This Week in Small Business: Curating content, enlightening leadership faux pas and get into a top Chinese University

Chinese University Quiz

Find out why Americans prefer NOT to work for a family-owned business. (Is yours family owned?) Discover what’s really important about content curating. Add these three things to your to-do list today, and while you’re at it we have six leadership mistakes you need to learn from.

Leadership, management and productivity

This article on leadership really resonated with people this week. It outlines six mistakes that teach important lessons.

There’s no shortage of things to get done when you own your own business. But take a moment and double check if these three items are on your to-do list. They are closely related to success.

SaaS (software as a service) can help you save a lot of time and money – especially if you consider your time as money. Check out these 10 online invoicing services for your small business.

Digital marketing strategist Sam Edwards lists six attributes required for effective leadership…and they all start with the letter “c.” Big Bird would approve.

If you haven’t moved your invoicing online yet, review these 10 options.

This may reflect on the way some manage their small businesses: Americans prefer not to work for a family-owned company.

Off loading risk via insurance, developing the right systems and using solid contract procedures are some of the ways you can reduce risk in your small business.

Small Business Basics: How to calculate the return on investment (ROI) of a marketing campaign.

Are you smarter than a fifth grader? Okay, then are you smart enough to get into one of China’s top universities? Take the test and see.

Do you need to bring in some managers from outside your core group? It happens in a lot of startups. Here’s guidance.

Every small business owner should be able to implement these four ways to make leadership development part of their company culture.

Marketing and sales

This 2015 B2C marketing survey is nearly 40 pages long. You can download it to see where we are and get recommendations on where we should go. More on the topic: Michael Brenner, B2B marketing expert, opines on creativity, technology and the future of storytelling. One seminal truth he shares: The purpose of content marketing is to earn your audience instead of buy it.

Here are four things that you really need to understand about content curating.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then these five steps for getting massive engagement with your visual content should pay off handsomely.

This podcast and accompanying article reveals the inside information on Twitter marketing by the author of Twitter Power 3.0: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time.

You bust your buns getting people to your website, only to have them bounce before they get to your good stuff. Here are 14 ways to reduce your bounce and increase engagement on your ecommerce site.

Pay-per-click advertising can really level the playing field between big and small businesses. Here are tips to give your small business the edge.

Entrepreneurship, startups and innovation

Tim Berry, Founder and Chairman of Palo Alto Software and bplans.com, says there are three dangerous myths associated with entrepreneurship. See if you agree.

Which US city has the highest percentage of women-led startups? If you think the answer is obvious, fahgettaboudit!

Finding a pain point and solving the problem is a great way to start a business. For Katherine Krug, the pain point was literal pain, back pain. Now she has a million-dollar home business.

Planning a startup? The success of this pet lawyer (no joke) offers some good insights.

Politics, government and the economy

According to a US Chamber of Commerce survey, small business is in the middle of a “slow and steady” recovery.

Imposing bank-style rules for small business – as proposed in the Neugebauer-Carney mandate – is the wrong approach to data security.

A number of states are getting into the business of providing services to help give small business employees the ability to save for retirement. See what’s up.

Sean Higgins says that a new union-friendly rule from the Obama administration targets small business.

Sponsored by AT&T

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Image: Not My Hat!, © 2003 Alan Levine, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.