Business Tips

If you're a bootstrapped business owner or co-founder, you are quite familiar with humble beginnings and bootstrapping your business to greatness. No matter how great your startup ideas are you'll face stormy skies, rough roads, flash floods, obstinate obstacles, and real rejection during your quest to grow your company. While the challenges are inevitable, how you react to obstacles and rejection in business is what really counts.  We've all heard of the rags to riches stories that so many entrepreneurs have lived to tell about... if they're lucky and incredibly persistent. Some have lived in their cars and others have maxed out a dozen credit cards just to give themselves a shot at business success. Here are the stories of 3 incredible and motivating business successes that plowed through obstacles and painful rejection.  Jeff Bezos of Amazon One of the most impressive of these frugal beginnings has got to be Amazon's founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. The picture abov...

You know all of that high quality digital content you’re supposed to be churning out to promote your business and boost search engine optimization? The kind that content marketing SEO gurus like Gary Vaynerchuk and Neil Patel preach about on a daily basis. It seems like a lot of work, doesn’t it? Yes, blogging for your business and creating other online content can be incredibly exhausting and time consuming! Who has time to create quality content every day or even every week? How do you even come up with all of the ideas and information that make up this constant content?  Well there is a way to make that process a lot easier and keep you from getting content creation burnout: reimagine your blog content into over a dozen other online mediums! When you’re marketing for your business , it’s always helpful to find ways to use the content that you spend so much time and energy developing into new creative ways. Here’s how you can turn one blog post into 15 new pieces of content thr...

When it comes to expanding your business acumen, there are a lot of viable options out there. Authoritative blogs, YouTube videos, podcasts, conferences, networking, workshops, and college courses are all effective methods for expanding your horizons. But it's hard to beat the knowledge that you can learn from well-written books. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk replied , "I read books" when asked how he learned to build rockets. There’s truly no substitute for reading books when it comes to helping you launch something new; whether it's rockets or the business you’ve always aspired to build.  Knowledge is perhaps the rarest and most valuable of all elements found on earth, provided you know the source and the right medium of transmission. But it's easier to get now than ever before with millions of affordable eBooks at our fingertips on any smartphone or tablet! These top business books can help an individual learn, grow and innovate when it comes to launching a n...

One of the largest and most underestimated social networks with around 200 million users (and around a $2 billion valuation) is Quora. Quora is kind of a mix between Reddit , LinkedIn, and the late Google Answers. Millions of questions are asked every day on every topic you can imagine (even very obscure ones you won't find on Medium and you'll only find on Reddit) and other members who are knowledgeable in those areas answer them. It's an excellent way to build your brand, drive traffic to your website or videos, and become an authority in your industry. You start your profile by ideally connecting your account to Facebook and Twitter, which helps you to find and connect with your existing friends and followers. You then create and optimize your profile including links to your other social media accounts, blogs, websites, products, or anything else you're looking to promote. You can start a free blog there as well if you want. I wouldn't recommend it over Medium, ...

Pinterest has been a popular social media platform for many years now and it has been successfully adopted by hundreds of thousands of businesses and entrepreneurs during this time. But not all marketers have gotten on board or fully utilized this versatile medium.  In fact, Pinterest seems to be one of the platforms that many companies choose to skip in favor of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn , YouTube, and even our mediocre friend Google Plus! I'm not saying you should ditch any of these tried and true platforms (except perhaps the lowly Google+ ... even though I personally use it almost daily to cover my bases), but you should give Pinterest a fair shot and maximize its potential. When most people think of Pinterest they usually think of DIY projects, design ideas, weddings, fashion, and fitness... but that's kind of like thinking  YouTube is just for cat videos, or that Instagram is just for Selfies (wait it's not?). Don't let this close-minded perspective...

Reddit is one of the largest social networks / forums that is largely ignored (myself included until recently I'll admit) by the majority of corporations and small business owners alike. It has over 500 Million active users and it is the #4 website in the US (#9 in the world) when it comes to overall traffic. It's an active and growing community that allows access to the coveted Generation Z and Millennial demographics. And now it's more versatile than ever with brand new complete user profiles. With a user base that enormous, it would be tragic not to take advantage of such an opportunity to promote your content and interact with prospects. In an increasingly competitive global marketplace, it would be wise to market your media and build your brand on Reddit. Here are some reasons why: Share Visual Content Like the wildly popular Snapchat and Instagram platforms, Reddit is all about images and video. If your business has a strong visual component, and I would argue most...

No I didn't hit my head and imagine I was back in 2011. We all know Google+ never materialized into a serious competitor for social media supremacy with its past and current rivals of Facebook , Twitter, or LinkedIn. I'll also admit Google Plus should never be the cornerstone or even a focal point of any sort for any social media marketer. In fact, over the last 6 years I've mostly used G+ as an undiscriminating dumping ground for all of my content. And honestly I could care less about Circles and Google Hangouts.  So why am I writing about using Google Plus marketing to help grow your business? Because it works!! It can help support your digital efforts and it provides a strong ROI (no cost and minimal time). It really comes down to the ease of connecting, minimal time investment, and SEO benefits that G+ can provide. It also fits with my overall theme of using every free weapon at your disposal in an increasingly crowded and competitive social media marketing landscape. ...