Network Solutions – Small business conversations and working together for small business success

Experiencing DEMO Fall 2009 & Living To Tell About It.

Yet another technology conference took place along the West Coast. This time it was DEMO, a long-standing tradition in the industry where companies got the opportunity to compete for a $1 million prize. This year seemed to be a little bit more concerned with celebrating an individual as much as the winners. For the past [...]

Smart Working: Avoid Burnout and Get Your Work-Life Balance Back

I will take a guess that if you are reader of this blog you probably have your own business full time or a side business that is growing to be full time. Taking the leap and being a full time entrepreneur is a bit jarring on the somewhat normal schedule you might have or have [...]

GrowSmartBiz Conference Recap: Integrating Traditional Marketing with Social Media

The last panel of the day at the GrowSmartBiz conference, panelists discussed how they could integrate traditional marketing with social media. Moderated by Jill Foster, the panelists included:
- Terri Holley (Creative Marketing Solutions)
- Brent Leary (CRM Essentials)
- Danilo Bogdanovic (Loudoun Scene)
- Joanna Pineda (Matrix Group International)
This is the first time ever that the amount of [...]

GrowSmartBiz Conference Recap: Raising Capital with Effective Finance Strategies

Panelists:
- Jeremy Brown (RapidAdvance)
- Edward Tuvin (Capital Bank)
- Denise O’Berry (The Small Business Edge Corp)
- Shannon Nash (Nash Management)
Where does small business get financing?
According to Jeremy Brown,  the Wall Street Journal said that in 2004, 46% of small business owners used credit cards to finance their business. He suggests that there isn’t a one best [...]

GrowSmartBiz Conference Recap: Driving Small Business Performance with Marketing & Innovation.

The first panel of the 2009 GrowSmartBiz Conference addressed how small businesses could increase their productivity and performance through sound marketing and innovation. The panelists included folks like:
- John Arnold (Contant Contact)
- Marissa Levin (Information Experts)
- Ramon Ray (SmallBizTechnology)
- Bob London (London, Ink)
What are some important steps needed for a brand? Some small businesses think [...]

#GrowSmartBiz : Watch the LiveStream of the Small Business Summit Sept 29th

The GrowSmartBiz conference is taking place on Tuesday 29th September at the Renaissance Hotel Washington DC and the tickets are selling fast.
The GrowSmartBiz conference s a premier one-day event featuring renowned small business leaders and well-known industry experts, including keynote speaker Chris Anderson and Sen. Mark Warner.

We also have some great news for folks who are [...]

Smart Working: Interview with Anthony Pappas of The Pappas Group

I recently had the opportunity to talk with Anthony Pappas of The Pappas Group. He is a really friendly and knowledgeable guy who is a brand expert in not just the “how” of creating a brand but what he calls “the why” of creating a brand. We sat down and talked about branding and entrepreneurship [...]

New WordPress Blog Hosting Package from Network Solutions

Blogs are now a great tool for establishing connections and I am happy that we have a great easy to use WordPress hosting package.  Along with some great new domain extensions like .ch which our friend Mark Kolich found useful and registered koli.ch we also launched a new Blog hosting package using WordPress this weekend . The [...]

Visit the SmartBiz Answer Booth at the GrowSmartBiz Conference!

Join us at the GrowSmartBiz Conference on Tuesday, Septmber 29th in Washington DC.  This educational and networking conference for small businesses hosted by Network Solutions is featuring the SmartBiz Answer Booth.
We will have the following Answer Booth experts to provide free feedback on general questions related to public relations, social media, legal matters, and technology:

Shonali [...]

Known Unknowns: Location, Location, Location

This past weekend, I was suckered by some friends into joining an impromptu bar crawl (hey, twist my arm, ow, okay) in Ye Olde Reston Towne Centre (it’s an upscale-ish, mixed use “don’t-call-it-a-mall” in the outer DC suburbs of northern Virginia).
Coincidentally, I’ve been getting more active trying out Foursquare, a location-based mobile social network — [...]