Make It

Overnight Prints on Twitter

Overnight Prints, a company I have used for business cards and post cards, has a Twitter account. Use it to ask questions about your order and find out about their latest promotions and discounts. Unlike other corporate accounts, this one looks to be handled by an actual person- not a computer- who is able to provide answers to specific customer questions.

Twitter 101 for Businesses

Via Mashable - a great blog with lots of social media news and statistics - I found out about Twitter's new  guide to using the site for businesses: Twitter 101 for Business. I've written before about how Twitter is a great tool for entrepreneurs, but if you need a little extra nudge to join up, here you go. Follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/rifferaff

Do You Blog Your Business?

Modish Biz Tips has an article up today covering 7 reasons why you need to blog if you are a shop owner. Check it out here.

How Not to Use Twitter to Promote Your Business

On Twitter, you can use the hashtag (#) along with a word or phrase to make it easy for people to search for that phrase within Twitter. For example, over the past few weeks, news regarding the Iranian election has often been tweeted with the tag: #Mousavi. (Mousavi is the name of the candidate who many believe actually won the election.) This makes it easy to enter the phrase #Mousavi in the Twitter search and only turn up relevant results. It's a way to guarantee your Tweet will be seen by people looking for news on this specific subject. And, with interest in the Iran election running high, it's a way to guarantee your tweet will be seen by lots of people.

As business owners, we all want to raise awareness of our brand, but surely no company would be so tacky and tasteless as to write tweets promoting their store and include the #Mousavi tag so that it turns up under this heavily searched term. Right? Well unfortunately one UK-based furniture company did exactly that, exploiting the Iranians struggle for demorcracy in order to sell home accesories.

In some of the worst hashtag spam we’ve seen in a long time, European furniture maker Habitat has been caught spamming Twitter to increase signups to its customer database.

More specifically, the retailer was caught adding topics from the trending topics – from #iphone to #Mousavi – to the front of Tweets trying to get people to sign up to a customer database. One Tweet read: “#MOUSAVI Join the database for free to win a £1,000 gift card.” The cheap trick has led many Twitter users to ask: what does selling furniture have to do with the situation in Iran?

Read the full article at Mashable. It's the absolute wrong way to use Twitter and has tarnished the brand's reputation in my mind. Take note.

Using Flickr photos on your blog

I'm not the best or the most prolific photographer, but I know it's good blogging practice to include a photo with every post. When I don't have a personal photograph to supply, as in the post below...and this one, I turn to Flickr. Flickr is a great resource for a wide range of photos, but you can't just use them willy-nilly, even if you credit the source. You might get away with it, heck, you'll probably get away with it, but if you want to make sure you're always in the clear, read on.

Here is an informative and well-written blog post that demystifies the confusing (to me, at least) world of copyright and Creative Commons. An excerpt:

The kind of photos you want to look for will depend on where you want to use them. Flickr images either fall under a traditional copyright or Creative Commons license.

You’re forbidden to use Flickr images marked as copyrighted (or ‘All rights reserved’) for your own purposes unless you get explicit permission from the author. Most of us don’t have the time or the patience to put up with the hassle. Here, I want to focus on Creative Commons licensed photos.

Read more here.

My take on the matter? I'm definitely guilty of pulling images from Flickr without following the proper copyright procedure. I'd always thought if I cited the source, it was ok, no matter where it came from. I've never really payed attention to those copyright settings, even on my own photostream which I now see is "all rights reserved" even though I'd be totally fine with someone using my photos as long as they link back. The craft and design blogging world is a little more insular and, dare I say, nicer than the blogging world at large. I've never had any complaints about use of photos and I imagine most people are similarly ignorant about the copyright laws and don't mind the use of their photos in appropriate ways.

So what will I do know that I know the official rules? Well my practice for using images from craft and design blogs will remain the same. Like I said, it's an insular group and in general people are fine with proper citation of the source. When I choose to use an image outside my little bubble of the blogosphere, where I won't have any connection at all to the photographer and am simply looking for a specific image to illustrate a concept, I will follow the Creative Commons licensing rules. How about you?

(Photo via Flickr)

What small businesses can learn from the White House Flickr Photostream

The Official White House Photostream uploaded its first photo to Flickr on April 28, 2009 and has quickly become the most buzzed about account on the photo-sharing site. Official White House photographer Pete Souza snaps all the photos for the photosstream and the resulting images - at times funny, poignant and inspiring - offer unprecedented access to the most famous address in the world.

The White House photostream is completely relevant to small businesses because of two words: transparency and accessibility. Scrolling through photos of the President enjoying a laugh with advisors or rearranging the furniture in the Oval Office, I'm struck simultaneously by the sheer normalcy of images and also how extraordinary they are. The snapshots of intense meetings draw me in and make me feel as if I'm right there next to world leaders as the important topics of the day are discussed, and the White House has never felt more accessible. The administrator of the account (whether it's Pete Souza or an assistant, I don't know) even went so far as to make the EXIF information visible for all new photos in response to the recurring suggestions to do so from members of the Flickr community in the comments section. 

I'm going to take a cue from the White House and think of how to do more with my own (somewhat neglected) Flickr stream. I may not have an award winning photographer to document my every move but I do have a business to promote, an audience, and a desire to connect with customers and creators. If the Federal Government, the largest employer in the U.S., can utilize Flickr to make themselves seem so approachable and transparent, surely we small businesses owners can do the same.