September 2011
65 posts
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Top 10 Steps To Reclaim Your Life From Distraction
Peter Bregman is strategic advisor to CEOs and management teams and author of 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done. According to Peter, people are interrupted, on average, four times an hour, and the more challenging the work, the less likely you are to go back to it after the interruption. In other words, we are most likely to leave our most important...
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7 Tips From CEOs On How To Eat Uncertainty For... →
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The Adventurous Life Of A Small Business Owner
Most small business owners know that running their own company is an adventure—every single day. There is a certain excitement of never knowing exactly what is going to happen. Some seek this out while others live in fear of it. Unfortunately, fear is almost always a part of this type of career choice.
Polar explorer, Ernest Shackleton reportedly announced his journey...
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How New Labor Guidelines Could Affect Your Social... →
A new report sheds light on legal issues involved with social media and the workplace.
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7 Ways To Better Manage Your Telecommuting...
Particularly for small businesses, telecommuting seems an effective strategy for maximizing a work force while still keeping costs low. You don’t need to pay for a centralized office space or deal with a drive to work, but you do have to contend with YouTube, Facebook and myriad other online distractions.
A recent CareerBuilder survey showed a stunning 17 percent of telecommuting...
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You Are An Expert! Does Anyone Else Know It? →
Your expertise can be your biggest (free) PR tool.
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King Nerd: How Robert Stephens Founded And Grew...
Thanks to Robert Stephens, I still have a job.
About 18 months ago, I was on deadline for a major story when my computer screen turned a bright shade of blue. My first thought: Call Geek Squad. About 15 minutes later, I was inside a Best Buy talking to an ‘agent’ at a speed easily faster than that of John Moschitta, Jr. (of the mid-80s Micro Machines commercial fame). I...
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The State Of Worker Loyalty: Building A Loyal...
Successful small businesses use strategies to attract, satisfy and build a loyal, high-performing customer base. These same strategies can be used to attract, satisfy and build a loyal, high-performing workforce. Working in tandem, these two dynamics will produce strong business performance.
These five strategies will help you build a loyal workforce.
Make sure...
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Conformity Is Dead! Make Money Marketing To... →
Today’s rich and famous aren’t necessarily wearing suits. Revamp your marketing strategy to get with the times.
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5 Questions To Ask Yourself Before Acquiring A...
Great companies are often made better by great acquisitions. If you’ve been salivating over the competitor down the street, you may be in luck. In today’s economy, businesses are looking to sell and it can be a good time for those in the market.
Before biting the bullet, consider these five questions:
What are their numbers?
Will customers cross over?
Will the acquisition help your...
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4 Ways To Increase Prices And Have Your Clients...
Prices increase and just about everyone hates it. But, if you are like most businesses, the economy is killing you and you are going to have to increase prices sooner or later. And, let’s be honest, if you wait until later, you will probably go out of business.
It’s the nature of the business. Prices increase for a variety of reasons, including market conditions,...
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Spotting Fads: Money-Making Lessons From Vampires,... →
Holiday shopping and the fads that come with are fast approaching. Here’s how to make money from them all year long.
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4.7 Million LinkedIn Users Are Employed by Small... →
There are more paths to a good job than the usual four years of college and an internship at a big firm. As the infographic below shows, a fair number of people on LinkedIn are veterans of the military services or graduates of community colleges. For the former, operations and information tech…
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Top 10 Reasons Your Website Is Losing Sales
UK retailers are losing more than £8 billion ($12.6 million USD) per year due to website inefficiencies, according to research by data and analytics firm QuBit. Using its Exit Feedback technology, QuBit collected more than 18,000 comments about a range of UK retail websites and analyzed the data to discover the major issues that these sites face.
Mashable spoke with QuBit CEO Graham Cooke...
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Signs That You Have A Scam Artist Working For You →
A new study reveals a profile of a typical scam artist.
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3 Undervalued Employee Virtues
As a boss, you may dislike or undervalue virtues of your employees. However, when exercised wisely, certain traits may be extremely useful in propelling your business forward. Consider the value of these three virtues.
Occasional imprudence
Practical inventiveness
Integrated thinking
Julie Rains explains why you should value these traits here.
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What Drives Small Business Social Media...
“The photos that you publish on your Facebook fan page generate 50 percent more impressions for small businesses than any other post type.”
—Read on to learn more from Dan Schwabel about driving engagement on social media platforms.
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6 Ways To Pitch Your Business To News Agencies →
News outlets are still a valuable promotional tool for your business. Here’s how to get their attention.
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Lessons From The New England Patriots: Turn...
Lou Imbriano has three Super Bowl rings. As the former Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of the New England Patriots for nine seasons, Lou supercharged his team’s marketing programs with many revolutionary initiatives. In his new book, Winning the Customer: Turn Consumers into Fans and Get Them to Spend More, he teaches small businesses how to grow customer...
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How To Stop Worrying And Start Selling →
Use metrics and organization to fight stress and improve your sales performance.
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5 Ways To Get More From Your Employees
We all know the drill. Get up, go to work, go home, repeat. Most of us go through those motions five days a week, every week. But time spent at work doesn’t have to be just the filler between leaving home and coming home. And yet, for so many workers, it is.
Enter: Managers. There are several things you can do to help your employees feel more engaged, more...
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5 Ways You May Benefit From The American Jobs Act →
Have you read up on the American Jobs Act? Here’s what it could mean for you and your business.
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“If we forget the people, our request for help with our cause, our launch, our...”
– Liz Strauss on the 3 Reasons No One Is Helping Your Message Go Viral
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New Domain Name Regulations Will Turn The Internet... →
Protecting your intellectual property online is getting infinitely more complicated. Here’s what you can do about it.
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The Online Tools Trackur Couldn't Live Without
Trackur CEO Andy Beal often gets asked about the tools and software his team uses to run his company. Not the actual technology behind the software—although PHP, Lucene, Solr and MySQL are key, for those interested—but the third party tools that help to run the business-side of things.
He’s a big fan of the cloud, and you’ll see that most of the tools his team utilizes are...
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6 Words That Will Instantly Make You A Networking... →
Networking can sometimes seem like a necessary evil, but not if you know what you’re doing.
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The Top 5 Group Buying Sites: Love ‘Em Or Hate...
Group discounts make the most sense for new venues looking to get the word out, those with economies of scale that make it less expensive to operate at higher volumes, or establishments with a realistic expectation of upselling coupon-holders.
To maximize success, social media experts recommend tailoring deals to encourage repeat visits, such as buy-three-get-two-free,...
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How Fragile Is The U.S. Economy Right Now? →
Some feel we’re on the road to recovery, others shout doom. What objective criteria can we use to assess the US economy?
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4 Ways Energetic Employees Electrify The Workplace
Witnessing a super-charged person infuse an entire organization with enthusiasm is exciting. I have seen those with a lot of energy expand the number of customers in previously stagnating environments, envision and execute initiatives in workplaces with limited innovation, re-start projects and teams once considered defunct and disbanded, and motivate high-performing groups to achieve even...
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3 Ways To Find Top Talent For Your Startup →
Conventional hiring doesn’t match a start-up business. Find out how these successful startups found top talent.
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5 Wicked Words That Are Sabotaging Your Success
Would you believe that the words you use actually determine whether you succeed or not? Language shapes how we experience the world. Take a few minutes and just listen to the conversations around you. Count how often you hear the following words: but, want, should, hope, try.
I did this experiment and got startling results. It wasn’t just the frequency at which these words came up, it was the...
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The U.S. Government Buys Everything—And Could Be... →
The government spends $425 billion a year on all types of services and products, so why not yours?
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20 New Keys To Social Media Etiquette
Forget the advice from Emily Post. She never dreamed of having to interact with people through real time social media. Enter Patricia Rossi, NBC’s national manners coach and Twitter’s No. 1 etiquette professional. Her new book, Everyday Etiquette has helpful tips for this level of social interaction.
Here are 20 of her keys to social media etiquette:
Always make an...
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Inspiration Doesn’t Come From A Box Of Cocoa Puffs →
Companies with hip perks get a lot of press. But research shows that’s not the real way to motivate workers.
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3 Strategies To Stay Afloat In Trying Times
I’ve recently discovered three brilliant—and easy—ways to improve the financial position of my business, but I’ll get to those in a moment.
First, let’s talk about why these simple changes are important. The global economy has been hurting for years now and the expected turnaround has taken longer and been more drawn out than most people anticipated. For small business...
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How To Create An Unbeatable Call To Action →
A great call to action makes your product irresistible to buyers. Here’s how to create a successful one.
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5 Ways To Thrive In A Overcrowded Industry
Back in 1994, an excited Tony Ellison sat down with a few friends to tell them of his plans for a new company. Just minutes into the meeting, one of his friends interrupted Ellison, and with a blank stare shrieked, “Tony, are you insane?!”
His friend was rightfully worried. Ellison, a veteran of Wall Street, was planning to leave his job to start an e-commerce company...
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Is Gold The Currency Of The Future? →
Both the dollar and the euro are losing their strength. What does this mean for the future of currency?
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How To Create More Value And Less Stress With...
Content creation is the foundation of marketing these days, but it’s also one of the hardest jobs a marketer has.
Getting the most from your content requires a bit of a shift in thinking. It’s hard work sitting down in front of keyboard and staring at that blank screen every day waiting for inspiration to blossom. That may be how the creative process works for some folks, but marketers need ...
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5 Ways To Grow Your Business Despite The Economic... →
Right now is an easy time to get discouraged about your business. Here’s how you can thrive even with a bad economy.
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Design*Sponge Founder: How To Turn A Blog Into A...
Growing up, I watched a lot of Bob Vila. It always mesmerized me how he could transform run-down shacks into Robin Leach-worthy mansions (yes, lots of early 80s references here), and I remember wondering—could I do that?
According to Grace Bonney, I can.
As the Brooklyn, New York-based founder of the wildly popular blog Design*Sponge (75,000 daily readers), Bonney...
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“Ineffective meetings make us think that we are accomplishing something though...”
– Al Pittampalli on why you should ditch informational meetings.
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3 Salary Negotiation Secrets You Probably Missed →
Are you planning on hiring some new talent? Here are some strategies to help you keep within budget.
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How One Woman Is Saving A Generation From Sexual...
Thanks to 19-year-old Dallas Jessup, today thousands of teenage girls can defend themselves against sexual violence. “I’m trying to save a generation,” she says.
Jessup is founder of Just Yell Fire, a non profit dedicated to educating adolescents on defense against sexual attacks and abduction. She started the organization five years ago, at the age of 13, after her...
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“Everything matters. Everybody’s watching. Everything’s a performance. Privacy is...”
– Scott Ginsberg on the cost of inconsistency.
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5 No Nonsense Travel Tips →
Learn how to be a savvy traveler with these tips from Chris Brogan.
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