The single biggest struggles I encounter with entrepreneurs trying to build a business is marketing. Some small business owners don’t think about it; some don’t understand it; some don’t like it; some cling to the belief that it simply shouldn’t be necessary, as long as their product is good enough. One way or another, though, [ Read More ]
As if year-end wrap up lists weren’t enough fun by themselves, I thought I’d share another particularly good ‘list of lists’ specifically designed for small business owners. SmallBizBee compiles a list of their most popular published list, to create the Top 10 Small Business List Posts of 2009 master list. Ranging from topics such as [ Read More ]
As my year-end consumption of ‘top ten lists‘ continues, I came across one on Chicago Now called “The Top 10 Small Business Trends of the Decade” by Barry Moltz. In the list he mentions several things that have all dovetailed together to define the changing nature of work — most centered around the pros and [ Read More ]
As a content strategist one of the things I spend a great deal of time discussing with entrepreneurs is SEO. As I’ve written here before, my first goal in any SEO discussion with someone is to help educate them on what SEO is and isn’t, and what it really can do versus what it really [ Read More ]
In a recent blog post, author Scott Ginsberg recently asked Have You Executed These Ten Essentials of Entrepreneurial Excellence? He then listed off the ten things he highlights as essential for entrepreneurs to be truly successful: Prestige requires pandemonium Confidence requires congruency Fame requires flexibility Success requires surrender. Creativity requires curiosity Originality requires murder Serendipity [ Read More ]
I grew up in a family-owned business. I remember, back in the early 1980′s, when my mother (the bookkeeper) got her first computer for the business: it was a Data General and it was bigger than our dishwasher. It had five-and-a-quarter floppy disks; it had virtually no RAM to speak of; and it came with [ Read More ]
I have recently started writing a blog series as part of my work with online small business management client, WorkingPoint. Aside from the fact that I think WorkingPoint has the best solution for small businesses, the reason I really like this series is because WorkingPoint is really making a strong statement about being a true [ Read More ]
What do FreshBooks, Shoeboxed, BatchBlue, MailChimp and Outright all have in common? Aside from being Web 2.0 businesses who serve the small business market, they are also the founding member organizations of The Small Business Web. An exciting initiative that launched earlier this year, The Small Business Web is a partnership of businesses dedicated to [ Read More ]
The second annual Interactive Austin Conference has wrapped up, and in true social media fashion, there is no shortage of online accounts of the day’s activities (with more to be coming over the next few days, no doubt). Online already are keynote coverage posts by Ricci Neer, for each Dion Hinchcliffe, Sam Lawrence and whurley. [ Read More ]
This week was the second annual Interactive Austin Conference. Focusing on the value of social media for business, AI09 convened a broad spectrum of experts, locals and practitioners to share, debate, network and learn about how to take advantage of social media for the benefit of business. Keynotes Starting off the day was industry leading [ Read More ]
The former CMO of Jive Software, Sam Lawrence, spoke to a crowded room at Interactive Austin this morning. His message was on the lessons needed to specifically apply in order to make social media work in your business. How We Say What We Say One of the challenges social media evangelists face is based on [ Read More ]
Over the past few months, I’ve been more closely aligning myself with the Enterprise 2.0 community of professionals. Though I have been in technology for my entire career, and in Web 2.0 for at least part of that time, and implementing Enterprise 2.0 solutions quite extensively in recent years, I had not previously made a [ Read More ]