You vote has been counted: A collection of your most useful small business articles
With so many ways to measure web traffic, page views, and clicks, it’s easy to crowd-source information on a lot of different topics. I went back through our click statistics to find the most popular articles that I’ve linked to over the last year or so. Most of these were included in our regular “This week in small business” feature of curated content. Think of it as voting by clicking! If you missed any of these “crowd pleasers” the first time around, here they are again, and they are just as relevant now as they were when we originally featured them. Social media marketing 3 social marketing tools that come with super powers, by Jim Belosic. Jim discusses three of his favorite tools and each one covered in this article performs an entirely different function. Great curation. 110+ Top Bloggers And Entrepreneurs Share Their Most Successful Social Media Action, by Minuca Elena. As you know from my introduction, I’m a fan of crowd sourcing and this article crowd sources social media marketing strategies, with the “crowd” composed of experts. Taylor Swift’s Seven Marketing Lessons, by Morgan Chessman. If you can get past the GIF that greets you in this article, you’ll get some solid advice on how you should present yourself in the social media. Five Small Business Marketing Ideas That Won’t Break the Bank, by Susan Solovic…hey that’s me! This article I wrote for Guidant Financial continues to be popular. The advice is solid and serves both brick-and-mortar and online businesses. (Some non-digital marketing advice here.) Content Marketing Questions: How To Do Marketing With No Budget? By Michael Brenner. The title of this article is a little misleading. What Michael actually does here is answer some very good and basic questions about content marketing. I’m willing to bet that you’ll find a question you’ve been wanting to ask someone. Community-powered marketing succeeds where traditional marketing fails, by Jackie Yeaney. Jackie does a great job explaining the differences between push and pull marketing and gives a ton of advice on how to start “pulling” customers in via your marketing. 4 Tips for Small-business Retail Marketing for 2016, by Armando Roggio. Prioritizing is big with Armando and here he shows you four areas where retailers need to prioritize their marketing. Instagram – When images matter most: 19 Marketing Tips for Success, by Adam Houlahan. Instagram’s importance to marketing is booming and I just read that Buffer is now able to share images to Instagram. These tips will give you a good foundation for getting started. 5 Overlooked Features of Your LinkedIn Marketing Strategy, by, Krystal Overmyer. For B2B marketing, LinkedIn may be your most powerful weapon, yet few really take advantage of it. Krystal’s observations will help. 5 Marketing Technology Trends on the Horizon, by Rohit Roy. No compilation would be complete without a quick glance to the future and a lot of what Rohit says here is already happening. Alternatives to social media marketing Take your marketing out of home to cut through the clutter, by Catherine Monson. Catherine makes a strong case for outdoor advertising. It can be cost effective and an excellent way to rise above the online din. I’m a big believer in sometimes walking the “road less traveled by” when it comes to marketing. Email...
read moreThis week in small business: Gangster, supermodel, and startups
We are chock-full of entrepreneurial wisdom and inspiration this week. Supermodel Kathy Ireland checks in with her story, we go on a journey with a former gang member, and there’s even advice for Millennials who have entrepreneurial dreams but are burdened by student loan debt. Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation Small business owners can learn a lot from startup entrepreneurs. “What exactly?” you might ask. Well, read this Forbes article to answer that question. Being an entrepreneur is not all high fives and hugs, says John Quick, as he breaks it down into three main points in this piece. Talk about the college of hard knocks! Gang-member-turned-millionaire, entrepreneur Ryan Blair has some brilliant business advice. Not every SEO technique is equally useful to everyone: Four things every entrepreneur needs to know about SEO. Supermodel Kathy Ireland is more likely to be on the cover of Forbes today than on Cosmo. The story of her journey is inspiring. For startups, capital is ammunition, not oxygen, cautions Jenny Lefcourt in Forbes. After losing family in the World Trade Center and to cancer, Lori Barzvi channeled her grief into a business plan and now has the number-one rated product on Amazon. Listen up Millennials: Don’t let student loan debt stop you from pursuing your entrepreneurial dream. Marketing and sales Addressing the 18th annual Women in Business Conference, Ann Marie van den Hurk lays out the necessities: business card, website, and the right social media presence. And, to help you pick the right social media platform, check out this Business-2-Community piece by Aleh Barysevich. Wanna be a rock star? Would you settle for becoming a digital marketing star? If so, here’s the article for you. Marcela De Vivo goes through all the steps required to create content for your social media sales funnel. If you’re still trying traditional marketing strategies to grow your brand, you need to give this Hubspot article a quick read. Leadership, management, and productivity Want real, in-the-trenches instruction on how to start a successful business from scratch? My sponsored free course at openSAP is now open, but time is limited. He (or she) who conquers the email in-box wins. Check out these tips and tactics from Dr. Mercola. More scary than Halloween: Rhonda Abrams’ eight things small business should fear! Stephanie Newby goes over what you need to remember when you’re suffering through a career setback....
read more5 tools that give you the confidence to take a vacation
The most important tool you can use to enjoy a real vacation without too many worries is a little thing called “delegation.” However, for those of us – and we are many – who can’t completely let go of the reins when we’re away from our businesses, here are five tools that will give you the confidence to take (and enjoy) a vacation. Social media customer service. You can use Twitter or Facebook – I recommend Twitter – to handle your customer service. This way, you can get a real-time picture of any problems that are brewing back at your business while you’re on the beach. I’ve written on the topic before and Bryan Haines has a great article over on Buffer that goes over 14 examples of businesses using social media for customer service. Slack. Think of Slack as instant messaging on steroids developed expressly for businesses. You can integrate it with all kinds of third-party apps and services, such as Google drive, so sharing progress and ideas in a complicated business environment is easy and immediate. You can also divide your crew into teams so you don’t bother people with messages that don’t concern them. Google Video Hangout. Hate missing those regular morning meetings with your employees? Why not move it to a Google Video Hangout so you can still attend and put in your two cents. Many companies today exist only in the virtual world and they use Google Video Hangouts for their “company” meetings. Basecamp. Do you typically leave a long list of to-do’s when you head out the door for your vacation? With Basecamp, you’ll know exactly when they’ve been completed. And, if you get more bright ideas when you’re poolside in Vegas, you can create another to-do, assign it to someone, and give it a due date. Pipedrive. Most small business owners will want to know how sales are going and be assured that their sales team is keeping the funnel filled and flowing. Pipedrive is an excellent – and simple – customer relationship management system that will get the job done. Also, it’s flexible enough to be used for non-sales processes. If you have anything where employees or customers go through a series of steps, Pipedrive can be set up to handle it. Before I leave this topic and start planning my next vacation, let me mention one more bonus of integrating one or more of these apps or systems into your small business: Your team will be more productive even when you aren’t on...
read morePlay your small business lifeline: Leverage your nearest SBDC
What prevents small business owners from reaching out for help? There are a few good answers to this question: They’re too busy, They don’t know who to ask, and They think they can’t afford it. Do any of these sound familiar? It wouldn’t surprise me if they do, but before I go any further, I want to modify my first reason above to: They think they’re too busy. I’ve helped many small business owners over the years, who wish they would have reached out for help much earlier. Correcting a few problems early on would have prevented years of unnecessary pain and substantially improved their rate of growth. I’m glad you’re here looking for some tips and today the tip I want to share is going to lead you back into your own community…or at worst a nearby community. Have you explored all the resources available at your closest Small Business Development Center (SBDC)? They’re usually free, so there goes the “can’t afford it” argument. SBDCs are nearby Just for the sake of an example, I did a search to see how many SBDCs there are in Kansas. After all, Kansas sits squarely in the middle of the Lower 48 and it’s typical of many other areas in our country. There are no fewer than 13 SBDCs spread out across the state, often associated with a college or university. I didn’t plot them all out on a map but considering that I-70 runs 424 miles across the state, it’s about 35 miles between exits that will take you to an SBDC. In other words, for most Kansans, getting to an SBDC shouldn’t take more than 45 minutes to an hour. Yes, I know they can be located to the north and south as well, but all I’m trying to do here is chip away at the excuse that you don’t have the time to talk to someone or attend a seminar at your nearest SBDC…even if you don’t live in Kansas. You’ll find your local SBDC to be a fantastic source of information and advice on all the “nuts and bolts” issues of running a small business, such as keeping your financials in order (and understood). These foundational issues of running a small business can be the difference between merely creating work for yourself and creating a commercial asset. SBDC advice No matter where you are in the life of your small business, you’ll discover resources that are greatly beneficial. If you’re getting ready to launch a startup, you’ll find advisors to help you. If you’ve been established for a number of years, you’ll be able to get the help you need to take your business to the next level. Are you ready to get started? If you are, then right now there’s really only one thing you need to know: your zip code. Head over to this page where you can search for SBDCs in your area. Enter your zip code in the box and start down the path of additional growth and success. Related: 7 Great Web Resources to Build Your Knowledge and Grow Your...
read moreNew small business health insurance website: An incredibly easy site that works for you
By Susan Solovic, THE Small Business Expert Here are some actual headlines I saw today when I was researching small business health insurance: Forbes: The Cost Of Health Insurance Is A Big Problem For Small Business Huffington Post: The Small Business Health Insurance Roller Coaster – What is Next? New York Post: ObamaCare just killed my health insurance – again I doubt that any of these shock you. For small business owners, navigating the industry to find affordable health insurance has been a major headache for as long as most people can remember. And to be frank, despite good intentions, the Affordable Care Act has, in many ways, made the situation more complicated. Even Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton – a loyal Democrat – just said that The Affordable Care Act is “no longer affordable.” Small biz health and wellness The other part of this issue is that it’s wise for small business owners to encourage employee health and wellness. Healthy employees take fewer sick days and are more productive. This means that you aren’t having people constantly covering for one another trying to get two jobs done during the work day. There’s one more piece of this picture that I need to mention: health insurance is a highly desirable benefit that creates loyalty and helps you recruit and keep high-performing talented professionals. Not all the news about small business health insurance is bad. UnitedHealthcare recently launched a website expressly for the purpose of helping small business owners and their employees get affordable health insurance easily and quickly. It’s great to see someone bringing the power and convenience of an online shopping experience to the small business health insurance market and doing it right. Convenient health insurance site Let me explain what I mean by “doing it right.” I went to the new website, entered my zip code, and the number of employees in my business and immediately had a screen in front of me spelling out the estimated costs for me and my employees for 12 different plans. That’s great, but there’s one little detail that really won me over: They didn’t require me to create an account to get the small business health insurance information I wanted! I do not like commerce websites that promise free information and then make you give them your name, email address, phone number, and in many cases even a credit card number before they will give you the “free” information. In other words, when you head over to the UnitedHealthcare small business health insurance store, you will get the most important information you need in under a minute without having to cough up any personal or business information. Other “doing it right” details: Easy navigation. You can get back to previous screens to change entries with a single click. Flexible options. If you want to add additional plans to give employees more choices, you can do this later; you don’t have to make every decision up front. Information upload. You can upload employee information from Xero, QuickBooks, or Excel files. By the way, every small business owner will have at least two plans to choose from, and many will have 27 plans. As I said above, I was presented with 12 plans. Control health insurance costs The bottom line with health insurance is, literally, the...
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