Posted by Chad Gardner

With new social platforms popping up seemingly every day, small businesses have the opportunity to inexpensively connect with like-minded people in their industry’s niche. These social platforms can them help discover valuable resources and give them the ability to learn from seasoned professionals. However, the limited amount of time available for small business owners makes it difficult to weed out the tools that are most valuable to them.

Fortunately, there are plenty of reputable blogs that provide an aggregation of useful small business resources. Now, I realize there are hundreds (if not more) “Top Blog” lists out there, but these are my absolute favorite resources. What makes them my favorites?

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Popularity: 46% [?]

Posted by Lisa Hephner

We’re all facing difficult economic times right now – from big businesses to small businesses, to all of our customers.

The following 5 tips can not only help make an economic downturn work for your small business, but can also position you well against your competition – large and small – so you can best reap the benefits when the economy rebounds. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 51% [?]

Posted by Chris Kampfe

A few weeks back, our President asked me to help create a visual representation of his vision for our company. At a stage when we are tightening our future direction, it seemed a good time to make sure everyone in our organization understood what that vision is.

I decided to draw some inspiration from a book that I was recently turned on to called “The Back of the Napkin,” by Dan Roam, in which Roam contends that any business idea can be conveyed more clearly by pictures.

The task at hand for our company was a difficult one, being that we work within the payment processing industry – an environment surrounded by major players who make the rules, and bizarre language and acronyms that explain the rules. Going into the project, the level of difficultly to explain the complexities of the industry in a drawing seemed somewhere between running a lemonade stand and landing on the moon. Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted by Chad Gardner

Although low-cost domains and affordable web design are readily available, a recent survey by Warrillow shows that the majority of small businesses don’t have an independent website – in fact, 59% are without this resource.

With more and more people searching for local businesses on Google (ie. “Denver, CO florist”), it is important for small businesses to be on the first results page – if not the first result on the page – for their respective niche or at least their company name.

So, if a small business doesn’t have a website, how can they rank on a search results page or create a valuable online presence?

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Posted by Chad Gardner

I wish I could remember which blog I first found out about Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty so I could give the author recognition, but there are 8,000+ blogs of all different subjects – from small business to personal to technology—registered to speak out about poverty today, and each and every one deserves acknowledgement for addressing such an important worldwide issue. This is truly an extraordinary opportunity requiring minimum effort to combine thousands of individual voices and opinions in to ONE, unwavering message.

Taking the idea that the sum is greater than the parts, I wanted to profile one of my favorite non-partisan organizations, The ONE Campaign, to show how anyone can get involved by contributing only their voice to help eradicate global hunger and poverty.

I had a chance to send some questions to a good friend of mine, Libby Crimmings, who is the Regional Field Director for the Iowa and Minnesota ONE Campaign.  I wanted to get a better feel for what this campaign is all about – including getting a grasp for the current worldwide situation and how even the smallest actions can create remarkable synergy.

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Popularity: 46% [?]

Posted by Sarah Jordan

A well-known foreboding statistic is that 75 percent of businesses fail in the first two years; and it’s not as if you’re in the clear after that.  In almost every tactical aspect, small businesses are at a disadvantage—health insurance, financial and employment resources, brand leverage, taxation, and the list goes on.  These facts contribute to (if not explain) the above figure.  But while that statistic might paint the picture that small businesses are fragile or volatile, the recession and most recent economic crisis has been revealing otherwise. 

Even more than usual, article links about small businesses have been flying around our office.  One article from CNN illustrated the “hits” that small business have been taking, but aren’t anywhere close to throwing in the towel.  Here are some of the business owners’ comments:

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Popularity: 76% [?]