Search Engine of Independent Retailers and Small Business Resources

O.k., I’m not sure if we’re procrastinating or lolligagging. Actually, if you could see what’s going on behind the monitor, it’s neither. This is a rather new venture for us. Neither of us really know anything about blogging and even less the new vocabulary that comes with it. What we do know is that there is a need for this blog idea. The idea of bringing small businesses together for a common cause. We know this, because we have a need for it and have heard feedback from colleagues expressing their desire for such a place.

So, fortunately, we’re quick studies. I’ve personally built about a dozen or so web sites for ourselves and colleagues; some of them pretty darn good too, just look at the ones on the left column under “Our sites”. I especially like what I’ve done for The Big Kitchen Cafe in San Diego. Whoopi Goldberg used to wash dishes here before she made it to the big time. This restaurant has been featured on Rachel Rae’s $40 a Day on the Food Network as well as being featured in Bon Appetit magazine as one of the top 10 breakfast restaurants in the country! The owner, Judy “The Beauty On Duty,” is our business neighbor and we’re very fortunate. She stops in and picks out whatever candle she likes and we don’t go hungry. It’s a mutually satisfying relationship.

Anyway, I digress. I think we have this concept pretty much in hand. We’ve set up this blog using Wordpress and hosting it on our own server. Having a little experience with hosting web sites, I managed to get all the files in their appropriate spots, and turned it on! And poof, we’re bloggers now!

Now to get content. I’ve visited many other blogs and poked around to see what other people are doing and how. We’re looking for articles related to our industry because after all, I have only so much information to share of my own, I can only type so fast, and I figure our readership might think that it would be nice to have some variety. So I found a couple resources for free content to share and articles with rights to republish that appear to be current and valid in today’s world. We’ll be sharing those as soon as we are able to review them and post the most relevant ones.

I’m also poking around and finding as many online forums as possible that are relevant to independent small business and have found a couple good ones. My theory, and I believe some of the gurus out there will agree, is that by joining these forums, I can poke around the various topics in which I’m familiar and put my 2 cents worth in. Hopefully the readers of that post will find it interesting enough to want to know who the genious is behind these words of wisdom and from whence he came. Therefore, we place our name and URL (universal resource locator) in every signature we post. This is good info. Perhaps one of you out there who is aware of this strategy can elaborate on it some more and we’ll post your article. If not, I’ll talk about it more in depth some other time.

So that’s where we are today. Amongst all the other projects we have going to keep ourselves fed and sheltered, we’re seeking content for you. I’ve just come to the realization that part of the spirit and philosophy of blogging is that it’s sort of an ongoing chain of thought. And if we don’t post frequently, even if we don’t have anything profound to memorialize, it’s better to pull that train of though into a station once in a while and provide someone an opportunity to board (or bored?), then to appear that we’ve been derailed!