Download the PowerPoint 
You may decide to use a recruiter when looking for that perfect job candidate, but why limit yourself to one recruiter when you may be missing out on a huge talent source? Ascendify takes the recruiter/hiring manager relationship to a new level with their social platform. Instead of a limited amount of static listings, Ascendify can offer your company a higher number of quality candidates, increased participation in employee referrals, greater efficiency in screening and more understanding of your brand for potential new hires. The platform makes it easier for candidates to understand your corporate culture, your benefits and special programs that make them want to work for your company.
Google+
For more information and charts about Small Business Mobile:
and See Key Highlights from the Web.com Small Business Mobile Survey
Search Articles
Most liked posts
Popular Tags
accounting and taxes blogging blogs Branding Business Development business travel Capital Access Compliance Customer Service ecommerce Email marketing entrepreneur entrepreneurship Facebook Generational Marketing GrowSmartBiz Conference Grow Smart Business lead generation LinkedIn Marketing michael dougherty mobile marketing networking online marketing Raising Capital Resources retail sales sales process SBSI Search Marketing seo small business small business accounting small business hiring small business loans small business marketing small business resources small business technology Small Business Trends social media Technology Twitter Web Design WorkforceCategories
- Categories
- Advanced Degrees
- Allison Kapner
- Best Of…
- Business Development
- Capital Access
- Carol Roth
- Compliance
- Cover Letters
- Customer Service
- Dating
- Email marketing
- Entrepreneurs
- Entrepreneurship
- Entrepreneurship
- Etiquette
- Etiquette
- Events
- Innovation
- Interviewing
- Interviews
- Jennifer Nycz-Conner
- Job Search
- Life Transition
- Lunch with Entrepreneurs
- Marketing
- Networking
- Networking
- Networking
- Networking
- Networking
- Networking
- Networking
- Networking
- Networking
- Networking
- Networking
- Patrick Madsen
- Patti Nuttycombe Cochran
- Personal Brand
- Recruiters
- References
- Resources
- Resumes
- Robin Ferrier
- sales process
- Sarah Morgan
- Small Business
- small business
- Small Business Success Index
- social media
- Technology
- Thomas Madrecki
- Tweetchat
- Uncategorized
- UnintentionalEntrepreneur
- Videos
- What's next Gen Y
- WhatsNextGenY
- Workforce
- Working World
Posts Tagged ‘small business’
Web.com Small Business Toolkit: Ascendify (Social Talent Acquisition Platform)
February 1st, 2013 :: Maria Valdez HaubrichWho’s Got Smartphones and Apps? Gen Y
February 1st, 2013 :: Rieva Lesonsky
By Rieva Lesonsky
It may not be a surprise, but Gen Y is leading the way when it comes to adoption of smartphones and smartphone and tablet apps, eMarketer reports. A study by Forrester, cited in eMarketer, found that consumers aged 24 to 32 are the most likely to own smartphones. Ninety-seven percent of Gen Y consumers have a mobile phone, and 72 percent have smartphones, higher than any other age group.
Overall, 93 percent of Americans owned mobile phones; however, only 50% have smartphones. Gen Z (age 18-23) was the second most likely group to own a smartphone, at 64 percent, followed by Gen X at 61 percent. After that, smartphone use declines rather drastically, with just 39 percent of younger boomers (47-56) owning them, 28 percent of older boomers (57-67) owning them, and 16 percent of those over 68 owning them.
Gen Y consumers are also more likely than any other age group to use smartphone and tablet apps, a different study by Flurry found. (This study defined Gen Y as 25 to 34.) Of the Gen Y users surveyed, 33 percent used smartphone apps and 26 percent used tablet apps. The 35-to-54 age group was next most likely to use apps.
You might be surprised that Gen Y are bigger users of smartphones than the younger generations, but eMarketer notes this group is in the “sweet spot” in terms of being old enough that they can afford more expensive smartphones, but young enough to want them and know how to make the most of them. In fact, the biggest reason younger customers cited for not having a smartphone was that they couldn’t afford it, while the top reason cited by older consumers was that they didn’t think it was useful or necessary for their lives.
What do these stats mean to you?
- If your target market falls in the younger end of the spectrum, you’ll want to make sure your business website is mobile-friendly.
- You’ll also want to consider developing useful, relevant and/or fun apps for your business that encourage sharing with friends.
- Keep in mind that Gen Y is most likely to own iPhones, while in other age groups and overall, Samsung phones dominate.
- Finally, keep in mind that Gen Y’s smartphone-dependency isn’t going away. As these customers move into their prime buying years, they’ll rely on their devices even more—so be ready to grow with them.
Image by Flickr user milesopie (Creative Commons)
Google+Good News for Home-Based Business: IRS Simplifies Home Office Deduction
January 31st, 2013 :: Karen AxeltonBy Karen Axelton
If you are a home-based business owner but have never claimed the home office tax deduction because you don’t want to deal with the complex reporting and calculation that’s required—or because you’re afraid making a mistake could trigger an IRS audit—you can breathe a little easier this April. That’s because the IRS has announced a simplified, optional method for claiming the home office deduction.
The new optional deduction allows taxpayers to claim $5 per square foot of home office space up to a maximum of 300 square feet, or $1,500 per year. Currently, small businesses and others claiming a home office deduction have to complete Form 8829, a 43-line form that includes complex calculations of allocated expenses, depreciation and carryovers of unused deductions. Taxpayers who want to claim the optional deduction instead will complete a much simpler form.
The IRS estimates the change will affect more than 3.4 million taxpayers (the number who claimed the home office deduction in tax year 2010, the most recent year for which the agency has data) and will reduce the paperwork and recordkeeping burden on small businesses by an estimated 1.6 million hours per year.
Here are a few things to be aware of in deciding whether you want to claim the traditional home office deduction or the optional simplified verson:
- Homeowners using the simplified option cannot depreciate the portion of their home used for business. However, they can claim allowable mortgage interest, real estate taxes and casualty losses on the home as itemized deductions on Schedule A. These deductions do not have to be allocated between personal and business use, which the traditional method requires.
- Since the optional deduction has a cap of $1,500, if your home office is significantly bigger than 300 square feet or if you have extremely high utility bills or other costs, you may want to stick with the traditional method of claiming deductions.
- No matter which method you use, you still have to meet the current restrictions regarding the home office deduction. For example, the home office must still be used regularly and exclusively for business, not for personal use.
The new simplified option is available starting with the 2013 return most taxpayers file early in 2014. For more details on the new option, visit the IRS website to read Revenue Procedure 2013-13.
Image by Flickr user james.thompson (Creative Commons)
Google+Why Your Emails Must Be Mobile-Optimized
January 30th, 2013 :: Rieva LesonskyBy RIeva Lesonsky
Are your email marketing messages optimized for mobile? They’d better be. According to the latest Return Path global bi-annual mobile email report, 37 percent of U.S. respondents surveyed now open their email on mobile devices, compared with the 30 percent opening them through webmail in a browser. The percentage of emails opened on mobile devices has increased 300 percent since 2010 and shows no sign of slowing down, says the report. Here’s some more of what you need to know:
Platform matters: While Android mobile phones still dominate in the U.S., Apple device users are more likely to open and read email on a mobile device than any other group. Although Windows Mobile saw an 85 percent increase in email opens since April 2012, it still accounts for just 0.3 percent of total email opens on smartphones.
Industry variation: Certain industries’ emails are more likely to get opened on a mobile device than others. The retail (40 percent), consumer product (40 percent) and real estate (38 percent) industries lead the way.
Is it safe? The information being sent via email is also a concern. For example, banking-related emails were less likely to be opened on mobile devices due to security worries.
Desktops aren’t obsolete…yet: Users check email more often on a desktop than on a mobile device during the day. I’d surmise that’s probably because they are sitting in front of their computers at work, but as more workplaces incorporate tablets into the work day, the desktop is likely to become less and less dominant.
Mobile sitting still: It’s a myth that mobile purchasing is taking place out of home. Just 22 percent of mobile purchases take place on the go; 18 percent occur at work and more than half (51 percent) take place at home. Your customers are more likely to be opening that email in bed or on the couch than in the car, so keep that in mind when designing your message.
If you doubt optimizing email for mobile matters, keep these facts in mind: Return Path found that email marketing messages drive twice as many conversions as social media or search. In addition, the average order value is higher on mobile devices, whether tablet or smartphone. However, since even those who open their emails on mobile devices still make most of their purchases on the desktop, you need to make sure your emails are optimized for both platforms.
Image by Flickr user Brad Flickinger (Creative Commons)
Google+
Your 3-Step Plan for a Business Website That Drives Sales
January 29th, 2013 :: Maria Valdez Haubrich
By Maria Valdez Haubrich
Is your small business website driving the leads, customer engagement and sales you want? If it’s falling short of your goals, how can you help your business website perform better? Here are three steps to take.
- Focus on your target customers. If your website isn’t attracting enough customers, maybe it’s too vague and general. No business, or website, can succeed by trying to be all things to all people. Instead of casting a wide net, narrow your focus. Try developing a couple of “personas” that represent your target customer. Be as specific as you can. If your target customer is a busy mom, is she a working mom or a stay-at-home mom? How old are her children? What products is she looking for? Get as specific as you can; this will help you focus on the keywords that will drive that exact customer to your site. By pinpointing the specific groups you’re hoping to reach, you can develop a website that reaches out to those people.
- Focus on your customers’ pain points. A website is first and foremost a marketing tool, but sometimes small business owners forget this. Just like your other marketing materials, your small business website should show prospects that your business understands their pain points and is trying to solve them. Going back to the busy mom customer we mentioned above, if she is a working mom with an infant at home, one pain point might be the need to keep stocked up on diapers in order to avoid midnight runs to the convenience store. Your website and keywords should focus on solutions such as diaper delivery, diapers shipped to your home, auto-reorder of diapers and similar options.
- Focus on a call to action. Sometimes your business website is working well at attracting customers, but when they’re on your site, they just click around for a bit and leave. If customers aren’t taking action on your site, it’s probably because you’re not showing them a clear call to action. Every page on your site should drive customers to take a specific step, whether that’s “Buy now,” “Shop,” “Call us,” “Click to get a quote,” or “Chat with our operators.” If your product or service is one that doesn’t require a lot of thought, your call to action could be simple, such as “Buy now.” If it’s a product such as business equipment that requires a lot of hand-holding before a decision is made, there will be more steps involved, but you still need a call to action for each of those steps: “Click for more information,” “Request a quote,” etc. This is not the time to be subtle. Use action-oriented words that are very specific as to what you want customers to do. Emphasize them with color, hyperlinks and graphics.
Last, but not least, be sure that you test all the changes you make to your site by monitoring your analytics to see what users are doing. By making these changes, you’ll find your small business website driving a lot more business.
Image by Flickr user FutUndBeidl (Creative Commons)
Google+
Web.com Small Business Toolkit: PEX Card (Business Prepaid Card)
January 28th, 2013 :: Maria Valdez HaubrichIs your company’s spending getting out of control? Are you finding it hard to keep track of employee expenses? PEX Card is a business prepaid card specifically designed to help companies take control of employee expense management. For a monthly per-card fee, businesses can distribute funds for employees to spend and then keep track of transactions as they occur. There are no transaction fees and no interest charges, and businesses gain more power over the company’s cash flow. You or your internal PEX Card administrator can easily add funds to your employee cards through the PEX website; that money is available to employees immediately.
Google+
Mobile Commerce, Mobile Payments: What’s the Future?
January 28th, 2013 :: Rieva LesonskyBy Rieva Lesonsky
While mobile payments and m-commerce have generated a lot of buzz in the media recently, both have been slow to take off and still comprise a very small percentage of payments and sales in the U.S. However, that may soon change, as two separate studies by Forrester reported in MediaPost project that mobile payments and m-commerce will surge in the U.S. in the next few years.
Payment Predictions
The first study projects mobile payments will increase from $18.2 billion this year to $90 billion in 2017—growth of nearly 50 percent. The study looked at three kinds of mobile payments. Mobile proximity, or in-store, payments are expected to grow fastest, increasing 137% to $41 billion by 2017, and going from 6% of mobile payments to 45%.
Much of the proximity payment growth is predicted to come next year, when Forrester says “early adopters” will begin using mobile payment solutions. This will force retail businesses to play catch-up and offer more mobile payment alternatives, as well as to incorporate Near Field Communication (NFC) technology into their point-of-sale systems.
Mobile Matters
The second study predicts that m-commerce will rise from $12 billion in 2013 to $31 billion in 2017, but its growth rate of 31 percent will be low compared to that of mobile payments. What’s holding m-commerce back? Currently, Forrester says, consumers are worried about security issues related to mobile transactions; m-commerce still isn’t well integrated with other ways to shop; and the checkout process needs to be simplified. (Both reports focused solely on the use of smartphones for payments and m-commerce, not on tablets.)
Currently, just 3 percent of ecommerce sales occur on smartphones, compared to some 57 percent that take place on tablets. Because of this wide discrepancy, Forrester’s report suggests that instead of worrying about how to encourage shopping on smartphones, retailers might be wise to focus on creating a better tablet shopping experience. After all, as tablet prices drop and tablets become even more widely adopted, it’s likely consumers will gravitate to them over smartphones when they want to browse or buy.
Image by Flickr user loupiote (Creative Commons)
Google+
2013 Hiring Forecast: A Good Employee Is Hard to Find
January 25th, 2013 :: Rieva LesonskyBy Rieva Lesonsky
Will you be hiring employees for your small business this year? If so, you’re in good company–but you might face challenges as tough as looking for a needle in a haystack. More than one-fourth of hiring managers polled in the CareerBuilder Hiring Forecast for 2013 say their companies will be hiring full-time, permanent employees in 2013, up 3 percent compared to 2012. However, that doesn’t mean the hiring outlook is rosy.
Many businesses are still on the fence about hiring. Although more than 60 percent of employers in the survey say they are in a better financial position than last year, the slow pace of recovery is still affecting hiring plans, and the percentage of companies planning layoffs also increased, from 7 percent last year to 9 percent this year. Small businesses, in particular, show signs of indecision, with both the percentage planning to hire and the percentage planning to lay people off up 3 percent from last year.
If you are planning to hire, what markets will see the most competition? Sales (29 percent) and IT (27 percent) are the top areas where companies plan to hire. These are also the two areas that will see the biggest salary increases. Customer service, engineering and production are close behind sales and IT, with slightly over 20 percent of companies planning to hire for these roles.
While it may be hard to believe, in many industries and/or regions of the country, it’s hard to fill skilled positions, and employers are struggling to find workers. How are companies dealing with the shortage?
- Temp time: More businesses are relying on temporary employees or using staffing services to fill in the gaps. Some 40 percent of companies surveyed report plans to hire temporary and/or contract workers in 2013, an increase from 36 percent last year.
- Talent poaching: More employers are actively recruiting employees from other companies. Almost 20 percent of employees in the survey reported having been approached by a potential employer in 2012 even though they hadn’t applied for a job at that company.
- Pay raises: Employers are concerned not only about finding skilled workers, but holding on to those they already have. No wonder many employers in the survey said they plan to increase compensation for both existing staff and prospective hires.
- Do-it-yourself: Instead of searching for skilled employees, more companies are training their existing employees to move up to positions of greater responsibility or learn new skills that are needed within the business. Some 39 percent of employers said they will train current employees for new positions this year, up from 38 percent last year.
Image by Flickr user John Pavelka (Creative Commons)
Google+Where Will Businesses Spend on IT in 2013?
January 24th, 2013 :: Karen AxeltonBy Karen Axelton
What will businesses be spending their IT dollars on for 2013? Until now, global uncertainty about the economy has been affecting IT spending, TechCrunch reports. Research firm Gartner’s projects worldwide spending on devices, including PCs, tablets, mobile phones and printers, to hit $666 billion this year, a 6.3 percent increase compared to 2012. However, the rise is still a significant cutback from Gartner’s prior forecast that 2013 would see $706 billion in global device spending or 7.9 percent growth.
For small business owners, however, the decreased spending may actually be good news. That’s because much of the reason for the shrinkage is lower prices thanks to cheaper Android devices. Another factor? PC purchasing is dropping drastically as consumers and businesses switch to tablet computers, for which there are many inexpensive options available.
Meanwhile, Forrester’s newest IT spending projections forecast 5.4 percent growth in 2013, but predict that 2014 is when growth will really ramp up. The company predicts that pent-up demand for mobile devices, cloud computing and smart computing will boost IT spending by 6.4 percent in 2014.
Other trends worth noting:
- Storage devices and peripherals are also seeing slowing growth, with that trend expected to continue as more consumers and businesses move storage to the cloud.
- PC and server vendors were hard hit in 2012 as these technologies became less used, and the industries’ decline in sales is projected to continue.
- Apple bucked the trend of decreasing desktop/PC sales. The company saw strong growth in sales of PCs and laptops, and that is projected to continue through 2013 and 2014.
- Windows 8 devices will see 8 percent growth in 2014, but will still be far outpaced by the double-digit increase in sales of Linux, Android and Apple products.
Overall, Forrester and Gartner both see 2013 as a transitional year when many technologies are becoming obsolete as new, less expensive ones take hold. For small businesses on tight IT budgets, that could be very good news.
Image by Flickr user Andrew Turner (Creative Commons)
Google+Affluent Men Are From Mars, Affluent Women Are From Venus
January 23rd, 2013 :: Rieva LesonskyBy Rieva Lesonsky
Both affluent men and affluent women have optimistic outlooks about their personal financial situations in 2013, a new report from Shullman Research found. However, there are significant differences in the optimism levels of men and women that could affect how you market to these wealthy consumers.
The Shullman Luxury and Affluence Monthly Pulse conducted in December found that 48 percent of U.S. adults with a household income of over $250,000 believe the U.S. economy is doing better today than it was a year ago. About one-third (34 percent) thought the economy was doing the same as 12 months ago.
However, when you dig down into the men’s vs. the women’s responses, some key differences emerge:
- Some 45 percent of men are very optimistic or optimistic about the economy, compared to just 35 percent of women.
- About 42 percent of female respondents say that the economy is essentially the same today as it was 12 months ago, compared to just 26 percent of male respondents.
- While men and women generally felt positive about their current financial situations, with 78 percent of men and 73 percent of women describing themselves as financially stable, men were more positive about the future. Nearly three-fourths (74 percent) of men believe they will definitely or most likely be better off financially one year from now than they are today, compared to 64 percent of women.
- Overall, 90 percent of those surveyed reporting that as long as the economy keeps improving, they will spend either more than they did in 2012, or the same amount. However, men were more likely to spend more; 43 percent of men said they will spend a lot more or slightly more than they did last year. Just 36 percent of women said the same.
Shullman Research Center founder Bob Shullman says women tend to take a more cautious approach to their finances than do men. What do these numbers mean to your business?
If you’re targeting upscale women, your marketing message will need to work harder to reach them and overcome that inclination to be conservative in their spending. Use marketing messaging that will calm their financial concerns, such as emphasizing the value of your product or service, how it will benefit them or their families, and how it’s a smart investment.
If you’re targeting upscale men, marketing messages that focus more on “fun” and rewarding oneself may be more effective. Affluent men are more willing to boost their spending and feeling more confident, so tap into their pent-up desires to spend a little more by playing up the desirable features of your product or service.
Image by Flickr user ToGa Wanderings (Creative Commons)
Google+
