Speak your mind, grow up your business

by: ibrahimbadhusa

Effective communication is absolutely essential for business growth. When you speak your mind, you should pay special attention to your body language, diplomacy, style, pitch, vocabulary and tone modulations. You have to watch how you communicate with our customers and if you are not candid or give the impression you are not speaking your mind, then you may be deemed to be an ineffective communicator. Speaking your mind is required for managing business negotiations, handling existing and prospective customers. While speaking your mind, use tact and skill to impress your listeners. When you are frank and genuinely speak your mind, people will respond to you positively.

There are a few points you should bear in mind while speaking your mind to promote your business interests. If you speak in a high pitch, it may be misconstrued as you are nervous. Practice speaking in a subdued pitch. Your tone reveals your confidence level. People can easily judge by your tone if you are angry or diffident. Try to maintain a neutral tone without sounding too monotonous. You have to adapt your manner of speaking to suit to suit varying situations. Talking too rapidly is again a sign of nervousness. Talking too slowly can be tedious for the hearers. So keep speak at a normal pace.
Being a spirited speaker does not mean that you make a fool of yourself while communicating. It means being livelier or upbeat while talking so that customers and fellow businessmen are eager to listen to every word you utter. As far as possible, use common words that are easily understood and that are easy to hear. If you cannot pronounce a word or are unsure of its meaning, avoid using it all together.

 
Create your unique positioning in the marketplace by the way you speak your mind. You should effectively craft your business message and articulate your uniqueness using your gift of expression. You should project an image that is in consonance with your message. The old adage, you never have a second chance to make a first impression rings true when talking your mind to targeted prospects. A proven marketing tool for finding new customers and helping your business grow is by speaking your mind as a speaker. Many local business organizations are all the time looking for keynote speakers. When searching for opportunities to speak your mind, do not confine only to trade shows and conferences. Regardless of venue, make sure you have an excellent speech with a convincing message. You will achieve success as a speaker and know the way to grow your business.
Most business people are not born speakers with a natural gift, but they have learned to speak their mind through persistent effort and by a trial and error process. Speaking what is in your mind is necessary and must be done in order to sustain and grow your business. Growing Your Business need not be a painful process all the time. Once you establish yourself as a competent speaker your popularity will begin to soar and that will result in your business growth.

Although most of us have had an impressive education with an expansive curriculum, we were you taught anything about effective communication and business growth. Once you develop communication skills and learn to speak your mind, your business will grow much faster than you expect.

Article Source: http://www.ArticleStreet.com/

How To Leverage Your Mindset For Success!

by: ebookxpert

Business is about influence, or leverage. Your book that you will author is a tool to leverage your credibility. And the first step in preparing your mind for success is to see yourself as an expert. Another way of looking at this is that you must sell yourself first to your dream of the possibility of becoming a best selling author.

So there are really two sales that must take place: the first sale is the one you make to yourself. The second sale is the one that actually produces money for you when members of your target audience complete the transaction with you.

To master the sale to yourself it is imperative that you write your own book. No ghost writer. You want your voice to come out strong and clear. One of the concepts we will discuss is your UPP which stands for your Unique Personal Proposition, which means your unique story. There is nobody better to get your message out then you! No one else has your story. Remember that the main reason people come to the Internet is to solve problems.

The purchasers of your book want your guidance. So you are paid to provide solutions to the problems that keep people up at night.

Creating Ideas
Here is how you create ideas: Complete a five minute exercise where you put your core concept in the center of a piece of paper and list as many ideas that are related to what you want to do. The key is to write everything down and do not pre-judge anything. This is the creative phase. You want to write as quickly as you can. Do not reflect at all on your ideas. The personal reflection comes in the next phase.

The key to brainstorming is recording all your ideas. This allows your subconscious to find relationships among them. There are three relationships that your mind will look at when analyzing your ideas. The great philosopher Socrates first espoused this concept 300 years before the time of Christ.

This process involves analyzing a) the similarity of your ideas (What is this concept like?); and b) The contiguity of your ideas (How are the ideas related to each other); and then c) the contrast of your ideas (How the ideas are different).
The ideas you create should all be involved in solving your target market's problems. To bring this home on how this should guide the writing of your book, the late and great G.K. Chesterton summarized the importance of analyzing problems first when he stated that the focus should not be on your book, but on understanding and magnifying your target market's problems first.

Your focus is not on you or what you think people need, but on the people, your target audience, and what they tell you they need.

This begins with understanding the difference between empathy versus sympathy. As an author, you must empathize with your target market. Empathy goes one step further than sympathy. Though the difference is essentially one of focus. Sympathy is the ability of showing how sorry you are that one person is going thru a painful situation. Empathy focuses on providing solutions for your target market. And the solutions that you provide should communicate the desired attitudes (what should I think) and the specific skills that are required to move to the desired end point (How do I get what I want and why should I do it a certain way and how do I implement an overall strategy in my life to make it happen).
Implementation is a key reason why information is the enemy to ultimate success. Information alone is passive as it fails to contextualize content. There is no implementation or ACTION if all you have is information. It is all content and no context.

The Author's Mindset
The first principle is preparation. Authoring your best seller is no different than preparing to participate in an athletic event. You don't just show up on game day without putting your body through immense preparations. The key to authoring a best selling book is to prepare before you start writing.

Here are the steps in preparation as we see it: there must be order in your life. Order begins in your mind, and then it must be channeled with a concrete game plan. Your success must acknowledge the need for patience, endurance and the ability to act in the face of fear and failure. Success does not come easily. You pay the price every step of the way.

The first step in preparation is to acknowledge your dream.
But what good is a dream if it stays in your head? You must give your dream legs. Thus, the second step is to take action on your dream of authoring your book. Don't wait for life to slow down, because you know it won't. Start making your dream of authoring a book a reality today.

Article Source: http://www.ArticleStreet.com/

The Benefits of Internet Marketing

By seoart

Internet marketing is exactly what it says, marketing that is done over the internet. Internet marketing and website promotion have many benefits, the principal one being that anything that is published on the internet has the whole world as a potential audience. It is also a relatively cheap way of driving traffic to your website and gaining more sales and boosting your income.

There are several different types of internet marketing that you can use and one of the most popular is by having a lot of content on your website that is SEO rich. SEO stands for search engine optimisation and it is a method of using keywords in your text so that it is highly ranked when someone puts them into a search engine.

Internet marketing and the relevance of SEO

If you have any product or service that you are selling, you need to let people know about it. There is no point in having a website that has no one visiting it, so you need a way to get people there. This is where search engine optimisation (SEO) becomes so useful to you.

When a person decides to search on the internet for anything they will type what they are looking for into a search engine. They will then usually click into a website that is within the first 3 pages of rankings. This is because a person assumes the higher the Google ranking (if that is the search engine they are using), the more relevant to their search the website will be.

A good ranking is usually down to good SEO. You can check that your website has good SEO and keyword density by using SEO tools to measure the percentage of times your keywords occur during the text. A good keyword percentage is 2-3% in order for a search engine to rank your website highly.

The rise of Internet Marketing

Internet marketing is growing daily and more and more people are using the internet as their first source for information. This is something that any business should realise and make the most of by looking at ways to improve their internet marketing.

256m people visited a search engine in December 2006, this represents 81% of global internet users. [Source: Nielsen/NetRatings, March 2007]

In addition to the clever use of SEO, one way links within articles are another great way of increasing your traffic. This is done by submitting articles related to your product or service and having a link that directly sends the reader to your website. If you want to get your business noticed then use internet marketing and see how it can improve your sales.

Article Source: http://www.ArticleStreet.com/

Small Business Owners Should Practice "Tough Love"

by: Jim Muehlhausen

Whether it's recession time or boom time, small business owners should look at the way they operate in order to maximize their revenues. Many small businesses are run a little loosely, because many owners believe they lack the overhead and the staff to require a lot of strict policies and procedures.

That's a mistake, according to Jim Muehlhausen, CPA and author of The 51 Fatal Business Errors and How To Avoid Them, from Emerald Publishing (www.51errors.com).

"Every business owner is enrolled in the world's most expensive business school: The School of Hard Knocks," Muehlhausen said. "Instead of acquiring business knowledge the slow and expensive way, business owners need to capitalize on the hard-fought lessons of others. That's why benevolent dictators are the best small business leaders, because ruling by committee against that landscape rarely works."

Small Business face more challenges than the large corporations with huge cash reserves to help them through financial crises. They are more susceptible to market fluctuations, have fewer clients to support them and generally have more transient staff. On the flip side, they also make up 70 percent of the businesses in the U.S., so as goes small business, so goes the economy.

In order to swim with the big fish without getting eaten, Muehlhausen suggests that small business owners get a little tougher and smarter to survive the nasty water.

"There are several practices that are considered standard operating procedure that actually work against small business owners," Muehlhausen said. "First, many insist on learning hard lessons themselves rather than learn from the mistakes of their competitors. To compound the problem, they also tend to hire employees away from their competitors without realizing that chances are that the employee may be leaving because they had been fired, or they are about to be fired. In essence, they wind up with their competitors' rejects, who they wind up firing soon after."

Muehlhausen also stresses that CEOs need to be benevolent dictators to be more effective.

"Managing employees is a lot like parenting," he said. "Employees may not like what you do, but you'll have to do it, anyway. Many CEOs are afraid to be authoritarian, but they should do it, anyway. They should remember two things – first, being authoritarian does not mean you can't be nice, and second, it's the CEO's name on the big door. No one else will be blamed for the failure of staff. An autocrat is not automatically a jerk, and businesses aren't a democracy. Hire good people, listen to input, but after you've listened, call the play and make sure you have a team on board who's going to execute it."

Article Source: http://www.ArticleStreet.com

Affiliate Marketing - You Can Earn An Online Income

by: rphanit

Making money online need not be expensive or difficult to implement. One of the Secrets is to try to have multiple income streams running at any one time so that should one stop working you don't lose all your income.

Just over 2 years ago I left a well paid job and shortly afterwards due to circumstances had to find a new income quickly. I began to try to make an income online, through sheer luck I soon managed to make enough money each month to cover all my bills. Before I started I knew absolutely nothing about marketing of any kind let alone online marketing. I hadn't even heard of AdSense until the day before i built my first site!

They say that necessity is the mother of invention, well desperation is the mother of action. I took action and started to generate an online income. for more information logon to www.firesale-automator.com.Within months I had enough money coming in that I could relax a bit and focus on a long term strategy. It wasn't easy to get to that stage and it took a lot of hard work. As a result I was determined to share some of the knowledge I gained through making mistakes and perseverance. I created The Income Academy to create an ultra cheap way to share my knowledge with people who wanted to learn how to make an online income.

As I said earlier in this article there are many ways to earn an income online. below I have listed 5 . The thing you need to remember is that it's not just as simple as making a website then waiting for your money to flood in.

Performing a service for people will always be one of the best ways to create an online income. People like to outsource repetitive or difficult tasks. If you have graphic abilities you could create websites templates. If you can write you could write articles like this one. If you do a good job you'll soon have regular customers.

Simple Affiliate Marketing. Find a product you like on Clickbank and review it create several articles and post them to website directories.

Create informative websites and add advertising such as AdSense to them.

Producing your own products then adding them to clickbank can be a good way of earning a steady income.

Buy established blogs and join a pay per post service and sell text link adverts. Just over 2 years ago I left a well paid job and shortly afterwards due to circumstances had to find a new income quickly. for more details go to www.clickmagnet-secrets.com. I began to try to make an income online, through sheer luck I soon managed to make enough money each month to cover all my bills. Before I started I knew absolutely nothing about marketing of any kind let alone online marketing. I hadn't even heard of AdSense until the day before i built my first site!

The above methods are just some of the methods that our members use to earn an income. At the Income Academy we provide you with as much help as you require and many of the tools. Despite what the Gurus will have you believe you don't need every tool and guide that is released in fact it is possible to start to make a good income without spending more than a few dollars.

Article Source: http://www.ArticleStreet.com/

how a fountain of spit-taught me why adsense templates don't work

By Mugambo

The sign on the door said AAA. This had to be it. I inched the door open and was instantly overcome by a tsunami sound wave of chanting: YES SIR! ADCENT FIXMASTER SIR! YES SIR! ADCENT FIXMASTER SIR!

Whoa! What had I gotten myself into? What was this, some kinda cult?

Alright I'll admit it. I'm an addict--an adsense junkie! But it was counseling I needed not some nutters' army! I tried to ease my way out without being noticed, but too late, the bald dude on the podium noticed me. He beckoned me forward with a flick of his hand. I approached cautiously and started up the steps but he practically shoved me back. I could see why, he couldn't have been an inch over five foot; I'd tower over him if we stood side by side--not the best situation if you're trying to be an effective commanding officer. Commanding officer--huh? I guess the atmosphere was contagious.

"NAME?" he bellowed. "Marc Ting," I replied somewhat timidly. "SAY WHAT?" he barked showering me with a fine mist spray of spittle. "MARC K. TING, SIR!" I shot back. But apparently that was not good enough. He glared at me as his face chameleoned through various shades of red before settling on a beetroot hue. For a second there I thought he was about to smack me. I guess the same thought must have crossed his mind because he abruptly turned his attention to the rest of the troop.

"YOU!" he growled to some skinny pimple-faced kid who had ADDICT written all over, "NAME!"

"OTTO RHEES-PONDAR, ADCENT FIXMASTER SIR!" pimple-face shouted back with rank precision; looked like normal speech was frowned upon in this neck of the woods. The Fixmaster turned back to me. The look on his face left no doubt; I'd better get it right this time round or else. I did! But that didn't stop him from laying into me anyway.

"WE HAVE TWO KINDS OF ADSENSE ADDICTS HERE" he boomed while pacing the podium, "THOSE WHO ONCE MADE A FORTUNE FROM ADSENSE AND THE LOSERS WHO NEVER DID!" He paused to catch his breath which was okay by me; the fine mist spray of spittle had long since turned into a cascading waterfall of spit that somehow seemed to land nowhere else but my forehead. Thus for the first time in my life I was grateful for the grotesquely bushy eyebrows the powers-that-be felt compelled to bestow upon me from the moment I was born.

"Tell me son" the Fixmaster continued, "When did you first start your adsense endeavors?" I wasn't sure what was more disconcerting; the fact that he called me son or the fact that he was talking normally.

"JANUARY 2006 ADCENT FIXMASTER SIR!" I hollered back, as loud as the best of them.

"AS I THOUGHT! WE GOT OURSELVES A GEN-U-WINE ADSENSE LOSER" he spat with obvious contempt and disdain. "I BETCHA TWEAKED, FIDDLED, ADJUSTED AND TRIMMED TILL YOUR FINGERS WERE RAW TO THE BONE, BUT YOU NEVER MADE MORE THAN NICKEL AND CENTS. AIN'T THAT RIGHT LOSER?"

Evidently I no longer qualified as son anymore but I couldn't have cared less. He was right though; I never did make anything more than nickel and dimes from Google Adsense despite faithfully following every instruction from the plethora of expensive adsense courses I had bought. In fact things had gotten so bad, that at one point my girlfriend started getting jealous of the computer. Imagine that--jealous of a computer!

Anyway I suppose it must have been the sum of the past year's adsense frustrations; my girlfriend almost dumping me; not to mention being publicly berated and humiliated by a five-foot tyrant that made my eyes suddenly well up. Apparently the Fixmaster must have noticed because just like that he stopped his tirade. I guess nothing quite kills troop morale as a grown man blubbering for no apparent good reason. From that point onwards the meeting was less boot camp and more group therapy. The Fixmaster confided that he used to make a ton of money from adsense but had committed the cardinal sin of spending it just as fast as he made it! Like so many others he thought the adsense party would never end. But end it did! And when that happened he lost a heck of a lot more than just his adsense mega-revenue. He lost his wife, his kids, his expensive cars, his two houses and his identity. So he decided it was only fitting to lose the adsense guru moniker too and start a new chapter of his life. One of counseling adsense lost souls like those of us gathered at the weekly Adsense Addicts Anonymous meetings, as well as educate newbie marketers of the dangers of exploitative "adsense gurus" who made their adsense money these days by capitalizing on the newbie's lack of knowledge. Here's what he had to say:

1. So-called adsense gurus only sell their eBooks or software after Google has nullified their systems. 2. Adsense gurus did not make their money the way they tell it in their eBooks. 3. Adsense Pre-optimized templates simply cannot work because of the changes that Google made to its adsense algorithm and is continually improving upon. 4. Anybody who bought an adsense eCourse or eBook after October 2005 was doomed to fail no matter if they followed the instructions faithfully and exactly. 5. The common sense kicker: why would adsense gurus let you in on their mega-revenue generating system while it still worked! 6. Adsense gurus these days make their money by selling their bogus adsense products to the unwary. 7. If you look carefully you'll notice almost all adsense revenue screenshots are from 2005 not 2006!

Article Source: http://www.ArticleStreet.com

How to Make Money Fast Online

by indam

3 Websites to make money online. 1. Associated Content. 2. Cash Crate. 3. Forum booster.Let's begin with associated content.

Associated content should be the number one stop for those people who frequently ask themselves, how I could make money fast. Associated Content requires you to write content, which in other words for those who aren't familiar with the online language, content means articles. Associated Content requires that you write articles for them, they will pay you anywhere from $3 to $40 for your content. Most of the time however the bids that they place on your content are for much less than $10. However, this is still a great way to make money online if you can type several articles per day. You may be surprised to see how easy it has become to earn a part time income through writing for Associated Content.The next site that we will talk about is Cash Crate. Cash Crate is a site that pays you to take surveys. They may pay anywhere from a dollar to possibly a hundred dollars, just for you to take a survey. Doesn't sound too bad now does it? The reason they pay you to complete surveys is that companies are willing to shell out loads of cash for in-depth information from their consumers to find out exactly what they word on the street is about their product or services. They even have a daily survey on the homepage that is guaranteed to make you some extra income; the guaranteed survey on the homepage pays $0.80. It may not seem like much but do the math, over a 30 day time period. That is almost $30 extra dollars just for taking surveys.Are you still asking yourself that question, how do I make money fast? Well if writing tons of articles and taking surveys doesn't really sound like your cup of tea, there is always the alternative of Forum Booster. Forum Booster is a website that pays you $0.10 for each post you make on a forum. This is great for those of us that would be searching and posting on forums either way, why not get paid for it? If you can post sixty posts in 1 hour, you can make $6, which is not that bad for earning money online. It may not be minimum wage, but you have the advantage of being in the comfort of your own home. You can be in your pajamas sipping coffee while working on posting on these forums. Each post should be a minimum of 12 words, which is not difficult to do at all.Overall there are tons of ways to make money quickly online but these are just the tried and true and the best of the best. Source: http://www.articlestreet.com/

From blog for fun to blog money

Currently Business and Marketing Online has become wonderful choice. In the beginning some people maybe just want to know what is a blog. Then we try to build a blog where we can share anything we want: diary, experience of life, tips, photos, news, and etc. There is many kind of blog provider. Blogger, wordpress, drupal, and etc are ready to serve us. They offered simple way to setup a blog. We don't need to become an expert of HTML code or another programmer language. We just customize everything that’s available there. And the important thing is FREE. Who doesn’t want to try something free that is not a dangerous area? All producers need a promotion for introducing and branding their products. Examples: Television, Tuner, Billboard, Events, Presentation, etc. Parallel with development of internet features, there is a new idea for advertising media. Google launched adsense program. All people that have website or blog that meet with Google criteria will be entitled to get adsense code after they submitted their website or blog. This adsense code can be put on many websites or blogs as long as it doesn’t contravene with Google rules. For details please go to google adsense

My friend first business running

On Saturday, 28 January 2009, I visited my friend who has invited me. He has talked to me many things about his new business. He has enjoyed what many people dream it. Has own business. Express our potential capability unlimited. And a pleasure : We fired our boss. I saw non permanent building. It's not a complicated process or equipment. As many people thinking, a manufacture is something big and complicated. But this is simple. There is just 10 people there doing process daily. But, when we get reality that Net profit over revenue is about 30-60%, it so surprised. There is many people with more money but doesn't know what should be to do with their free money. Or maybe, they just do a business with low profit over revenue. He also paid people who he learned the business and has been working 30 years in that core business. Some points that I noticed: 1. Business idea that's never die. 2. Always study business knowledge although he is still in a company as an employee. 3. Using all relation and environment as tools. 4. Build what can be built step by step to support business plan. 5. Work after five for his own business extra hard. 6. When chance comes, he hold it and exposed all his potentially capability in all angle. 7. He recruited experience people and not worry to pay. 8. Carefully in using of profit. The priority is paid for loan and posted to new investment to grow the company. 9. Sharing with unlucky people. 10. All of above things will run smoothly and effectively if we pray to god everytime.

Right business is big mountain in the beginning but become beautiful beach in ending

We are always surprised when we meet our friend that has a settle business in his arms. Maybe two years ago, one year ago, or maybe just three months ago, he is still same like us. An employee of company and same level or maybe lower than us. He has salary same with us. Why is he so successful now? What does he do? He worked 8 hours and do a joke like us. But during 8 hours and after 5 pm, is he do same like us? Why did he left us a thousands km? a million km? His income is not only to be double, but maybe 10 times or more than us. We just look our face in the mirror and said: why am I still here? It's our homework.......

Five No-Cost Marketing Tips

By Laura Lake, About.com Are there ways to market your business that will not cost you a fortune? How can you get the word out without driving your company into a financial black hole? Truth is most marketing does take money, but there are some low-cost and no-cost options that you can put into action that will help you to get the word out about your products and service. While these ideas will not cost you a lot of money they will cost you time, so prepare for that. These are fantastic ideas for the company that is just getting started. They also work! Choose two out of the five and move forward on them this week. Once you begin to see that in fact these promotional ideas can bring you business your momentum will build and drive you to pick two more. 1. Network at events. Go to Chamber of Commerce meetings, BNI Group meetings, and other organizational meetings that will be attracting your "ideal" client. Gather business cards. Get as many as you can and then begin to phone and email to follow up. Do this immediately while you are still fresh in their mind. If they cannot use your services, ask them if they know of someone who can and get their contact information. 2. Attend public meetings. At every public meeting, make a commitment to say something that could be useful to those that are attending. This is a great way to not only share you knowledge and help others, but it also puts you in the eye of those who could use your services. 3. Create a "useful" handout. A handout that when given to a recipient they keep because it has value. For example with my business I have one entitled the "Top Ten Marketing Tactics Your Competition Wish They Knew." Make sure that you include your name, phone number, email address, website information and your 30 second commercial that tells the recipient about your business. 4. Create joint-ventures. Find colleagues and business associates whose business compliments yours and do joint promotions. For example I do joint-ventures with a copywriter and graphic designer. Who could you partner with? 5. Write letters to editors of local newspapers and business publications.Make them interesting and newsworthy. You'll be surprised at how often a good letter will get printed. Do not forget to include your contact information and website address. By committing to one of these items on a weekly basis within one month you will see your business gain recognition and business. You can get the word out there without spending hundreds of dollars.

Marketing definition

By Wikipedia Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. [1] The term developed from the original meaning which referred literally to going to market, as in shopping, or going to a market to sell goods or services. Marketing practice tends to be seen as a creative industry, which includes advertising, distribution and selling. It is also concerned with anticipating the customers' future needs and wants, which are often discovered through market research. Marketing is influenced by many of the social sciences, particularly psychology, sociology, and economics. Anthropology is also a small, but growing influence. Market research underpins these activities. Through advertising, it is also related to many of the creative arts. The marketing literature is also infamous for re-inventing itself and its vocabulary according to the times and the culture.

Guide to Small Business Blogs

By Shara Karasic, Work.com Community Manager It seems like every day there are new blogs from business owners, people who serve small business and those who monitor small business trends. Blogs are often written by people who have "been-there and done-that", and it's good to know what's being talked about in the small business blogosphere. But how do you figure out which ones are worth your time to read? While you can't keep up with them all, there are easy ways to browse the best ones. By browsing small business blogs, you can: Stay up-to-date with the latest business trends, opportunities and news. Get timely advice from business coaches, marketing gurus and accounting experts. Keep an eye on the competition and get ideas for your own business or blog. Action Steps The best contacts and resources to help you get it done Get an overview of the latest trends, opportunities and tips Start at high profile business blogs that have a lot of traffic and are consistently updated by well-known bloggers. I recommend: Small Business Trends includes coverage of technology that affects the small business market. Get marketing tips from the Duct Tape Marketing blog or BIG Marketing for Small Business, and find out about business networking online at Virtual Handshake. Two up-and-coming entrepreneurs share their personal experiences at Slate's BizBox. Others worth a look include Business Opportunities Weblog and The Entrepreneurial Mind. The eVenturing Entrepreneur's Viewpoint Blog links to useful business articles around the Web on topics from going global to staff management. Find out how to go from "corporate prisoner to thriving entrepreneur" at Escape from Cubicle Nation. Carnival of the Capitalists has links to the most interesting business-related blog posts, hosted on different blogs each week. Discover the best blogs from actual small businesses Gain a unique perspective into the lives of people starting and running all kinds of small businesses through their blogs. I recommend: USA Today's Small Business Connection blog often features small business blogs. Pajama Market highlights a small business blog of the day and interviews bloggers about the impact blogging has had on their businesses. Other interesting reads include Aldo Coffee, The Bloomery Florist, Sharma Jewelry Designs, Sheepdog Print and Design, and Kendrick's Billiards. Find other small business blogs on blog directories To find a coffee shop blog, for example, type in "coffee shop". You can also subscribe to keyword search feeds to find the latest blogs in your area of interest. Search on your own company name to see if it's being mentioned in the blogosphere. I recommend: Try Google Blog Search or Technorati's business directory, or simply search for a business type or topic you're interested in from the top pages of Google Blog Search or Technorati. Use RSS readers to get summaries of updates to your favorite small business blogs RSS or RSS feed refers to a way for sites to syndicate their content, and allows you to read the highlights of all the blogs you like to read in one place. I recommend: You can subscribe to a blog's RSS feed from the blog itself. You'll get a special URL and then you'll need to view it in an RSS reader or aggregator, such as My Yahoo, Google Reader, or Bloglines. Tips & Tactics Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide If you've found a good blog, a way to find more quality blogs on a similar topic is to look at the blog's sidebar to see what other blogs the author has recommended. Commenting on an interesting blog post is a way to voice your opinion or add some useful information, but it can also let more people know about your URL or expertise. Some top blogs that don't deal specifically with small business, but cover topics such as technology, may also be useful for you to track.