This Week in Small Business: Focus on Email and Market to Baby Boomers
There’s so much good news and information this week on email marketing that you should be able to give your sales a major kick in the pants. On the economic front, the new is so-so, but there are a couple of interesting items that sing the praises of the now-aging Baby Boomers. Marketing and sales Jerry Daykin, global digital director at Dentsu Aegis Network, contends that the real marketing loss is old-fashioned skills, not the so-called “digital gap.” Josh Haynam runs down 32 lead generation ideas that will inspire you as you develop your next marketing campaigns. A strong dose of “native advertising” might be just what the doctor ordered to revive your content marketing campaigns. Social media and SEO Described here are 16 social media tools every marketer should be familiar with. Are we witnessing the final death throes of advertising? It might be all SEO and social media from here on out, right? You may not have the same advertising and marketing budgets as the big brands, but you can certainly compete in SEO. Folding testimonials into your advertising and marketing is a powerful tool. Here are four ways to use Twitter to pump up your online credibility. Redesigning your website? Don’t make these five common SEO mistakes. Email marketing This Yoast article will introduce you to the different kinds of emails your online shop needs to be sending – recovery, retention, related products, and rewards. Tried and true: Email is consistently the highest revenue-generating marketing channel. Here are insights from Venture Beat. There are a few critical steps in email marketing to build brand awareness. Ryan Pinkham of Constant Contact lays them out very clearly. Cynthia Price, marketing director at Emma, describes three ways brand publishers can use email marketing. Leadership, management and productivity There’s not much room for error when hiring the customer support team for your small business. Here are the qualities to look for. Have you kept up with all the ways content marketing is changing the way companies do public relations work? Be sure you’re current. There are great options available today in time tracking software that can give you the information you need to control costs. Test your small business tax knowledge. Have you bought into any of the five “myths” outlined in this article? If you don’t have any experience with conversion on your website, you need to study all the basics that Jose Vasquez discusses. In this 6-minute video, Jeff Walker talks about the connection between rejuvenation and productivity. Don’t mistake these seven good reasons for making your next business meeting a “walk” as another way to say, “Take a hike!” If exporting is a possibility for you, check out this SBA page for information and some video success stories. Women, you’re even more behind the eight ball when it comes to retirement than the men. You’ll find the problems faced as well as the solutions in this Kiplinger article. Also of special interest to women is this run down of business expansion grants. Can you relate? Kim Siever list five things he hates about working for himself but also goes into six things he loves about working for himself. (Love has a one point lead…) Great employee support is the foundation of great customer support. Are you giving...
read moreHow Your Business Can Benefit From Zappos’ ‘Holacracy’
Can you picture your business without any bosses or formal management hierarchy? Can you picture buying your next pair of shoes from an online company with no bosses or formal management hierarchy? While the first question I posed may be entirely rhetorical, it seems many will be answering “yes” to the second question: Zappos has announced a transition to a new management-less structure. Although it’s not a totally new idea, there has been a lot of recent interest in “holacracy” as an organizational system within companies. For a large organization such as Zappos it means that there would be “whole units” that are self-organizing and self-managing but at the same time part of a greater “whole.” These units are responsible for functions or tasks. To some degree, individual Whole Foods stores are organized like this. The various departments – meat, produce, and the rest – make up the units. In the Zappos plan, the units are being called “circles.” The 30-minute memo Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh issued a lengthy memo to employees outlining the plan and urged them to take 30 minutes reading it. He mentioned some specific moves the company is making that I think help to understand what are the important points of adopting holacracy. Hsieh specifically says that there will no longer be “people managers.” This reflects the elimination of hierarchy. As the company transitions, there will be a program to help managers find “new roles that might be a good match for their passions, skills, and experience,” according to Hsieh. Pay will be determined through democratic means within each unit, or circle as Zappos is calling them. Managers, or others who prefer not to work within the new system, can leave the company with various severance packages that start with some three months of pay and COBRA costs covered for up to three months. If my description sometimes seems a little vague, it is. Putting into words a system that is designed to be rather amorphous and unstructured is a challenge, but I hope you’re getting enough of the flavor. The go-to book on the subject is Frederic Laloux’s “Reinventing Organizations,” if you want to plunge more deeply into the topic. However, whether or not you decide to jump into holacracy with both feet, I think some of the principles that underlay this system are worth considering, especially in how they relate to employee engagement and buy-in. Unarguably good goals It is easy for top-down systems that strongly rely on management command and control to cause a lot of employee dissatisfaction. I know a talented graphic designer who once interviewed for a job. The position was frankly a bit below her experience. During her interview she was told explicitly that should could not offer design suggestions to anyone; that was someone else’s job. Rather than take advantage of a person’s talents and knowledge, this company’s management philosophy forced everyone into, boxes which stifled creativity and teamwork. It also seems that the mission within any circle or unit must be clearly understood by all its members. This will encourage and promote communication and clarity. Many of us who have worked in large organizations know that often people seem to be “pulling in different directions.” This prevents many companies from making progress. If implemented properly, this should...
read moreHow to Understand and Survive the Era of Obamacare Smallbiz Uncertainty
If you have any close relationships with physicians who operate private practices in your area, you may know the headaches they suffer trying to get all their paperwork done property to satisfy private insurers and government agencies. Local doctor groups need to have a department of employees dedicated to nothing but coding their forms correctly. That kind of chronic pain has now come to small business owners, thanks to the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Companies with 50 or more employees are required to document the number of hours and absences their employees rack up and how much they spend on health insurance. All of this will be reported to the IRS to determine how many workers are averaging more than 30 hours per week and therefore must be provided with health insurance. Additionally, small business owners need to track the months an employee is covered by health insurance and the cost of premiums so the government can determine if the coverage falls under its definition of “affordable.” Big paperwork price tag A survey conducted by the National Small Business Association estimates that the cost of compliance will average more than $15,000 for small businesses. Question: Are these new costs of compliance being included in the cost of “health care”? John Haslinger, a vice president at ADP Benefits Outsourcing Consulting, told the Associated Press that the software and databases that track attendance, payroll and benefits are typically separate systems, so there isn’t an easy way to combine them in the manner required by the IRS. The health insurance brokers that work with local small businesses may be able to provide these extra services, but they will come at a cost. One San Francisco-based flooring company reports paying some $25,000 a year to outsource these extra record keeping and reporting activities. Along with insurance brokers, payroll providers and HR firms are adding ACA-related services to their menu. If you’re running a legacy software system to handle payroll and related areas of your business, you might consider bringing in a coder to add the features you need to comply with IRS reporting requirements. However, there is certainly no guarantee that the law won’t change in the next couple of years, so your software tweaks could be outdated about as soon as they go live. Senators seek additional delay In fact, just a week or so ago a group of Democratic senators asked for yet another delay in ACA implementation that would impact small businesses. These senators – all up for reelection in the next cycle – asked Human Services secretary Sylvia Matthews Burwell to delay the rule that puts companies with 51 to 100 employees in the “small group” market instead of the “large group” market. Premiums are higher in the small group market and this rule is currently set to take effect in 2016. These senators don’t want businesses in their districts getting hit with premium hikes too close to election day. No matter what your personal position is on the ACA, I think we can all agree that we need stability in the health insurance market. At least then costs will become more predictable and small business owners can formulate expansion plans with some degree of certainty. Further, service providers will be able to design systems that fit the needs of...
read moreFor Great Twitter Engagement, Pretend You’re in a Granite State Coffee Shop
As you have probably noticed, we’re heading into a presidential election cycle and that means we’ll be getting about 72X the news stories out of New Hampshire than we normally receive. One of the things I like best about this season, is when candidates and reporters head into New Hampshire’s local coffee shops to talk to the citizenry. These small businesses have been public meeting places for neighbors to talk and share ideas for generations. It’s this kind of engagement that we’re always trying to achieve with our social media strategies and if you keep this in mind, it will help you be better at using a platform like Twitter. Chit chat over a popover For example, at Popovers On The Square in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, how popular would a guy be if he only spouted off his opinion and never listened to anyone else? He might be tolerated, but I can guarantee you that he wouldn’t make many friends. Translate this to Twitter and you get a person who never engages his followers. His followers stop following, mute him or just start ignoring him. Take the “social” out of social media and it’s just media. Pfft. There’s a secret added benefit to engaging your followers or those you follow: The Twitter users who engage with you are themselves the most “engaged” on Twitter. Because of this they are the most likely to send your message or your brand along to their followers. Further, when a follower reaches out to you on Twitter, try to respond quickly. According to a Lithium Technologies study, more than 70 percent of Twitter users expect a response from a brand and just over half expect that response within an hour. Engagement best practices LeadSift, a company that helps brands understand, identify and reach their ideal consumers via social media, studied what makes a good and bad Twitter response. They found that: Having an external call to action link in the first Twitter response reduced engagement by 19 percent, but if you must, put the CTA link in the second half of your response. Using a hashtag increases engagement by 15 percent. Personalized responses increase engagement by 20 percent. Using “click” instead of “find” in your CTA links boosts performance nearly 30 percent. Emoticons are good. They increase engagement by two thirds. Punctuation is great! It improves engagement by 27 percent! I could put all of these “best practices” back into my New Hampshire coffee shop setting. For example, if you’re talking to a salesperson, do you want the first words out of his mouth to be a hard sell? And with emoticons, isn’t it more pleasant to chat with someone who has personality? So as you manage your Twitter engagement, just see yourself having a cup of Joe with a new friend in New Hampshire, waiting for the well-scrubbed candidates to come around to make their pitches and shake your hand. Relax, enjoy and engage....
read moreSBA: Small Business Friend?
Small business is pretty big business in the federal government’s bureaucracy. President Obama elevated the position of Small Business Administration administrator to cabinet level back in 2012 and its operating budget – just salaries and general overhead costs – is about $430 million. Of course, there’s a lot more cash involved in SBA loans and loan guarantees. Between 2007 and 2013, this figure totaled $67.23 billion. The money was handed out to almost 35,000 entities. Watchdog groups have recently called attention to some potentially troubling observations in the awarding of loans and guarantees: Organizations qualified for standard bank loans have received SBA loans, and Groups catering to the “lifestyles of the rich and famous” are being funded. Let me make some general observations before I give you some specifics. The SBA is handing out tax dollars collected from individuals and corporations. Much of this tax money comes from hard-working small business owners. Because of the source of the money, there are certainly many cases were a portion of a small business owner’s tax payment goes to fund the competition down the block. One must ask the question: Would it be better to leave those billions of dollars in taxpayers’ pockets rather than send the money to Washington D.C. – where much of it disappears in operating costs – and have bureaucrats redistribute it to many companies who don’t really need it in the first place? Most small business owners go through normal means to raise startup and expansion money. They save. They borrow from family members. They max out credit cards. They go to a local bank. Is it fair for those folks to be competing against someone who is using public funds? Those are questions for all of us to consider and I’m sure we could have some good discussions over coffee someday, but until that day comes, let’s look at some loans that causes many of us to question the priorities and even existence of the SBA. The taxpayer advocacy group Open the Books highlights several exclusive private clubs that received large amounts of SBA loans or guarantees: Gun clubs. The administration may rail against guns on the campaign trail, but when it comes to handing out money, gun clubs hit a bullseye, including the Centennial Gun Club in Englewood , CO, which received $4.0 million and the Frisco Gun Club in Frisco TX, which scored $3.282 million. Yacht clubs. The Pequonnock Yacht Club in Bridgeport, CT and Houston Yacht Club in La Porte, TX each floated $2.0 million loans. Also among the recipients of SBA approval were Napa Valley wineries, Rolex and Lamborghini dealers, resorts, Fortune 100 companies, and even private equity firms. Please don’t get me wrong. I think all of these kinds of businesses and clubs are great and I don’t know of any illegal activity behind the awarding of loans or loan guarantees. But I generally think that the government should stay away from picking winners and losers and let the market sort those things out. Something like the SBA may have a role in tough times – and it does grant disaster relief loans – but when the economy went south several years ago, SBA loans actually decreased. What’s the point of handing out more money in the good times, when smart, hard-working...
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