Work.com Small Business Community Blog

How to Be an Expert

According to Kathy Sierra of the Creating Passionate Users blog, the only thing standing between you-as-amateur and you-as-expert is dedication. Think of all the things you can do to push through the amateur threshold into guru territory. Don't be afraid to suck, for awhile. And practice until you get better and better.

You will hear the advice to do what you love over and over. The reason people say that is because if you have the passion that allows you to practice deeply and enough to become really great at something, you are likely to become a master. I know someone who studied Russian for eight years in high school and college. She could read Pushkin short stories, recite children's rhymes, and make small talk about her babushka, but couldn't have a deep conversation. She got decent grades in class but never truly excelled. Then, after she graduated college, she lived in Indonesia and fell in love with a local man. By living in the village where few spoke English, and really focusing on trying to understand the man she loved, she was more fluent in Indonesian in six months than in Russian which she had studied for eight years.

In terms of business, hard work, determination, and perserverance are what separate successful entrepreneurs from unsuccessful ones, and allow dreams to be fully executed.

Nikole Gipps, blogging over at StartupNation, tells experts how to take the next step in her blog post: Don't Tell Us You're an Expert, PROVE IT! Nikole suggests proving your expertise in the following ways:

• Give answers on sites such as LinkedIn and Yahoo Answers (experts such as Scott Allen and Anita Campbell provide answers on those sites)
• Write articles to increase exposure among search engines, bloggers, and journalists
• Become a guru on a site with high traffic such as About.com (btw, here at Work.com, we're looking for community leaders for our Government, Legal, and Operations channels)
• Provide enough information in a tagline or signature for people to find you (if they want, don't spam)
• Comment on relevant blog posts (you can start by adding a comment down below, thank you very much!)

Tags: work.com, article marketing, creating passionate users, kathy sierra, startup nation, scott allen, anita campbell, yahoo answers, nikole gipps, linked in

Featured Experts on Work.com

In our ongoing quest to highlight the good people sharing their business advice, we just updated the Featured Expert section on the Work.com homepage.  Our current crop of featured experts includes:

• Khalid Aziz (Advanced Communication Skills)
• Denise Clancey (Establishing an Effective Telesales Training Program)
• Linda McHugh (Conversion Tracking Simplified)
• Jenni Simcoe (Creating a Customer Database)
• Dawn Martin (Professional Organizing for Productivity and Profitability
• Michael Wissot (Free Business Cards)

If you are a guide author with a guide rated at least 5 and would like to be featured on the Work.com homepage please contact me. Remember, you can always see all the top experts on Work.com on the full top expert list.

You can climb up the top expert ranking depending on how many guides you've written, how many visitors you have to those guides, and your guide ratings. The best way to increase your expert score is to write highly useful guides that people visit often, tell other people about, and link to! 

Tags: work.com

Organizing for Productivity and Profitability

Dawn Martin, principal of Simply in Place, just published a guide on professional organizing for productivity and profitability. I was amazed to read her statistic that an average person spends roughly 150 hours per year searching for documents - which is equivalent to almost a month of work! Dawn lists tools and processes that help us reclaim the time we would otherwise have lost to disorganization:

• Do a self-assessment before you begin your organizing effort - figure out what your goals are, what you need to change, what has kept you from achieving your goals, what you can do to overcome obstacles
• Choose tools that are suitable for you such as organizing software at Paper Tiger or Neat Receipts scanning software
• Take charge of your space and schedule the time you need for organizing - disorganization takes far more time
• Begin each day by completing the three most important tasks on your to-do list
• Find an organizer in your local area at NAPO

Good luck with your organizing efforts, and we'd love to hear about what works for you to organize your business. Now I'm going to start on these 48 sticky notes by my laptop...

What Entrepreneurs Most Want to Know: June 2007's Most Popular Work.com How-to Guides

Do you know what entrepreneurs and business owners most wanted to know about in June 2007? I just checked the Work.com stats, and last month, entrepreneurs and business owners most wanted to know about Yahoo Small Business Services, writing winning proposals, and writing good job descriptions. Lots of new guides on the list this month!

Here are the top 20 most visited Work.com business how-to guides in June 2007:

1. Yahoo Small Business Services *
2. Writing Winning Proposals *
3. Writing Good Job Descriptions *
4. Writing Effective About Us Web Pages *
5. Writing and Using Customer Thank You Cards *
   
6. Writing a Marketing Plan *
7. Writing a Business Mission Statement *
8. Writing a Business Growth Plan *
9. Work Hours and On Call Regulations *
10. Word of Mouth Marketing *
11. Wireless LANs *
12. Wireless Internet Service Providers *
13. Warehousing for Small Business *
14. Warehouse Storage Rack Identification Guide *
15. VOIP for Small Business *
16. Voicemail Solutions *
17. Valuing a Business *
18. Using Zillow.com in Your Real Estate Marketing Plan *
19. Using Yahoo Answers to Market Your Business *
20. Using Classified Advertising Online *

* means new on the most visited list. # in parentheses is ranking compared with last month's.

Also see May 2007's most visited guides to see what was hot last month, or you can always check the Most Popular Guides page on Work.com to see which business how-to guides have been most popular over time. Is your guide in the top 20? Hints on how to get it there: link to your guide from a variety of sites, put it in your online profiles, put your URL in your signature, email it, blog about it -- there are many ways to spread the Work. More hints in the guide to increasing your online visibility using Work.com.

Tags: work.com, entrepreneurs

Creating Win-Win at Tradeshows

Helen Hoefele, a freelance blogger and graphic designer, just published her new Guide to the Win-Win of Tradeshow Giveaways and Promotions. Helen talks about how important it is at trade shows to create trust for potential clients by offering them something for free, and allowing them to choose whether to do business with you if your company provides the services they are looking for. Focus on creating relationships, while also making sure your tradeshow experience is also a worthwhile investment for your business. Create a win-win by showing them what you have to offer and answering their questions, and by giving them a way to contact you such as providing them with a promotional item imprinted with your URL and phone number. Get step-by-step advice from Helen on how to prepare for tradeshows.