As a small business owner, you face many challenges in standing out among a crowded marketplace, so how you market yourself is incredibly important.

Today’s business landscape is not what it used to be – writing for the web is a lot different than creating your old Yellow Pages ads.

In this Internet-driven age, crafting your message can be incredibly difficult. Online, in-your-face marketing can come across as annoying and can actually damage your company’s image if you’re not careful. Good content marketing seeks to develop a relationship between the company and its customers. At the very basic level, your marketing content should be “shareable” so that consumers are excited to share it on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, causing their friends and relatives to read it (and hopefully respond to the marketing) too!

When disaster strikes, the American Red Cross is there to help. Whether it strikes a household or entire communities, through house fires, floods, hurricanes, landslides and earthquakes the American Red Cross is there to help those affected.

Though most widely known for its disaster response, the American Red Cross is much more than that. Through the generosity of volunteers and donors, the American Red Cross is able to prevent and alleviate human suffering in the face of catastrophes and emergencies.

Spending money is right up there with spiders and Mondays, everyone has to deal with them at one time or another, but no one wants to. With the new healthcare changes, people are being forced to do at least one of those things..

Business owners and consumers alike are either getting insured or facing penalties. As consumers all filed taxes last month, many felt the pressure of that new healthcare penalty, which starts at $95 or 1% of income for those who didn’t have health insurance, but will gradually rise to 2.5% or $695 per person by 2016.

While consumers are weighing out penalties, small businesses are facing healthcare changes of their own. As a business owner, is it better to offer healthcare to employees or bite the bullet and pay the penalties?

If you Google “habits of successful business owners,” a strange thing happens – nearly every article that pops up on the search feed is a list. “Seven Things Insanely Successful People Do every Morning Before Work,” or “12 Things to Eat to Make You a Better Business Owner,” or “45 Things Successful People Do Differently Than You” – the lists go on and on.

Though some of the lists get quite obscure – lists are easy to compile, easier to read and they make it seem like success is just a checklist away. Despite the popularity of these “how to” articles, there is no foolproof way to become a successful business owner.

Success isn't some three step process.. Though in this case I've made it work in five. First, let's be clear - your company won’t magically take off if you take a special kind of shower each morning.

Everyone is looking for a deal, something that allows consumers to experience the illusion of savings when still spending money. From my many years of experience, if you are looking to attract more business, it is paramount that every restaurant have specialty food and beverage offerings. This can be done on a weekly or monthly basis with rotating items, but at the very least should be done for all major holidays. These offers resonate well with customers and help attract more guests, both new and old.