Today, The New York Times reported that Senate Republicans squashed the small business bill that would allow small business tax breaks and increased loan availability. While Alibaba.com is not taking political sides on the issue, we are in favor of helping small businesses succeed.

In fact, we’ve created a site just for this purpose. It’s just one of the many helpful resources provided by Alibaba.com to help your business get off the ground and point you toward success. We wish you the best of luck!

Here are a few good books for the budding entrepreneur from Entrepreneur.com. They may not make the list of the best business books ever written, but they are  definitely valuable in your quest for wisdom. Let us know if you have other obscure books that make your list. Enjoy!

1. You Need to Be a Little Crazy, by Barry Moltz
An irreverent, but honest, account of what to expect when starting up. Moltz, a serial entrepreneur and angel investor , discusses the passion–or insanity–that drives entrepreneurs and draws from real-life stories to show that sometimes failure is inevitable. It’s a message every small-business owner needs to hear, but doesn’t hear enough.

2. Oh, the Places You’ll Go!, by Dr. Seuss
It’s a treatise on doubt, procrastination, loneliness and overcoming your fears in a refreshingly brief 600 words. It may look like a children’s book, but the advice in this Dr. Seuss classic is universal: When you pick yourself up after every setback, success is “98 and 3⁄4 percent guaranteed.”


3. Founders at Work, by Jessica Livingston
If you’ve ever wondered what qualities all successful entrepreneurs possess, wonder no more. Livingston takes a look at several of today’s well-known tech companies, including Apple, Flickr and PayPal. Through illuminating interviews with company founders, you’ll learn valuable–and sometimes surprising–things about how these revolutionaries stumbled on the path to success.

4. The Innovator’s Dilemma, by Clayton Christensen
This is an engaging book that explains how big companies are toppled by ignoring innovations from seemingly low-end competitors. Entrepreneurs should read it like a playbook on how to break into markets and catch the incumbents flatfooted.

5. Purple Cow, by Seth Godin
Godin has just one piece of advice for business owners: Be remarkable. You’re either a purple cow (exciting, phenomenal and unforgettable) or you’re just like the rest of them (boring and invisible). The idea is that the key to success is being extraordinary from the start by building the remarkable into everything you do.

At Alibaba.com, we have a Twitter feed, Facebook page, YouTube channel and AliBlog. At times it’s tricky to allocate resources, brainstorm ideas and satisfy our fans through all the channels. But, hopefully we’re doing a good job because we really enjoy it.

Does your company already have an established social media strategy? If you don’t, you may be lagging behind your competition. If you do, is it being executed in the right way? The following article from Young Entrepreneur will give you some great information to get your social media channels flowing in the right direction. Enjoy!

Safety First! Think Before You Dive into Social Media

You wouldn’t dream of starting as business without a plan, so why do so many business owners start social media campaigns without any real planning or strategy. Typically, they start blogging, Tweeting, building Facebook pages and checking in on FourSquare simply because everyone else is doing it.

In other words, they approach social media marketing as if they were a kid playing with a shiny new toy. Ask a six year old what his “strategy” is in playing the toy truck and he’ll look at you like you were crazy.

Ask a small business owner what his social media strategy is, and you are likely to see the exact expression.

“I’m looking to get more customers,” is the most common answer.

The only problem with that statement is that “getting more customers” is a goal, not a strategy.

The Strategy Stage

Effective social media strategy begins with self-reflection.

• What is the core of my business?
• What differentiates my business?
• Who is my target audience?
• Once I get an audience, what messages do I plan on delivering?
• (Most importantly) How can I turn my audience in revenues?

Once you have clear answers to these questions, then you will be able to look at a variety of social media platforms and see which ones are best suited to deliver your messaging.

For example, if you are looking to establish yourself or your business as experts in your field, blogging and social community involvement may be the best way to go. If you are looking to enhance your customer service or make specific offers to your target audience, Twitter may be the best platform. For businesses looking to work with other businesses, LinkedIn may be the best bet.

In virtually all cases, though, a combination of platforms and campaigns is the best option.

The Best Choices for your Business

Unfortunately, many businesses go the “trial and error” route. They dip their toes in the social media waters and fail to achieve their desired goals. The reasons for the failure can be a lack of understanding of the etiquette of the particular platform, poor messaging or a failure to make a sufficient commitment of time and resources.

This “trial and error” method can cost companies (especially smaller companies) enormously. Time and money spent on bad campaigns can never be recovered. Most than just costing your company resources, a poorly executed social media campaign can cost your company credibility and even destroy your company’s hard-earned reputation.

Because of limited resources, many entrepreneurs make the mistake of putting their social media marketing into the wrong hands. They hire an intern who knows every social media platform, but doesn’t know the first thing about your business.

This isn’t just reckless. It is stupid!

Think about it. If you have the wrong person blogging, posting on Facebook, Tweeting or commenting, you can see your business’s goodwill destroyed overnight. Remember that every word you broadcast online is both permanent and searchable.

That’s why it is so important to either have social media expertise in-house or to hire a company with not only real social media experience, but one that understands your business and your messaging.

Getting Started

When I work with clients on their social media strategy, we go through a detailed question and answer process. There is no single social media platform or combination of platforms that work for every business. In earlier Business Learning Center articles, we have discussed the strengths and weaknesses of a variety of social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogging.

The objective behind the Q & A process is to understand the client’s short term and long term business goals, to see what the client’s other current marketing and advertising efforts are and then determine what the client hopes wants the results of the social media campaign to be.

Some of the questions we typically ask are:

• What is your commitment to the social media campaign (manpower, time investment, budget and duration)?
• What are the goals of the campaign?
• What are the criteria for measuring the success or failure of the program?
• How do you plan on measuring the success or failure of the campaign?
• Who will be at the “steering wheel” of your social media campaign?
• Does anyone in your company have social media expertise?
• More importantly, does that person(s) have the skills to deliver your key messaging through social media?
• To what extent are you willing to outsource your social media campaigns?

Armed with the answers to these questions, I work with clients to build their social media campaigns. In some instances, we just handle the front-end work: creating a strategic plan and launching the campaigns. In many cases, clients want us to run all aspects of their social media campaigns.

In Conclusion

Social media can be a very powerful business tool, but it must be treated with the same respect as you treat other marketing and advertising efforts. Don’t begin a campaign until you have the right strategy and the qualified personnel to execute that strategy. For most entrepreneurs, it means going to a company that really understands both business and social media.

I was searching through and reading some blog posts at Youngentrepreneur and came across this gem. The 33 quotes below are the best of the best. Quotes can be inspirational, grounding, whimsical, deep or simply true. Anyway you look at them, they may be your ticket to entrepreneurial greatness. Enjoy!

“If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” Jim Rohn, Entrepreneur, Author, Motivational Speaker

“In life and business, there are two cardinal sins: The first is to act without thought, and the second is to not act at all.” – Carl Icahn, Investor and Entrepreneur

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Poet

“A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.” – Richard Branson, Entrepreneur

“Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes; work never begun.” – Christina Rossetti, Author

“Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.” Williams Jenning Bryan, Politician and three-time Presidential candidate

“Watch, listen, and learn. You can’t know it all yourself. Anyone who thinks they do is destined for mediocrity.” – Donald Trump, Business Mogul

“High expectations are the key to everything.” – Sam Walton, Entrepreneur

“The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.” – Vidal Sassoon, Entrepreneur

“Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.” William Butler Yeats, Poet

“I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.” – Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect and Entrepreneur

“Opportunity is missed by most because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” – Thomas Alva Edison, Inventor and Entrepreneur

“If you work just for money, you’ll never make it, but if you love what you’re doing and you always put the customer first, success will be yours.” – Ray Kroc, Entrepreneur

“The secret of success is constancy to purpose.” – Benjamin Disraeli, Author, Politician and Scholar

“How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.” – Coco Chanel, Entrepreneur

“A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him.” – David Brinkley, Newscaster

“I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.” – G. K. Chesterton, Author

“Those who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try nothing and succeed.” Lloyd Jones

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.”­ – Michael Jordan, Basketball Legend and Entrepreneur

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” – Thomas Alva Edison, Inventor and Entrepreneur

“Not doing more than the average is what keeps the average down.” – William M. Winans, Clergyman

“Six essential qualities that are the key to success: Sincerity, personal integrity, humility, courtesy, wisdom, charity.” William Menninger, Entrepreneur

“My will shall shape the future. Whether I fail or succeed shall be no one’s doing but my own. I am the force. I can clear any obstacle before me or I can be lost in the maze. My choice. My responsibility. Win or lose; only I hold the key to my destiny.” – Elaine Maxwell, Author

“It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd American President

“You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do.” – Henry Ford, Entrepreneur

“The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible — and achieve it, generation after generation.” – Pearl S. Buck, Author

“It is on our failures that we base a new and different and better success.” – Havelock Ellis, Physician and Author

“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.” – Goethe

“With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate, and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity.” – Keshavan Nair, Author – Gandhi Biographer

“To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.” – Anatole France, Poet

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” – T. S. Eliot, Author

“Some people have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can.” Willis R. Whitney, American Chemist

“For every failure, there’s an alternative course of action. You just have to find it. When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.” – Mary Kay Ash, Entrepreneur

By now you’ve probably seen the Indonesian smoking baby sensation on YouTube. I can’t help but think that the kid could be kicking the habit if his village would invest in some of these electronic cigarettes.