Today, Yahoo! Small Business launched the Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard, a free tool that helps entrepreneurs discover new marketing opportunities to grow their businesses, while getting a comprehensive picture of their marketing results, online reputations, and website performance, all in one place.

Designed specifically with the small business owner in mind, the Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard provides a clear, consolidated picture of a business’s marketing results and reputation, making it easier to discover new insights and develop new ideas for growth.  With key business metrics from across the Web accessible in one location, small business owners with limited resources can spend more time focusing on their core businesses and less time buried in multiple interfaces and spreadsheets.

Some of the key features included in the free Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard include:

• Search engine and directory listings: Enables monitoring and provides recommendations on new listing opportunities, covering over 100 sites (including Yelp, Yahoo! Local, and more)
• Online reputation management: Pulls information from up to 8,000 sources (including Facebook and Twitter)
• Site traffic analysis: Enables users to understand key website performance metrics (including Google Analytics)
• Small business-focused news and advice: Provided from Yahoo! Small Business Advisor
• Campaign tracking: Provides email marketing, SEO, and SEM campaign tracking (must subscribe to these services)
• Support: 24/7 in-house free customer support

Additionally, business owners can opt for paid premium services within the Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard that enable them to enhance their marketing and analysis.  For example:

• Local Visibility Pro: Small businesses can increase their online visibility by submitting their business information to over 100 search engines and directories
• Reputation Management Pro: Users get more comprehensive data, plus the ability to track their competitors, receive email  alerts, and share positive customer comments via social channels or email
• Integrated campaign tracking: Small businesses can also attract new customers by taking advantage of marketing services from featured, best-in-class third party marketing vendors, including Constant Contact and OrangeSoda, and display and monitor results from campaigns with those vendors from within the Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard

“We created the Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard to help small business owners who feel overwhelmed by online marketing options and monitoring a wide range of sites and social networks to keep up with customer feedback,” said Shannon Parker Hane, Director of Product Marketing, Yahoo! Small Business. “Now, within a single tool customers can conveniently evaluate their marketing options, campaign results and online reputation without having to search across the Web for information.”

The Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard and Yahoo! Small Business Advisor are the most recent additions to the suite of tools from Yahoo! Small Business that provide resources to help small businesses grow. To learn more about the Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard, please visit http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/marketing-dashboard.

Yahoo! Small Business Advisor also devotes an entire section to key political issues facing the small- business community throughout the 2012 election year. Featured in the launch is an exclusive Q&A with Small Business Administrator Karen Mills, President Obama’s new Cabinet appointee, along with results from Yahoo!’s second quarterly small-business political survey.

Released today, the online survey conducted by Yahoo! Small Business and Ipsos MediaCT indicates that small-business owners across the country continue to be frustrated with the status quo.  A majority are planning to become politically involved this election season, saying they will give time or money to support political candidates in the upcoming elections, and nearly one-third said business issues will take priority over family, lifestyle, social, or geopolitical issues when they head to the polls in November.

Additional findings show:

• The GOP presidential candidate that these small-business owners say will be best for supporting small-business issues is Mitt Romney, with 23 percent of respondents behind him; however, “none” is the choice of 20 percent surveyed and another 20 percent remain undecided.
• More than 70 percent of survey respondents – all owners or partial owners of U.S. businesses with 1-100 employees – claim that the stalled economy has had a negative impact on their business.

“We are thrilled to present our users with a destination that provides them with the support they need in these complicated economic and political times,” said Tom Byun, vice president and general manager, Yahoo! Small Business. “We are passionate about providing the small-business community with the necessary counsel – whatever that means to the individual – to help them achieve their entrepreneurial dreams.”

Yahoo! Small Business Advisor will include original articles and videos from Yahoo!’s own Small Business experts, while top-tier partners including Inc., Reuters, and Entrepreneur contribute best-in-class small-business news.

Yahoo! Small Business Advisor showcases some of Yahoo!’s patented technologies and new features, including:

• Yahoo!’s Content Optimization Relevance Engine (C.O.R.E.) – also used by Yahoo! editorial programmers as a guide in Yahoo! homepage programming, which enables Advisor to learn what is interesting to users and surface those types of articles for easy navigation and content discovery
• Yahoo! Social Bar highlights the business news a user’s personal social network is reading and talking about
• Yahoo!’s Livestand iPad app provides “anytime, anywhere” access to Advisor content, which includes small-business articles, videos, blogs, and Twitter feeds
• Yahoo! Answers allows users to tap the wisdom of the community to answer pressing small-business questions

Released in beta in late 2011, Yahoo! Small Business Advisor aggregates the best of Yahoo! original articles plus content from leading business publishers, while leveraging Yahoo! technology to deliver personalized information to both aspiring and established business owners. Testifying to audience enthusiasm, the site reached 4 million page views just three months into beta.

We hope you’ll check it out!

Photo: Anthony Tieuli

It does in reality, too. I can tell you this firsthand, because it’s what Yahoo! Small Business gets to do every day for our customers.

As I write this, we’re in the midst of one of the busiest and most exciting times of the year for many of these folks: the holiday shopping season. Whether you’re a Merchant Solutions customer selling online using our store platform, or you’re a Web Hosting customer with a bricks-and-mortar retail business using your online presence to expand your customer reach, this time of year is crucial.

We know this, and delivering products, resources, and experiences designed to help our customers grow their businesses and be successful during the holidays and throughout the year is what we do year-round. For me, one of the best parts of this is knowing who will use what we deliver. In many cases, I mean faces and names, and not just business names. Something that makes Yahoo! Small Business unique is the face-time we get with our customers—not only at industry conferences like Internet Retailer, but also at our very own Yahoo! Merchant Summit.

Talking to our customers is my favorite part of the Summit. Some have businesses that have been life-changing not only for them, but also for their customers. Here’s just one example: After her son was diagnosed with autism, one of our customers turned her experience finding ways to help him communicate into what she calls the best job she’s ever had. She created National Autism Resources, a site where parents and teachers can find easy-to-understand information along with affordable autism teaching materials and products that can help children on the autism spectrum. If you’d like to hear more of her story, you can watch this video.

We get a lot of direct feedback from our customers at the Summit and through other channels about what they need to thrive and how we can delight them, and we incorporate what we learn into the products we launch. I’m lucky enough to be part of all the action, and am excited to tell you about a few of the products and features that Yahoo! has launched for our small business customers in recent months:

• For our Merchant Solutions customers, we launched a customer registration system that uses social login, where customers can sign in using their credentials from Yahoo!, Google, and AOL (we plan to add Facebook and PayPal to this list in the first part of 2012). Our system also allows customers to save their credit and debit card information. This is designed to make checkout faster and easier for shoppers, which can help to increase sales. The ability for shoppers to save card information is also a feature that most hosted competitors don’t offer.

• Also for Merchant Solutions, we launched a new ecommerce site search that lets us leverage our Yahoo! Search technology. The new site search provides a better, more engaging search experience, allowing shoppers to add items to their carts from the search results page, refine search results with filters, search only specific product categories, and more.

• For our Web Hosting customers, we added a number of great new template designs to Yahoo! Site Solution, which makes it easy to design a professional-looking web site with little or no web design experience. We’ve also launched widgets that help customers customize their pages by inserting badges, banners, and HTML for custom widgets.

The dreams we help our customers achieve is what inspires me every day. It’s truly rewarding to hear our customers’ stories and to be able to deliver products that set them up for success, so they can continue to make their dreams real.

Jennifer Farwell
Sr. Manager, Product Content
Yahoo! Small Business

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series entitled, “In My Own Words,” that gives employees the opportunity to share their own stories about Yahoo!. Feel like yodeling your own? Post your Yahoo! story on your social networks using the hashtag #myYahoostory.

Edward Hechter

Edward Hechter was Executive VP and General Manager of a major web development firm, managing hundreds of employees and operations spread across the country. After 18 years as a corporate road warrior averaging 150 travel days per year, he decided that being an effective corporate officer required too great a sacrifice on his ability to be the husband and father he aspired to be.

A year after helping take the web development firm public, he decided to combine his skills in ecommerce and online marketing with his wife’s experience in business operations and technology. In January 2007, they acquired and re-launched PartyPail.com. Within 10 months, they expanded out of their house into a 1,800 square-foot warehouse less than a mile from their children’s school and started hiring employees. By 2008, they expanded to a 9,000 square-foot facility even closer to their children’s school. They are now in an 11,000 square-foot facility shipping 6,000 orders per month generating millions of dollars in sales each year.

The Hechters seek to provide their 24 employees with a family-friendly work environment, and so they’ve created a “Mom Squad” of parents and grandparents generating income while having the flexibility to be involved in their family lives.

“Of all the ‘jobs’ I’ve had, the best job I’ve ever had is being a dad and husband. The great joy in my life has revolved around my wife and kids. Working in the corporate world traveling 150+ days per year put a strain on our family, and it caused me to miss things I can never recapture. Since starting PartyPail, I’ve been able to attend EVERY play, school program, sporting event, Scout outing, and fun family event without any interruption in my professional career. I’ve been blessed to have the flexibility to be a soccer coach, a Scout leader, a school volunteer, and much more. I get to drive my son(s) to school, and often get to pick them up as well. My relationship with my children, and my wife, is very strong, and feeds my soul – something I’m sure would be more challenging if I were still a road warrior in the corporate world.”

Yahoo! applauds the Hechters for not only re-shaping their careers to allow them to prioritize family, but also for creating a work environment that allows their employees to do the same.

Nacho Hernandez

Having missed out on the opportunity to work in the family business his great grandfather started, his grandfather worked on, and his father eventually sold, Nacho Hernandez felt compelled to create his own family business, so he launched MexGrocer.com.  Over a decade and 150,000 customers later, he and his father are working side-by-side to create a new family legacy.

“My great-grandfather started a family legacy that lasted for three generations. The company was sold in my father’s generation, and so I was unable to be a part of it. We started MexGrocer.com to re-create and reclaim a new family legacy. My hope is that in a decade or two, I’ll still be here working side-by-side with my own children, and for decades after that, they’ll be passing the heritage onto their children and their children’s children.

“Some people are only able to see their fathers once or twice a year. By having the opportunity to start a new business with my father and thanks to the great ecommerce platform we’ve received from Yahoo!, I’m able to work side-by-side with my own father every day. And we don’t just see each other – we’re building a business legacy together.”

Yahoo! celebrates Hernandez for melding work and family to create a legacy to last for generations.

Hear more about Edward Hechter’s story

Hear more about Nacho Hernandez’s story

Many Americans dream of owning their own businesses and the myriad of benefits that come with it – the job flexibility, the satisfaction of being one’s own boss and controlling one’s own financial destiny, and the potential of turning a passion into a profession.

The impact of these enterprising individuals, brave enough to “go out on their own” and shape their own economic futures, is astounding. Starting a business requires you to be the CEO of everything, from HR to accounting, to product or service fulfillment, to website development and maintenance. It can be a daunting prospect, though with the right idea, a strong business plan, a lot of passion, and carefully chosen partners, it doesn’t have to be quite so daunting.

This National Small Business Week, Yahoo! Small Business is celebrating our nation’s current and future entrepreneurs by offering:

• A fun and interactive quiz on our Facebook page for would-be entrepreneurs to test their small business IQs. See if you’re ready to start a business!

• A special discount for entrepreneurs thinking about starting a business or thinking about bringing their existing businesses online. With Yahoo! Small Business’ easy-to-use services, launching your company website or online store can be greatly simplified. You can build your website yourself or hire one of our experienced partners to do it for you.

During this National Small Business Week, we thank and celebrate the many inspiring entrepreneurs who define the American dream.

I started the Feel Your Boobies Foundation in 2004 after I was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 33. My goal was simply to remind as many young women as possible to “feel their boobies” because it’s something that saved my life.  We’re now an international non-profit foundation and Yahoo! enables us to spread our message far and wide… and that’s certainly worth a big Yahoo! Yodel.

Feel Your Boobies is 2 employees strong and runs out of a small garage in Central PA.  We are still so tickled pink (of course!) about our business relationship with Yahoo! and are so thankful for the personal support we have received during our growth.

When we say “unexpected and unconventional methods” it means you probably won’t see a “feel your boobies” brochure at your doctor’s office…but you sure as heck might pass the Boobies Bus® on the freeway, or you might be laying at the beach and see an airplane towing a banner with our logo during our Boobies @ the Beach promotion, or, you just might be lucky enough to claim a free car magnet or sticker during one of our Facebook and online promotions.

And that’s where Yahoo! comes into it.  We’re using the Yahoo! Store to give away free ‘feel your boobies’ swag to help remind people about this lifesaving habit with a little humor to boot. We also leverage the Yahoo! Store to accept donations and of course we sell plenty of funky apparel emblazoned with our slogan as well, which is the primary way we fund the “Are You Doing It?”® Reminder Campaign.

The overnight success (literally) of our first free magnet promotion in early 2009 caught us by complete surprise.  In fact, it was a personal phone call from a Yahoo! customer support person who alerted us to the massive volume we were experiencing.  He was not only as excited as we were, but also made himself available over a holiday weekend to provide us with tips to leverage the Yahoo! store to manage the increase in orders more efficiently.  Being a grassroots organization, this spike in traffic was something we dreamed of having, but nonetheless were quickly overwhelmed by the reality of it all.   Fortunately, the free magnet giveaway also triggered a large amount of unexpected donations and merchandise orders that have allowed us to extend the free giveaway program.  We have also decided to incorporate this into our annual campaign because of the exposure it has brought to our organization.

Learn more about our campaign, shop, and signup for our email list at www.feelyourboobies.com.

Leigh Hurst

Founder/President; Feel Your Boobies Foundation

Now I’m co-owner of Dapple, purveyor of the first line of environmentally-friendly products that deal with baby-specific cleaning challenges. And thanks to Yahoo! Small Business, our business is skyrocketing –- even in the current economic climate.

In March, on a whim, my partner Tamar Rosenthal and I applied to Yahoo! Small Business and fwm‘s “Seeds for Success” grant program and were later named one of the three finalists chosen from among 5,500 entrepreneurs. Over the last six months, we competed for the grand prize by working toward milestones with our website, sales, partnerships, PR and marketing, and more. More than 660,000 people recently cast their votes on Yahoo!. And lo and behold, we won!

It’s wild to think that just six months ago, we had no products on shelves, no retail presence. Just a few prototypes and a lot of hope. After we earned Yahoo!’s grant of $25,000 in cash and services, it was the perfect storm. We were able to produce our first two products, found small retailers in our New York City neighborhood willing to be our first test market, and built our web site. I can’t describe the kind of endless credibility the Yahoo! name gave us. We later struck deals with two major national retailers, attended trade shows, won an iParenting Media Award for best product, and got a lot of great attention from mommy bloggers. We’ve sold more than 25,000 units to date, have distribution in 300 stores and strong interest from big national chains, and now have six products in our line.

As part of our prize, we got mentoring advice from some really legendary figures through fwm (Finding What Matters). For example, fwm’s Carolyn Kepcher, of “The Apprentice” fame and Yahoo!’s program co-sponsor, helped us shore up our business plan while being a great sounding board. Cathie Black, president of Hearst Magazines, taught us about breaking through closed doors “in a ladylike way” but never giving up. Brand guru David Vinjamuri helped us create thoughtful packaging (e.g., pump dispensers are far more convenient for harried moms) and branding that resonated with our customers. Beauty maven Bobbi Brown gave tips about carefully growing our business. And Scott Smigler from Yahoo! partner Exclusive Concepts helped us recognize how important a successful Web site is as part of the mix and was amazing in revamping our Yahoo! Small Business Web site.

We’ve experienced many ups and downs in our journey and we’re often humbled by the hard work and dedication of other passionate entrepreneurs. If you’re on the edge of jumping in and think you have a great idea with a lot of promise, we say “go for it!” But put on your seatbelt and hang on –- the ride is incredible. As for Dapple, we plan to use our grand prize winnings to bring you even more baby-friendly cleansing products in the near future.

Dana Rubinstein
Co-Founder, Dapple

But first, let me explain why this program is so near and dear to me. One word: Mentoring. My own career, including the opportunity to judge on The Apprentice and the upcoming launch of FindingWhatMatters.com (what should be the single largest network of career/life experts and resources anywhere), was built on the advice of wise mentors. They helped steer and cheer me. And now it’s my turn to pay it forward.

The three winners will have access to a host of business experts, including myself; Bobbi Brown, founder and CEO of Bobbi Brown Cosmetics; Cathie Black, president of Hearst Magazines and author of the bestselling book “Basic Black: The Essential Guide to Getting Ahead at Work (and in Life);” and a dozen others who have walked the entrepreneur’s road. We’ll take them under our wings and show them the proverbial ropes.

Each finalist will also receive a grant package that includes $20,000 in cash, $5,000 in website consulting from three Yahoo! Small Business partners, and website hosting from Yahoo!.

Without further ado, I present the three finalists:

Dana Rubinstein (New York, NY): Dana is co-founder of Dapple, a company which produces baby-safe and earth-friendly detergents, cleaners and sanitizers. She and her business partner created these products based on their own experiences of wanting safer, eco-friendly choices for their children. Dapple is ready to launch its first product in NYC test markets this spring.

Abby Port (Woodstock, GA): Abby is founder and CEO of Red Koala, an online purveyor of customizable canvas-based art for everything from home décor to other canvas products, such as shoes, totes and luggage. A veteran of the corporate world, Abby decided to start her own business after the birth of her third child. Work on Red Koala’s website has already begun and the site should be ready to launch in a couple of months.

Karla Duncan (Birmingham, AL): A pediatric speech pathologist, Karla is founder and president of Head2Toe Publications, a company that designs and develops toys and educational materials specifically for special needs children. Karla founded Head2Toe out of a desire to have the products she truly needs in order to care for the children with whom she works. Head2Toe products currently are in development.

These women, painstakingly (truly the roughest part of this assignment!) selected from among 5,500 entrants with compelling ideas, will spend the next six months using the mentoring, hosting and financial resources they’ve won to grow their businesses. The one who achieves the most growth in that time will win a $10,000 bonus grant.

Want to keep up with their progress? Check in regularly to track the finalists and their businesses, and tap into blog entries from them, as well as from Bobbi, Cathie, and me.

Success. It’s all in knowing where to go with what you’ve got. And finding the right someone to point you there.

Carolyn Kepcher
CEO and Co-Founder
Carolyn & Co. Media
fwm:Finding What Matters

I’ve been fortunate in my career. I was an EVP at the Trump Organization, working for one of the most famously demanding bosses in the world. I was also lucky enough serve as a judge with him on the TV show The Apprentice. But in addition to those roles, I also held a far more important position — mother to two young children. It’s because balancing work and life is so challenging that when I left the Trump Organization I decided to start a new company, Carolyn & Co. Media, which I co-founded with another female professional, Jen Marr. Our company’s first brand “fwm: finding what matters,” will launch later this spring and will help women like myself equip themselves with the tools and resources to find this elusive balance.

One of the best ways for women to find flexibility in their careers is to start a business themselves (which is, of course, one of the reasons I’m doing so myself). That’s why I’m thrilled to have been on The Today Show this morning announcing, in partnership with Yahoo! Small Business, an exciting grant program for women entrepreneurs.

With this program, we’re celebrating women business owners, and highlighting the opportunities available to them when they use the Internet to pursue their goals. Three women will each win more than $25K in cash and services, as well as mentoring from successful business leaders. The three finalists will “compete” to accelerate their businesses. The most savvy among them will receive a “bonus” grant of an additional $10,000, to be awarded in October.

Female entrepreneurs seem to be on the rise. There are more than 10 million women-owned businesses in the US today, growing at twice the rate of small businesses overall.

I hope this program and my personal experience helps inspire women of all ages and backgrounds — professionals, retirees, stay at home moms, recent college grads, you name it. Whoever you are, if you’ve dreamed of starting your own business, I hope this program helps encourage you to embark on that rewarding journey and to use the Internet as your partner. Thanks to Yahoo!, it’s easier and more affordable than ever to bring a business online.

For more details, read more here and check out the website.

Carolyn Kepcher
CEO and Co-Founder
Carolyn & Co Media/fwm:Finding What Matters

From plumbers to accountants, corner markets to day spas, Yahoo! has been proudly helping small businesses succeed online for more than eight years. Today we’re taking our commitment to a new level and doing something we’ve never seen done before.

Beginning today, Yahoo! Web Hosting has gone “unlimited.”

Yahoo! Small Business customers have told us loud and clear that they want getting online to be as easy and painless as possible. Instead of worrying about things like “how many visitors can my site handle?” and “how many pages can I build?,” they’d rather focus on growing and running their business.

Our new Yahoo! Web Hosting plan offers unlimited disk space, unlimited data transfer, unlimited email storage, and 1,000 email accounts — all for $11.95 a month. This is shared hosting, so we won’t become the new home of General Motors any time soon. But for the very large majority of our small business customers who simply want a professional-looking site in hours, the hosting-purchase decision has suddenly become significantly easier.

Now small business owners can focus on growing their businesses and driving traffic to their sites, feeling comfortable that their hosting package will grow with their business.

Don’t know the first thing about web design? No sweat. We’ll continue to include award-winning, easy-to-use web site design tools that help business owners with little or no technical chops quickly build great-looking sites. You’ll also get a free domain name, 24×7 phone support, and a new 30-day satisfaction guarantee. And to help customers find these businesses online, Yahoo! Small Business will automatically optimize your site and submit it to top search engines. (I can think of a pretty good one.)

If you’re an existing customer, you’ve probably already received an email invitation with the option to migrate to this new plan. If you’re not an existing customer and want to get online, visit our site for more information.

Now go spread out. There’s plenty of room.

Guy Yalif
Director of Web Hosting Products, Yahoo! Small Business

Photo from dmax3270