This week in small business: Stirring up the chocolate industry…
Will this be the longest recovery on record? Can social responsibility sweeten up the chocolate industry? Is it possible to rank above Wikipedia on Google? These and other important questions are addressed head-on in this week’s collection of curated content.
Leadership, management, and productivity
Get the insights required to be a master at giving workplace feedback in this MasterCard-sponsored article.
John Hall delivers a good roundup of the latest Small Business Marketing Trends Report in his Forbes article.
The chocolate industry has been around almost forever. See how Emily Stone is changing things up in this profile by Megan Giller.
Better. Cheaper. Faster. Jeff Charles outlines how the automation wave will help small business.
Writing for the Infusionsoft knowledge center, Jessica Thiefels takes holistic look at contract vs. full-time employment for small businesses.
Marketing and sales
Need to relaunch your site someday and you’re concerned about your SEO? Joydeep Bhattacharya tells you how to do it in seven steps.
You’ll find 11 solid ideas for beginning to build your brand’s social media presence in this piece by the Forbes Agency Council.
In this podcast, Eric Siu and Neil Patel discuss whether or not it’s important to become Google certified.
It’s spring cleaning time again, so why don’t you take Amanda Brinkman’s advice and try her four simple ways to spruce up your marketing?
If you sell on the Interweb, you’ll want to check out Blair Nicole Nastasi’s seven tips for increasing e-commerce revenue next quarter.
Katherine Sullivan covers four unknown Facebook tools she says can take your marketing to the next level.
Trying to elbow out Wikipedia in search rankings is a major task. Steven Olenski chronicles what the founders of Everpedia learned about SEO.
Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation
Mary C. Long gives us a list of 25 socially strong entrepreneurs she believes we should follow and emulate.
Check out mother-daughter duo Ashlee Ammons and Kerry Schrader in this article by Lelia Gowland. These are two black women entrepreneurs who won’t allow themselves to become “hidden figures.” And related to that story is Andrew Medal’s profiles of eight women leaders who are disrupting entrepreneurship.
In this video, Bryan Elliott sits down with venture capitalist, entrepreneur, and bestselling author James Altucher to see why he does what he wants – not what he’s told to do.
Politics, government, and the economy
Writing for CNBC, Patti Domm discusses how Goldman Sachs economists lay 2-to-1 odds that this will be the longest recovery on record.