The state of the economy has entrepreneurs cutting back everywhere they can. But one area where you shouldn't cut back is in giving back. The OC Register recently spotlighted Earth Friendly Products , a Southern California company that makes environmentally friendly cleaning products. Thanks to record-breaking quarterly profits, the company is giving its employees bonuses equal to a week's...

Anyone who knows me knows I like to move fast. I like to talk fast, walk fast, and act fast. No wonder that I've taken so well to Twitter, the social networking tool where the messages you post have to be 140 characters or less. Twitter is the latest illustration of something I'll call "keep it short," a point that is well illustrated in this BusinessWeek article . The author highlights...

Have you ever tried to market your products or services to the federal government? The government is a great client — and the feds are required to award a percentage of their contracts to small businesses. But for a small company, navigating the processes, acronyms, and requirements of dealing with such a big customer can be intimidating and frustrating. Marketing to the government requires a...

You may have read before on this blog about the improvements we've made based on your feedback. Just to reiterate, at Office Live Small Business, we keep a close ear to the ground to listen to what our customers have to say. We like to hear about how you're using the service, what you like about it, and how you think we could make it better. If you've ever responded to one of our surveys...

Do you have a Facebook profile? For your business? For yourself? I've blogged a lot here about social media, but when I added Facebook to my social media toolkit a while back, I was a little confused at first. Did I need a profile page? Lots of my friends have them, but they seemed too "personal" — and I didn't want just anyone to be able to post stuff on my Wall. I finally...

Once you've built and launched a website for your business, you might think that you're done with site design. But you don't want your site to become stale and outdated to potential customers. Do you? Small incremental investments in your site's design can pay big dividends. The best sites are iterative, improving over time and offering dynamic features to keep things fresh. Recently...

This might be the week that people not in the know stopped proclaiming they don't use Twitter because they have no interest in hearing what other people ate for breakfast. As Iranian discontent broke out last weekend, mainstream media coverage was somewhat lacking, and what they're calling the "could-be" revolution was broadcast to the world via Twitter. This point was driven home...

If your company sells Business-to-Business products or services, new research shows that your small business may actually have an edge over large corporate competitors. Surprised? According to research firm Warrillow & Co ., in a recent study, 45 percent of entrepreneurs surveyed said they were interested in buying products or services from local suppliers. Why did these entrepreneurs trust smaller...