Twitter Chat January 17: Going Virtual With Your Technology #SMBChat |  |
- Twitter Chat January 17: Going Virtual With Your Technology #SMBChat
- Senior Entrepreneurs: Options for Financing Your New Business
- FrameBlast Offers Mobile Video App With Real Editing Capabilities
- 5 Low Cost SEO Software Tools for Small Business
- New Year Goals for Small Business Owners
- Why Companies Offer Trade Credit
- Apple Develops Cheaper iPhone for Late 2013
| Twitter Chat January 17: Going Virtual With Your Technology #SMBChat Posted: 14 Jan 2013 04:20 PM PST Unless you’ve been living under a rock (I know you haven’t!) you have been hearing a lot about the cloud recently. Large enterprises have gone to virtual technologies, and more and more small businesses are considering virtual technologies and cloud-based solutions, or starting to move in that direction. By virtual technologies, I’m talking first about virtual servers that reside somewhere other than your facilities. But virtualization can also refer broadly to online data storage and cloud based software. In our shop, we handle much of our technology virtually. For instance, for hosting our websites we use a virtual hosting environment, instead of trying to deal with physical servers at our facilities. It is much easier for a small team. We avoid a lot of hardware maintenance headaches by leaving it in the hands of experts. In the event of a natural disaster touching our locations, it’s not our headache to worry about keeping the servers going. Our IT Manager has secure access over the Web and can even perform certain activities through his smart phone, to manage the server configurations, address database issues, schedule backups, move files, and so on. He doesn’t have to be physically in the same location with a hardware box to manage it. Hand in hand with the remote servers, we are moving much more of our data storage in the cloud. It is more convenient with a distributed team spread out over multiple locations. As a team we can access files securely through the cloud. And we use literally more than a dozen cloud-based software applications, another way we are moving away from localized IT. But as we do more virtually, security is something we are paying much more attention to than ever. Even basic security issues such as passwords become magnified when you must manage things remotely through password-enabled dashboards or applications. Perhaps you are in the same situation as we are, or considering it. If you’d like to know more about going virtual with your technology and how to ensure security as you do it, please join experts from Symantec and me for a Twitter chat about the topic. Bring your questions! Here are the details: Title: Going Virtual with Your Technology—What SMBs Need to Know Date: Thursday, January 17, 2013 Time: Starts at 1:00 pm Pacific time / 4:00 pm Eastern (New York) time Length: 1 hour Expert participants:
Where: On Twitter.com. Follow the hashtag #SMBchat For background reading, check out the 2012 Symantec Disaster Preparedness Survey which revealed that SMBs and small businesses are beginning to implement virtualization technologies but the majority still have not … yet. The post Twitter Chat January 17: Going Virtual With Your Technology #SMBChat appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Senior Entrepreneurs: Options for Financing Your New Business Posted: 14 Jan 2013 03:00 PM PST
Senior entrepreneurs have many advantages. Starting a business later in life brings with it a wealth of business experience, aptitude for what it takes to compete and succeed and self-awareness that youth doesn't always possess. But with the average cost of starting a business hovering around the $30,000 mark, how can seniors finance their new ventures? Should you tap into your retirement savings, borrow against your 401k or apply for a loan? Here are some considerations and options to bear in mind as you set about financing your new business venture: Pursuing Your Dream of Self-Employment Needn't Cost Much Don't be put off by the average cost of starting a business mentioned above; not all small businesses need huge amounts of financing to get off the ground. Home-based businesses can get started for around $1,000, which can be funded with a credit card. Home-based franchises are another option, and costs as low as $2,000 to buy into some. Lean business practices, such as buying surplus and using independent contractors instead of hiring employees, can also help keep your costs low. If your investments aren't going to help you generate revenue, don't spend the cash! Consider a Government-Backed Business Loan Many seniors are wary of seeking out business loans, often concluding that lenders won't finance businesses that get started later in life. This is where government-backed business loans can help. With lower fees and a guarantee to banks and lenders that a portion of the loan will be repaid if the business owner defaults on the loan, these loan programs encourage the lender to take a greater risk than it would have otherwise. Government loans support billions in lending to small business owners, so talk to your local bank or financial institution about government loan programs they may offer. Borrowing Against or Tapping into Your Retirement Savings – The Right Way Should you tap into your retirement savings account to finance your business? Entrepreneurs are risk-takers, and even though the risks are high, using your own retirement money can give you an increased degree of flexibility and control over your business investment decisions than dealing with third-party sources of capital. Each situation is different, so make sure you seek advice before you make a decision. Here are three options for using your retirement plan to fund your business:
Be sure to talk to your accountant and your existing 401(k) administrator and get the right professional advice before pursuing on this option. 2. Tap into Your 401(k)/IRA – Tax law does allow you to tap into your retirement savings account without penalty, if you follow the rules—which can get complicated. To do this, you will need to structure your business as a C Corporation. This entity will then issue all of its stock and transfer it to a new 401(k) profit-sharing plan in exchange for the cash in the plan. Consult a tax attorney or accountant to handle incorporating and setting up the new retirement plan. 3. Withdraw Directly from Your 401(k) – This should be your last option. Anything you withdraw is subject to regular income taxes and could draw a hefty tax penalty, depending on your age (10 percent for those 59½ years old or younger). Get Advice While financial intuitions and your retirement plan administrator can help steer you through some of the options discussed above, it's also worth getting objective advice from small business assistance resources in your community. A good place to start is to team up with a business mentor from SCORE, a nationwide nonprofit association dedicated to educating entrepreneurs and helping small businesses start, grow and succeed. Their services are free. Local Small Business Development Centers and Women's Business Centers also provide counseling on available financing options.
The post Senior Entrepreneurs: Options for Financing Your New Business appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| FrameBlast Offers Mobile Video App With Real Editing Capabilities Posted: 14 Jan 2013 01:00 PM PST Consumers and business professionals alike are becoming increasingly reliant on mobile technology. This means that mobile-centric social networks are becoming increasingly popular. So while businesses might want to stick to professional platforms to create and share media or promotional items, mobile-centric platforms can potentially provide wider access to target consumers while simultaneously saving time and money. For example, Instagram has become a pretty useful promotional network for many businesses, mainly due to its ease of use for mobile devices and its vast network. Now, a handful of new apps are emerging that hope to provide a similar platform for mobile videos.
Since videos offer a more in-depth look at a subject, certain types of businesses could find such a platform even more useful, provided it can build a large enough network to make it worthwhile. FrameBlast has recently emerged as a simple, free video app that gives users the ability to record, edit and share videos. The app gives users some editing capabilities as well, such as adding music and Instagram-like visual adjustments. And once videos are completed, users can share them with their network on other social platforms such as Vimeo, YouTube, Tumblr, and Facebook. The photo above shows some of the editing capabilities, such as video adjustments and music selection, as well as recording additional clips. It also shows some of the sharing options available for finished videos. FrameBlast is owned by Clearer Partners, which is a UK-based media studio that offers a lot of experience in online video. The team has worked on creative film projects for The BBC, Joost, UK Parliament, and more over their 50 years of combined experience in the professional media industry. Some of the other mobile video sharing apps that have emerged, such as Viddy, have a much simpler approach that allow for single clips and limited editing capabilities. Simplicity can certainly be a plus for consumers, but for professional businesses that want to share more in-depth mobile videos, FrameBlast is probably worth a look. The app is currently available for iOS devices, but FrameBlast is reportedly working to launch Android and pro versions soon. The post FrameBlast Offers Mobile Video App With Real Editing Capabilities appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| 5 Low Cost SEO Software Tools for Small Business Posted: 14 Jan 2013 11:00 AM PST Without tools, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is working blind. That said, tools can also be a waste of money if your SEO efforts haven’t reached the stage of profitability. These five SEO software tools help you gather SEO information without breaking the bank: 1. SheerSEO
This all-purpose tool helps you manage, monitor, and conduct SEO campaigns. While it has broad capabilities, it is most useful for watching your rankings and how your link building efforts are impacting them. SheerSEO is available at several different levels priced between $7 and $40 per month. (They recommend the $15 option.) Features include: Rank tracking – This lets you know where your pages are ranking for your chosen keywords. The most useful part of this is the historical tracking, so you can follow trends in your rankings over time without needing to export to a spreadsheet. Main referrers – This lets you know how many links you have and lets you view the top 50, sorted by most referrals or by "PageRank Boost." This is not merely the PageRank of the link. Instead, PageRank Boost is a specially created metric designed by SheerSEO which estimates how strongly the link impacts your rankings. Social metrics – Track how your site is shared on Facebook, Twitter, etc. The tool is good at finding sharing activity you wouldn’t normally see from the social networks themselves. Link building – A "blog reviews" tool helps you partially automate the process of getting product reviews from blogs. A directory submission tool is also included, although this is a somewhat dated tactic. Reporting – Use this to easily put together easy to understand reports for clients. 2. W3Optimizer
This product is available for $9.95 a month or $99.95 a year, putting it well within the reach of small businesses. Use the tool to analyze competition for keywords in Google, and to discover keywords used by your top ten competitors in the search engine. The tool also offers on page analysis, and more detailed analysis of your top ten competitors, as well as detailed off-page analysis of your links and the various factors revolving around them. A content optimizer offers advice, and extras include a members forum, and a search engine snippet simulator.
At $15/month, this product is one of the most complete & best values for money small businesses can get. SearchEnabler is useful in complete site audit, analysis as well as optimization and tracking. It also has multi-user option so in case if you have more than one website to manage, you can go for $49 version which lets you manage 5 sites. Tools include: Domain Analysis – Get advice on how to fix errors and optimize your domain for the search engines. Website Crawl Analysis – Get information about how well your site is getting crawled and indexed by Google. Content Analysis – Discover issues with your content such as duplicate titles and text, long or short titles, and more. WebPage Analysis – Test how well optimized your pages are for specific keywords. Keyword Rankings – Track your keyword rankings and record how they change over time without needing to export to a spreadsheet. Link Analysis – Track the number of links you and your competitors have gathered. Detect broken links on or off your site to recover them for search engine benefit. Tracking – Integrate your Google Analytics as well as social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ to track your traffic and social media performance. 4. SERPs.com
This one’s a bit more pricey than some of the other options, but SERPs.com does offer a monthly $48 version which is within the reach of many small businesses. One of the best features is the fact that the tool offers link metrics from SEOmoz without needing to pay the SEOmoz price. In addition, the $48 version offers daily rank tracking for 300 keywords, more than enough for most businesses. You can manage three clients, ten websites, and export stylish PDF reports. Smart ranking alerts let you know about sudden changes in the search results, and a Google weather report lets you know if changes in your rankings were caused by changes to the algorithm. One of the more useful features is the ability to add events, such as changing a keyword position, and track how it influences rankings for that keyword. 5. DIYSEO
At $33.25 a month this one’s fairly low on the price scale. The tool offers a simple step by step plan to boost search engine traffic. Keyword consultation comes with the package to help you choose which phrases to chase after, as well as tools to track your rankings and backlinks. This is a good option for beginning SEOs or businesses that would like to handle most of the SEO themselves. For advanced SEOs, however, this tool will seem more like a refresher course in things they have already learned. ConclusionAs they say:
SEO software helps you stay in touch with your efforts and outcomes so it’s clearer what is helping and what’s a waste of time. It’s important to track your results so that you can continue making process. At the same time, it’s important to avoid spending too much money early on in the SEO process. These tools are a good place to get started. Do you recommend any other tools? What is the best way to leverage tools for success? The post 5 Low Cost SEO Software Tools for Small Business appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| New Year Goals for Small Business Owners Posted: 14 Jan 2013 08:00 AM PST
In light of this yearly tradition of creating lists, here are five attainable new year business goals for the small business owner: 1. Delegate More When you're just starting out with your business, money is usually tight and it's natural to want to tighten your purse strings. However, small business owners are also notorious for having trouble handing over the reigns. Trying to take care of everything yourself can be harmful to both your well being and your business. With only one person in charge of the whole show, there's only so far you can scale. This year, consider tasks that you can delegate down, such as the countless tasks that are easy to do and don't require specific expertise. If you're worried about costs, just remember how much of your valuable, revenue-generating time you'll be freeing up. Your business can't grow when you're focused on busy work. In addition to delegating down, think about areas of your business that you should delegate up. These are the tasks that require special knowledge and skills and ones not related to the core wheelhouse of your business. While DIY may seem easier on the wallet in the short term, it's typically better in the long run to hire a specialist to handle complex issues, such as an accountant for bookkeeping or taxes or an expert for handling your legal paperwork like incorporation. 2. Get Your Books Ready for Tax Time Early This Year Are you guilty of waiting until the last minute to organize and file your taxes? Do you find yourself wading through emails, drawers, and your car to find any stray business receipts you can expense? Do you need to try to remember a full year's mileage expenses on April 13th? Don't wait until April to start on your tax forms this year. Start fresh by organizing your books from day one of the new year and start gathering what you need for your prior year’s taxes now (even if that means outsourcing your accounting or signing up for a new cloud-based application). 3. Protect Your Assets with an LLC or Corporation While legal fine print isn't the most exciting part of running a business, forming an LLC or Corporation can be critical to your business and personal financial health. These business structures protect your personal assets from any liabilities of the company. This means that if your business can't pay its debts or happens to be sued, your own personal property may be shielded from any judgment. In addition, these formal business structures can improve your tax situation and carry other benefits that you may want to discuss with your CPA or tax advisor. If you're not quite ready to take the plunge to incorporate, you should at least register your business name with the state. This simple step is known as filing a DBA (Doing Business As or Fictitious Business Name) and it does two things:
4. Put Your Customer First As a small business owner, you know you wouldn't be anywhere if not for your customers. As you move into the new year, put your customers first in all that you do. A small business can stand out in a crowded market by offering impeccable, personal, and customer-centric service. Treat your customers as people, not numbers or sales figures. Listen to your customer's needs and bend over backwards to make them happy. 5. Set Aside Time for Yourself As an entrepreneur, you probably suffer from little separation between your personal and work life. This year, make a point to set aside time for yourself each and every day. Go to the gym, do something you enjoy or just turn off your phone and other devices for a half hour each day. It's important to recharge your batteries in order to stay focused and motivated throughout the year. A change of scenery can stoke your creativity. Who knows what brilliant plan you'll dream up when you step outside your daily grind. Sticking to a goal is tough for anyone. The most important thing is to create realistic ones that make sense for you and your business. What are the goals you’ve set for your business in the new year? Goals Photo via Shutterstock The post New Year Goals for Small Business Owners appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Why Companies Offer Trade Credit Posted: 14 Jan 2013 05:00 AM PST Trade credit, or financing provided by the seller of a product, is an common way that small companies borrow, with research showing that 60 percent of small companies make use of it. Typically, companies receive trade credit by declining a seller’s discount for faster payment. By taking more time to pay, buyers are, in effect, getting a short term loan. Explaining why companies use trade credit is relatively easy. It's a substitute for more expensive and more-difficult-to-obtain forms of credit, such as bank loans, academic studies show. When banks make credit more difficult to obtain, or when companies are young or faltering and cannot easily borrow money from other sources, their owners often turn to trade credit as a source of capital. But why do sellers offer trade credit to their customers? Some researchers argue that companies provide trade credit because they have access to lower cost financing than other firms. However, other studies showthat firms in worse financial condition supply more trade credit than those in better financial condition, and firms with greater access to credit themselves provide less trade credit than those with lesser access to capital, suggesting that something other else must be at play. The most compelling explanation is that trade credit is a sales tool. Scholarly investigations indicate that sellers use trade credit to signal to customers that they are offering high quality products. In addition, sellers of more unique products and services offer more trade credit at a cheaper price and with less concern for the creditworthiness of the buyer than sellers of commodity-like goods and services, studies show. Finally, companies that face more competition to sell their products and services are more likely to provide trade credit to their customers than those in less competitive markets, research reveals. The post Why Companies Offer Trade Credit appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Apple Develops Cheaper iPhone for Late 2013 Posted: 14 Jan 2013 02:30 AM PST Innovation is a constant consideration for small business owners and entrepreneurs, not only because of the changes they need to make in their products or services in order to compete, but also because the tools for marketing and operating their businesses are ever-changing. In this roundup, we consider one major revolution– the rise of mobile–and how this innovation is changing everything. The Age of InnovationCut rate communications. A report suggests Apple is developing a cheaper iPhone for release later this year with a price somewhere between $99 and $149. The trend toward mobile technology is affecting every aspect of how we interact with customers, suppliers, and partners. With these devices becoming less expensive all the time, more of your customers will be ready to do business on a mobile platform. Bloomberg The next runner up. Apple is not the only company making waves in the mobile niche. In fact, columnist MG Siegler argues that a very different kind of company, Samsung Electronics, may become the most important tech firm of 2013. Recently, the company announced its intention to start selling phones running on the open source platform Tizen in addition to its Android-based offerings, making the company a dominant player in the market. TechCrunch Evolve or die. You know your business has to innovate to keep up with the pack. The mobile revolution is just the latest example of this as your customers make big changes in the way they communicate and do business. But whether you are trying to make changes in your products or services or in the way you interact with your customers, small privately held companies often face the greatest challenges, writes management consultant Marc Emmer. Here’s why. Executive Street On the MoveIn the black. If you want to know how important mobile devices could be to your business’s bottom line, check out these statistics collected on the impact of mobile purchasing during the 2012 holiday shopping season. Specifically, PayPal numbers show a 173 percent increase in mobile purchases on Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. with a 193 percent increase in mobile sales on Black Friday. Overall, Paypal saw a 164 percent increase in mobile payments over 2011, reports blogger Rieva Lesonsky. Grow Smart Biz Face the realities. An estimated 75 percent of the world’s population now have mobile phones, according to this infographic shared by blogger Wong Ching Ya. This means that even something as simple as your Facebook marketing should be done with mobile users in mind. Here we see some tips for making sure mobile users stay engaged with your Facebook page. Suggestions include focusing on quality content in your feed, the only thing mobile users will really see, and investing in an advertising strategy that includes Sponsored Stories and Page Post ads. Social@Blogging Tracker Monetize your mobile startup. As might be expected, the upswing in mobile usage has brought about an increase in the number of mobile startups to accommodate users. The major challenge for these businesses from day one is figuring out how to earn a steady revenue from their applications, a challenge even for some larger businesses with mobile apps. When you launch a mobile business, monetization should be part of your strategy from the beginning, not something to be considered only after your application is completed. Rahul Varshneya Time to get started. You’ve heard about the importance of mobile technology to many aspects of your business. Not least of these, is the way in which customers are paying for products and services. In this post, Dave Thomas gives us more data from research firm Gartner. The question is whether your business is ready for the next step in digital marketing, or not. The mobile reality of the marketplace means its time to make some changes in your business. Tweak Your Biz The post Apple Develops Cheaper iPhone for Late 2013 appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
Over 50 and thinking of starting a business? You're in good company. Approximately 7.4 million Americans over the age of 50 work for themselves. And according to the AARP, one in six baby boomers working for someone else hopes to be self-employed in the future.
With each new year comes a new set of goals. As humans, we're constantly aspiring to improve ourselves, whether it's wanting to lose weight, exercise more, get organized, spend less money, etc.| You are subscribed to email updates from Small Business Trends To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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