Social media for business: boon or bane?

When I started Organic-Ally years ago, I had wanted only to change the world, that we learn to "dispense with disposables". Seriously! One string bag at a time. One organic cotton hankie at a time. Here's what I did: 

Organic-Ally Hankie Gift - Father's Day Special

  • I found suppliers of organic cotton string bags, and organic cotton hankies. I placed my orders.
  • I set up a "free" website, but this lacked a lot of functionality. So I paid for a website.
  • I bolted on a free shopping basket software, but this only allowed me to take cheque payments.

Imagine my shock when the first order dropped into my Inbox. We had gone away on holiday and I came home to find an order with a cheque enclosed. I did not even have the right type of envelope to despatch the order.

  • So I migrated to a paying service.
  • Then I integrated payment service providers and had been doing much the same since then.

How did we find customers on the internet? At that time there were a number of like-minded businesses and we exchanged links. We each had a page that said: "these are retailers you can trust, and we all have the same ethics".

Organic-Ally was, and still is, more of a mission than business, although at one point I had a business plan that was much bigger. That was before I decided to return to academia. I was able to do this because my husband's health had improved, and our son's SEN were being taken care of. But, of course, I took my eyes off the ball. 

Fast forward to the present. Well, if you do not have people with the expertise to write SEO (search engine optimization) and content for you, or pay to get people to "Like" your Instagram, Twitter and FB, then you are stuck.

As I am now stuck. I am just rubbish with social media. I don't even like sending out marketing emails to customers because I find these intrusive.

Instead I get flooded by requests from the "experts" to re-model my website, to ensure I get page one ranking, to manage my social media, etc. 

Please, please, by all means, do this for me. But would you take payment in hankies? String bags (like regrets), I have a few?

There is no money for marketing. If anyone wishes to improve my website/SEO/marketing for free (or be paid in hankies/string bags), please apply within. Or make me a case study to show your prospective clients what you are capable of?

Why not close up/down? 

Good question. Now that there are hankie retailers all over E**y, etc and they seem to have won the SEO sweepstakes, whatever Google says, maybe I should just close. ?? (NB. Too many times I have googled "organic cotton hankies" and am taken to an E**y site where they do not, in fact, sell organic cotton hankies.)

But I still enjoy making hankies. I still enjoy working with fabrics. The "organic" factor is still very important. See: Why Organic Cotton? And Organic-Ally allowed me to work around family needs. And I hope very much that one day, I can hand over Organic-Ally to someone who chooses to do the same.

****

Buy organic cotton Birch fabric at reduced prices!

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