This week in small business: Enough 2017 SEO tips and insights to keep you busy
SEO was really on everyone’s mind last week. If you’re new to the topic, or an old hand in search of fresh insights, you’ll find what you need in this week’s collection of curated content from around the Interweb. Leadership, management, and productivity If you want success, you need to keep negativity out of your life. Tim Denning shares how to not allow fear to stop you from becoming phenomenal. Want to do some binge watching? Check out these must-watch TV shows for small business owners, according to Tori Tsu. Some grants and contests are set aside for women-owned small businesses. In this National Law Review Article, Kristen M. Veresh tells us what’s required. Marketing and sales In his Forbes article, Jayson DeMers asks if we are overdue for an SEO revolution. On the same topic, Thea Partridge delivers three solid strategies for improving SEO. And if you still don’t have enough SEO ideas, Joel House has five tips for you! AJ Agrawal says that 2017 is the year of video marketing. Marketing departments today are expected to contribute revenue, but remember – it’s not just about technology when you start making your plans, says Steve Nakata. It may be a little late for this, but I think the principles still apply: How to Continue Your Small Business Success After the Holidays, by Rich Kahn. Carbonite’s Chief Evangelist Norman Guadagno shares four marketing tips that are sure to help your small business grow. Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible. – Tony Robbins Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation Writer and programmer Marco Arment published two interesting graphs on his website that might give us clues as to the future of computing. If you want to drive your startup, you need to stay strong. Here are how 10 top entrepreneurs take care of their health. We talk about niche marketing a lot. Sometimes it’s good to hear a success story and that’s what Dan Schawbel delivers in his profile of Derek Flanzraich. Until you cross the bridge of your insecurities, you can’t begin to explore your possibilities. – Tim...
read more20 quotes to encourage the new entrepreneur
“Imagination rules the world.” – Napoleon Bonaparte Someone tweeted that quote the other day and I immediately copied it so I could come back to it, share it, and ponder it a bit. I think it makes a great new entrepreneur quote because when you’re starting out on a venture – or hoping to – you need to let your imagination run free. The new entrepreneur is always trying to create something where before there was nothing, and it takes a great imagination to accomplish that. You know I believe that coaching is important if you’re serious about success. In some ways, I find that inspirational quotes can give you similar encouragement and insights as a coach. And, they are always at hand. With that introduction, here are some of the best new entrepreneur quotes from my “collection.” Find a way to save them so you can lean on one or two when you need a little push. Also, feel free to use them in your social media posts. “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence…” – Calvin Coolidge “You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction.” – George Lorimer “One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.” – Andre Gide “Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.” – Les Brown “Vision without action is daydreaming and action without vision is a nightmare.” – Anon “The road to success is always under construction.” – Arnold Palmer “Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.” – Dale Carnegie “You have to be able to get up and dust yourself off and always be going forward.” – Rita Moreno “Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.” – Henry Ford “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Edison “Everyone’s dream can come true if you just stick to it and work hard.” – Serena Williams “If you want to succeed faster, you must double your rate of failure. Success lies on the far side of failure.” – Thomas J. Watson Sr. “If you hear a voice within you saying ‘you are not a painter’ then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.” – Vincent Van Gogh “You need to spend all of your time and energy on creating something that actually brings value to the people you’re asking for money!” – Gary Vaynerchuk “What do you need to start a business? Three simple things: know your product better than anyone. Know your customer, and have a burning desire to succeed.” – Dave Thomas “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.” – Winston Churchill “Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” – John R. Wooden “Real difficulties can be overcome; it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable.” –Theodore N. Vail And let me leave you with this advice because in many ways it relates to how you might use all of the previous quotes: “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why...
read moreFedEx grant contest could put $25,000 in your small biz bank account
Could you use $25,000 in cash and $7,500 in credit for FedEx Office print and business services? (Okay, dumb question, I know.) That’s the grand prize in FedEx’s fifth annual Small Business Grant Contest. If you want to enter, you have until March 29, 2017 to get your application in. Head over to the company’s Grant Contest page to write a short profile of your business, upload four photos – including your logo – and submit an optional 90-second elevator pitch. The second-place finisher will get $15,000 and $5,000 in credit for FedEx Office print and business services. Finally, eight “bronze prize” winners will each receive $7,500, plus $1,000 in FedEx Office print and business services. I’m a student of the small business topics owners and would-be founders search for on Google, and “small business grants” is always a popular search. Unfortunately, with very few exceptions, there aren’t grants out there for small businesses. Government agencies facilitate loans, but unless you’re in a very special category, there are virtually no grants available. Further, many of the competitions that are popular today are limited to startups and even business plans. That makes this FedEx contest pretty special. By the way, the basic requirements for entry are to be a “U.S.-based for-profit small businesses with fewer than 99 employees and operating for six months or more.” That chunk of cash and those valuable services could do a lot to greatly help any small business. Last year’s winner – Ginjan Bros., a small business that develops and brings to market traditional African drinks – used the money to increase production. They needed the boost to fill current orders and get enough inventory on the shelves to expand distribution. I’m glad to see that the contest is in its fifth year. Sometimes these things come and go quickly. Over its first four years, 13,000 businesses have entered the U.S. competition and the total prize money has grown from $50,000 to $120,000. Further, there are now contests in nine countries. I urge you to enter. It won’t take a lot of your time and the payoff could be a game...
read morePlug your small business into these free digital learning resources
February 23 is Digital Learning Day, and what better day to introduce your team to some amazing free resources that can help build a better business? Not only will your team build better personal and professional skills, you will enjoy increased loyalty and dedication to your business by demonstrating your commitment to your employees’ growth. Here are some excellent resources to build business skills: TED Talks: No list about free learning is complete without mentioning TED Talks. This collection of speeches from the world’s greatest entrepreneurs, inventors, authors, activists, scientists, and thinkers is filled with ideas to spark creativity and encourage exploration. Many of the talks are short enough to be watched over lunch break or first think in the morning, and all of them include some great nuggets of information to glean on a huge variety of topics. Have you seen my TED talk? Duolingo: One of the most interesting language learning tools on the Internet, Duolingo is totally free and can help users learn or brush up on nearly two dozen languages. CodeSchool: While not all of the courses on CodeSchool are free, your employees can learn the basics of JavaScript and several other coding languages completely free in this self-paced course. I’m not a coder myself, but Jordan Minor gives Code School an “excellent” rating in his PC Magazine article. EdX.org: Completely free university-level courses in business, finances, computer technology, and more. Send your employees to brush up on the tricks of public speaking, analyzing data with Excel, or building and managing great teams. Udemy: Udemy is another online educational resource that allows students to access both free and paid courses. Check out the many personal development courses that are free, such as “The 7 Essential Steps to Getting Your Dream Career” here, which can help employees narrow their focus to better serve your business in their perfect position. The Muse: The Muse is an aggregate site that collects some of the best business-related educational resources from around the web. Not all are free, but many are! Depending on what types of skills you and your team need to develop, be sure to check out tools that can help you learn how to manage your time better and how to reduce distractions in the workplace. Also, don’t forget YouTube! I have nearly 100 videos on my YouTube Channel. Finally, many top universities post lectures and speeches from their professors to YouTube and these can be prime resources for gleaning valuable information. There are hundreds of free educational resources out there that are waiting to be discovered on Digital Learning...
read moreCan you leverage any of these fast-growing freelance specialties for small business success?
Upwork just published its list of the 20 fastest growing freelance categories or skills. Demand for each of these – via its system – has increased more than 100 percent over the last year. Some of these don’t concern the average small business owner (they can be very technical), but several of them do. Looking at them is a good way to get a feel for current trends. You might find a skill that you hadn’t considered leveraging via freelance talent. Of course, it’s possible your competitors are making better use of freelancers than you are, so it’s good to examine this list and see if there is any way you can engage additional freelancers to push your business forward. Tableau developers. Tableau is software as a service that gives businesses interactive ways to view big data to make it more understandable and actionable. Using either desktop or mobile devices, you can create data dashboards and share them with others. If your future success depends on understanding big data, you might want to connect with a Tableau developer. User experience design (UX). Getting people to your website is only half the battle. Getting them to do what you want them to do once there on your site, is a separate question. Visually appealing and intuitive design is increasingly important. That’s the strong suit for UX designers. Pardot experts. Pardot is B2B marketing automation from Salesforce. Pardot is somewhat like Infusionsoft for B2B companies. It can sync prospects from your CRM system with Google Analytics visitors stats. If you’re selling to businesses, you owe it to yourself to look at Pardot more closely. Social media management. This is number seven on Upwork’s list. That tells me a lot of business owners are handing off big chunks of their social media marketing to freelancers. If it’s eating up too much of your time – or your results are just so-so –consider outsourcing. Swift development. Swift is the programming language developed by Apple for building apps for iOS, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Watch. While it is billed as easy-to-use, most small business owners are going to hook up with an experienced Swift developer when they want a mobile app. Android development. Pretty much the same thing as Swift development, except for Android devices. Chat support. Want to add chat support to your website? You can find offshore freelancers who will work for as little as $3.50 per hour. Shopify development. Getting started in ecommerce is easy with systems like Shopify, but to get things exactly the way you prefer them for your business, sometimes it takes a developer to do some tweaking or create add-ons. Video editing. For at least the last two years, we’ve been stressing how video is taking a prominent position in website content and marketing materials. Consider finding a reliable freelance editor to give your videos the polish they need to make you look your best. Facebook marketing. There are some wonderful Facebook marketing success stories. However, there are more stories of failures. If you try to do it yourself from day one, you might be in for an expensive education. An experienced hand could speed up the process. Content writing. The written word will always be central to your web presence – and printed materials. However,...
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