8 Top Notch Information Resources for Small Businesses
As a small business owner, business blogger and service provider to other small business, I’m always looking for resources that will help me improve my own business, and provide insight into the latest developments, innovations, tools and guidance on financial and tax matters. Over time, I have bookmarked a list of the resources that I visit frequently:
With an excellent cross section of articles, the Globe and Mail is primarily geared towards Canadian small business owners. Articles range from top ten lists to thoughtful accounts of small businesses success stories and challenges.
An American Express sponsored website, Open Forum has a winning formula for a small business website. Articles, of the How To and List variety, tend to be short and succinct and provide a wealth of insight on how to improve your business and the tools that you need to do it with.
A social networking site focusing on small business, BizSugar allows bloggers to submit articles (subject to approval), relating to small business and blogging which are then voted up. Articles receiving more than 15 votes are “hot topics”. Many of the articles are submitted by smaller bloggers , which provides for a refreshing cross section of perspectives and insight.
With hundreds of websites to choose from, Alltop describes themselves as an “online magazine rack”. Essentially they aggregate small business news from a variety of websites, from which they select the top news . This is updated every hour, and is great to browse through if you only have a few moments. Of course, if you have more time on your hands, there are hundreds of websites to choose from, all of which have gone through a manual review process in order to be included.
Founded in 2003 by Anita Campbell, Small Business Trends is a comprehensive resource for small businesses. Articles keep you updated on the latest news , events and legislation, as well as providing info on useful tools, social media and business blogging. They are also the foundsers of BizSugar , from which they will often aggregate the best articles.
Inc.
A magazine that can be found on most newsstands, Inc also has a great website that provides small and medium sized business owners with the whole gamut – articles, how to guides, news and interviews (I particularly like their slideshows). They also have an “Ask Inc” section where members of the community participate in asking and answering questions. .
As the name suggests, Entrepreneur magazine is geared towards entrepreneurs and SMBs. They have a combination of written and video reports and an extensive archive. They cover news, review current trends and provide some interesting perspectives (“How to Take a Chunk out of the Zombie Economy”).
Free Entrepreneur Startup Guide
Owned by CBS, BNET is a great resource for smbs as well as employees and bosses that are part of larger organizations. With a pleasing interface (love the green) provides similar coverage to Inc. and Entrepreneur, with a little more of an international flavour. Since the focus is broader, BNET also provides insight into management, human resources and leadership.
There are hundreds of websites and blogs that are great resources for small business owners. The problem of course is finding the ones withquality content, that are actually relevant to your business. Regular visits to the resources listed above have resulted in significant improvements in my own business, and knowledge which is invaluable to the businesses that I service.
Ronika Khanna is a Montreal based accountant who helps small businesses achieve their financial goals. To receive regular updates of articles pertaining to small business, accounting, tax and other topics of interest to business owners you can sign up here. You can also follow her on Linkedin.