Top 10 Posts on the Small Business Bonfire Blog in 2011

Now that 2011 is safely behind us, we decided to pull our stats to see what readers liked best during the year. So if you are looking for a quick and dirty reading list to kick-start 2012, you are in the right place! Here are the ten Small Business Bonfire posts from 2011 that received the highest number of visits, starting with the most popular.

Comment below to let us know which Bonfire post from 2011 was your favorite!

1. Sample Marketing Plan TemplateA one-page sample marketing plan template with targeted questions to help you fill in each section, as well as links to more marketing plan tips and resources.

2. Swipe File: Customer Welcome Letter – Jason demonstrates the power of a welcome letter, and gives you a great one to add to your marketing swipe file.

3. 81 Services for Sending Online Invoices A list of services to help you send online invoices, manage the ongoing billing process and get paid on time.

4. Marketing Plan Basics for Small Business Owners – Emily explains the importance of a marketing plan for small businesses, and provides an overview of some of the data your marketing plan should contain.

5. How to Promote Yourself without Being a Jerk – Self-promotion doesn’t have to be icky. Here are a few ways to toot your own horn, and get others to help you out, without being a complete jerk about it.

6. Three Ways to Get the Word Out about Your New Business – Stacey shares three strategies she used to get the word out about her business in her local community.

7. Five Ways to Find the Right People to Follow on Twitter – Tips and resources that will help you save time as you search for the right people to follow on Twitter.

8. Five Essential Small Business Apps That Use the Cloud – Five small business apps that demonstrate how powerful the cloud can be for busy entrepreneurs who need instant access to data, from anywhere.

9. How to Get Deadbeat Clients to Pay Up – Emily shares some useful tips for dealing with clients who have unpaid invoices and won’t pay.

10. Six Steps to Stop Giving Away Too Much for Free – Becky gives us six steps for gracefully handling free requests for your expertise in a way that generates more paying customers.

Picture of Chaz Michaels

Chaz Michaels

TRENDING AROUND THE WEB

Arkansas’s own Democrat-Gazette is among nearly 400 local newspapers now suing OpenAI and Microsoft over claims their articles were scraped without permission to train ChatGPT and Copilot, and the case could set the terms for whether smaller blogs and digital publishers ever get compensated when their content trains someone else’s AI.

Arkansas’s own Democrat-Gazette is among nearly 400 local newspapers now suing OpenAI and Microsoft over claims their articles were scraped without permission to train ChatGPT and Copilot, and the case could set the terms for whether smaller blogs and digital publishers ever get compensated when their content trains someone else’s AI.

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Overapologising isn’t always a sign of low confidence — sometimes it’s what happens when someone spent years in rooms where keeping the peace felt like survival

Overapologising isn’t always a sign of low confidence — sometimes it’s what happens when someone spent years in rooms where keeping the peace felt like survival

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Why studios chasing spec deals with digital creators are really just buying an audience-acquisition cost they can no longer justify building from scratch

Why studios chasing spec deals with digital creators are really just buying an audience-acquisition cost they can no longer justify building from scratch

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Opening a disagreement with “not to be rude, but” or “no offense” doesn’t erase the offense that follows, linguists who study these softening phrases have found they signal the speaker already knows what’s coming next isn’t going to land well.

Opening a disagreement with “not to be rude, but” or “no offense” doesn’t erase the offense that follows, linguists who study these softening phrases have found they signal the speaker already knows what’s coming next isn’t going to land well.

Global English Editing

New York’s SAFE Act now blocks algorithmic feeds and overnight notifications for any user a platform believes is under 18, and the rules Governor Hochul’s office finalized this summer could quietly reshape how blogs and digital publishers reach teen readers who discover content through social recommendations rather than search.

New York’s SAFE Act now blocks algorithmic feeds and overnight notifications for any user a platform believes is under 18, and the rules Governor Hochul’s office finalized this summer could quietly reshape how blogs and digital publishers reach teen readers who discover content through social recommendations rather than search.

The Blog Herald

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People who learned to write in longhand often think differently on paper — and many quietly miss the slowness of it

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