Starting a new business? You might want to avoid these like the plague.

You see — I’ve spent the last 10 months working with hundreds of startup entrepreneurs on their businesses.

And yes — a multitude of problems and roadblocks explode to life in a new startup. But here are the top 7 that can stop an entrepreneur dead in his (or her) tracks:

1.) Zero Startup Capital

Numero uno on the list. Go figure. Heard so many variations of this it’s hard to count.

You want the secret to overcoming this one? Simple. Bootstrap until you have real customer validation and real traction. Then; and only then; should you reach out your hand looking for investors and startup capital.

Now I know this might cause your heart to sink — but it shouldn’t. Bootstrapping to validation does two things: First, it forces you to run really lean, think through strategies very carefully and overall be very careful with any money you do have. It’s called being resourceful.

And second? Getting traction and validation before seeking funds shows investors you are serious; and actually gives you greater leverage when it does come time to raise the dough. Quite simply — you’ll have more opportunities and be able to name better terms.

So don’t fret if you haven’t a nickel to your name. I didn’t either.

2.) Not Knowing Where to Start

I think this comes from information overload. So much wisdom out there — so many ways to start a business. The secret here? Just start somewhere. Listen — there is no “one” right way to do it. Yes, there are some core principles every entrepreneur needs to address; but the reality is there are many ways to skin a cat. Same with starting a company. Just start already. You’ll figure it out as you go — trust me.

3.) Fear of Failure

Let’s just get this out of the way right now: You will fail at some point.But so what? Everybody does.

Okay, feel better now? Good, because now you can go ahead and start your company. Please do yourself a huge favor — don’t allow the fear of failure keep you from even trying. A friend told me once that fear is just “False Emotions Appearing Real”.

You’re going to die someday anyway — so don’t be on your deathbed looking back in regret on how you didn’t even try. That would be a sad day my friend.

4.) Idea Chaos

First, what exactly is idea chaos? See if you find yourself muttering any of these words:

• “I don’t know if my idea is a good one or not.”
• “I don’t have a clear idea of what I want to do.”
• “I have too many ideas and don’t know which one to go after.”

Cure for this pain? Idea Dump + Judge + Test = Your Perfect Business Idea

You’ll find it — I promise. Again though, just like #2 above, the key is to just start somewhere. Listen, my writing peer and friend Cheryl Conner on Forbes told a great story about this guy named Josh and how he built an entire company from stumbling onto a simple idea of cutting down trees. Believe me, if he can do it — so can you.

5) Relationship Dysfunction

An island. Yes, you can own one, but you shouldn’t be one as an entrepreneur. You need help. You need a team of other human beings. You know — just like you with warts and all.

Maybe you suffer from not having the right coach, mentor, employees, advisers, investors, co-founders, contractors, programmers and so on. Call it “relationship dysfunction” and watch out for it. Why? Because it can literally kill your business dreams.

The secret to overcoming this cursed roadblock? Focus on finding, building and nurturing relationships every single day of your existence as an entrepreneur. Listen — it’s no coincidence the most successful entrepreneurs are the most connected entrepreneurs.

So wake up tomorrow. Eat breakfast. Connect.

6.) Customer Shortage

Lord knows, customers can be like slippery little fish you can’t hold onto. I mean, do we entrepreneurs ever really have enough of them? Never have I heard the words “we need to get rid of customers because we have too many” uttered from the mouth of a business owner.

Yes — the cry usually heard is: “I don’t have enough customers and it’s killing us.”

Although there are a thousand reasons for this roadblock, one of the biggest I see is this:

You have no “hook”.

Entrepreneur Jon Goldman calls it the “Big Zig” (vs. a “zag” which everyone else is doing). Seth Godin calls it a “Purple Cow”. Call it your UVP (unique value proposition) or USP (unique selling proposition) or whatever you want — but the point is you need to stop being like every other Tom, Dick and Harry (sorry guys) out there. You need to be unique.

Nail this — and you’ll find yourself blasting through the “lack of customers” roadblock with a fury.

7.) Cash Flow Crunch

I know what you’re thinking. “Hey, he already mentioned this as the first roadblock.” And you’d be somewhat right — but not exactly.

You want to know the number one killer of all small to medium size businesses?

Running out of cash. That’s it. No mystery. No sleight of hand. Just plain old no money and can’t pay the bills anymore. Call it “cash flow crunch”.

So how can you overcome this nasty little devil of a roadblock and avoid becoming one of those depressing statistics on failure rates of startup businesses?

Easy. Learn the numbers. Yes — those dreaded balance sheets; income statements; and cash flow projections.

Most entrepreneurs I run into hate that stuff. We want to work on fun things like innovation; marketing and strategy. But the truth is — you simply have to know the numbers of your business. Without it — I dare say you’re going down hard one day. Smashed right into the brick wall of cash flow crunch.

So treat your cash like gold. Better yet — treat it like a precious gift from a loved one. Understand it; cherish it and be very stubborn about parting with it.

There you have it. 7 Deadly Roadblocks for Startup Entrepreneurs. Which one is your nemesis?

NOTE: If you don’t know me, I’m Eric. Husband, father & life-long entrepreneur…

If you’re an entrepreneur, let’s hook up. Seriously. Here’s a killer formula:

Your Wisdom + My Wisdom = More Success

Tags: Entrepreneur, Business, Idea, startup, Small Business, Startup company, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Consulting

Among the social networks, LinkedIn can be one of the most useful when it comes to cultivating critical, lucrative business opportunities, since it has a high concentration of business decision makers. The trick is going beyond connecting with cousins and college buddies to strategically building a "power network" of individuals who should be potential clients.

But building a power network on LinkedIn doesn't happen overnight. Here are seven tips for making the kinds of connections that can benefit your business the most:

1. Optimize your profile: One of the easiest ways is to update your profile picture. LinkedIn views this kind of update as "freshness" and it can help your ranking when others are searching for someone like you.

2. Tell people who you are, who you help and how you help them in your headline: A headline that communicates these points is often what grabs a person's attention when searching the site. I should be able to read your headline and know exactly what you offer and why I should get in touch with you. Be clear and compelling.

Related: 5 Underutilized LinkedIn Marketing Tools

3. Fill out all current and past work experiences: You never know who's looking for you, possibly a co-worker from an old job, or maybe a classmate that's suddenly feeling nostalgic and wants to see who they can find online. By listing all of your places of employment -- including your educational institutions -- you can create a larger net for capturing searches. Plus, these connections could be second- or third-tier connections to people you've been trying to meet.

4. Join targeted groups: This can be one of the most effective ways to connect with like-minded professionals who are serious about using LinkedIn to form deeper business connections. Participating in these groups also enables you to share your knowledge and to learn from other members.

5. Create a targeted group: Not only can leading a group give you a certain level of credibility, it allows you to connect with people who are influential within your specific industry.

6. Send personal invites: These, in my opinion, always trump generic requests to connect. The invite is your first communication on LinkedIn, so make a good first impression by writing a personal request and asking how you can help the person, or whom you can introduce them to.

Related: 3 Tips for Using LinkedIn's New 'Endorsements'

7. Get endorsements and recommendations: This can help enhance your profile, but there's a right way and a wrong way to do this. Don't send a mass or generic e-mail to clients or colleagues asking if they can endorse your skills or write a recommendation. First, identify people who have a great story to share about you and your skills. Contact those people directly, via phone or e-mail, and let them know you're personally reaching out to them because of (insert how you've helped them here) and would appreciate it if they'd be willing to write a quick recommendation for you, based on that story.

The same goes for endorsements, which are much easier to give since it's just a click of a button. It also helps if you mention you'll be endorsing their strongest skills as well.

In what ways do you grow your network on LinkedIn? Let us know in the comments below.

Tags: LinkedIn, Social network, Business opportunity, Connections, Headline, Endorsements, Using LinkedIn, Skill

Yep you’re busy. You have a business to run. You have customers to serve. You have a new product launching and you need to get the world out. Service revenues are down this month and you need to drum up some new business…

Are these excuses why you don’t have time for Twitter?

Nope.

They are all perfect reasons why you NEED to make time for Twitter.

Twitter is a quick and easy way to connect with, inform and talk to customers in real time. It’s also a great way to scale your business fast.

You: But where and how do I get started?

Me: With this 7 step plan of course.

Step #1 – Get out of your comfort zone

Embrace the unknown. You have no idea what you’re doing. That’s ok. Get over it. I’ll let you in on a little secret…. Neither do I. Social media is all-new for everyone and there are no “experts”. Just be yourself, learn as you go, talk to people and you’ll figure out what works best for you and your business.

Step #2 – Introduce yourself with a great profile

Complete your entire profile. All of it. It’s extremely valuable real-estate. This sounds super obvious, but it’s amazing how many people don’t actually do it. Who are you? What do you do? And most importantly, what can you do for me? While your profile is technically about you, the smart folks in business know that answering “so what” and “who cares” is the key to keeping a customer’s attention. So… who are you and what can you do for me in 3 short quick sentences. Go!

Step #3 – A picture says a thousand words

Twitter only gives you 160 characters to describe yourself, but a picture says a thousand words! The very first thing you should do once you create your Twitter account is upload a picture of yourself. Nothing says either “I’m a newbie” or “I’m a spam bot” more than using the default Twitter egg. Nine out of ten people I know on Twitter would probably agree with this if I bothered to ask them. The 10^thwould be a newbie or spam bot of course. Use a clear, professional looking picture of yourself. No wedding photos, no candid or group shots, no fuzzy out of focus ones from the last year’s Christmas party. If you don’t have a good headshot, pay the $50 to get one. It’s your first impression on Twitter. Make it count!

Step #4 – Tweet with purpose

Random thoughts, musings, lunch updates, inspirational quotes and jokes are not going to grow your business. Don’t just tweet whatever comes to your mind but on the other hand, don’t spend hours thinking about it either. Here’s the secret… if something pops into your head and you immediately think “I’d like my customers to know that” tweet it. More importantly, if something pops into your head and you immediately think, “My customers need to know this”, tweet it! Remember social media is just talking to people. Don’t over think it, use your own voice, use your own words and tweet with purpose.

Step #5 – Hash it out!

Find the people and conversations that matter to you. The best way to do that is to find your hashtags. So what’s a hashtag? It’s just a topic of discussion with a # in front of it. Say you’re a real-estate agent and you sell condos in Toronto. You can follow the #condo hashtag you’ll see all the discussions about condos currently happening on Twitter. Add the #toronto hashtag and now you’ll see tweets about condos and Toronto. Hastags are filters, rally points, conversation descriptions, search tags and lots more. Most importantly they are used to organize Twitter conversations. . Hundreds maybe even thousands of real time conversations about the business you are in are taking place right now. Find the ones that matter most to you and you’ll begin to tap into the right conversations and more importantly the right people.

Step #6 – Talk to people

Duh. I know. But you’d be surprised at how many small business twitter accounts are simply used to broadcast. Spray and pray marketing will get you absolutely nowhere. Twitter is the ultimate communications tool. It scales like nothing you’ve ever seen before. If you want to get introduced and to know people, start and join conversations.

Step #7 – Don’t give up

It takes hustle, chutzpah and time to build a business. It’s the same with Twitter. Don’t worry if you only have 100 followers after a month. 100 raving fans following your every word on Twitter, engaging you in conversation and doing business with you is much better than 10,000 followers that do nothing. It took time to grow your business. It will take time to grow your business with Twitter. Stick it out. It’s worth it and when the magic begins to happen, you’ll wonder why you didn’t get started much earlier!

Bangalore: Money matters. Everybody wants it. Everybody is searching for the magic Mantra to make it."You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong”, says Warren Buffet, the third richest man in the world. So what does it take to mould your own destiny? Here are some of the attributes of the self made rich:

Goal Oriented Passion

Be a dreamer with a mission and always on the lookout to bring ideas to fruition. Achieve the perfect marriage of dreams with reality. Bill Gates, an avid reader, developed an interest in  programming at a very early age and at the tender age of 15, he, and pal, Paul Allen went into business with  "Traf-o-Data," a computer program that monitored traffic patterns in Seattle, and netted a cool $20,000.Its about knowing what you want to do and also loving it. Flights of fantasy with feet firmly grounded.

Dedicated Initiative and Proactivity

Success comes to those who go looking for it. To quote Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook and one of the youngest everbillionaires,” I just think people have a lot of fiction. But, you know, I mean, the real story of Facebook is just that we've worked so hard for all this time. I mean, the real story is actually probably pretty boring, right? I mean, we just sat at our computers for six years and coded. “It’s never a giant leap but a lot of small, carefully measured steps to the top involving a lot of burning the midnight oil and rising with the sun.

 

Economical Spending

Every penny that goes into building a fortune counts. And pinching pennies is the way to maintaining that fortune. Ask Warren Buffet. Despite raking in the moolah to splurge at will, he remains to this day, a man of simple tastes, reportedly living modestly in same house in Omaha, Nebraska, that he bought in 1958 for $31,500.

Calculated Risk Taking

 

Treading the beaten path can lead to stagnation while jumping into situations can prove disastrous. Capital can be easily frittered away. It takes a lot of guts to take the road less travelled. But it is a journey both adventurous and rewarding. What is needed is a balanced approach whether investing in stocks or diversifying into a new line of business. Carefully considered and researched risks ensure that money is used to grow more money.

 

Discipline

The greatest asset is one’s own self. Healthy eating, exercising, and resting keep the body in prime condition. The mind is a muscle which needs to be exercised as well. Regular reading and writing are ways to keep the mind sharp. Making social and meaningful connections with others gives one a sense of support and well being .Also, exploring the spiritual aspect of life leads to new awakenings of self discovery and renewed vigor for greater accomplishments.

Synergized Networking

Winners don’t work in vacuums. A simple handshake goes a long way in building a strong, resourceful network around one.Success is a collaborated effort among individuals who come together as a team bringing with them a potpourri of different ideas. It is an endeavor of creative cooperation between open- minded people working towards common goals, while respecting each other’s differences and exerting positive influences on each other.

Learning

 While Pink Floyd sang ‘We don’t need any Education’, there were future billionaires dropping out of the education system: Bill Gates, Richard Branson, and Micheal Dell, to name a few.But the learning never stopped. Keeping pace with changing times is one way of growth, but accelerated growth needs path breaking innovations that lead the change. And innovations start with knowledge. An unquenchable thirst for knowledge slaked upon learnings from books, people, and experiences is imperative to maintain lifelong success.

The advice on how to be “the effective guy” is just so common online that it starts to get boring … You know, reading yet another article on how to be a great blogger and all…

So why not take a different approach and consider the seven habits of highly ineffective bloggers instead?

If you think that it’s a joke, it isn’t. If you look around in the blogosphere I’m sure you’ll find tons of bloggers who fit this description perfectly. In fact, I bet that you’re guilty of one or two of these habits as well (I know I am).

Habit 1. Not proofreading

This is the first sin bloggers make. I know that crafting a nice blog post takes time. You need to do your research, prepare the resources, and finally write the thing using a number of relevant links and keep all the SEO optimizations in mind … there’s really a lot to do.

In all this commotion, it’s easy to overlook one simple thing: proofreading. The fact is that proofreading is one of the most important phases of crafting a blog post. Without it, you’re not using the potential of your post effectively—some readers will simply be discouraged with all the grammatical errors you’ve made.

My advice is this: proofread your posts at least once. In addition, use a plugin like After the Deadlinefor some extra help (it provides automatic proofreading).

Bonus tip: There’s one more trick I want to share with you. I’ve found that I get much better results when it comes to the quality of my writing if I write a post one day, and then edit and proofread it the next day.

Habit 2. Not networking

Did you know that 80% of your blog’s success depends on the people you know, not on the content you write? You didn’t? That’s because I made that statistic up!

Whatever the stats, I’m sure the benefits of reaching out to your fellow bloggers are pretty clear to you. Building a successful site is always easier if you have someone you can contact for help, or for a joint venture proposition.

Treat your blog like business. The more quality business partners you have the better. Networking in the blogosphere isn’t even difficult. It all starts with a simple email that says hi.

Habit 3. Not using offline blogging tools

These days, I’m all about offline blogging tools. One particular tool, actually. It’s called Windows Live Writer. What’s great about it is that it allows you to create an optimized blog post offline, and then send it to any WordPress blog you want.

Let’s face it: you won’t have internet access at all times. Maybe you’re staying in a cheap hotel, or visiting your family over the weekend, or some other scenario. If you want to be effective, you have to have a way of creating a post even if you’re offline.

I know that the standard way of doing this is through Microsoft Word or some other text processor, but they are not very good at providing WordPress-ready formatting. Windows Live Writer is great in this regard—give it a go.

Habit 4. Not staying on topic

Going off topic makes you highly ineffective. And the reason is that your readers have come to your site to read a very specific piece of information. They’ve seen a headline, or a search engine listing, and clicked on it. Now, if you decide that you want to change the direction mid-post, they’ll simply leave.

Over time, such practice will make you really ineffective at writing about the things you wanted to write about. You’ll always get distracted at some point and talk about other things. This is something you really need to be wary of.

The simple advice is this: if you fail to stay on topic, your readers will get confused and leave.

Habit 5. Not promoting your stuff

Writing and publishing the post is usually only half the job. If you want to make it really popular, good content won’t be enough, you also need to spend a fair amount of time on promotion.

And by promotion I don’t necessarily mean spending money on ads and reaching out to investors. Just a couple of clicks on some social media share buttons might be enough, or sending an email update to your subscribers, or notifying your StumbleUpon friends and contacts, and so on.

Also, this is where your network of contacts comes into play again (mentioned earlier). If you have some friends in the blogosphere, you can let them know whenever you publish something really valuable (your pillar content).

Habit 6. Not writing guest posts

Every website you know of—every single one of them—became popular because of some other website. There’s not one website online that became popular on its own (no, not even Google or Facebook).

The key to success, then, is to get featured on other websites. There are two possibilities here:

1. The difficult one is to do something remarkable and get mentioned naturally.
2. The easier one is to write a guest post and offer it for free in exchange for a link.

I really can’t emphasize this enough, but guest blogging is the cheapest and the best way of building your brand online. If you think that you don’t need to do any guest blogging, then you are not utilizing your full potential as a blogger.

Habit 7. Not doing SEO

I know some people say that SEO is dying. Mostly, this attitude is the result of the recent updates like Penguin, which killed a number of legitimate websites and online businesses just because they were building quality (yes, you read this right, quality) backlinks.

This whole situation makes the SEO game a lot harder, but it doesn’t mean that you should leave it completely. The fact is that one thing surely won’t change anytime soon: Google will still remain the main provider of traffic online, and if you want to get a piece of this traffic, you’re going to have to learn how to be up-to-date with the best SEO practices and implement them in your blog.

Make sure to pay attention to the popular SEO blogs and also the official Google webmaster central blog.

Are you guilty?

This concludes my list of 7 habits of highly not effective bloggers. Feel free to tell me what you think, and admit how many of these habitds you’re guilty of. Be honest—I know I’m doing at least two myself!

You're probably always hearing about the most popular, mainstream social networks -- Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ -- and how you can use them for business. That's because these networks attract such a wide range of users, that it's easy for the majority of marketers to have success connecting with their audiences there. But you must know that those "top" social networks aren't the only ones out there, right?

Truth be told, there are hundreds of other, niche social networks on the web that, depending on your particular audience or your goals, can also be well worth it for you to participate in.

Why Niche Social Networks Are Valuable

A social network can be considered "niche" if either A) the focus of the social network is much more specific (e.g. a social network just for events), or B) the users it attracts are much more targeted than those of social networks that cater to a wide range of users (e.g. a social network just for animal lovers).

The beauty of niche social networks is that they take the step of targeting and segmentation out of the marketer's job. So for example, if your business sells yarn and you're a marketer participating in a social network for knitters, you already have a much more targeted audience at your disposal than you would on a social network like Facebook. And we all know how much more effective your marketing can be when segmentation is involved, right? So before you devote all your social media marketing time to just the top networks, it behooves you to do some research into whether there are any niche social networks populated by your audience.

Not sure what kinds of niche social networks have popped up on the web? Here are 7 of some of the more targeted social networks to open your eyes to what's out there. Have you heard of or used any of these before? Go ahead -- try 'em out!

1) Quora

Quora is often a forgotten social network, but it's also one of the most valuable. Quora aims to provide answers to almost any question you can think of. From questions about marketing to questions about coding, Quora provides a great resource to both users looking for answers, and marketers seeking to position themselves as thought leaders. Think of it as a much broader version of LinkedIn Answers!

How Marketers Can Use This Network

• Ask questions about your industry to collect direct insights into what your audience is thinking.
• Answer questions about your company, industry, or even competitors. This will help you position yourself and your company as a thought leader. (Note: Disclose what company you're from for the sake of transparency -- and credibility!)
• When possible, provide links to resources such as blog articles that help to answer users' questions.
• When appropriate, sprinkle in links to some of your educational lead-gen content such as ebooks and webinars to capture Quora users as business leads.
• Connect with other marketers on the network to see what is or isn't working for them.

2) Meetup

Attending and planning events is an important part of any marketer's job. Meetup makes this responsibility easier for almost every industry. Whether you're hosting or looking to attend an event that focuses on marketing, health, lifestyle, literature, or even family, pets, sci-fi, or photography, Meetup provides a centralized network with information on the events happening in your area. Marketers who want to reach a particular industry can immediately identify the right events and connect with attendees even before they attend.

How Marketers Can Use This Network

• Identify relevant industry events to attend. Not only will you be able to see all the industry's events in one place, but you'll also be able to find networking opportunities before the event even starts.
• Publicize your own events and attract more attendees by industry or geography.
• Find inspiration! Get cool event ideas from other cities, and bring them to life in your own area.

3) Care2

The trend toward "going green" isn't exactly breaking, but it has caused an uptick in many marketers making sure their marketing campaigns use environmentally friendly processes. The social network, Care2, popped up as people came together to discuss this eco-friendly type of lifestyle and educate others about it. And more and more, marketers need to use these practices in everything they do to cater to this growing audience. By participating in this social network, marketers can educate themselves about the ways they can implement eco-friendly tactics into their marketing strategies.

How Marketers Can Use This Network

• Research, research, research! Implementing green strategies into your marketing isn't easy. Learn what others are doing.
• Talk to people in this community, and see what they really care about. What topics matter most? Is your marketing aligned?
• Does your company sell products/services that cater to eco-friendly users? Then you're golden! Research what eco-friendly issues are prevalent among your audience to inform your content creation, marketing, product decisions.

4) Gentlemint

When the popularity of Pinterest began to rise, we noticed the emergence of another social network catered to men's needs and interests: Gentlemint. Often called the "Pinterest for men," Gentlemint has a similar layout to Pinterest with a layout of images that can be commented on and re-shared. But instead of pictures of fashion, food, and babies, there are pictures of guns, cars, and alcohol -- a community perfect for businesses selling products/services that appeal to the male demographic.

How Marketers Can Use This Network

• If your target audience is comprised mostly of men, use Gentlemint to do some research about what the male demographic is interested in. See what they're sharing, and identify what's popular (and what's not).
• Host Pinterest-like contests to drive traffic from Gentlemint to your website and engage your audience with your brand.
• Apply Pinterest best practices and set up a board (or a few) through which you can connect with Gentlemint. Here are 28 creative pinboard ideas you can adapt to cater to the Gentlemint audience.

5) CafeMom

Mommy bloggers have become a very popular resource for promoting products and services to other mothers looking for parenting advice. CafeMom is a popular network that gathers these mommy bloggers on one platform to share on childcare through blogs, videos, and games. This audience is becoming an increasingly valuable asset to marketers who are trying to get the attention of mothers.

How Marketers Can Use This Network

• Blog about and share information that is useful to mothers, and share it in the network. Give advice about parenting, and recommend products or services that might be useful to them.
• Research the articles and videos this audience is posting to get a sense of the topics that garner the most clicks and views. Figure out how to incorporate these topics into your content creation strategy.
• Make connections with other mothers to learn about the problems, challenges, and interest. Ask questions/survey them to learn how to better market to them.

6) ThirdAge

The fastest growing age group on the internet is senior citizens. More than ever, Baby Boomers and seniors are connecting online with each other and their families. As a result, the internet has become a resource for seniors to get advice from each other on health, aging, and retirement. This is where ThirdAge comes in. ThirdAge boasts newsletters, groups, discussion boards, videos, articles, classes, games, and more designed to help females ages 50+ connect and get advice -- perfect for marketers whose products/services appeal to an older generation.

How Marketers Can Use This Network

• Research to discover better ways to reach this audience. How do they like being marketed to? What do they like or dislike?
• Peruse the forums to learn what issues this demographic struggles with. Can you create and share content that helps address these issues and provides solutions?

7) Athlinks

Athlinks is a social network for athletes to compare statistics and network with each other. With over 266,000 members, it allows athletes to provide information about themselves such as the sports they're interested in and lists local races and events athletes can attend to meet up with other like-minded athletes. It also includes an athlete directory to search by person or location. This network is great for marketers whose products/services cater to the athletically inclined.

How Marketers Can Use This Network

• Using the event feature, find out and attend events that are popular among the types of athletes you cater to. This could be a great opportunity to chat with your buyer personas and even publicize some of your products and services in person.
• If you're a local business, search for and connect with members of the different clubs your audience may be a part of by location. 
• Share a relevant article or participate in the 'Action Spy' section of the website to participate in the conversation.

What other niche social networks have you found handy?

In the blog post, “Chief Revenue Officer: A Failed Experiment or an Evolutionary Step?” I talked about how the transition to a customer-centric organization will transform many Chief Revenue Officers into Chief Customer Officers. As organizations realize that the customer experience and relationship is the asset that leads to revenues, CROs will shift focus from the revenues themselves, to the customers that deliver it.

For CROs making this transition, it may feel like unfamiliar territory. Change is difficult for any organization and for the individuals involved. I wanted to provide seven tips for executives making the transition.

1. Get Inside your Customers’ Skin
In order to align all the company’s functions with developing, maintaining, sharing and performing to detailed customer experience maps, the company needs to have deep personal relationships with its customers to truly understand them.

2. Relationship Determines Revenue 
Customers often value relationship more than the product or service. Find out how to invest in stronger relationships, understand customer budget bibles and match their planning cycles.

3. Break the Technology Addiction
Technology doesn’t have all the answers and it can’t auto-service the customer. Technology is a tool and we must know when and how to use it in communications and analytics to create better decision outcomes. Invest in these tools, but don’t let them replace in-person conversations and relationships with customers.

4. Revenue requires a Village
Customer-centric organizations are not natural homes for lone-wolf, “hail-Mary pass” producing sales folks. Chief Customer Officers need sales, marketing and support departments to understand the holistic experience for the customer and deliver their individual components with the same tone, cadence and channels outlined in a unified experience map.

5. Pay for Relationship Quality
People do what they are financially incentivized for. CCOs that are supporting a customer-centric transformation are replacing NPS and customer sat scores with a measurement of each function’s role in delivering a customer experience that supports revenue. Instead of MBO, churn or close rates, consider performance metrics aligned with the customer experience story board, customer engagement and peer scoring.

6. Collaboration is your Lifeblood
Customer centric organizations are highly collaborative; it’s the secret sauce to delivering consistent, meaningful experiences and relationships. Only through enterprise-wide transparency, information sharing, proactive feedback, ideation and communication patterns that transcend hierarchical organization structures can teams respond to customer expectations and quickly resolve issues.

7. You’ll Never Know It All.
One of the biggest challenges facing CROs transitioning to CCO is that they don’t know or have experience in all the functions – marketing, sales, distribution, and customer service/support. At best someone might have deep experience in two but not all. That also means CCOs need to let go of tendency to ‘command and control’ and lead by example, enforce highest of ethical behavior standards, enable employees to their jobs to the best of their ability, and focus on building healthy teams.

Is Your Blog Helping Your ROI?

Your inbound marketing strategy can’t take off without great marketing content, and your business blog shouldn’t be ignored. HubSpot has found that companies that blog generate 55% more website visitors, 97% more inbound links, and have 434% more indexed pages than companies that don’t. Even if you’re posting once a week, you may not have leveraged the full power of content creation for your small business brand. We’ve compiled a list of 7 of the most common business blogging mistakes we see and some insight on how you can improve:

1. Not Using a Subdomain

Is your company blog housed on your website, or are you using Blogger, WordPress, Typepad or Tumblr? While it’s incredibly easy to get started on these free blogging platforms and it might take a little help from an IT specialist tocreate a subdomain on your website, you can’t afford this blogging mistake. If your blog is hosted elsewhere, your company website won’t receive the SEO boost it deserves with all your hard work on content creation!

2. Not Writing Often

Does your business blog tend to be neglected when things get busy? We recognize that small business owners rarely have much free time, but research has indicated that blogging on a regular basis is necessary in order to see real results. Don’t overload yourself by committing to an aggressive posting strategy. Even if you can only post once or twice weekly, making a commitment and sticking to it is necessary for success.

3. Neglecting to Optimize for Search

Google handles 100 billion search queries each month. That doesn’t even account for searches on Bing or Yahoo! Are you actively working to ensure your content is can be found by people who need your product or service solution? It’s no secret that business blogging is a powerful tool for gaining and maintaining a high search ranking. If you’re not leveraging internal linking, keyword research, tags and other SEO strategies to ensure your content can be found by search users, your inbound marketing strategy could be suffering.

4. Over-Optimizing for Search

Please tell me you’re not still writing for the Google search algorithm of 2010? Keyword stuffing or even just using a high keyword density isn’t an effective business blogging tactic in the world of Panda 3.9, where quality trumps quantity. Google realizes that people want great content, and the main way it determines value is through volume of inbound links. Write information, tutorials and articlesthat people want to link to by including a distinct voice, style, humor and fresh statistics.

5. Not Leveraging Social Media

So you’ve built a blog on a subdomain of your website. You’ve filled out a content calendar and you’re publishing a few times a week. But nobody is reading your writing! If you’re not promoting your content on social media, you could be missing out on quite a few opportunities for visibility. Maybe some of your Twitter followers just don’t know the content exists! Make social media promotion part of your. Better yet, take the advice of Rand Fishkin and other inbound marketing experts and promote your content more than once to give it the best possible chance to really take off.

6. Not Including CTAs

Are you including call-to-action (CTA) buttons at the bottom of your blog content? Are blog readers given a chance to subscribe to your blog in the sidebar? HubSpot recommends that business bloggers include a call-to-action button at the bottom of every piece of blog content. Once you’ve developed some irresistible, free top-of-the-funnel offers like eBooks and white papers and some CTA buttons, continually test out design, colors and placement. Make a point of leveraging your content for profit, and discover how you can best use articles as a lead generation tool.

7. Ignoring Blog Analytics

How are your numbers, anyway? It can seem tempting to push metrics to the back burner, but not analyzing success on a regular basis could seriously hurt your ROI. You should be tracking inbound marketing analytics like traffic, sources of your page views and whether you’re generating inbound links. You shouldn’t try to argue with the data, and your blog metrics are going to give you the best insight into how you can improve your ROI.