Small Business Tips and Advice

As many home bakers and sellers of food products have found out, you have to be one tough cookie to be successful at selling food online. Not only do you need a good ecommerce site, you need ... (more...)

This blog post, on the importance of small business owners taking an active role in company videos, was written by Bettina Hein, the founder and CEO of Pixability. *   *   * For many small business owners, getting in front of a video camera (even a little Flip) can be scary. Sure, ... (more...)

More and more businesses of all sizes are using social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter and Foursquare, as a way to better engage customers and increase sales. However, just having a Facebook page or a Twitter account is no guarantee of success. So ... (more...)

More ecommerce businesses are using the crowd (i.e., their customers, Facebook fans and/or employees) to help them develop new products and build brand loyalty -- and the strategy seems to be working, at least for some online businesses. But is crowdsourcing a viable marketing and/or product development strategy for every ... (more...)

My latest article for Small Business Computing (which also got picked up by Ecommerce Guide) is titled "Marketing Strategy: Why Logo and Web Design Matter." And, in my humble opinion, it is must reading for any small (or really any) business owner thinking about rebranding or just ... (more...)

These days, if you really want to know what your customers are thinking (and where they are shopping), you need to connect with them online, on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Indeed, in today's social media-driven world, having a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a LinkedIn profile, and ... (more...)

If your website isn't optimized to be viewed on mobile devices, you could be losing out on potential customers and sales. Need a reason to go mobile? How about 234 million of them? That's the number of Americans who were using mobile devices as of December 2009, and that number is ... (more...)

Media training, teaching CEOs and executives how to answer a reporter's questions, is important if you want to get publicity for your business. That's because few things create a worse impression on a reporter than an interviewee who is unprepared, inarticulate, and/or doesn't answer the question(s). As a reporter/journalist for ... (more...)

Adding search-engine optimized (SEO) video to your web- or e-commerce site can not only help you stand out from the crowd, it can increase traffic to your site and improve sales. Indeed, according to studies conducted by Forrester Research, having an SEO video on your e-commerce site increases your ... (more...)

To be successful at attracting new customers, today's small business owners need a multi-faceted, multi-channel customer acquisition strategy that targets prospective customers where they surf, exchange information and shop. While there are many ways to do this, the following five strategies are highly effective, inexpensive (or free) and any ... (more...)