If we prioritize business growth, we are almost always prioritizing transactions rather than relationships. We compensate sales teams much more highly than we compensate customer service or marketing teams. This is wrong. Anyone can bring in a customer once--but what does it take to keep that customer and unlock his value?READ»
There are better things to do with time and money than produce content no one will read or see. "Content marketing" is king, but not if you create the wrong content, or bad content. READ»
From Santiago to Seoul, Shanghai to Sao Paolo, there are startup outposts and events for entrepreneurs connected through social media and best practices. And everywhere it is the same: smart, wonderful people with good ideas and a massive case of Silicon Valley envy. What’s missing in these cities that causes local entrepreneurs to feel so inferior?READ»
Small businesses are not typically early adopters of web services, but there are so many time-sucking tasks they must do. Scheduling tweets used to be laborious. So did finding the right people to follow on Twitter. So did scheduling lunches. All these small problems add up for a person with limited time. It’s a real relief to have them automated; here's how to get started.READ»
When it comes to social media and engaging customers, the advantage is on the side of the small, the new, the nimble. Large organizations must break down silos, invent new processes, and protect against employees not close enough to the company's vision to embody it. But the little guys can trot out the whole team to meet customers wherever they are, whether it's online or on the road. READ»
Rock Health is a new nonprofit incubator in San Francisco, dedicated to software development that may change health care. These women have the dream of disrupting the worst-run consumer industry in America with new mobile technologies that put power back in the hands of patients and providers.READ»
Over the past week, the amount of attention given to Google+ has only grown, partially because of the thin pipe of people being let on to the site to discover for themselves. So what would we give up? Who would be disrupted?READ»
This is a story about chocolate, about people, and about stellar customer service. A car pulled up to my house in Phoenix at 9:45 one night last week, and out came a woman striding toward my front door, braving barking dogs. She ...READ»
Moderating a panel on curation at last weeks BlogWorldExpoNY, I got caught in the crossfire among Paper.li's Edouard Lambelet, Eric Hippeau, and Magnify's Steve Rosenbaum. Is curation a good thing? Or something that can limit discovery and force us into old conclusions?READ»
David Pogue is the gadget writer for The New York Times. His job is to try new technology, and I've been reading and relying on him for years. But in the last few days, he has been bitten in the a-- by that same technology.
Pogue, ...READ»
Step off the plane in Sao Paolo, the commerce center of Brazil, and you can feel the innovation in the air. GeeksonaPlane, a group of founders, entrepreneurs and investors from the U.S., has arrived, and the Brazilian entrepreneurship community is rolling out the red carpet.READ»
Springub is German, and his company, Jimdo, which makes free web pages, has 3.5 million users, mostly in Europe and Asia, not in the U.S. Jimdo was founded in Hamburg in 2007 to make websites for businesses, and its ease of use quickly turned it into a consumer product as well.READ»
Group buying attracts the wrong customer--not only the ones who won't tip, but the ones who won't come back, the ones who can't afford the product at full price, the ones who already know the business and would come anyway but now get ...READ»
So you have put your Minimum Viable Product up, and a few users have latched on to it. Enough to know you won't fail, and you actually have to build a team. Here is perhaps your greatest chance of failure.READ»
Gary Vaynerchuk sent a tweet saying that the first 200 people to pre-order his book on Amazon and sent him the receipt would get a surprise. Last night I got an email from Gary, thanking me for buying his book. And that's what his new book is all about.READ»
This is a big year for small business. Because of Groupon's apparent success, everyone is targeting mobile, local, and social for small businesses. At SXSW, I have been having conversation with some of those folks, and I have ...READ»
