This Week in Small Business: Mining 2015 for Marketing Gems
Are we nostalgic for 2015 yet? Probably not, but we saw a few good articles last week that look back at the year to pick up some marketing and management lessons.
Leadership, management and productivity
Gene Marks writes a regular small business column for the Washington Post. Here he shares his favorite stories from 2015.
The list is rather eclectic, but I think these Bill Gates recommended books will boost your small business acumen.
Not all small-business borrowing is the same. This article follows it via a lifecycle perspective.
Separate the fact and fiction of succession planning in this overview by Glenn Ebersole.
Cyber attacks on big business make the headlines, but small business owners are also under siege. Don’t let yourself be misled.
Marketing and sales
Blogging is central to almost every content marketing strategy, so when you can boost your traffic by a factor of four, it’s a very good thing.
To be successful at word-of-mouth marketing, you first need to really understand your target audience(s).
Download an app and you can get personalized marketing tips from Google.
In another 2015 “Best Of,” Joe Lazauskas surveys content marketing…so does Kimberlee Morrison.
These 25 Do’s and 25 Don’ts should help guide your small business social media marketing in 2016.
Learn how to write posts that will rank highly in Google search results.
Entrepreneurship, startups and innovation
Is there meaning in being a small business owner. The head of the SBA says yes.
Politics, government and the economy
Small business hiring seems to be swinging to part time employees. Does that bode ill for the economy overall?