Business Blogs: Trends, tips, and real-life anecdotes from industry experts.

With over 70% of the economic experts expecting a last quarter uptick in the economy, now is the perfect time to start preparing for the extra business.  I am a big fan of using virtual assistants to help build out my team during peak seasons.  This is an especially useful business strategy in today’s [...]

Some companies are doing well during these tough economic times. That’s why I sat down with David Durick of gotoBilling, www.gotobilling.com, to find out the secret to their success (and how marketing has played a role in their significant growth over the past year).
Here’s what David had to say…
What do you do at gotoBilling.com and [...]

Most people associate telemarketing with outbound sales call centers- a huge room full of employees with headsets on making calls for sales, lead generation, or collecting survey information or donations. But telemarketing also works the other way around. If you don’t have the staff, or language capabilities to support taking calls, inbound telemarketing is a [...]

Given the global recession, real estate presents new challenges and opportunities for business owners. Businesses especially are affected by the pressures of reduced demand and tighter lending criteria. The fact is, you’re challenged to do more with less.
I just moderated an expert panel on video as part of the Wells Fargo Webcast Series on this very topic [...]

Our ally, Victoria Colligan of LadiesWhoLaunch has been a huge supporter and advocate for our Leading Moms in Business competition. She and her team created considerable awareness among the LadiesWhoLaunch community about the competition and many of her members ended up being named winners.
Victoria, ever committed to the success of moms, provided us with this great [...]

When you consider your business model (which includes your marketing efforts), you generally concentrate on these core components:

Why will people pay you? (money, votes, donations)
What does it cost you to sell your item…margins?
What protects you from competition, price-feature battles?
How will you turn an agnostic audience into loyal customers?

Early on when transactions had no costs, doing [...]

It’s early in the morning, and I just fielded a few calls from struggling entrepreneurs who are overwhelmed with all of the marketing and PR data out there. “Where do we start?”
There is a lot of information out there, especially on this site. And it can be difficult to figure out what activities to pursue [...]

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 [...]

Recently, I was contacted by a PR firm (Attention) and asked if I would profile Blake Mycoskie on my blog(s). I’m ashamed to say how long it’s taken me to turn this piece around, however seeing the latest ATT commercial featuring Blake after a long day of meetings (at my day job) shamed me into finishing. My [...]

Usually, the acronym, ROI (”Return on Investment”) is reserved for use in characterizing how much money you get out of a deal as an investor. It’s basically a financial stat.
But the ROI for us at StartupNation is something quite different, which I realized as soon as I received this unsolicited email at 7:41pm. Beyond the [...]