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Here is this week's digest of the best small business articles recently submitted to Small Business Brief. Enjoy!
Is The Better Business Bureau A Waste Of Time?
Source: http://www.smallbiztrends.com
I was all set to write what I considered to be a non-controversial post about the Better Business Bureau. I didn't expect ANYONE to find fault with the Better Business Bureau. The Better Business Bureau is like motherhood and apple pie. Who could say anything bad about them?
Submitted By: sannwood
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Local SEO: The Single Most Overlooked Strategy
Source: http://www.aussieseo.com.au
Whilst it is fine targeting the entire city or state for many services, the simplest, most overlooked optimisation technique is very simple: targeting to the suburb level. Both city and suburb targeting complement each other; city targeting is good to get the general traffic, but for many local businesses, suburb targeting will provide higher quality traffic, and above all, there is usually no competition.
Submitted By: aussieseo
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Word-of-Mouth Marketing: It's About Being Remarkable
Source: http://www.smallbusinesssem.com
Sure, plenty of small businesses have created great products. But they don't have the world's attention like Apple does; for small businesses, buzz is most often the result of creating great experiences for customers, of doing something that they have to tell their friends about. It's usually about remarkable customer service. It's about doing something out of the ordinary.
Submitted By: DavidWallace
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Public Speaking: What's Confidence and How Do I Get It?
Source: http://www.coachlisab.com
You don't have to be confident to appear confident, but the beauty of this mental and physical practice is that the more you appear confident to others, the more your confidence will grow for real. When you believe in yourself and believe in your message, your audience will, too.
Submitted By: coachlisab
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Are Your Marketing Strategies and Your Website on the Same Page?
Source: http://www.somethingcreativeinc.com
Despite your offline sales and marketing efforts, prospects will often visit and factor in your website as part of their buying decision. If your website is not conveying the same value and message, you may be losing potential customers. Here are 5 tips to make sure your website and your marketing strategies are on the same page.
Submitted By: bdorland
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Networking: Make it concise, then follow up
Source: http://www.baltimoresun.com
At networking events, most people waste the few moments they have with contacts by focusing on themselves. Professional marketing coach Charlie Cook recommends that every entrepreneur have a 30-second description of the problems his or her business solves. After that, the focus should be entirely on other people's business concerns, problems they want solved and unmet business needs. As the conversations unfold, you might find areas that overlap with the solutions you provide.
Submitted By: Rachel
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Why Use WordPress to Power Your Small Business Website?
Source: http://www.expand2web.com
WordPress is one of the most popular blogging tools available. But what many people don't know is that it is a powerful Content Management System (CMS) that can be used for more than just blogging. With WordPress you can build a blog, a website, or both.
Submitted By: doncampbell
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10 Ways to Optimize a Popular Post on Your Blog
Source: http://www.problogger.net
The first thing to realize is that 'hot' or popular posts on your blog are not only important because of the traffic that they are currently bringing in - but they're actually more important because of what they could potentially do to improve and grow your whole blog. Most of what follows is about leveraging a hot post to grow your blog.
Submitted By: thejenn
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Profile of LinkedIn's Founder Reid Hoffman
Source: http://www.latimes.com
How people define their professional identity in a virtual world was the question that inspired Hoffman to start LinkedIn. He wanted to help workers gain more control over their careers and destinies. His solution: Turn everyone into the CEO of their own business -- themselves.
Submitted By: thejenn
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Felix Dennis's Tips for Getting Really, Really Rich
Source: http://www.inc.com
Felix Dennis' book, "How to Get Rich: One of the World's Greatest Entrepreneurs Shares His Secrets", newly published in America, mostly skips the braggadocio and platitudes typical of self-made-millionaire memoirs. There's entertaining and practical advice for early-stage and growing businesses about raising capital, hiring talent, and negotiating, with particular focus on the necessity of maintaining ownership -- the key to eventual riches.
Submitted By: Robert
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Demand Media wags a long tail of niche websites
Source: http://www.latimes.com
Rosenblatt, Demand Media's chief executive, has quietly amassed a network of thousands of websites such as EHow, Expert Village and a slew of special-interest sites including GolfLink, Trails.com and Daily Puppy. Although none are huge hits, together they rank among the Internet's 50 most visited Web networks, according to rating service ComScore Inc. Demand is doing so well that some Yahoo executives have expressed interest in buying it; Rosenblatt said the company isn't for sale.
Submitted By: thejenn
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Targeting An Untapped Niche - On-Demand Lawn Cutting
Source: http://www.promagazine.com
Malarney started mowing lawns while in junior high school. By the age of 16, he was making $400 a week in and around his neighborhood. For the next 10 years, he grew his business-to the tune of operating five "big rigs" with seven crewmembers each. Then the recession hit, and the owner reinvented his business.
Submitted By: Robert
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Interview With Twitter Founder Evan Williams
Source: http://www.techcrunch.com
Williams went into far more detail that I thought he would in answering my questions about Twitter's business model. We talked about a lot of possible business models, but Williams focused on charging for commercial activity on Twitter, and keeping normal usage free.
Submitted By: thejenn
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Add Flare To Your FeedBurner Feed
Source: http://www.johnszram.com
One thing I noticed is how few FeedBurner users are taking advantage of the FeedFlare feature that lets you build interactivity into your feed. Put simply, it adds little links at the bottom of your feed so that subscribers can Stumble, Digg or add your post to del.ici.ous amongst others, increasing the chance of your content being shared. I've created a quick video to show you how it's done.
Submitted By: JohnSzram
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12 Reasons To Fire Your Web Designer!
Source: http://blog.webbizideas.com
Reason #1: When asked if he knows PHP, the reply is: "I don't do drugs."
Submitted By: WebBizIdeas.com
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10 Web 2.0 Ideas that Failed
Source: http://www.fastcompany.com
With all of the hype surrounding Web 2.0 companies like Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter, it's easy to forget that lots of Web companies still fail. Here are 10 that failed in the past year - and why.
Submitted By: Darryl
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Does your Homepage Engage Visitors? - Judging a Book By It's Cover
Source: http://www.goodbarry.com
Five interesting 'rules' that one should follow when designing their small business website homepage or directing a webdesigner to do the work for them to achieve a lower bounce rate and maximum engagement.
Submitted By: EddyC
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A Conversation with Michael Gerber
Source: http://www.businessweek.com
Michael Gerber, author of best-sellers The E-Myth Revisited and E-Myth Mastery, argues that anyone can become an entrepreneur and create a successful company, a departure from the conventional wisdom on the question of whether entrepreneurs are born or made.
Submitted By: Robert
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The Definition of Social Media Marketing: How to Find the Best Social Media Consultant
Source: http://www.techipedia.com
I asked several social media consultants, bloggers, marketers, search engine optimizers, and social media addicts about what they considered to be essential skills and characteristics of the most efficient and results-driven social media consultants.
Submitted By: thejenn
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10 Awesome Tools That'll Make You An Expert Twitter User
Source: http://www.dumblittleman.com
For all those twitter lovers, here are a set of tools which could further enhance your expertise as a twitter user and utilize it effectively. And those who despise twitter, there is no harm in taking a look. You might start loving it.
Submitted By: thejenn
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Five Don'ts for Marketing in Tough Times
Source: http://www.businessweek.com
Perhaps the slowdown already has made an impact on your company. Or maybe you can see it coming but aren't sure exactly when and how it will hit. In either case, the most important thing is to keep your wits about you and not succumb to five common mistakes companies often make when times get tough.
Submitted By: Robert
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Using Great Customer Service as a Differentiator
Source: http://www.instigatorblog.com
Create enough of a positive vibe with customer support and suddenly it becomes much easier to upsell customers. And think about the dollars that might exist in extended training options you offer customers (especially for B2B companies.)
Submitted By: Darryl
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Three Sticky Ways to Hold Reader Attention
Source: http://www.copyblogger.com
Your copy might focus on benefits instead of features, have the right balance of emotion to logic, and maybe you've even snagged the reader's attention with an arresting headline. But after your reader clicks through, does your copy hold her interest?
Submitted By: DavidWallace
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21 Ways to Make Your Blog or Website Sticky
Source: http://www.problogger.net
A superb article highlighting 21 techniques which you can use to make your blog or website more sticky.
Submitted By: MarketingMinefield
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Mom-and-Pop Multinationals
Source: http://www.businessweek.com
Global outsourcing is no longer just for big corporations. Increasingly, Main Street businesses from car dealers to advertising agencies are finding it easier to farm out software development, accounting, support services, and design work to distant lands.
Submitted By: Robert
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Merchants angry over getting yanked by Yelp
Source: http://www.sfgate.com
Yelp has erased business reviews that they think have been "bought" or are too positive.
Submitted By: gwkari
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Real Life Examples of Business Owners Using Social Media
Source: http://www.smallbiztrends.com
An interesting article discussing what business owners have said about using social media in real life situations.
Submitted By: MarketingMinefield
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How to Analyze and Improve the 'Bounce Rate' for Your Website
Source: http://www.doshdosh.com
A term commonly used to measure visitor engagement is the bounce rate, which is the percentage of initial visitors who leaves your site after arriving at the entry page. This is a great article analysing the bounce rate and looking at ways you can improve it.
Submitted By: MarketingMinefield
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Culture Shift: Eliminating Employee Cynicism for Good
Source: http://www.managesmarter.com
The great paradox is that businesses driven by self-interest cultivate employees who learn to similarly put their own self-interest first - to the ultimate detriment of the business. A management obsession with profit creates a workforce disinterested in profit, and obsessed instead with working conditions, wages, and other issues of interest to the workers themselves. How can businesses break free of this trap?
Submitted By: Rachel
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It's Not About You!
Source: http://freelanceswitch.com
Despite the ubiquity of buzzwords like personal branding and other popular forms of self-promotion, in the end it stills comes to down to what a potential client gains from working with you or using your services: in other words, what is in it for them. You can use this natural self-interest to your advantage when crafting pitches and proposals by focusing on exactly that.
Submitted By: Rachel
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Directories Aren't Dead - 11 Tips for Directory Submission
Source: http://www.aussieseo.com.au
Although submitting to directories by themselves may not provide you with a lot of traffic, it still remains of one of the easiest and most effective ways to get links.
Submitted By: aussieseo
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Niche Building and Expert Status
Source: http://www.1040blog.com
Accounting marketing: creating a niche in accounting can be done with an effective tax blog.
Submitted By: sanok2001
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Top 5 Reasons eBay Sellers Fail
Source: http://guruknowledge.org
Building an eBay business is in many ways similar to building any business. To be successful everything has to work: Marketing, Sales, Quality, Pricing, and Customer Service. Selling on eBay, however, has some unique features that differ from traditional retail businesses.
Submitted By: dking
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Top 7 Hiring Mistakes for Startups
Source: http://www.entrepreneur.com
The good thing is there are some hard and fast hiring rules startups should follow. Most hiring issues occur as a result of looking to keep costs down or not having a clear vision about what the business is and where it's going. However, my experience has shown me that cutting corners in the hiring process now can mean trouble for the business later.
Submitted By: Darryl
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Recruiting Resources for New Business Owners
Source: http://www.effortlesshr.com
As a new business owner, you might not be aware of the many options available to help you find your employees. The following is a list of resources to consider when you are looking to add employee(s) to your company.
Submitted By: ehrblogger
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