Owning a small business often means wearing every possible hat available, from marketer to sales clerk and inventory manager to HR professional. Learn from the experiences of the small business owners who are NFIB members as well as the best experts for each industry. Below you will find small business tips for everything from taxes and regulation to promotion and networking.
Bloggers renew this chorus every time Google releases an update: SEO is dead. But don’t believe it. Search engine optimization (SEO) is alive and well. “SEO, the art of making content more accessible and understandable to search engines, will exist and thrive for as long as search engines exist,” said Sam McRoberts, SEO expert and CEO of VUDU Marketing, in a...
“You dating anyone?” Who hasn’t bristled at that query? Entrepreneur Matthew Homann, who was asked about his dating situation many times after getting divorced nearly a decade ago, got the idea of concocting an imaginary girlfriend to stop the endlessly repeated questions. “I’d talk with folks about [the divorce] and be asked about being in a relationship all the time,” he says....
In the eyes of your potential customers, there should be a difference between spam and your sales-pitch email. A successful email sales pitch is… Compelling. Grab a potential customer’s attention right away with your subject line and opening, says Michael Chasin, cofounder of LawKick, a lawyer-client matching service in Los Angeles. Depending on your business and clientele, this could be a powerful statistic,...
The Business Owner: Alexis Davis, CEO of Hoo-Kong.com, an online jewelry seller in New York The Book: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t by Jim Collins Why I Read It: I was at my friend’s house, and it was just lying on his counter. At the time, I was just starting to launch my online store for...
It’s no longer a question of whether a small business needs a Facebook presence. Rather, it’s a matter of how to best use it. Here are three tips to maximize your results. Develop a posting strategy. Celebrating its 10th birthday this year, Facebook is now too mainstream for you to approach it with a willy-nilly, laissez-faire attitude. Research Facebook pages of companies...
Online shopping may have boomed in recent years, but according to the United States Census Bureau, fewer than 6 percent of purchases were made online in 2013. Brick-and-mortar locations are still king, so small business owners need to make sure their storefronts stand out for all the right reasons, says Danaria Farris McCoy. As general manager of Freedom Crossing at Fort...
Set in 1960s New York, AMC’s hit show Mad Men chronicles the cutthroat world of advertising decades before “digital” became a word people uttered daily. The characters’ casual, in-office scotch drinking may be passé, but many of the show’s elements still ring true in today’s tech-driven advertising world. As the owner of a small advertising agency, Denise Blasevick, CEO of The...
The tedious search for a Halloween costume launched a new career for Adam Freck and Andrew Volk, owners of Superfan Suits, an online retailer of zany costumes. In 2008, Freck wanted to dress as the Green Man mascot from TV’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but he couldn’t find the bright-green, body-hugging spandex costume for sale in the United States. After a...
Two words can make customers nervous: hard sell. Yet, it’s still as prevalent as ever. This New York Times article details the hard sell practices by Staples. Hard-selling, the act of direct, forceful pressure on customers to convince them to buy a product or a service, can feel rather uncomfortable—for both sellers and potential buyers. So how can a small...
NFIB is a member-driven organization advocating on behalf of small and independent businesses nationwide.
Or call us today
1-800-634-2669
© 2001 - 2024 National Federation of Independent Business. All Rights Reserved. Terms and Conditions | Privacy
