If the recent Profit Minded post "How a Designer Turns Tweets into Sales" left you thinking that tweeting 14 times a day is beyond your capacity, here's another angle.

A tweet a day could grow your customer base.

Twitter itself has just published a 21-page guide for small business owners on how to use the platform to engage customers and "put Twitter to work for your business." The straightforward, simple, and illustrated tips are designed to show business owners how to "connect with customers, amplify your message, and ultimately, grow your business." And one tweet a day might be all you need to make an impact.

For total newbies, the guide dissects the anatomy of the 140-character tweet, tells you what to do with a hashtag, explains what it means to follow and be followed on Twitter, and shows how and why to retweet and direct-message your followers. It also offers tips on designing your profile page, and developing your company's Twitter voice with plenty of inspiring examples from well-done small business feeds.

For those

Would your workplace social media policy hold up to NLRB scrutiny?

That some employers routinely ask job applicants to hand over their Facebook passwords was provocative news in May when two U.S. Senators asked the Attorney General to investigate the legality of the practice. Employers demanding to snoop around inside a potential hire's Facebook account? Why not ask prospective employees to hand over their personal diaries and family photo albums too? The sleaziness of the practice just seemed obvious.

But the National Labor Relations Board has determined that employers need guidance when it comes to writing workplace social media policies. The independent federal agency recently released a report focused on employer policies governing employees' use of social media.

"Employee use of social media as it relates to the workplace continues to increase, raising various concerns by employers, and in turn, resulting in employers' drafting new and/or revising existing policies and rules to address these concerns," wrote Lafe Solomon, Acting General Counsel

Patti Wunder, owner of Easton Place, generates leads on Twitter

Patti Wunder was savvy from the start about leveraging social media to generate business for her one-woman handmade stationery and digital branding operation, Easton Place. She built a beautiful website, writes an engaging blog, has posted hundreds of enchanting photos to Flickr, produces a monthly e-newsletter, keeps her Facebook page up-to-date, pinned feverishly to Pinterest until copyright concerns led her to drop it, and has a busy storefront on Etsy.com.

But she says her @easton_place Twitter feed has translated to the biggest sales of all.

Wunder's stationery products, which she calls "fine paper lovelies," hark back to pre-Internet etiquette. In the age of Evites and Facebook birthday greetings, her hand-drawn cards printed on high-quality stock seek to sustain the disappearing tradition of the U.S.P.S.-delivered invitation and the calligraphy note.

But 140-character electronic messages have turned out to be a winning way for her to find new customers. In the two-plus years

Women entrepreneurs often dislike discussing money, says business coach Linda Tomb

Business coach Linda Tomb takes a three-step approach to helping women entrepreneurs find startup success. Once she has helped her clients get control of their time and sharpen their focus, Tomb turns to their relationship with money.

"Your relationship with money is the relationship you'll have the longest," Tomb tells entrepreneurs. "Unless your business is really just a hobby, you must take a good look at how your business will make money."

It might seem like obvious advice for anyone trying to start a business, but Tomb says many women she works with do not like to talk about money. And yet, at her speaking engagements, everyone has questions about money. So, Tomb pays special attention to the topic with her coaching clients.

Be able to explain your business
First she tells women to hone their approach to the outside world. "If you're going to make money doing something, you have to be able to explain what you do," she says. "It's astounding to me how many people think they're

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

findcustomers

By Carol Roth

Ask a small business owner what his or her top challenge is and most will rank "getting new customers" amongst their top issues. With customers more distracted and so many options to choose from, this can be even more of a challenge nowadays. Below, find four tips on how to generate more leads and customers in efficient ways that won't break the bank.

Leverage Your Existing Customers: There's no better way to garner more business than directly and indirectly from customers that are already having an amazing experience with your business. Directly, talk to your customers about how you can earn more of their business, either through increased purchasing frequency, increased size of purchases or by meeting more of their needs with additional goods and services.

Additionally, customers tend to spend time with other individuals or businesses that look a lot like them. That means that your customers are likely a connection point to other ideal customers for your business.

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

Asked what business tasks they could do better, "being more efficient" was top on the list of one in five entrepreneurs who responded to a recent national survey of small businesses. A cluttered calendar, daily distractions, and an overwhelming to-do list can keep any busy business owner from succeeding, and time management tips like the ones we shared here last week can help you streamline your schedule.

An uncluttered mind is key to entrepreneurial success

But getting control of your time is just one of three steps that business coach Linda Tomb recommends to business owners who seek greater success. Hand-in-hand with clearing the clutter from your calendar goes clearing the clutter from your mind, she says.

Tomb's consultancy, Unleash Your Business, helps women entrepreneurs "grow a small business into a big business…with heart." In part two of our three-part "Time, Focus, Money" interview with Tomb, she says, "Focus is about taking charge of the thoughts that are occupying your brain. You can work till you drop but still be