JumpUpTeam Blog - Starting a Business and Succeeding

Just Start Event in Seattle - Tell Your Story to Win $50K

As many of you have heard, the Just Start campaign kicked off last week. We've had some really amazing Just Start stories already. One of my personal favorites is...Cojack's. Check it out!

More folks will be adding their voices to the Just Start campaign as we hit the road and have live events in four cities across the country. Today, the Just Start campaign kicks off its first event in Seattle. There's a bunch of cool stuff to do at the event. You can work with smal business experts to help you actually kick start your business. You can hang out with some of our JumpUp members who are there to share their very inspirational "Just Start" stories. And, the video confessional will be set up for folks to share their "Just Start" stories live for a chance to score $50K in cash and expert resources to start a business.

Last but not least, folks can also pick up a free copy of QuickBooks Simple Start 2008! I am just thrilled...in fact, I need to head out the door ASAP to get to the event on time today! So, if you're in Seattle, come down to the Westlake Center between 11AM and 6PM today and tomorrow. All the best, Kira

What Do You Think About the Forums?

Hello all, this is Chris.  I'm the product manager for JumpUp, and I'm excited to start using this blog to get your thoughts on how the site is working (or not working for you).  Recently, we updated the forums to include sub-forums to help organize the ever-growing number of topics we have.  I'd love to have your input on the forums.

- Are there any pain points in using the forums today?
- Are there other discussion forums on other sites that you really like?  If so, why?
- What do you think about the new sub-forums?
- Have you thought about posting a question but haven't?  If so, is there anything we can do to help?

Please let us know what you think.

Getting customers with great profiles

    Hi folks, Kira here. A few times a month, we're going to highlight JumpUp members who've done really cool things around here. From providing really valuable small business help in our forums to sharing great stories in their spotlights, our members shine, and it's a great part of my job to turn the lights up that much more!

Another great part of my job...getting to read all of the JumpUp profiles as new members join. A few of the ones I've really enjoyed lately include:

    
• Quarto Conservation - I love the recent surprise and the favorite item on the desk

    
• Chefess - Even though she doesn't have a picture, the most unusual client story is hilarious!

I'd love to hear which profiles you find valuable on JumpUp. Also, what do you think makes a good profile? We're hoping to share some insights with folks about how to improve their profiles, because having a rich profile here at JumpUp helps businesses get found on the web. Remember, JumpUp shares page rank with its members, so including a web address (and having a complete profile) improve the profiles' search ranking and, in turn, the ranking of the sites listed on the profiles.

Til next time and JumpUp! Kira

Getting Customers - JumpUp's First Steps to Helping You

Hi folks, Kira here again. As a serial entrepreneur and the wife of a budding business owner, I know the pain (and the thrill) of getting customers to buy your product or service. I vividly remember begging college professors to tell their students about my language travel business because, as I like to put it, no customers = no food or change to call home!

Helping you get customers is one of the key priorities for the JumpUp team and for the whole community over the coming months. There are a lot of ways that, together, we can help. We just released our first center about online marketing to help you easily find information, tools and experts who can help you get more people to visit your website. We've got several forums devoted entirely to getting customers, where we've got lots of people asking and answering questions about SEO (search engine optimization), word of mouth marketing and the pros and cons of websites v blogs.

These are just some of the first steps that we're taking here at JumpUp to help you get customers. I'd love to know...what else can we do? What help do you need?

A Warm Welcome from the JumpUp Team

Greetings and hello! Kira here. I'm so excited to share the news that we've launched blogging functionality on JumpUp, and the JumpUp Team is jumping right in.

We'll be blogging about a variety of topics from sharing the latest features and functionality on JumpUp to sparking conversations about how to get more customers. We'll have members of the JumpUp Team posting to the blog. They include Sunondo, our fantastic development lead; Eirene, our fearless leader; Chris, our newest member; Wendy, our design guru, and, me, your community and marketing lead. Last but not least, we'd like to see you here too. The intention of the blog is to spark a conversation with all of you.

Speaking of all of you, we have so many members with amazing expertise to share, and blogging is a great way to share that expertise with everyone. And, in keeping with our commitments to you, blogging also helps members who use the tool get more visibility on the web. Keep an eye for the "create blog" link on your profile pages, which should be live in a few weeks.

Till then...JumpUp! Kira