The Blog

5 Secret Resume Killers Every Hiring Manager Looks For

At one point or another, it has happened to all of us. An exciting job opportunity that matched our background, experience and education finally came along. And not only was the job well within our salary range, but it was a PERFECT fit for our resume—to the point we convinced ourselves “They actually wrote this job posting for ME!” So ...

Social Bookmarking: Dos and Don’ts

One of the steepest learning curves I have encountered as the owner, writer and chief Search Engine Optimization guy of a blog site is with the art—and science—of social bookmarking. As I discuss in one of my recent posts Inexpensive SEO Strategies for Small Company Websites: Part III, getting websites to link back to yours (a.k.a. reverse-linking) is the Holy Grail of ...

9 Reasons Your Marketing Communication Lacks Credibility

Before I get too far into this article, I’m going to come right out and say something: I believe Marketing Communication is quickly becoming a lost art. In fact, I would go as far as to say that at many companies, the quality of marketing-related communication is not only devalued, but coming dangerously close to being completely ignored. I will save ...

4 Pricing Strategies That Work for Small Companies

As many of you know, this article is Part 2 in a two-part series on product and service pricing. And I am happy to say that so far, Part 1 (4 Pricing Mistakes You Need to Stop Making) has generated a surprising number of comments and spurred some interesting debates among Marketing people. One of the more heated Twitter conversations ...

4 Pricing Mistakes You Need to Stop Making

Of all the things I was asked to do early in my career as a marketer, one of the most intimidating was determining the price of my company’s products and services. To this day I still remember the first time I was asked to come up with a go-to-market pricing strategy, and will never forget the stress I felt and ...

6 Critical Mistakes All Small Company Managers Must Avoid

Before I get too far into this article, I need to point something out. Like hundreds of people before me, I could have used the 1,000 words that follow to declare that running a successful small company is about things like taking risks, accepting failure, multi-tasking, finding creative solutions to problems, and never accepting ‘no’ for an answer. But anyone ...

5 Survival Tips from Successful Small Company Managers

Truth be told, few things in business are more complex than running or managing a small company. While our counterparts in Fortune 500 organizations have the benefit of things like goals and job descriptions and long-term plans, the only constants small company managers have on their side are change and uncertainty. . . and a minimal amount of job security. ...

What Does a Social Marketing Manager REALLY Do?

When it comes to Marketing, every decade has had its ‘hot’ careers. During the 1980s, catalog marketing and direct mail houses were the place to be. In the 1990s, web design firms and ad agencies were overloaded with job applicants. And from 2000 to 2009, any career related to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) seemingly turned to gold the minute it ...

Twitter for Small Business: An Interview with Shannon Evans

When you spend as much time networking as I do, you meet some pretty interesting people—people with things like motivation, ideas, experience, and a strong desire to help others become better at what they do. Shannon Evans (@shannonevans on Twitter) is one of those people: a development editor, literary coach, book reviewer, and author of the brand new small business ...

7 Reasons Your Employees Might Hate You

When you take a moment to list all of the functions involved in running a small company, it is easy to see how overwhelming entrepreneurship can be. Having to perform sales, marketing, accounting, purchasing and shipping (along with two dozen other daily tasks) requires set of skills many people simply don’t have . . . which is why most successful ...

The Key to Catching (and Passing) Your Market Leader

If there is one thing nearly universal among small company owners and managers, it is the need—and sometimes the outright obsession—to do what the market leader is doing. Whether copying a piece of their business model, matching their prices, advertising in the same places or hiring their ex-employees, the fact is most small companies spend a great deal of time ...

5 Unique Traits of Great Small Company Employees

As many of you who regularly visit this blog know, my life mission is relatively straightforward: to stop small company owners and managers from running their companies like big ones. And nowhere is it more tempting for entrepreneurs to emulate their larger counterparts than during the hiring process, where they compete directly with Fortune 1000 firms for the world’s best, ...

Myron Mixon: Business Secrets from a BBQ Entrepreneur

Being a full-time Marketing guy, part-time blogger and perpetual Historical house renovator doesn’t leave a great deal of room in my life for hobbies. That said, I always manage to set aside at least a few hours each weekend to pursue one of my favorite passions: barbecue. And not the “throw a few hotdogs and burgers on the grill” barbecue ...

The Most Alarming Trend in Small Business

As regular visitors to my blog know, I typically don’t give lectures or tell small company owners what to do. Most of my articles are written under the assumption that a) good or bad, adults can make their own decisions, and b) small business people will almost always do what is best for their organizations. But as of late, I ...

5 Free Twitter Tools for the Busy Small Company Marketer

As I have mentioned several times in previous posts, there are few things in business more challenging, more stressful, and more frustrating than being asked to market your company’s products and services on a shoestring budget. Those of us who have carved a career out of small company (and small budget) marketing know the secret to success lies not in ...

5 Ways to Immediately Improve Your Small Company Operation

Regardless of why it was initially founded, the goal of any small company is to generate more money. But once our businesses are off and running, most of us become too preoccupied with running them to make the constant improvements necessary for increased efficiency, increased sales, and ultimately more money in our pockets. But there are some operational ways we ...

5 Job-Related Lies You Might Be Telling Yourself (Guest Post)

A 2010 report released by The Conference Board says that American employees are increasingly unhappy—which they say is “a long-term trend that should be a red flag to employers.” But is it also a wake-up call for employees who are experiencing increased workloads, ramped up stress and a lack of purpose? The kind of stress people experience working extended hours in a ...

15 Signs You Might Lose Your Small Company Job

Over the course of my 18-year career, I have spent a great deal of time on both sides of some messy employment situations. In addition to terminations, corporate reorganizations, company mergers and hostile acquisitions, I have been part of several multi-round company-wide layoffs . . . one of which resulted in me exiting the building with my personal belongings in ...

An Interview with Buzzom CEO Bhupendra Khanal (Part 2)

Below is Part 2 of a recent interview with Bhupendra Khanal, the architect behind Buzzom—a leading social marketing and Twitter account management tool. Mr. Khanal offered to share his time with Eric Rudolf, a career Internet Marketing professional and owner of THEsmallCOMPANYBLOG. Please follow this link to access Part 1 of this Interview. THE INTERVIEW: QUESTIONS 6 THRU 10 Eric: For marketing analytics ...

Social Marketing Automation: Interview with the CEO of Buzzom

Below is Part I of a two-part interview with Bhupendra Khanal, Founder and CEO of InRev—developers of Buzzom. Buzzom is one of the fastest-growing Twitter Account Management tools in the industry, and was recently featured in PC World’s list of Top 5 Twitter Ranking applications, as well as in a recent article in Forbes Magazine. Although he runs a company in ...

5 Ethical Ways to Grow Your Corporate Email Database

When it comes to marketing, one of the most essential ingredients for success is time. Over my 18 years as a marketer, I have never heard the words “Quick . . . market this!” nor have I uttered them to someone else. People who market for a living understand the concept of time, and realize things like web hits, social ...

Inexpensive SEO for Small Company Websites: Part 4

Given the current state of the economy, the days of being able to afford professional Search Engine Optimization (SEO) help are gone. As website traffic struggles with the economic downturn, small companies need the services of market-leading firms like Bruce Clay, SEO Inc. and HighRankings.com now more than ever. Unfortunately, we have no hope of affording their five-figure start up ...

Article Marketing on Twitter: The Art of the Retweet

By now, most of my regular readers have a pretty good handle on the ‘business model’ of this blog. In a nutshell, my strategy is simple: I write one article per week, post it, then spend the next six days trying to get people to actually read it. This recurring series of events can be a grind for an article ...

6 Blogging Lessons I Learned the Hard Way

When I wrote my very first post in October of 2008, I knew there would be a few things to learn about blogging. Back then, I figured my 16 years of small company marketing experience could take me most of the way, and I would simply fill in the gaps with a handful of articles and one good book from ...

4 Ridiculous Myths About Small Company Webinars

A few weeks ago I was catching up on my industry reading, when I came across a consultant-generated white paper called 9 Management Practices for Exceptional Webinars. For someone who conducts a marketing-related Webinar at least twice per month within my own small company, I thought this article would be a quick way to pick up a few pointers. But as ...

33 Changes for the Small Company Manager

Looking back on this past year as a manager in a small company, I see a mix of both good and bad. Sure, my company was one of the few in its industry to NOT lose ground over the last 12 months (as my buddy Mike says, ”Flat is the new hypergrowth—right?”), but my performance, my decision-making and my execution were definitely far from perfect. In ...

Why Customer Input Doesn’t Always Matter

Over the years I have worked for several small companies that were firm believers in customer surveys. In the eyes of these particular businesses, there was nothing a company could not ask a customer. Whether it was an idea for a new product, an improvement to an existing product, a search for marketing advice or a simple customer satisfaction exercise, ...

Strategic Self-Promotion: 8 Rules for Marketing Yourself

On occasion, the workplace can be a confusing and frustrating place for a small company manager. Have you ever volunteered to lead an upcoming high-profile initiative, only to see someone else be selected for no apparent reason? Have you ever interviewed for an internal position higher on the organizational chart, then not been selected even though you meet 100% of ...

Is it a Lead or Not? Getting Marketing and Sales to Agree

Being in charge of filling a Sales pipeline is a tough spot for any Marketing person. Not only are legitimate sales opportunities difficult to find, but when it comes to actually defining what a ‘lead’ looks like, beauty is often in the eye of the beholder. There are literally dozens of ways to classify incoming inquiries generated by outbound marketing ...

Marketing Tool Review: SocialOomph Social Media Productivity

As a blogger who also has a day job, the lure of automated marketing tools is, at times, nearly impossible to resist. But as I discussed in a recent post titled Four Marketing Technologies That Are Ruining the Internet, most of the tools marketers have to choose from do little more than encourage us to clutter the Internet with artificially-generated traffic, ...

5 Visually Appealing Plugins for the Lazy Blog Designer

To me, one of the keys to my blogging success thus far (“success” being a term I use loosely in this case) is that I am keenly aware of both my strengths AND my weaknesses. On the Strengths side of the ledger, I have two things going for me—I can write, and I can market myself. But on the Weaknesses ...

Four Marketing Technologies That Are Ruining the Internet

As I look back on my 17+ years as a professional marketer, it occurs to me how far we have come. Once popular marketing methods like direct mail, trade shows, cold-calling, and print advertising have been completely replaced by Internet-based technologies—technologies which are not only less expensive, but much easier to use. Today, anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can become a ...

15 Things I Did When My Blog Was Hacked: A Recovery Plan

I don’t usually make a habit of getting emotional in my blog postings. But for reasons I will explain shortly, the last three weeks have changed me. Although I could never be considered an overly positive person, I certainly have never been a negative one. I trust people when they earn it, and believe for the most part that the ...

The Five Hidden Ways Small Companies Waste Money

At some point in our lives we have all heard the saying “if you count the pennies, the dollars will take care of themselves.” Although this advice might have helped your grandparents survive The Great Depression, this kind of small-minded thinking carries no weight when it comes to running and attempting to grow a business. This is not to say ...

12 Essential Sections of a Great Marketing Plan + Template

I’ll never forget the combined feeling of excitement and panic the first time my boss asked me to create a Marketing Plan for a new product. While part of me was excited by the fact I had finally ‘arrived’ as a professional in my field—much like a doctor being asked to treat a first patient—the remainder of me was scared ...

Adsense, WidgetBucks, Commission Junction and Amazon: A Side-by-Side Affiliate Review

According to several notable bloggers, I am now hitting the traffic milestones necessary to place affiliate advertising on my blog. As most newbie affiliate advertisers do, I experimented with multiple programs before I settled on my ‘ideal’ combination of placements. Although it is too early to financially evaluate all of the programs, I believe there is value in passing on ...

3 Traps to Avoid When Starting Your Own Small Business

At some point, we’ve all been there. Over the last few years each of us—at least one time—has become fed up enough with our jobs to consider starting a small business. The process always starts the same way: we do some research on the Internet, make a few phone calls, and run a set of rough financial projections. Then, when ...

The Myth of Social Networking and Revenue Generation

As anyone who was once a member of an electronic bulletin board knows, social networks have been around for decades. Twenty years ago, only a handful of businesses had the forsight or the technical knowledge to consider utilizing something like a BBS for marketing purposes. But today, social media technology is much more accessible and easier to use; and the ...

4 Reasons Your New Business Will Thrive in a Bad Economy

Over the past six months or so, all of us have spoken to at least one friend or relative who is considering starting a business. Some have been laid off, others have experienced cutbacks or pay cuts, and the rest are simply unhappy with their current situations. But regardless of the circumstances, the person looking to start a business always ends the ...

The REAL Reason Banks Won’t Lend Any Money

If you were looking for a sure-fire way into an argument, your most likely adversary these days would not be a neighbor, or an in-law, or even a customer service person at your local mega-retail establishment. More likely, your difference of opinion would lie with a banker. Utter the words “banks aren’t lending any money” around someone who works for a financial institution, and the next ...

Reality TV: 7 Underrated Shows You’re Probably Missing

I am a firm believer that every person in this world has at least one vice. No matter who you are, where you live or what you believe in, there is a moral weakness out there with your name engraved on it. Mine, as made quite obvious by the title of this post, is Reality TV—the creative, chaotic, and sometimes violent shows that force ...

How I Became a Mediocre Blogger for Only $9.95 per Month

Although it has only been a year, it seems like an eternity since I made the semi-life changing decision to become a blogger. I had always dreamed of writing for the masses—showing people how smart I was, how clever I could be, and how many things I learned during my years in the working world. Blogging appeared to be the next logical step in a ...

The 4 Critical Differences Between Large and Small Companies

Over the last three years writing about small companies, many of my friends, colleagues and fellow bloggers have questioned my decision to draw such a hard distinction between small companies and their larger counterparts. I regularly receive emails like “Is working for a small company really that different?” and “Aren’t good management techniques the same for all companies?” but have not bothered to prepare a response. Until today. ...

Internet Marketers: The New MVPs for Small Companies

As recently as ten years ago, Marketing Departments were widely viewed as little more than service bureaus for most organizations. In the eyes of many businesses, marketing existed only to perform low-level tasks like generate marketing collateral, assemble presentations, and coordinate trade shows. I know this not because I read about it, or because someone told me, but because I was there. During ...

Authors: 6 Other Things to Do with Your Book Idea

As a recent visitor to my blog pointed out, the traditional self-publishing model of “write a book, print a bunch of copies, and sell them” is becoming more outdated and short-sighted every day. The fact is, recent developments in technology and content delivery have presented a whole host of fun, profitable and low-cost ways to deliver your book idea to the masses—ways that won’t ...

7 Reasons I Suck at Blogging, and What I’m Going to Do About It

As many of you know, the first year as a blogger can be an extremely rewarding time when it comes to learning. If I compare my current knowledge of Internet marketing to what I thought I knew 12 months ago, I’m almost embarrassed at how behind I really was. This isn’t to say I’m caught up, but at least now I feel ...

57 Things That (Sort of) Increased My Twitter Clickthroughs

Until I am willing to manually approve each person who joins my Twitter community, I have no choice but to live with the reality that a significant percentage of my Twitter followers are MLMers, self-proclaimed SEO experts, and consultants who would love to help me run my business . . . even though I don’t actually have one. But the fact is, my target audience ...

17 Great Reasons Why Professional Marketers Hate Twitter

If given the opportunity, one would be hard-pressed to find a marketing channel that evokes a more polarizing reaction among professional marketers than Twitter. People who get paid to market for a living (the ones with things like degrees or experience or both) are rarely in the middle on Twitter: they either love it, or they go to bed each night hoping social networking’s newest ...

Universal Search: Still Relevant for Small Companies?

In mid-2007, Google gave SEO experts and Internet marketers an entire year’s worth of job security when it announced the first steps toward a Universal Search model. Shortly thereafter, similar announcements were made by MSN and YaHoo; and for the remainder of 2007 and much of 2008, the topic of Universal Search was featured at every marketing conference and written about by every blogger on the planet. But then—like O.J. ...

The 5 Biggest Lies in Internet Marketing

Being a full-time blogger comes with a lot of baggage. Actively maintaining two websites, six email accounts and memberships to a dozen social networking sites is definitely fun, but certainly more work than I ever imagined it would be. Although these tools are great for keeping in touch with readers and fellow bloggers, they also come with a catch: I receive more than my share of incoming junk messages. Not ...

Real-World Benefits of Twitter for Small Companies: Part II

Like many of you who regularly visit this blog (over 6,000 now—thank you!) I have spent countless hours reading about, researching, and experimenting with Twitter over the last few months. My goal is to answer one simple question: “Can this technology be used to make a positive impact, financial or otherwise, on a small company?” This post will act as Part II in a series of posts focusing ...

How to Add a “Tweet This Post” Button to WordPress in Less Than 60 Seconds

In terms of using Twitter as a business tool, I have learned one key thing over the last couple of months: that very few companies actually Tweet original content. In an effort to drive traffic to their sites, most companies large and small will grab onto anything they believe is newsworthy—swine flu updates, MSN headlines and phrases from motivational posters being three of the ...

A New Definition of Marketing for Small Companies?

Although the textbook authors at Prentice Hall, McGraw-Hill and Houghton Mifflin might not agree, the definition of Marketing is not a static, catch-all descriptor that can be indiscriminately applied in any situation. Marketing is a sliding scale; a moving target that changes based on industry, audience, and most importantly company size. While larger firms can spend ridiculous amounts of money simply throwing their ...

6 Reasons to Stop Using Direct Mail

This past summer I spent three days at DMA 2008, the world’s largest annual marketing conference. Due to the expense involved in attending (a $2,000 registration fee + air and three nights of hotel) this was actually my first DMA conference. Being a professional marketer since the early 1990s I have seen a great deal of change within my profession, and expected the nearly ...

5 Unbreakable Rules for Using Twitter as a Business Tool

Like most social technology sites in worldwide use today, companies big and small are scrambling to convert Twitter from a simple networking tool to a legitimate way of increasing revenues and decreasing costs. Unfortunately, most of these businesses are learning just enough about Twitter to be dangerous. And annoying. And in some cases, unethical. Although many of us would love to see each new Twitter account ...

Small Company Survey: 5 Signs of a Healthy Organization

Whether you are an employee, manager, or owner of a small company, the question ”How is my company REALLY doing?” is often asked, but rarely answered. Sure, there are basic metrics like Total Revenue, Profit Margin and Employee Turnover which can paint at least part of the picture. However, all of these measures have one inherent flaw: they measure things which have already happened. So is there a way to ...

Self-Publishing: A Simple and Inexpensive How-To Guide

Over the last several months it occurred to me that at least a dozen of my friends, relatives and acquaintences are in the process of writing a book. Because of what I currently do for a living (Marketing Director for a mid-tier training and publishing company) a number of them have asked me for advice. This series represents a summary of the conversations I had with each of ...

Real-World Benefits of Twitter for Small Companies: Part I

More than any other social networking site in worldwide use today, Twitter owes a significant portion of its recent growth to pyramid schemes, egocentric celebrities, get-rich-quick gurus, and kids from Amsterdam with nothing better to do than collect thousands of new followers per week. While these people continue to tie up Twitter’s bandwidth by posting 140-character brain farts in rapid succession, my focus continues to be on the business ...

Pay-per-Click (PPC) for Small Companies: Still a Bad Idea

Back in early November I wrote a short post titled When Pay-per-Click (PPC) is a Bad Idea. As of this morning, about five months later, this article is still the most popular page on my site. One of two things is likely the cause: 1) many small companies are considering investing in Pay-per-Click and having doubts, or 2) many small companies are already investing in PPC, and second-guessing ...

New Rules for Direct Email Marketing

Since the middle of 2001, I would estimate I have booked, written, sent, and evaluated over $8 million in B2B and B2C direct email campaigns—promoting everything from enterprise software to educational services to retail products. Over this eight year period many things within the direct email landscape have changed, thanks in part to laws like The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (which laid out enforceable rules ...

Inexpensive SEO Strategies for Small Company Websites: Part III

Dirty Negotiating: Yet Another Walmart Corporate Standard

Over my 17 years working for small companies, I have had the opportunity to negotiate and eventually do business with the corporate offices of dozens of members of the Fortune 100. As much as I dislike the way these large firms are run as a whole, I must admit companies like Ford, AT&T, Verizon, Home Depot, Target, Cisco, 3M and Washington Mutual have always treated my companies ...

Authors: 5 Reasons to Self-Publish Your Next Book

Over the last couple of months it occurred to me that about a dozen of my friends, relatives and acquaintances are in the process of writing a book—a science fiction novel, a how-to manual, a business resource, a cookbook, and a fiction novel based on actual events being just a few examples. Because of what I currently do for a living (Marketing Director for a mid-tier training and ...

The Danger of Relying on Vendors and Consultants

A few months ago at a professional meeting, I had a chance to speak with the VP of Marketing for one of the country’s largest for-profit online Universities. The focus of our discussion was marketing strategy; or more specifically, how the company generates potential students (a.k.a. leads) to pass along to the Enrollment Counselors (a.k.a. sales team). Using their Online MBA Program as an example, ...

Inexpensive SEO Strategies for Small Company Websites: Part II

Given the current state of the economy, the days of being able to afford professional, full-scale Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are little more than a distant memory. As your website traffic struggles with the economic downturn, small companies like yours need the services of market-leading firms like Bruce Clay, SEO Inc. and HighRankings.com now more than ever. Unfortunately, you have no hope of affording ...

Five Ownership Mistakes That Kill Small Company Growth

At some point in the past 12 months, all of us have heard a friend, relative or co-worker say ”I should start my own business!” The basis of their claim is usually that they are ‘idea people,’ and obviously idea people always make GREAT small company owners . . . right? Not exactly. After 17 years of working in and with small companies, ...

Competitive ‘Intelligence:’ When Social Networking Backfires

Today, I would like to take a minute and tell a story. A story about an actual, real-life situation in which a high-profile player in an extremely competitive industry makes a huge mistake the rest of us can learn from. At the small company I currently work for, we have a competitor I will call Randy. Randy is Founder and CEO of the ...

A Hiring Manager’s Guide to Small Company Interviewing

When it comes to the hiring process, small company managers are used to carrying the bulk of the load. While our counterparts within the Fortune 1000 have access to things like on site recruiters, online assessments and multi-departmental search teams, small company managers rarely have the time or the patience to endure an interview process of more than two rounds. ...

3 Tips for Finding (and Getting) a Small Company Job

For whatever reason, most people prefer to acquire their job search advice from store bought career guides. If this wasn’t the case, books like What Color is Your Parachute?, Internet Your Way to a New Job and Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters wouldn’t be flying off the shelves right now. But these factory-produced manuscripts all have one thing in common: they cater to people who are looking for jobs at LARGE companies. Those of you ...

Tips for a Tough Economy: Marketing on a Small(er) Budget

When the economy worsens and the term “401″ more accurately describes my account balance than the retirement vehicle itself, marketing services firms across the nation try to get their finger on the “our method is most cost-effective” scale. If you read their self-promoting white papers and newsletters, you will find that nearly every sector of the marketing services world is claiming their method is tailor-made for tough economies. But which marketing ...

The Dangers of Not Building a Shared Corporate Vision

In the early 2000s I managed the marketing department for a venture funded software development company, run by two on-site owners and a non-owner CEO. As you can imagine, the culture was hard working, fast paced, and energetic. Upon hire, all employees were given a ’starter kit’ of stock options, with the opportunity to earn additional options over time for various ...

Simple Definitions of Social Media and Social Networking

As we move through the first half of 2009, I plan to develop and post a series of articles relating to monetizing (i.e. making money from) Social Media and social networking. These articles will outline my thoughts about these vehicles as they relate to small companies—specifically, whether or not I believe it is possible for small firms to directly or indirectly leverage Social Media ...

Book Review: What Every BODY is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People

Regardless of what kind of small company you manage in, you cannot escape the fact that effectively dealing with PEOPLE is key to your success. Even the most office-bound managers among us still have to perform employee evaluations, lead company meetings, attend business dinners, deal with councils and commissions, inverview potential new hires, perform face-to-face customer service, resolve conflicts among employees, or attempt to sell something every ...

9 Signs You’re Involved in a Pyramid Scheme

By virtue of owning a website created to help small companies, people trying to launch their own businesses are regular visitors here. Many of these soon-to-be entrepreneurs have the drive, the knowledge and the plans required to become a great success someday, which makes running this website one of the more fun and rewarding things I do with my time. But over ...

The Key to Catching (and Passing) a Market Leader

As small company owners and managers, very few of us have ever had the luxury of working for a market leader. More often than not there is at least one other company in the industry with higher annual revenue, better quality, more name recognition, or a significantly longer list of customers. Small companies spend their entire existences playing catch-up, and most are ...

The Importance of Blogs for Small Company Web Traffic

This past summer I attended a 3-day marketing conference. I spent most of my time in the e-Commerce and Web Marketing Track, hoping to learn more about increasing the effectiveness of my internet-based campaigns, generating additional web traffic, and maximizing new web technologies for marketing and online sales. One of my favorite sessions was a panel presentation and Q&A on ...

The Dumbest Marketing Campaigns of 2008

A few days ago, a friend of mine told me he uses half the space in his blog to complain about things. Apparently one of the side benefits of running a blog is that you get a chance to rant once in awhile (who knew?) so I started making a list of things that generally irritate me: self-proclaimed wine experts, celebrity couples, seven dollar pints of beer, and ...

Inexpensive SEO Strategies for Small Company Websites: Part I

Given the current state of the economy, the days of being able to afford professional, full-scale Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are little more than a distant memory. As corporate website traffic struggles with the economic downturn, companies need the services of market-leading firms like Bruce Clay, SEO Inc. and HighRankings.com now more than ever. Unfortunately, we have no hope of affording their five-figure start up fees, much ...

Attracting Great Employees . . . Without Perks

Yesterday I received my latest issue of the local metro business magazine, featuring their annual list of ‘Great Places to Work’ for 2008. The spread was full of the metro area’s highest profile retailers, consulting firms, technology companies, manufacturers, coffee chains and law firms, along with a handful of smaller up-and-coming organizations readers were told to watch out for. Each listed company was graced with a small article ...

Why Key Employees Leave Small Companies

A few days ago I was having a conversation with a co-worker, and the topic of conversation was why seemingly smart, loyal, qualified and motivated employees suddenly leave small companies. My co-worker’s position was that employees leave bosses and not necessarily companies, and I tend to agree with her. But at the same time this leads to the secondary question of “What ...

Small Company Mistake #2: Hiring Big Company Managers

I’ve been doing some interviewing lately for several open positions at my company, including a high-profile management spot. As I work my way through the interview process I have been making a conscious effort to reflect back on previous hires, hoping to narrow down exactly why some small company managers work out so well . . . and why others crash, burn, and ...

Metrics for Growth: Do You Need a Second Espresso Machine?

A few days ago I was sitting in a recently opened, neighborhood coffee shop with a friend who makes a living evaluating businesses and business units. During our conversation he and I began discussing how much money a coffee shop might cost to operate. After running some calculations relating to things like overhead, average transaction size and profit margin, we eventually concluded that this particular store would need ...

Why Do I Work for a Small Company?

For those of you who are regular visitors to this blog, you no doubt have noticed two points I often go out of my way to make: 1) that the keys to success in a small company are markedly different than in a large one; and 2) that working at a small company is more fun, more challenging, and ultimately more ...

The Silent Killer: Under-Investing in Technology

I recently worked with an IT professional services firm that was coming to the end of an impressive growth stage. After being in business since 1991 and experiencing flat revenues for nearly 10 years, the company had managed to increase its annual revenue by a factor of five between 2001 and 2006. When ownership noticed that 2007 revenues were not ...

Small Company Mistake #1: Acting Like a Big Company

When I originally created this blog, I included the category “Mistakes and Miscues” for a very good reason—so contributors had more than enough room to second-guess all of the questionable decisions small company owners and managers make. Over time I anticipate this will be the most popular section of the blog, but obviously this remains to be seen. In case you’re wondering, each of ...