Welcome back to our LinkedIn newsletter where we’ll take you through the A-Z of Pink Spaghetti Weston-super-Mare.
Each month we’ll be looking at a different alphabetical aspect of the services that we can help your business with - from Admin to Zoom, we’ll be talking to the experts on the team, giving you nuggets of wisdom, and offering you an extra helping of business brilliance.
Hungry for more? Read on…
Keeping the lines of communication open is essential to any business. After all, if your customers can't contact you, you have no business!
It can be tricky though as business (hopefully) starts to increase, meaning you're spending more time focusing on the job and less time answering messages. Reply times can increase which can frustrate customers and can lead to you burning the candle at both ends to try and take care of everything.
Outsourcing your communication might sound counterproductive. Your customers want YOU, don't they? But it can be a really effective way to ensure you only deal with the things you need to deal with, saving time and energy for the important things! No one wants to be trying to reply to emails on the school run, or sending social media messages at 2am - and unfortunately for a lot of small business owners, that's the reality.
Whether you need someone to master your email inbox, handle the social media comments, or you want to hand over a list of calls that need to be made - keeping you on top of your communication is a breeze for the Pink Spaghetti team!
If business communications aren't really your thing, you might be wondering how we can help and how much time we can actually save you. So here's just a few things that we assist our clients with on a day-to-day basis!
- Emails. For most business owners, an empty inbox is an impossible dream. Unless you're one of our clients that is! We can dive into your inbox on a regular basis, delete the junk, file anything that needs filing, and flag anything that needs your attention. We can set up rules and filters so that, after a while, your inbox will almost take care of itself, and we can even reply to FAQs using templates so that you know everyone is getting the same answer.
- Invoicing. If you're not getting paid, then there's a problem. It can also feel difficult to have that 'you need to pay me' conversation, even though it really shouldn't! We can take over the admin-heavy side of things, sending out your invoices for you and chasing late payers. So if you need someone to have the awkward conversations for you - get in touch!
- Meetings. Organising a meeting between multiple people can be one of the most frustrating things there is. Trying to find a convenient date and/or venue, liasing with the participants and the venue, it all takes up valuable time. We're happy to help research venues, find convenient days or times, and organise the whole thing so all you need to do is turn up! We can even be there to host, take minutes, and make sure that everyone who needs it has a copy afterwards.
- Phone calls. If the idea of making call after call fills you with dread, hand it over to us. Whether you're calling back customers, doing a spot of outbound marketing, or you've just got a list of random calls to make - hand us the phone and get on with your day!
- Marketing. Your marketing is still communications, so it's important to make sure you're getting it right! From creating email newsletters to handling your social media comments, we can take care of any aspect of your marketing communications that might be filling your time. We'll put together perfectly crafted posts, handle those DM's, create bespoke newsletters - all so you can get on with what you want to be doing!
When you're running a business, it can seem like the messages are never-ending. So here are a couple of our favourite tips to help you get on top of them once and for all!
- Touch it once. This handy little tip can apply to just about anything - texts, emails, social media messages, etc. Once you've opened it - action it! If you need to reply, reply. If it just needs filing, file it. Don't let it linger in your inbox, where it'll just take up a bit more headspace every time you look at it.
- Label everything! To keep on top of a busy inbox, organisation is key. You need to know what folder to put things in, and where to find things if you need to respond in the future. Labels and folders help you do that. If it's something that feels too overwhelming to set up, why not let us loose on your inbox?
- Mark unread. A handy little tip if you use WhatsApp in your business... we've all had those moments when we've accidentally opened a message on WhatsApp that we were avoiding until we were able to action it. This help page from WhatsApp explains how to do it
. While it'll still show as read to the sender, it does at least mean you can send a quick holding message, then mark it as unread for you so it doesn't drop off the mental to-do list!
If you’ve got room for more, why not sign up for our monthly newsletter? If this is our extra helping, our monthly emails are the main course!
