SMB-Branding-Infographic-Clives-Car-detailIn many circles people talk about Facebook as a miracle marketing solution for small businesses. And lots of businesses have been doing very well there, with some even skipping their own website to make their Facebook page the hub of their online strategy. Well, those businesses might want to rethink that strategy. This absolutely fascinating post explains why. It's pretty technical stuff but the key lies in the paragraph where the post authors point out that Facebook is effectively asking you to pay up to get the people who liked your business page to actually see posts from it in their feed. "Most brands or business pages have acquired their likes through Facebook advertising. Not all of them, but a large percentage. The whole idea is that you get people to like your page and then you engage with them through content and updates. What is happening now — with the introduction of promoted posts — is that Facebook is trying to get brands to pay to be seen by all the people who already

thumbupdownFor anyone involved in retail, right now is about as late as it gets for you to prepare for the holidays. If you haven't already done so you should be frantically preparing. Here is an article we published some time ago with a great set of tips on getting things right for the holidays. We've also still got elections on our minds and we looked at a poll that shows that it is the smallest small businesses that are struggling the most and that they especially have trouble getting credit and loans. Another election issue is the failure of any of the main candidates to address entrepreneurship and up-to-the-minute issues facing legislators like crowdfunding. We also had a great article about leadership and another about creating a platform to support young entrepreneurs.

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,

snowmanWe're almost half way through October, which means it is already time to be setting up your online advertising plans for success in your holiday shopping endeavors for your online store.

Last year, holiday shoppers in the U.S. spent over $46 billion online. This holiday season, online sales are predicted to grow to significantly - by at least 15%. So it is important to be ready to put your holiday plans and deals in front of your customers. Microsoft is presenting a free Bing Ads webinar to address this topic on October 18th at 10AM PST and this is a great opportunity to pick up some tips.

The webinar is supposed to cover

Driving more traffic to your site: Choosing the right keywords and perfecting ad copy.
Reaching the right customers: Savvy targeting tips and ways to put Bing Ads' powerful reporting tools to work for you.
Positioning your ads in the right places: How to capture the growing number of shoppers searching for gifts on their mobile phones and tablets.

You can find out

fedgovtWe are going to revisit a great article from last week today. After the debates, which some outlets characterized as delivering a big win for small business, we took exception, pointing out that the debates were long on rhetoric and contained almost no practical discussion of small business issues. Take a look.

Some of the other best stories for today:

A great article about converting visitors to your website into sales. The suggestions seem simple but are extremely practical and in our experience while most businesses have done SOME of these things, very few have done ALL. 7 Tips for converting website visits into sales.

Following on from our look at the political scene is an impassioned plea from a small business owner and advocate in Oregon about getting big money and big business out of politics in order to restore the voice of the smaller business. It's a good point regardless of any other reasons for or against the Citizen's United decision.Big, secret money in politics hurts

mavenlink-infographic-small-businessWe had the first presidential debate this week and while small business came up, it came up mostly under the guise of taxation or with a great deal of rhetoric and no specifics. We had proposed seven great questions that could have been addressed and in the end one of the seven was addressed, two were alluded two and the four most important were ignored. Despite all the talk, small business owners know that carrying on the hard work of finding new customers, fulfilling contracts, making sales and all the everyday operational work must go on. But we can all take heart from the teacher who has made $1 million selling lesson plans online - while continuing to teach. More and more startups and entrepreneurs are coming from the ranks of the baby boomers or even retirees - whether that is because of a desire to keep working or a necessity. Regardless, the SBA has some programs to help. And even though many of them are over, you can still get help from SCORE and other SBA programs. If you are

smallbusinesselectionWe had the first of the presidential debates yesterday. Unfortunately, despite using the phrase 'small business' a total of 29 times between them, very little was showcased in terms of specifics. We showcased seven questions we would have liked to have seen addressed. Unfortunately only the last three were even discussed and the answers to those were long on rhetoric and short on specifics. Hopefully we'll see some more answers in the debates to come.

Some of the other best stories for today:

How to protect your small business from lawsuits.

Why are small businesses hiring?

How YouTube can be a marketing tool for small business.

Are you fighting the wrong business competitor?

Brought to you by Yahoo! Small Business. Take a look at our domain, web hosting and ecommerce solutions. Follow us on twitter and on Facebook.

Inc. has a good article reporting on a discussion Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg had with reporters at the IAB MIXX Conference during Advertising Week in New York. Much of what she had to say was about small business, what a problem it is for advertising online and how Facebook is hoping to find the solution. This is a subtle shift from the focus of her discussion earlier that day with Charlie Rose where she talked about social advertising, re-emphasizing a theme that Mark Zuckerberg brought up on his recent trip to Russia.

Local advertising has indeed been a hard problem for tech companies to solve, but perhaps not as difficult as the Facebook team is making out. When supplied with any form of location data, google search ads on any site can be locally relevant for example, as can ads from The Yahoo! Bing partnership. And here at Yahoo! for example, there are local listing services, the ability to locally target advertising within the Yahoo! Shopping portal and even local solutions

October is National Women's Small Business Month. Plus five other small business reads for October 1st, 2012.

• Four tips to get local TV coverage for your small business.
• Small business retirement plan resources from the IRS.
• What business expenses can you claim for your small business?
• Is your small business in a cash crunch?
• 20 entrepreneurs share tips on increasing sales