Ideal Business Consultants

When was the last time you reviewed your D&B business credit report?

Did you know you can review your profile at anytime at no cost whatsoever?

iUpdate DNB is a simple tool you can use to ensure the Dun and Bradstreet database contains the most up-to-date information on your business.

iUpdate provides you with the ability to review and update your company profile online, free of charge, 24 hours a day.

In order to take advantage of this free tool you will need to register with iUpdate DNB. This also goes for previously registered users of eUpdate DNB.

Here is how to register step-by-step:

Step 1: Lookup Your Business

Go to iUpdate DNB and enter your business information to find out if you’re listed. I

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Many of our entrepreneur marketing coaching clients are involved in Direct Sales or MLMs. Because I was not sure I actually knew the difference (okay, I admit, I didn’t know there WAS a difference!), I thought I should get some help from an expert in the industry!

Guest post by Direct Sales Expert – Tina Kraft

Most Network Marketing Companies have an auto ship for both the customers and the distributors, and to receive your royalties as a distributor it is a minimum monthly autoship to receive your products for “wholesale” – every company is different. N

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Many small business owners have been asking exactly how the health care bill will affect them. We don’t have a crystal ball but we will do our best to try to answer some of your most important questions.

What is the Timetable for Employers?

In 2011, the law will require individual and small group market plans to spend 80 percent of premium dollars on medical services. Large group plans have to spend at least 85%.

By 2014, employers who have more than 50 employees must offer health insurance benefits or pay penalties. Companies with 25 or fewer employees who meet certain wage requirements will also be able to get credits toward health insurance purchases. <

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I was struck recently by a tweet from a social media guru, commenting on how staid and outdated he found the presentations at a healthcare conference because social media was so undervalued and unappreciated as a marketing vehicle.  That tweet really got under my skin.  It seemed pretentious to me, calling healthcare marketing outdated because they aren’t using the latest social media tactics.  But then I realized this ‘guru’ probably spends much of his time on social media blogs, following other social media gurus on Facebook, Twitter & Google+, and using all the latest ideas himself.  I’m sure he talks with hundreds of clients, helping them make the best use of social media for their businesses.  Of course he would think that healthcare professionals ‘just don’t get it.’  He, after all, lives in the social media echo chamber.

For many of us, the echo chamber also frames our business and personal discussions.  Do you find yourself bored from reading ever- similar story themes in your daily Facebook stream?  Do the tweets from people you follow all start to sound the same after a while?  Do you find the sources you read tend to cluster around certain repetitive themes?  If so, you’re in an echo chamber that was most likely crafted for you by Google or Facebook.  It’s a dangerous place to live for very long, because you’ll find after a time that your opinions become hardened, you start to think your views are ‘the truth’, and you gradually lose your ability to see other points of view.   Or, if you’re naturally more open-minded, you’ll find yourself becoming bored by the lack of diversity and new ideas you find online.

Remember those long-ago days when most people got their news from mass media, when we had to trust news editors to decide what was newsworthy and fit to print?  In those days, editors had to print a diversity of topics in order to satisfy their diverse readership.  Today, Google serves up a smorgasboard of information, making us feel like we’re exposed to endless diversity.  But it’s deceiving because Google tailors the delivery of that information in search results based on what it knows of our interests and previous behavior.  Facebook does the same, by favoring posts from people we interact with most.  And Twitter has the same effect, as we follow people we find interesting and then get drawn further into their circles of similar people.  Google+ alleviates the echo chamber somewhat by allowing you to deliberately create separate – and ever-widening — Circles of connections.  But it doesn’t do away entirely with the echo chamber.

In the world of social media, it takes work to keep an open mind and a broad perspective.  We’ve offloaded that job from the mass media news editor to the online individual.  It’s a heavy burden but an important responsibility – to yourself and others.  If you leave it to Google and Facebook, they will, over time, cocoon you in a well-padded chamber of echoes of your own voice.  If that is scary to you (it is to me!), you’ll need to keep a vigilant hand in the management of your social media circles.  Prune the list of who you’re following, what blogs you’re subscribed to, and what perspectives you’re reading.  If you feel the chamber walls narrowing, go out and find opposing viewpoints and subscribe to those.  Get active in their comments.  Engage with other perspectives. The old adage “don’t judge a man till you’ve walked a mile in his boots” could

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As a small business owner it can be quite a challenge deciding what the best business credit card is to obtain with over 500 corporate credit cards to choose from in the marketplace.

In addition, there are various types of cards that each serves a unique purpose for your business. Such as tracking business expenses, controlling spending, managing employee spending, etc.

Before you select a card it is important to first obtain copies of your personal and business credit reports with scores.

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Doing a search on customer demographics seemed so easy. I just wanted to know, “where do customers come from in 2011″. I was thinking of things like the internet, email, referrals, advertising, etc.

After spending a couple of hours researching this, I found that there is A LOT of data out there that DOES NOT cover what I wanted to know overall but I did find a Neilson Study that shows this information for women (I am POSITIVE that a least a little of this concerns men too!)

While we cannot know if the women polled actually PURCHASED something, we are able to see that their trust level in sources is a key factor to determining if they would be WILLING to buy. Som

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You are in for a treat today! Today, one of our good friends at Survey Monkey, Phillip Garland, Ph.D., VP of Methodology is guest blogging at BookFresh on the hot topic of survey research on the web. Survey Monkey is a revolutionary questionnaire tool to create and publish custom surveys in minutes, and then view results graphically and in real time.

Is the Web Killing Survey Research?

By Philip Garland, Ph.D., VP, Methodology, SurveyMonkey

A growing number of researchers are becoming enamored with opinion hubs afforded by the Internet—facebook, twitter, blogs, and proprietary user communities, to name a few. T

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Today WikiLeaks began releasing a database of hundreds of documents from as many as 160 intelligence contractors in the mass surveillance industry. Working with Bugged Planet and Privacy International, as well as media organizations form six countries – ARD in Germany, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism in the UK, The Hindu in India, L’Espresso in Italy, OWNI in France and the Washington Post in the U.S. Wikileaks is shining a light on this secret industry that has boomed since September 11, 2001 and is worth billions of dollars per year. Wik

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