up onto a web site automatically (so as long as I am in range of an internet connection I get everything backed up including my contacts list), and it all synchronises with my computer as well.  One fear I had when I went to the electronic diary was a failure causing me to lose everything and my diary is critical for my business.  Now I have not 2 but 3 copies of everything electronically, so the chances of my iphone, computer and web storage all failing is very remote - less remote than the chance that I could have lost my paper diary!

Still the true key to success has not been so much the technology itself, but USING the technology - every person reading this entry probably has all the electronic management tools they need, but ARE YOU USING THEM?

Small business owners often find that their time revolves around a stream of little things that are necessary to keep a business running, but don’t seem to have anything to do with what they wanted to be in business for.

If you allow them to queue up, it can seem daunting to imagine how you are ever going to get through them all.

One of the most important aspects to keeping this under your control, rather than letting a million things seem to take control of you is finding a way to organise yourself that suits you.

There are many ways to do this, but the principal is preventing all these tasks from clogging up your own brains temporary storage, and into some kind of a system. This system needs to be able to track these small tasks so that you can’t forget them, whilst allowing you to concentrate and focus on the tasks you went into business to perform.

The usual suspects are typically diaries, lists, whiteboards and sticky notes, but maybe you can use technological equivalents?

There are many brands of software that accomplish these tasks for windows, Mac and Linux systems.

I would be very surprised if you don’t already have the tools you need on your computer now, even if you’ve never used them.

Maybe you can add better or more sophisticated products, but some of the very simple tools could turn chaos into manageable.

One of the things I personally love most about using an electronic diary is the reminder alarm feature. You wouldn’t believe how many tiny tasks I put into my diary - everything from making a critical phone call to getting milk on the way home, allowing me to work through my day without so much clutter in my head.

Ah the written word!

There is something about the written word that makes it seem valid, authentic and reliable. It can be comforting to read something, and know that if you are unsure of any content you can go back and read it again!

I believe that we used to weigh our words carefully before putting them into writing. I’m not so sure that holds as true today.

We live in an age where anyone and everyone not only can, but probably does publish, to the degree that maybe we don’t give so much consideration when putting something into print.

Communication via email has become so completely integrated that very few of us can imagine a business world without it.

Does that mean we are using the written word well as a communication vehicle – just because we are using it?

I must admit that even though I send and receive far more emails daily than I would like to count, I often find it a frustrating vehicle for a few reasons.

Firstly if I ask more than a couple of specific questions via text I find it is rare the receiver will answer more than the first couple anyway.

Secondly if I send more text than can be read on screen without scrolling, I probably wasted all that text below. That’s important as it means if I don’t say the critical things in the first section they risk being missed altogether.

Thirdly if I ask for confirmation by the receiver of important attachments in my email I rarely receive this.

I often ponder on the reasons for these 3 main points, and as I teach email communication and netiquette we discuss just such issues.

If you consider the communication issues you have had with text in your business, I wonder if you can supply the answers?

When considering the issue of spam, or junk email, business owners need to also consider ways to prevent spam starting, just as we would rather prevent a disease than treat one. Once your email address is validated out there in the world of spammers it is out of your control how far and wide your address is passed along.

One of the methods used by spammers is to check over the code in a web site looking for email addresses.

One of the design methods used to provide email contact from a web site is to provide the email address actually in the code as a link that will open up the visitors email program with a new email addressed and ready for a message.

Firstly we need to understand that ‘spammers’ are not individual people, they are computer programs. It would be virtually impossible for a person to sit at a computer and search the internet for email addresses, then send emails to those addresses one at a time.

The process involves a computer program, scanning web pages constantly, looking for patterns that look like email addresses and copying the information into a database that then generates the mass emails.

There are better methods available - providing email contact links from your web site using scripts, rather than holding the address on the page where any person or program can search and view the source code.

Some businesses use temporary email addresses from their web sites to try to help prevent spam as well. This can work, however it feels more professional to email someone at a ‘real address’ rather than somewhere like hotmail when making a business enquiry.

How many strategies do you have in place to both prevent and deal with the spam issue?

Spam would have to be one of the single most annoying computer phenomenon we battle with. Often you may wonder why does anyone bother doing it, doesn’t everyone just delete it? Well it may surprise you to know that it remains economically viable because there are no real operating costs apart from managing mailing lists, and it is very difficult to hold senders accountable. The sheer number of spam being sent out means that a very low response rate can net a healthy profit.

The costs really are borne by the public and more so by the internet service provider, due to loss of productivity time and fraud. ISP’s have spent a lot of money adding extra capacity to their services to help people cope with the deluge.

It is estimated that it costs internet users tens of billions of dollars each year.

Spam consumes computer and network resources, and time and attention to dismiss unwanted messages, let alone the costs associated with falling for a scheme initiated by spam!

If you receive spam it is important that you never click on any links in the email. If you do, you could be directed to a false website that contains some malware that could retrieve personal information, banking details and passwords from your computer, and cause your computer to begin sending out spam to others.

Spam blocking techniques fall in one of two broad areas – adding technology to the mail transfer agent or putting the blocking appliance between the transfer agent and the internet.

There are a host of add-ons that can be used with your mail program if it is not cleaning enough spam out on it’s own, that are usually simple to install and use.

The second option is more common for large companies as they can handle high volumes of messages and it requires hardware and an administrator to manage.

Imagine a world without email? I do know some people who don’t use email, but I don’t know anyone in business that doesn’t.

Whilst email has opened up a world of fast, cheap communication, it has also opened up a means of unwanted communications – SPAM. If you wondered where the name came from, think of Monty Python and that haunting song (yes truly!).

Spam would have to be one of the most annoying phenomenons we encounter online and mostly we can recognise it as soon as it arrives, but sometimes the subject lines are clever enough to fool us for a moment. Having said that, it is still a fact that people are drawn into schemes that are obviously too good to be true every day, so it shows that the numbers game spammers play does work.

One of the most important things you can do in relation to spam is NEVER reply to them – many people get fed up with spam and start to hit reply to ‘tell the spammer off, and teach them a lesson’. This is never gets to any person who reads it, let alone learns a lesson, but what it does do is flags your email as an active email account that will respond, and is sold on to other spammers – just the opposite of what you were thinking to achieve!

Another measure you should take is to use a spam filter. Most quality email programs have a spam filtering feature, that allows you to mark off emails you receive as being spam so you don’t receive them again. Good spam filters also ‘learn’ what spam ‘looks’ like – types of subject lines, places they come from, so that you can cut down on the amount you get.

More hints next week on ways to cut down on attracting spam to your email.

Being open and adaptive to new technologies can be an important business strategy. Technology can assist your business to effectively operate flexibly and encourage creativity from your employees.

Yet every piece of technology you introduce comes with some hidden and not-so-hidden costs – installation, maintenance, training, repair, patches, upgrades and more.

The way you address this tension between innovation and costs will depend on the size of your business and its organisational culture.

A standardisation policy that fits your situation is a strategy that can bring benefits to your purchasing and keep sweeping changes in check.

Standardising hardware is often one of the most difficult tasks as technology changes in individual components happen so rapidly and prices fluctuate frequently.

Operating system standards can make a surprising difference as you need to stay on top of updates and patches, and supporting multiple operating systems complicates this task. (eg XP and Vista)

Standardising the software in use can be more difficult as some users feel comfortable with old versions of software that they know well and can resist upgrading. However there are advantages to the organisation for keeping software versions standard that can be more effective than simply always having the latest.

Buying in quantity can provide access to lower prices and make installation and setup easier if everyone is receiving the same hardware or software at the same time. All equipment can be upgraded, tested and training given at the one time, and staff are able to support each other in learning the new system.

Keeping a technology inventory is often overlooked by smaller businesses but is a vital tool. The inventory should includ hardware, software, upgrades, updates, patches, issues and solutions, and maintenance carried out.

If something goes wrong with a piece of equipment having an inventory with a history is the most useful tool for the techie to correct the problem.

Clients often tell me that their computer is starting to run slowly.

There are a range of causes, but one of the common things I find when I look at the machine is that there is anything up to hundreds of files and folders sitting on the desktop.

File management is a critical yet simple skill with any computer, but one of the most overlooked ones!

When a computer ‘boots up’, it has to load into RAM (memory used whilst you are doing things on the computer) everything stored on the desktop. So if you keep saving (or dumping) things there, you have less and less memory to use. If you have lots of RAM, then really having a few files there whilst you are working won’t make any real difference.

But even if you have plenty of RAM and you have hundreds of files there, not only do you have an incredible mess, your computer will become terribly slow.

If you use a MAC, another common problem is a large amount of files and folders in the user folder. This can cause real issues with the computer including corruptions of the user account.

Try to think of it this way – imagine if you had a big storage cupboard at work. Instead of building shelving and storage bays, you just left it bare and each time you got something you opened the door, threw the stuff inside and quickly shut the door again.

Then when you wanted something you rummaged through everything just piling things up all over the room.

How long would it take you to find what you wanted, and how often would you fail to find what you needed?

A simple filing system will solve a lot of problems in the long term as well as save time, which of course in business means saving money too!

Even the simplest mobile phone can be used as an effective business aid.

The power of text messaging should not be underestimated!

Companies are using text as a cheap, simple and non-invasive way of communicating with clients.One of these methods is to confirm appointments. Imagine that you make an appointment some days or weeks in advance.
	The day before the appointment you receive an sms message reminding you of the appointment and asking you to confirm it. Many people receiving these messages don’t realise how much money a business can save by these confirmations.Staffing levels are affected by the workload, and it is astoundingly surprising how many people fail to show up for appointments with a business.
If you had 4 staff rostered on one morning and they were all booked up for the whole morning, then you know that your wages are covered and some profit is to be made. Imagine if even 10% of those appointments fail to show. This could result in losing the entire profit margin, and if the percentage is higher could mean that the business does not take enough in to even cover the wages and expenses for the morning.
The simple text confirmation could allow the business to schedule other clients in to fill those slots, and at the least allows them to schedule effectively.There are systems available that allow your customer management system to generate automatic appointment reminders by sms. This means that you do not need to dedicate time to going over each appointment and creating messages.
Businesses also use messaging for marketing. Personally I am not a fan of receiving marketing to my mobile, but I know others that love it.It is important that the business first establishes permission from the client to market to them this way. Otherwise it is just another form of spam.