I’m a huge fan of 37Signals and have followed them ever since they were a usability company through their transformation into a product company. Anyway about a year ago I heard they were working on a CRM product called Sunrise, which they have apparently agonized over, scrapped, and reworked. I think we can safely assume […]

It’s been clear to me since just doing two podcast episodes on a business related topic that I am not in Kansas anymore. The “production value” if you like, has got to be higher on a podcast, and not only that but the level of intimacy/connection with the audience/community has got to be higher as […]

What is Zooomr? Well, it is very much like Flickr, except Zooomr is very interested in “where” you take pictures, and provides tools for you to Geo tag your photos. So it’s sort of like a flickr+Googlemaps+frappr mashup. Ahh, ok, got it….. Oh except it allow for audio comments on its photo’s as well, so […]

Most small businesses have to take some horrible compromises when trying to get into ecommerce and sell products online, it’s either a crappy looking yahoo store, or an ebay store, which in the end marginalizes your identity. So if you want an ecommerce store just made for small business check out shopify.com, it’s easy, it’s […]

I’m happy to report that even though this site is only 6 months old it is now on the front page of google for my chosen key phrase which is “local internet marketing”. I actually only checked because I noticed a spike in traffic from google, and I thought I would investigate. It took over […]

Biznik is a business networking site, based in Seattle, started by Dan McComb, focused on encouraging F2F networking, and referring business between members. One of the very interesting aspects of this is that “good behavior” like referring people business gets you kudos and builds your reputation.

Hmm, imagine that, rewarding people for behavior you want […]

Shel Israel, co-author of naked conversations had this to say after giving a talk to the Seattle chamber of commerce:

What inspired me the most, a little to my surprise, were the folks at the Chamber of Commerce. These were folks, as Robert puts it, who were hungry to learn. I met a wedding planner […]

Selling and marketing a service based business is a unique challenge that does not get enough attention, which considering services make up significant percentage of the US economy, is rather a problem.
I found this article on a favorite site of mine for marketing articles that lays out some of the differences between selling and […]

Creating a blog for your business can be a valuable tool in your marketing toolbox, for some businesses more valuable than the website itself. I know many businesses equate “blog” with “confessional teenage diary”, and dismiss it as a trend, but it’s seriously good business. In the end a blog is just a very “simple […]

Some nice tips from lifehacker for the “small business blogger”
Getting To Done: Tips For The Small Business Blogger - Lifehacker

Yahoo is teaming up with six apart, makers of typepad, to provide blog hosting aimed at businesses. 5 gigs of space and 200 gig of bandwidth is a pretty good deal for 12 bucks a month.
BetaNews | Yahoo to Offer Blogs to Businesses
The disadvantage of a hosted system like this for a business is […]

The wonderful guys at Feedburner can help you turn your RSS feed into an email newsletter. This is a wonderful addition to the tools that feedburner provide, and i’m hoping will help continue to build my readership.
See the subscribe form on the right hand side of the page, well just enter your email in there […]

I just came across businesstown.com and this is a great collection of resources and articles for the small/medium business. It covers a multitude of topics in a clear and down to earth fashion that is unlike what seems to be the trend online. I wish more sites were like this.

Here’s a simple little script that you can cut and paste on your web site to hide your email from most spambots. instructions are included in the comments, it’s better if you put the function in a seperate .js file, but it works as it.
Cheers,
karl

Click to download the code as a text file:
emailHidingCode.txt

On the topic of generally using a blog as a marketing channel, it really depends upon asking a couple of questions of your business. First who are your customers, and secondarily what are the interests, challenges, or topics that they might have in common. Once you come up with a theme that might resonate with […]

Many of the big companies are jumping on the blog bandwagon but what about small businesses?
All businesses could benefit from creating a blog, not because its the latest trend, but it forms the cheapest, most organic way of generating a dialogue and a deeper relationship with customers and partners.
A blog is really an […]