Small Office, Home Office Information

I wish I had the recipe for this so that I could share it with you but I don’t, almost overnight and without us realising what was going on it just happened.

For several years now Toni’s small business has had a millstone tied around it’s and our neck - figuratively of course.

We had something that was holding us back, a burden that was weighing us down and then, almost overnight, that millstone has turned into a motivator. We can see a way of ridding ourselves of the millstone and now it’s motivating us to work towards that goal.

It’s motivating us more than you could imagine,

Almost everyone - and many businesses - have their millstones. A burden that is holding them back. If you have one can you see a way of turning it into a motivator?

Often all it takes is a little positive thought, a different perspective and suddenly than millstone isn’t weighing you down anymore. Instead it’s motivating you to strive for new heights in your personal life and in the life of your business.

As I said at the start, I wish I knew how it happened for us because then I could share it with you. But if you have turned a millstone into a motivator then maybe you would care to share it with us?

Ok - so over the last week I’ve talked about the idea of your small business starting a blog and talking with the community. I’ve given you some links to look at including one that will take you to a small business that has a very successful blog even though you would think that few people would be interested in signs.

So if you want to start a discussion with your community how do you go about it if you have problems writing on a regular basis?

Obviously you look for a writer, someone who can take your thoughts, assemble them into something that people can read and do it on a regular basis.

We’re currently setting up a blog just like that for our friend who runs a computer shop. If you need help or further advice about the subject check the ads that appear alongside this entry or email me at:

copytext at gmail.com

There are many ways to advertise your products - just look at motor vehicles for instance. Almost everywhere you look you will see an ad for a motor vehicle or an ad that reinforces a brand name.

Sometimes, if you think outside the box, you can do both at once.

This ad that was produced for Honda in the United Kingdom to advertise their latest Honda Civic model definitely came from somewhere way outside the box but it arouses your interest in the car, it has an underlying message of Honda being an exciting company and there is the appeal of … well I won’t spoil the surprise.

Have a look for yourself and turn your speakers way up - Honda Civic

The scale of the ad is obviously way above anything a small business or home office business could afford but that doesn’t stop you from thinking outside of the box like Honda’s ad agency did.

For the uninitiated a Blogroll is supposedly a list of links to the blogs that your read or that you consider to be your friends.

I have no blogroll (perhaps that means that I have no friends) and when someone suggested that I should have one in a comment on my post Five Reasons Why This Small Business Blog Sucks I suggested that blogrolls were incestuous.

Perhpas that was a little blunt and Stowe Boyd says it in a much more gentle way here.

I’m sure you’ve seen the advertising and there might even be some appearing in the Google ads on this page. Someof them almost look plausible while others are obviously too good to be true and then there are the others that are harder to spot.

And if you don’t spot them they can end up costing you a lot of money.

These days there are so many people who are desperate to work from home and that means there are rich pickings for scam artists. But how do you tell the genuine offers from the scams?

Little Red Flags Used to Spot a Scam may help you and stop you from falling into the clutches of the scammers.

My thanks to Martin from Home Office Voice for pointing me to this article

Just a quick update in the middle of this very pleasant Australia Day. Here is another small business that has it’s own blog - English Cut.

Now for someone who spends most his working day in nothing but a pair of shorts a blog like English Cut is like a foreign languange but just look at the comments. There are people who want to converse with the business, they are customers and they want to join in the conversation.

A couple of days ago I wrote Let Your Small Business Have a Say and suggested that maybe your small business could really benefit from having a blog.

If you read that you could easily be wondering what on earth your business would do with a blog. Who would want to read it?

Well you might be surprised at who would ready what you and your small business had to say and here is an example.

One of the more unusual small business blogs that I have ever come across is Signs Never Sleep a blog by the Lincoln Sign Company. The blog is “a running commentary on what the company does, day-to-day, to create terrific signs for your business or home.”

And you might be surprised to know that it makes for some very interesting reading. But does it work for them?

To answer that perhaps you should read an interview that Dave Taylor did with them on his Intuitive Life Business Blog. That interview also makes for some very interesting reading and you can find it at Q&A with the Lincoln Sign Company: Does Your Blog Work

I hope it will certainly give you something to think about.

And now I’m off to enjoy a public holiday. It’s Australia Day - the day we come together to celebrate all the great things there are about being Australia and we do typically Australian things - like having a BBQ, drinking beer, watching cricket and all those other things that most other countries just don’t understand

How many of us would dare to shut the door on 20% of our business?

People would think that we were insane if we did but here is the story of a man who did just that.

The man who said no to Wal-Mart

It makes interesting reading on a number of levels.

If you have just arrived on this site for the first time then let me welcome you to what is commonly referred to as a blog.

The Wikipedia gives this definition for what a blog really is:

A blog is a website in which journal entries are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called “blogging”. Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts,” “posts” or “entries”. A person who posts these entries is called a “blogger”.

The Wikipedia definition also goes on to say that “blogging has quickly emerged as a popular and important means of communication”.

These days lots of people and lots of businesses both big and small blog. Even newspapers blog but there are still a few who think that only the hip people should blog.

Razor is a journalist here in Australia who writes and blogs for the The Age (one of Australia’s major newspapers). In response to something he blogged about one reader had this to say:

I don’t even consider this a blog really. It is really just the corporate world hijaking yet another product of the underground and trying to get in on what the ‘cool’ kids are doing. Media blogs began as an alternative form of media, to have media blogs owned by the same media is kind of pointless. I don’t really understand what you are trying to achieve here as if I have no doubt that you are simply pushing the agendas of your copporate paymasters.

It’s sad to see comments like that because Razor regularly makes some very valid points in his posts but whether he does or not the comments were totally wrong.

Sure blogging was started by ordinary people. It was and is a conversation carried on by people all over the world and it should be a conversation that anyone can join in.

Even your small business has a valid place in that conversation so don’t be shy about having your say and starting a blog for your small business.

But don’t forget one vital point - sometimes when people open their mouth all they do is show the world that they really have nothing to say. Some corporations who have tried blogging have revealed a lot more about themselves than they realise.

I’ve beem reading an interesting post titled Marketing in a Post-Cluetrain Era over on Gaping Void and it got me wondering about how to apply what was talked about there to basically any small business in any town big or small.

Recently one of the our friends who runs a computer business was thinking about ways of getting the name of his business in front of people in this town. We suggested that he sponsor the newsletter that goes home to the parents of the students at one of the local high schools.

Here if you sponsor the newsletter you get to advertise on it for free.

Now that’s fine and it does work but what would you do if you felt that there was some value in what was talked about on Gaping Void?

It’s something to think about and I’m sure that there are a number of things you could do that would suit your situation.

One thing I just thought of for our friend was to don a tshirt embazoned with the name of his business and help out at the next school fete or even offer to talk to the computer class about computer repairs. Of course, there would be a handout for the kids to take home with them and the name of his business would be right there on the handout.

Those are just some idle thoughts - is the basic concept something that could work for you?