Is Realtime Communication Crucial For You?

I have to admit it, I am a “realtime communicator“. I’m a heavy users of various IMs, voice over IP services, BlackBerry messenger, Twitter and, last but not least, email. Moreover, I’m kinda obsessed with the ability to keep up with everything and to give responses and feedbacks to my business contacts, friends, family, clients and so on, as soon as I can.

All that said, my obsession leads me to being continuously in search of the best way to manage all this overload of information I  deal with everyday and, in this perspective, the ability to manage all my emails properly is crucial.

A lot of times I come across tweets or blog posts where someone complains about the 437 unread emails in their inbox or the 798 emails marked for reply. 437 unread emails? I feel the pain when I see 10 unread emails in my inbox! Ok, maybe it is just a real obsession, but I’m constantly in the “inbox 0″ status, that is no emails to be processed (this is maybe the real reason why I switched back to a BlackBerry from an Android phone).

Achieving this goal is not easy, but fundamental if realtime communication is crucial for you and for your business.  For me, responding in the right timeframe to emails is crucial, as well as having full control of my inbox, organizing it in the best way as possible. Fortunately filters, labels and a proper use of the “report as SPAM” and the “archive” buttons are essential ingredients to organize my inbox(es).

An example? Let’s think of an email sent an important prospect, someone you never met before but who could be crucial for signing a deal. Let’s say that at a certain point, he/she replies. You know what? I realized that if you followup to that email immediately, you are more likely to get a new a new response in real time and get the ball rolling towards the next step. Reason? You sent your second email in a timeframe when his/her level of attention was very high and willing to interact with you. A minute later, and you could have lost one or more weeks.

Let’s face it, we are in the “realtime communications” era and any communications medium must be used properly by you and managed properly when others use them to contact you. Twitter mentions, DM, emails, IM, Facebook messages, FB comments…. everything can be important but also time-consuming. The worst case is when a conversation starts with a medium and ends up going on in another medium. There are a few services that aggregate multiple social inboxes into one but I find them a bit confusing a not the ideal solution when lots of messages are involved.

All that said, how do you keep up with realtime communications? Is it crucial for you or you just forget your mobile phone off and forget about it? If you are reading this blog, I guess that’s not your case… Please leave your comments below, looking forward to reading your opinion.