(p.s. Ignore the awkward “Bye” at the end of the video )

                  

If you have visited our About Us page recently, you will see that it has been revamped and looks awesome! When you look at companies About Us pages, what are you looking for? You want to see the face of the company – their employees, get the story about the company and see testimonials to confirm you are bringing your business to the best company.

When we were re-designing our About Us page, we wanted to include all those and more. We might be an internet company, but we are real people and strive to connect with our users! By seeing our pictures and bio, it makes it easier to connect with us and make your feel more confident in using Tatango for group SMS. Heck, you can even contact Derek directly on his cell. We also have included outr Twitter handles and Facebook account links. We are not an internet company ran by robots.

For comparison, would you feel more confident in this company based on their About Us page or would you rather see something like this? (I’ll take the later)

What are some of your favorite About Us pages you have come across?

                  

“We love Tatango, our team would never go back.  It’s a breeze in about 30 seconds and I am able to communicate with approximately 50 phone numbers, I don’t need to be near a computer to get off an email and the boys and their parents all know of any change in plans minutes after it occurs.  Its great since our boys mostly drive themselves now to practice and when they leave school at the end of the day they know what is expected of them.

Derek, I am thrilled to hear that the club is considering using your system.  Our team has used it since last August.  I had a meeting with all of the parents and players for the new year and they were unanimous that they would not go back.”

Sports teams are just another example of who uses Tatango. The group possibilities are endless. Have a group you want to communicate with? Use Tatango!

Follow us @Tatango
Like us on Facebook

                  

This is interesting because you’d think the hours would be during the work day (8AM-5PM), but it seems that the nighttime is getting more use. Is this because we use this time to break away from work-related internet use and catch up on TV shows, daily news, blogs, etc?

The night owl stat caught my attention too, “…compared to users in the other top 10 countries, users in the United States are more likely to be browsing with Opera Mini between midnight and 4 AM.” Between midnight and 4 AM? What are people doing in those wee hours on the internet?

When does the majority of your internet use occur?

                  

There are many reasons for this, including:

-Text messaging is sending a message directly to the persons phone, while Twitter is sent to the website or phone app that the people you want to communicate with have to open. Also, they need to have a Twitter account, which many people still don’t have – while majority have cell phones with text message abilities.

-Twitter is more of the idea of many to many, when group text messaging is one to many.

-Being many to many, your tweets get lost in the other tweets your followers are receiving. If someone you want to communicate with doesn’t check their Twitter or Twitter app right when you tweet out your message, it will become lost is their followers updates.

-Twitter is a social media tool to build your brand and yourself, engage in current trends and topics, not a specific group communication tool.

Here’s a LinkedIn conversation thread that inspired this post. Let us know in the comments about your experience with Twitter as a group communication tool and if you think Twitter is replacing text messaging.

                  

This is easy to do!

If you have multiple groups under one owner, when you text message into our system, we will bounce back a message that asks which group you would like to send the message to. #1, #2, #3, etc. You respond with the number that corresponds with the group and it only goes to that group. You can see this in the picture below (and no, you don’t need an iPhone for this – this will work on all phones).

Have any questions we can help with? E-mail support[at]tatango.com or tweet @Tatango

                  

College students are more of a target for text messaging than e-mail, considering almost every student has a cell phone. To communicate with Generation Y, texting is the way to go as e-mail is pretty much obsolete for this age range.

                  

When you receive a text, most open the message immediately, while with e-mail, we tend to skip over the e-mails that are not pertinent at that moment.

What are you waiting for? Skip the clutter and send a text!

                  

“On the day your brother finally follows through with getting hitched to his 3-year girlfriend, and proposes, it’s a proud and exciting moment to celebrate. But as I soon realized, as the younger brother with the title of ‘Best Man’, there is a great deal of responsibility that falls in your lap – The Bachelor Party. And no, I was not going to screw this one up by leaving the groom stranded on the scorching rooftop of a Las Vegas hotel. We were heading to the Seattle Mariners game on a June night in Seattle. Coordinating the financing, RSVPs, special requests, event logistics, catering, transportation and hotel accommodations for a full night out at our very own Private Suite at Safeco Field with 20 riled up guys can be quite the task to take on!

About two months prior I set out to propose the event to our attendee list and feel out the response. I had a list of 20 email addresses and brief paragraph that summarized the event’s details and cost. What I discovered after about a week’s time and maybe 1 reply returned to my email inbox, is that email is inefficient! Whether people don’t check them frequently enough, spam filters play a role or emails just get put off till later, I quickly changed my approach and looked for another means to plan this party.

The solution was Tatango.com, a user-friendly online tool that allows you to send group text messages to the entire contact list of your group, instantly. It was like night and day from then on. Each time I sent out a text message (160 characters) to my group of 20 people, I received numerous replies with RSVPs, excitement and thanks. I had everyone committed two months in advance, sent a reminder two weeks out, an update a week out and a final couple of group messages on the morning of the event and just before our meeting time. All 20 guys showed up at the meeting place on time and ready to go! And how did I do it? From my account on Tatango.com and the palm of my hand using Tatango’s shortcode messaging straight from my mobile phone. The experience that I had managing this awesome event, that otherwise could’ve been a disaster, really opened my eyes to SMS as a group messaging tool. It’s no wonder that SMS has an astonishing 98% open rate (70% in the first minute) compared to email’s ineffective open rate of 30%.

As the night came to a close, my brother’s best friends and relatives ranging from ages 24 to 62, all came up to me and personally thanked me for working so hard on coordinating a night to remember for everyone. If only they knew.. it was as easy as text messaging .

Alex Mittelstaedt, “The Best Man”
Tatango Group: BlakesBachParty

                  

There are many reasons for becoming a virtual company:

-Being an internet based company, we have the freedom and ability to do our work wherever. We also moved all documents and communications to the cloud to help make our work accessible from literally anywhere.

-We can now allocate rent costs to fund projects to improve Tatango

-Gives employees the freedom to move (Seattle for example) or stay in Bellingham. Some employees have wanted to move to Seattle for some time, but with Tatango based in Bellingham, this wasn’t possible.

-And most importantly, we can work in our pajamas!

Here is a link to a short video Derek did, explaining our move and reasons more in-depth. We’ll continually post with updates about how going virtual is working for Tatango as time passes.

Have you worked virtually before or currently do? Any tips, suggestions or comments please feel free to post.