Best of the Web
Best of the Web Best of the Web, written as an excerpt or blog snippet for the busy executive, is a collection of web marketing and business blogs that are relevant to the web marketing community and other business professionals. We update the information frequently to make sure only interesting, useful and informative articles are included. Below each synopsis is a link to the original article source, so the readers can read the blog in it’s entirely.

7 Ways to Help Ensure Your Business Succeeds

Donald Todrin     Entrepreneur

The darkest days of the Great Recession are over, so we are told, but I’m finding that sales have increased only slightly for some small-business owners, while revenue remains deeply depressed for many. While some customers are loosening up their wallets a little, it is clear purchasing habits have changed.

Deep economic changes have occurred, and business will never be the same.

Entrepreneurs — whether they’re an unemployed person striking out on their own or a seasoned veteran trying to get the mojo back again — must do things differently in order to survive. Everyone must change, especially small-business owners.

Luckily, what have not changed are the business fundamentals, those management traits that successful entrepreneurs almost all possess: tenacity, commitment and vision, and basic business skills.

New strategies are required, however, strategies designed to work in a changing business climate.  Here are 7 ways to help ensure your business succeeds:

How to Upsell Without Being Obnoxious

Laura Spencer     freelancefolder.com Upselling is a great way to increase your profits as a freelancer–if it’s done right. Upselling means selling additional products and services to your existing clients or convincing them to upgrade their current purchase to a more expensive purchase. If a fast food clerk has ever asked you if you “want fries…

The 5 Biggest Lies Entrepreneurs Tell Themselves When Starting a New Business

Douglas E Rice     unknowninkdesign.com When you receive the spark of a great idea, you start to get the itch. You can’t contain it. You can’t keep it to yourself. You want to do something with it. You’ve got to turn it into a viable business. In Poke the Box, Seth Godin says, “All around you…

Ideas for Growing Your Business

US Small Business Administration     sba.gov For those of you who have already successfully started a business and are ready to take the next step, you may be wondering what you can do to help growing your business. There are many ways to do this, 10 of which are outlined below. Choosing the proper…

10 social media measurements every marketer should know

Rob Petersen     barnraisersllc.com “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” said Peter Drucker. Social media measurement tools are one of the fastest growing areas of analytics and venture funding. But, among businesses that purchase them, only 34% are “happy;” 60% say they are merely “okay” and 6% are so frustrated they are…

Pin to Win: The Ultimate Short Guide to Pinterest for Business

Brett Relander     socialmediatoday Ready to ramp up your efforts on Pinterest? Here are the no-fail guidelines to become a real “pinner.” You can generate lots of traffic from Pinterest in a short amount of time. You can make your path even quicker if you let these 9 rules guide you to success: Rule…

4 Essential WordPress Plugins For Business Blogs

Cynthia Boris     Entrepreneur Whether you have a blog for your small business or blogging is your business, WordPress has a number of plugins that can help you maintain and grow your blog with minimal effort. Plugins are snippets of code that, once activated, automatically embed themselves into your blog. They can be installed directly from your WordPress…

5 Traits To Look For In New Hires When You’re Building A Startup

Vivan Giang     businessinsider.com When you’re starting a new company, you’re hoping it’ll experience breakthrough growth, which means that every step is crucial because so many changes are taking place in the first few years. To help move your company forward, you need to find and retain the right employees. In the book ‘The Reinventors:…

Best Time To Tweet and Post On Facebook and Twitter

Sean Clark     seanclark.com One thing that has always drawn me to online business is the access to data it gives you, that you can then use to help make business decisions. I am not suggesting data alone is the answer to all the decisions we make in business, but it does go a long…

7 Simple Changes You Can Make To Improve Your Website Conversion Rate

Pat Walton     websearchsocial.com If your web traffic is high but people aren’t buying, reviewing, or signing up, it means you have a low conversion rate.  Here are a few ideas that can help improve you website conversion rate: 1). Offer an incentive 2). Create a compelling call to action 3). Use quality images 4)….

Join The 1% And Become A Content Creator

Michael Brenner     Forbes How does a company move from becoming a promoter of their stuff to a provider of business insights? How do brands become publishers without hiring entire newsrooms full of journalists? Turns out, the answer is simple: take the knowledge, the expertise and the passion of your employees and focus that…

Red Bull just gave everyone a Master Class in social branding – here’s how and why:

Simon Mainwaring     simonmainwaring.com Global viewership, life and death stakes, an historic moment – Red Bull masterfully combined all these ingredients to create a social and shared brand experience on a scale never seen before. While the live and post leap coverage focused on Felix the man and , no doubt, daredevil, let’s deconstruct the top ten features of this…

5 Tips for Terrific Power Tweeting

Jeff Bullas     jeffbullas.com Twitter has been my blogs content distribution powerhouse since the day I hit the “publish” button on my first blog post. It allows me to tweet information to the world in real time with simplicity and no fuss. All you need is good headline, a shortened link and some hashtags…

Why Focus Groups Kill Innovation, From The Designer Behind Swiffer

Gianfranco Zaccai     Fast Company THE AERON CHAIR, THE SWIFFER, AND THE REEBOK PUMP–NONE OF THESE BREAKTHROUGH PRODUCTS WOULD HAVE GOTTEN HIGH MARKS FROM A FOCUS GROUP. HERE, CONTINUUM’S GIANFRANCO ZACCAI LISTS FOUR STEPS TO TAKE BEFORE INTRODUCING A DESIGN TO THE MASSES. Think about it: How many great ideas have you had sitting…

10 Errors Entrepreneurs Must Avoid upon Social Media – Part 2

Cynthia Cavoto     firebrandsocialmedia.com Part 2 continued from Part 1 Typical Social Media Errors Your Start-up Ought to Avoid Stopping too soon Developing an Internet presence takes a good amount of time. But, the largest error entrepreneurs usually make is to quit their consistent updates as they have an adequate following. Keep in mind,…

How Your Small Business Can Attract a Big Client

Lee Polevoi     Intuit Going after big clients may seem like a daunting task. However, whatever their size, all businesses have similar needs and challenges for which they seek quality solutions. If you can demonstrate that you offer those solutions, you could prove to be an ideal partner or provider. To that end, here are five…

The ultimate business owner’s guide to Facebook advertising

David Klein     Dynamic Business Most smart business owners understand the value of Facebook advertising and are excited by the prospect of being able to reach such a huge number of prospective customers using the world’s largest social media platform. Facebook Ads can return big bang for your advertising buck. However, many business owners don’t know…

4 Ways to Keep a Small Company Culture as Your Business Grows

Stuart MacDonald     Entrepreneur Most startups are looking to grow. But once success hits, how can you scale your company without shedding the shared values and culture that helped make you successful in the first place? FreshBooks, a cloud accounting company based in Toronto, started in 2003 as a handful of people in a small office….

4 Ways Small Retailers Can Compete with Amazon

Ashley Lutz     Open Forum The success of giant e-commerce businesses are forcing other retail websites to pick up the pace. Retailers, such as Macy’s, Saks, Ralph Lauren and Tiffany & Co., have huge resources to build up their online presence, but no other online retailer can compare with Amazon in terms of innovation in recent years, according to Aram Rubinson, an…

5 Things Michael J. Fox Can Teach Us About Business, Happiness and Life

Andre Bourque     SocialMediaToday It took Michael J. Fox eight years to publicly reveal he had Parkinson’s disease back in 1998. He was starring in his second hit TV show and it was no longer something he could conceal. For years he struggled to accept his condition, rarely gave interviews, and deliberately remained out of the…

The 10 Most Prominent Writers’ Workshops in America

Online Education Database     OEDb There is a myth that writing is a solitary endeavor. While it’s true that no one but the author can put words to paper, writing is certainly not a solitary practice, especially for students in creative writing workshops at some of the most prestigious writing programs in the U.S….