Small Business Tech

One of the downsides to Tumblr is that by default it does not have any Like buttons for Facebook. Having these Like buttons are very important to helping to spread your information to other potential fans, customers or followers. 

The following steps will guide you to adding the Facebook Like button to the bottom of all your existing and future blog posts. 

Step 1:

Log into your Tumblr account and click on the gear icon for preferences.

Step 2:

Next click on the customize your blog button.

Step 3:

Now in the left side pane, you want to click on the button under your current theme labeled “Edit HTML” just under the image of your theme.

Step 4:

Next you need to scroll down in the code to where you see the text {/block:Posts} for my theme it happened to be around line 299. 

Step 5:

Now copy and paste in the following code in full, just before the {/block:Posts} tag in your theme.

<div><iframe src=”http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href={Permalink}&amp;layout=standard&amp;show-faces=true&amp;width=450&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light” scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0” allowTransparency=”true” style=”border:none; overflow:hidden; width:300px; height:75px”></iframe></div>

Your code when pasted should like similar to this.

Step 6:

Almost done, at the top be sure to save and close your theme changes. You can now go to your blog page and refresh to test that the buttons are showing up properly.

If you are having any issues re-check the code to make sure you pasted the code in full with div tags in the correct location and also to be sure it saved properly. 

*Update 10/21/2011*

One of my customers had a Tumblr template that did not have the {/block:Posts} tag so here is another option if you run into this. You can place the code without the DIVS like I did in the image below.

Need help?

If this kind of change is a bit too much for you? My company Site Dragon can help, give us a call or email by visiting our web site at: http://www.sitedragon.com

Found a cool site for managing your social media sites. You can post in 1 place to all of them. http://www.ping.fm

SiteDragon web site updated, with a cleaner design and flat pricing on services you need.

Check us out at http://www.sitedragon.com

With smart phones becoming more and more common place, it is more often than not your customers will be trying to connect to your business from that device.

Those of us with smart phones have all done it, you are talking with a friend or co-worker and hear about a company or see it on TV and immediately pull out your phone to look up that company.

Using the SiteDragon site as an example you are usually greeted with a site like this:

Needless to say navigating even a simple site like this through your phones screen is painful. In most cases your customers are just looking for basic information, maybe they want the phone number, or just quickly see your services to see if you have what they are after.

As the saying goes, it is best to strike while the iron is hot and missing out on this opportunity to connect with your customer you run the risk of them forgetting to revisit your site later.

At SiteDragon we offer the ability to convert your site into a mobile version and provide code that will route any customers who may be visiting your site on a mobile device to your mobile version seamlessly.

Here is an example of the SiteDragon site below with the mobile version:

This interface is a lot cleaner! My customers can now quickly find what they are looking for to either; contact me by phone or email right from their device and also quickly see my services or connect with me on social sites like Facebook or Twitter.

Getting a mobile site today can be a huge boost to your business by getting those mobile customers while the iron is hot and they are interested in your company.

Contact us over at SiteDragon and get a Mobile site today!

As most of you know the hardest part of being in business is getting those new referrals. Once you have that referral more than likely you are able to turn that into a potential customer or at the very least increase your brand awareness to a future customer.

The best referrals you get are almost always from word of mouth from your existing friends, coworkers and colleagues. 

This is where Referral Key comes in. This free service will let you add in all your clients and other colleagues and let them refer you new business. They should be doing this already right?

Where the good part is, you can add in a $ dollar amount that you are willing to pay for new referrals, and unlike pay per click advertising you are in control of paying out those referrals. Meaning you only need to pay out for a referral that generates in new business. You can also turn that off or on as needed should you reach a maximum capacity.

Check out our SiteDragon profile for an example of how your business can look. You can also import in your LinkedIN contacts and other contacts as well. 

More often than not I find myself needing to do a remote session with clients to see what is going on their screen.

Sometimes its for tech support or other times it might be the reverse where I need to do a demo where they look at my screen and I walk them through the presentation. 

There are a few brands out there that let you do this and each is more expensive than the next. I was using GotoAssist which was costing around $9.99 for what they call a “Day Pass” which was the cheapest option I could find out there, this was a good option for the people who needed remote support. In addition I was using something called Fuze Meeting which was a free online meeting software as long as you only had a small number of attendees, the voice did not work so well but most of my clients would phone in so it worked out ok.

Yesterday a friend of mine showed me a free option to replace them all called Join.Me and I was blown away with how easy it was. No registration, no lets put your credit card on file just 1 click install the software which was fast and your ready to share. I can invite a bunch of clients for a meeting, pass control over to them if I needed or have my client go to the site and email me the share link to do remote support.

They also have a Pro version if you find your business needs something with more structure like scheduling meetings and more. 

If you find yourself needing an online meeting or to do some remote assistance this is the product to try. 

One of my clients has a need for a newsletter system after doing some research we checked out Constant contact and others it was far more cost effective for my client to use these existing systems then to build one from scratch. Along with far less headaches of managing a email marketing server, email bounces, spam compliance and all of that. 

The best one in the running right now is MailChimp, which offers a free forever plan for under 2,000 subscribers. They also offer a pay as you go plan which really meets the needs of my small business client who is just starting out and will have low volume for awhile.