Search Engine Tools are a dime a dozen, but most only do a very tiny micro-task; substantially useful tools are few and far between.  Here are my personal favorite free search optimization tools for SEO; some may be familiar but hopefully there’s a few surprises in here for you.

Snippet Preview Tool
This allows you to enter in titles and meta-descriptions and test out how they are likely to appear on Google.  An invaluable search engine tool.
http://www.seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html

Rex Swain’s HTTP Viewer
It’s great for checking out HTTP header responses and following redirects for any page.
http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html

Search Engine Reports Free Bulk Rank Checker
This search engine tool is perfect for running a quick search engine ranking check on a prospect – drop a ton of terms in and it will bring back their ranking positions (not which page that is ranking exactly, just its rank – but that’s a fast way to assess someone’s situation).
http://searchenginereports.net/

LSI Keywords
I had previously reviewed a great site called textalyser which can perform a frequency analysis of documents.  If there is more than one URL to analzye though, it requires pasting in the text which is cumbersome.  I usually use textalyser and paste in the text from the top web pages ranking for a term to discover what related words I should be using when doing on-page optimization for that term.

Get a free quote on search engine optimization now.

But I recently found this *fantastic* search engine tool…”LSI Keywords”.   Ignore the name, let’s not argue about what LSI is, it’s a misuse of the term…but this tool will actually go retrieve the top 5 results on its own for your search, eliminating the manual steps of grabbing the URLs from the search engine and copying and pasting the content into the tool.   It also lays out the frequency charts for the unigrams, bigrams, and trigrams right next to each other so you don’t have to scroll down below the fold to see the top terms.  This is a *great* search engine tool, a huge timesaver.
http://lsikeywords.com/

Xenu Link Sleuth
The myth, the legend.  Perfect for finding broken links and much much more.
http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

Screaming Frog
This is starting to take some of the mantel away from Xenu; it can be used to check many kinds of SEO issues on a website, and is an ideal tool for performing a quick site audit.
http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/

Drive traffic to your web site, start today.

SEOQuake Toolbar
I don’t use the mozBar; not because I’m not a moz fan, but I’m trying to keep myself from being dependent on SEOMoz’s tools.   My theory is, SEOMoz is so effective and popular it seems to be taking over the entire SEO world…so if I want to compete with people who are SEOMoz believers and aficionados, then if I use search engine tools and techniques from elsewhere, perhaps that will give me an edge.   The SEOQuake toolbar is great for rapidly doing a competitive analysis on a SERP.
http://www.seoquake.com/

GoRank Keyword Density Analyzer
I use this to check out keyword density and other metrics on the top search engine results pages that are ranking for whatever term I’m trying to optimize for; it can help in figuring out how long the document should be, how often the keyword should be used, and so on.  If you’re a fan of extensive on-page optimization, you’ll really appreciate this search engine tool.
http://www.gorank.com/url_comparision_report.php

Pingdom
This tool provides a quick way to check page speed and image sizes, without having to install Firefox or Chrome plug-ins.  Since search engines now take into account page speed, using something like this is an important step in any search engine optimization audit.
http://tools.pingdom.com/

Niels Bosma’s Excel SEO Tools
I have to confess, I have had zero time to evaluate this personally yet, but its feature set is extremely exciting and it comes recommended by some very knowledgeable people.  There are a *ton* of functions this provides including the ability to scrape data from websites, manipulate backlinks, analyze analytics data, and more.  It looks so promising I felt it would be a crime to leave it out – I hope to put some time into using it soon.

http://nielsbosma.se/projects/seotools/

Online Sales Google SERP Bookmarklet
To use this search engine tool, just go to the website, click on the green button and drag it into your bookmark toolbar.  Then whenever you do a Google search, hit the button and it will transform the search engine results page into separate, nicely pasteable, titles and URLs.  It’s a super-useful tool.
http://www.onlinesales.co.uk/google-results-bookmarklet/

Facebook offers so many opportunities to reach customers with specialized advertising that almost every business can benefit from some form of paid advertising on Facebook, even if it spends only a few dollars a week.

However, it is one thing to use paid Facebook advertising sparingly—for example to tell your fans about an event—and quite another to commit to making Facebook a significant source of leads or traffic for your business. Answer the follow questions to find out if Facebook ads can be a significant source of leads for your business.

Are you a local business with a physical location?

Does your business have a doorknob that customers turn? If so, then Facebook is for you. Dentists, doctors, lawyers, veterinarians, physical trainers, gyms, specialty shops, cupcake stores, specialty groceries, beer and wine shops, restaurants, mechanics, theaters and music venues are highly likely to benefit from locally targeted Facebook campaigns, which may cost as little as $100 to $200 a month.

Facebook allows you to advertise to people who live within a few miles of your location, to advertise directly to your known customers, and to advertise directly to your customers’ friends who live nearby. Facebook is good for selling locally because Facebook makes it easy to get your message in front of your local market demographic even before your target audience has begun searching for your particular product or service.

Does your business harmonize with Facebook?

I suspect it is possible to successfully sell almost any product or service on Facebook. However, it is clear that some products sell on Facebook like magic and others are really, really difficult to sell there. The interesting question for your business is “How easy will it be to sell on Facebook?”

Some types of products or services are a natural fit for selling on Facebook — so natural that you can set up a campaign and start finding new customers in a few minutes. Other types of products and services will be a harder sale. And, Facebook may not be a good channel for purchasing clicks until you have exhausted easier channels.

The more the following statements describe your product or service, the more Facebook is for you.

Our Stuff Is Unique

Facebook is for you if you sell unique or personalized products. Facebook is the worldwide capital of individual expression. It’s the perfect place to sell customized and personalized products, items that express a person’s own tastes and preferences. It is also a great way to engage potential customers on a human-to-human level

You will not maximize Facebook’s marketing potential if you are selling products that could be listed in the “commodity” category or if customers can easily find your product at big-box retailers and national chains. Facebook is the place to sell products that don’t carry an expected price. Sell unique products, where the value is determined by the customer’s desire to have something interesting, not by the price.

We Sell to Consumers

Facebook is for you if you sell to consumers, not businesses. Facebook is a place for individuals to connect with friends and family. It is best used by businesses as a place to find and connect to individuals and individual consumers. It is not a good place to sell to other businesses. Although corporations have pages on Facebook, they are there as a sales presence to market to consumers, not as a purchasing presence to buy from your business.

We Sell Fun Products

Facebook is for you if your products are fun. It is a great place to sell events, memberships, experiences, personal improvement, travel and entertainment. Facebook is fun! It is a place where people go to connect, to play and to socialize. It is a place to feel, express opinions and display emotions.

And events, travel, and entertainment are full of fun and positive emotions. These subjects are naturally social, and people love to ask “Where have you been?,” “What have you seen?” and “Where do you want to go?”

If you provide personal improvement products, especially anything that’s new, trendy, hip or cool, Facebook is also a great fit. If your product involves some form of training, accent the social advantages more than the academic aspects, such as how learning a new language can make travel more fun.

We Harmonize With Identity, Personal Beliefs, and Convictions

Facebook is for you if your business harmonizes with a person’s identity — political affiliations, religious convictions, beliefs or social movements. Regardless of whether your company leans right or left or whatever, there are lots of people who may be predisposed to do business with you for that particular leaning. And you should take advantage of it. There are very simple ways you can target your customers on Facebook and communicate with them in ways that connect to the things they care about.

If you appeal to a variety of such backgrounds, then you can design specific marketing campaigns to cater to each of those preferences. You may have different pockets of people within your customer database, and the better you understand those pockets, the more you can target your ads, and the more you can sell.

Where does your business fall? Visit,IsFB4ME.com to help you answer that question. The site asks you 10 short questions about your business and results in a score from 1 to 10 that you can use to better understand how your business fits with Facebook.

Anyone who has started a business has his or her own rules and guidelines, so I thought I would add to the memo with my own. My “rules” below aren’t just for those founding the companies, but for those who are considering going to work for them, as well.

1. Don’t start a company unless it’s an obsession and something you love.

2. If you have an exit strategy, it’s not an obsession.

3. Hire people who you think will love working there.

4. Sales Cure All. Know how your company will make money and how you will actually make sales.

5. Know your core competencies and focus on being great at them. Pay up for people in your core competencies. Get the best. Outside the core competencies, hire people that fit your culture but aren’t as expensive to pay.

6. An espresso machine? Are you kidding me? Coffee is for closers. Sodas are free. Lunch is a chance to get out of the office and talk. There are 24 hours in a day, and if people like their jobs, they will find ways to use as much of it as possible to do their jobs.

7. No offices. Open offices keep everyone in tune with what is going on and keep the energy up. If an employee is about privacy, show him or her how to use the lock on the bathroom. There is nothing private in a startup. This is also a good way to keep from hiring executives who cannot operate successfully in a startup. My biggest fear was always hiring someone who wanted to build an empire. If the person demands to fly first class or to bring over a personal secretary, run away. If an exec won’t go on sales calls, run away. They are empire builders and will pollute your company.

8. As far as technology, go with what you know. That is always the most inexpensive way. If you know Apple, use it. If you know Vista, ask yourself why, then use it. It’s a startup so there are just a few employees. Let people use what they know.

9. Keep the organization flat. If you have managers reporting to managers in a startup, you will fail. Once you get beyond startup, if you have managers reporting to managers, you will create politics.

10. Never buy swag. A sure sign of failure for a startup is when someone sends me logo-embroidered polo shirts. If your people are at shows and in public, it’s okay to buy for your own employees, but if you really think people are going to wear your branded polo when they’re out and about, you are mistaken and have no idea how to spend your money.

11. Never hire a PR firm. A public relations firm will call or email people in the publications you already read, on the shows you already watch and at the websites you already surf. Those people publish their emails. Whenever you consume any information related to your field, get the email of the person publishing it and send them a message introducing yourself and the company. Their job is to find new stuff. They will welcome hearing from the founder instead of some PR flack. Once you establish communication with that person, make yourself available to answer their questions about the industry and be a source for them. If you are smart, they will use you.

12. Make the job fun for employees. Keep a pulse on the stress levels and accomplishments of your people and reward them. My first company, MicroSolutions, when we had a record sales month, or someone did something special, I would walk around handing out $100 bills to salespeople. At Broadcast.com and MicroSolutions, we had a company shot. The Kamikaze. We would take people to a bar every now and then and buy one or ten for everyone. At MicroSolutions, more often than not we had vendors cover the tab. Vendors always love a good party.

Zombie repellant might not be something you expect to find on the shelf at Walmart. Or, for that matter, puppy shoes.

But a public relations-savvy contest that the nation’s largest retailer announced last week could result in one of these off-beat products landing on Walmart shelves before year’s end.

For Walmart, it’s all about garnering publicity and social-media hits. But for the winner of the contest, it’s a chance to go from a virtual unknown to a distinguished product sold with roughly 150,000 others at more than 3,800 Walmart stores nationally.

“Their shelf base is probably one of the most rare and precious items in the world,” Golden Gate University consumer psychologist Kit Yarrow says.

Online contests by familiar brands continue to pick up social-media steam. Baskin-Robbins has sponsored contests to let folks create ice cream flavors. Mountain Dew has involved consumers in creating soft-drink flavors. Now, Walmart’s getting into the action.

Walmart dubbed its contest the “Get on the Shelf” program — an American Idol-style competition for small businesses. Two rounds of online voting will determine three winners, all of which will be sold online, with the grand prize winner gaining a spot in select stores.

As on the reality show, it’s the contest’s oddities that often grab public attention. Among the more unusual submissions:

•”Uggs” for dogs? Pugz Shoes — boots for puppies that are stylishly similar to Uggs — are designed to keep your pooch’s paws warm. With a faux leather exterior and a faux wool lining, they’re practical and fashionable — because dogs are people, too, right? (Four shoes — $19.99)

•Zombie repellant. Miss Stephanie’s Potions is a line of scented sprays and body washes for children afraid of monsters hiding in the closet. It includes a range of products to ease kids’ night frights, such as zombie-repelling sprays and fairy-attracting scents. (4-ounce spray — $9.99; 8-ounce bubble bath — $9.99)

•IPad pillow. EPillow, a lap pillow for tablets, allows users to get cozy with their electronics. ($29.95)

•Toilet seat backrest. The Toilet Comforter cushions your back during long thinking sessions on the porcelain throne. Grab a magazine — you might not want to get up. ($25.95)

“It’s like American Idol,” Yarrow says. “The first round is really entertaining because there are so many duds, and the duds themselves are funny and engaging.” And, she notes, they can generate buzz.

Originality is the key to gaining retail space, says Chad Brewer, president of Hugs Pet Products, which makes Pugz Shoes.

“If you don’t have something that’s really different — that’s going to stand out — you’re not going to get that shelf space,” Brewer says.

The national exposure could provide a much-needed boost for small businesses, several contestants say.

“We’re still not in the black yet, but we’re literally only a few thousand (dollars) from it,” ePillow creator Renee Anderson says.

With more than 800 video entries already, the competition is tight, but New England Consulting Group founder and CEO Gary Stibel says just because products don’t make the final cut does not mean they have lost entirely. Any publicity can generate sales, he says.

Giving shoppers a say in the company’s offerings is crucial to connecting with them, says Chris Bolte, vice president of @WalmartLabs — the social-media and e-commerce team that created the contest.

“You always want to stay closely tuned to what your customers are looking for,” Bolte says. “It’s really about getting products on the shelves that we haven’t seen.”

Then there’s just one minor issue: What aisle at Walmart stocks the zombie repellant?

If you don’t have a Facebook page for your business, it’s not the equivalent of trying to operate without a telephone and modern plumbing. But social media is something almost no business can afford to be without.

Social media allows a business to connect directly with its consumer base. A business with a Facebook page is approachable, personal and accessible.

Before the advent of Facebook, businesses relied on press releases and advertising to get the word out about sales or product developments that might interest customers. Compiling those took time and money. But the amount of information a company can disseminate now is constrained only by the number of times the person in charge of social media can hit the Post button.

The ease of disseminating information, coupled with a general lack of Facebook etiquette, can become a problem in its own right. And some common social media behavior can have serious negative repercussions. Below are four offenses business pages commonly commit.

1. Overposting

Because the only constraint to posting on a business Facebook page is the willingness and stamina of the poster, many businesses try to break their own posting records every day. Every thought the poster thinks is deemed essential public knowledge, and it’s shouted from the Facebook rooftops with gusto.

Overposting clogs up users’ newsfeeds. Your business’s postings become white noise and an annoyance. Then, they become spam.

When customers feel that your page has spammed them, they will either hide your business from their feed or delete you from their list. And once they delete you, the follower is unlikely to reverse their decision.

How much is too much? If you’re posting more than once or twice a day, you risk alienating your customers.

2. Oversharing

Oversharing is not overposting, which is talking too much. Oversharing may be treating the business’ Facebook page like your diary or your political soapbox. Treating your company’s social media page as anything except a PR platform is oversharing.

It’s fine if you want to inject a little personality into your promotion platform. But there’s a fine line between “personality” and “personality crisis,” and once you cross the line, your page is toast. People will hit the “Hide postings from…” button faster than you can say “Ron Paul Forever!!!” (Oh, and turn the caps lock off.)

3. Poor writing

Many businesses cut a corner by writing their own social media content tor farming it out to an intern with poor grammatical skills. Your Facebook feed come across like the the local furniture-store owner who does his own TV commercials. Unless that’s the aesthetic you’re going for, consider having somebody professional look it over.

And by professional, we don’t mean your text-speak-fluent “resident young person.” Bad writing (multiple misspellings, clunky prose, the overuse of emoticons and abbreviations) makes your Facebook page look unprofessional. How many people want to patronize a business projecting a voice that says essentially, “Uh, yeah, whatever”?

4. Lack of moderation

Your Facebook Wall is like your community bulletin board. So, it will probably collect graffiti. Personal musings, links to dubious sites, pictures of somebody in a swimsuit—whatever it is, random crud will clutter up your page. You have to be diligent to keep your Facebook page spic-and-span. Otherwise, you risk having a page where law has no name.

While you don’t need to put a full-time hall monitor on your page, you have to clean things up once in awhile and delete postings that don’t fit the purpose of your Facebook page.

Over the years, I have met a lot of entrepreneurs who have been frustrated by low profits, lack of growth, or the stress of the never-ending demands. Many struggle with all three. While every business is different, there are common denominators. In fact, I believe there are 10. The tricky part is that failing to have a handle on just one of these areas can result in mediocre performance, a stressful existence, or ultimate and intimate failure. That is one reason the failure rate for small businesses is so high (here are some others).

This is the checklist I review when I’m not satisfied with my company’s performance.

Marketing

1. Targeting. Do you have a strategy to reach your best potential customers with your sales and marketing efforts? A shotgun approach is too expensive and inefficient for any company, especially a small one. What percentage of the people you approach actually buy a product or service like yours?

2. Advertising and Public Relations. There are many choices for where to place an ad and how to execute a public relations campaign. The problem with many small businesses is that their marketing activities are driven primarily by which salespeople happen to call on them. Ineffective advertising or public relations can be not only a tremendous waste of money but a tremendous waste of opportunity. If you are doing things the same way you did them 10 years ago, you are probably getting less response.

3. The Message. Lots of companies still use this line: “We will exceed your expectations.” I even saw it on the back of an ambulance. (I don’t know about you, but I have pretty high expectations when I call an ambulance! Are the technicians going to give me a haircut after they bring me back to life?) It was a good line when someone first thought of it. Now, it is old. It is tired. It needs to retire. You need to exceed people’s expectations by coming up with your own line. Maybe it is not a line at all. Maybe it is a message. Whatever it is, it should say something about your company that means something to potential customers.

Management

4. Hiring. I can’t think of anything more important than hiring the right people. Great hiring is a skill, one that frequently is not the strong suit of the typical entrepreneur. Do you have a hiring process? Hiring by trial and error is a very expensive and painful way to build a staff. I have found that hiring the right people is 75 percent of management. What percentage of the people you hire work out great? It should be 80 percent or 90 percent, and perhaps less in a low-wage environment.

5. Firing. This is never a popular subject, and it’s especially uncomfortable these days. But it is a harsh reality of business that some people are just not suited for some jobs. Many bosses avoid firing at all costs, including going broke, because they want to see themselves as being “nice.” In reality, customers and other employees just see them as irresponsible. Here is a simple test: Are there people who work for you who you would be relieved to have come in tomorrow and quit? If the answer is yes, that is not a good sign. Especially if the employee is a relative.

6. Operations. Training, standards, support, recognition, systems, key performance indicators, follow-up, etc. Is your company getting the job done? Are customers happy? Do you know? How is employee turnover? Are employees happy? Would they tell you if they weren’t? Do you have people who tell you the truth? Do you yell? (I know. You’re passionate.) Have good people left your company for more money? That is frequently an indication of other problems.

Accounting and Finance

7. Basic Accounting. Many seemingly successful companies have gotten into big trouble by neglecting accounting until it is too late. Accounting is not just about paying taxes. It is about information, insight, and control. Great accounting will not make a business successful, but bad accounting can destroy a business. Is someone staying on top of receivables, being careful about opening new accounts and making sure the existing ones are current? Could you walk someone through your financial statements and explain each part?

8. Pricing. This is probably the sleeper on this list. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen entrepreneurs either put themselves out of business, or never make the money they should have, because of bad pricing models. They charge prices that bear no relation to the costs or to the value proposition. This is just one of the reasons a company needs accurate accounting — so it can determine the true cost of a product or service. Do your salespeople have control of the pricing for jobs that they quote? If so, are they selling at a price that allows you to make a profit?

9. Financing. Most businesses need some kind of financing. Whether it comes from investors, banks, credit unions, factoring or even credit cards, there is a lot to know and understand. This is another place where a good accountant can be of great help. Or not. If you have one of the many accountants who just do tax returns and are not really experienced at helping businesses grow, you can find lots of information in books and online. Or you can hire a better accountant. Here is a test: Do you know your debt-to-equity ratio?

Leadership

10. Any one of these topics could fill a book, and leadership is no exception. Let me count the ways: vision, direction, inspiration, support. It is similar to management, but they are not the same thing. As my company has gotten larger, I have found that leadership gets easier because I now have managers managing. When a company is smaller, the boss has to manage and lead. One minute you are writing someone up for violating the late policy, and the next you are trying to inspire the troops. Perhaps management is pushing, and leadership is pulling. It’s not easy doing both at the same time.

Whether you score well or poorly on this list, keep in mind that it is an ongoing struggle. Personally, I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and I can assure you that I am constantly wrestling with almost every item on the list.

So how did you do?

Q: I have tried all sorts of things to grow my business, and they all seem to work — for awhile. Then things go back to normal, which is not good. I don’t really know what I am doing wrong. Might you have any insights from the other businesses whom you have worked with? — Gerald

A: What works for one business may of course not work for another, but that said, one thing I know is that if you want to take your business to the next level, one thing you have to do is crank up the marketing.

The reason for that is that there are three types of customers: New customers, existing customers, and exiting customers. Customers leave for all sorts of reasons — habits change, they move, they found someone better or more convenient or cheaper — whatever the reason, they leave. It happens. The purpose of marketing is to keep the customer pipeline open so that there are always new customers coming in to replenish those that leave.

What I suggest is that you not try just one marketing idea, but actually test several new ideas, all at once. It will take bandwidth on your part, yes, but it need not cost a fortune, and the benefit is that you will discover what works. Then you can take the top producing ideas, implement them full time, and use them again and again.

Here are a few easy ideas to get you started:

1. Add video to your website and Fanpage: I am beating the video drum a lot lately because it is important. People watch video online, and posting videos that people watch is one of the very few ways to get someone’s uninterrupted online attention for three or four minutes. That’s marketing gold.

2. Use Facebook to rock your business: There are two main ways to use Facebook to grow your business:

1) Advertise. Example: Chris Meyer is a photographer who decided to try putting some ads on Facebook. And because one of the best things about advertising on Facebook is that you can very specifically target your desired demographic, that’s exactly what Chris did. He placed ads on Facebook that would only be seen by people in his area, aged 24 to 30, whose relationship status was ‘engaged.”"

How smart was that? Very smart. Over the course of a year Chris’ $600 ad campaign generated almost $40,000 in revenue.

2) Create a Fanpage: Having a Facebook Fanpage can also really benefit any business. By creating an interesting, fun, valuable Fanpage, and getting people to like it, you create another way to drive traffic to your business. The secret is to have a Fanpage that is interactive, useful, and has good content. For instance,

• “Company news” is boring. But discount coupons are not.

• Industry articles are boring. But contests are not.

3. Create a winning e-newsletter: Newsletters are great because they are permission marketing, that is, they stem from potential customers giving you permission to contact them. That is huge. But if you are at all like me, although you get your share of e-newsletters, some never get opened, right? And we all know why: Bad content! Boring content. Irrelevant content.

Bad content is the main reason not all newsletters are created equal. Great content usually equals a great e-newsletter. Offer great content and you usually have a compelling e-newsletter.

Even better, creating good content is not that difficult to do. You don’t have to be a professional writer or geeky wordsmith to create valuable content. Here’s the secret to creating compelling content (from a guy who creates content for a living): Be yourself. Show your passion for your subject. Share the love. What people like to read is something real and authentic, valuable and interesting.

These are just a few ideas. If you look, there are many more. Try some out, see what works, and then make a commitment to using the best all year long. You will be glad you did.

Today’s tip: It is important to remember that social networking is not just about numbers, about getting a lot of fans or followers. The woman who opened my eyes to social media taught me that the point of it is to meet new people with whom you can do business. By tweeting smart, she did just that. She created relationships with people she otherwise would not have met, and as a result boosted her business 34% in one year.

I’m guessing that one of your New Year’s Resolutions for your small business was to make more money.

Great. But now what?

To help you actually achieve your goal, I’ve got 12 tips to make sure you do make more money this year.

1. Get listed free. Take 30 minutes — right after you finish reading this column — and list your business, free, on search engine local listings.

This helps your company show up when a prospective customer searches for a business like yours on the Web or a mobile device. No technical expertise is needed. Get started with

• Bing business portal, bing.com/businessportal;
• Foursquare, foursquare.com/business;
• Google Places, google.com/places;
• Yahoo Local, local.yahoo.com; and
• Yelp, biz.yelp.com/claiming.

2. Figure out what makes you money. Businesses have two kinds of money, cash and profits.

Cash comes from making sales. Profits come from selling products or services for more than they cost you to produce. Small businesses generally focus on bringing in cash, and that’s OK because cash keeps the doors open.

But to get ahead, you need to focus on the parts of your business that bring you the most profits.

3. Market to current and former customers. Satisfied customers are the ones most likely to be future customers or refer others to you.

Yet small businesses typically neglect to market to them.

When my garbage disposal breaks, will I remember the name of the plumber I used two years ago? Not if the business doesn’t keep its name in front of me.

4. Get a contact management system. You need a good way to organize, manage, and stay in touch with your contacts, something easy and that you can access from mobile devices, not just a drawer full of business cards.

My company just switched to Salesforce.com.

5. Create a marketing plan. Spend your marketing dollars and time wisely.

Identify your best prospects and the most effective ways to reach them. Then market consistently. You have to stay in front of prospects.

6. Contact at least three prospects a week. Or seven. Or 20.

Give yourself a realistic quota, make a list of top prospects and referral sources and keep it where you see it. Get out there and sell.

7. Bother people. I mean be persistent, not annoying.

People are busy, including your prospects. Even if they want to buy from you, they may forget you. So stay in touch repeatedly.

8. Close the deal. Marketing is great, but at the end of the day, you also have to make — and close — the sale.

Sure, you have to let prospects know about your products or services, but you also have to ask them to make the purchase. Give them incentives to purchase now and make sure they see a strong call to action in your marketing materials.

And ask, directly and in person, to take the order, close the deal.

9. Shop local, shop small. I asked a woman at my gym where she got her workout shoes.

She responded: “Try them on at (name of local small store), then order them online.” Yikes!

Small businesses can’t survive as showrooms for online retailers. If we want customers to buy from us, we have to shop small.

10. Check out social-media marketing. I’m not saying that Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn will make you money, but you can increase your visibility.

At least know enough to figure out whether it might be right for you.

11. Get a cloud-based email newsletter service. Don’t be misled by the word “newsletter.” You can use these services to announce sales, new products or services, whatever.

Some choices for small businesses: Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, Vertical Response, Emma. An added bonus of cloud services is analytics. You get far better information about how your sales efforts are performing and who is responding to your emails.

12. Develop a business plan. In many ways, this is the most important.

Yes, I’m biased because I’ve written two books on developing business plans. But developing a business plan has been the single most important contribution to my company’s survival and success. Planning gets everyone moving in the same direction and provides structure for decision-making.

Now is the perfect time to develop a business plan for 2012.

It was around August 15, 2008 and I should have been in the process of finishing my book. A Word document stared me in the face with a bunch of chapters filled with random blog posts, quotes, disconnected paragraphs and a few usable pages. I felt like one of those poor souls on the Hoarder shows, paralyzed by stuff and ideas all around me, but unable to move from the sheer terror of the task.

My daughter was still under a year old, and I had the weight of my family’s income on my shoulders since the construction market in Phoenix was in the 4th Circle of Dante’s Inferno.

I picked up the phone to call a favor in to Martha Beck, my Jedi Knight High Council member. “Writing a book is hell,” she said to me when I first got my book contract. “Call me if you get stuck.”

So I did.

“I can’t do this,” I said. “It is too big. I am totally overwhelmed, and I am never going to get this done.”

“Of course you will,” she said. “Just break it into tiny little pieces that are so small that they are almost insulting. Do you think you could write one paragraph?”

“Yes, I think I could do that,” I said. “But I have sixteen chapters to write! I will never finish on time!”

“Then put that as your goal,” she said. “Don’t worry about your 16 chapters for now. Just write a paragraph each day, and be sure to reward yourself for doing so each day. At the end of the fourth day, give yourself a bigger treat.”

Feeling better that my writing hero had confidence I would finish, I agreed to her crazy process and went back to my Word document.

I started with one paragraph. It was not pithy, profound or crisp. But it was a paragraph, and I felt a tiny weigh lift from my chest.

I kept writing each day. Paragraphs turned into pages, which turned into caffeine-fueled 14-hour days of flying fingers, writing, copying and pasting.

I turned the book into my publisher on October 31. The next day, my editor Emily sent me a lovely email.

“Congratulations, you did it!” she said. “Now, can you cut it by 30% in the next two days?”

Amazingly, cutting content that I had sweat over for months was a breeze. I could feel the book take shape as we hacked off meandering stories and unnecessary sidebars.

I think about this experience often as I set new goals, including writing another book.

Once you define the goal that feels right (and I gave you some tips on how to do this here), start really, really small.

Big Hairy Audacious Goals Sometimes Give You Hairballs

Get out of debt by 2013 starts with alphebetizing your bills and setting them in date order.

Writing a book starts by opening up your word processer, naming the document and creating the cover page.

Getting on Oprah’s Life Class starts by calling a local gym and asking if you can deliver a 15 minute talk to its members.

Tiny Steps Win the Race

I’m not a fan of end-of-year employee reviews. If you waited until the end of the year to give feedback to your employees, you failed. But, when done properly, year-end employee reviews can serve an important purpose.

Here are five tips to help you improve your employee performance reviews.

1. Never wait until the end of the year – provide constructive feedback regularly. You should be providing regular constructive feedback to your team – and each employee you supervise throughout the year – on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. I am not suggesting you set up regular meetings for such reviews. Make your reviews and constructive feedback informal, low key, and regular. The measure I use for myself: does each person on my team know how I feel about their work during the prior week? If I can’t answer that question, I failed.

If an employee isn’t contributing, fire them after giving them an opportunity to improve. Don’t wait until the end-of-year reviews – you’ll only make yourself and your team miserable.

2. Take time to prepare for each review and require each employee to prepare. If you’re going to invest your own time and your employee’s time for an end-of-year review, make sure you both prepare. Take the time to identify three to four strengths and three to four areas for improvement. Make sure you’ve identified concrete examples for each so that you can go into more detail when appropriate.

Also make sure your employees know in advance that you’ll ask them to talk about strengths and areas for improvement. No employee is perfect. No person is perfect. We all can improve – and it’s your job to help your employees identify areas for improvement.

3. Be brutally honest. I’ve seen too many people afraid to speak their mind at review time. That’s not surprising – we’re typically not even honest with ourselves – how can we be honest with others. But when it comes to reviews, candor is critical – and should work both ways.

But be careful not to make the review only about mistakes. You want each employee to walk away more motivated and excited about their job – talking only about mistakes and problem areas will not accomplish that goal.

4. Stay human. Fight the temptation to spend the time reviewing graphs filled with data or reading from a form. Review time is a time to talk. If you want people on your team to feel like human beings, treat them as human beings.

5. Listen more than you talk. Far too many people think review time is a time to talk. It’s not. Review time is a time to listen. The conversation should always be two-way. Invite your employees to talk about their accomplishments and struggles. Invite them to talk about their work and personal goals for the coming year. Ask them if they’re happy with the work they’re doing and the people around them (you’d be surprised how many people are afraid to ask this question). Ask them how you can do better.