GRD Google Fans

Creating a blog and then recruiting a group of authors who have strong strategic referral partner potential is a killer local marketing idea. Every time I mention this tip in small business workshops the light bulb goes on for one or two marketing thinking owners. Just going out and recruiting potential strategic referral partners with this approach will get you much farther than the typical “hey, send me some business pitch.”

Blog networks are all over, but few local businesses are taking advantage of this play. If the right referral partners…

Too often business owners get stuck in a rut when it comes to generating referrals. The common ploy of paying for referrals just doesn’t do much to motivate, and in fact, may feel a bit distasteful in many settings.

I’ve found that some of the best ways to stimulate referrals is to do something creative enough that it stimulates buzz and word of mouth. The idea is to get people talking so that they refer without really overtly selling anything.

Here are two pretty creative examples, one for customer referrals and one…

The web app builder Zoho is doing something pretty amazing. It’s building out the complete suite of small business tools online and doing it in the face of proclamations and claims of this vision from Google and Microsoft.

They have successful built tools for online spreadsheets, documents, presentations, databases, web meetings, mail, chat and CRM. This week they announced a nifty little tool called Zoho People. The aim of this tool is to allow businesses (big and small) to move their HR and recruiting online. The basic features include an employee database…