Broken dreams can either stir up hunger or infuse discouragement. I look around my city and see shreds of both woven into the fabric of the small business community. We are hungry to press on but weary from the fight. For most of us, what started as a passionate expedition into the direction of our dreams, has proven to to be an exhausting up hill battle. Is this sounding familiar? For those of us who aren’t locked in the grip of struggle perhaps you find yourself treading water in the grip of survival? Unable to capitalize to your fullest potential and continually replicating the same results? My name is Russell Breton and I am on a mission to make a difference. I want to change the s

Mark Bean, the managing director of C7, and Josh Hilliker, the director of social media at Intel-GE Care Innovations, sat on a panel moderated by 3Fold’s Gordon Fowler to discuss whether or not social media’s return on investment (ROI) is measurable. Turns out, it is. As was revealed over the course of their discussion, there’s a plethora of tools out there for everyone to track just how effective their social media presence is. There are a lot of dated measurements (i.e. number of clicks or time on site), but they don’t quite carry over into social networking very well. Some of the newer tools include Hootsuite and Tweetdeck for the smaller businesses, or Radian 6 and Crimson Hexagon for

The little store in the little town© By Diana Hartley Once upon a time there was a business. The business stood on a cute corner of a cute town and for years did cute, if not, substantial business. One thing was for sure, it made the owner the money he needed to pay his bills and stay in the town. The owner knew all of his neighbors and friends who frequented his establishment often, if not every day. The business sold goods that people needed in their daily lives and it was easy and convenient to go to town to get these things. Then, what seemed like overnight, the town began to change. The news had forecast big changes for the town years before, but no one who had lived there, many for

Midtown residents have been dealing for years with the impacts of a City led campaign to "Bring People Downtown" that ignored the fact that people are already here. Media and Midtown Business Association boosters have contributed by consistently disparaging the existing mixed-use neighborhoods as a desolate, disgusting and scary wasteland; a "dead zone" with invisible/irrelevant residents. Yet, Midtown's now-attractive and lucrative historic neighborhoods ONLY exist, due to the diligent, hard work and determination of residents, preservationists and neighborhoods associations, over the past few decades. Residents met with the MBA and other stakeholders in 2009 as part of MBA's Regional

 The Sacramento Social Media Club (SMCSac) held their April meeting at The Urban Hive featuring a trio of experts discussing social media and the law. Formally titled “The Web of Justice,” some forty plus lawyers, law students and those just interested in the topic gathered to hear individual presentations, followed by a question and answer period. Jeff Marmins, Executive Director of the SMCSac, was the MC for the evening, welcoming the crowd, before introducing the three speakers. Jonathan G. Steinis a litigator whose law practice handles a variety of cases from personal injury to debt-collection. It is as a blogger, however, that Mr. Stein comes by his social media expertise. He contrib

Do you have a business? As the sales manager of The Sacramento Press, I have been meeting with a lot of small business owners in the area who I would have never heard of if it weren’t for a few good leads. And, it’s pretty likely that a lot of other Sacramentans haven’t heard about these quaint little businesses either. We are talking about businesses that could offer up some great goods and services to you and those you know. With the economy in a downward spiral, it’s becoming more and more difficult for these businesses to brand themselves and market their offerings. As a result, they aren’t in a position to buy internet advertising like they used to. So when faced with these opposit