During National Small Business Week, I remind you – small-business owners – of Verizon’s  many free resources, which can give you an edge over your competition.

Tomorrow, Wednesday (May 23) at 2 p.m. ET, the Verizon Small Business Center (http://business.verizon.net/) will present another free webinar, offering tips to protect your business in the event of a disaster. The webinar will feature two executives from Firestorm, a leader in business continuity planning vulnerability analysis, risk mitigation and crisis management: Jim Satterfield, co-founder, and Oz Hill, principal.  No worries if you can’t catch the live webinar, all of our webinars are available for on-demand replay(to see the full list go to http://bit.ly/vinvUO).

In addition, the Verizon Small Business team has sponsored Melinda Emerson’s weekly live Twitter chat (@SmallBizLady) held tomorrow evening at 8 p.m. ET  All participants will receive a free book from Verizon, so join the chat -- #smallbizchat. Emerson will chat with Jennifer Abernethy (@SalesLounge), who will share tips for using Pinterest to promote small businesses.

This post is from members of Verizon’s small business team.

Whether it’s your friends sharing pictures on Facebook or watching that new viral hit on YouTube, it seems like you can’t go a day without hearing about some sort of social media. As a small business owner, you probably wonder how you can utilize these sites to improve your business. Fortunately, Twitter has become an extremely beneficial tool for small business owners. Businesses like The Coffee Groundz in Houston saw their sales double after three months of strong user engagement on Twitter. Even with all the potential benefits, as of last November only 10% of small businesses have made the micro-blogging platform a part of their social media marketing strategy. So if you follow these tips, you’ll be way ahead of the curve.

Guest post by Craig Staley, Verizon's small business digital communications specialist.

At Verizon, we’re always striving to bring additional value to our small business customers whenever and wherever we can.  That's why we're committed to helping small businesses to save money through the Verizon Discount Program.  With partners such as FedEx, Office Depot, SuperMedia.com and more, we're helping you to save money on the things your business needs to function every day.  The benefits of being a Verizon small business customer is that you can  sign-up for any of the offers by visiting www.business.verizon.net; look for the Verizon Discount Program link (under ‘Quick Links’).  We even have a sweet deal for adding services from Verizon Wireless.

Guest post from Marcia O’Toole, manager of the Verizon Small Business Center.

In a recent analysis conducted by Compass Intelligence, a small business market analysis firm, in 3Q 2011 Verizon once again ranked highest among leading small business portals.  This is the fourth consecutive quarter where the Verizon Small Business Center was judged to offer the best online experience for small business owners.

For more information on this report click here (or go tohttp://bit.ly/sYNmWM).  Strengths of the Verizon Small Business Center cited were its “elegant, consistent design; engaging content; self-learn training; and business-specific news.” 

Guest post from Marcia O’Toole, manager of the Verizon Small Business Center.

During the holiday season, many small businesses experience a reduction in work or planned vacations.  This is a great time to launch or update your professional online profiles, network with new and old colleagues, and get updated on your field.   

If you haven’t joined, check out Verizon Professional Networking, this is a great viral community to find other small business owners or professionals… perhaps you need the services of an accountant, or want to team up with a similar business to buy in bulk or want to barter services… this is a free platform for you to network.