As many of you know, I write for a number of online publications, one of them being the American Express OPEN Forum blogs. Not long ago, they gave me the go-ahead to open up that opportunity to the small business experts who contribute here at Small Business Trends.

That means it’s not just me writing articles at the OPEN Forum — now the Expert community from here is publishing over there, too.

Recent Submissions by the Community

We’ve had this program in place since August.  Well over a dozen community contributions are published there to date. Here are some recent articles of the Small Business Trends experts published at the OPEN Forum (in no particular order):

• Laurel Delaney - McDonald’s: Local Footprint, Global Reach.
• Brent Leary - What CNN Can Teach Entrepreneurs About Social Media
• Dawn Rivers Baker - Making Life Difficult for the Self Employed
• Joel Libava - I Don’t Like My Franchise. Now What Do I Do?
• Ivana Taylor - Me to Customer: Don’t Let the Screen Door Hit You.
• Steve King - The End Of Online Auctions?
• Ramon Ray - Develop the Knack for Business Growth
• Deborah Brown - Crying Babies Trump Whiny Managers
• Zane Safrit - Small Businesses, Tear Down Those Walls
• Scott Shane - Entrepreneurs with Poor Credit Face Crunch
• Mark Anderson - Drowning in Red Ink, Er …. Let’s Call it Maroon

And we’ve just added a new face at OPEN Forum, too. Dr. Susan Reid, whose articles you’ve seen here, has her first article published this morning as part of the Small Business Trends Network on the OPEN Forum:
Ten Steps to Successful Online Book Marketing.

Please show your support by reading the Experts’ articles.  If you like an article, click on the little black button “Yes” underneath the article title indicating you found it useful.   That will tell us which topics you want more of.

Turning into a Thriving Community

It’s turning out to be quite a thriving blog over there. Guy Kawasaki, an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer turned venture capitalist, is writing there. Scott Belsky of the Behance.com creative network writes there. John Battelle, former co-founding editor of Wired magazine and now CEO of Federated Media, posts there. Mike Masnick, founder of Techdirt is contributing there. And members of the Techdirt Insight community are now also contributing, in much the same way as the Small Business Trends Expert community.

There’s also a timely brand spanking new section over there titled “The Economy.” (Pretty timely you’d say, right?)

Opportunities for the Small Business Trends Community

I’m really happy to be able to provide this opportunity for the experts in the Small Business Trends community. It means that each person gets a chance to share their expertise on small business topics to a wider and different audience over at the OPEN Forum. 

Here is the description of the criteria for becoming part of this select group of small business experts:

The Small Business Trends Contributors are a network of small business experts sharing insights on a wide variety of timely topics affecting entrepreneurs and small business owners of all types. The Contributors are themselves small business owners and entrepreneurs or those who deal daily with small business and entrepreneurship issues as academics, analysts, consultants, journalists.

Each brings a unique perspective – and an area of expertise, be it global business, franchising, startups, business trends, online business, marketing, technology, customer service, human resources or hiring. Each is chosen for their ability to look at issues and distill them down to what entrepreneurs and small business owners need to know to make decisions and run their businesses. Each Contributor speaks with a unique, no-nonsense voice about key issues.

A big thank-you to all of the small business experts for lending their time, expertise and valuable contributions. And many thanks to American Express OPEN for being so welcoming of multiple voices.

Looking for More Experts

Finally, if you’d like to know more about this program and whether you can be involved by becoming a Small Business Trends Expert, drop me a note at: anita - at - anitacampbell.com. Tell me the topic area(s) you want to write about — be specific.  And point me to a few writing samples.

I am looking for those who have something fresh and interesting to add to the conversation, and who currently are bloggers or regularly write articles.  You must also want to become an ongoing part of the community — no one-time submissions por favor.  Only original articles are accepted — we do not republish previously published materials. 

(Usually I get inundated with responses whenever I put out a call like this, so please be patient. I evaluate  each request individually and respond as fast as my over-burdened inbox allows.)

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