If you’d like to learn more about “RSS” and how you can use the technology as a marketing tool, be sure to check RSS Marketing 101 by Phil Gomes.

His top 3 reasons for RSS:

- RSS is incorruptibly opt-in
- It saves users time
- RSS is measurable

BusinessWeek has a short piece entitled Starbuck’s Secret Ingredient. It looks at how you can incorporate coffee chain chairman Howard Schultz’s persuasive communication skills in your workplace.

In summary, here are the top 3 lessons:

Lesson 1: Dig deep to identify what you are truly passionate about (hint: it’s not always the product itself) and convey that message to employees, customers, and colleagues. When you are passionate, you come across as excited, energetic, and enthusiastic — all of the qualities people like to see in others. And if people like you, they’re more likely to do business with you or to back your vision.

Lesson 2: Inspire your colleagues, investors, or employees by painting a picture of a world made better by your service, product, company, or cause.

Lesson 3: To get the most out of people, a leader has to tap into their emotions as well as their minds. People can relate to stories. They can see themselves in other people’s stories. The ability to use stories to get people to buy into one’s vision with their hearts is a powerful leadership capability.

You can read the whole article here. Better yet, grab yourself a copy of Howard’s book and head to your local Starbucks for a little reading.

Derek Featherstone shares 10 ideas to help improve your businesses. His number 1 piece of advice - start a blog!

“I can attribute at least six figures of income to my blog (that doesn’t include the two decimal places!). Can you afford not to try it for yourself?”

Advertising your small business on search engines has always been much more complicated then placing an ad in your local yellow pages. Yahoo however is hoping to change that with their recently announced product called Local Featured Listings.

A Featured Listing is a top-of-page listing that is available at a flat, monthly rate starting at $29.95/month, depending on the business category and location. (A bottom-of-page listing is also available at a discount.) These limited advertising slots are available on a first come, first serve basis.

Here’s an example of what the listings look like. Notice the highlighted positions at the top and bottom of the page?

This is an easy, affordable way to attract customers whenever they are searching for businesses like yours in your area.

Note: Yahoo Local is currently available in the US only.