5 Tips For Entrepreneurs

by Sharon Michaels (Read about her here.)

(Listen to it here.)

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From experience I know that growing a business takes time, energy and money. It is extremely exciting to find credible resources that provides a valuable business service and is free to use. In fact, the site you’re on right now, WomensMedia.com is one such resource.

Personally, I’m a big believer that if I can learn a new how-to or gather a time saving success tip, it is worth my time to use the resources available to me. And if they are free, so much the better!

Here are a few of the free Internet sites I’ve found, use myself and want to share with you.

1. Small Business Administration - http://www.sba.gov/index.html

This is truly a valuable resource for the woman business owner.

The site is divided into four sections:

• Small Business Planner – Help manage your business from start to finish.
• Services – Expand your business with programs and services
• Tools – Increase your business with products and tools
• Local Resources – Support your business with a team of experts

This site is filled with self-help business building tools. It’s worth your time to browse through this site to pick and choose the right information to support your business growth.

2. SBTV.com – http://www.SBTV.com

SmallBusinessTV.com is a content-rich Web resource filled with up-to-date information dedicated to small business owners. SBTV.com is an Internet TV station. It has TV programs covering all areas of interest to business owners – marketing, money, green business, success stories and even a daily newscast of breaking business news. Many of the programs are aimed specifically at women in business.

3. Twitter and Facebook – http://twitter.com and http://facebook.com

Social Networking is a powerful free marketing tool that is here to stay. If you want to be competitive within your target market, then learning to wisely use Twitter and Facebook is an inexpensive marketing must. These two social networking tools can take your product or service directly to your target market. Many business connections have been formed on Twitter and Facebook.

4. Social Oomph – http://www.socialoomph.com/

This free tool works alongside Twitter. I use Social Oomph to program my “tweets” days in advance. You can even use a keyword service to have a daily report sent directly to show you each time the keywords programmed the report were used in tweets and by whom. Since I’ve started using this service, my followers have more than doubled and the subscribers to weekly Ezine has increased considerably – all from having 24 hour exposure. It’s exciting to know that even as I’m sleeping my new tweets are being read by people all over the world in all the time zones.

5. Project Gutenberg – http://www.gutenberg.org

Project Gutenberg is one of my favorite resources for interesting free content. Project Gutenberg  is known for electronic books that free to reprint in your own articles, newsletters and books. Basically this site has hundreds of books, magazine articles and essays that are now in the public domain – that means in the United States the copyright has expired. You can find books by Mark Twain, Louisa May Allcott and more. These are electronic books (ebooks) that can be downloaded onto your computer.  You’ll want to go to the site and read the details to make sure you’re using the materials properly. I’ve used excerpts from books and magazines on my blog.

To sum it up, being a wise entrepreneur means knowing how to find and use inexpensive business building resources. Pick and choose the resources that are right for growing your business. Please remember, I am only making a recommendation and not endorsing any of the sites mentioned.

Listen to today’s podcast here.

Be sure to visit our site, WomensMedia to get Expert Advice for Business Women.

Or on our website, WomensMedia you should read:

Women in Business – Do You Have a Fear of Selling? or

The Right Way to Promote Yourself Using Social Networking

For quick updates for Business Women you should follow NancyFClark on twitter here.

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