StartupNation Blogs

As the “royalty” status of Hollywood stars has risen, so has their effectiveness as key influencers in consumer purchasing behaviors. Celebrity product placement is considered an “influencer-marketing” approach for helping brands increase their competiveness in an increasingly crowded marketplace. Marketers and small business owners can harness that power through strategic product placement opportunities that have [...]

Recently, I received some interesting information from a small business owner who is pursuing his passion, and thought I would share his tips with you. Meet Shy Figaro, a successful, high-end fashion designer and entrepreneur.
Tell us about your business and why you started it.
I’m fascinated about beauty and elegance, and believe that fashion is a [...]

Since many of you commented on my last blog entry, here are three more free tools to help you with your small business PR activities:
1. Help a Reporter Out
PR Pro Peter Shankman set up this great site at http://www.helpareporter.com/. Simply enter your name and e-mail information. And each day, you’ll receive a list of reporters [...]

To follow up on a previous post requesting feedback on topics and offering to highlight members of the community, I learned of the BTS Blog started by Tom Blue, co founder of Lead411— BTS stands for Business, Technology and Sales.  The BTS Blog is dedicated to discussing startups, business trends, bootstrapping, tech companies, sales and [...]

You’ve probably read our StartupNation advice about how to leverage the value of social media to benefit your business. (You can listen to a first and second podcast on this subject, too.)
But a word of warning: What you may not know–and should be prepared to overcome–is that just like there are squatters on website domain [...]

Tory Johnson, frequent reporter on ABC’s Good Morning America show and anchor of the ABC NewsNow series focusing on careers asked for a little StartupNation love recently. One of her faithful fans, Natalie, of ChicSweets, asked for ideas about how to move her business forward on a variety of levels, especially in the transition from part-time [...]

Today, it’s crucial to be visible to customers and prospects on the Web. Most small businesses know this, which is why it’s more than a good idea to be aware of what people are saying and what could be the next success story or miserable failure for your brand. Until recently, the only way to [...]

Twitter, http://twitter.com/, is a great way to build buzz about your products and services. But if you are using it for media relations activities, here are a few tips to keep in mind:
1. Keep it professional.
Although you want to reach out to followers on a personal level, keep it professional and provide valuable information. Your followers [...]

When you’re on a bootstrap marketing budget, you can never have too many friends in media.  If you don’t have those connections now, there’s still hope.  You just might be able to win a few new media friends with the social media darling, Twitter.  Twitter has been a favorite of the media and public relations [...]

Referencing my prior post on Creative Capitalism, here is another business with a 1 for 1 model.
A new project by California eco-urban design firm LJ Urban aims to make giving more concrete—quite literally—by matching its sales of homes domestically with funds to build homes in the impoverished African nation of Burkina Faso.

Urban has designed a [...]