Small Business Saturday and its Shop Small slogan get a lot of attention, but they aren’t the only holiday shopping project small town businesses can join for more buzz this season. Shift Your Shopping Shift Your Shopping is a theme you can adopt for any local shopping campaign. The emphasis is on shifting more of…
Want to promote your local businesses? Use a social list-making site to collect the websites and social profiles of businesses in your area. I first heard this idea from Dave Shideler, back when delicio.us was the social bookmarking tool of choice. Today’s social list-making tools offer some key advantages. Why use social list-making tools? 1….
“Everything gigantic in American [retail] is about to get smaller or die.” That’s the dramatic claim by contrarian economist James Kunstler,writing about the big retail sector in Business Insider. He says big retail is on the brink of scale implosion. Kunstler points to the same trends that are affecting small towns: online shopping, global delivery,…
If you look back through various writings, these two terms, entrepreneur and small business owner, were once considered the same thing. Yet today business schools and economic/community developers often view them differently. More often the focus is on entrepreneurial development with fewer programs having “small business” in the title. Yet one often wonders are they…
Guest post by Rick Skorupski Population migration – a net loss or a net gain for the The Plains States? Thanks to Grow Spink Inc. (an economic development non profit in north eastern South Dakota), I had the opportunity to go the Symposium on Small Towns at the University of Minnesota – Morris in June…
Most small town downtowns could use some sprucing up. Different businesses have different styles from a bunch of different decades. None of the signs or facades match. Clashing is probably a better description than coordinating. What can you do to get updated designs without spending a ton on the project? Webster City, Iowa, is one…
Did you know that military won’t be the biggest use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS)? In fact, agriculture will account for 80% of UAV use in coming years, Jim Mason of Elk City, Oklahoma, tells us. He also explains why rural Western Oklahoma is a leader in the industry. In…
When my friend Deb Brown started as Chamber of Commerce director for Webster City, Iowa, they had too many empty buildings. Rather than try to hide that fact, Deb put on a tour of empty buildings. The idea was to clean up buildings and show them off to potential new business owners. Read about how…
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