Best Small Business Blogs You Might Not Know About
Posted By: Dave C on 3/25/2008
Like a well-scripted novel, a good blog usually keeps you engaged and
waiting for more. With everything that’s on the Web today, it’s impossible to
filter and summarize all that’s relevant to a specific business discipline. A
blog also helps you establish a public dialogue where anyone can participate
and learn … Here are a few of my favorite small business blogs I’ve stumbled
across:
Small Biz
Survival
A description on the site reads: “By and for small business people in
rural areas and small towns,” and that’s exactly what this weblog is. Regular
features fall into primarily five subjects: Ideas revolving around
entrepreneurial or community growth, new or particularly useful small business
resources found on the Web, reviews on helpful online tools or interesting Web
utilities, and point-of-view stories from small business owners sharing both
their accomplishments and failures. Once a week, business owners can promote
their products or services in the Brag Basket, where touting your business success
is encouraged. The primary contributor, Becky McCray, is on a clear mission to
revive public loyalty to small business and offers a great personal touch to
the blog. Bookmark their site, as I did, and you can follow their progress.
Flyte: Web
Marketing Strategies for Small Business
Flyte’s notably entertaining and informative blog features tech savvy Rich
Brooks tackling the kind of Web issues that budding entrepreneurs face every
day. Updated three to four times a week, topics include: e-mail marketing, social
media, search engine optimization, Website design and marketing, blog writing,
related small business news and more. Digging in, I found posts like “How to
Keep Visitors at Your Website” and “Social Media Overload.” Entertain yourself
and visit their About Us page where the staff cleverly placed their favorite
toddler pics next to their respective bios. I’ll admit that at first I thought
this was a group of over-achieving preschoolers running the show. Then I went a
little bit deeper. According to his own bio, Rich is not only an experienced
blogger but also an avid speaker who entertains national audiences on subjects
like Web design and Internet marketing. Among many other activities and
involvements he also teaches a class at the University of Southern
Maine called “Web Marketing for Entrepreneurs.”
The Entrepreneurial
Mind
Jeff Cornwall, Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at Belmont University, hosts a daily blog on just
about everything entrepreneurial. To really find what you’re looking for here I
suggest scrolling down a little bit to the left hand drop-down bar labeled
“Flag Sticks”. Here, blog topics can be searched by subject, like Family
Business, Entrepreneurial Finance, Entrepreneurial Myths, and Bootstrapping
with articles like "Competing with the Big Boys on Cyber Monday" or "If
I Only Had the Money" myth. A well researched and informative blog that
stays current with today’s trends. Special thanks to Jeff and the student body
for sharing their research.
Duct Tape Marketing
Waggish name aside, Duct Tape Marketing is a small-business-centric
site diving deep into marketing-related topics. Topics, ranging from “7 Tips
for Successful Blogging” to “Social Networking with Training Wheels,” are all hosted
by small business marketing specialists. Duct Tape marketing founder, John
Jantsch, brings over 20 years of marketing experience and specializes in
helping small businesses create and implement effective marketing plans.
RetailEmail.Blogspot
Want to find out what your big-box competitors are doing to win
customers? It’s easy, just spy on them. Better yet, you can count on RetailEmail.Blogspot
to conduct the espionage for you. The blog showcases e-mails sent out by your
retail rivals and diagrams what is done effectively or poorly. They monitor the
e-mail marketing campaigns of more than 100 of the top retailers on the Web, meaning
that you can stay on top of the trends without a million-dollar marketing
budget. You can search by selling season, retailer, topic and more. The latest post
I saw on the site was a Harry & David e-mail they had critiqued. Overall,
the site functions as an excellent resource for any small business marketer
trying to stay hip in the e-mail world.
Church of the
Customer
Updated three to four times a week, the blog is an intellectual evaluation
of how companies past and present interact and deal with their customers; decisions
that small businesses can learn from. The site operators, Ben McConnell and
Jackie Hubba are accomplished writers, speakers, and sought-after consultants.
Contributing to the blog is a handful of other scholars and marketing gurus who
put their best two cents on the table with every article. This is a successful
blog that keeps you on your toes. Why the church? Because they teach you how to
create “customer evangelists.” You can find out how you can develop customer loyalty
and how to effectively manage your customers. What’s more important than that? Well, that’s
their point.
Small Business
Brief
The Small Business Brief contains a treasure trove of links to helpful
small-business-related articles found throughout the Web. It’s a well-structured
and easy to navigate blog, offering direction for entrepreneurs on how to
successfully plan, open and run a business. In the Small Business Ideas Forum, you
can find plenty of topic listings concentrating mostly on e-commerce. Here you
can find out more on topics like affiliate advertising and buying and selling
advertising space. If you like what you read here, Fetch it!
Small Business
Trends
This all encompassing blog tracks a wide range of small business
issues, utilizing news commentary, links to related articles, interviews and an
occasional book review. Updated daily, the blog speaks to all types of
entrepreneurs. Much of the focus here is on achieving marketing success, but you
can expect to find brief articles on nearly every subject. They regularly
feature articles from a cast of almost forty industry experts so you can expect
many points of view here. It’s up to you to disseminate.
Small Biz Mentor
How would you like to have your own small business mentor? Here you
go. Most of the blogs you’ll read here are quick inspirations or an occasional anecdote
from a happy customer like the article I read today “The Little Pizza Café That
Could – Take Away for Any Small Business.” I even watched a humorous YouTube
video capturing a clash between Chef Ramsey and a restaurant owner named
Sabastian, which was featured on the reality TV series Kitchen Nightmares. You’ll
find a steady stream of business related topics here. If you want to quickly
peruse the archived articles or browse by topic, you can easily search through
links posted on the right hand column of the blog.
Small Business
Growth Strategies
Stephanie Chandler puts together a rich mix of articles for
entrepreneurs and has compiled a list of hundreds of links to sites she
recommends. She is a bona-fide entrepreneur who fled Silicon
Valley and her corporate cohorts to pursue the American Dream.
Like many Weblogs, you can quickly lose three hours of your day, hopping from
blog to blog.
The Savvy
Entrepreneur
I originally stumbled on this blog through a link on Small Business
Growth Strategies and it hooked me right away. This blog speaks to a particular
niche of service-based small business professionals. Christine Favreau is a passionate entrepreneur
who shares her tried-and-true experiences of running a small business in the
service industry. You’ll find a collection of her thoughts, research, challenges,
opinions, tools and tricks of the trade.
Seeds of Growth:
Ideas to Help Small Business Grow
This is a good place to plant a bookmark. This blog combines original
articles with content filtered from their favorite blogs across the Web. I
found a mix of offbeat subjects and interesting articles like “The Cannonball
Business Plan” and “The Pumpkin That Sold Me a House.” This blog is more of a
casual read and the best you might walk away with is inspiration. Still, who
doesn’t want to be inspired?
So with these twelve recommended blogs and of course our own at America’s Best
Companies, you should never need to crack open a book or pay another consultant
again. :)
If I’ve left out any particularly good ones, please feel free to add
to the list.
