Tools for Online Success

Many small businesses are looking for economical, yet effective ways to market their business and get people thru the door. Social media and the web are effective ways of doing this. I found the book "Blogging, Create and Maintain Valuable Customer Connections" to be very interesting and easy to understand and read. This thing about blogging is new to me, especially setting a blog up and posting and commenting to it. Last night I was commenting on David's blog, and after about 40 minutes of thinking and writing, I hit the Post button and nothing happened. So I hit another button, and it went blank. I had lost all of the information I had written! I was furious, but at the same time upset with myself for not knowing how to post a blog! How hard could it be?

To make a long story short, I had to rewrite it and it didn't work again, but this time I had copied it before I hit the Post button! I finally remembered the advise of Dr. Weyant- if you are having problems on the blog, use Firefox instead of Explorer. Had he not said that, I would have not completed the post.

You may be asking, what is the reason for blogging this story? What relevance does it have? Although blogs, wikis, tweets, and other online tools can be of enormous benefit to a small business, based on my experience, many small business owners don't know about these benefits, and much less know how to use these tools. To be honest, had it not been for this class I would probably have not set up a blog. I currently have several ideas of how I want to use it to enhance my job and at the same time show the benefits of it, as well as other online tools, to the small business owners I work with.

In looking for information on online tools, I came across a set of videos developed by the US Small Business Administration in partnership with Google which I found very educational and interesting. It is called Tools for Online Success. If you know of any small business owners, please share this information with them.

Are there any other resources on blogs or online tools that you have found valuable?