New York SBDC Research Network

By Anna Auerbach From LinkedIn HubSpot was one of Werk’s earliest supporters, which put me in the orbit of Chief People Officer Katie Burke, who recently joined me the first installment of “Looking Forward.” She shares my passion for flexibility solutions—even the kinds that don't make headlines or annual reports. "Some of the most important work that we do is not measured in revenue but in the trips that aren't taken, in the hours and minutes that people get to spend at home with their loved ones, and in the trust that we build when we create space for people to have those types of connections with their families or with their lives or with things that matter most," she told me. Millennials get a bad rap for demanding a lot of flexibility, but I think the reality is they just demanded what everyone in the workforce actually wants. Gen Z, millennials, Baby Boomers—I actually think everyone wants flexibility at work. And so I think we'll continue to see...

Consider this: There are about 700 million websites. But to most of us, only a tiny fraction of those sites exist because we jump from bookmark to bookmark, scanning our favorite homepages and refreshing our feeds. People are loyal to websites that draw them in because, simply put, the majority of those 700 millions sites are just plain bad. Of millions of websites analyzed by Marketing Grader, a whopping 72% received a grade of 59 out of 100 or below, which essentially means 72% of websites are failing to attract new visitors and convert leads. Marketers everywhere are asking, "Why do so many websites fall short?" Read more from Marketing Profs You never get a second chance to make a first impression. That’s why your homepage is undoubtedly one of the most important pages on your website. For any given company, the homepage is its virtual front door -- and face to the world. If a new visitor doesn't like what they see, their knee-jerk reaction is to hit th...

Grader.com offers a "family of tools that helps measure all that matters in inbound marketing." Read "inbound marketing" as the Internet, social media and blogs. And they are all free. Website Grader is a tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website or blog and provides recommendations for improvement. Press Release Grader evaluates press releases and provides a marketing effectiveness score. Twitter Grader measures one's Twitter profile. (Last I checked, the NYS SBDC Twitter feed had a score of 87 out of 100.) These are all services of Hubspot.com , an Internet marketing company that also offers a website redesign kit gratis, as well as some useful seminars. Oh, and Are You Using Your Business Cards to Socialize? ; i.e., to use social networks. It's All About Networking.