If there's one industry you'd expect to have been decimated by the current economy, it would be spas. That's why I was surprised to learn that, according to The New York Times , just the opposite is true. Yes, demand for expensive treatments such as $185 skin-scrubs and pricey seaweed masks is down. But demand for treatments that promise to de-stress you is through the roof. Susie Ellis...

Wow, it's been a busy week for both Office Live Small Business and Office Live Workspace, with lots of new enhancements to announce. We've already gotten a lot of feedback; we're reading all of it, so please keep it coming! Multiple posts have gone up about the recent changes, so I thought it would be helpful to summarize everything in one handy post. So here goes: New look, new workspace...

As if small-business owners don't have enough financial worries to deal with right now, we're facing new threats from a tax-rebate scam that's making the rounds. The SBA is warning business owners to watch out for letters that claim to be from the U.S. Small Business Administration and ask companies to provide their bank account information in order to qualify for federal tax rebates. Entrepreneurs...

To the surprise of no one who knows him, Duct Tape Marketing guru John Jantsch has come up with his own plan for stimulating the nation's entrepreneurial economy. It's called Make-a-Referral Week , and it takes place March 9-13. The goal of the event, Jantsch says, is to generate 1,000 referred leads to 1,000 small businesses to showcase both the power of referrals and the power of small business...

If your small business sells to other businesses, should your marketing messages acknowledge or mention the recession? An editor at BtoB MediaBusiness magazine posed this question to his social networks recently and got some thought-provoking responses. The answers ranged all over the board. Some said that failing to acknowledge the economy is the equivalent of burying your head in the sand. Others...

We're glad you stopped by. As we told you yesterday, there's a new look (obviously) and some exciting new features on our Office Live Small Business Community site. And as we said in that post, we want you to feel at home in this new Community site, and to contribute your questions (and answers), your comments, and your expertise about Office Live in the form of articles in our new Wiki. We'd...

Last week, I told you about some changes we're making to Office Live Small Business to make it easier for you to use. Now I want to give you a heads-up on a few high-impact changes that will allow you to do some cool new things with your website. The past few months we've been tweaking our site design tools based on your feedback and requests — and our latest improvements are now live...

I travel a lot for business, and I’m always interested in new ways that small-business owners network. So I was fascinated by this New York Times account of one entrepreneur who flies cross-country for one purpose: to network. David Topus, a marketing and communications consultant in Atlanta, flies both domestically and internationally, selecting the routes that offer both low fares and lots of fellow...