Although business startups are forming every day, still many of the current new entrepreneurs dont know about the SBA. The United States Small Business Administration is a government sponsored agency who is 100% dedicated to the growth of the small business community. According to SBA, they have these goals:

The SBA officially opened its doors in 1953 but it was around in various forms long before. During the Korean War, the Small Defense Plants Administration was established as a way to help small businesses during war time. Before that, all the way back to the Reconstructive Finance Corporation which was established to help small businesses recover from the devastating effects of the Great Depression.

Prior to the recent day Great Recession the SBA was only a small part of the Federal budget.

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As always when major news happens in the online marketing arena, I’ve spent a fair amount of time today digesting the announcements Facebook made at its F8 Developer conference yesterday (see Facebook’s page on the event).  While I’ve never been much of a Facebook fan to begin with (I’m just not exhibitionist by nature), the new features seem over-the-top… even for people who do like to share.  How much do we really want to know about hundreds of other people, after all?  And how much more time do people really have to waste on daily trivia and minutiae?  I think it’s time to call TMI.

If you haven’t seen or read about the new Facebook updates, these were the key news highlights:

Timeline. The redesigned Facebook Profile includes a “Timeline” allowing users to go back as far as their birth date and fill in with pictures and important events, essentially creating & sharing their entire autobiographical photo history.

New Apps. With a new developer capability called Open Graph, Facebook apps will now allow users to share with their friends whatever they’re doing – automatically.  You’ll be notifying your friends about what you’re reading, what music you’re listening to, what you’re watching, and whatever else developers can think of for you to share.  The news of your activity will appear in a new Ticker stream. Then your friends can copy you or s

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Small business marketing has MANY shiney objects to chase and it may seem like the latest and greatest new gizmo is the most important. Today we are we are going to talk about what may seem a little antiquated (smile) email marketing and some common email marketing mistakes!

Not having a professional email address

If you are still putting a gmail, aol, road runner, comcast or other free or obviously system emails on your business cards or handouts, people notice and assume that you are not professional (at the very least they will assume that you are WAY behind technology-wise, which in this day and age is not cute or funny, it is a red flag to potential customers!)

Using your company email address

While I understand there are some situations that you need to use a corporate email address, this is a SMALL BUSINESS BLOG.

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You don’t have to be a celebrity, politician or family member of a murder victim to get your cell phone hacked.

Sure, staffers at the now-defunct News of the World may have ransacked the voicemails of all of the above, but even “normal” people are targets for fraudsters mining for sensitive information.

And it’s scary how easy it is.

“As you’re doing more and more things on your mobile phone, you need to take added precaution,” says Vijay Balasubramaniyan, chief technology officer and co-founder of Pindrop Security, an Atlanta-based telecommunications company specializing in phone security.

Caller ID spoofing, for instance, used to be a valuable tool for business owners on the go who wanted their company number to appear on a client’s caller ID. Now, hackers exploi

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T-shirts, when well designed and marketed, can be used as excellent promotional products. Everybody loves tees that come with witty captions and cool graphics. So why not incense this with your company logo or caption and have people wear your advertisement all over the city to grab people’s attention!

Targeting the Right Audience

The most important trick is to outline the target audience that you want to market your product to. It makes no sense to write a caption regarding a science project, say and sell it to fashion junkies. It is only when it reaches the right kind of people who can process the message that you try to send does the tee become a marketing weapon for your enterprise.

Design

The design is the most important feature since it needs to generate certain appeal as soon as people glance at it. Always make sure it is witty, catchy and remember that a little bit of humour always helps! I Get more…

The internet is a huge place now, and for a business to ignore it is potential suicide. From 2005 to 2010 the amount of web pages doubled, and its predicted that by 2015 it will be 8 times what it is now. It can represent a huge market, far bigger than any footfall you would get to a shop, so your online presence needs to be attractive in order to convert customers. However, many markets now have become saturated, with thousands of companies vying for the same spots. This has been taken advantage of with the ever changing art of SEO, where eventually it comes down to who has the most money and therefore can afford the most online marketing. It is also not helped by the dominance of Google, making the page 1, number 1 spot the most highly fought over and leaving the others out of the game. You therefore need to look to innovative marketing strategies in order to get noticed.

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