I’ve identified five “secret weapons” for people building a business from home.They are not “secret” in the sense that nobody knows about them. They are however secret in the sense that many people I meet who are in business, from home or elsewhere, seem oblivious to the fact that these resources are available to help them.

My list is, in no particular order of priority:

• Organic search
• Social networking
• Skype
• Blogging
• Syndication

In selecting my favorite “secret weapons” I have used as one criterion the consideration that many or most people with businesses from home do not have large marketing budgets and are always interested in what can be done effectively on a limited or zero budget.

Organic search

Whether we want to sell our goods or services locally or globally – or both – gaining a basic understanding about search is both imperative and potentially very rewarding. Deciding not to know about search is not a good business decision.

My focus here is on organic search, because I believe the power of organic search is relatively secret.  I find that people seem to feel they understand paid search: maybe they see that as a kind of new, web version of paying for a box in the printed yellow pages. People sometimes tell me what good results they are having from Google ads or other paid research. Sometimes they tell me what bad results they’ve had.

I find it a challenge to get either group interested in  a conversation about organic search.

I don’t have any problem with people using paid search, as long as they know what they are doing and know how to manage the process, or have it managed, within a specified budget.

But if the home based business owner’s first real introduction to online search resources is from an individual or company offering to sell search or search engine optimization (seo) services or products, it’s really important to be able to establish from the outset how much of the service is about using paid search and how much about organic search.

And for a cash-strapped home business owner, there is a lot you can do with just organic search, without having to pay. Of course, if you do have a budget for the purpose, there are search engine optimization expert companies and individuals who can help you with organic as well as paid search: with the right expertise you can surely move faster and better than doing it the self-help way.

And whether you are hiring external expertise or going the diy route, it will be relevant for businesses wanting at least some business from a local market to build some understanding of the new realities and opportunities with local search. There is an excellent interview on local search by Michael Gray with my friend, top search wiz, Lee Odden.

In that interview, Lee provides some great advice, including how to interact with local media.

One tool in this area of search and media, global as well as local, and which in my not totally unbiased opinion is ideal for the home business owner, is Pitch Engine. There is a free level and then other levels still within the budget frame of most home based businesses. I posted here recently about Pitch Engine and small business (and declared there my interest as Australian manager).

Social Networking

In an earlier post in this series I wrote about what I called the myth of isolation for people in home based business. No prize for guessing that how I named the post showed that I am not on the side of those who think that working from home means you will necessarily feel isolated.

But here I am going to go  a step further and say that working from home may well give you access to many more people, more communities, in more diverse parts of the world and walks of life, than your friends and colleagues in more traditional, “working for the Man” places of work, may have.

And with time zones being what they are, those of us who work from home have access to such communities around the clock, if we wish.

With resources such as  the various groups we can join on Google Groups, Yahoo! Groups, or Ning and access to other social networking platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter,  most with no financial outlay involved, we have access 24/7 to a potentially amazing array of resources for collegial support, research, checking and feedback.

Not to mention that a number of these can and do also serve as virtual water coolers.

Skype

The free or low-cost VoIP or Internet phone service Skype has to be one of the best of all the secret weapons for the home based business owner.

Secret? With millions of people using Skype at any one time, you may well ask. And yet I continually find people with businesses from home who do not use Skype, although many indicate that they have “heard of it”. Skype enables me to have conference calls around the world, to coach clients in far-flung localities and all at no cost other than what I am already paying for Internet access, plus, with a very modest, one-off outlay for a third party application, Pamela, having the option to record any of those calls in a downloadable file, .

“”Skype: don’t work from home without it.”

Blogging

Don’t believe the pundits who say blogging is dead. What they really mean is they are bored with it. A recent survey indicated that blogging in the business context has a bright future.

Blogging is potentially a very powerful weapon for the home based business owner. When I think that, ten years or so years ago, to even begin to have the kind of communication capability provided by a free or low cost blog, together with RSS/syndication (see next point) cost me and others  thousands of dollars, I find it impossible to be blasé about blogging.

This is probably a good point at which to mention that my book for small business 7 Step Business Blog, is  not only in its 2nd edition but is now available for downloading free of charge (see form, top of right sidebar).

Syndication

Having sung the praises of Skype, I actually believe that, for the home based business owner, syndication, or RSS, is a bigger gift than Skype.

To use what is probably the more common term,  RSS provides me as a home based business owner with a two way benefit:

• I can get up to date news and other information from selected sources delivered automatically to me on a continuous basis
• I can make information available to others who might not come on a regular basis to visit my blog but are happy to receive regular updates in their RSS reader

What’s not to love?

Are there other secret weapons for the home based business owner? Please share.

Picture “Working from Home” – by carlfish via Flickr, Creative Commons

And Jake asked “Will there be a time when older people don’t think it’s cool to joke about their tech cluelessness?”. As a card-carrying “older person” I was not offended, although at least one commenter, younger than I, took umbrage at the generalization about age groups.

One reason I was not offended is that I do hear, especially from people over about 55, those jokes about not understanding the technology – usually, I believe, with a sub-text of “and I don’t want to know”.  Up till now I’ve tended to “go along with the joke”, as the saying goes, although I don’t actually find it funny. But now that I’ve read and reflected on what Jake is saying, I think I might emulate young Jake and start getting a tad peeved. Because however jokingly, however implicitly, being proud of ignorance is surely not a good look for anyone, at any age.

And ignorance of social media, at this point in time, is no longer an option for anyone who has a serious desire to be successful, or continue being successful, in business, government or other walks of life.

Speaking earlier this week at a conference on Government 2.0, on the theme that parliamentarians and public sector managers need to become active participants in social media, I mentioned that at at another event a couple of years ago, in the private sector, I’d been asked by a member of the baby boomer generation how people who did not become knowledgeable and skilled with the new media would get on, and I’d said “they will just become irrelevant”.  I did not spell out, but left the thought hanging in the air, so to speak, that the same would apply to politicians and public sector managers.

Not that I want to preach to the choir here. I just wanted to share the “Ah ha!” moment I’d had in reading Jake’s post and participating in the comment discussion:  ignorance about social media is no laughing matter.

More to the point, I am guessing there are many people besides me, who are active users of social media, participants in social networks, and are starting to find it frustrating in business to have to deal with people who are not participating.  Minor irritants perhaps, in themselves – “you’re not on Skype and you don’t want to check it out?” “you’re not on Twitter and you think it’s a waste of time?” – but indicating a mindset of resistance to learning and adapting.

I believe some of those people are in for a shock, the day they find that their unwillingness to learn new skills, new ways of communicating and collaborating, has left them out in the cold. Some of us just won’t want to put in the effort to do business with them and will seek out people who are more tuned in to these modes of communication and collaboration.

It won’t be joke time any more.

In short, I can see a time, if it hasn’t already arrived, where being able to use social media effectively and, for the digital immigrants among us, as natively as possible, will become a requirement for doing business. And, for those who feel they are behind the game, putting in the time now to learn and be more skilful will surely pay off in providing an edge in a tough world.

The age discussion is just a distraction.

But as I was asked on Monday by conference convenor Senator Kate Lundy,wh ere can those people who want to learn go to get the information they need? One suggestion I made, which would work for people in business as well as those in government, is to join one of the Social Media Club groups, where the motto is “if you get it, share it”. Other ideas or suggestions?

Picture credit: Social Media Club, San Francisco/Silicon Valley, Kristie Wells, via Flickr – Creative Commons

Although the term “social media release” has wide currency, I don’t know of any one, generally accepted definition or simple explanation.

My adaptation of an explanation by social media template author Todd Defren is that the term “social media release” (SMR) is used to describe a media release which incorporates social media tools (social bookmarking, RSS etc) to provide background data, context and on-going updates to clients’ news, so as to help journalists and bloggers better understand and/or research the story behind the releases.

Pitch Engine has been taken up by some major brands, including Xerox, IBM, Hallmark and many others.

It also works very effectively, in terms of functionality and especially financial affordability, for even the smallest, work from home, solopreneur business.

The most economical option is the free one. The next level of subscription, providing archiving of releases and other benefits, is only $35 a month or $400 a year. And for an additional $15 a month or a total $500 for a year’s subscription you get, for any brand from the largest to the smallest, your own customized newsroom. The details of the various options are described here.

Right now there is a special Buy One Get One Free offer for annual Pitch Engine subscription purchases – but it lasts only for another couple of days, through June 13, 2009. For anyone taking out a one-year paid subscription, a second will be added free. You might notice that the media release focuses on PR firms, but the offer is for any subscription, so the home based entrepreneur who does her own pr is most certainly included!

* (Disclosure: our company Webartsco is now working with Pitch Engine to market and support the service in Australia.)

Photo “Working from Home”, courtesy RodBegbie via Flickr, Creative Commons license

The old card is pictured here.

With a few offline events coming up I really do need something more up to date.

I’m taking this opportunity to figure out just what role I see the card as playing in my marketing and what I want the card to communicate about me and what I do.

That process is making me do some serious questioning of the whole business of business cards.

I’m by no stretch of the imagination a graphic designer, but for reasons outlined below I’m casting caution to the winds and designing this card myself, with the help of a couple of basic tools, Microsoft Publisher (part of Microsoft Office) the free, downloadable Irfanview image software and online tools provided by business card printers (details below).

This is a longer post than I’d orginally intended. Its length is partly due to its reflecting over 20 years experience of using a variety of business cards, with at best mixed results. I’m hoping the post might be helpful to someone, sometime, although as it’s about a DIY exercise I’m pretty sure it won’t win me any friends in the business card design game!

Memories of cards past

I’ve had a lot of business cards in my time, first in the public service once I reached a level of seniority where it was deemed appropriate for me to have a card, and then in business. In the public service I think it was a status thing, kind of a right to show off my title once I reached the executive level.

When I started in business, getting a business card was one of the things  you did. And you went to networking functions or meetings and exchanged cards with the other people there. I think the theory was that this was a way to attract business, although as I reflect on that now there is no single instance that springs to mind where I could say my business card did in fact ever play a key role in attracting new business.

That reminds me of the gag I heard a few years ago: “Did you hear about the consultants’ Christmas party? They all had a drink and exchanged business cards.”

I didn’t have or need a business card when I was a school teacher or when I drove a taxi. No point. I believe I needed one as a consultant and coach. I am pretty sure I still need one.

But what kind of card am I going to have? What words and other information will it have on it?

I’ve done some online searching for ideas, with mixed results (some links at the end of this post) and the realization that I have to figure out what will work for me, rather than rely on others’ ideas of what “should” be done. My ideas on that have changed in recent years and in fact my thoughts on the subject are still changing (evolving I hope).

My pre-conceived notions challenged: Bob Burg on the uses of cards

My ideas about business cards and their value for business started to change when I read master networker Bob Burg’s book Endless Referrals. Bob is not big on cards, or at least on how cards often get used.

He certainly doesn’t have time for the way they get used often at networking functions. If you have ever been to a networking breakfast where a person you’ve never met arrives and sprays their cards around the table like a dealer at a casino you will get the idea. Waste of time.

Bob says there are three uses for a business card: 1) you could win something (you know, the fishbowl thing at the local restaurant, or some other “email address catcher” receptacle at an expo); 2) you could get a lead (he is less than enthusiastic about this one); 3) you can get others’ cards. This third reason – to get others’ cards – is, Bob says, the only one that matters. “As far as I’m concerned” he writes “this is the one truly valuable benefit of business cards…”.

Although he is not what you would call an enthusiast, he’s not completely down on the idea of business cards:

Although I make light of business cards, and generally find they are not worth much more than the paper stock on which they are printed, they can have some value when used correctly.

Another challenge: The Case of the Disappearing Cards

I’ve started asking myself and the occasional person who will listen “Why do so many people not have cards any more?”

Because increasingly I’m noticing that people don’t have them, especially people in Internet/social media related business, with the notable exception of people who are in that arena but more in design, advertising and marketing fields.

Is it because business cards are so 20th century, so analog, so uncool? Is it a sign of a quiet revolution against the tide of newsletters, promos, last chance offers, exciting news that flood our email boxes in response to all those cards we’ve given out at breakfasts, in the bowls at expos, at business gatherings?

Or is it because a lot of us feel that we and our contact details are now so findable online that we don’t need the expense and inconvenience of having cards designed and printed and then having to carry them around, against the moment when someone at a function says “Do you have a card?” Or say we meet a business person from Japan.

Awkward thought: am I at risk,  if I fall in with a bunch of geeks, of looking like a real doofus if I ask for or produce business cards? Oh the embarrassment!

And what about the planet?

No doubt because I work mostly online, I always seem to have these days more business cards than I need. And the ones I have are now out of date, using a title I no longer use. And with that thing of it being only marginally more expensive to have a thousand printed than five hundred, I hate that moment when, sooner or later, I have to ditch about 600 cards I’ll never have use for again because the information on them is out of date.

Not to mention the speed of change in technology and business

Business cards, it seems to me, used to have a longer life than they are likely to have now. Twitter didn’t exist when the first version of my current card emerged and when I updated it in 2007 it did not occur to me to put my Twitter handle on the card, whereas now I’m doing so with my next card.

I also used then the title “Blogging Evangelist” which I don’t use now, not because I don’t promote blogging for business – I decidedly do – but because it’s not the focus of my business in the way it was back then.

The new card project

Taking all those considerations aboard, I do believe that, for the time being at least, I still need a card. But I’m going with temporary and home-built design, using some basic tools to get a result which I believe will work for me.

These are the principles I’ve applied:

Front of card

• include photo (a feature of the older and current card commented on positively, many times)
• my name in a font size easy to read at a glance
• my preferred contact details: mobile (cell) number | Twitter @ handle | email address
• primary web/blog address
• tagline
• no title (I find using titles triggers pigeonholing)

Back of card

• what I do in social media – strategy
• a quote about the importance of strategy
• room for recipient to jot a note
• matt finish (current card I had foolishly made gloss – no one could write on it!)

What’s not there

• other blog/web sites (potentially confusing)
• landline number (not always at base but usually have mobile)
• fax number (no discernible usefulness)
• coaching information (again, potentially confusing – thinking about a separate card)

Design and printing I’ve used Microsoft Publisher for the card design, Irfanview to adjust the picture, Click Business Cards (based in North Sydney, Australia) for the printing.

My intention is to do another version before my next overseas trip, with the international phone number (country code etc). In the US, I’ve found the people at Overnight Prints really helpful: but I had to learn the hard way that “Overnight” was a brand, not a literal promise – it was still speedy by the standards then (and perhaps still) prevailing in Australia and very economical.

Both Click Business Cards and Overnight Prints provide really helpful online tools. With each, you can use one of their templates or use their blank format and upload your own image/text, as I’m doing with the new card.

My new cards will not be certainly not as elegant as the old ones, but I am confident they will be more practical in helping communicate what I do in the social media space.

I quite liked the old black background but it was never part of an overall branding and in fact the card I’m producing now is more aligned with the very plain style of my main web/blog sites.

Some links for stimulating card design ideas (some fairly zany, which could work for some businesses):

• Neil Patel has a great post on really creative cards.
• David Airey has a thought-provoking post and comment thread on the question of good and bad design for business cards.
• Jacci Howard Bear offers on About.com a  list of the 11 Parts of a Business Card.
• Some good ideas are also in the article Business Card Design and Printing, by an Australian graphic design company.

I welcome any suggestions as to how, within the parameters I’ve indicated above, I could improve on my new design or comments on how I’m proceeding with this project. As there is no cost other than my time in any re-design, and a fairly modest cost for another print run, I’m quite open to practical suggestions. And anyway I’ll be doing a new run when I’m next planning to travel internationally.

I’ve drawn up a list of nine challenges for the serious business builder. There is no particular significance in the number: it’s just the items that came to me. And although in my previous post in this series I listed twelve things about home based business that give me pleasure, that doesn’t mean of itself that the pleasures outweigh the challenges – although for me they do.

The list of challenges was written down off the top of my head and is drawn very much from my own experience. I have deliberately not gone and looked up any of the books I have on small or home-based business, or lists on various websites, although no doubt my list has been influenced by things I have read at some time or other in the past 21 years of my having a home based business. So I accept that there may well be better, or at least longer, lists elsewhere. And I’m really wanting here to focus on listing the challenges, rather than pontificating, well, at least not right now or not as much as I might, on how to handle them.

1. Our mental pictures of business

If our mental picture of what “business” looks like does not include working from our kitchen table or from a corner of our lounge room, or even from a re-organized guest bedroom (hoping we don’t have any guests right now), it’s going to be difficult or impossible to see ourselves as building a business (as distinct from “managing” or “getting by”). If, like me, your early memories of “serious” business are going to work in a big office in the city, it could be even more challenging.

To deal with this we could start by seeking to understand and absorb into our thinking and behavior the NLP principle that “the map is not the territory”. If that map or picture of business we have in our mind cannot accommodate our desire to be serious about building a business from home, we need to find and work on ways to enlarge and enrich our mental map so that it includes a wider range of possibilities about “business”, or about “business and us” than we can currently envisage. Finding examples of people who have built successful businesses from home and focusing on them would be one way of moving forward.

2. Our self-judgement

If there is any one thing likely to keep us thinking small and playing small, it’s our own – often unconscious or sub-conscious – self-judgement. So many of us have had successes in life as measured by how we performed in various roles, whether in business or private life. When we start a business from home, we are going to have to deal with someone who is, for many of us, our sternest critic, ourselves. I’m not going to delve too deeply here, but anyone who these days has read or heard even a little about basic psychology knows how easy it is for us to sabotage our own best efforts through self-doubt and self-criticism.

Taking steps to build our self-esteem is part of what is needed to be able to build a real, even a great business from home. And we need to learn to think like business owners – easier said than done for people who have spent a working lifetime being employees.

3. Lack of skills

When we start a home based business we each have some sort of skillset. We may be strong in administration and in our knowledge of the product or services we are selling. We may have marketing skills. But we may lack some of the skills that in previous roles, in a corporate life, we did not really need to have. And for me, working for so long in the public service, one of the biggest challenges was not having any training, or for that matter skill, in selling or marketing. I’ve since spent a lot of money being trained by experts and a lot of time developing my selling skills, to a point where I no longer feel anxious about that area.

For another person, there may be a need to develop some basic administrative and financial literacy skills. One skill I would recommend highly is knowing how to read a balance sheet and other financial reports. There are books and courses on these things.

4. Lack of capital

II think I’m on safe ground in stating – without any research data to back me up – that one of the realities of home based business is that a lot of us have started our business from home because we did not have the funds to spend on setting up an office or workshop or studio elsewhere, or if we had the money available we did not want to spend it on that. There is a strong element of common sense in that. Spending a lot of money on facilities before you have income arriving to cover it is not usually a smart move. On the other hand, it highlights a factor, lack of capital to grow and expand, which is common to small business and one of the standard reasons offered as to why a lot of small businesses fail.

Business credit is one answer to this challenge and in the current economic climate that is presumably going to be harder to access than usual.  The topic is too big to cover in this short post, but for any business to grow, it will be necessary to work out where the money to underwrite that will come from, whether from a percentage of income, from personal savings, from family loans or financial institution credit.  And for any of those options to have a chance to help produce success, some serious financial planning and business strategic planning will be essential. More skill development!

5. Attitudes of others

I would like to think that in this day and age people generally would understand that a business from home can be a serious business. My hunch is that the reality is otherwise. And I think the reality is that no matter how many people you could produce who generate a six figure income or more from home, people who commute to work and work for others for a wage less than that will still be capable of being condescending about business from home. And then there are the drop-ins: people who would not dream of just dropping in to see someone in a city office without at least a prior phone call or text message, but will feel no compunction about calling by unannounced to someone’s home, even though they know they are working.

We need to let people know, early in the piece, that during business hours we are not available for casual drop-ins but if someone wants to come around for a coffee and chat to just be good enough to call first.

There is actually a deeper issue here. Unless we are made of very stern stuff, we can easily be influenced, often without our seeing it, by attitudes of friends and family. That’s the real reason we need to let people know that what we are doing is business, not a hobby.

6. Being able to set our own times to work

The flipside to having the freedom to work at the times we choose and at a pace we set, not at times and a pace others set, is that we have the scope to fritter time away and be unproductive without always recognizing that. In a former role, we might have procrastinated but we knew that when the report was due we had to deliver it or face consequences. A problem with working from home, for ourselves, is that we have the ability to procrastinate without having to face consequences, or face them immediately.

We do need to plan, to set routines and stick to them, and have a system of reviewing progress. We need to exercise self-discipline and be honest with ourselves in having a clear sense of how what we do and when we do it relates to how we get paid.

7. Family responsibilities

There can actually be some very real advantages in terms of family responsibilities, in terms of working from home. For example, being able to take children to school and pick them up at the end of the school day, rather than heading off in the early morning to commute to a city office or battle your way home through the crowds, strap-hanging on a train or bus. But for someone who has been used to working in a traditional business setting and then has to organize a schedule which takes account of children’s programs, or perhaps involves caring for elderly parents, there can be a challenge in getting into and maintaining a “business-building” mentality.

There may be need for some negotiation. For example, parents may need to sit down with children and set some ground rules – as, when their mother has the door of her office closed, that means she is at work on her business, which provides the food on the table and their clothes and holidays etc. And couples need some “contractual understandings”, such as that one person being “at home all day” does not mean that that person has to do all the housework and be responsible for everything around the house.

8. Lack of corporate resources

One of the best things about working in a corporate environment is that there are People Who Take Care of Things. Whether it is how your salary is paid and expenses reimbursed, or the provision and care of office equipment, computers, Blackberries, there is someone who takes care of it. Not always efficiently, perhaps, but generally in such a way that you can get on with the “serious” work you are being paid to do. And in a big enough enterprise there will be people who can fill in or cover for you, if you are sick, for instance.

Then one day, when you have been relishing having your own home office, you have an Internet access problem and it happens to be at 11 am on a Saturday and you have a proposal to deliver first thing Monday. After you have spent a couple of hours on the phone to tech support and done at least one trip to a local store to get some piece of equipment, you find you have lost a large part of the time you were going to use to work on your proposal. Welcome to the world of home based business, where for all the wonders of outsourcing we sometimes find ourselves wearing hats we are not used to and may not have particular training for. You are now officially CEO, CMO, CFO, CTO and Head Technician.

My view is that there is no simple solution, but we need to be able to work out early in the piece what we can reasonably, sensibly outsource, and what we absolutely have to do ourselves.

9. Team of one

This point, the challenge of being a team of one, is closely related to the previous one on lack of corporate resources. I’m a strong believer in the advantages of getting synergy, which I think of as the higher level of energy and greater effectiveness you can get when two or more people are working together in harmony. In corporate environments, a lot of money and effort is expended in getting teams to work together effectively and productively.

Working from home, many of us have achieved more or less success by teaming up with others who also work from home. I’ve personally found this beneficial in a number of ways: in pitching for business the combined skills of the team can be a deal-maker; you can brainstorm and share the work that needs to be done; you can check and improve on one another’s work. At the same time, there needs to be a lot of trust and you need to have mechanisms in place, in advance, to resolve disputes and misunderstandings.

Do you have other points to add to the list? Or would you parse some or all of the ones above differently? We are all learning and I hope you’ll share.

Picture credit:
2007 Dublin City Marathon (Ireland) courtesy infomatique, via Flickr – Creative Commons