26 Amazing Business Blog Posts from 2010
Cover of Outliers: The Story of Success
This is a list of 26 of the best business posts that I read in 2010. The articles you won’t want to miss are Six Keys to Being Excellent at Anything, How (And Why) to Stop Multitasking, 6 Tips on Starting a Digital Business from the Founder of Pandora, Memo to Investors: Entrepreneurs Aren’t Born, They’re Made, How to do 500 Times Better Than AdSense, and Storytelling and the Greatest Sales Letter of All Time. Of these six, don’t miss the sales letter. It’s absolutely amazing.
Enjoy!
p.s. If you pay attention to the titles, you’ll learn a lot about writing good headlines.
Harvard Business Review Blog
- How (And Why) to Stop Multitasking—Doing several things at once may make you think you’re getting more done. Actually you’re not. This post tells you why that’s not true and how to stop multitasking so much.
- Six Keys to Being Excellent at Anything—What’s the key to excellence? Based on the book Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell, many people are agreeing that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. This post provides six keys to accomplishing the 10,000 hours needed to become an expert.
- Six Ways Leaders Can Fuel Excellence at Anything—This post is by the same author as the previous post and outlines how leaders can inspire excellence in the people they are leading.
- Do Your Teams Produce Reports or Results—This is an important question. Many times teams spend hundreds hours coming up with a proposal when they could have spent the same amount of time implementing a solution and testing the result. So how about you: do your teams produce reports or results?
- Dear Entrepreneur: Think Cash, Not Ideas—Many entrepreneurs are caught up in the current “big idea” business model. If you come up with the right idea, you can be the next Google, Groupon, or whatever. This post is a reminder that there are other ways to start profitable businesses that don’t involve a “big idea.”
- How to Become a Thought Leader in Six Steps—Becoming a thought leader has never been easier for the average person to do. With the availability of Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, and everything else, anyone can become a thought leader and be influential in their realm of expertise. This post provides six steps to build your personal brand and become a thought leader.
Yahoo Finance
- Being Steve Jobs’ Boss—Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be Steve Jobs’ boss? This is an interview with John Sculley who had that task after the Apple board turned down Steve Jobs’ for CEO. If you pay attention, you can notice some of the keys to Apple’s success such as Steve Jobs’ love for beautiful products and his demand to keep things simple. I came up with six keys to Apple’s success. How many can you find?
Mashable
- 5 Tips for Startup Success from the CEO of Meetup—Anytime you can learn something from someone who has already done what you want to do, it’s worthwhile. If you’re looking to start a digital company, this plus the next two posts are for you.
- 6 Tips on Starting a Digital Business from the Founder of Pandora—I’m a big fan of Tim Westergren’s story and what it took for him to start Pandora. His advice in this post is priceless.
- 5 Tips for Startup Success from a Co-founder of Hootsuite—Hootsuite is awesome. This guy helped to get it started. That makes him pretty cool. My favorite advice that he gives is the need to address a real problem and the importance of staying focused. Check it out for yourself.
Local Tech Wire
- Memo to Investors: Entrepreneurs Aren’t Born, They’re Made—I’ve been wondering for a while how important entrepreneurial DNA is. If you don’t have “the DNA,” can you still be an entrepreneur? This article helps to debunk the myth that entrepreneurs are a select breed, and that either you have it or you don’t.
- Defining Who is a Real Entrepreneur – It’s Not Black and White—This post is written by the same author of the previous post. It further develops the point that entrepreneurs aren’t born, they’re made.
Copyblogger
- SEO Copywriting: The Five Essential Elements to Focus On—Copyblogger is so good that it’s the one blog I make sure to read every day. If you want to get into internet marketing or blogging, this is the blog to subscribe to. And if you want to learn about the essential elements to focus on for SEO, this it the post to read.
- How to do 500 Times Better Than AdSense—A lot of people think that the way to make money with a blog is to monetize with ads. That might work for some, but in this post, Johnny B. Truant shows how you can do 500 times better than AdSense. You may want to take notes.
- 8 Bad Habits That Crush Your Creativity and Stifle Your Success—You may not realize it, but there may be habits that you have that are stifling creativity and success. This post talks about how to deal with eight of those habits.
- The Best of Copyblogger 2010—This isn’t necessarily a post per se, but it’s a list of the best Copyblogger posts of 2010. Copyblogger posts are gold, consider this list to be the purest form.
Chris Brogan’s Blog
- How to Write Three Blog Posts a Day—Chris Brogan is an amazing blogger. He’s ranked number three in Ad Age’s Power 150 list of top marketing blogs. This is his post about how to write three blog posts a day. Make sure you check out how Chris makes this happen.
Pro Copy Tips
- Storytelling and the Greatest Sales Letter of All Time—Like I said before, this “greatest sales letter of all time” is absolutely amazing. Check it out and let me know what you think.
Quick Sprout
- Beginner’s Guide to Corporate Entities—If you’re thinking about starting a business but don’t know much about the difference between a sole proprietorship, an LLC, or a C corporation, this post is a great starting point. It explains the basic differences in a way that’s easy to grasp.
- How to Effectively Use Testimonials—Testimonials are critical to online marketing success. This post will help you to use testimonials more effectively.
- 7 WordPress Plugins You Ought to Know About—Sifting through WordPress plugins is tiresome. Which ones are worth your time, and which ones aren’t? These are seven plugins that are definitely worth your time.
- Focus on What Your Good At and Nothing Else!—Sometimes it’s worth it to learn something new, but other times it’s better to hire someone to do the things you can’t do. This post outlines why you should become an expert in what your good at and not waste your time with anything else.
Kiss Metrics Blog
- 101 Conversion Tips to Help Improve Your Website—Learning more conversion tips is never a bad idea. How about 121 more? Awesome. This list is long, but you can learn a lot by paying attention to these tips.
User Interface Engineering
- The $300 Million Button—How can a web-site button be worth $300 million? You’ll have to read this post to find out.
Bubble Cow
- Editing Your Own Novel: The Importance of Self Editing—According to this post, editing your own novel gives you a better chance to get published. Read more to find some tips on how to do it yourself.
Inside CRM
- 101 Ways to Monetize Your Blog Without Irritating Your Readers—Most people want to make money off of their blogs. This list provides 101 ways to do that. Yes, 101. That’s enough tips to last for a year.
So there you have it: 26 amazing business posts from the year 2010. How about you? Do you have any amazing business posts to share from 2010?
Like you, I was duly impressed by the How & Why to Stop Multitasking article. A problem so obvious and yet still such a poor habit so often ignored. Along the same lines as that article, I received this quote in my school inbox one day last month:
"If you are presented with a task that takes less than two minutes, you should do it right away. The effort you would go to trying to remember to do it later is more trouble than just doing the task immediately."
That's the "Two Minute Rule" from David Allen's book "Getting Things Done" and was inserted into a class email regarding completing a mandatory survey that would take less than two minutes. A survey that otherwise would have been put off by the class until the deadline two weeks later, was completed by 60% of the class by the end of day one thanks to the inspiration of that quote.
Not only did I fill that survey out immediately, I also began to employ that rule in my daily life. And it works like a charm. Less multi-tasking and more tasking in 2011 Joseph Wesley.
This two minute rule is helpful. If you don't do things when you think about them, you'll probably forget to do them later. I'm going to try this rule out and see how it works.
Hey Joseph,
Thanks for posting this, Actually it has giving me a great idea for some future posts. One of my favorites that you posted was How to do 500 Times Better Than AdSense by one of my favorite bloggers Johnny B. Truant.
Keep up the incredible job as a content created.
Talk soon,
Jesse
Thanks, Jesse, I’m glad you liked the post. That article by Johnny B is really good. Experience gives a post like that much more impact.