We wanted to give you even more of a leg up with this megalist of our top small business resources from the past few months, including social media, tech, startups, marketing & advertising, dev & design and mobile posts that were written with small business in mind.
Of course, if you're still hungry for more business resources, you can follow Mashable's business channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook. Happy reading!
Social Media
HOW TO: Poll Consumers on Facebook
We collected some simple ways to poll your consumers on Facebook, as well as a mini-list of best practices.
HOW TO: Set Up a Foursquare Special
There are now seven types of specials available on Foursquare -- here's an explanation of each special, along with some tips to help you get started.
10 Proven Strategies for Greater Likeability on Facebook
Here are 10 universal laws for brand likeability in social media.
HOW TO: Get Your Employees On Board With Your Social Media Policy
It’s not an easy job to help people reconcile their public and private lives on social media, and it all comes down to training, mentorship, and establishing guidelines and best practices. Here are some tips.
5 Best Practices for Travel & Tourism Brands on Facebook
Best practices for travel and tourism brands on Facebook -- borrowed from the big players in the industry — that will help you attract gadling jetsetters and secure more reservations.
HOW TO: Create a Group Tumblr Blog
Want to set up a company blog that contributors can post to from multiple accounts? Want to use a password-protected Tumblr internally? Here we show you how.
5 Tips for Closing a Sale on Facebook
How can you maximize the social network to close sales for your own business? Here are five tips to help you design a Facebook presence that makes buying your products more desirable and easy.
14 Best Practices for Long-Term Social Media Success
Following these best practices will prevent your brand from falling victim to the coming wave of customer unlikes and unfollows. But more importantly, focusing social channels and investing in the value of each will improve the customer experience and encourage greater engagement.
HOW TO: Start Marketing on Foursquare
The most recent iteration of the location-based app, Foursquare 3.0, expanded the features and made it much easier for businesses to jump on the bandwagon and start marketing. Get started here.
HOW TO: Get Started With Photo Blogging
We consume so much content in our digital lives, it seems we’ve developed a need for it to be presented in the simplest, most efficient way possible. Enter: the photo blog.
Social Media for Small Businesses: 6 Effective Strategies
Many small business owners are either too busy for social media, or they don’t truly understand Facebook, Foursquare or Twitter. So they choose to delegate these tools to interns or specialists. This may not always be in the best interest of the company.
How Tasti D-Lite Has Raised the Bar for Social Media Success
Frozen dessert shop Tasti D-Lite has been heating up the social space over the past few years, introducing a series of innovative digital programs and campaigns. We spoke with Chief Marketing Officer Bill Zinke to get a taste for what the company is up to lately and what digital and social projects it’s working on next.
How Small Businesses Can Use Social Media for Customer Service [INTERVIEW]
Customer relationship management isn’t just the domain of big brands, and these days, more and more companies are offering free online tools to make it easier for SMBs to keep track of and reach out to their customers.
HOW TO: Start Marketing With HootSuite
As social media increasingly becomes optimized for brands, marketers are finding themselves juggling multiple accounts across a variety of networks. With so many statuses to update and so little time, keeping yourself organized is key.
5 YouTube Marketing Tips for Better Engagement
In addition to its incredible success as the de facto portal for video uploads and viewing, YouTube is itself a community. For brands, it provides an additional viable opportunities to spark discussion with followers. It’s a place to build relationships and create a space for users to converse with each other about branded content.
5 Tips for Recruiting College Students via Social Media
More and more companies are recognizing the value of social media in building their employer brand in the minds of college students. From the Department of State (@DOScareers) to Google (@GoogleStudents) to MTV (@MTVNetworksJobs), organizations across many industries are taking to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and blogs to enhance their image and build a pipeline of talent from college campuses.
HOW TO: Add Social Sharing Buttons to Your Website
For many sites, adding social sharing buttons is a simple and effective way to quickly boost pageviews and sharing stats. Unfortunately, it can also be a way to clutter up your pages, confuse your users, and cause massive bugs and layout issues. Here’s a quick guide to best practices for adding social sharing buttons to your site or blog.
Should You Outsource Your Social Media Efforts?
Hiring a social media consultant may not be as straightforward as hiring other types of professional service providers, such as a web designer or an accountant. Here are four questions to consider when deciding whether to outsource your social media.
How The Pros Measure Social Media Marketing Success
The notion that marketing costs can’t always be understood is an ancient one. John Wanamaker, a department store mogul who died in 1922, once mused, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Here are some tips to help you figure it out.
HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Facebook and Twitter Promotions
As social media has worked its way into every aspect of our lives, we as a culture have come to expect that our favorite brands — from “Big Gay Ice Cream” trucks to national airlines and fashion houses -- are easily accessible on the most popular social networks.
9 Digital Marketing Lessons From Top Social Brands
Big brands have already blazed trails in the digital marketing world. We spoke to social media and marketing experts at MTV, American Express, Xbox, NBA and AT&T to get the scoop on how they learned to hit the mark.
HOW TO: Use Facebook Social Plugins on Your Website
One of the easiest ways to make your online presence more social is by adding Facebook social plugins to your website. There are many different Facebook social plugins to choose from -- here are four of the top plugins for business and tips on how and when to use them.
How Businesses Can Survive a Product Recall Using Social Media
These five tips will help companies maximize the potential of social media to protect consumers and their brands in the midst of any product recall situation.
HOW TO: Avoid and Prevent Facebook Spam
Facebook is doing a lot to help curb app-generated spam, with platform spam down 95% in 2010, but no automated system is perfect. Here are some tips to reduce the amount of spam that you see on Facebook -- and avoid contributing to the problem yourself.
6 Common Email Marketing Mistakes Small Businesses Make
For small businesses, email still represents a cheap, effective way to establish or maintain a relationship with clients. But the content has the power to either attract or repel -- check out these tips before you hit "send."
HOW TO: Launch Any Product Using Social Media
Guy Kawasaki shares 12 things he did to launch his new book, including information about costs, vendors and analytics.
5 Excellent Small Business Blogs To Learn From
Here are five small businesses that are using a blog to reach local communities and showcase the company’s experience and expertise. We’ve outlined exactly what they’re doing right as a guide for other small businesses to improve their own blogging activities.
10 Tips for Posting on Your Brand's Facebook Page
Once your brand is on Facebook, the question becomes: How you engage those fans and sustain a meaningful online dialogue with your customers?
Top 5 Mistakes to Avoid on Your Company Blog
Corporate websites are often little more than interactive brochures that display basic information and describe what the business offers. But if you’re looking to do more, then a company blog is a much better choice.
5 Tips for Maintaining Brand Consistency Across Social Media
As the recent foibles of Aflac, Chrysler and Kenneth Cole and others demonstrate, keeping an up-to-date, 24/7 presence on social media has its risks. A bigger risk though, is to ignore social media. So what is a brand to do?
The Pros and Cons Of Tumblr For Small Business
More and more businesses have been getting hip to social blogging platform Tumblr, which may have you wondering, “Should I be on Tumblr, too?"
Business
HOW TO: Recruit All-Star Employees on a Startup Budget
Your first few hires set the tone for your culture. What’s more, it’s often said that A-level hires get you more top quality hires in the long run. You don’t just need to make time for recruiting -- you have to be great at it.
How Startups Will Benefit if the SEC Relaxes Funding Regulations
The areas that the SEC is going to review are general solicitation rules, the 500 share holder limit and regulations around crowdfunding. Easing these regulations will have a major impact on how startups raise capital and will help more startups raise funding.
HOW TO: Better Communicate With Remote Startup Employees
Communicating with remote workers can be a challenge, but for any company that has employees or contractors working outside of the office, learning how to properly communicate is an important way to increase productivity.
HOW TO: Sign Up Users Even Before You Launch Your Startup
In April, “stealth” social media startup Kohort announced its upcoming launch. Within a few days, the site received thousands of user signups, according to its founder Mark Davis. In the startup world, this itself perhaps isn’t uncommon, but what made Kohort’s story unique is the fact that those thousands of users had no idea what Kohort was when they signed up.
Tech and Gadgets
10 Best BlackBerry PlayBook Cases [PICS]
If you’re in the market for a cover for your new super-sized ‘Berry then take a look through the photo gallery of available choices.
4 Free Ways to Learn to Code Online
Learning to code is something every tech-minded person should try at least once — and the wealth of online courses, many of which are free or surprisingly inexpensive, make learning about programming easier than ever.
14 Tips for Hiring the Perfect CTO
Hiring the wrong person for key company positions can cost a business thousands — or tens of thousands — of dollars and man hours. This is especially true when it comes to tech companies hiring the wrong chief technology officer.
Flip Alternatives: 5 Great Pocket Video Cameras
While many are content to shoot casual videos with the cameras built into their phones, if you’re looking for a standalone gadget that shoots true HD and is still easy on the wallet, check out these alternatives to the once-popular Flip.
Big Data: How New Technology Is Helping Marketers Create Better Consumer Experiences
In this era of constant connectivity and tracking, we are creating huge amounts of data every second. Just like consumers, marketers are facing information overload. The big question is: How can we use this data to produce better, more relevant customer experiences?
11 Excellent iPad Apps for Meetings and Presentations
Here are 11 iPad apps that will enhance your presentations.
HOW TO: Make Your QR Codes More Beautiful
QR codes are malleable and can be redesigned in truly extraordinary ways, while still maintaining their scanability. The truth is, QR codes no longer have to be checkerbox in appearance. We’ve entered a new phase of “designer codes” that can be integrated into marketing campaigns in an attractive way that isn’t an eyesore.
Closed or Open Source: Which CMS is Right for Your Business?
It seems there are new contenders vying to be the top content management system (CMS) every day. Making it easy to add products, articles and just about anything else is a mandatory development skill today. Inevitably, the question always arises: “Do we download something free and open source, or do we buy a solution?”
Marketing & Advertising
Why 5 Big Brand Marketing Campaigns Are Betting Big on Social Gaming
In 2011, U.S. gamers will spark $653 million in revenue solely from purchasing virtual items. That figure is expected to reach $792 million in 2012.
5 Marketing Jobs Worth Paying For
Now, if you’ve started your own company, chances are you’re the type of person who is willing to roll up your sleeves and get things done yourself. But there are some areas of marketing in which the experience of a professional — administered at the right moment — can really make the difference between a polished, awesome product and a complete mess.
The 5 Qualities of Highly Effective Community Managers
Today, the role of community manager is common at companies of all sizes -- from startups to multinational corporations. Despite their ubiquity, there is still a lot of confusion around what a community manager actually does and what employers should look for when hiring one.
5 Digital Marketing Trends to Watch
Small businesses plan to increase spending on inbound marketing in 2011, allocating money to initiatives such as Facebook campaigns and location-based advertising, but businesses will also experiment with a handful of new (and not so new) strategies.
8 Ways to Improve Your Live Event With Social Media
Whether you just want to generate a bit of buzz or instead have specific goals to increase ticket sales and attract top speakers and attendees, social media can make the planning process smoother by leveraging digital word-of-mouth. Here are eight tips for best results.
How 3 Companies Took Content Marketing to the Next Level
There is a laundry list of issues that need to be addressed when it comes to improving corporate blogs, but here we've narrowed it down to 10 tips that companies should work on.
6 Smart & Effective Email Marketing Tactics
Successful brands are cross-pollinating email marketing strategies via email clients, social platforms and mobile devices. Brands still find email effective because it’s inexpensive and universally accepted by people all over the world.
HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Google AdWords
Often, small businesses set up a campaign and load it with relevant phrases, only to see little traction. Or worse, they get clicks (which cost money) but aren’t converting them into sales.
Top 4 Tips for Creating a Podcast for Your Small Business
Podcasts are an interesting challenge for small businesses. They require a little more know-how, energy and time than signing up for Twitter, Facebook or even Foursquare. But they’re not nearly as daunting as you might think, and they offer an excellent opportunity to build a unique audience and generate leads for your business.
Top 5 YouTube Marketing Mistakes Committed by Small Businesses
We’ve spoken to three top experts in the video marketing arena to get professional advice about the common mistakes that small companies make on the video-sharing platform so that you can avoid making those same errors.
5 Tips for Creating Your Own Group Buying Deals
Group deals have become a popular way to attract new customers and boost sales. While this phenomenon started with marketing service providers such as Groupon and LivingSocial, it has expanded to such diverse businesses as Facebook and The New York Times. The group buying market is now estimated at $4 billion.
4 Innovative Ways to Use Web Video for Small Business
How does a small business compete with disturbingly low attention spans and a whole Internet of viral videos? Read on for five ways that small businesses can take advantage of web video without blowing their budgets.
4 Inspiring Small Business Video Successes
Looking for inexpensive PR? We spoke to some PR pros to find out how to tap into the online media and get your biz a little exposure without breaking the bank.
3 Podcast Success Stories from Creative Small Businesses
Despite the challenges, there is value in video for small businesses, even if you’re a video greenhorn. We found four businesses that have had real world success thanks to video.
Dev & Design
5 Ways to Ensure Your Site Is Accessible to the Visually Impaired
The web is full of tips on how to design websites for blind users, most of which are geared toward making your website accessible to screen readers.
Top 5 Web Design Mistakes Small Businesses Make
If you’re a small business owner, your website is the central hub of your company, and it’s a pivotal part of your marketing and branding.
5 Small Biz Web Design Trends to Watch
Your website has to capture a visitor’s attention, entice him or her to stay and browse around, create an interest in your product or service, and result in sales. For small businesses with limited time and budgets, design is an essential factor in both attracting and converting potential customers.
Mobile
How 5 Companies Are Using the iPad to Increase Productivity
These five companies are making a pretty strong case for how Apple’s iPad (and its competitors, when they catch up) has a lot of potential to make business more efficient.
How The iPad Is Helping Businesses Go Green
Apple’s iPad tablet device is helping businesses take on more environmentally friendly habits, enabling them to cut costs and save resources.
HOW TO: Build a Mobile App for Better Customer Support
Building a smartphone application that’s able to deliver a superior customer care experience is more complicated than just porting a mobile version of your FAQ.
5 iPad Apps That Rival Their Desktop Counterparts
With more than 65,000 apps built to take advantage of the iPad’s features, there are tons of options, from photo editing to word processing that match — or outpace — their desktop counterparts.
5 Essential Business Collaboration Apps for iPad
There are a handful of iPad apps that jump to the forefront of any discussion on business collaboration tools.
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