It seems like every day there are new blogs from business owners, people who serve small business and those who monitor small business trends. Blogs are often written by people who have “been-there and done-that”, and it’s good to know what’s being talked about in the small business blogosphere. But how do you figure out which ones are worth your time to read? While you can’t keep up with them all, there are easy ways to browse the best ones. By browsing small business blogs, you can:

1.    Stay up-to-date with the latest business trends, opportunities and news.
2.    Get timely advice from business coaches, marketing gurus and accounting experts.
3.    Keep an eye on the competition and get ideas for your own business or blog.

Get an overview of the latest trends, opportunities and tips

Start at high profile business blogs that have a lot of traffic and are consistently updated by well-known bloggers.
I recommend: Small Business Trends includes coverage of technology that affects the small business market. Get marketing tips from the Duct Tape Marketing blog or BIG Marketing for Small Business, and find out about business networking online at Virtual Handshake. Two up-and-coming entrepreneurs share their personal experiences at Slate’s BizBox. Others worth a look include Business Opportunities Weblog and The Entrepreneurial Mind.

Discover the best blogs from actual small businesses

Gain a unique perspective into the lives of people starting and running all kinds of small businesses through their blogs.
I recommend: USA Today’s Small Business Connection blog often features small business blogs. Other interesting reads include Aldo Coffee, The Bloomery Florist, Sharma Jewelry Designs and Kendrick’s Billiards.

Find other small business blogs on blog directories

To find a coffee shop blog, for example, type in “coffee shop”. You can also subscribe to keyword search feeds to find the latest blogs in your area of interest. Search on your own company name to see if it’s being mentioned in the blogosphere.  We recomended to join us in BaliTrade.biz.

Use RSS readers to get summaries of updates to your favorite small business blogs

RSS or RSS feed refers to a way for sites to syndicate their content, and allows you to read the highlights of all the blogs you like to read in one place.
I recommend: You can subscribe to a blog’s RSS feed from the blog itself. You’ll get a special URL and then you’ll need to view it in an RSS reader or aggregator, such as Bloglines.

Tips & Tactics

• Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide
• If you’ve found a good blog, a way to find more quality blogs on a similar topic is to look at the blog’s sidebar to see what other blogs the author has recommended.
• Commenting on an interesting blog post is a way to voice your opinion or add some useful information, but it can also let more people know about your URL or expertise.
• Some top blogs that don’t deal specifically with small business, but cover topics such as technology, may also be useful for you to track.

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By Shara Karasic, Community Manager, Community Manager, Work.com

http://members.business.com/Shara-Karasic

A website is a powerful marketing tool that can help boost your online tutoring service business. It can help you to communicate useful information to both parents and potential students. Businesses, parents and students who want to search for the services of a professional consultant or private tutor will either do their searches through the Yellow Pages or through the internet. The Yellow Pages can useful information, a website can provide more detailed information – information about a particular company, it’s services, tutoring rates or the details and experiences of its staff members. Providing this level of detailed information to a customer – whether they live in your neighborhood or in another part of the world – can make a big difference to the survival of your tutoring business. A carefully planned and fully optimized website can provide your business with repeat visitors, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Simplifying Website Design

Having some knowledge of HTML or knowing how to use a website authoring tool such as Dreamweaver MX 2004 or MS Frontpage can help you to create a professional website – however they are not essential for building a high quality, good-looking website. The good news is that there are now many free or low cost, quality website design tools and web hosting services for people on a low budget. Many of the web design software discussed on this site are user-friendly, some are low cost, while most are free software. Nearly all the tools mentioned can help you to easily put up your own online tutoring website without needing to have any special knowledge of computer programming.

Seven Website Design Tips

Before we go into the nuts and bolts of website design, we need to be aware of some common design pitfalls. These pitfalls can either make or break the design and usability of your own online tutoring service website.

1. Put Up Easy to Read Articles
2. Use A Simple Navigation Menu
3. Optimize Your Pages For Quick Downloading
4. Avoid Dead Links
5. Keep Site Contents Fresh and Relevant
6. Browser Compatible Websites
7. Color Compatibility

Search Engine Submission

Once you publish your website, the next step is to perform a manual search engine submission. A search engine submission is important for new websites because there’s no way for a web-crawler to know that your pages exist unless you tell it of your website’s where-about. However, it’s important to know that a search engine submission does not guarantee a listing, or ranking on search engine results. Here are some popular places to manually submit your website.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of tweaking your web pages in such a way as to improve it’s overall ranking in the major search engines. For online tutors, learning search engine optimization is a major step in making your pages stand out from among the two billion web pages on the internet (and thousands more that are been created daily). Below are a few simple techniques that you can use to help you improve your overall ranking. If you have a website that is non-pornographic, non-gambling or not illegal in anyway, applying these simple suggestions can help you to greatly improve you website ranking.

Maintaining and Improving Your Website

Maintaining your website is an on-going process. This section looks at some things that you will need to do to maintain your website. As your experience and skills improve, you may want to improve your sites appearance and usability. The second part of this guide offers some details on how to improve your site.

Remember when you needed a product or service, and you pulled the bulky phone book off the shelf to find it? While that may still be your first impulse, there are hundreds of different, and often better, ways to find what you’re looking for. Many online business directories offer more than simple addresses and phone numbers. For free or for a subscription fee, many directories also offer detailed company information that’s designed to help you grow your business.

Online business directories can do even more for small businesses. Listing your business in online directories can be an ideal way to reach other businesses that need your products or services. Use online business directories to:

1. Find new customers.
2. Find suppliers.
3. Build mailing lists.
4. Find key contacts within corporations.
5. Check credit ratings and financial status.
6. List your company and thus, attract new business.

It is easier to compare your business with other similar ones through an Internet directory. To compete, you need to be listed next to businesses that offer similar products and services. Here are a few advantages to being listed in a business Internet directory:

1. To compete with other local companies-there’s a high probability they are listed in the business directories.
2. A business web directory positions your company with other major players in the industry.
3. Larger companies that promote these directories will help drive additional business to you.

Action Steps

The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Look for an Internet directory with performance-based options

Some search engines or directories only make you pay as your business gets leads from them. Once you get feedback on your site’s performance, you can make adjustments based on what customers want.
I recommend: Superpages.com allows a variety of options to get your business listed, including a free listing or a Pay-Per-Click option. Yellowpages.com also offers a free listing or an option to build an online store to drive visitors to you.

Get national exposure through an Internet business directory

If you are a local business looking to expand nationwide, an online directory can give you the kind of visibility needed. Get your brand out to more people with business Internet portals.
I recommend: The largest Internet directories, such as Yahoo! or Google, will drive the most attention to your business. DMOZ is a site where you can request to list your business for search engines to pick up.

Use an Internet business directory to get your company profile out to the public

An Internet directory service is more than a phone book, it’s a way to get company information out to the general public.
I recommend: Business.com & BaliTrade.biz is a directory that also offers hundred of business-specific categories.  DexKnows.com gives your business the ability to be compared to other similar ones by location. Also, Hoover’s offers company profiles and expert advice to millions of customers.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• Many Internet directories are local. Many sites have strong followings that include local directories.
• Start with some of the free listings offered by an Internet search engine, then pay for more services depending on the customer response.
• Make sure the search words put your business in the internet portals under the right industry categories. Do a few test searches and make adjustments to your keywords as needed.
• Online portal directories allow your business to measure the site statistics, respond to what matters to consumers and make adjustments based on demand for your product.

The official source of Internet Directories and Portals is the Internet Directories and Portals page at Business.com
Get listed in several Internet directories to maximize exposure
By Sharisa Lewis

Craigslist.org started as a small San Francisco email list in the mid-1990′s, created because Craig Newmark wanted to make it easy for his friends to know what was going on around town, whether it was the latest Anon Salon or a web conference at Moscone Center. How did Craig develop his email list into one of the world’s most popular community websites? He focused on usefulness, purpose, and trust.

While companies considering creation of an online community must be clear about what they hope to achieve in terms of the bottom line, it is crucial that actual users have a strong, engaging community purpose if you want to develop a successful community that will grow organically.

To build a thriving online community, there must be:

1. A strong, compelling user purpose
2. Communication tools that make it easy to connect and a user interface that supports connection
3. Content/Events to draw users back and give them opportunities to mingle
4. History, or backstory, that creates an affective bond
5. Identity/Status/Reputation – facilitate creating and displaying who a member is
6. Boundaries/Groups – special groups or levels for members of different status
7. Trust – needs to be embedded within the structure of the site and interactions with and between members.

Action Steps

The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Get your finger on the community pulse

Before starting your own community, spend some time in thriving online communities and social media sites, especially those in the niche you are interested in. Hell, get off your computer and spend time with the people for whom you want to form a community, getting to know how they interact and what motivates them. If it’s schoolteachers, sit in a classroom. If it’s lumberjacks, pick up a chainsaw, put on your boots, and follow them out to the forest. Then, before logging on again, get a basic grounding in culture by reading some Levi-Strauss, Mead, Geertz, Benedict, Boas, and Weber. Okay, then know your virtual community history because while the graphics may be better now, the principles are mostly the same: know about IRC, MMORPGs, MUDs, MOOs, Compuserve, Usenet, and the Well.
I recommend: Okay, now plunge into today’s online community world. I assume you have a good grasp of Web 2.0, social networking, and great community sites such as flickr, YouTube, LibraryThing, Wikipedia, Craigslist, eBay, Amazon.com, Yelp, threadless, and Second Life.

Here are some of my favorite community people: danah boyd, Howard Rheingold, Cliff Figallo, Joi Ito, Craig Newmark, Mimi Ito, Amy Jo Kim, Cynthia Typaldos, Derek Powazek, Jim Cashel, Guy Kawasaki, Anastasia Goodstein, and Clay Shirky.

Keep up-to-date with the Online Community Report and join the online facilitation Yahoo group, where people exchange best practices about how to moderate an online community.

Set up your tools, content, & interface for community contributions

So, your business reasons for community make sense (you have given some thought to this, right?), or you have an endless flow of non-profit funds so you don’t have to worry about business reasons (lucky you), and there is a strong purpose, both selfish and communal, for users to participate in your community. You know the ins and outs of your target audience (you did select a target audience, didn’t you?) because you are a member of that audience, or you are tightly connected with that audience, or you are prepared to write the next essential ethnography of that audience. You have typical personas of this group in your head (the 7th grade social studies teacher who favors critical thinking over teaching to the test, the lumberjack into sustainable harvesting). You are determined to offer a simple, clean, elegant, integrated set of features, editorial, and functionality that will maximize the collective wisdom of your community. Great start.
I recommend: For discussion forum solutions, try Vanilla, a free, open source message board with an elegant interface and a minimalist bent, or the popular phpbb, or browse thinkofit’s forum list for more ideas.

If you are building your own user-generated content (UGC) solution, make sure to test and refine the interface, be careful of having too high a barrier to entry which would act as a bar to achieving critical mass quickly, and consider incorporating ways that users can shape the site’s taxonomy.

Make sure the site addresses your audiences, reflects the community purpose, and has built-in ways to highlight members’ identity, status, reputation, and groups, so that members can be part of the governance of the site.

Your servers are prepared to accommodate high traffic, and you have considered how you will moderate, the privacy policy, the terms of use, and copyright issues. Remember that enforcing the legal requirements of your site requires programming, content, and interface design.

Seed your community site

The best way to seed your community is to find your ideal type of users to be the first participants. They will set a precedent for future use of your site.
I recommend: The founders of MySpace knew a lot of people in the indie music community, and invited them to seed their new site…thus MySpace became the place to learn about new bands.

Nurture and grow community participation

Okay, you’ve launched your site and the first real users are coming…guess what? Your users will help your site evolve in directions you may have never anticipated. Highlighting this evolution will keep your site interesting. Typically, an online community has a 1-10% participation rate, with the rest being lurkers. Don’t forget to integrate email into your community site to keep participation high. Don’t be surprised if it takes a lot of time to nurture and grow your community.
I recommend: Craiglist.org started as an email list to Craig’s friends, but is now is a highly-trafficked community serving cities around the world from Beijing to Berlin.

Measure and analyze community metrics

It’s important to measure your community stats from the beginning, to get a benchmark in terms of what to expect later. Changes to your interface, tools, and traffic will affect the community dynamics. Stats should factor into your feedback loop and affect future site development. Return-on-investment (ROI) may be measured directly in terms of sales conversions from community members or advertising on community pages, or more indirectly in terms of PR value, customer loyalty, or a replacement for customer support.
I recommend: Statcounter has a free version of site measurement software that shows you where your traffic is coming from and which pages are popular.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• They won’t come just because you’ve built it – driving quality traffic takes work in building relationships.
• A common mistake in launching a new discussion forum is to set up too many initial categories. This splits conversation, especially when traffic is still low. It’s better to start a discussion with a few categories and then expand later as your usage dictates.
• Read the YPulse.com newsletter which focuses on youth virtual community and social media – what the kids are doing today is what the adults will be doing tomorrow.
• When a corporation sponsors an online community, it gives up some control. Don’t be scared of users saying anything negative about your product, however. Better they do that on your own forum where others are saying positive things about your product, and you can easily respond. In today’s media world, it makes a business look self-confident and full of integrity if they allow honest, public feedback.
• One of the best ways to learn about what works and doesn’t in terms of online community is to talk to online community professionals who’ve developed successful communities from scratch.
• Good stories are the glue of the strongest online and offline communities. Every group, from hunter-gather tribes to modern physicists, has a story that binds them together with history, mission, and purpose. Weave in your “story” to your interface and interactions, and let your users become main characters in that story.

The official source of Building an Online Community is the Online Community page at Business.com