With text messaging becoming one of the most widely used forms of communication, trends are pushing towards a more "Text Friendly" world. But what exactly does it mean to be "Text Friendly"? Many systems provide businesses the ability to send out mass text broadcasts - group messages sent from the business directly to their consumers' mobile phones from a five digit number (these are called shortcodes). But what happens if the consumer wants to respond? Say, they have a question or need clarification, want to learn more or simply want to say "thank you"! By restricting the conversation, customers are left without a voice.

WHAT HAPPENS IF WE ARE NOT AVAILABLE AT CERTAIN TIMES TO ANSWER INCOMING TEXT MESSAGES?

This is a question commonly asked by small business owners! It's so easy for customers to send a text at anytime of the day but what happens if you're not available to respond right away?

Text messaging has become the new wave of communication for individuals and businesses alike. Your customers want to reach you by text and there's a chance that they're already are trying to! With more and more companies becoming Text Friendly, it's easy to get left behind.

TextUs.Biz will be exhibiting at the Denver Biz Tech Expo tomorrow at booth #211! We'll be their with TextUs.Biz Receptionist app demoing our innovative approach to visitor management. We'll also have a limited number Receptionist in a Box packages available for those who are interested in purchasing our easy set up all-in-one kit!

Unfortunately, we've all been there; stuck in the endless automated voice prompt menu trying to navigate your way to a customer service agent. Often times, we are put on hold and when phones are too busy, we are presented with the option to leave a voicemail. Most of us hang up and tell ourselves "I'll call later", but actually never get around to it. As a business, are these the kinds of interactions you want your customers to have with your brand?

SMS marketing vs Email marketing? How many times to you receive an email and delete it before even reading it? Probably very often. In fact, the email marketing space is so over saturated that many refer to promotional emails as spam. It can take up to 90 minutes for a person to reply to an email, if they even reply at all. Why invest in sending your message using a disregarded method of communication? It's time to rethink how you communicate with your customers.

Your customers can now send you a text message directly from your website with TextUs.Biz!

Simply be adding two lines of code to your website . . . your customers can click on a “TextUs” tab, enter their cell phone number and send you message that will instantly pop up in your TextUs.Biz Web App. 

Here at TextUs.Biz, we are always looking for ways to improve the experiences of our customers because truth be told, we love you. (No, we really do!)

Rags Shop & Consign is our featured business this week with a great retail use case for texting! When customers come in to consign their old clothing the main thing they want to know is when they sell items. With TextUs.Biz Messages, customers are able to text into the store to find out what they've sold and what their account balance is. Their customers love it! See below...

It's Meme Monday! We have a new category, LOL Texts, to add to our monday post series. This weeks submission comes as an amazing aquatic theme SMS joke. Be sure to pull this one on any of tour coast dwelling friends and family!

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business. 

http://mashable.com/2013/05/20/mobile-marketing-tools/#

Hope everyone had a great Mothers Day! Here's a texting problem we doubt most moms have but we thought it was a good meme monday post.

A powerful customer service concept and quote by Nelson Boswell, "Always give people more than they expect to get."

Ten20 nail and waxing spa is a Text Friendly business! Many of our salon and spa customers have told us texting has become a huge piece of their client appointment process. Texting works great for scheduling appointments but it's even more of a time saver for Ten20 employees who send follow up confirmations. Theres a huge time saved by texting as opposed to calling each customer.

One of the tools businesses use to get the word out that they're a text friendly business is by putting a "Text Us!" window badge on their storefront. The badges have a space to add the businesses phone number and cling to most surfaces!

The phone has become a bottleneck for communicating with your customers, creating stress for both salon personnel and your customers. Time is wasted and business can be lost while retrieving or leaving voicemails.

Would you rather text or talk? http://textus.biz/textortalk/

Wouldn't it be nice to text any business just like you text your friends? We think so and that's why were our on a mission to enable businesses to become #TextFriendly. That means businesses can both send and receive texts for any product questions, appointment details or anything you might need. Sometimes its just

We're launching our new post series, Meme Monday, in proper fashion with no other than texts from Hillary. Hills would rather text than talk! Would you?

The TextUs.Biz Messages for Business iPad app is now available! Download: iTunes Link