Sunday 4 March 2012

PART III - How to Shore Up Critical Shortfalls in Your Business Brain Trust!

Save time and money - Use the Internet to train YOURSELF! 

Often when you’re launching a business, there are a few areas where you are not the “Subject Matter Expert”.   And, as nice as it might be to hire people to fill every gap in your resume, that usually is less than feasible.   As someone who has always ‘trained herself’ in the business aspects of many part-time and full-time self employment pursuits, I’m in love with how the internet gives me access to tons of free or inexpensive, high quality learning options.

Online tutorials and webinars, in varying levels of complexity, are everywhere on the internet, covering such subjects as cloud computing, blogging, software usage instructions, social media, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and a whole bunch of other subjects which can be essential to any newly launched entrepreneur who needs to learn on the fly and develop his/her business skills as inexpensively as possible.  In essence, with the resources available to us today online, you can teach yourself anything! 

So, next time you think you need to take an expensive upgrading course, or some 8 week community college course, use your nimble search engine fingers to see if you can locate some ‘free’ online training instead!  (Caution: many of these free offerings have a promotional backdrop to them and want you to purchase another service/package from them after you’ve sampled their wares.   As a result, as more businesses jump on this bandwagon to build their brands, you may find less and less is available for free.  That said, there are still many highly talented and reputable specialists out there sharing their expertise gratis.   And, for that, we applaud them!) 

BONUS:  Many of these folks also offer free e-books when you subscribe to receive their newsletters. 

And never underestimate the luxury of having a good old library card as a means of upping your business know-how!  Or Amazon books, who will deliver books and other resources right to your door.

·         Citrix Online is a fabulous resource for HR and other business-related topics of interest.

·         Youtube has experts in many fields offering videos on how to do practically anything.

·         Free Site Engine Optimization (SEO) tools in webinar form from Jason McDonald 

·         Social Media Guru, Mari Smith, on Using Social Media to Promote your Business and one of her webinars   

·         Small Business Bliss features a great little newsletter/blog by Vancouver marketing specialist, Martina Iring, where she shares lots of inexpensive tips on how to make the most of your small business marketing $$$  

·         Various IT and Business Instructional Tutorials:  http://tutorials.freeskills.com/ 

·         Social Media Examiner’s – free e-book on Facebook Marketing

·         Goodwill Community Foundation - free how-to’s on all manner of software and basic life and business skills