By L. Drew Gerber

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With the economy remaining uncertain, more and more businesses are looking for low cost — or no cost — ways to reach their potential customers. Even with everyone talking about economic recovery, businesses are still watching every penny. There are tactics that can be employed though to get attention and new customers in cost-effective ways.

Nothing has people knocking on your door like PR. Most companies know this, but with shrinking budgets it’s hard to justify signing on with a PR firm. The good news is you don’t have to. Read the rest of this entry »

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There are ten minutes before the next meeting. The pile of Action items sits before you, as does the list of To-Do’s. How do you decide what to do in the time you have?

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Productivity guru David Allen, in his classic book Getting Things Done, offers these tips for prioritizing:

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I just received a book for review this week, and as I leafed through it, I realized there are words of wisdom for those beyond the intended audience. The book, Career GPS: Strategies for Women Navigating the New Corporate Landscape, by Ella Edmondson Bell with Linda Villarosa, is directed towards women. But the introduction and first chapter had some inspiring ideas that apply to all of us.

Here are some excerpts that guide us to be a triumphant leader:

Bring in Your Authentic Self: Advances in technology have created greater transparency. Everybody’s watching. Read the rest of this entry »

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Who?

It’s an important question.

It’s an important question when you are trying to build (and maintain) a client base for your business, or when you need a certain type of person to hire, or when you need to meet  a new contact. Who provides you with leads and new clients?  In The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell,  the importance of relationships is stressed, in both your personal and business life. And the people who provide you with connections are called Connectors.

Who are the Connectors in your business world? Typically, these people: Read the rest of this entry »

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How does your team create new ideas? Do you find your team going down the same boring path it always does? Need some ideas for jumpstarting a brainstorming session?

The human brain likes to make connections between things, and that’s why we associate hotdogs with baseball, or snowmen with coal eyes (or whatever you associate them with). You can challenge these everyday associations by creating a disturbance in your connections. And that’s where creativity lives.

Say your business always uses coupons to try to attract new customers. You need a new way to gain new customers, and the team is ready to try an unusual technique. But what? Read the rest of this entry »

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Yesterday we posted a blog by James Snider on using LinkedIn for your job search.Here’s a link to our sister site, The 60 Second Marketer. I’ve posting a great follow-up, How to Verify an Email Address Using Linkedin.

In fact, anyone who uses LinkedIn for any purpose will like this tip. Check it out.

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James Snider has a helpful blog on Using Social Media in the Job Search. This is an excerpt:

With budgets being cut everywhere, hiring departments at corporations find they have to do more with less.  If they were on all the major job boards a few years ago, they are only on one or two today.

One of the methods for finding people that is becoming increasingly popular is LinkedIn.  For the corporate recruiter, LinkedIn is a cheap way to post a job and it gives them greater insight into the candidates than a simple resume. There are 1,000s of jobs listed on LinkedIn. In some cases, these jobs are ONLY listed on LinkedIn.

Here are three simple steps top finding a job on LinkedIn: Read the rest of this entry »

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BNet has published its top 77 Worst Business Blunders of the Year. Looking back over 2009, they picked out some of the most amazing business mistakes. I spent darned-near an hour, lost in capitalistic craziness. Here are some of our favorite goof-ups that you want to be sure to avoid.

You can’t make this stuff up. Um, on second thought… Read the rest of this entry »

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A successful team is the cornerstone to running a successful business, and it is now more important than ever to ensure your people are attaining the highest level of achievement. But how can you enforce that expectation of achievement?

A tool that is being used, and one that has been gaining popularity as the economy has suffered, is a behavioral employment agreement. Read the rest of this entry »

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Have you put much thought into your business card? Does it have your name, your address, your phone number, your webpage….  Guess what. So does everybody else’s.

Your business card needs to reflect what it is you do, and how you do it. It is your advertisement, so you don’t want it to be just like everybody else’s. Read the rest of this entry »

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