Google says 97% of consumers search for local businesses online.

It’s important for your business to be listed in local online business directories.  The more places your business is listed, the more value your business will get from the Search Engines (call it “internet respect”).  Think of it as you are setting your roots in the ground so the tree can become established.  When you are “respected” you gain certain advantages over businesses who have not take the time to set up their internet roots. The best part about it is most of the directories are free.

Benefits of listing your business in online local directories:

• It’s Free!
• Get’s local visits to your website, also builds incoming links to your website.
• You build a credibility with search engines by your consistent efforts.
• You build online reputation with feedback.  Have customers leave positive reviews of your business.

Most of these services offer added benefits of a paid subscription, but there are many benefits from the free subscriptions that are not to underestimated when properly utilized.

Here are some of the free local directories you can submit your business to:

1. Google Local Business: http://www.google.com/local/add
2. Yahoo Local Business: http://listings.local.yahoo.com
3. Bing Local Business: http://www.bing.com/businessportal/
4. Yelp.com: https://biz.yelp.com/claiming
5. Merchant Circle: http://www.merchantcircle.com/signup
6. Patch: http://www.patch.com/
7. YellowPages.com: http://listings.yellowpages.com/
8. Best of the Web Local: http://local.botw.org/
9. Super Pages: http://www.superpages.com/
10. City Search: http://www.citysearch.com/

Notes/ Tips to keep in mind when creating your business directory listings:

• Make sure your information and descriptions remain close to identical from one listing to the next (helps to retain credibility amongst search engines)
• Make your business stand out by explaining the products, message, or talent the world should know about
• Come up with keywords or keyword phrases about your business you think people will search for to find you and include them in your listings description and categories (example: electrician, long island, 24/7 service)
• Provide a comprehensive listing.  It is essential to provide all the details about our business to help stand out from the competition (including name, address, phone, website, hours of operation, as well as deals, marketing, photos, etc.)
• Keep the pages up to date and informative in order to remain competitive (the more you update your listings, the better your chances are of standing out and remaining competitive online)

If you are interested in listing your business but just can’t find the time, contact us, we can help.

You have decided to venture into the wondrous world of Twitter.  You get there and you follow all your favorite celebrities and business inspirations.  Then you look to add your friends into the mix and it’s not so easy to find them.  In this article, I will explain how you can currently utilize your Facebook friends list to link up with them on twitter.

Calling Facebook and Twitter! Why isn’t this easy to do?

I came across this topic when trying to do the same thing, thinking it would be easy, but for some reason this was not a match made in heaven.  Hopefully in the not to distant future this will be implemented as “easy to do” and this article will be obsolete.

First Things First

Twitter utilizes your email address book as the primary way to find your friends who are using twitter. Use Twitters “Who To Follow” link on the top navigation.  Go to the tab “Invite Friends” and select from one of the email clients that you use.  Currently the list is Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail & Messenger, AOL, and LinkedIn.  If you have an account with one of these sites, use this service to start linking with friends. In many cases, you may not use any of these services as your primary email service.

Enter in Facebook

Even if you do use one of the services listed above, you may have more contacts on Facebook than in your email address book.  We can utilize our Facebook account contacts by importing then in to a Yahoo account and then importing those Yahoo contacts into your Twitter account. Twitter then does the work to see which of your friends actually have Twitter accounts. Follow that? Let me take you step by step.

1. You will need to have a Yahoo account in order to do this.  If you do not have one, it only takes minutes to create one.  Once you have that set up, log in to Yahoo.
2. Navigate into Yahoo Mail and click on “Contacts” on the left hand column.
3. Find the area that says: “Import your Contacts from other accounts to Yahoo!” and click on that link.

   

4. On the next page, select the Facebook link and follow the steps to import your Facebook contacts. Voila! There are all your contacts and email addresses.
5. Now all we have to do is log in to Twitter, go to the “Who To Follow” at the top, then “Find Friends” tab and import all your contacts from Yahoo.

It’s a bit of a roundabout, yes, but its a solution many people have been looking for as neither Twitter nor Facebook make it easy to link together.

Each of us works an average of 8 hours per day, 40 hours per week… that’s close to half our waking hours.

We go about our daily lives talking on cell phones, printing sales reports, driving to work, using more of the worlds resources as the population increases each year.  As we feel the consequences in our pocketbook with rising oil/gas prices and even the cost of paper increasing, it is a wise idea to step back and observe how to utilize resources more responsibly.

Let’s leave future generations a more sustainable world.

We can take steps individually to lower our carbon footprint by evaluating our workspace and engaging new techniques and options available to us.

Many of us  have grown accustom to recycling in our homes but find the work environment to be more of a struggle.

What can you do to leave a “lighter footprint” at work?

1. Utilize Computer Energy Settings – optimized your computers energy settings to go on standby and shut down monitors after a selected amount of time. Be sure to shut down your computer entirely when you leave for the day.
2. Find Ways To Use Less (Paper Especially) - With computer storage getting cheaper and cheaper and online tools aplenty, we have may options available to us to keep documents digital. Keep files on the computer instead of in file cabinets. If you are concerned they will be lost, try one of the many online backup services available for free. Change your bills and banking to online only and soon enough you will feel good about using less paper. Also, try to use both sides of a sheet of paper. I like to keep used paper to write notes on the backside.
3. Rethink Your Commute – Take public transportation, carpool, bike or walk (you get exercise at the same time). Consider getting a hybrid or electric vehicle or just working from home.
4. Use The Right Resources – When you use paper, consider using recycled paper with a high content of post-consumer recycled paper. Get refillable pens instead of disposable ones. Use cloth instead of paper towels. Choose biodegradable cleaners and soaps. Recycling printer cartridges is often free, and replacements are often cheaper than new ones.
5. Green Your Workspace – Get recycled furniture or new furniture that is manufactured from recycled materials. Replace those incandescent bulbs with compact florescent and take a look into the growing market of efficient LED lights such as LED lamps. During the day, use natural lighting from windows and leave the lights off (if possible). Natural light is also said to improve worker productivity.
6. Lunch Techniques – Bring your own reusable containers to work. I like to use glass Pyrex containers. They are microwavable and are heavy duty. Traditional takeout usually leaves a big pile of trash for a small amount of food. If you do go out for lunch, try biking or walking.
7. Recycle Everything- Make it a habit to recycle everything. Just about any kind of paper can be recycled. Batteries can be recycled, old cell phones and even some computers can now be recycled.
8. Share These Tips With Co-Workers – It is great that you are conscious of your footprint and are taking active steps to live a greener life. Make sure to spread the word when you can to your friends and co-workers.

An interesting number:

55 < The percent of water saved by producing recycled paper compared to virgin paper. Recycled paper also takes 60-70 percent less energy to produce than paper from virgin pulp.

Remember: Even when we think we are saving energy by putting our computers to sleep or even shutting them down, we are still using as much as 15 – 20 watts. A 2002 report found that “Lopomo [low power mode] energy use is responsible for about 10% of the total electricity use in California homes.” To make sure that monitors, printers, DVD players, microwaves and computers are all the way off, pull the plug! A good practice is to have them on a surge protector and shutdown the surge protector after shutting down the devices.

Resources For This Article and Further Reading:

• 10 Ways To Go Green At Work from The Sierra Club
• How To Go Green At Work by PlanetGreen.Com
• How To Go Green by Treehugger

I hold this island close to my heart.  It continues to be a source of creativity and appreciation in my life.  I try to use this inspiration each day as I work with many of the great people of Long Island.

Old Wesbury Gardens

Bar Beach Town Park In Roslyn

Caumsett State Park

Caumsett State Park

Clark Botanic Gardens

Planting Fields Arboretum

Planting Fields Arboretum

Planting Fields Arboretum

Harvested Corn Field / Tractor

Riverhead in the Fall

Squash Field

Long Island Greenbelt Trail

Old Westbury Gardens – Mansion

Old Westbury Gardens

Nassau County Museum of Art

William Cullen Bryant’s House

Montauk Beach

Split Rock – Glacial Erratic – Paumanok Trail

Cold Spring Harbor – LI Greenbelt Nassau Suffolk

Riverhead – Peconic Bay

Sunken Meadow St. Park

Sunken Meadow St. Park

Sunken Meadow St. Park

Sunken Meadow St. Park

Riverhead Pumpkins

Long Island Vineyard Cellar

Jessup Neck – Elizabeth A. Morton National Wildlife Refuge

The Atlantic

If you are also inspired by the beauty on Long Island and want to showcase your photos, send them to webmaster[at]successbydesigns[dot]com and we will include the selects in a future article right here with your name and information.

View these photos as a slideshow.

Problem: You forgot a file on your computer that you desperately needed and no one is home to send it to you.
Problem: You need to give a friend access to your computer to help diagnose a problem.
Solution: Set up a way to access your computer remotely and make your life easier.

Some may think this technology is not accessible to them, but one company has made it easy enough for even the novice internet user. And the best part, they made it FREE (which is rare for remote access software).

In this article I will explain how to set up a logmein.com free account so you can feel good about accessing your files when you are away from work (or home).

Navigate over to http://www.logmein.com and click “Create an account”

Select the option on the left to “Access Computers Remotely”.  Notice here there are three types of accounts there (Pro, Free, Ignition).  We will be using Free. In the Pro account, you can access more than one computer and share files easier.

Fill out the Create Account Form and “Continue”

In order to access the computer remotely, a small application needs to be installed on your computer.

The next step will prompt you to download the application. Press “Download”.  Make sure you save it to a familiar place on your computer so that you can open the file after it finishes downloading.

Run the Installer.

Enter a name for your computer and finish out the installation process.

The LogMeIn Application will run after installation.  If it doesn’t go find it in your Programs Folder (Windows) or Applications (Mac).
The next step is to give the application your login information.  So press the button on the Welcome screen “Choose account and subscription”

Put in the same login email and password you used to sign up the account with.

On the next screen, leave it as is but make sure your Available Subscriptions is on the Free account and press “Finish”.

You have now set up your computer to be accessed remotely.  Now we want to try it out.  You will need to go to another computer to test it. Once you are at another computer, navigate over to logmein.com and “Login”. Once you are in, you should see some information about your computer.  If the “Remote Control” button is green that means you can get in, if it is grey, that means your computer is shut off or has gone to sleep, etc.

Press the green “Remote Control” button and you will follow a series of steps to gain access.

This next step can be a little tricky.  Because of security reasons (which is a good thing) LogMeIn requires not only that you know the login and password of your LogMeIn account but also that you know the Administrator login and password for the computer you wish to access.   if you do not know your computer login information.

And then you are in!  It can be a bit tricky to setup but once you do so, its easy to use, and its free! (for one computer anyway).  If you have more than one computer, you can upgrade by purchasing one of their pay plans.  The pay plans also allow file sharing.

———————–

FAQ:

How do I find my Windows username?

You can determine the Windows username as follows:

1. While sitting at the host computer with LogMeIn installed, press and hold the Windows key and press the letter R on your keyboard.  The Run box will appear.
2. In the box, type cmd and press Enter.  The command prompt window will appear.
3. Type echo %username% and press Enter.
4. Your current username will be displayed.

————————————-

How do I wake a computer that is in sleep mode or powered off?

Waking a computer

Use “Wake on LAN” on LogMeIn.com to switch on a computer that is in sleep mode (PC or Mac) or powered off (PC).

Confirm the following to ensure that you will be able to use the Wake on LAN feature.
Is Wake on LAN enabled on the host?

1. Open LogMeIn and choose Options from the left menu.
2. Click the Preferences button.
3. Click the Advanced tab.
4. Make sure that Enable Wake On LAN from sleep and power off is checked.
5. Click OK.

note Important:
The Wake on LAN function requires at least one other LogMeIn host to be online and available on the same LAN.  Please see the Pro² user guide (linked below) for more information.
Is your computer in a supported low power mode?

Stand-by, sleep, or hibernation mode (ACPI specification S3 or S4) are supported.  Please consult your computer’s documentation to confirm compatibility.
Do you want to wake a PC that is powered off?

For a Windows PC that is powered off (but still plugged in), confirm that Wake on LAN is enabled in the computer’s BIOS. Consult the user guide of your computer or motherboard to locate the appropriate BIOS switch (usually Wake on LAN from S5).
Do you want to wake a Mac?

Enable the following setting on the Mac host: System preferences > Energy saver > Wake for network access.

Confirm that the Mac is on a wired network (Wake on LAN is not supported for Mac hosts on a wireless network).

You cannot wake a Mac that is powered off.
All set?

When these conditions are met, any computer in your account that is ready to be woken up will show the Switch on this computer button.  Click the Switch on this computer button to wake the computer.  Please allow time for the computer to wake.

For more support, visit the logmein.com support section.

Local search engine marketing is one of the most straight forward and cost effective ways to market a local business.  The days of Yellow Books are over and more people are going to the internet for local information then ever before.

If you rely on local business, you company needs be listed on Google Maps.  To do this, you’ll need to get listed with Google Places. And it’s free!

Whats the difference between Google Maps and Google Places?

In plain english:

• Google Maps is a database of listings
• Google Places is where you manage your own listings.

Google creates unverified listings on Google Maps by scraping up web content.  If you find your business on Google Maps, you can then claim it as yours.  If you don’t find it, you can add a new listing.  After you claim your listing, you can manage it in Google Places.

Advantages of Listing Your Business

• See Helpful Statistics About How People Find You.
• See Where Users Are Searching From.
• Helps Customers & Potential Customers Find You Easily
• Free Advertising For your Business (provides link back to your web site as well)

Can I make My Business Stand Out?

A new service was launched this summer called “Tags” which allows businesses to purchase advertising to promote certain aspects of their business. So for example,  if I wanted to run a special on DVD Players, I would pay Google a $25 flat fee to purchase a tag that runs for one month. Now every time my listing comes up on Google Maps, my special on DVD Players will show up as well.

Another way your business will stand out from others is if it is located in the center of town.  Sometimes there is not much you can do about this, but businesses in the center of the town being searched for do show up higher then businesses further from the center of town.

Other helpful tips for your Google Place listing:

• Add as many categories as you can.
• Fill out as much information as you can, the more sections you fill in the better
• Encourage your customers to write a “Review” of your business on Google Maps.
• Include important keywords in the description of your business.
• Respond To Reviews To Enhance Your Listing
• Upload photos of your product/service
• Create Coupons to provide an incentive for people to visit your site or contact your business.

Here are a few videos from Google to explain their service as well:

For help with Google Places, visit their help section.

Transcript:

1.73 Billion Internet Users Worldwide (Sept. 2009)

• 418,029,796 in Europe
• 67,371,700 in Africa
• 20,970,490 in Oceania / Australia
• 179,031,479 in Latin America / Caribbean
• 252,908,000 in North America
• 738,257,230 in Asia

Email

• The Number of Emails sent on the internet in 2009 – 90 Trillion
• 247 Billion – Average number of emails per day
• 200 Billion – Average number of SPAM per day
• 1.4 Billion Number of email users worldwide
• 81% – The number of email that were SPAM

Websites

• 234 Million – The number of websites as of December 2009
• 126 Million – The number of blogs in the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse)

Social Networks

• 84% – Percent of social network sites with more woman than men
• 27.3 Million Number of Tweets on Twitter per day (Nov. 2009)
• 4.25 Million People following @aplusk (Ashton Kutcher, Twitter’s most followed user)
• Facebook serves 260 billion page views per month. That’s more than 6 million page views per minute or a staggering 37.4 trillion page views in a year

Page Views Per Month

• Facebook 260 Billion
• Myspace 24 Billion
• Twitter 4.4 Billion
• LinkedIn 1.9 Billion

Facebook

• Facebook needs as many as 30,000 servers and they’re still growing
• 350 Million people on Facebook
• 2.5 Billion Photos updated each month to Facebook

Photos

• 4 Billion Photos hosted by Flickr (Oct 2009)
• 30 Billion At the current rate, the number of photos uploaded to Facebook per year

Video

• 1 Billion – The total number of videos YouTube serves in one day
• 12.2 Billion Videos viewed per month on YouTube in the US (Nov 2009)
• 924 Million Videos viewed per month on Hulu in the US (Nov 2009)
• 182 – The number of online videos the average internet user watches in a month (USA)
• 82% Percentage of Internet users that view videos online (USA)

Viruses

• 148,000 – New zombie computers* created per day (used in botnets for sending spam, etc)
• 2.6 Million – Amount of malicious code threats at the start of 2009 (viruses, trojans, etc)

Launch Dates of Major Social Network Sites

• 1995 – Classmates.com, Craigslist
• 1997 – SixDegrees.com
• 1998 – Care2, Xanga
• 1999 – LiveJournal, BlackPlanet, AsianAvenue
• 2000 – MiGente, mixi(Japan), (Six Degrees closes)
• 2001 – Cyworld, Ryze, StumbleUpon, Meetup.com
• 2002 – Friendster, Fotolog, AsianAvenue, LiveJournal, BlackPlanet, Plaxo, MyLife (formerly Reunion)
• 2003 – Skyblog, Couchsurfing, MySpace, Tribe.net, Last.FM, Hi5, LinkedIn, Open BC/Xing, Netlog (Europe), MyHeritage
• 2004 – Flickr, Piczo, Mixi, Facebook (Elite Universities), Dodgeball, Care2, Orkut, Dogster, Multiply, aSmallWorld, Catster, Hyves, Yelp, Taringa (Argentinia), Basecamp
• 2005 – YouTube, Facebook (high school networks), Xanga (SNS Relaunch), Yahoo! 360, Cyworld (China), Ning, Bebo, AsianAvenue, BlackPlanet (relaunch), Gather.com, Renren (china)
• 2006 – Facebook (corporate networks), Cyworld(US), MyChurch, QQ(everyone), Windows Live Spaces, Facebook (everyone), Twitter, Cafe Mom, Nasza-Klasa (Poland), Odnoklassniki (Russia), Vkontakte (Russia)
• 2007 – Tumblr, Ravelry
• 2008 – Kaixin001 (China), Yammer, Plurk
• 2009 – Foursquare
• 2010 – Google Buzz

The average internet user spends 2 hours per month searching sites like Google. Why Google? Because the average index of Google is 3 times larger than Yahoo’s index or MSN’s index.

Think you know how to search Google? Easy enough isn’t it? Just type and search.

Google has many tools to help make finding what you seek for easier & faster. In this article, I will review some basic and advanced features of the internet searching giant. You may be surprised to learn something new that makes your search experience easier.

The Sidebar

Back in May 2010, Google came out with some new updates to make life easier. So let’s review those first.  After you do a search and all the results come up, there are now tools on the sidebar (left hand side).  First you will notice you can filter results based on the type of information.  Maybe you want an image, so you look in “Images.” Maybe you what to see what everyday people are talking about, so you look in “Blogs” or “Discussions”

Remember you can always switch back to “Everything” to remove any applied search filters. Let’s review each filter in the list:

Everything: Entire search results with no filters.
Images: Only images
Videos: Only videos
News: News from sources worldwide
Books: Google’s book database, books.google.com, which shows you where you can buy the book or borrow it (library)
Maps: Search the Google Maps (I use Google Maps almost everyday)
Shopping: Google’s price comparison service
Blogs: brings up search results of Blogs only
Updates: Twitter results and other Micro-blogging and Social Networking
Discussions: results will consist mostly of Forums

You can specify even further by creating a custom range of time to search in, you can search in results just from the last 24 hours, last few days, last week and more. With these options, Google really makes it more likely you are going to find what you are looking for faster and easier.  Here is a video by Google to share the updates:

The Seasoned Veterans

Here are some old standby’s that you may or may not know about:

• Think Before You Search – This may seem obvious, but clearly defining what you are searching will bring you the best results.  Think about what words best describe what you are searching for.  Ask yourself if there are any words you might use instead?  If it’s a descriptive search, use as many words as needed  (like “web development company long island new york“)
• Either/Or Search – Google automatically assumes the word “AND” between all words you search for.  For example, if I searched for [swimming hiking] Google will search for both swimming “AND” hiking and bring back results with both of the words in those pages. Maybe you want to find out about swimming “OR” hiking. In this case, the search [ swimming OR hiking ] will will bring back results either mostly about swimming or mostly about hiking.  When you use the OR operator, make sure to insert it in all uppercase letters or Google will ignore it.
• Exclude Words From Your Search – Sometimes you may do a search for a word that had double meanings.  For example, if I am searching for information about the computer program “flash” but don’t want any results to come back that have the word “camera” in it my search would look like this:[ flash -camera ] (there always needs to be a space before the minus sign and no space after it) Whatever the reason is, you can now exclude words from your searches.
• Search with Similar Words – Google lets you search with synonyms by using the ~ operator.  For example, if I want to search for comedy movies but also wanted similar words to come up in my search, my search would look like this: [ movies ~comedy ].  Results may include words like “funny”, “jokes”,”stand-up” and other synonyms of the original word “comedy”
• Search for an Exact Phrase – Sometimes you just want to find where an exact phrase shows up on all those web sites out there.  To do this, just enclose your search phrase in quotation marks. For example, [ "Sony DSR-25" ] or [ "green furniture" ].  In these cases, Google will search only for where these words show up in the exact order you typed them in.
• The Wildcard – The symbol ” * ” can be used as a wildcard in a search.  For example, say you forgot the lyrics to a song and you know the first few words and the last few words, do a search like this: [ Happy * To You ]. Are you looking for governmental information?  Search [ *.gov ]

Other Useful Google Search Operators

• site: – Website doesn’t have a search function? no problem.  [ site:successbydesigns.net portfolio ] will search the site “successbydesigns.net” for the term “portfolio”
• filetype: – this one can be really useful if you are looking for a specific file type.  It came in handy the other day when I was looking for a wood chipper/shredder PDF manual.  My search looked like this [ filetype:pdf craftsman chipper/shredder manual ].  It didn’t bring up the perfect match but I found the site where I could find the manual.
• link: This operator will list webpages that have links to the specified webpage.  So if you own a website and want to see who is linking to your site, do a search like this one, [ link:yourwebsitename.com ]
  
• define: – I find this one really useful.  It can be used like a dictionary but you get results from Google trusted websites.  Try it with any word or phrase, example: [ define:shrike ].  After you do your search, Google will show “related phrases” that can come in handy if you want to refine your search.

Google Resources/Help with Searching:

• Go The Google Search Page
• If you are having trouble finding what you are looking, for try the Advanced Search
• Read further about Advanced Google Search Operators
• Google search basics: Basic search help
• You can find out more about the capabilities of Google search.  Some other fun searching capabilities include weather, movie times, cooking conversions, currency conversions, zip codes, flight tracking ans a whole bunch more.  Explore these capabilites.

*NEW – See this video about the latest search capabilities (Fall 2010) from Google Instant:

What is a screenshot you may ask?

Acdording to Wikipedia a screenshot, screen capture, or screen dump is an image taken by the computer to record the visible items displayed on the monitor or another visual output device.

Basically, its a picture of what is on your computer screen at that precise moment in time.

There are many, many ways to take a screenshot.  Here are some of the most popular ones:

PC Users:

Without Any Outside Software Assistance:

1. Press Print Screen button key (may look like this: “prt scr” and is usually in the upper right hand side).  This copies the image to your computer’s memory.
   
2. Open up the “Paint” program (Typically can be found here: Start > All Programs > Accessories > Paint)
3. Go to the Edit menu and click Paste or you can press and hold “Ctrl” and tap V. Then you may crop if you like.
4. Click File > Save As. In the box that pops up, change the “Save As Type” to PNG or JPG. Type in a filename for your image. Choose a place to save, like the Desktop, and click save.

With Outside Software Assistance:

• Snagit -  It’s the best (but is not free)
• Gadwin Print Screen (free)
• ScreenGrab (free firefox plugin – need firefox browser)

Mac Users:

Without Outside Software Assistance:

• Option+Command+3(full screen shot) Photo goes to your desktop automatically
  OR
• Option+Command+4 (select area of screen you want – drag a square on the area of the screen you want) Photo goes to your desktop automatically

With Outside Software Assistance:

• Snapz Pro (Great but not free)
• SnapnDrag (free)
• Screenshot Plus (free)

Further Reading/Resources:

• Learn How To Make A Screenshot at take-a-screenshot.org
• Taking Screenshots in Windows and Mac OSX
• How To Take a Screenshot in Microsoft Windows
• YouTube Search for “How To Take A Screenshot”

Ever feel like what’s in your inbox dictates how your day goes?

Or maybe you want to respond to email but just don’t have time to answer ALL of them and then they start building up.

This can get overwhelming and lead to a lack of control, leaving you feeling pulled in too many directions, sometimes even losing track of important emails.  Let’s wrap a leash around that inbox and pull it on in a bit closer.

Get A Clean Inbox

“Your Inbox should be for things you haven’t read yet.”
-Merlin Mann of 43 Folders

I just spent an hour a day for 5 days cleaning out my Inbox.  I never thought of all these messages piling up in my inbox as a big deal because I could just go back and see all of them or do a quick search and find what I needed but having a clean and clear Inbox has many advantages.

I now have more:

• Organization
• Cleaner, Efficient Work-flow
• Space on my Hard Drive
• Control Of My Life

Utilize these techniques and gain some piece of mind

Some Quick Helpful Tips When Organizing Your Email…

1. Have a set time/time-limit to work on email – 20 minutes or less, 2-6 times per day -  If you can, don’t keep your email open all day, just when you are working on it. This is easier said then done but give it a try and you may feel less overwhelmed immediately.
2. Process To Zero – Each time you work on your email, there should be ZERO messages in the Inbox when you are done. (Again easier said then done but once you learn some easy techniques, this will get easier)
3. Have a system to organize your mail – The first thing that comes to mind is to create folders for clients, personal, etc, but that only leaves us with more clicking to do to and we might even miss important messages.  Here is one way to do it:

Create 3 Folders:

1. Archive – For anything you are totally finished with but may need access to later on
2. Followup – For mail you need to respond to but cannot do so in 2 minutes of less
3. Hold – For mail that you need to wait on in order to take action (waiting for someone to get back to you, coupons, other delegations)

Leo from Zen Habits uses only one folder, “Archive”, which he likes because he doesn’t want to work in more than one folder.  There’s no one way to do it, find what works best for you. The point is to keep that inbox clean and maximize your efforts. I like the 3 folder approach because after I sort things out I know exactly where to go when looking to take action on important email.

According to this inspirational video from Merlin Mann of 43 Folders, there are 5 things you can do with an email:

1. Delete – Obvious but get used to doing more of this. Or Archive It.
2. Delegate – Send it to someone and then archive it or put it in Hold box until you get a response. Give yourself a reminder when you delegate
3. Respond – Get used to doing a quick 2 line reply (get a rhythm)
4. Defer/ Hold Until Later – Don’t want to deal with it now, or need more information to repsond (Hold Box)
5. Do – If it is something you can do now, Do it. (Put Meeting on Calendar, Build To-Do List, Quick Task, etc)

It’s a good idea to have a To-Do List handy while working on email. I use Google Tasks (part of Google Calendar) but you could use just text files or another program.

Try Keeping your Inbox neat, you may just respect it more, and find you are actually respecting your time and attention.

Email Zen is that easy: check email at regular periods, take action on each email right away (or note it on a list to do later) and archive. Ahhh. Empty inbox! – Leo Babauta, Zen Habits

A Few More Quick Tips

• Lose The Fear of Deleting Email (Event though it took me a little while to sort through ALL my emails that were piling up in my Inbox, I was able to do a lot of it in bunches and by the end I was going through it much faster. Once you Process To Zero the first time, your daily email regiment will feel as easy as floating downstream.)
• Do Email Less – Dont leave email open, Shut Your Auto Update Off (Get Out Of Email and Have A Life Somewhere Else).  Sometimes you cant do that, but most people can.
• Check it once per hour, process for 10 to 20 minutes
• Filter certain mail into Folder
• Unsubscribe to Newsletters you no longer wish to receive
• Develop Templates of email responses you use most often (so you can respond really fast)
• Get in the Mindset of Converting Things Into Actions

Interesting Articles about this topic:

ZenHabits: Email Zen: Clear Out Your Inbox

Inbox Zero: Reclaim Your Email, Your Atten­tion, and Your Life

43 Folders: Process To Zero

Getting Things Done (GTD) by David Allen