The intangible benefits of blogging

"Search for the term benefits of blogging and you’ll probably find hundreds and thousands of blog posts and pages waxing eloquent about the great benefits of blogging and I totally believe in most of the stuff. Blogging has so many benefits that it is simply outrageous not to have a blog, especially if you run an online business.

Blogging has both tangible and intangible benefits. Since you’ll find tangible benefits of blogging almost everywhere, in this post I’m going to talk about the intangible benefits of blogging: benefits that are there but you cannot see them, you cannot measure them, and they may not even manifest an effect that you can observe." Click the title to read more...

Some Great Benefits Of Business Blogging

"Business blogging has great benefits along with great drawbacks, but this being a blog-cum-website promoting business blog consulting services, it wouldn’t be prudent to highlight the drawbacks (although I shall, in a later post). The number of benefits exceeds by far the number of drawbacks otherwise at Amrit Hallan Blog Consulting Services we wouldn’t be providing blog consulting services; we would rather be doing something else." Thanks to my Sheboygan friend Steve Gallimore for asking about specific info on the benefits of business blogging. Here's some good information for anyone interested in the topic. Click the title to read more...

SaaS: Enterprise Power Comes to Smaller Businesses | Entrepreneur.com

"Less risk, more reward? Regardless of how you do the math, software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications are providing smaller businesses with software capabilities that previously only larger companies could afford." Click the title to read more...

Google Reader Keyboard Shortcuts

What? Not using Google reader? I can show you how it will make short work of staying up to date on whatever you're tracking...

7 Powerful Questions That Spark Fresh Ideas

"Our world has been forged on the heals of fresh, innovative ideas that were thought of by ordinary people with an extraordinary ability to persevere around obstacles, past setbacks, and despite criticisms. The way these people, just like you and I, came up with these amazing ideas was by asking themselves these seven powerful questions." Click the title to read more...

5 Ways to Build Your Virtual Office | Entrepreneur.com

"When it comes to running a business, our feet are firmly on the ground but our data and software are increasingly in the cloud." Cloud computing can be very helpful in lowering the technology costs of a business == let me show you how! Click the title to read more...

Bringing Market Intelligence to Your Sales Prospecting

Good advice here...

"The single most important yet forgotten step in developing a sales prospecting campaign is market intelligence. Your resources are optimized when you have a well-qualified prospect list. Imagine you own a roofing company looking to generate leads. A typical costly prospecting campaign would involve calling or mailing home owners to determine if there is a need for roof repair.

A more effective approach may be to use services such as Geosemble Technologies Inc. based in El Segundo, CA. The company utilizes high tech and satellite imagery to locate swimming pools, roofs in need of repair, cracked driveways, etc. which is crossed referenced with city data to create highly target leads. Before you embark on any prospecting campaign, make sure you perform some form of market intelligence to improve your results."

And this is just the basics. If you're in marketing, how can you know what your customers value unless you have first performed the market intelligence necessary to understand that they want and what they don't. And I don't mean asking them directly, I'm talking about a full blown market intelligence report with primary and secondary research! The only way you can deliver to your customers demands is to know what those demands are...

Want to talk to a real pro? Have I got a resource for you. No one does it better in Northeast Wisconsin than Chris Vanderheyden. I'll be happy to hook you up -- just give me a call or drop me a note...

Sprint's Quarterly Results: As Bad as We Figured - WMExperts

"After rumors of spinning off Nextel, rumors of getting bought out by Deutsche Telekom, and making some sort of weird combination of declaring uncle and making a Hail Mary pass by creating a new, separate WiMAX company... after all that we weren't exactly expecting Sprint to report anything very good about the past three months. We don't want to say it was worse than we expected, because it wasn't. Of course, we were expecting that the entire company would explode like a Death Star with a proton torpedo in its reactor vent shaft, so it would have been pretty tough for them stoop that low." Cause and effect. This is what happens when you offer such poor customer service! Click the title to read more...

Sales Contracts for Small Businesses | Sales & Selling from AllBusiness.com

"Many companies sell a product and therefore need a good Sales Contract. The Sales Contract lays out the price, terms, and conditions for the sale of goods, equipment, or other products. The actual Sales Contract can take the form of fine print on the other side of an order form or an invoice, or it can be tailor-made for a particular sale." Click the title to read more...

The blogging three step | Duct Tape Marketing Blog

"One of the most common questions I receive is “how do I get started blogging?” Some might find it a bit odd that I suggest a three step approach and the first two steps don’t have much to do with directly working on your own blog. No, I think you get started blogging by working on your blogging mindset and blogging presence. So, here’s my 3-step blogging start-up plan." Click the title to read more...

Should lead generation ignore current customers? | B2B Lead Generation Blog

"”We know more about our prospects (leads) than we know about our current customers” was shocking statement I heard from a client and it stuck with me. In fact, it's the impetus for this post.

When you have a complex sale, it can be easy to think of lead generation as only a process for acquiring new customers rather than a process that can also be applied to generating new or more business from current customers." Click the title to read more...

Business Blogging: The 4 E's

Public speaking a competitive marketing skill | Duct Tape Marketing Blog

"Every small business owner can benefit from becoming a better speaker. It doesn’t really matter if your ambitions are to sell across the desk or present across the globe, getting your message heard and acted upon is essential small business stuff.

In fact, I think that forcing yourself to get in front of an audience and deliver a talk of some sort is one of the best ways to develop competitive marketing skills. When you have to get your thoughts down into a concise 30 minute talk and then go out and get instance, sometimes too truthful, feedback it develops character and poise along with an improved message.

The first time you get up in front of a crowd and realize that nobody will die if you aren’t very polished is the point at which you might just get hooked on doing it again and again." Click the title to read more...

Executive Coaching for Leadership Bad Behaviors: Habits That Hold You Back | Working Resources Blog

"When there are conflicts in the workplace it is usually because of poor communication or interpersonal communication challenges. Leaders are challenged on a daily basis to interact effectively with others. The most successful leaders are emotionally intelligent agile. They know how to read people and are savvy in their communications.

In my executive coaching practice over the last twenty years, I have noticed a consistent pattern of bad behaviors displayed by less socially intelligent leaders. These 'bad behaviors' can be unlearned and a more effective communication style developed.

The good news is that better interpersonal skills can be learned and emotional intelligence improved." Click the title to read more...

Blogs Surpass Newspapers & Magazines in Popularity on Google

"Google Trends, a service that lets you compare the world’s relative interest in particular topics, suggests that blogs’ popularity have surpassed that of newspapers or magazines, at least on Google.

And this gap between blogs vs newspapers and magazines is much wider in California and India." Click the title to see a close-up screenshot with data for the last 30 days...

Microsoft U-turn to stop Linux dominating ultra low cost PCs

Microsoft is launching a programme to promote the use of its Windows OS in ultra low-cost PCs but only tose with limited hardware capabilities. In its effort to undermine Linux it is condemning people to machines with poorer functionality and performance than the open source alternative. Click the title to read more...

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