Archive for October, 2009

How to Improve Your Small Business Network

Published by Shawn Hessinger on October 27, 2009 in bizSugar Website. 2 Comments

Let bizSugar.com be your small business network sharing resources and information while getting to know our growing online community of small business owners and entrepreneurs.

small business

Here are some simple ways you can improve that small business network with surprisingly little effort:

  • Report bad actors. Sure, bizSugar is a great source of free information and resources on starting a small business or running one for that matter, but there are some people out there who can ruin the experience for everyone else. Whether they are spammers cramming our community with unrelated or straight advertising links and comments, rude members making inappropriate comments or any other person violating the spirit of our community’s simple rules of conduct, if you see a member ruining the site for others please let us know.
  • Tell a friend. If you know someone else you think could benefit from or contribute to our small business community network—local chamber of commerce presidents, business club members, startup entrepreneurs or small business owners—be sure to let them know about bizSugar.com. We’d love to have them as members and you’ll benefit with the increase in networking potential that new members can provide.
  • Visit and vote for your favorites. Instead of trying to figure out how to set up a small business network on your own, why not join the online community for small business that’s growing fast? But don’t stop at our front page. Be sure to check out and visit our upcoming new links and vote on the ones you find the most helpful. You can help us decide what new articles belong on the front of our site and let other members know which links you found most valuable.
  • Share our content. From getting small business ideas to developing a small business plan, bizSugar.com’s passionate membership shares news and information of all kinds pertinent to the small business community and you can do the same. Share information from the bizSugar community on your small business blog or Website via feeds, widgets, buttons and badges. Check out our post on how to “Sweeten Your Website with Small Business Content” to learn more.
  • Share your feedback. Don’t wait until something’s gone wrong to drop us an e-mail at bizSugar.com. Keep in touch with feedback on what you like, what you don’t and what could do to make this community better. With your support, we can create an ever better experience for all of our members.

Sweeten Your Website with Small Business Content

Published by Shawn Hessinger on October 20, 2009 in bizSugar Website. 5 Comments

You can improve your Website with small business content from your friends at bizSugar.com. See below:

Sweeten Your Small Business Blog or Website

  • Add our Feeds. Visit our main site under hot topics (our front page) and look for the RSS feed icon at the far right of the “sort by news” options. Click on the icon and then cut and paste the RSS feed displayed in the address window at the top of the new page into the code for your blog or Website or into a specialized custom HTML widget if your platform provides one. You can also visit us on Twitter (see the right side of this blog) and click on the RSS icon to cut and paste this feed into your blog or Website as well adding the latest content from the bizSugar community to your content too.
  • Add our Buttons. You can add voting buttons to your favorites or every post on your small business blog to allow readers to submit and then vote for your articles here on bizSugar.com. To do so, simply visit our “voting buttons” section under “Tools” at the bottom of the bizSugar main page, copy the code you find there and follow these simple instructions for installation.
  • Add our Widgets. If you’d like a bolder way to invite your visitors to the bizSugar community and to promote your affiliation with our growing small business social media site, a great method is by adding our “Top Stories” widget or one of our customized badges. Simply visit the “Widgets” section at the bottom of the main page and cut and paste the code for the widget or badge you would like to share into your blog or Website and show you’re a part of the bizSugar community.
  • Add our Toolbar. Our new toolbar provides a wealth of small business information from around the Web directly through your browser and lets you quickly and easily share links found while surfing the Internet with the bizSugar community as well as allowing you to share links to top bizSugar stories with your readers via blog, social media site of Twitter. Complete instructions on downloading are available through the bizSugar toolbar post on our blog.
  • Add our plugins. For WordPress aficianados, we offer a collection of plugins available to download that will allow interaction between certain versions of the WordPress platform and the bizSugar community. Check out plugins that allow you to automatically add bizSugar buttons to your WordPress blog, use bizSugar as an option with the Share This plugin on WordPress and allow a bizSugar option for use with the Sociable WordPress plugin by visiting the “Plugins” link under “Tools” at the bottom of the WordPress main page.

Share content from our community with your visitors and add value to your small business blog or Website with these features from bizSugar.com.

Help Make bizSugar Better

Published by Shawn Hessinger on October 13, 2009 in BizSugar Tips, bizSugar Website and bizSugar comments. 2 Comments

As the bizSugar.com community grows ever larger providing ever greater value for visitors, we’re looking for members to help make our site even better as the premier small business community and social media site on the Internet.

To help us reach our goal, here are some of the things we’d like regular bizSugar members to help us ensure so that the experience of new members will be a good one they wish to repeat.

Stuff we want…

  • Great links to the best articles with small business news and information on the Web provided with a brief explanation in the description area provided for you in the “submit” section that makes our visitors want to read more
  • Great comments by those passionate and knowledgeable about small to medium sized business filled with insight, information and entertaining detail about your experiences, opinions and even questions and concerns you may have to get a conversation started
  • Great members from throughout the small to medium sized business community including those interested in business, those seeking to start or currently running a small business or those interested in helping or advising them
  • Great opportunities to network and share news and information vital to small and medium sized business worldwide whether in the field of franchises, e-commerce, business coaching, business-to-business or virtually any other aspect of starting, owning, operating, selling or managing a company today

Help us make bizSugar better

Stuff we don’t…

  • Spammy links to sites unrelated to small or medium sized business or attempting to sell members unrelated items or services having little or no connection to the small business community (if you haven’t even looked at our site, don’t bother submitting to our community)
  • Spammy comments responding to the legitimate posts of members either with unrelated information or with short responses and URLs attempting to attract members from our community to totally unrelated sites as a sales or marketing ploy
  • Discourteous people who behave rudely or inappropriately when commenting on the links of other members or to the comments left by others or who use our member contact tools to harass or otherwise annoy other members
  • Outright advertising even if your opportunity or service is perfectly legitimate and applies to the small business community, we would prefer press releases or information that add value to our members’ experience instead of outright ads or pitches aimed at selling our members on your service or product in an area set aside for information and exchange.

Whether you’re a new or longtime member, we’d appreciate your help in making the site the best possible experience for everyone. Be sure to adhere to the guidelines above and feel free to contact us about others you believe are abusing the priviledge of membership or ruining the neighborhood for fellow visitors.

We look forward to a growing and thriving business community that can provide the best news, information and even advocacy for our members by arming them with a helpful resource they can use in making decisions each day.

Improve Productivity with bizSugar Toolbar

Published by Shawn Hessinger on October 6, 2009 in bizSugar Website. 1 Comment

Improve your productivity as you surf the Web while adding small business links and building your reputation on bizSugar.com.

Now you can do both at once with the bizSugar.com toolbar allowing you to look for subjects that catch your fancy and share them instantly on the finest and friendliest small business community on the Internet.

bizSugar toolbar

Here’s how to make the bizSugar toolbar work for you:

bizSugar Toolbar 2

We here at bizSugar.com hope you get a lot out of the bizSugar toolbar and would love feedback on how you use it and how it’s working for you.