“They have a running joke that things only go wrong when I’m not here and therefore I’m forbidden from taking a vacation.”

“I’m a one-man band around here so it’s hard to truly get away.”

“I envy those that can take a day off without worrying if the network is down or if the boss can get to his emails.”

“Sure I can take a vacation…with my laptop and Blackberry.”

It’s sad that many working in IT don’t enjoy the benefit of true, uninterrupted time away from the office especially those that work for a small to mid-size business.  So is there any hope for the heroes that have the thankless job of keeping critical business systems and functions running smoothly?

Yes!  Granted, there is no simple catch-all solution.  Everyone’s situation is different based on company size, industry type, number of IT people on the team, availability and resources for back-up, etc.  But I have created a short list of helpful tips for finding a better work/life balance.

#1 – Create documentation.  Depending on your setup and the level of understanding that your co-workers have, this could take hours or it could take weeks.  But basically create a guide complete with vendor help desk numbers, how-to’s and be sure to cover the “what-if” scenarios.  This becomes much easier when you have servers and software programs that basically run themselves.  It’s something to keep in mind when it’s time to renew software or update equipment.  The easier, the better.

#2 – Establish one point of contact that you trust to filter emergency-only calls to you.  This will eliminate everyone and their brother from calling you for their idea of an “emergency.”  By only giving your contact info to one qualified individual, you should reduce the number of interruptions you get.

#3 – Set a short (and I mean short) amount of time aside each morning or evening to check emails and voicemails.  While it’s not truly disconnecting, some people find they can relax more knowing they are on top of what’s going on in the office.  It also means that you won’t be going back to several hundred emails and voicemails when you return to the office.  Bonus!

#4- Hire an outside consultant to back you up while you’re away.  This option isn’t for everyone.  Some think that this is a good way to get replaced.  Others have difficulty trusting their responsibilities to an outside source.  But this can be a viable option especially if you can create a relationship with someone in the industry that you trust.

#5 – Travel to a place with no internet connection or cell phone service (or at least say that you’re in such a place).  Yes, it’s somewhat drastic but sometimes it is the only way to find true peace and quiet away from the office.

And finally….

#6 – Create a cardboard cutout of yourself (must be realistic and complete with photo).  Test the theory that everything seems to go wrong when you’re not there.  If it appears that you’re still in the office…..who knows.  It’s worth a shot.

Good luck and enjoy your vacation!!!

So essentially what you’re saying Sheryl, is that the behaviors I exhibit as a teenager are the same behaviors I’ll exhibit as an adult.  While that may be true in some aspects, for example – I still eat Lucky Charms for breakfast and I still indulge in the occasional ‘Saved by the Bell’ re-run, there are circumstances in which my behaviors are not at all reflective of those during my teenage years.  For example, as an adult, I don’t communicate with my co-workers through the passing of paper notes folded up into triangles and the locker room is no longer my hub for information.   Over the years, as my environment changed from an algebra class to a software company, several of my behaviors have changed as well.

I think it’s important to keep in mind where email is most relevant.  Would I expect a teenager to be the primary user of email, in the midst of school, sports, dates, etc.?  NO!  Email has the most relevance in the workplace.  Why?  Because it’s the tool that best meets the needs of businesses.  It’s fast, secure, accommodates the attachment of documents, and has the ability to be archived.  It is, in fact, the primary communication system in most organizations.  Organizations that teenagers will someday be a part of.

With that being said, it makes sense that email fares better statistically when looking at a broader audience as opposed to just the teenage segment.  An article on Mashable titled “What Do You Check First: E-mail or Facebook” states that more than 50% of U.S. online consumers check their e-mail before visiting other websites when they start the day.  It goes on to say that Facebook is the first destination for only 11% of U.S. online consumers.

I think you get my point.  I strongly disagree with Sandberg’s comments and if I’m being very honest, I find her opinion to be somewhat short-sighted.  Maybe even slightly biased based on the company that she works for.  Yes, communication is evolving, yes short-form communications are on the rise but to say that email will become obsolete because teenagers aren’t using it is a pretty big stretch in my opinion.  Or maybe it’s wishful thinking for Facebook?  What are your thoughts?

While the graphic was meant to be entertaining (and it certainly was), it also brings up some valid points.  In fact, it reminded me of a blog post that my colleague, Brad, wrote back in January.  Brad took a look at the impact that your email address can have on your business, particularly from a marketing standpoint.  Your email address holds a unique branding opportunity among other things.

Whether it’s your business, your computer skills or [insert a number of other things here], your email address speaks volumes.  From your level of professionalism to your credibility as a company, it’s a reflection of your image.  It’s the first thing your potential clients, vendors, etc. see in their inbox.  It may even be a deciding factor in whether or not they open your email.  It’s your first impression and potentially your last.  Shouldn’t it be a good one?

The answer is yes.  Then why isn’t every business using their own domain name? For some it’s the perceived cost associated with setting up a dedicated mail server.  For others, it’s the time and effort it takes to switch from their current solution.  Yes, it will take some time.  But depending on the mail server you choose, the cost incurred can be minimal.  In some cases, even less than what you may be paying now.  And if you choose a vendor with pre-sales installation support and migration assistance, the effort on your part is minimal as well.

Isn’t it worth the time to find an email server that in addition to sending your mail enables you to communicate your brand and professional image to all of your contacts?  Heck, I’ll even save you some time and get you started.  IMail Server has low-cost mail server options that include pre-sales installation and migration support.  There are no more excuses to let go of that generic joe_schmo@aol.com email address!  (And of course, my apologies to the owner of that address)

But anyhow, back to my two issues….

#1 – The term “email” gets a bad rap.  Most people think of email as just the basic sending and receiving of an electronic message.  But what a mail server can do is really quite extensive.  Before I started working for a company that develops email server software, I had no idea about the functionality that is inherently part of my email tool.  We compare email to other social media platforms and consider it to be just basic asynchronous communication.  And that’s where the bad rap comes in and when the “email is dying” conversations start happening.  But a good mail server is not just a piece of software that enables the relay of messages.  Done right, it is a complete messaging solution that enables connection and collaboration from anywhere.  So before jumping on the “Yea, email has to change” bandwagon, I challenge you to really understand what your current mail server is capable of already.  My presumption is that it’s probably way more robust than you realize.  This leads me to my next point…

#2 – Email has changed.  It has evolved to include synchronization with mobile phones, archiving, instant messaging, shared calendaring, protection from spam/viruses, and the list goes on.  As our needs and business environment changes, email servers are evolving to meet those needs.  And they will continue to evolve.  I know from first-hand experience that innovation is driving development in the mail server space.

In one sense, I agree with the statement that email has to change.  But it’s no different than anything else – computers, advertising, telephones, etc.  It’s a statement of the obvious.  Change is constant.  What’s more important, in my mind, is to look for a company that embraces change and will constantly look for ways to develop or improve their products to meet the ever-changing needs of their consumer.

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Hollow marketing is when you attempt to create ancillary buzz around your product or service based on the buzz of another. To understand what I mean you may need to understand the process of search marketing a bit. When a company gets viral buzz it is because they are seeing a lot of natural search surrounding their product. The iPad is a great example of that. People will then start searching for iPad apps, iPad features, iPad compatibility, etc. So, the term “iPad” starts to receive a lot of relevant search terminology. Small companies that need ancillary buzz attempt to leverage the relevant search terms. So, they will create a press release or a blog post…the really bold will even create web content and drop some meta data to support it directly on their site or a landing page. They do this in hopes that they will get some indirect iPad traffic to land on their site and “hopefully” convert 0.02-0.05% of that traffic. The fact is, it is hollow…especially in the IT world where the buyers are smart, technologically savvy, and highly specialized. My point being, do I really need to tell an IT professional with years of training, experience, and expertise that they can access email coming from my product (IMail Server) on their iPad? Ummm…let’s see…that would be a no. They already know that.

This reminds me of Al Ries and Jack Trout’s 20^th Law from “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk!” Law 20 is “The Law of Hype” and it states the following:

“When things are going well, a company doesn’t need the hype. When you need the hype, it usually means you’re in trouble.”

All of this to say – watch out for hollow marketing. Don’t get sucked into the ancillary hype that companies attempt to create. Rather, rely on your experience and expertise as an IT professional because at the end of the day…that is what drives your individual success.

First, let’s talk about cost.  Because, let’s face it…the bottom line drives most decisions in companies these days.  As I just mentioned, for a lot of businesses, the economics of choosing a hosted service can be far more appealing than those of making a software investment and the “typical” admin resources that go along with it.  But it’s not that black and white.  Businesses of all sizes should be calculating a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) before making any call on what’s cheaper.  I recently tweeted an article that I thought was very insightful about the subject.  Check it out. As the author mentions, the business/delivery model and in turn, cost and pricing structures vary significantly between a software-as-a-service (SaaS) and an on-premise solution.   Therefore businesses need to consider short and long term costs as well as factoring in their own specific business needs that could tack on additional costs.

Now that we’ve tackled that beast, let’s move on to the smaller, less significant things.  You know, like security.  That’s not a big deal to any of us, right?  WRONG!  Security experts are all over the various cloud services, warning that not enough is being done to ensure that they are secure.   Do you know who is managing the computers with your info on it?  Or how it’s being protected?  And right on the heels of security is privacy.  Can other users get access to your data accidentally?  Great example – I recently read an article about Facebook and “private” messages being leaked.   I tried to find the article again for this blog post and there were sooooo many Facebook/privacy issues being talked about on the Web that it was nearly impossible to find.  Point made.

What else should you think about and research prior to making a decision?  Just a few final points:

• Convenience –which option is going to best meet your specific business needs and align with the resources you have available?  Keep in mind that not all on-premise solutions are difficult and not all SaaS models are easy as far as implementation and maintenance.  Do the research and ask questions.
• Hosted services rely heavily on network bandwidth and keep in mind – that isn’t necessarily free.  And it isn’t necessarily reliable.
• What service and support is available?  Just because you aren’t managing the mail server from your location, doesn’t mean you won’t need service or support.  Make sure it’s available and make sure it’s good.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…one support call on the 3^rd Tuesday of the month isn’t tech support.  See previous post.
• Financial stability of the hosted service provider.  If you’re trusting one of your most valuable assets to another company, make sure you’re confident they will be around in another 2-3 years.  Do your homework.

The intent of this post was not to bash hosted services.  There are valid benefits to hosted service and for some businesses, it is the right choice.  My message is this – take the time and do the research for YOUR business.  Every business is different – from number of users to specific messaging and business needs.  There isn’t one right answer for everyone.  Calculate a complete TCO and walk through a few “what if” situations.  It will be more than worth your time and effort.

So do we need to detox from our inbox? Or are we just becoming incredibly effective at multi-tasking?

There is no doubt that the ability to stay connected to email via mobile device is extremely useful.  Any mail server worth their weight in gold enables mobile synchronization.  It’s become an expectation, not just a feature.  And for good reason. We can respond quickly, collaborate from remote locations and stay connected to our calendars, tasks and contacts at all times.  Many would argue that mobile messaging is business critical.  According to Osterman, “…this year’s study finds that employees rely so heavily on mobile e-mail availability that if service went down, even for an hour, 85 percent of respondents indicated that it would impact their business work flow.”

It’s an invaluable convenience.  No doubt.  But how do we prevent too much of a good thing?  The definition of compulsion is an irresistible persistent impulse to perform an act such as excessive hand washing (or in this case checking your email).  If you find yourself at your daughter’s wedding hiding behind the ice sculpture with your Blackberry or driving 12 miles out of town during the family trip to Big Bear Mountain just to make sure that contract came in from your vendor…..you might have reached the point of compulsion.  It’s time to put down the phone, set your email auto-responder and enjoy a little time off.  Hey, there’s always the car ride home…if you’re not the one driving of course.

So I’m looking at status updates yesterday and my friend says that her crops are going to die because she’s giving up Facebook for Lent.  This just speaks to the addiction that is social media these days.  Keeping up with the constant feeds, links, threads, updates, notifications, farms, zoos….it’s all become too much for the average person.  So it’s not surprising that the current focus in the industry is consolidation.

Enter Google.   Their latest answer to our overwhelming communication woes is Google Buzz.   Now, unlike many other bloggers out there, I’m not even going to touch the issue of Google’s “auto-follow” option or the impending privacy issues that they face.  I’ve read countless articles over the last few days and it appears that Google is on top of the matter.  HUGE faux pas but enough is enough already.  Moving on….

My main issue is this incessant need to combine all things communication into one platform.  WHY???  I’m all for the convenience of a “one-stop-shop” but that’s not always the answer.  Case in point…every morning I put on 4 different types of lotion.  Why?  Because each one serves its own purpose for the different parts of my body.  One lotion just wouldn’t meet all of my needs.  In my mind, it’s the same with communication.  Trying to force a one-stop solution ignores the complexity of communication altogether.   And that’s what Google has done.

My relationships (business, family, friends, acquaintances, or classmates) are all different.  So it only makes sense that how I correspond with them and what I share with them will vary.  It can be personal, business, private, public, quick, lengthy, asynchronous or synchronous.  For some, I use email.  For others it’s FB or Twitter, a phone call or text or even… (gasp) face-to-face.  Would just one of those work for you in all cases?  Do you want your business contacts to see what you ate for dinner last night in one minute and receive a contract proposal from you the next?  If something is completely public, can it also be secure?

I’m not saying that communication overload isn’t an issue.  There are millions of people, myself included, that are feeling overwhelmed with the excess of information and messages to sort through on a daily basis.  But I am not of the mindset that the answer is one tool.  I use email for specific reasons and I use social media for an entirely different set of reasons.  Likewise, I have personal email and business email.  I have a work Twitter account and a private Facebook account.  They are purposely kept separate.  And I don’t think I’m alone in that.

So rather than trying to pigeon hole a number of tools into one, doesn’t it make more sense to think about how to improve the information flow within existing platforms?  Email will never be Twitter and vice versa and that’s ok.   They have separate reasons-for-being.  So how do we work smarter within each tool to keep from drowning in a sea of messages?  Better filtering? More customized information streams?  And how can the different tools be flexible enough to interact with each other without jeopardizing security?

What are your thoughts? What’s working for you? What’s not?  Do you see a “Wal-mart” in the future for communication?

New Scientist. Well, that’s their claim anyway.  But I disagree.  They report that a group of computer scientists have claimed to develop an “effectively perfect” method for blocking spam. YAWN. Same story. Different writer. Different day. Fact is by the time I started researching this “new” method, Amir Lev, CTO at Commtouch had already blogged it and effectively said, “kudos guys…you invented what we’ve been doing all along.”

The magic behind Commtouch is RPD. RPD stands for Recurrent Pattern Detection.  In layman’s terms: the technology identifies and classifies message patterns.  It analyzes massive amounts of traffic in real time; searches for patterns that will classify a message as spam and then using that information it identifies malicious messages and blocks them from your inbox, all within minutes of an outbreak.  RPD blocks 98% of spam and maintains a tiny false positive level.

In a nutshell, it all boils down to your reputation. If you send relevant mail from your server you maintain a good reputation. You start sending irrelevant mail and you develop a bad reputation. Once that bad reputation is in place you get blacklisted and now you have extra work on your hands.

I remember when I was in college. I had the reputation of being an outdoorsy guy who spent more time on his mountain bike in the woods than in the classroom. When people wanted a great place to hike or ride…they would call me for advice. If they needed advice on physics or molecular biology they called…well…anyone but me. Why? Because I had ZERO credibility in that area. Your reputation attracts a specific niche audience. Commtouch’s reputation speaks for itself and that is part of the reason we’re a satisfied business partner with them. The New Scientist? Well…I’ll just leave that there.

As for spam? We don’t like it. We don’t ask for it. It’s effectively a pain and a nuisance. But there are some solid anti-spam solutions available. We chose Commtouch because of the reputation of their technology, its ease-of-use, and affordability. The solution you choose needs to meet your specific needs as well as provide you with rock-solid protection. I am interested though…what solutions are you using? How are you using them? How effective are they? How much maintenance is required on your part? Leave your comments below.

In August 2008 I wrote a very brief blog post entitled, “What does your email address say about you?” You can go there and read (if you like)…but the quick and dirty on it is this: 3 researchers from the University of Leipzig conducted some research to determine any correlations between an individual’s personality and their email address. Well, not their entire email address…just the first part of it (AKA: the local-part). Now, almost a year and a half later, here I am talking about the “other” part of the email address – the hostname. And, I am asking the same question, “What does your email address say about you?”

First and foremost, I am a marketer and I am looking at this topic from a marketing perspective. So, maybe a better question to ask is, “What does your email address say about your business?”

The fact of the matter is that the typical email user does not care about the technical aspects of mail delivery. Most do not even commit your email address to memory. And why should they? Our email clients auto-fill addresses, we all have digital address books, and we reply to more email than we generate.  So, other than ensuring proper delivery to the intended recipient, does an email address have any significance at all? I would say that it does, especially for those of us in business.

On my desk is a stack of business cards I collected from a trade show. There are 53 cards in that stack to be exact. All of those cards have the person’s email address clearly printed alongside their contact information. The general construct of those email addresses are some variation of their first and last names for the local-part and then followed by their business domain for the hostname. We’ve come to expect that as standard practice for business email, right? Well, there is this ONE card in that stack that is different. This company chose to use their business name as the local-part and “Hotmail.com” as their hostname. Their business card is of equal weight as the others. It shares the same aesthetic qualities as the rest. However, there is a drain on its legitimacy because the email address does not match their company URL. I know it may seem minor. But, from a marketing perspective this is a lost opportunity to remind these potential customers of your brand.

Your brand is the image of your product or service in the market. Your brand image is both experiential and psychological. The market experiences your brand through the products and services you provide. But, the market also engages your brand expecting that it will align with all the advertising muscle you’ve put behind it. The last thing you want your brand to do is suffer. Given the fact that email remains the most critical application for small-to-mid sized businesses, why would we not make every effort to ensure that our email address is part of our brand management strategy?

So, what does your email address say about you? Better yet…what does it say about your brand management?

Hopefully it says good things. My random collection of cards shows that 52 out of 53 businesses are doing it right. But, what if your business is like the one mentioned earlier? What should you do? The good news is that it is a fairly simple fix. All you need is an email server.

Email servers vary as much in function as they do in price. If brand management is your primary objective then remember that you do not need a beast of a machine and you do not need to spend a lot of money to get yourself up and going. One FREE solution is IMail Express. It handles all of your email, supports up to 10 users, and runs on modest hardware.

Having an email server, whether it is a hosted solution or something you maintain in your office, should not intimidate you. Most vendors have taken their time to think about their customer’s needs and to create very intuitive administrative controls. Not to mention, in the case of IMail Express, for just $99.00 you can have access to 12 months of unlimited technical support.

Bringing this back to your brand…with little-to-no out of pocket expense you can quickly adjust your brand management strategy to include the use of your business’ email hostname. This increases the subtle psychological impact of your brand and brings you one step closer to setting the proper expectations for your product or service.