In my last post, I provided some tips for selecting a good username on Twitter. In this post I will give you some tips to get your profile picture right. The tips in this post not only apply to Twitter but also for other Social Networks.

Your profile picture is the first point of contact for a person who is interested in knowing more about you. Therefore, it is important that you give some thought into the selection of your profile picture. As a business owner you need to project the right image to your clients.

Here are some of my tips for selecting a good profile picture. These tips are more applicable for people who use Twitter for business purposes.

1. Be yourself. Do not fake your personality. It is very important that your clients’ expectations about you are met if both of you had to meet face to face.
2. Take the picture in a relaxed position. Wear clothes that your are comfortable with and ones that reflect your style and personality.
3. Take the picture in a brightly lit environment.
4. It is preferable to have a neutral color background.
5. Do not have other distractions in your photo. For example, do not take a picture with your dog. Your clients are not interested in your dog. They are interested in getting to know you better.
6. Only have other people and objects in your picture, if they are related to your business or profession. For example, if you are a professional Dog Trainer then you got to have a picture with a dog!
7. Make direct eye contact on the picture, it is important that you come across as a confident person in the eyes of your prospective clients.
8. Avoid Logos! If you own a business or a brand, do not use the logo as your profile picture. In social networks people are more interested in making connections to people, not organizations. Even if you use your company name as the username in your Twitter account, it is important to show your face in the profile picture.
9. Keep your profile picture consistent across different networks such as Twitter, Facebook etc. This allows potential clients to easily recognize you.
10. Take multiple pictures in different postures with varying smiles.
11. Ask family and friends for their opinion. Get a vote. Choose the picture that gets the most number of votes.

I hope you found the above tips useful. Add your own tips in the comments section. Thank you.

As a business owner you may want to give some thought into the selection of your Twitter username. A good Twitter username can give you an advantage in marketing yourself or your business.

When it comes to Twitter usernames you have the following 3 choices:

1. Use Your Real Name (example @RichardBranson)

This is the best option for business owners who want to promote themselves directly. For example, if you are a real estate agent you may want to promote yourself to your local community. Using your real name is very effective on Social Networks because people are interested in making connection with a real person instead of a company. Also, this option is more suitable if you intend to use Twitter for personal use.

2. Use the Name of Your Business or Brand (example @TechThinker)

If people are going to find your business using your brand name then it is important to use your brand name as your Twitter username. For example, I use the name of my blog (TechThinker) as my username on Twitter since I want to promote my business under this brand name.

3. Use a Keyword Rich and Descriptive Name (example @WhatsOnToronto)

Some people prefer to use a keyword rich Twitter username that describes the nature of their business. For example, the username name @WhatsOnToronto is self explanatory. It is not hard to figure out what this Twitter profile is all about. Google pays a lot of attention to content generated by Social Networks. Therefore using a keyword rich username may allow you to take advantage of Google search results.

Tips for Selecting a Twitter Username

1. A Twitter Username cannot exceed the maximum 15 character limit.

2. A Twitter Username can be changed without creating a new account. You will NOT lose your followers due to a username change.

3. If you happen to change your username, make sure to immediately create a new Twitter account with your old username. Simply leave a tweet (in the newly created account) indicating the fact that you have moved to a new Twitter username.

4. If your real name is already taken, then try a username with initials (example @RobASmith) or try a name with an adjective or description (example @RealtorDavid).

5. Whenever possible try to keep your username short. Your username will consume characters when it appears on a tweet or retweet. Therefore, keep your user name as short as you can.

6. Avoid underscores(“_”) on your username. On many mobile phones it is often hard to type the underscore. Not all mobile phones support the underscore directly on the keyboard, even if the underscore is found on the keyboard it might be hard to locate it.

Do you have any other tips to choose a good username? Please share them below.

While Twitter as a company is not making any money, entrepreneurs and businesses can make money on Twitter in number of ways. Twitter is a very valuable tool to promote your brand, build relationships with clients and eventually make money by selling your products and services.

So, how your business can make money on Twitter? Here are some of my thoughts.

1. Promoting Products and Services

One of the most elementary methods to make money on Twitter is to promote your products and services. Deals and Contests are two techniques that you can use to promote your products on Twitter.  Make sure that you do not over use these techniques. If you tweet about product deals very frequently your followers will probably ignore you.

2. Turn Followers into Marketers

This is a very powerful technique where you can turn your followers into marketers who are willing to sell your products. For example, you could pay your followers a referral fee for every product they sell for you. Alternatively you can reward your followers with a point system where they can earn points for referring products that can be later redeemed for something valuable.

3. Turn Followers into Creators and Helpers

If you are developing a product and want to get the best ideas, you can turn your followers into creators or helpers to deliver that product. For example, let us assume that you have developed a new software and want people to perform usability testing. People who follow your company on Twitter are probably interested in your software too. With in no time you will have many people willing to test your product and provide their feedback.

4. Reaching out to Clients in Different Geographic Locations

Twitter can be used as a broadcasting tool to reach new clients in different geographic locations. Let us assume that you conduct seminars and workshops on Personal Development. You travel the country city by city holding these workshops. You can tweet your workshop details and location information when you are in a city. This allows you to get new clients from that area.

5. Lead Generation

Using Twitter you can get new leads and convert them to loyal clients. The best way to do this is by adding value. For example, if you are a real estate agent you can use Twitter to provide various information relating to real estate. For example, mortgage advice, home staging tips, market trends etc. When you provide value, people are more likely to notice you. By adding value you become a trusted and credible source in your industry. When people view you or your business as the expert in the field, they are more likely to do business with you.

The above points are some ideas that came to my mind. Please note that this is not an exhaustive list. If you have other ideas and methods to make money on Twitter please feel free to share them below.

Photo Credit: luc legay’s photostream

Flavors.me is a simple site that pulls all your social media content into a single location. To use flavors.me you simply signup for an account and start importing your content from other services into flavors.me. The social media sites and services supported in flavors.me include Twitter, FaceBook, Tumblr, Posterous, Blogger, Wordpress, LinkedIn, GoodReads, NetFlix, last.fm, YouTube, flickr, Four Square, Etsy and your blog’s RSS feed.

I like this service because it is very simple to use. Keeping track of a person across a number of social medial sites and services can be overwhelming. Flavors.me allows you to share all of your social content in a single location. The site has a minimalist and intuitive design.

You can check out my flavors.me page at http://flavors.me/techthinker

While flavors.me is free to use, the company provides a premium service for $20 a year. The premium service offers Custom Domain name support, web statistics and a contact form for your readers to contact you.

Check out this cool flavors.me video. I hope you like it.

Flavors.me from Jack Zerby on Vimeo.

Today, I did a reorganization of the categories in my blog. I had too many categories therefore it was time to reduce them and focus on the core topics that I want to concentrate. As I continue blogging, I am getting a much clearer picture on the direction I want to take this blog. Reorganizing the categories is my first initiative to make sure my blog stays on track with its goals and objectives. The next time when I have an idea for a post I will be checking to see whether that post will fall under any of these categories. If the post doesn’t qualify for a category, I will not be writing that post. This will make sure that I stay super focused on message and content that I am trying to promote in this blog. The following pie chart shows the percentage of posts by category at TechThinker.com. My next task is to rewrite the About Page of this blog.

The following is a guest post by Zack Shapiro.

Zack Shapiro is an entrepreneur, tech blogger, journalist and world traveler. You can find him on Twitter @ZackShapiro and on his blog at ZackShapiro.com.

Over to you Zack:

Humankind has never been more linked together than we are today. And tomorrow, we’ll be even more connected.

With the increasing levels of connectivity, we became slaves to our means of digital outreach. Facebook, blogging, Twitter, email, Skype and the list goes on and on.

Chances are you suffer from being incredibly over-connected to at least one of the tools listed above.

It’s time to begin to break away. If it sounds scary, don’t worry. We’ll take baby steps.

As with any change in habits small steps are important towards reaching your goal of being digitally free. Jumping into things cold turkey often leads to a relapse because we can’t mentally commit.

My foray into digital relaxation began with No Email Saturdays, where, as the name suggests, I take a break from email for one-seventh of the week.

At first it was harder than I imagined it would be. I had no problem leaving Mail alone on my laptop but I forgot to turn off the email on my iPhone. That meant I was constantly checking my phone not to see what the email was but to see if I had gotten anymore. As the day went on and the number of unread emails climbed higher I was no better off than digging into the actual emails themselves.

There was still digital weight on my mind. This you do not want.

If you’re apprehensive about cutting the cord remember this: unless you work for an organization that requires you to be connected all the time, you don’t need to be.

Sure an email on Wednesday morning about Friday’s meeting may be an important one but ask yourself this, “What could I possibly get on Saturday that can’t be taken care of on Sunday?

Leave the Mail our Outlook icon alone, don’t go to your webmail and turn all email on your phone off. Every phone has a way to switch it off without deleting precious accounts or stored email. Leave it all alone.

If you find yourself itching to see what’s waiting in your inbox remember this: You have to physically allow yourself to check your email. Be strong. I believe in you.

It has been a little over a month now with No Email Saturdays and I love the concept. It frees my mind from whatever’s coming up and I trust that whatever I get on Saturday can be dealt with later. It’s unrealistic to expect yourself to be connected at all times.

Now I’m ready to take the next step: No SocMed (Social Media) Saturdays.

You may not be able to get to me by email on Saturdays but you can still get my attention through my blog, an @reply on my Twitter account, a comment on Flickr, etc. So I’m still connected; I’m still checking.

Next Saturday I plan to cut out the blogging. The following week, Twitter. Those are my big two. Identify yours and make a plan. Set goals based on your level of comfort after realizing what the extra free time means.

Go outside. Spend time with friends. Watch TV without your computer around. Read a book. Go for a run. Have some fun.

There are two types of people. The Shipper and the Perfectionist. The shipper ships a product on the deadline date even when the product is not fully finished. The perfectionist only ships a product when it is fully complete. For the perfectionist, even if a small feature is incomplete it is a good enough reason to delay the delivery of the product.

Who do you want to be? Which style is better?

Here is my personal take on this issue.

While we should always strive for best quality in the products we produce, the perfectionist mentality is the NOT the right attitude for today’s fast phased market place. In today’s market place the product has to be delivered at the right time. Velocity is key. The market place moves at such a rapid phase and by being a perfectionist you may not be able to deliver the product right on time. Another problem with the perfectionist is that the perfectionist always works under more pressure compared to the shipper. Since the perfectionist prolongs the delivery of the product, the product becomes (or feels) stale over time. This is why we often end up throwing up work that was dragging for moths or weeks. Overtime the passion fades away and we perceive the product useless, even though the product has some value. Perfectionist often get stuck with a product development because they are not willing to move on to the next stage.

On the other hand the shipper attitude is great for for today’s fast phased market. Shippers are usually in better control of their products. They are much happier people than the perfectionists. By shipping the product at the right time, shippers feel a sense of achievement. Therefore they are able to do a much better job in their second delivery of the product. By shipping the products on time, the shipper tames the Lizard Brain and Resistance that has been telling the shipper all sorts of negative things such as “the delivery will not happen”, “be careful”, “your product will not be received well in the market” etc.

Do you agree with what I am saying? Which camp are you in?

If the product has a quality score of 90% and if it is going to take substantially more time to achieve a quality score of 99%, will you ship the product as it is? or will you try to achieve a score of 99% and delay the delivery of the product?

Ok, that is a bit exaggerated. Apple is not the king of the tech world but no one can refute the fact that the company is a dominant player in the technology market. What makes Apple a successful company? As entrepreneurs what can we learn from Apple? In this post I try to answer these questions by identifying some of the key characteristics that set Apple apart from other tech companies.

1. Market Creators

Apple under Steve Jobs has had tremendous success in creating new markets. In the past decade alone the company has created many new products and ventured into markets that never existed before. The iMac, the iPod, and the new iPad are perfect examples of such products. While others try to capture market share, Apple succeeds in creating new markets!.

2. Innovation

From its inception, Apple has been a very innovative company. Apple has provided cutting edge technology well in advance than it competitors. For example, when iPhone was launched 3 years back, there was no other product in the market that matched its capabilities. Apple invests a lot in research and development.

3. Simplicity and Usability

Apple products are highly user friendly. Apple doesn’t complicate things. For example, take the iPod shuffle, it has few buttons or controls. Most of the consumers want simple and easy to use devices that provide few choices. When a device provides too many choices it becomes harder to use the device. Simplicity and usability are key to the success of a product.

4. High Profit Margins

Apple makes few computers than many PC manufacturers. But unlike PC manufactures where the profit margin is very low, Apple’s profit margin is very high. This allows Apple to keep its profits high even though Apple sells fewer units than its competitors.

The next 3 points provide the reasons why Apple is able to maintain high profit margins.

5. Quality & Consumer Focus

Apple has a reputation for providing quality products and services to its customers. Apple no longer wants to indentify itself as a computer company rather it wants to be a consumer company. When you sell for the corporate market it is easier to fix a defect in a product. For example, you can roll out a service pack to fix a software problem. But this is not possible in the consumer market. If the product does not work as expected the consumer will return it for a full refund. Apple knows this very well and provides the best quality products for its consumers.

6. Value Added Services

Apple products provide a full user experience. For example, Apple doesn’t simply sell iPods. They have value added services such as iTunes Store to compliment the iPod. The iTunes Stores is a great source for recurring revenue.

7. Followership

From the 80s Apple has a huge followership due to a very strong brand. These mac fan boys and girls will always buy Apple products. Mac fans pride from the fact that they are NOT PC users. They religiously buy Apple products all the time. Not all companies have built such religious followers.

I hope that you find the above points useful. These points can be easily incorporated to your online projects and business initiatives.

Photo Credit: kevinthoule’s photostream

WordPress is a free blogging platform that was created in 2003. The software was originally intended for creating blogs. Over the years Wordpress has been continuously improved. Today Wordpress is used is to create all types of websites. In this post I look at the top 7 reasons for creating your Business Website using WordPress.

1. Free

The WordPress software is opened sourced. You can use the software free of charge for both personal and commercial projects.

2. Community

WordPress has a large user community. Therefore it is very easy to get resources and help from fellow WordPress users.

3. One Click Installation

WordPress is very easy to install. There are many web hosting companies that provide standardized installation options to create a WordPress website. A WordPress website can be installed in a minute with few mouse clicks!

4. Easy to Update Content

It is very easy to update a WordPress website. All you have to do is to login to your WordPress dashboard and start editing pages using the rich text editor. You can also update your website content using desktop applications such as Microsoft Live Writer.

5. SEO Friendly

If your website is custom built, you need to make sure that your website developer is good in Search Engine Optimization. The sad reality is that many web developers are not good at SEO. Many developers primarily focus on website aesthetics and not on SEO. But when you create your website using WordPress, you need not to worry about SEO. WordPress comes with a rich set of SEO features straight out of the box. These SEO features include tags, categories, easy to crawl URL structures etc.

6. Themes

Giving a face lift or make over to your website is easy with the use of themes. WordPress themes allow you to change the look and feel of your website. There are many customizable WordPress themes that are available for free or for a price (many of them are priced under $100).

7. Plug-ins

WordPress plug-ins allow you to customize the functionality of your website. Plug-ins allow you to add more functionality to your website without writing any code.

Do you use WordPress for a Business Website? Show off your website in the comments section.

The 80 20 rule states that 80% of results come from only 20% of work or effort. This rule has been observed by many researchers in various situations. Here are some examples to illustrate this rule:

• 80 percent of revenue of a company is made by only 20 percent of workers
• 80 percent of software bugs come from only 20 percent of the code
• only 20 percent of the population in a country enjoys 80 percent of its wealth

While not everyone would agree on the percentages, the important thing to learn from this rule is that most things in life are not distributed evenly. That is to say, the ratio is never 1 to 1. For 1 unit of input you will not get 1 unit of output.

Keeping the 80 20 rule in mind is important for your success. You have to identify the most important things that are key to your success and then set your focus on them. Let’s apply this rule to blogging. To maintain a successful blog you have to do a number of activities. These activities include creating content, designing your blog’s layout, socializing, replying to user comments and emails, creating informational products such as ebooks, search engine optimization (SEO) etc. Successful bloggers are those who have mastered the 80 20 rule (either consciously or unconsciously). These bloggers do know what are the key things they need to do in order to get the best out of their blogs. For example, take the blog The Infopreneur by James Richmond. The blog only started 3 months back. Within this short time frame James has achieved very impressive results. I can see two reasons why The Infopreneur has been so successful. The blog is super focused on two important things, Content Creation and Discussion. James has an objective of publishing two posts every day. He also spends a lot of time in socializing with his readers by replying to their comments.

The 80 20 rule is a valuable tool for bloggers who have a day job and can only commit an hour or two each day for their blogging activities. So the next time you do something with your blog, ask the question is this really important for the success of my blog? Can I spend the time and resources that I am about to spend in something that will be more effective and one that produces more results.

If you are going to spend your time on the key things, who is going to do the rest of the tasks to complete the remaining work? Outsourcing is the answer! For example, if you are not good at graphics design, don’t spend your time designing a logo for your blog. Outsource that work to someone else who can do a much better job than you. If you are not in a position to spend money on outsourcing you could exchange expertise. For example, you can get your logo designed by a designer and you can return the favour by helping the logo designer with something that you are good at.

Do these all make sense? Love to see your responses.