I'm freshly back from attending the 2nd Small Business Unleashed conference, this one held in Columbus Ohio where I served as one of four live-bloggers covering the sessions and workshops presented there. Like the first conference, this one proved to be an excellent time for learning, sharing and networking with small business owners from around the globe (one guy came from Australia). Out of all the conferences I attend, I have to say that this one is my favorite not only because of the quality, but the intimacy it provides seeing it is a much smaller conference than some of its larger counterparts.

Click to continue reading »

Posted by David Wallace | Permalink | Comments (5)

I'm currently attending the Small Business Unleashed conference being held in Columbus Ohio where I will be live-blogging a total of 9 sessions. I am joined by Diane Aull, Jackie Baker and Scott Allen who will be live-blogging sessions as well. For the most part, I believe the four of us will be able to cover all sessions on the first day as well as most of the workshops occurring on the second day.

Small Business Marketing Unleashed (SBMU for short) is designed specifically for small to medium sized business, teaching them online marketing skills that will help them to grow their businesses. Topics such as web site architecture, organic and paid search marketing, link building, social media marketing, blogging and so much more are taught by industry leading experts. because it is a smaller and more intimate conference, attendees get very personalized attention that they would not normally get at some of the larger conferences.

Click to continue reading »

Posted by David Wallace | Permalink | Comments (0)

There is absolutely nothing wrong with earning a link from a blog post you decide to comment on. In fact, if you comment often on blogs, it is a good way to increase the amount of inbound links pointing to your site's pages. However, there is a "right" way and a "wrong" way to go about accomplishing this.

Before I provide a list of things you should not do, allow me to point out that gaining links from blog commenting is a fringe benefit. In other words, gaining a link should not be your main objective. You should be commenting in order to join the conversation. That is what blog comments are all about.

Click to continue reading »

Posted by David Wallace | Permalink | Comments (44)

If you are a local business and want to be found on Google Maps, you will want to make sure you are listed first of all. Along with that, you might also want to pay close attention to some new guidelines Google has issued regarding their goal to keep Google Maps a great source of information for users and business owners alike.

The items listed outline practices that could result in your business listings being permanently removed from Google Maps. And while they cover the most common practices to avoid, keep in mind that Google may also respond negatively to other practices not listed here. Basic idea is to not "spam" or try to take some kind of advantage that would be considered unethical.

Click to continue reading »

Posted by David Wallace | Permalink | Comments (4)

I know it has been a little slow posting here lately. The slowdown occurred last week when I decided to move this blog out of Movable Type and into Wordpress. While setting up Wordpress is always a breeze and Movable Type allows you to export all blog content into a flat text file for easy importing into Wordpress, what followed was something I did not expect.

Click to continue reading »

Posted by David Wallace | Permalink | Comments (3)