Hope you and your kin had a happy Christmas.
Next holiday? New Year’s Eve. Have a good one, but celebrate responsibly. The last thing anyone wants is for you to become another statistic.
Now that I got the PSA out of the way, let’s get to this week’s small business article roundup.
If you use Skype regularly, chances are you noticed the service was down on Wednesday. Initially, Skype CEO Tony Bates didn’t rule out a malicious attack being the cause of the outage. However, he eventually released the following statement:
We now understand the cause of the problem and we believe it was not caused by a malicious attack. But, we are still doing a full analysis and we will provide an in-depth post-mortem.
Nothing can make up for the missed experiences, but we’re going to be sending our Pay As You Go and Pre-Pay users a Skype Credit voucher via email. The voucher can be used to give you approximately 30 minutes of free calling to landlines anywhere in the world.*
For our active subscribers, we will credit you with a week’s extra subscription service
Jesse Thomas is the CEO and Founder of JESS3, a creative interactive agency specializing in social media data visualization. Jesse has created projects and designed products for Nike, Facebook, Google American Express, Discovery Channel ,IBM, Intel, Salesforce.com, C-SPAN, NASA, The Wall Street Journal, and many other blue chip companies and startups.
In this business article, Jesse makes six predictions for digital advertising in 2011.
1. Local Advertising Becomes Relevant Again With Location
2. Silicon Valley Will Be the Next Madison Avenue
3. Influencer Will Be the Celebrities of the Social Web
4. Small Will Be the New Big for Social Networks
5. Brands Will Become More Like Media Companies
6. Facebook “Likes” Will Be More Important for Your Brand
In this small business article on Small Business Trends, Rieva Lesonsky writes about how her company GrowBiz Media collaborated with Zoomerange, “the world’s first Web-based survey tool,” to survey small business owners about goals and plans for 2011.
The results of the survey of small business owners were positive. When it came to their own companies, 34% expect their sales to rise in 2011.
Read Reiva’s article for the full results of this small business owner survey.
When is it time to give up?
There is a stigma attached to giving up. Probably because often times people give up prematurely or without merit. However, sometimes giving up is the right thing to do.
For example, if you are a fan of mixed martial arts, you know that if someone (of equal or greater strength) locks an armbar on you, you have to give up or your arm will eventually break. Essentially, there are two options: give up or have your arm broken.
Why do I bring this up?
Well, sometimes businesses stick with a single idea for too long. Either they never get the idea going and go out of business or they stick with it for too long and go out of business. If your business isn’t constantly evolving, chances are that it will not be long for this world.
As with most things, there are some exceptions to this rule. However, for the most part, a company needs to grow, know when to give up, and know when to move on.
This small business article in the Wall Street Journal emphasizes the importance of change to a businesses’ survival. It uses several small business owners’ stories to emphasize this point.
Lisa Barone is back at it. In this small business article, Lisa explains the importance of branding and gives helpful tips on what to consider when establishing your brand.
Did you know that going to bed too late doubles your risk of breast cancer or that you are 100% more likely to have a heart attack if you get less than 7 hours of sleep per night?
I am the king of taking sleep for granted, so seeing these stats was a wake up call, or go to sleep call, for me. Check it out.
Be sure to check back every Monday for a new Small Business Article Roundup.
Got your own favorite small business article from the past week? Please share it in the comment section below.
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