113 Posts found for Source: OPEN Forum (American Express)

Your financial statements may not make the bestseller list, but they do tell an intriguing story—at least to a banker. Unfortunately, the tale they tell may be misleading. Since finance is no place for fiction, you need to make sure your statements tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

To do that, the first thing you need to know is that … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Kate Lister | Source: OPEN Forum (American Express) | Subjects: Accounting, Small Business

Greg Jarboe is the president and co-founder of SEO-PR and author of YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour a Day. Guy Kawasaki asked him to help explain how to use it to enchant customers.

Content: Article | Author: Guy Kawasaki | Source: OPEN Forum (American Express) | Subject: Marketing / Sales

Ideacide is a great way to kill creativity. There are many ways to perform it.

Content: Article | Author: Matthew E. May | Source: OPEN Forum (American Express) | Subjects: Innovation, Organizational Behavior

Listening to real time conversations for opportunities, leads, and reputation management is now a standard marketing item on the to-do list.

While there are services that provide this kind of tracking for a fee, there are a number of tools that any do-it-yourselfer can employ to capture much of what’s being said about their brands, people, products, and industries in real time.

Content: Article | Author: John Jantsch | Source: OPEN Forum (American Express) | Subjects: Customer Related, Management

Many site small business owners’ eyes glaze over when people start talking about analytics, click through rates, and abandonment funnels. Really, there’s a lot of jargon that goes with measuring a site with analytics.

Small business owners should be paying attention to their site analytics because the data provides useful insights into their site traffic, which ultimately leads to more sales. If you’re not paying attention … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Glen Stansberry | Source: OPEN Forum (American Express) | Subject: IT / Technology / E-Business

Every small business leader faces the challenge of building and managing a team. Finding the right folks is half the battle. After you find them, it is your responsibility to manage the team. Great management happens on both a “micro” level and a “macro” level.

Content: Article | Author: Scott Belsky | Source: OPEN Forum (American Express) | Subject: Management

If you are like most small businesses, though, video is likely the last type of content that you are actively using online to promote your business. After all, it seems much harder to produce than it really is. In fact, video can be the easiest type of content to create if you follow a few basic rules.

Content: Article | Author: Rohit Bhargava | Source: OPEN Forum (American Express) | Subject: Marketing / Sales

[how can one tell if an idea is any good?] Here’s the simple litmus test: Does your community care? Everyone has a “community” of constituents—customers, users, readers, clients, etc. Share your ideas liberally. If your community engages with them (either for or against them), then you know you’re onto something. If they don’t look twice you know that you either need to reconsider the idea … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Scott Belsky | Source: OPEN Forum (American Express) | Subjects: Creativity, Innovation

As a business owner, you know your product, service, market and customers. But sometimes one of the most challenging aspects of operating a business is employees. Not because the employees themselves are a challenge but because there’s so much legislation and nuances to employee relations.

Wouldn’t it be great to have a go-to list of resources that can provide answers to common HR questions or solve … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Sharlyn Lauby | Source: OPEN Forum (American Express) | Subject: Human Resources

Bill Meade explains how organizations should approach reigniting intellectual property programs. Most organizations have IP programs languishing on their books. Bill specializes in turning these programs into steamroller, competitive advantages.

Content: Article | Author: Bill Meade | Source: OPEN Forum (American Express) | Subject: Legal

In the days of old: circa 2007, social-media marketing meant monitoring the blogosphere and managing forums, but today marketers are jumping in by actively creating and managing brand communities. Dave Balter is the founder and CEO of BzzAgent, a word-of-mouth media network headquartered in Boston. His company recently launched BzzScapes, a network of brand-centric communities, created by advocates and dedicated to the collection and ranking … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Guy Kawasaki | Source: OPEN Forum (American Express) | Subjects: Best Practices, Customer Related, IT / Technology / E-Business

Too much money is worse than too little for most organizations. Until that day comes, the key to success for most organizations is bootstrapping. The term bootstrapping comes from the German legend of Baron von Munchhausen pulling himself out of the sea by pulling on his own bootstraps. That’s essentially what you’ll have to do, too.

Content: Article | Author: Guy Kawasaki | Source: OPEN Forum (American Express) | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Small Business

Guy Kawasaki provides a list of ten things that every small business owner should do in the new year, though you will likely find the list applies to larger businesses as well.

Content: Article | Author: Guy Kawasaki | Source: OPEN Forum (American Express) | Subjects: Management, Small Business