It’s 2009 and like many of you, we’re getting our virtual house in order. One of the things we’ve wanted to do for a while is provide webinars for our new customers. Oh sure, we’ve got killer screencasts and the best darn Customer On-Boarding Specialist anyone could ask for; this will be just another great tool in your arsenal for learning to better manage your contacts using BatchBook.
We know that even with the best intentions, getting started can feel overwhelming. We want to give our folks every chance to succeed. It’s fun once you get into, really! And so useful — every day I’m amazed at the cool stuff I can do with my BatchBook account.
Our first webinar is scheduled for Friday, January 16th at 2pm EST. It will cover the basics of using BatchBook, including importing, adding and editing contact information, logging communications, creating To-Dos and using Lists & Reports. Since this will be our first ever webinar, there may be a few kinks to work out. But we expect to cover a lot of ground PLUS you’ll have the undivided attention of folks who want to help you all for the low low cost of…free!
If you would like to be a part of our inaugural On-boarding webinar, please drop a quick note with your name and email address to onboarding@batchblue.com. We’ll send you a meeting invite with complete information within the next few days.
We’re very much looking forward to all that 2009 is going to bring. Thank you for being a part of it.
Inspired by Chris Brogan’s Rockstar badges and by the special request of some of our more ardent admirers, we’re pleased to announce BatchBadges! These are little badges you can post to your website or blog that will display not only your love for BatchBook, but also how smart and well-organized you are. Nothing says “I’m a savvy business professional” like a well-organized contact network!
Please feel free to choose your favorite from the ones below. And thanks so much for being a part of the BatchBlue community.
Once again, social media has collided my worlds in an interesting (and hopefully beneficial) way. Last week, I was lamenting on my personal Twitter account how many children and families were going to be impacted by all of the recent lay-offs across the country. My friend responded with a story about a single mom in Providence who didn’t have enough money to buy her hungry kids snacks. Within minutes another friend, T.J. Sondermann, had proposed that we use the next Providence Geeks meeting as a venue where we could collect food for our local food bank.
I contacted Jack Templin, who with Brian Jepson runs the monthly Providence Geeks meeting, and pitched the idea via email. Always supportive of local efforts, Jack and Brian were quickly on-board. BatchBlue president Pamela O’Hara then contacted a friend who works at the Rhode Island Food Bank and worked out the logistics of what was most needed and how we would collect it.
Jack requested an image for the newsletter he was sending out announcing the event, so Adam and I decided to have a little fun with it. We spent some time working up a couple quick logo ideas, then posted the results on Flickr and asked people on Twitter to vote for their favorites. We got a lot of great feedback and ended up combining two designs for the final logo used on the webpage announcing the first offical Geeks for Good project: tomorrow’s food drive at Providence Geeks. Thanks largely to social media and our people network, this was all organized in about three days.
Here are a few of the takeaways from this experience:
Your social network is filled with people who are ready, willing and able to pitch in.
Don’t be afraid to propose your ideas to folks who can help. They just might say yes!
Try and do good where and when you can. The world can benefit for your unique skills and talents, whatever they may be.
We look forward to Providence Geeks tomorrow night, where our friends from Tizra are presenting and we’ll also be helping out some folks in need. Hope to see some of you there!
Ho ho holy macaroni, it’s December already! If you’re like me, walking the fine line between “why are all these holiday decorations up in August?” and “Only how many shopping days until Christmas?!”, now is the perfect time to get your holiday mailings out.
In an effort to do the same, we’ve put together a few tips that you might find helpful in using BatchBook to help manage your holiday mailings.
Use a tag for all the people you want to send holiday cards to (i.e. “xmas08″ or “holiday cards”). Then create a list from that tag. Voila! Everyone is grouped together very nicely. Even if they aren’t in real life.
Use “Advanced search” to quickly find a group of folks (all with same last name, all with “Realtor” in their title etc.) and tag them for the holiday list.
Print mailing labels from your list, stick them on your cards, get ‘em in the mail this week. Your friends and relations will be amazed.
Convert last year’s holiday tag (or any other tag) into this year’s tag by clicking on the tag name, choosing “select all” and then choosing to “tag or SuperTag” them all (but use the new tag name!). Two tags, two lists, too cool!
If you run into duplicate records for some folks as you are building your list, you can easily merge them.
If you want to import your list into MS Word for a personalized holiday letter, open up a blank Word doc and follow these steps.
If you’re sending to multiple people at the same address, use the company name field for the family name (i.e. “The Ransom Family”) and choose to display “company name only” when printing labels (or sending e-mails)
Need to know which mailing labels to buy before printing? Check our handy FAQ on the subject.
Remember, a clean contact list is a happy contact list. Getting your contacts in order for the holidays will mean you’re in good shape for the new year. Nothing like getting a jump on getting organized.
Last week, I recorded a bunch of new screencasts to show you the ins and outs of BatchBook. While I really liked the old screencasts, they still had the old design! Can’t have that!
But that’s just one of ‘em. Don’t forget to see the rest!
You may have seen that big “Subscribe” box above. What’s that all about? Well, I figured… why not make them into a video podcast? Basically, all you need to do to turn a bunch of videos into a podcast is make an RSS feed for them. So, I did. I also submitted that feed to iTunes and got them in the Podcasts section of the iTunes Music Store. Check it out! (iTunes link):
In the next few weeks, I’m going to write some “How-To” posts about the screencast creation. There will be three parts:
Recording the screencasts
Encoding the sreencasts and embedding them
Creating the podcast feed and submitting to iTunes
If you want me to let you know when those are available, just drop me an email (adarowski@batchblue.com) and I’ll let you know!
