Orange Buzz

As a small business owner resources are limited and time is a restraint. Who doesn’t struggle finding time to get everything done? People often ask me where do I find the time to blog, tweet and all the rest. The truth is I don’t do it all, not all at once and not as often as I would like to, but I do try to make time to do it.

So what is the secret for small business owners? Well there is no secret, you just need to do it. If you are the person that thinks that you need someone to tweet for you, stop now, it would be a waste of time and money.

People want to know the person behind the business, they want to be able to like you, admire you, or in most cases they want to feel that they are spending their money with someone who is worthy of their business. They want to feel a connection with your business, they want the real you.

People want to know who they are dealing with, are you the person you say you are?

Potential clients, especially business-to-business clients, are weary of how they spend their money. If you are a sole trader (eenmanzaak in The Netherlands) then you ARE the business. Other business owners want a reassurance that you are the one that is going to solve their problem(s) and that you are trust worthy.

Now this doesn’t mean that everyone needs to like you, as in real life, you can’t please everyone. But if your customers are online talking about you, don’t you want to know what they are saying? Interaction is where the magic begins, you can now connect and respond online and even make an offline connection.

The beauty of social media is that it doesn’t have to cost you anything except time. If you streamline your efforts you can make social media work for you.  Set a time limit if you know that you get distracted easily. Find a platform that you like and go for it, take your business online.

image credit: flickr.com/darrentunnicliff

There are literally hundreds of WordPress themes that you can use on your blog/site. You can spend days if not weeks trying to decide which theme you like the best. But do you know what you are downloading?

What you might not be aware of is that there are also many websites offering themes but they are not trustworthy. You could be downloading a theme that has been manipulated, when you use it on your site you could be spreading unwanted spam to others.

Do some research and save yourself time. Often just a quick Google search, or reading through the website will give you a good idea if the person behind the themes is who they say they are.

There are several websites that I recommend for downloading themes:

WooThemes (paid themes, affiliate link)
ElegantThemes (paid themes, affiliate link)
WordPress.org Directory (free)
Design Disease (free) 
ThemeForest (paid themes)
ThesisTheme (paid themes, affiliate link)

Flickr is a great resource for images, if you haven’t discoverd it yet make sure you go ahead and save the link for future reference. Blog posts come to life with a picture. It can reinforce your message or add a different dimension to your post.

As a rule I prefer to add a picture to my blog post, I am a visual person and I like adding an additional element to my posts. But sometimes even thought I have a lot of images of my own there often is not one that matches my thought process. I even find inspriation the other way around, go and search for interesting pictures on Flickr and then write a blog post!

You don’t have to have a Flickr account to search and post images to your blog.

• go to the Flickr Creative Commons search page
• type in your key word(s) and hit enter
• now click on an image that you want to use
• the image will open in a new page
• hover over the tiny triangle at the end of the menu bar just above the image
• a small drop down menu appears, click “Grab the HTML/BBCode”
• you can adjust the image size
• copy and paste the code into your blog post (html version not the visual tab)

Happy image hunting!

More info on Creative Commons:
CreativeCommons.org
flickr.com/creativecommons
Skelliewag “a complete guide to finding and using incredible flickr images

image credit: flickr.com/luvi

Red dots are locations of Flickr pictures. Blue dots are locations of Twitter tweets. White dots are locations that have been posted to both.

Don’t know anyone who tweets, think again. Eric Fisher created a brilliant Twitter and Flickr map for Europe and most of the European capitals.  The Netherlands is a ‘hot spot’ again but also you can pick out Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco. Social media is going mainstream.

image credit: Eric Fisher