

Why you should have two email accounts

You should have two email accounts, one that is professional and one that is personal. I've had my email account at BradHallArt for over ten years, and I use it, along with Apple Mail to communicate with my clients. It really is the best for this type of communication, as I can sort, save messages in easy-to-find-again places, and mostly it's because I own it. The messages live on my computer, which is backed up hourly. I cannot be "put out of business" by a server going down at Yahoo, or Google. I've had excellent service from Bluehost, who hosts my website, and in the rare occasions when there has been any trouble (and it's usually my fault) there is someone that I can talk to right away. Besides, if you're in business, having an email that ends with yahoo or gmail just looks ridiculous.

But last year I bought a Chromebook and decided to give Gmail a try. I like it. But it's different. It is way more convenient than using my professional email, as it's set up to be conversational. And so I use it for friends, and for my hobby, which is collecting old photos of Phoenix. I also use it to manage the comments on my blogs, which are on Google. If someone makes a comment, I can look at it right away, as Gmail has a tab called "Social". My blogs are part of my professional reputation, so I don't want obscene messages, or spam, on them.

So I'm very happy with Gmail and my professional mail setup. I check them several times a day, but gmail more often because all I have to do is to glance at the tab on my browser and I can see a new message. And these messages are conversational, what I like to call "Monkey Chatter". I respond almost instantly to the Gmail messages as they are usually dealing with doing something socially. My professional email gets more careful attention, and I am more focused on professional protocol there.

This is all making more sense to me now.