StartupNation Blogs

Doing our best for you StartupNation folks, here’s our latest advice regarding making the most of your retail holiday selling season. Hope you find it helpful. Please add in your own tips as comments below, too! We could all use the wisdom!�
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As a business owner, I love being my company’s “evangelist.” I get huge kicks from educating and exciting people about becoming a customer. But frankly, there’s an even more important—though arguably less exhilarating—aspect to closing new business. We call it, the art of follow up.
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My feelings about this were confirmed and further fueled at [...]

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 [...]

This video does all the talking…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8

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To make sure you’re leveraging this trend to its fullest, be sure you check out StartupNation’s new e-Report:
Blast Through the Recession with Social Media, Mobile Marketing & More

There are certain level points and junctions in business and the social media revolution we are in the midst of is one of those. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

We spend a lot of time, appropriately, sharing as much as we can at StartupNation about how to get new customers. But once you get customers onboard, what can you do to make sure you keep them?
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Our advice is to ask four key questions:

Who is my customer? This helps you understand your target market. Familiarize [...]

I wonder if products have the same experience people do, that when they meet their match, they feel like they are “home?” I’ll bet the product manager of this doosey has earned his bonus:
Hillshire Farm ham and turkey + reusable Gladware
= Green, Money Saving, The-Big-Corporation-Proves-It-Can-Still-Listen-To-Customers

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What partnerships could you consider in your business?
Example: B&B could supply guests with brunch [...]

I picked up a book in the airport recently: Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher. It’s a fast read and has enough tabloid photos to keep you interested. Her come-sit-by-me-and-dish point of view is disarming and I genuinely enjoyed her tales, her vulnerability and her wit. More importantly, I respect what she is doing.

Wishful Drinking

Carrie Fisher [...]

Just learned about EveryBlock, is a new way to keep track of what’s happening on your block, in your neighborhood and all over. You can choose your city and get a citywide overview of news by category. I might never eat in my own neighborhood again given the amount of violations reported….
The site is one [...]