Paul Chaney knows small business and social media. We met in 2008 when Zane Safrit introduced us at BlogWorld Expo. When Paul told me he was launching his own consulting firm, I invited him for an interview. We talk about Paul’s small town connections, his experiences leading up to writing The Digital Handshake, and his…
Tourism is one of our favorite topics here, especially how to use online tools to reach more visitors. During South by Southwest, Sheila Scarborough and I sat down with Jennifer Navarrete and Luis Sandoval, Jr. of the Tech in Twenty show to talk about how social media can help tourism organizations tell the stories of…
Location based games and applications like FourSquare and Gowalla are hot topics right now. Checking in on Gowalla Players use their mobile phones to check in at various locations to share recommendations with each other, to find friends who happen to be nearby, and to compete with each other. To get a real sense of…
Making Social Media Pay Off: Driving Awareness and Growing Your Small Business Through Tweets and Friends By Suzanne Cordeiro Jumping into the local organic pizza market feet first, PROMISE PIZZA learned early on the impact – and potential payback — of social media. I started using Social Media in October 2009 and was clueless about…
[Liz Strauss has been a friend to Small Biz Survival for… ever, it seems like. She called us SOBs back in our very first year: 2006. We finally met in person in 2008, when we stayed at Sheila Scarborough’s house together for SXSW. Liz is a mentor, a friend and a constant fountain of encouragement….
Suzy and Tracie make bread in a little strip mall in Mishawaka, Indiana. They have a franchise with Great Harvest Bread Company. They give you free slices to sample. (Apple Scrapple is very good.) They are like lots of bread stores in lots of towns.Their store/bakery is only a couple miles from our daughter’s college,…
Last year at the Oklahoma Entrepreneurship Conference, we had two people tweeting: me and @stargardener. When we announced the hashtag we were using for the event, we got the oddest reactions. We had a tweetup, with just the two of us, and it was great. And the brand-new-at-the-time @OKCCoCo was there. This year, there were…
To get ready for an upcoming presentation, I came up with a list of things about social media that scare small town governments, or roadblocks that keep them from participating in social networks. I think there are lots of similarities to small businesses. We don’t know what to do. We don’t want to lose control…
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