Treat yours customers as if they were newspapers reporters; this is the new mantra for savvy companies of all sizes.

As consumers, we’ve become disenchanted with advertising and marketing of all sorts, having being duped, tricked or made to feel foolish on more than one occasion. The last true medium that holds sway is referrals from friends, colleagues, or online reviews from the likes of Yelp, AngiesList or TripAdvisor. According to a survey by the American Marketing Association, 90 percent of consumers trust peer reviews and 70 percent trust online reviews. It’s the last, true, medium that many consumers turn to when faced when inundated with choice, and confused by similar-sounding sales pitches.

Perhaps it is because reviews are the last sacred ground, that a flurry of outrage spread like wildfire across the Internet when news leaked that Reverb Communications (a PR agency) was paying interns to write positive reviews on iTunes for their clients Apps. Or when the occasional Amazon.com author gets ousted for disparaging competing books while positively reviewing their own. If you can’t trust advertising messages, and you can’t trust reviews, what else is left?

Recently I received a disturbing email from a friend informing me that he had replied to 7,545 emails in 2011. Included in his email—and the irony is not lost that he sent an email—was an analysis of how much time he had spent replying to those emails.

By his “conservative” calculation, he estimated he had devoted a full 45 days (19 percent of his annual workable time) replying to email last year. Of course this is just the time spent replying to emails; it does not account for his time reading all his incoming emails.

Naturally, this made me wonder: Is my friend managing his time and email correctly? I’ve received many of his emails, and I feel confident saying “no.” Why? For one thing, he’s not a professional communicator.

Below are some suggestions for managing email:

Stop and evaluate
Not every email needs an immediate reply, but every email needs an action from you. You can reply, not reply, or save it for later. When determining which to do, keep the following questions in mind:

• Who sent it? If it’s from your boss or client, reply within a reasonable amount of time.

• What is the urgency? Is the email so crucial that you should you drop what you’re doing and respond immediately? Probably fewer than 10 percent of your emails require such attention.

• What is the context? Is the email important to the work I am doing or will be doing soon?

• What is my “call to action”? If I reply, is my reply clear? For example, do I need more information from the sender? Am I going to forward this to my boss? Am I going to put an action on my task list for next week? Be clear to yourself and to the sender about your next steps.

Set ‘to’ and ‘copy’ expectations
This is an important and challenging step. If you’re a manager, it’s vital that you’re clear about which types of emails your subordinates should copy you on and when you would prefer an email to a phone call or meeting.

For example, I tell my colleagues that I want to be copied on all important client deliverable emails—those including a case study article, press release, etc. That’s it. I don’t want emails about their professional development or employment terms; we’ll discuss those issues face to face.

Set these expectations to reduce the emails from your team members. Do the same with your supervisor. Setting clear expectations and following through are essential to any project, and email is no different.

Consolidate topics and actually talk
Whether you are a manager or a subordinate, remember: If you send a lot of emails, you’re going to receive a lot of emails. Try picking up the phone or talking face to face, especially if you have multiple topics to discuss.
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We believe that being well informed when making decisions is the best thing you can do for your business (and your personal life, too!).  Online surveys are a great way to perform market research quickly, easily, and cost effectively. Here are 3 ways you can implement them into your business strategy today:

1. Define Your Market
Arguably the most important aspect of market research is defining the market. You may know your industry and product down to a science, but that only gets you so far. Are white, single men in their 30’s buying your shampoo, or are teenage girls your biggest customers? The answer to that question will have a profound impact on your business strategy, so you want to make sure you’re confident in it.
Send a simple demographics survey to your customers, clients, or fan base. Use an expert-created template, or create your own. Ask them about their age, gender, race, education level, and interests. Ask how they use your product or service, and ask for their feedback. The more you know about who they are and how they’re using your product, the better you’ll be able to cater to their needs and keep them coming back for more.

2. Concept Test
Run a concept test to evaluate consumer response to a product, brand, or idea, before it’s been introduced to the market. It will provide a quick and easy way to improve your product, identify potential problems or flaws, and make sure your image or brand is properly targeted.
Put a picture of your ideas for your logo, graphic, or advertisement in an online survey and have your audience select the one they like best. Ask them what stood out to them, what the image made them think and feel.
What if the thing you need feedback on isn’t an image or logo, but a concept? Write a brief synopsis for your respondents to read through. Then ask them what they remembered, what their reaction was, what problems they might anticipate. Different people will see different challenges and opportunities in your idea, and their feedback will be invaluable as you fine-tune your plans.
Don’t know how to reach your target audience? We have one you can talk to…

3. Gain Feedback
Once you’ve defined your market demographics, tested your ideas, and created your product, there is one more crucial step in the process. Soliciting and analyzing feedback is crucial if you want to continue to deliver great results. Find out what you did well, what issues people are having, and what direction they’d like you to take in the future.
You don’t need to take all the suggestions you get when soliciting feedback. But by asking for it and paying attention to what people say, you’ll be better prepared to succeed in future creative endeavors. Your customers will appreciate that you asked, and they’ll appreciate the improvements you make even more.

Happy survey-making!

For first-time entrepreneurs, expanding the business and hiring those first employees is an exciting adventure. But it can also be rife with challenges and sometimes mistakes. The reason: The skills needed to successfully lead a growing enterprise are markedly different than what it takes to run a one-person business.

We spoke with three business leaders about challenges they faced as their companies grew, and how they dealt with them.

Challenge No. 1: Hiring the right people — and keeping them
Many first-time leaders make regretful hiring decisions early on. They choose people too much like themselves when what they really need are employees with complementary skills. They also sometimes recruit people who may have the right skills but lack solid values.

Tom Sullivan, founder and chairman of Lumber Liquidators, a Toano, Va.-based hardwood floor retailer, learned his lesson the hard way. When expanding operations beyond his first store in the Boston area, he needed store managers and truck drivers in other cities, but some of his earliest hires didn’t pan out.

Related: What Entrepreneurs Can Learn from Costco’s CEO

One store manager admitted to stealing money from the cash register, which he later repaid. Then there was the truck driver who disappeared on his first delivery, taking both the truck and the cash he had collected. “The biggest thing was getting people you could trust,” says Sullivan, 52, now chairman of the 2,000-employee public company. He didn’t do enough due diligence at first, but after those experiences, he quickly began conducting background checks on all new employees.

He also realized he needed to do more to motivate workers and build a more entrepreneurial culture. Instead of paying drivers by the hour, he gave them 60 percent of all delivery fees. He also began paying store managers 0.5 percent to 2 percent commissions on their sales. The new compensation policies led to higher retention rates. “Some of our sales managers made over $150,000, even $300,000, based on their sales,” Sullivan says.

Challenge No. 2: Expanding prudently, not prematurely

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For anyone with professional ambitions, moving up in the ranks is a goal from the moment we start a new job. When appropriate depending on our chosen profession, we often start with a bang and try to demonstrate intelligence, initiative, and the ability to lead.

Sometimes, decisions are made that don’t always make sense to us. We see people being promoted and wonder what they did that others did not. Rather than speculating, the folks over at Crisp360 took a more scientific approach.

In March of last year, Penn Schoen Berland conducted 303 interviews with senior business executives at U.S. companies with at least 1,000 employees. The results are available in the infographic below.

From the data, here are the top five most important factors in their most recent promotion decision. The selected candidate:

• Has excelled in current position
• Showed leadership potential
• Demonstrated strong interpersonal skills
• Possessed appropriate job-related skills
• Had a history of strong performance reviews

Armed with this data, the next corner office opening could be yours.