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About this time of year, some people get in planning mode for the new year. Often times this planning involves dragging out white boards and reviewing last year’s plan to evaluate progress.

My take it that kind of planning, trying to figure what to do next, only leads to mediocrity. It helps you get a little better, maybe, but it’s usually all down there in the ground level, tactical stuff. Read More

Intuit, makers of Quickbooks, wants to know about a local business you love. And that business can even be your business. Cash grants every month too.

love a local businessI think their Love a Local Business promotion is very fun. All you do is go to the program site and nominate a local business and tell them why you love it. Once a month they pick five local businesses to win a $1,000 grant Read More

You know I’m a huge fan of blogs for small business and an equally big supporter of the WordPress blogging platform.

The wide adoption of WordPress is aided greatly by the fact that its open source architecture means that outside developers can create add-ons to extend the basic functionality. Read More

I need to warn you this post is a bit more commercial than my standard content, but I use the tool I’m going to tell you about today so much that I think you will benefit from just learning about it.

I’ve been working for about three years to create an online team and project management tool, Intranet, file collaboration, and task management program to run my business and the Duct Tape Marketi Read More

Right now showing up on page one of the organic search results is the holy grail of small business online marketing. Any business that spends significant time consistently producing keyword rich, educational content, draws links, and is active in numerous social network can eventually gain some real traction when it comes to search results. Read More

If you're doing good work, have products that people enjoy, and provide a service and experience that exceeds expectation, chances are, your business is benefiting from word of mouth referrals. Read More

If you have no precise marketing strategy, or even a simple set of marketing goals, social media participation will only serve as a glorious way to highlight that your business is precisely like every other business that says they do what you do. (That's a nice way of saying you are doomed to compete on price.) Read More

Is Social Media Changing Selling? Marketing podcast with Mike McLaughlin (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download — subscribe now via iTunes [ Professional Services Sale ... ] Social media has certainly changed marketing, but few people are addressing just how dramatically it's changed sales. In this interview we hit that subj Read More

I'm a big fan of the newish Twitter List function. I wrote about it last week — 5 Reasons to Use the New Twitter Lists Feature Now that I've you pumped up about using lists, I want to talk about a few tools that I think can make the feature even more useful. Read More

In a fit of collaboration goodness I would like to gift one set of seven awesome books to the person that most creatively answers the following: I get the biggest return for my business using social media when I [fill in the blank] I'm the only judge and I'm going to pick the answer I like the best. But, here's what you'll get if you win. Read More