If You Want To Grow You Must Invest in Yourself – Attend One of These Events |  |
- If You Want To Grow You Must Invest in Yourself – Attend One of These Events
- Your Guide to Small Business News the Week Ending August 17
- Grumpy Cat Grumpuccino Is Here, Proving This Cat’s a Marketing Machine
- Read The Professional’s Guide to Business Development to Win Business
| If You Want To Grow You Must Invest in Yourself – Attend One of These Events Posted: 17 Aug 2013 04:30 PM PDT We bring you our latest hand-picked list of events and awards for small businesses and entrepreneurs. If you want to grow your business, you must invest in yourself — and in your team. That means learning and building skills, and it also means networking with your peers. Attend one of these events — or participate in an Award — to develop your business. To see a full list or to submit your own event, contest or award listing, visit the Small Business Events Calendar. Featured Events, Contests and Awards
INBOUND is a 4 day marketing experience that brings together thousands of marketers from around the globe for an annual event held in downtown Boston, Massachusetts.
Author and small business speaker Gene Marks is collaborating with PayPal on a giveaway of $2,500 in PayPal POS hardware. To enter the contest, go to Twitter.com, follow @GeneMarks, and tweet the following message: I am entering the #CashRegisterRIP contest: http://Bit.ly/GeneC4R
This contest highlights small businesses and helps them to show off their amazing products, services and happy customers all with a chance to win $10K. The contest is open this year to small business owners and their consumers. At the end of the contest, one photo will be chosen as the $10K Grand Prize winner. Hashtag: #SmallBizLove
This conference brings together amazing women entrepreneurs, both on and off the stage. Hear real behind-the-scenes stories of success including JJ Ramberg, Sarah Endline, Janine Popick, and Pamela O’Hara. Expert keynotes and panel discussions include: Getting Funding for Growth with Kay Koplovitz & Peggy Wallace, Turning Ideas into Companies with Yao Huang, 5 Strategies for a Stronger Brand with Julie Cottineau, and a journalist panel on Pitching the Media. SEATING IS LIMITED. More Events
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This weekly listing of small business events, contests and awards is provided as a community service by Small Business Trends and SmallBizTechnology. The post If You Want To Grow You Must Invest in Yourself – Attend One of These Events appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Your Guide to Small Business News the Week Ending August 17 Posted: 17 Aug 2013 12:30 PM PDT
Here is news important to your business from the recent week. The Small Business Trends editorial team has you covered, always looking for the stories that will give you a competitive edge and better business insight. Check them out below. MobilePhone with Firefox operating system coming to the U.S. Firefox is best known for its Web browser. But did you know the Mozilla Foundation has released a mobile operating system? It’s new, it’s open source, and it’s coming to the United States. If your business could use a phone that works with the new Firefox operating system, is inexpensive and doesn’t lock you into a contract with a mobile carrier, here’s one to consider. ZTE, a Chinese phone manufacturer, is planning to make the phone available online soon in a snazzy orange color. Goodbye locked-in contracts with your cell phone carrier. Hello choice and flexibility. But not so fast! There are some downsides to consider — including an operating system that has not yet withstood the test of time, and a very small number of apps. Meanwhile, Apple protects you from phones that could kill. Well, the faulty adapters could anyway. A new program from Apple lets you drop off suspicious adapters and replace them inexpensively. And HTC unveils the HTC One in the economy size. It’s called the HTC One Mini. It’s got many of the features of HTC’s flagship phone, only smaller. And it’s cheaper. We give you some of the basics to help you decide whether this could be the device for your business needs. Put mobile in your marketing mix. Needless to say, small business owners aren’t the only ones with mobile technology out there. Your customers have it, too. Megan Totka explains how to make the best of that. How mobile is changing e-commerce. The rise of mobile technology means appealing to only PC users is no longer sufficient. It’s time for a multi-screen ecommerce strategy, says William Johnson, an editor at Big Eye Deer. He shows you how to develop one. Portable LED screens are another kind of mobile. TJ McCue, the Small Business Trends Products Editor, gives us an overview of this new portable monitor for your laptop, from AOC. Why settle for one screen while traveling with your laptop, when you could just as easily have two? It’s a valuable device for holding in-person meetings when you’re on the road. And affordable – we like to hear that, right? Social MediaTwitter combats online abuse. The microblogging platform has had its ups and downs. But recent threats against members brought an outcry especially in the UK. Here’s what Twitter is doing in response. Study says people like “likes.” It’s not quite that simple, of course. But the basic idea that came out of the study is that your social media content will fare better if you add a positive vote or “like” immediately after publishing. LinkedIn adds Sponsored Updates. These are similar to sponsored content on both Facebook and Twitter. You can now target any segment of the site’s 225 million premium users. The service will be available to any LinkedIn user by the end of the month — as of the moment it is limited to large corporations (of course!). Analytics are also new on LinkedIn. These are meant to be used with the new Sponsored Updates. The two together create a new marketing opportunity for small businesses to get your brand name out before LinkedIn’s unique professional community. An explanation of the hashtag. Hashtags seem to be everywhere these days – even at the bottom of the screen on your favorite TV shows. This is what a hashtag looks like: #SMBinfluencer. Hashtags have become an important feature on Twitter, Facebook and other social media. If you don’t use hashtags in your marketing, you may be missing out. Hashtags are pretty easy to understand, once someone explains them. Small Business Trends founder Anita Campbell does just that. She also gives free or low cost ideas for using hashtags in your marketing. Social media expands local business reach. Meet Calvin Virgilio, whose parents Robert and Suzanne opened a bed and breakfast and specialty granola company in a small town in Pennsylvania. This spotlight profile shows how a local small business is growing through social media. ServicesPayPal introduces bundled services. The online payment company has combined services from Bill.com, Constant Contact, Outright and Cloud Conversion. Does this look like a good deal for your business? Or would PayPal provide more value by offering a broader marketplace, rather than bundling a few specific services? Swiftly offers $15 design service. From the team that brought you 99Designs, this service offers something different. Logo alterations, business card changes, photo resizing and cropping completed same day. Patch closings could hurt local business marketing. It’s true small businesses have many choices when it comes to promoting the business online. But few have the narrow local focus of the hyperlocal news sites called Patch. AOL, owner of Patch, is retrenching. See what’s in store for hyperlocal publications, as roughly 500 out of 1000 will be shuttered. Stay on top of business expenses. It’s not anyone’s favorite thing to do. But prepaid debit cards can make it easier to keep track of costs while you are traveling and while your employees are traveling too. Rieva Lesonsky has more. ManagementSmall business no longer as nimble. It seems in recent years small businesses no longer lay off at higher rates during recession or hire more quickly during recovery than big businesses. Scott Shane, Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at Case Western Reserve University has more. Wellness programs can save money. Here’s a post that looks at wellness programs and the benefits they can bring to your organization. Michael W. Zuna, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Aflac U.S. shares suggestions for getting started. Book ReviewsWrite more seductively. Your Web copy serves a simple purpose. It brings you more online customers. Pierre DeBois reviews How to Write Seductive Web Copy: An Easy Guide To Pick Up Customers by Henneke Duistermaat. Acquire new businesses. You don’t need to start a business from scratch. Here’s a look at a different approach. Another review from Pierre DeBois looks at Successful Acquisitions: A Proven Plan for Strategic Growth by David Braun. Bubble sign image, Shutterstock The post Your Guide to Small Business News the Week Ending August 17 appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Grumpy Cat Grumpuccino Is Here, Proving This Cat’s a Marketing Machine Posted: 17 Aug 2013 09:00 AM PDT
The popular Internet meme Grumpy Cat is continuing to grow its brand. The cat is now the face of a new beverage, Grumpy Cat Grumpuccino. The line of bottled coffee from Grenade Beverage LLC is being marketed with the tagline, "It's awfully good." The drinks officially became available for purchase online earlier this month. Grumpy Cat also recently received some recognition in the business world, gracing the cover of Direct Marketing News's July issue. A cat might not be the most traditional choice for the cover of a marketing publication, but Grumpy Cat has made an impact on the marketing world since being introduced on Reddit.com in 2012.
Within the past couple of years, brands like Wonderful Pistachios and Vitamin Water have begun to partner with memes and other Internet sensations for their marketing efforts. And some meme originators, such as the owners of Grumpy Cat, have even built successful brands around their memes. But a meme needs more than just a few reposts on a website to reach the fame of Grumpy Cat. That's where Ben Lashes comes in. Ben Lashes: Meme Manager for Grumpy Cat BrandLashes serves as Meme Manager for the Grumpy Cat brand, as well as for other online sensations like Nyan Cat and Keyboard Cat. Since this is fairly new territory for anyone, he has had to try to figure out exactly what it takes to manage a meme. For Lashes, that starts with securing a name and all the digital property associated with it, including domains, copyrights and trademarks. Protecting a meme doesn't necessarily mean preventing others from creating fan art or putting their own spin on memes. It just means making sure that others don't make money on the meme at the expense of its original creator. Promoting a meme isn't always a big part of a meme manager's job, since distribution on sites like Tumblr and Reddit can happen so quickly. Photos of Grumpy Cat, for instance, were shared on social media millions of times within weeks after the original post. It was only after the cat, whose real name is Tardar Sauce, became an Internet sensation that the owners began securing domains, building a brand and hiring a meme manager. But Lashes can help meme originators get involved with larger scale projects such as Grumpy Cat's Grumpuccino or movie deal. Since memes are generally made popular by the masses, rather than by the attempts of a singular person or organization, the built-in notoriety can help secure such deals. But part of a meme manager's job in these situations is to help the owners avoid getting taken advantage of and sidestep bad deals. For some, there's a fine line between a popular meme and one that has become too mainstream. Lashes and other managers have to find a way to keep their clients in the spotlight without overexposing them. Since Grumpy Cat has already secured a book deal, feature film, merchandise at stores like Hot Topic and now the Grumpuccino, it seems this cat really has become a marketing machine. The post Grumpy Cat Grumpuccino Is Here, Proving This Cat’s a Marketing Machine appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Read The Professional’s Guide to Business Development to Win Business Posted: 17 Aug 2013 06:00 AM PDT
For many companies, an ad-hoc business development process can wear out over time. So moving at a snail's pace to establish a more systematic one will certainly mean a short life in the marketplace. You need to move fast to develop more business. To accelerate your business development plans, consider reading The Professional's Guide to Business Development: How To Win Business In The Professional Services. It’s written by Stephen Newton and published by Kogan Page. I learned about the book through NetGalley and asked for a review copy. Newton, founder of DLO Associates, has worked as a business coach and strategy consultant since 2001. I think he has written a great guide to align marketing, sales and operations. If you run or work in a professional services firm, you will want to read this book. Breaking Down The Basics: How Business, Like The West, Was WonThe book attempts to offer a comprehensive view of running a professional firm. A reader looking for ideas beyond social media and Cloud advice will be well satisfied with how Newton delivers his perspective. When noting CRMs, for example, Newton tempers the latest-and-greatest ideas with a balanced suggestion on how to organize. Check out this quote to see how straightforward he is:
The chapters progress into specifics in achieving a "hit rate" – the degree of winning new business while retaining existing ones. The suggestions are meant to be scalable to your resources. Get The Most from a Business ReferralSales professionals will enjoy the points about referrals. He offers 5 specific referral errors, elaborating on typical topics raised along the way. Check out Newton's comment about potentially misguiding a client's view about your firm. He raises a question in which the answer can limit the ability to offer other products or services:
I liked how actionable each suggestion and outlook is, and how the details lead to ideas that you can work into your business immediately. Chapter 11 features a one-month plan, with its core details broken into three tenets – marketing, sales, and business systems. It is meant to create "multiple streams of concurrent activity rather than doing things sequentially." I felt many of the ideas work for small businesses that are using even the most basic features of a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solution. In fact, Newton touches on the value of CRM with respect to client delivery. He notes another way to support a client when project details are unexpectedly changed:
What Else You Should Read With This BookProfessional's Guide complements ideas such as No You Can't Pick My Brain, and can be a good lead in for deeper books on systems such as Service Innovation and Islands of Profit In A Sea of Red Ink. A little irony – Newton mentions in Chapter 10 a book I reviewed, The Checklist Manifesto, as a great source for checklist. A companion website is referenced. It includes downloadable resources. Get this book and quickly sink your teeth into the processes that set your business on the right path to success. The post Read The Professional's Guide to Business Development to Win Business appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
While reading a National Public Radio (NPR) story about snails having teeth, I became astounded at how even nature shows the value of systematic behaviors. When it comes to snails, a single snail can go through 30,000 teeth in its lifetime, replacing them as they wear out.| You are subscribed to email updates from Small Business Trends To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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