Happy Holidays from Our Small Business Community

Below watch our “Happy Holidays” greeting on behalf of the entire BizSugar small business online community.

A special thanks to BizSugar contributor Cindy King for her recent weekly posts on top BizSugar picks at Bloggertone.com. Here are Cindy’s top picks for this week:

• Iranian Cyber War Against Twitter. Brought to us from blogger Willie Wee at Penn Olson, this link looks at an alleged hack into Twitter by person or persons unknown identifying themselves as members of the Iranian Cyber Army. The story highlights the new dangers faced by businesses large and small as they go global in a sometimes uncertain world.
• Start An Affiliate Program to Increase Your Sales. A link to an article at Open Forum by Denise O’ Berry shows step by step process by which you can create your own affiliate marketing program allowing other businesses to sell your product to their customers.
• How To Explain To Clients That They Are Wrong. The photos alone in this post at SmashingMagazine.com are enough to recommend it, but there is also a wealth of information about how to deal with the realities of dealing with clients on a day to day basis…especially ones with whom you disagree.
• Customers Reduce Risk by Buying from Experts. Are YOU One? Sales coach Skip Anderson raises this question and the answers will doubtless be controversial. Is a salesperson an expert? Should he or she be? To what degree should an expert be selling products…outside of services or products strictly based on that expertise?
• Developing an Entrepreneurial Mindset. Are great entrepreneur born or made? This post from FlyingSolo.com suggests innovation can be taught…and learned. Read the post and decide for yourself. Are entrepreneurship and innovation a state of mind?
• What Free or Cost Effective Business Tools Did You Use This Year? This link to a post from fellow Bloggertone contributor Greg Fry is a great roundup for the year and the small business gadgets bursting on the scene. Fry shares his own top tools with links in his post and it would be worth the time of any gadget guru worth their salt to have a look.
• Social Media Strategy: 6 Areas of Focus for 2010. Doyle Slayton’s take on the social media revolution is comprehensive and looks at the full range of social media channels. The post lays out a strategy in the shifting sands of the social media world that will hopefully lead to a new role for sales in 2010 and beyond.