Now as communications manager for Column Five, a small advertising agency based in Southern California, Donegan brings this realization to his team as they create powerful infographics and other maximum impact marketing efforts to bear for clients.

In fact, Column Five says they’re responsible for “writing the book” on the subject, that book being Infographics: The Power of Visual Storytelling.

But the agency’s and Donegan’s focus on creating innovative ways to communicate marketing messages doesn’t stop there.

Since distinguishing themselves as leaders in infographics, (some of which Donegan has shared with the BizSugar community) Column Five has expanded the way they think about marketing.

Donegan and his team now offer a range of services. They including brand strategy, advertising, visual language design and software development.

But Donegan’s agency doesn’t just work on the medium for communicating a brand’s message. They also work to make their clients more promotable and newsworthy.

As Donegan explains, the company works to tailor its efforts specifically to a client’s needs, which pushes them to challenge the boundaries of visual communications.

“This paradigm shift has allowed the agency to solve very real problems for a much larger swathe of clients, from huge Fortune Ten companies to unknown start-ups, in a way that is relevant to each,” he says.

Donegan says his agency uses the BizSugar community for a variety of reasons.

“It not only gives C5 a place to showcase our work and achieve a client’s promotional goals in a place that taps into the small business demographic, but also gives a place for us to see what small business owners are talking about.”

If you’d like to someday be chosen as a BizSugar Contributor of the Week and be featured here on the BizSugar blog, there are a few simple steps to take.

Join the BizSugar community by signing up for a free account, be sure to “like” our Facebook page and then start sharing content while commenting and voting on posts submitted by others. We can’t wait to meet you!

The post Ryan Donegan @ryanpdonegan Rocks Digital Marketing Possibilities appeared first on BizSugar blog.

Now, in her own words, “fully mobile,” Costa mentors startups from her website, CateCosta.com, as she travels the world through Latin America and beyond, exploring entrepreneurial ecosystems or traveling just for pleasure.

“Both of my parents are business owners and growing up seeing the autonomy they had compared to that of a typical employee, I always knew I would end up in entrepreneurship somehow,” Costa says of her inspiration.

She started in a somewhat less nomadic way, of course, first working for herself and then for a VC-backed startup.

But her interest in learning more about how startups work led her back to school for an MBA and to a position heading the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Howard University School of Business in Washington, D.C.

There Costa’s tasks included supervising the Institute’s entrepreneurship education workshop series, entrepreneur incubator, special events including a business pitch competition and the Google Digital Empowerment Event, the Institute’s one-on-one startup counseling sessions, and the Annual Faculty Conference on Entrepreneurship.

Working in the Institute’s entrepreneurship programs Costa learned the importance of working with entrepreneurs who had a vision but lacked the knowledge and experience to get started.

“So, I became a consultant with clients of my own as well as through a non-profit organization in DC,” Costa says.

However, Costa would eventually leave the non-profit to focus only on her private clients, allowing her to indulge her passion for travel while working.

Costa’s own experiences as an entrepreneur can serve to inspire her clients too. She’s the founder of Venture Catalyst Consulting, a small startup consultant firm; President of Only Honest, a video sharing website focusing on political discourse; formerly a business consultant with the Minority Business Development Agency’s Business Center in Washington, D.C. and also the former sole-proprietor of a major contractor in the cruise ship industry.

Costa is also, of course, a BizSugar user:

“I spend a lot of time online reading the latest tips and news related to startups and small business, and I stumbled across BizSugar in an article I was reading and decided to check it out,” Costa says.

“Most of the things I test drive after reading about them don’t actually remain a part of my daily routine for long because they’re not effective, but BizSugar has been an awesome resource for me both in terms of providing me with great content to share with my followers and in helping me share what I’m doing with a community that’s interested in what I focus on,” she adds.

She says,”The BizSugar community really seems to be one where everyone is there to collaborate and learn as opposed to some of the others where people just SPAM each other.”

Would you like to be a Contributor of the Week on BizSugar and have your business featured on the BizSugar blog? Just sign up for a free account, “like” our Facebook page and start sharing content, commenting and voting on the content of others here in the community. We would love to hear from you!

The post Cate Costa @cate_costa Combines Passions for Entrepreneurship, Travel appeared first on BizSugar blog.

As an international speaker, trainer and author, Gibson has built a career on the power of social media, even if he started his career in very traditional marketing and selling.

“It’s the future of business and so many companies are struggling with how to really use it profitably,” Gibson acknowledges.

For all his realization of the new media’s potential, Gibson began his sales career traditionally enough learning cold calling and selling seminar tickets door-to-door at age 15.

“My Dad and mentor Bill Gibson (@BillGibson1 on Twitter) taught me the business from the ground up, he has been speaking and training on sales since 1979,” Gibson says. “By the time I was 18 I was delivering training sessions on personal selling.”

Now an international speaker and author who has addressed over 100,000 people over the past sixteen years on stages in North America, Southern Africa, India, Malaysia and South America, Gibson has become something of a guru on social media marketing.

He has been blogging since 2002, podcasting since 2004 and claims today to drive the majority of his business from social media and social networks. His books on social media and sales include “Sociable! How Social Media is Turning Sales and Marketing Upside Down,” “Closing Bigger-the Field Guide to Closing Bigger Deals” and a book co-authored by Jay Conrad Levinson entitled “Guerrilla Social Media Marketing.”

So how did a traditional sales person forge a career in social media marketing, a field about which some businesses still feel uncertain?

“It was a natural progression – my trips to India, Latin America and Malaysia all came from my blog and podcast,” Gibson explains. “Social media and social networks are an incredible tool.”

He says his focus on social media has really been a response to demand.

“More and more clients wanted help with social media strategy and after writing ‘Sociable!’ and ‘Guerrilla Social Media’ I made the decision to really focus on social communications,” he explains.

Today, Shane is Chief Social Officer of Socialized Communications, a Vancouver based social media agency, with speaking and agency clients including Ford Motor Company, DTM Systems, The U.S. Department of Commerce, Corning Cable Systems and dozens or major business associations and chambers of commerce globally.

Shane says he discovered BizSugar.com through a “Twitter Tribe” of global sales thought leaders, many of whom, he says, are also members of the small business social community.

“I like Bizsugar because the audience is very business focused,” he explains. “Unlike other social bookmarking sites it allows me to hone in on my audience. There’s also a real community feeling, people comment, interact and often end up connecting on other platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter.”

Gibson also says he uses BizSugar as a “one-stop-shop” for content he can curate for his own social media followers.

If you’d like to become a contributor on BizSugar and perhaps someday be featured as a Contributor of the Week here on the BizSugar blog, simply sign up for a free account and “like” our Facebook page.

Then start submitting small business content in accordance with our guidelines and vote and comment on the content of other members. If you have a blog and would like to encourage readers to share your content on the BizSugar community, our BizSugar buttons make it easy. Place one on your site today!

The post Shane Gibson @ShaneGibson Takes Social Marketing to a Global Audience appeared first on BizSugar blog.

As she tells it, she launched her communications and business development firm Flying Pig Consulting several years back specifically for that purpose.

“The firm is based around the belief that with the right tools and strategy, any organization can beat the odds, defy the rules and ‘fly’ despite the obstacles they faced (in structure, size, resources, etc.),” she says.

Petrolino approaches this goal by offering affordable resources including communications consulting, coaching and strategy for small businesses and non-profits.

In conjunction with these services, Petrolino co-hosts an online business talk show, Call a Biz Hero, with fellow small business consultant Nicole Fende.

Each week, Petrolino and Fende spend half an hour interviewing entrepreneurs, small business owners and experts on challenges faced by small business owners, obstacles that, in keeping with the show’s superhero theme, Petrolino and Fende refer to as “business kryptonite.”

The co-hosts have also launched a crowdfunding campaign and interactive board game to help entrepreneurs decide which of their ideas are worth pursuing.

Participants can play along at home and then take part in challenges that appear on the show, Petrolino says.

Petrolino and Fende developed the game after years of watching entrepreneurs struggle with what Petrolino calls “ideamaggedon.” Petrolino describes this as a tendency among entrepreneurs and small business owners to struggle with too many ideas and not enough resources to implement them.

Petrolino is also an enthusiastic BizSugar user. She says sharing content with the BizSugar community has become just as important a part of her regular routine as is sharing via Facebook or Twitter.

“BizSugar is not only an amazing platform for me to share my own articles and work, but also a way to network and learn from my peers,” she explains. “When you share on BizSugar you know you are sharing with a very targeted community of small business focused professionals. You really can’t find that anywhere else.”

Becoming a BizSugar member is free and easy. Just join our community and start sharing great small business content while commenting and voting on the submissions of other members. And, don’t forget to and “like” our Facebook page.  We can wait to hear from you!

The post Laura Petrolino @lkpetrolino Helps Businesses When Pigs Fly appeared first on BizSugar blog.

“I’ve run my own business since 1997,” says Cox. “I just love the freedom and flexibility that it offers and I relish being the creator of my own destiny.”

Both Cox’s instincts as an entrepreneur and his yen for work/life balance come from his parents.

“As a child I grew up in a pub run by my mum and dad,” Cox remembers. “Quality family time was very scarce and I know my mum now has regrets about the things she missed out on when I was growing up.”

When Cox began his own family, he knew the time he was putting in on his current business would be incompatible with his evolving home life.

“So it was goodbye to the stupid hours I’d previously clocked up in my business, and hello to a model based around residual income,” he said.

The business he created, SpinLessPlates, provides a more flexible business opportunity for him and does the same for his clients.

“SpinLessPlates is a complete small business management software solution for multi-tasking business owners,” he says. “It’s flexible, affordable and very easy to use. Spin users finish boring admin tasks more efficiently, increase productivity by accurately tracking and billing their time and know their numbers by generating and analyzing reports.”

Cox says the software gives small businesses the facts they need make the right decisions about their businesses.

“Spin’s philosophy hinges on my drive to work less and earn more (which incidentally is the theme of my blog),” he adds. “And the feedback I’ve received from my growing network of users is proof that the principles work.”

An important goal was to make the tools simple and intuitive for his customers, including stay-at-home moms balancing childcare with a business and other work-at-home entrepreneurs.

But Cox also focused on making his business easy for him to operate…from just about anywhere.

“Since becoming a parent my ambition was to be able to put my business in a bag and have the capability to work from anywhere with an internet connection,” he says.

A resident of Buxton, Derbyshire in the U.K., Cox says he’ll be able to run his business just fine with only his iPad, the Spin App, a Moleskine notebook and his favorite pen while on a family vacation in Florida later this month.

So, how and why does Cox use BizSugar?

“For me self-education is the key to success,” he explains. “The freedom to learn from the masters, study proven success blueprints and design my own curriculum beats any college course! I’m an avid blog reader and I love dipping into BizSugar articles because there’s always a new bite sized nugget to discover. I’m always on the lookout for an idea for my next productivity blog post or that snippet of information that’s going to benefit my business and BizSugar frequently delivers that little gem. It’s a must-visit on my reading list and I highly recommend getting involved in its active, supportive community.”

Would you like the opportunity to be recognized as a BizSugar Contributor of the Week, just like Paul Cox, and have your business featured right here on the BizSugar blog? Just join the BizSugar community (it’s free) and “like” our BizSugar Facebook page, then start contributing regularly with news and tips, comments and votes. We can’t wait to hear from you!

The post Paul Cox @SpinLessPlates Offers Business in a Bag appeared first on BizSugar blog.

Herman works for a San Diego Aerospace maintenance company.

“So, I do social media as much as possible at work all day and then I come home and blog and network on multiple social media sites after work,” she explains.

She started her own blog, Jenn’s Trends, just five months ago in January, and spends her weekends writing blog posts for the following week.

On her blog, Herman writes simple to understand posts about trends in social media management for small businesses or businesses new to social media.

“I have made amazing connections with other bloggers and through social media sites that have been invaluable to my growth in this venture,” she ads.

Herman gives several reasons for starting up a blog in her spare time.

First, she says she likes helping others learn.

“It’s kind of a passion for me to see other people learn something that they maybe thought was complicated and realize that they can understand it in simpler terms,” she adds.

This is why Herman works to write blog posts using easy to understand examples rather than complicated technical jargon.

Her posts have included titles like “Grow Your Social Media Strategy Like a Garden” and “If Every Social Media Site Was a Martini…”

Second, Herman says working to gain buy-in from upper management in her day job for use of social media has inspired her to help other business owners understand the benefits too.

“Beyond just my blog, I’m a creative problem solver by nature and I love the challenge of helping others find new ways to improve their social media strategies,” she says. “Whether it’s finding new ways to use Pinterest or finding new types of posts to add to Facebook, I always enjoy working with businesses to find these new tactics.”

Herman says she found the BizSugar community through her online connections too.

“I started using BizSugar because all of the bloggers I followed were there. I figured if they were there, I needed to be there too!” she said.

Like other social sites, Herman uses BizSugar in a variety of ways.

“I use BizSugar to share my blog postings and direct traffic back to my blog. It’s a great platform and easy to use,” she says. “I also use it to find other great articles that both teach me new things and that I can share with my audience. I have regularly shared an article I found on BizSugar on my Top 5 Must Read Posts of the Week on my Facebook page. The content is just that good!”

If you would like to be member of the BizSugar community and perhaps even someday be featured here on the BizSugar blog as Contributor of the Week, getting involved is simple.

Just sign up for a free BizSugar account, “like” our BizSugar Facebook account and start contributing small business news and tips and voting and commenting on the contributions of others. We look forward to meeting you!

The post Jenn Herman @jennherman31 is All About Social Media appeared first on BizSugar blog.

Striking out on his own, he founded Straight River Media with just a computer, a laser printer and a book on Quark Express.

“The term content marketing didn’t exist in 1993, but it was the company’s foundation — in the form of print newsletters that I created for clients,” Keltto recalls.

Later, in the 2000′s while doing contract work for publishers, Keltto witnessed the slow disintegration of the traditional publishing industry.

With so many writers, editors, designers and sales people from the traditional media seeking to reinvent themselves as small business people, Keltto realized he had the experience to serve this niche. As a result, in 2010, Solopreneur was born.

The site shares resources, Keltto’s “coachsulting” and content marketing services, a blog with tips and news important to the solopreneur community, and copies of two books Keltto had a hand in producing.

He says the site’s philosophy exemplifies what friend Bob Andelman (aka Mr. Media) describes as Keltto’s mindset:

“If the world’s self-employed entrepreneurs came together to share their victories and woes, their challenges and innovations, the result would eventually uplift them all.”

The site also serves another purpose.

“The Solopreneur Life also has been a laboratory, a place to test what works and what doesn’t; I take what I learn and put it to use for my Straight River Media clients,” he explains.

Many other things have changed since Keltto launched his business back in the early 90′s; the explosion of social media, for one thing.

He says he’s used many of the most popular social media: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest and Instagram.

He claims to have gotten the best return on investment from Twitter and his show on Blog Talk Radio, now in its second season of weekly programs.

Keltto is also an enthusiastic member of the BizSugar community, of course.

“I enjoy using BizSugar as a listening post. It’s an efficient tool for understanding the challenges that solopreneurs and small business owners are facing,” he says.

If you’d like to be a featured Contributor of the Week on BizSugar, simply sign up for a free account, “like” our Facebook page, and start contributing news and information on a regular basis, while voting and commenting on the content shared by others. We can’t wait to see you here at the BizSugar community!

The post Larry Keltto @Larry_Keltto Flies Solo in Entrepreneur Life appeared first on BizSugar blog.

Byron’s first job out of college was working with small business owners to help them increase sales. Witnessing firsthand the freedom entrepreneurs enjoyed in their businesses and the influence they had in the community made a powerful impression.

Since then, Byron has created her own business helping other entrepreneurs exert that influence and become more sought after for their skills and expertise.

“After learning marketing from soup-to-nuts over the course of three marketing director positions in three different industries, I found that what I loved best was making someone a business superstar,” says Byron. “Not some crazy, ego-filled CEO you see being indicted on the nightly news – working with small business owners and professionals who have a big vision for the work they’re doing and gifts to share with the world.”

Byron’s company, Famous in Your Field, helps clients develop a strong personal brand combining ideas from corporate marketing, PR, consulting, internet marketing, psychology and the entertainment industry.

She also writes regularly for ASPIRE Magazine where she interviews and profiles entrepreneurs like Lewis Howes (the magazine’s March cover story), Derek Halpern, and the founders of Food Matters, learning more about how successful entrepreneurs separate themselves from the crowd.

Lori and her team apply these ideas to the help clients build reputation and recognition as authorities in their fields using coaching, workshops, VIP days and done-with-you services.

She says she uses the BizSugar community as a way to both learn and share the best information in small business.

“I found BizSugar through Twitter and once I visited, I was hooked! Each week, there’s loads of fresh content to read and business building ideas to put into action,” Byron says. “I publish my own blog posts there, too – it helps me gauge what topics are popular in my niche. Plus, I get to share the love by posting links to my favorites via Twitter.”

If you would like to be featured as one of our contributors of the week here on BizSugar, simply sign up for a free BizSugar account, “like” our BizSugar Facebook page and begin voting and commenting on your favorite content while submitting news and tips you’ve found helpful as a small business owner. We’d love to hear from you!

The post Lori Byron @LoriByron Turns Clients Into Superstars appeared first on BizSugar blog.

They are all subjects Allton knows well as the owner and operator of a small business that provides Web development, Internet consulting, social media management, blogging and online advertising services for clients.

“I can tell them exactly what they need to do, or just do it for them, depending on how involved they wish to be,” he explains.

In most cases, Allton’s services begin with design of a Website using the Drupal Content Management System (CMS) platform. Each site includes a blog and other content including FAQs and testimonial pages, all allowing the client to log in and make changes at any time.

Along with this, Allton also includes SEO and social media integration, meaning new blog entries are automatically shared with search engines like Google and Bing, and can also be posted easily to sites like Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.

“Once we have a great new website in place, I provide my business clients with ongoing marketing advice and assistance,” Allton says.

Those services can include creating ongoing content for the company’s blog. They can also include creating and updating social media profiles on Facebook, Google+, Twitter or other sites.

“My goal is to ensure that businesses are able to leverage the power and connectivity of the Internet to promote and grow their business,” he says.

For Allton, his full-time, full-service business sprang from years of experience providing part-time Web design services. He made his part-time gig into a full-time profession after moving to St. Louis in 2007.

Allton discovered BizSugar after noticing the community mentioned several times on another service.

“I was really impressed right from the start,” Allton says. “It was easy to get started and I immediately identified some great articles from people I didn’t previously know. I now share my own posts there and use it to curate content for myself.”

If you would like to be featured as a Contributor of the Week in the future here on the BizSugar blog, nothing could be simpler. Just sign up for a free account on BizSugar and “like” our BizSugar Facebook page. You can then begin submitting your own small business news and tips while voting and commenting on the submissions of others. We can’t wait for you to join our community!

The post Mike Allton @mike_allton Wears Many Hats in Business appeared first on BizSugar blog.

And you can also probably understand why Mangen, following the particularly harsh winter of 2007 to 2008, marched into her boss’s office and told him he would need to find someone to replace her by Thanksgiving.

No, Mangen was not just another angry employee who had decided she just couldn’t take it anymore. She was a woman with a plan and an entrepreneur at heart who already had in mind an idea to reinvent herself and her work. It was an idea that would eventually have her touching the lives of others like her too, talented professionals seeking to take greater control of their lives without the need for crazy commutes and insane working conditions, but who perhaps lacked as clear an idea of how to get started.

Fortunately, Mangen was hardly bereft of talents and already possessed the tools needed to build her new business. As early as July, she began laying plans to create a company offering support services to business owners in need of her abilities but without the resources to hire full-time or part-time help.

“In December 2008, I officially opened my doors as a virtual assistant offering bookkeeping and administrative support to small business owners and solopreneurs,” she says.

Her marketing approach for bringing in clients has been fairly simple and straight forward.

“Most of my clients have come as a direct result of relationships I’ve built on Twitter and word of mouth,” she explains.

She says she’s met and worked with many fascinating people and businesses since launching her virtual assistant service and is constantly inspired to help others interested in entering the virtual assistance industry. She believes that industry will continue to grow and diversify, thanks to technologies that allow people with skills to serve and connect with businesses in need of those skills around the globe.

“I’ve experienced somewhat unusual success, earning six figures and was approached in late 2012 by Tess Strand, founder of Virtual Assistant Forums, to be an instructor for her Virtual Assistant Business Jumpstart class,” Mangen says. “Ten wonderful women just finished my first six-week online class in March 2013 and I will be teaching another starting in June 2013.”

Mangen has also been a longtime member and contributor of the BizSugar community, joining way back in March of 2010.

“As an information sponge and someone who loves to learn and help others, I find that BizSugar allows me to accomplish both,” Mangen says. “I primarily use BizSugar to share interesting small business posts from the blogs I regularly read, as well as find new sources of content to add to my RSS subscriptions. The digital world changes so quickly, and I find the BizSugar community is a great place to find current and timely information on changes and trends.”

Would you like to be a BizSugar Contributor of the Week like Mangen and have your business featured here, on the BizSugar blog? Just join our  free community and “like” our BizSugar Facebook page. Then start contributing by sharing small business news and information while voting and commenting on the contributions of others. We can’t wait to meet you!

The post Michelle Mangen @mmangen Beats Commuting Blues appeared first on BizSugar blog.