Mike Bowler

A lot of people don't seem to understand what we're offering in the way of business cards for Easy Branding Tools so we thought we'd let everyone try it out for free.

https://easybrandingtools.com/freecards

Obviously, we're trying to get people interested in our full product, which includes letterhead, a hosted website and branded email. Think of this as a no-obligation teaser

Once you fill in the information you want on the card, we'll email you a PDF file that's ready for printing. You can either print it yourself on your printer using standard card stock (the email will explain what paper to use) or you can send it to a professional print service. If you're just printing a couple, it's cheaper to print yourself. If you're printing hundreds then it's cheaper to send to a print service.

This article from the CBC shows real confusion on the part of the government. I've highlighted the parts I find most interesting.



Clearly the government doesn't know what end is up. They allow politicians to use Facebook because it's a business tool that lets them communicate with their constituents but don't allow government employees to use it because it somehow isn't a business tool. And don't forget that the employees might someday use it inappropriately even though there's no evidence of that happening so far.

I find Facebook to be extremely useful as a business tool. It lets me keep in touch with business contacts in a way that other business networking sites like LinkedIn just don't. Clearly the politicians have figured this out and are using Facebook for business. The policy makers within the government are behind the politicians on this one though. They haven't figured out that it might be a useful tool for government employees to keep in touch with other business people as well.

I was at a business networking event last night where the topic of Facebook came up. A number of us are seeing real business value from this site. One person who works for the government was talking about how she had just signed up but couldn't use it from work so she has to wait till she gets home before she can use it. Wouldn't it be better if she had access to the tools to do her job while she was at work rather than having to wait till she gets home?

The standard argument seems to be that we should ban websites if there's a possibility of doing personal rather than business things with them. Using that logic, shouldn't we remove phones from the office as well? I've seen lots of people make personal phone calls from work and yet we don't see this overreaction here.

I'd like to see a bit more common sense put into play here. We should let our people have access to any tools that let them do business more effectively and trust them to keep personal usage to a minimum. We already do that with phones - let's start trusting our people with websites like Facebook as well.

There's a new blog that I'm going to be contributing to: ThinkingOfStartingABusiness.com. Why another blog when I'm not writing frequently enough to this one as it is?

Three reasons really.

First is that this blog has become a real mix of technical and business and nature and other stuff. Just because I'm interested in a variety of things, it doesn't mean that my readers are interested in the same mix. Moving business discussions to a blog devoted to just business stuff will help split the content a bit.

Secondly, Easy Branding Tools (the product from my newest company) is targeting people just starting a business and the business articles I write tend to be relevant for exactly that market. This means that people interested in my business content may also be interested in Easy Branding Tools so we can use that as a feeder site.

I write business articles because I find it fascinating. If I can use those same articles to drive traffic to one of my businesses then that's an added bonus.

Third, there are other people interested in writing for a common "starting a business" blog who wouldn't post anything here. This means more interesting articles from more people which is good news all round.

So, if you're here because you're interested in the business stuff I write then please join me at the new blog ThinkingOfStartingABusiness.com.

And if you're thinking "hey, I might like to write something interesting about business for that new blog" then drop me a line at mbowler [at] gargoylesoftware [dot] com.