This Week in Small Business: Rekindle old contacts, double check your website, and more

news you can use

This week many of the most popular small business articles I’ve shared on social media deal with critical, “meat-and-potato” topics, such as networking, business valuation techniques and making sure you aren’t missing a critical item on your website.

Leadership, management and productivity

Sometimes in small business (and life) it’s not how good you are, but who you know. That’s why learning how to reach out to old networking contacts can be valuable.

A 22-year Army career prepared Fred Wellman for the challenges of building successful firms. Here’s Fred’s story.

This guest article on my site about how to value small businesses has been a big hit with readers.

Marketing and sales

Honestly, sometimes the obvious is the easiest to overlook. Check your website against this list of critical home page items and make sure you haven’t dropped the ball.

Want to find out what content works best? This blog looks at a study that examined one million articles.

Infographics are a powerful small business content marketing tool. Just make sure you’re telling the truth with yours!

Emotional marketing can be very powerful. Sarah Dawley gives you five ways to use it in your B2B company.

Entrepreneurship, startups and innovation

If you’re an entrepreneur or small business owner, I think you’re probably pretty competitive. Check out this comprehensive list of contests that I’ve put together for you.

Is your startup a good fit for “storefront America”? If so, here are the best locations along with the best businesses.

A lot of today’s startups are born in coworking spaces, accelerators and incubators. Get the big picture of how those places compare and which is best for your plans.

Politics, government and the economy

As various polling firms pick up and peer into their Magic Eight Balls, they seem to be agreeing that small business hiring is fairly healthy.