America's Best Business Practices

Thank you very much for the valuable information. I will pass it along and hopefully the innovative recommendations can positively affect and harness maximized success within a small organization.

Thank you Ryan. “We cannot control the wind, but we can adjust our sails.” It is time that small biz starts controlling those things we can.

Spread the word! :-)

Thank you so much – these are just the tips I’m looking for as I’m trying to develop business for a small training and development company.

Thank you for the additional information on an important topic. Do you have any thoughts to share on using the local SCORE office volunteers vs. the wisdom of LinkedIn members?

Good question, Ellen. I think you can secure good advice from both sources. However, anyone can make recommendations whether or not they know anything about the matter.

SCORE would be face to face where you have an opportunity to look the individual in the eye and ask about their experience so you can determine how much trust you wish to put into their recommendation.

With LinkedIn it is virtual which for me, would make it more difficult to determine whether or not I felt I could trust the advice. Yet, I can assure you if you get the right person on LinkedIn, they will have as good advice as a SCORE counselor.

Having said this, I personally would prefer a face to face meeting if it were me. I might also ask for advice in a LinkedIn group and then see which advice made the most sense to me.

Either source is free. So what do you have to lose?

Thanks for reading my blog Ellen and good luck with your business.

Thank you for sharing this information. SCORE looks like an amazing resource that I am definitely going to check out some more.

Great article! Thanks for the tips!

I am focused on tip #2. Low budget (no budget) marketing. It is fun and you must be creative to really take part in this one.

One idea, something I wrote about on my blog just today coincidentally, is writing articles about your profession. Tips that folks can use on an immediate basis.

Then you GIVE these articles away for free. Make sure they are valuable and not hype and people will post them on their site and blog.

For instance I am a chess coach (as well as a freelance writer). So I write a lot of articles about how to teach very young children to play chess.

There aren’t a lot of articles about this on the net, so people are eager to scoop them up. I have learned to tell them that they are free (or else they assume I want money).

It is all part of the “pay it forward” mentality of social networking. People really respond to it and business will come as a result.

Thanks for your comment Laura. Although I wholeheartedly endorse the concept of “paying it forward,” there are two sides to the coin of giving articles away. This is not a new idea. It worked very well with print prior to the internet.

On the one hand, if your article is posted on several sites with a link back to your blog, you may generate a little traffic from this link. However, if the article tells the entire story there is not need to go to your blog for anything. Therefore you may be read, but not followed because they are not following YOUR blog.

On the other hand, it is important to understand how most search engines treat “duplicate copy”. Generally speaking they downgrade all of the “duplicate copy.” By downgrading all pages with “duplicate copy”, they also downgrade the validity of the links back to your blog. There is a lot of discussion about this topic and SEOs do not all agree.

I play it safe because about 40% of traffic to this blog comes from search engines. I work with those that wish to copy my articles and here is example of how I like it done, so there is not a problem with search engines:

My initial post: http://bestbizpractices.org/2010/01/03/why-many-small-business-are-still-struggling/

Copy of my post: http://www.ccassociates.com/blog/?p=504

You will note that the topic is the same, but the copy is abbreviated with a link back to read the entire article. The title is different. Their title is sexier, while mine is more search engine friendly. The content that is there has been reworded so it is not “duplicate copy.” In this case, the copier got what they wanted, I received additional exposure and traffic and we did not create a “duplicate copy” issue.

I leave it in your hands to decide.

Interesting!! I didn’t know any of this, but it makes sense.

Maybe you can help me figure out something. I write a lot about chess and education. My purpose is many-fold. One thing is that I’m trying to actually make a change in our culture, to get parents teaching their children chess at a young age in America (like they do in other countries).

I have discovered that you can actually start at age 2. It is a different lesson than at age 4 or age 6, but you can actually teach the game.

So, for me I just started writing about this to get the ball rolling, as I researched an exact technique for teaching any parent to teach their young child.

I shared my articles and was astonished to discover that when you started typing my name in Google, “Laura Sherman Chess” actually came up as an option to click on. There was one about harp too.

This maintained for months and then disappeared. Now if you type my name, you’ll see a few entries for “Laura Sherman” on the first page (which is cool), but there is no suggestion of “Laura Sherman chess”. You have to type that phrase to see all my articles.

Was it the duplication that caused it to disappear? I did it all by accident. I just wanted to get articles out to parents and brand myself a bit, gearing up for the book I’m writing. It was a nice side effect.

And being the greedy girl I am, I want it back! Any advice?

Thanks!

Laura, it sounds like you want to “close the barn door after the horses are out.” I’m not sure how best to do that. Maybe someone else has a suggestion.

But if your target market is “parents” there must tons of groups (e.g. LinkedIn, Google, Yahoo, etc.) catering to parents, where you can become involved in their discussions. That is what I would suggest.

Ah, yes, well, that’s the problem with trial and error. I think I’ll get it back, probably through the blogging. Either way I’m moving forward and learning!

Definitely all your suggestions are very good. I do have some groups, but through blogging I have the feeling I’ll be able to reach more people.

Thanks, Mike! I appreciate your help!

I think #5 is too often missed. Many people write goals but dont go back regularly and look at them. It is so easy to get caught up in day to day business that you forget what what direction you are going and quickly get off course. Of course having goals are only as good as the action you take to achieve them.

Some interesting thoughts, but I’d like to challenge #1. Simply chasing new customers can be expensive and it depends on where the business is in its cycle as to whether this is the most appropriate course of action.

In my experience a business will grow its revenues, profits or customer base, but the three do not always go hand in hand. Increasing customer base can mean discounting, hitting revenues and profits; revenues may come at the expense of profits and customers; profits may come without increasing the customer base or revenues with some sensible cost reductions.

My suggestion is, therefore, simply that this year your target should be to grow your business. Whether that means customer base, profits or revenues (or to which extent you balance the three) should be a thought out business decision.