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FastTrac™ Growth Venture summer program for businesses - Fifty Percent Scholarships Available - Saturday, March 14, 2009

For Immediate Release
Contact: Sue Huff 239-596-7990

E. Sue Huff & Associates, Inc. selected to
Coordinate Nationally Recognized
FastTrac™ Summer Program for Southwest Florida

(March 12, 2009 – Naples, Florida) Sue Huff, owner of E. Sue Huff & Associates, Inc., a marketing and management consulting firm located in Naples, Florida, has been selected as the coordinator for the FastTrac™ Growth Venture summer program.
Huff founded her consulting firm in 1996, after gaining extensive business experience through work in management, offset printing, newspapers, advertising, and the visual arts. E. Sue Huff & Associates assists small to mid-size businesses in developing, administering, and planning their marketing strategies, as well as, providing gap management services for those companies who find themselves with too few senior managers. The firm’s clients vary from computer software developers, aviation repair stations, banks, real estate, transportation, medical and accounting practices to educational, governmental and non-profit organizations.

Huff says, “We are honored to be chosen to help market and coordinate such an important educational opportunity for business owners. This program specifically targets entrepreneurs who have experience running their businesses. In this tough economic atmosphere, it is a privilege to offer them a framework to improve the performance of their business.”

FastTrac Growth Venture® is a ten-week, three hour per week opportunity to focus on improving and growing all aspects of a participant’s business. In today’s economy where many businesses are facing financial difficulties, the program offers guidance on ways to focus, bootstrap, plan and strategize to improve profits and grow sales.

The summer program begins on Monday, June 8th at the Hyatt Place in Bonita Springs. This season is being sponsored by KeyBank and BriersCPA. Two people from the same business may attend for a single tuition of $650. Fifty percent scholarships are available to anyone making the request. FastTrac has graduated 650 businesses in this area and 300,000 nationwide. For additional information, interested parties may contact Sue Huff at 239-596-7990 or master facilitator, Dr. Beth Hagan at 239-947-8085 or online at Visit www.FastTrac.org and www.FastTracOfFlorida.com.
The FastTrac Growth Venture Program® is an initiative of the nationally recognized Kauffman Foundation. Ewing Kauffman, the late entrepreneur and philanthropist, established the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation as the first foundation to focus on entrepreneurship as one of its primary areas of interest. The foundation is devoted to advancing entrepreneurship by focusing on research, education, technical assistance, and policy. It’s goal is to increase the number and success rate of individuals engaged in the process of starting or growing their own business or idea. The Foundation is based in Kansas City, Mo. and has around $2 billion in assets. For more information, visit: www.kauffman.org.
For more information about E. Sue Huff & Associates, Inc., visit online at www.esuehuff.com or call 239-596-7790.
-end-

Labels: Announcements, Mom and Pop

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Five Super Simple Link Baiting Steps for Mom and Pop - Monday, March 9, 2009

I have decided to start writing some super simple and short guides for mom and pop. Mainly since the vast majority of the SEO blogs out there are addressing people in the web development & SEO business.

First, since this article is for mom and pop, let me define Link Bait. Link Bait is any content on your website that is so useful that other websites link to it. As you probably know (or maybe you don’t), links from other websites help with search engine rankings. So how does a local small business develop content that others will want to link to? Here is just one simple strategy.

1. Start a Blog (visit blogger.com for a super simple and FREE place to do this).
The blog audience doesn’t always have to be your potential customers. In addition to customer focused posts, I suggest blogging about topics your colleagues might be interested in too. Maybe you are in the printing business and you write an article aimed at other printing businesses. For example, this could be a top 10 list of favorite tools. Maybe there is a printing business in another town that finds the article useful and they mention your blog post on THEIR blog and they link back to your post. That is a link. Not only is that a link. It is a link from another printing business which is even better, because it is on topic.

2. Identify Your Linkerati (audience from whom you would like a link).
Let me define that term for mom and pop. Linkerati = potential linkers. So in the example mentioned in #1 the linkerati would be other printing businesses. Whoever your linkerati turns out to be, that is who you need to write for at least some of the time. Not every blog post is Link Bait. You will still write for your current customers, potential customers, the community at large and now your linkerati.

3. Join Twitter.com
Start following colleagues in your industry. You can find them by going to Twellow.com which is an organized directory of twitter profiles. Hopefully they will follow you back. Have meaningful conversations with them. This can’t just be about spamming them with blog posts. Setup your blog to post to your twitter automatically using the easy and free tool offered at twitterfeed.com. There are similar tools for other social networks.

4. Join a Few Message Boards and Social Networks
These would be communities where your linkerati hang out. Again the interaction here should be genuine. Some social networks allow you to feed your blog posts to your profile. For message boards you can include your blog link in your signature. Let me caution you that this can be a tremendous time waster if you are not methodical. Join just a handful of communities that you genuinely want to participate in related to your industry. Then once a day or every other day, visit and participate for a set amount of time (or else you will find yourself compulsively being there all day). Again, the goal here is not to spam them with your blog posts, but to network with others in your industry and in the process you can make them aware of your blog and any good posts that you write.

5. DIGG.com, StumbleUpon.com, Del.icio.us and Reddit.com
These are all places to submit to that can potentially get your post in front of the people who might link to it. If your post is really good, it will be voted up and more people will see it. The people who see it who find it useful will talk about it in their own blogs and link back.

That’s it for now. I’m hoping to keep doing these super simple and short guides for mom and pop in the future.

Labels: Link Bait, Link Building, Mom and Pop, SEO

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