Starting and growing a small business is a great challenge, but it can be done with the right information. We’ve collected some of that information, from marketing to cash management to some major soul searching about why you might want to try all of this in the first place. Enjoy today’s Small Business Trends news wrap-up for more details on how to grow your business today.

Marketing
Perspectives in marketing. Global copywriter Ann-Christin Lindstedt explains how a Swedish heat wave taught her the importance of perspective in marketing, either local or international. Don’t forget to see things from another person’s perspective. How will they receive your message and how can you better understand them? GlobalReach

Vampires and marketing. Check out this Small Business Trends Radio podcast as your host Anita Campbell talks with product developer Kimber Chin about ways in which trends in popular culture, in this case involving the wildly popular Twilight vampire romance saga, can play an important part in marketing for your small business. Tune in and enjoy. Small Business Trends Radio

Branding
What are they saying about your brand? What you don’t know could definitely hurt you, says Traci Hayner Vanover, who argues that, beyond worrying about marketing your product or service online, you ought to be worried about what others are saying and getting the right feedback. She also shares some neat tools that can help you make it happen. Promo Diva

eCommerce
How to sell e-books and other downloads. Check out this video review about how to join the infopreneur revolution. You’ll learn more about what services are available to sell digital information products from your Website. If you have expertise and the desire to create information products for your niche market, here is how to make them a reality. ScottFox.com

Book Shelf
What’s on your checklist? Pierre DeBois reviews The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande, a book about risk management for small to medium sized to large businesses and beyond. Gawande is a surgeon and Harvard Medical School associate professor and was motivated to write the book while in search of a way to eliminate doctors’ errors but eventually expanded his research to include other fields as well. Small Business Trends

Social Media
Are you sharing enough? What’s the key to marketing your expertise via social media? Well, the important thing is to keep sharing your content and the helpful content produced by others with your network of connections across the Web. Greg Fry has some additional technical advice on how to make sharing effortless. Give a listen. Bloggertone

Self-development
The entrepreneurial urge. Do you have a dream to work for yourself? Is the life of an entrepreneur for you? Whatever you decide about becoming a small business owner, be sure that fear is not the major factor. This guest post from entrepreneur Marshall Davis looks at what’s involved, how to get started and how to know whether entrepreneurship, small business and working for yourself is a good fit and how to fulfill your dreams. Jim Kukral Dot Com

Operations
Cash flow crisis? “Cash flow is the life blood of any business,” begins the article from Colleen Debaise adapted from The Wall Street Journal Complete Small Business Guidebook. With so much talk about small business credit these days, it’s cash flow that counts. Managing your cash flow will give you the ability to keep your business going regardless of hard times. WSJ

Strategy
While everybody’s getting rid of their blogs, guess who’s expanding Have you heard online marketers and entrepreneurs say they’re ditching their blogs? Have you heard them say they’re going for e-mail marketing instead? And where is it written it’s got to be one or the other? The advantages of a blog for online marketing and SEO are clear. So, while other people are getting rid of their blogs, Chris is starting more. ChrisBrogan.com

Training more customers. Why settle for a small niche market when a much larger group of customers can potentially be yours over time, a larger group of customers who can be trained to become your perfect customer or client in the long run. Blogs and e-mail autoresponders are perfect for this purpose. Sonia Simone will show you how.  Copyblogger