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MyCorpSocial: Social Media Starter Kit for Business: Small Business Resources

May 24th, 2012 ::

MyCorpSocial

If your business hasn’t quite joined the social media world, MyCorporation has come up with an easy-to-use starter kit that’s free with the purchase of any MyCorporation incorporation or LLC packages. The kit takes you step by step through setting up a presence on the four biggest sites: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. You’ll find out the basics including how to reach out to your customers, increase your fan base and follow social media etiquette. The kit allows you to customize your online profile and gives you a glossary of social media terminology, then shows you how to maintain each presence in an efficient way.

 

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Posted in Marketing, Resources, Small Business, small business, Social Media, social media, Uncategorized | No Comments »

The Best (and Worst) States for Small Business

May 24th, 2012 ::

By Maria Valdez Haubrich

Are you considering moving or expanding your business? Then you might want to get out your ten-gallon hat. A recent survey to uncover the most small-business-friendly states, conducted by Thumbtack and The Kauffman Foundation, found Texas and Idaho ranked highest overall.

The 2012 Thumbtack Small Business Survey polled 6,000 small business owners nationwide about conditions in their states including:

  • Ease of starting a business
  • Hiring costs
  • Regulations
  • Training and networking programs available
  • The region’s current economic health

You might be surprised to find that taxes weren’t the only—or even the most important—factor small business owners cared about. Easy-to-understand licensing regulations and helpful training programs were also seen as critical in creating a small-business-friendly environment. In fact, Small businesses said licensing requirements were nearly twice as important as tax-related regulations in determining their state or city government’s overall business-friendliness.

Here are some of the findings:

  • Texas had three of the top five cities (Dallas, San Antonio and Austin), while California was home to the bottom three (Los Angeles, San Diego and Sacramento).
  • Colorado Springs and Washington, DC, had the nation’s healthiest small businesses.
  • Idaho, Nevada and Delaware had the most small business-friendly tax codes; California and New Mexico had the least-friendly tax codes.
  • Nebraska small business owners were the most optimistic about their business improving during 2012, while Iowans were the least optimistic.
  • The South was the most small-business-friendly region of the country, while New England was rated the most hostile.

View the full survey results, including state-by-state breakdowns, here.

Image by Flickr user cote (Creative Commons)

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Posted in Accounting and Taxes, Business Law, Compliance, Small Business, small business, Workforce | No Comments »

Project Eve: Social Network for Female Entrepreneurship: Small Business Resource

May 23rd, 2012 ::

Project Eve

Started by two entrepreneurial women looking to promote, support and celebrate women business owners, Project Eve is a platform for female entrepreneurs to communicate and collaborate (minus the sharp elbows). The site is hoping to connect women across all industries and geographies looking to share their expertise and experiences, ask questions and help each other out. The mission: to create a trusted community of women who want to see each other succeed. Sign up and find out about events, join a local Project Eve group, get feedback on an idea, receive an e-newsletter and more.

 

 

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Posted in Networking, Resources, Small Business, small business, Uncategorized | No Comments »

How to Treat Your Interns Right

May 23rd, 2012 ::

By Rieva Lesonsky

The end of the school year is here, and that means it’s time for many small businesses to turn to a valuable labor source: interns. Hiring college students to work in your business, learning the ropes, is a rite of passage for students and small business owners alike, and can give you access to the energy, enthusiasm and tech skills of young people who can contribute a lot to your business.

But a growing number of companies, emboldened by the recession, are taking more than they’re giving from their interns. The New York Times recently reported on the growing practice of companies offering unpaid internships, having interns work 12 hours or more and using them solely for “grunt work” like fetching lunch and filing.

These aren’t just college students, either. The Times reports a growing number of college graduates are clamoring for internships in a tough labor market where the jobless rate for college grads age 24 and under is now 9.4 percent.

Are you exploiting your interns? Yes, entry-level work has always involved some degree of fetching and carrying, but if your internships aren’t offering anything of value, you could be running afoul of the law.

The major area to consider is whether your internships are paid or unpaid. State labor laws regulate this, so you first need to determine whether your state requires paying interns. If your state does allow unpaid internships, you also need to comply with federal Labor Department regulations.

In general, this means that:

  • Unpaid interns must gain some type of vocational education from the internship.
  • The internship is for the benefit of the interns.
  • Interns can’t be used as substitutes for regular employees; instead, they have to be supervised by employees.
  • The employer cannot derive immediate benefit from the intern’s work.

An unpaid internship may seem like a lot of trouble for you in the beginning, but if you handle it right, you can end up training someone who could become a valuable employee in the future. Stay on the right side of the law, and your company will be a desirable place for interns. Run afoul of the law, and you could ruin more than your business’s reputation.

Image by Flickr user Jessica Mullens (Creative Commons)

 

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Posted in Business Law, Compliance, Small Business, small business, Workforce | No Comments »

Vivastream: Social Platform to Connect Business Professionals: Small Business Resource

May 22nd, 2012 ::

Vivastream

Don’t let the next event you attend or put together end as soon as the last chair is put away. Vivastream wants to help you make important connections while the event is taking place and keep the conversation going after it’s over. Vivastream’s Web and mobile applications help attendees meet new people that are interested in similar subjects and helps connect people who have the right information, knowledge and resources. Vivastream tells attendees who else is attending and who they should meet based on the attendee’s profile, then facilitates the introduction. It can also help vendors find important leads.

 

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Posted in Networking, Resources, Small Business, small business, social media, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Small Business Owners Hopeful About Access to Credit

May 22nd, 2012 ::

By Karen Axelton

Small business owners are becoming more optimistic about the availability of credit, a new survey by Gallup shows. The Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index poll conducted last month shows that small business owners’ perception of the ease of obtaining credit is the most positive it has been in three years.

The poll found a net difference of -7 percentage points between the 2 percent of small-business owners who say credit will be easy to get in the next 12 months and the 32 percent who say it will be difficult. Of course, that’s nowhere near the +45 of June 2007, before the recession began. The measure hasn’t been positive since a +14 reading in September 2008.

The poll also reflects a continuing trend, as the 32 percent who expect credit to be somewhat or very difficult to get in the next 12 months is down from 38 percent in January and 43 percent in November 2011.

That’s perception, but what about reality? Asked to look back over the past 12 months, 30 percent of small-business owners said that credit was somewhat or very difficult for their companies to get; 22 percent said it was somewhat or very easy to get. Thirty-four percent were either extremely or very confident they could get credit if needed; 39 percent were “somewhat” confident about this.

Small business owners are no strangers to borrowing: Three in four have previously borrowed money or used credit for their businesses. About half (47 percent) use just a little of the credit available to them, while 20 percent use most or all of it.

What does credit enable small business owners to do?

  • 76 percent of owners say it has made it easier for them to run their businesses on a daily basis;
  • 63 percent say it has helped them keep their businesses open;
  • 50 percent say it has helped them expand their products and services, take more risks, and be more profitable;
  • 33 percent say it helped their businesses with payroll; and
  • 20 percent say it allowed them to hire.

Image by Flickr user Robert Scoble (Creative Commons)

 

 

 

 

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Posted in Capital Access, Raising Capital, Small Business, small business | No Comments »

Onlywire: Auto-Submit to Social Media Sites: Small Business Resource

May 21st, 2012 ::

Onlywire

How much of your day do you spend posting and tweeting and posting some more? Wouldn’t it be better to actually spend that time communicating with real people? Onlywire can help by automating your social media activity. You can auto-submit to 50 of the biggest social media sites from your computer or mobile device and allow visitors to share your Web content with a click of a button. WordPress blogs are auto-submitted as are your RSS feeds. Pricing plans are based on number of submissions per month, and you can add a Captcha option for a bit more.

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Posted in Marketing, Resources, Small Business, small business, Social Media, social media | No Comments »

How Your Business Can Profit From Retail Showrooming

May 21st, 2012 ::

By Rieva Lesonsky

The proliferation of mobile devices—and shopping or price comparison apps to use on them—has retailers worried that consumers are using their stores as “showrooms” to check out merchandise, then go online on their phones or tablets to find the same product cheaper elsewhere. But a new study from Wave Collapse, reported in MediaPost, suggests that worry about showrooming may be overblown.

The study found that people who use shopping apps in-store to research products or compare prices aren’t necessarily more likely to go online to buy—they’re simply more avid shoppers in general, across all channels. In fact, 93 percent of those who used apps in stores also reported buying something at a physical retail store in the last week, compared to 84 percent of people who didn’t use shopping apps in stores.

While the research may ease your fears that people are standing in your store, checking out your products and then buying the same thing on Amazon for less, the news still doesn’t mean you can relax. Wave Collapse found that many people who use smartphones in-store aren’t looking for the same products online—they’re seeing if they’re available at other, nearby physical stores. In other words, they’re doing what they’ve always done—comparison shopping—but they can just do it faster now.

Wave Collapse’s data also shows that smartphone shoppers are desirable customers who aren’t limited to mobile purchasing. Some one-fourth of smartphone owners report buying a product on their mobile devices in the past week, 60 percent report buying something online, and 87 percent report buying something in a physical location.

It boils down to this: Mobile shoppers are power shoppers, whether online, on the phone or in the store. So if you see a customer whipping out a phone in your shop, don’t get grumpy. Get over and offer to help them by:

  • Providing more information about the product
  • Offering additional help such as setup or delivery
  • Explaining extras such as warranties and other offerings that might set you apart from the competition
  • Offering to find or order the product for them in a different size, color or style

Recognize mobile shoppers as power customers, and treat them accordingly.

Image by Flickr user whiteafrican (Creative Commons)

 

 

 

 

 

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Posted in Marketing, sales process, Search Marketing, Small Business, small business, Technology, Web Design | No Comments »

Quotegine: Online Business Proposal Tool: Small Business Resource

May 18th, 2012 ::

Quotegine

If your business proposals could use a makeover, Quotegine can help you develop professional-looking business proposals that are easy to create, have more features and allow you to track your results. Quotegine can be used for any industry, ,and you can collaborate on the proposal with a team. Everything is created, sent and signed online, so there’s no need to print anything out. You can use one of Quotegine’s many templates or create your own custom design. After your proposal is delivered, you get real-time analytics that tell you how much time a client spent on each page and what captured their interest.

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Posted in Business Development, Marketing, Resources, Sales Process, sales process, Small Business, small business, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Why Social Media Users Are Your Most Valuable Customers

May 18th, 2012 ::

By Rieva Lesonsky

You know social media can help spread the word about your business. But did you know customers who are active on social media are more valuable to your business because of it? That’s one of the findings of the 2012 American Express Global Customer Service Barometer.

While customers in general care more about good customer service than last year, and are willing to spend more money to get it, the stakes are even higher for businesses dealing with social media users. American Express found that people who have used social media for customer service at least once in the last year are willing to spend substantially more (21 percent) with companies they believe provide great service – in contrast with the general population (13 percent more) and those who have not used social media for customer service (11 percent more).

People who use social media for customer service are also much more vocal about customer service experiences, both good and bad.  If they have a positive customer service experience, they’ll tell an average of 42 people about it; in contrast, consumers overall tell an average of 15. For negative experiences, the numbers are even bigger.  People who use social media for customer service tell an average of 53 people about negative experiences; in contrast, the average user tells 24 people.

Consumers who use social media for customer service also have higher expectations for customer service in general. More than 80 percent of them have failed to complete a planned purchase because of a poor service experience, compared to 55 percent of consumers overall.

In addition, consumers who use social media for customer service are more likely to

Why do consumers use social media for customer service? The most popular social reasons were:

  1. Seeking an actual response from a company about a service issue – 50 percent
  2. Praising a company for a great service experience – 48 percent
  3. Sharing information about your service experience with a wider audience – 47 percent Venting frustration about a poor service experience – 46 percent
  4. Asking other users how to have better service experiences – 43 percent

Clearly, using social media for customer service can have a big effect on your business—both positive and negative. If you find customers reaching out to you this way, be sure to be responsive to their needs, because you can be sure they’ll spread the word—either good or bad.

Image by Flickr user sjcockell (Creative Commons)

 

 

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Posted in Business Development, Marketing, Sales Process, sales process, Small Business, small business, Social Media, social media | No Comments »

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