Welcome back! It's good to see you again. Please note that I am now publishing all new material at my hub site: In Context Blog

This is a guest post by Alvina Lopez:

Twitter and Small-Business: 3 Brief Stories to Inspire Other Small-Business Owners

We often hear Twitter stories about customers and large corporations and how the two interact both online and in real life, but what of all the small businesses? How have they adapted Twitter’s usefulness into their business models?

If a quick Google search is any indication, most of them have done exceedingly well. There are many success stories around the internet that tell of small businesses’ ability to connect with clients and potential customers in order to promote their brand in many ways, ranging from basic status alerts of hours and location changes to extravagant sales and contests.

Here are just a few scenarios that other small business owners can learn from:

@powells – Powell’s Books (Portland, OR)

Powell’s books is a well-known independent books store that recently celebrated it sixteenth year of having an online presence and store (its brick and mortar location is forty years old). As part of this sixteenth birthday celebration, the store recently offered over $500 worth of free books to contest entrants, all of whom had heard of the prizes online. This celebration, no doubt, also brought many new customers to the Powell’s Books website, and hopefully their experience was good enough to keep them coming back.

@desserttruck – DessertTruck Works (New York, NY)

DessertTruck Works is one of the many street food vendors that travel around our cities to sell their food to hungry urban workers. Many of the street food vendors use Twitter to tell their customers where to find them, what deal sand meals they’ve got for the day, and how their trucks will handle inclement weather, traffic problems, and other sudden changes in the route. By keeping customers informed, DessertTruck Works and vendors like it can better protect their expected sales figures, thus keeping profits up.

@danielha – cofounder of Disqus, a third party blog commenting platform

Shortly after a blogger Tweeted that she did not think she could use Disqus because it would not handle the older comments on her blog, essentially erasing them from the blog after the switch, cofounder of Disqus Daniel Ha responded to her with a question: “doh. how can we make it easier for you?’ What followed was a back and forth through email which ultimately led to Disqus finding a way to handle old comments. By watching his brand and interacting with users, Ha managed to help one blogger out and greatly expand Disqus through this improvement.

As I said earlier, these are just a few of the many small business Twitter success stories that you can read about online. The important thing to keep in mind is that in each of these stories, and in others around the internet, we see small businesses using Twitter to focus on connecting with clients and potential customers. They’re not simply in the game to get the most followers, but rather they seem interested in developing relationships within the community. They understand that using Twitter to gain others’ trust is the first step to growing their business.

By-line:

This guest post is contributed by Alvina Lopez, who writes on the topics of accredited online schools.  She welcomes your comments at her email Id: alvina.lopez @ gmail.com.

Each Wednesday, Mike St. Pierre posts about topics related to Getting Things Done.

When I first started blogging a few years ago, I went through a series of stages that most authors can appreciate.

• Wow, I’m online!
• Ok, now what do I say regularly?
• This is really easy!
• People are actually reading me?
• Better check my stats…
• Better recheck my stats…

And so it goes.  In those early days (here’s TDS in retro format) (and in version 2.0) life was simple and something like blog stats meant a lot to me.  I joined a few networks and saw the others as competition.  When top 50 productivity lists came out, I felt honored to be among the ranks of 43 Folders and Zen Habits.  After all, those are the big dogs, I thought. I Stumbled.  I Dugg.  I plugged away at Delicious.  I posted for LifeHack and others.

LAZY from a GTD PERSPECTIVE

But, as with many things in life, I just got lazy and didn’t really care about so many of those things.  Checking my stats became an afterthought.  RSS subscribers- if folks showed up, cool.  If not, my quality of life was really not affected all that much.

I even tried an experiment when I went on vacation.  I watched my traffic while not posting for a week.  Guess what? They were nearly identical to when I was posting like a maniac.  I realized that my small fish of a  blog was in a very big pond.  A humble truth was once again realized.  As with many things-GTD, I began to relax and focus on my message.  I then felt more free to massage the content and focus in on what I really wanted to say.

TODAY

So what’s my outlook today?  I blog because I can.  I have something very unique to discuss with readers- the spirituality of work.  Very few other folks are talking about it so I know that I’m filling a void.  RSS subscribers are a handy item for job interviews but beyond that, my children’s quality of life is not affected one  bit by how many folks are reading TDS in Google Reader.  And that’s ok.

In the big pond of blogs, some small boutique shops can survive.  WIth the right attitude, a unique product and a willingness to be at service to the wider community- The Daily Saint and this humble correspondent will be around for a long time.  That’s GTD in perspective.

Phil Gerbyshak at Slacker Manager has tagged me with this meme, and since I am sick and unable to concentrate too much, I’ll play along. First, the Rules:

• Link to the original tagger(s), and list these rules on my blog.
• Share 7 facts about myself in the post - some random, some weird.
• Tag 7 people at the end of my post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

7 Facts About Me

1. I’m 39 years old, as of December 1st, 2008. I have just under one year to complete my goal of making a million $$$ before I am 40. (I set that goal when I graduated from High School and everything looked peachy)
2. I went to college for Mechanical Engineering, loved college and my friends - hated engineering. If I could go back and do it again I would major in History.
3. I got married for the very first time in March of 2005. Since then the lovely bride and I have lived in three states (CT, NC, ME) and visited 11 more in the last 5 weeks.
4. I have had a wide variety of jobs and a “career” in Hospitality Management, but I have never loved any job as much as I love working for myself, helping other people learn the skills that have helped me.
5. I do not really like dessert.
6. I have ADD and I manage it thru diet, suuplements and lifestyle management.
7. My hobby is collecting and painting miniature soldiers.

NOw, I get to tag 7 other folks to share information about themselves, and then let them know they have to play.

I have a good feeling about these 7 fellow tweeters and bloggers!

• Styletime
• Ross Hill
• eDragonu
• Sarah Lewis
• Heidi Miller
• Becky McCray
• communicatrix

Please do feel free to stop by. These blogs are not all about productivity, but they may have some helpful tidbits for you in other parts of your life.

Sorry for lack of posting, I have been been very busy with offline work. I had a little time this morning and wanted to share with you an interesting post by Jared at Technotheory.com - Should “productivity” play a role in your friendships and relationships?

When it comes to friendships and relationships, is it fair to apply principles of productivity…or is it not only a waste of time but perhaps even harsh and potentially damaging?

I say if you’ve got a system that works for you, then by all means apply it to the people in your life, too. It’ll not only help your sanity but your relationships.

Read it and leave a comment.