Social Media Trends for Small Businesses
Anita shares how social media impacts small businesses. You’ll discover which small businesses are slow to adopt social media and where social media brings the best results.
Social Media Examiner (video)

Hiring for attitude, not experience
Studies show experience alone is not the best criteria in hiring. Herb Greenberg joins Jim Blasingame to discuss tapping into non-traditional talent – hire for who the person is, not just what they’ve done.
The Small Business Advocate (audio)

Small business owners turning to the Square to accept credit card payments
The small business owners are using a device called the Square to accept credit card payments from customers. The wireless device attaches to iPads…iPhones…and Droids…and works with a free app.
KFDM-TV News

Small Business Software Review: Fishbowl Inventory 2012
To be clear, Fishbowl Inventory 2012 is a small business asset management system — that is to say an inventory management system — that automates inventory functions and processes.
Small Business Computing

How to Get Facebook Fans
But how do you find, keep, and engage these fans? Manger has some advice about this perennial Facebook dilemma.
American Express OPEN Forum

Small Business Exporting Advice on Foreign Operations
For small business exporters, it is therefore crucial to receive advice and support from business partners. Two of the most important relationships they will likely form are with a freight forwarder and a foreign distributer…
International Business Times

Small Business Strategic Planning: a Process for Success and Survival
The small business strategic planning process has two essential elements: devising a strategy and changing it when necessary.
International Business Times

‘Small’ IT Market Attracts Big Companies
The small-business help desk is going corporate, with initiatives from companies like Apple Inc. bringing new competition to independent consultants who typically handle the IT needs of US start-ups and small companies.
Wall Street Journal

Small Business Efficiency Expert Now Offering Free Resource to Help Business Owners Find Those Longed-for Extra Hours in Their Day

So many business ideas falter and business owners fatigue due to inefficient processes eating up valuable time. That’s why director of small business efficiency company The Heart Of, Nikki White, has created a comprehensive Effective Business Mindmap to guide business owners through re-thinking where they spend their limited hours.
PRWeb (press release)

Cloud Computing is Far More Than Just Technology
Cloud computing may be cutting edge technology, but the majority of people using it in the future won’t be tech junkies. So don’t treat them as such.
GetApp.com

A Guide to Small Business Survival

Small business blogger survival guide. A big part of surviving as a small business blogger involves being a social animal. Here David Leonhardt gives every small business blogger some great resources to keep you, your business and your blog alive.
Business Insider

Why Online Reputation Matters to Small Business
You’re a small business owner. Most of your customers are the people who live within 25 miles of your storefront. Why does it even matter what the Internet has to say about your brand? That has no impact on your bottom line.
Small Business Trends

5 Ways to Use Other People’s Content in Your Marketing
You need lots of content, you know that, but you also know that content creation is one of the more time intensive marketing activities you have to tackle.
Duct Tape Marketing

My wife just closed the books on our mid year numbers(January – June) and profits are up in the double digits again. I say this every year but my wife and I are constantly amazed by how our little business continues to grow and expand.

Seriously folks, there’s nothing particularly exciting about our online store on the surface. We sell wedding hankies and linen napkins primarily to the wedding and event planning industry. Nothing big! Our niche is very small but it happens to be a part of a very large and lucrative market that is insensitive to price.

Source/Read More: MyWifeQuitHerJob.com

Then there’s real sweating, as in the perspiring that occurred in abundance during last week’s soupy, clothes-sticking, oppressive blanket of wretched weather.

That’s the kind Gabriel Mandujano likes a lot, because it leads to clothes and towels in need of cleaning. And that’s where he’s ready to ride to the rescue.

The “cycle” in the name of his company, Wash Cycle Laundry, refers to the two-wheeled variety. To a city that already offers food delivery by bicycle, as well as recycling pickup and even police protection, Mandujano has introduced a pedal-powered laundry service.

Source/Read More: Philadelphia Enquirer

We’re celebrating at the 2011 Small Business Summit. Harold Jackson joins Jim Blasingame to discuss his company, Buffalo Supply, and what they do, how they’ve survived the past year and a half, their fears, and more.

Source/Listen: The Small Business Advocate

We’re celebrating small businesses at the Small Business Summit. Mike Bucci joins Jim Blasingame to discuss how he started K&M of Virginia by inventing the Painter’s Pyramid and how they’ve survived and thrived.

Source/Listen: The Small Business Advocate

LivingSocial.com Founder Tim O’Shaughnessy waited tables at Ruby Tuesday in college—not a typical background in a field whose entrepreneurs often spend their formative years crafting software code.

O’Shaughnessy, 29, has used his unconventional pedigree to transform the startup into the second-biggest provider of digital deals. The four-year-old company has more than 1,500 employees, up from 33 in early 2010, and expects to generate $1 billion in sales this year, double the forecast in January.

Source/Read More: BusinessWeek

When it comes to acknowledging the contributions of small businesses, few honors are more prestigious than the Small Business Administration’s Champion awards.

Although the SBA’s Small Business Champions are nominated rather than plucked from the masses — and they must have accepted the SBA’s help at one point or another, thereby further limiting the pool of contenders — they needed to prove their mettle nonetheless. Not only did the national winners of awards like Exporter of the Year and Young Entrepreneur of the Year have to show evidence of success through profits and sales, many of them needed to prove they’ve helped create business opportunities for fellow entrepreneurs. Some even had to show that their efforts led to legislative changes.

Source/Read More: Entrepreneur

Such as Erin Baker’s Wholesome Baked Goods:

In 1994, Erin Baker began making healthy breakfast cookies. “One day I caught a call from a woman asking for the nutritionals—we were selling them naked in a jar at Quality Food Centers,” remembers Baker (and yes, that is her real last name). The woman figured out the cookies were only two Weight Watchers points and word quickly spread. How quickly? In a year (1999), Baker’s business went from two employees to 100. Then, Weight Watchers suddenly changed its points system. In a period of eight months, the company lost about 60 percent of its distribution. How did the bakery recover? Two words: New products. She says they moved away from the diet crowd—”we realized they were fickle,” says Baker. “It’s been very successful for us.”

Source/Read More: INC.com

The latest addition to Burlington’s Church Street got all dressed up for its first day of business.

“We say a handsome potato is a dressed up spud,” said Mike Beaulieu of the Handsome Potato.

Beaulieu and his fiancée Katie took a homemade favorite and turned it in to a full-time business.

“My mom taught me how to make mashed potatoes when I was younger. So it is coming from her, but I put a little twist on it,” Beaulieu explained.

Source/Read More: WCAX

Jim Koch, the man behind Samuel Adams beer and the Boston Beer Company, has been through it all. Ever since starting his own company, which began with brewing beer in his kitchen, he’s worked hard to not only grow his business, but to help others do the same, as evidenced by the Boston Beer Speed Coaching event, which was held at the Warwick Crowne Plaza recently.

The event is aimed at providing small business owners in the food, beverage and hospitality industry with guidance and advice for how to grow their business, improve their products and streamline their operation.

Koch said he wishes he had access to similar events when he was starting out because he was forging into uncharted territory.

Source/Read More: Warwick Beacon