Blog Posts by Owen Linderholm

Every two years a worldwide event comes along and grabs the collective attention of the global population, presenting an unparalleled opportunity for businesses big and small. The Olympics will open on July 27th and the games will continue until August 12th, providing small businesses with a two week period to capitalize on the excitement and patriotism that accompany the games. Given the scale of this opportunity, it makes sense to take a look at your business and see how you can leverage this attention to build sales:

Tips to leverage Olympic-related sales

1) Make sure your website or online store’s keywords and SEM (search engine marketing) campaigns are adjusted to reflect current Olympic trends that will capture consumers. For example, Usain Bolt is a huge name in the Olympics, so if you sell door and window hardware try terms like "gold medal bolts."

2) Find real connections between your business and the Olympics, such as local athletes competing in the games or athletes that

chequeGold is on people's minds a lot right now. No, not THAT kind of gold - Olympic gold. And the regular kind of gold too - because for small businesses the bottom line is critical.Besides the usual financial news of public company quarterly profits and the slow and steady implosion of various European economies, there is still time for some concrete advice. On Yahoo! Small Business Advisor we highlighted stories about small businesses finding new ways to get cash and funding, seven strategies to make the most of your budget as a startup, how to tell that it's 'time to kiss your boss goodbye and become an entrepreneur,' and (unfortunately) how small business owners aren't finding themselves able to take vacations this Summer.

If you haven't taken the plunge yet, hopefully some of these articles give you the impetus to start your own business — and if you do, we have tools to help. Besides our domain name, web hosting and ecommerce products, we also have just added an innovative marketing

workerbeeEven though we are in the middle of the traditionally slower business months of Summer, there's plenty going on to interest the small business owner and entrepreneurially minded. On Yahoo! Small Business Advisor we highlighted stories about President Obama's ideas to help small business, looked at how to tell if you are entrepreneurial, discussed why Mark Zuckerberg might not be a good role model, provided seven lessons from the first year of a startup and visited the Waldorf-Astoria along with 250,000 new guests as part of a new business venture.

If you haven't taken the plunge yet, hopefully some of these articles give you the impetus to start your own business — and if you do, we have tools to help. Besides our domain name, web hosting and ecommerce products, we also have just added an innovative marketing dashboard that you can try for free even if you don't use our other products.

There was also a ton of good small business information from elsewhere on the web.

7 Steps To

We hosted a live chat on Twitter yesterday to discuss the topic of online marketing in general and the new Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard in particular. It was hosted by @SmallBizLady, aka Melinda Emerson, host of #SmallBizChat, Author of the book, "Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months" http://www.succeedasyourownboss.co.

We compiled the highlights of the chat into the following transcript. The only changes have been omissions and a few corrections of typos to improve clarity. We also made a Twitter list of all the active participants which you can subscribe to here: https://twitter.com/#!/YSmallBusiness/ydashboard-chat.

Chat questions and answers

@SmallBizLady 12:29pm
Good afternoon everyone and thanks so much for joining us for the Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard Tweet Chat!

@SmallBizLady 12:32pm
Q1 What are some techniques to attract new customers?

@YSmallBusiness 12:32pm
@SmallBizLady is the author of Become Your Own Boss and blogger of Succeed As Your Own Boss.

@SmallBizLady 12:32pm
A1 The

Most people, even the most successful of business people, even successful lawyers, struggle to complete everything they have assigned for themselves to do. A recent survey by the professional networking site LinkedIn looked at how many people were able to complete things on their to do lists and from what industries. This survey noted that lawyers reported being the least able to finish all their tasks. Small business wasn’t broken out or asked as a category but we suspect that for the small business owner, the numbers are even worse.

Why is that? We researched all the best advice on getting through your list that we could find and there are some startling conclusions.

We put the wrong things on our lists.

We tend to put big projects that we haven’t thought about properly on our list. If you add  a task like ‘create presentation for national sales meeting’ to your list in the morning and expect to get it done and crossed off by the end of the day then you are setting yourself up to fail.

A recent survey by the professional networking site LinkedIn looked at how many people were able to complete things on their to do lists and from what industries. This survey noted that lawyers reported being the least able to finish all their tasks. Small business wasn’t broken out or asked as a category but we suspect that for the many-hatted, ultimately responsible-for-everything small business owner, the numbers are even worse.

So we thought we'd give you some help by rounding up the best advice on being more effective with your own personal to do list. There’s a lot here but if you only take away three points they are these:

• Keep your list possible – short, to the point, actionable.
• Make sure you do the most important thing on the list every day – just one thing.
• Cut things off the list ruthlessly.

Before we dive in: The most important thing with a to do list is to get things done. That means your list and your system have to work for you. So do not take this or any of the expert

customerdialogLast week we started this new blog series rounding up some of the best small business reading from here on Yahoo! Small Business Advisor and also elsewhere. We continue this week with some great advice and success stories.

You should also take a look around some of what Yahoo! Small Business has to offer. Besides our domain name, web hosting and ecommerce products, we also have just added an innovative marketing dashboard that you can try for free even if you don't use our other products.

We also have a tools section within Yahoo! Small Business Advisor where you can quickly and easily create a press release with a wizard, track packages, calculate loans and look up zip codes.

We had an interesting set of stories in this week at Yahoo! Small Business Advisor that included the following:

The inconvenient history of Silicon Valley. (It turns out that the entrepreneurial capital of the US was created on the back of LOTS of government support.)
Four signs you're a terrible communicator.
How

What better time than National Small Business Week to kick off a new weekly series of blog posts rounding up the best of the week that we have found both here at Yahoo! Small Business Advisor and elsewhere?

It's been a big week for small businesses and a big week for us too. We posted a series of original interviews with executives from American Express, UPS, Verizon, Constant Contact and Orange Soda about small businesses and what their challenges are and each gave some advice on how to succeed and how to work with them. Why is that important? Well, we picked those companies because they all provide important services TO small businesses in different areas - financial services, logistics (ie shipping and fulfillment), communications and marketing. Plus we learned some great facts. Did you know that about half the GDP and half the employment in the US comes from small businesses? Did you know that UPS is a classic startup by a teenager in a basement? Only in 1907, not 2007!

We also