Webinar: Prepare Now for Your 2013 Small Business Tax Returns |  |
- Webinar: Prepare Now for Your 2013 Small Business Tax Returns
- Apple Pays $200 Million for Topsy
- 3 Ways To Let Others Do the Content Marketing for You
- UPS Considers Delivery Drones Too
- How to Search For Images For Your Blog – Faster
| Webinar: Prepare Now for Your 2013 Small Business Tax Returns Posted: 05 Dec 2013 04:00 PM PST
Although we are still in the Holiday Season rather than tax season, it is not too early to get started on preparations for your 2013 return. Just as one should not wait for the night before an exam to cram for a test, the same applies to getting your documentation in order before meeting with your accountant. Most small business owners wait until March or April to meet with their accountants. A better idea is to prepare now for the meeting and schedule the appointment with your tax preparer in January or February. He or she will appreciate getting a head start before tax crunch time. Both of you will be less stressed out than you would be in mid-April. Get Your Financial House in OrderWhether you do your own bookkeeping throughout the year or have an accountant handle it for you, get a handle on your financial records. During the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, take some time to sort through your receipts. Make sure:
If you had a good year revenue-wise and foresee major expenses in the future, consider making the purchase now to lower your taxable income for 2013. Now is also a good time to make charitable donations. Consider putting them on a business credit card, and then pay it off promptly. This can help you improve your credit score. Sole proprietors might consider changing their business format and incorporating. Establishing an LLC or a C-corporation formally separates business assets from personal assets. Further, there can be tax advantages of setting up an LLC or C-Corp. Firms such as The Company Corporation offer advice and incorporation services for thousands of entrepreneurs each year. Besides potentially saving money, incorporating gives a company a more professional image. Utilize the slow time at the end of the year to look into the advantages of incorporation. There is so much to know about taxes, but most small business owners are not experts in this area. They are much better at running their business. Many entrepreneurs can do their filings on their own, but more often than not, an experienced tax accountant can help them save significant sums of money. Numerous tax laws will change after December 31st. Your tax expert can help you take advantage of opportunities that expire at the end of this year. Further, if you owe money to Uncle Sam, your accountant may be able to point you in the right direction if you need money to pay your tax obligations. Join Us for a WebinarWebinar: Year-End Small Business Accounting Tips When: Tuesday, December 10, 2013 at 3:00 PM (EST) Who: Co-hosted by my company, Biz2Credit, and Small Business Trends. Details: Featuring money-saving tax advice from Alan Goodman, a veteran CPA, and John Meyer of The Company Corporation an expert in business incorporation. Anita Campbell, the founder of Small Business Trends, will be the moderator. Registration: Join us and sign up now, it’s free – hope to see you there! The post Webinar: Prepare Now for Your 2013 Small Business Tax Returns appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Apple Pays $200 Million for Topsy Posted: 05 Dec 2013 01:30 PM PST
Apple Inc. has acquired Topsy Labs Inc., a company that specializes in Twitter search, monitoring and analytics. The deal is worth about $200 million, media sources are reporting. For those unfamiliar with the Topsy site, it is a resource allowing users to slice and dice all tweets dating back to the very beginning in 2006. On the site, users can sort through the estimated 500 million or so tweets made a day in a variety of ways. Search, Analytics and TrendsTopsy’s data collection is basically divided into three categories: Search By searching for a particular term or group of terms you can see the number of times it has occurred on Twitter over the past hour, day, seven days, 12 days or 30 days. You can also ask Topsy the number of all time mentions for a term. Then specify whether you are looking for the term in a link, tweet, photo or video. Or ask whether it was mentioned by a user considered to be an influencer. Analytics By entering up to three terms (brand names would be one example) you can determine comparatively how mentions of these terms have compared over the past month. If you choose Coke, Pepsi and Starbucks, for example (pictured above), you’ll see how popular each term was with Twitter users recently. Trends You can also discover whether specific terms are trending with a large number of Twitter users. Simply enter your term in the social trends section. Then select the top 100, 1,000, 5,000 or 20,000 mentions. You can again select the kind of content you are seeking in tweets on the topic. In this video overview, Topsy co-founder and chief scientist Rishab Aiyer Ghosh explains how Topsy sorts data results: Apple’s Plans Remain UndefinedApple has not been specific about its plans for the Topsy purchase. However, The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the sale, has speculated. The analytics company’s technology will likely be incorporated into the company’s products. The service could be used to:
In general, Topsy could help Apple better monitor social conversations about all its products. Bottom line: More data can benefit any company big or small, and analytics tools like Topsy can help companies make sense of conversations already going on in social media. Image: Topsy The post Apple Pays $200 Million for Topsy appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| 3 Ways To Let Others Do the Content Marketing for You Posted: 05 Dec 2013 11:00 AM PST
Content marketing is a complex, sometimes counter-intuitive way to make money. It often takes a lot of giving before you start to see the results. But those results are undeniable, and they stick around for years. They build momentum, and eventually become nearly unstoppable. So what’s the secret to mastering content marketing? There are many answers to that, and some of them are mutually exclusive. But there’s one answer that may not have occurred to you. One of the most powerful ways to leverage content marketing – is to get others to do it for you. Let Others Do the Content Marketing for You1. Accept Guest Posts, and Do it RightSEOs (search engine optimizers) and content marketers love the idea of guest posting as a way to build traffic. But few articles talk about the power of hosting a site that accepts guest posts as a method of building traffic. Of course, opening up the floodgates and accepting guest contributions isn’t always a strategy that’s going to guarantee growth. We’ve all seen the slew of terrible article directories filled with subpar content that was clearly put together in about five minutes as part of an effort to manipulate the search results. Most of those sites pull little or no traffic. Yet, if you look at most niches, you’ll find at least one major success that consists of content produced in large part by guests. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that standards are the main thing separating the winners from the losers who employ this strategy. Of course, there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy here. But some commonalities include: A Brand Identity with a General Shared Purpose for the Content It’s not enough to only accept good, great or even awe-inspiring content. If the guest posts don’t have anything in common, you’re going to end up with a schizophrenic brand. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that every article needs to be about the same topic, and in fact most marketers are probably too narrow, rather than too broad. I’m talking about your tone, values and purpose. Those should be made abundantly clear in your guest-posting guidelines. Depth and Novelty There seems to be a myth floating around that most users need a double dose of Ritalin just to sit through an article longer than a single page. Neil Patel has repeatedly found that long form content typically increases conversions as well. If an article is 400 words long, I feel fairly safe in saying it’s probably not valuable (unless you’re Seth Godin). That’s not a universal statement, but it’s generally true. Please don’t take this to mean that a post is valuable if it’s long. Look for content that brings something new to the conversation, something a bit more comprehensive than anything else on the subject. Something that finds interesting connections, something insightful or something that puts a new spin on an old topic. Do not accept content that feels too familiar. Usefulness Your guidelines should strongly emphasize the takeaway. People will happily read long form content, but only if they feel like they’re getting something out of it. Your readers need to understand what the benefits are. That should be made clear in the title. Readers also love being told what to do. That’s why most of them are there. They’re looking for advice and instructions. Entertainment If the post isn’t useful or novel, it had better be entertaining. That means it ought to be funny, relatable, inspirational, cute or incites an emotion. Let me be clear on this, this is not the same thing as creating emotional content. Emotional content tells readers how you feel, when your goal should be to make them feel. Remember, the story creates an emotion, it doesn’t embody one. I already know what you’re thinking, “How am I supposed to accept guest posts like this? Nobody’s knocking down my door.” The answer to this is actually fairly simple. You just need to be willing to make a few investments. You need to set the bar high early on. The best way to do that is to work with somebody influential from the very beginning. If you think you need to have an amazing site before that happens, I’m going to tell you that you have it all backwards. Jon Morrow is with me on this. It’s influential relationships that make all the difference. You know what Jon Morrow finally did that turned his blogging career around? He hired Problogger’s Chris Garret to give him some pointers. His response was that nobody knew who he was. If nobody’s knocking down your door for a chance to guest post, chances are nobody influential has worked with you yet. I know a lot of people stress “relationship marketing” and if you’re already good at that, you probably already control a massive platform with influential people requesting to contribute content to your site. If that’s not you, I’m going to let you in on a little secret – people like to get paid to write. Digital marketers have grown up in a culture where you write to make money by getting attention. But a lot of them come from a journalism culture, a culture where people expect to get paid to put finger to keyboard. If they’re any good, and if they’ve got a network, they’re probably getting paid. And most times, influential bloggers generally aren’t asking for that much money. None of this is an excuse to stop approaching them like human beings, of course. Most of them are very busy. You should still make at least a bit of an effort to sell them on the idea of writing an article for you. After all, you’re probably going to want to do this more than once, and you’re probably going to want them to feel comfortable sharing your site and promoting you on their network. Use the money as an ice-breaker to kick off a relationship, not an excuse to avoid it. It won’t take too many of these paid gigs with influential writers before outreach starts to get easier, and you start to notice that you don’t need to offer the money to get the results. Keep at it for several months or up to a year or so. Pretty soon, you’ll be getting more requests than you’ll know what to do with. 2. Become a Master CuratorBefore we dive too deep into this, I’d just like to stress that you can’t do content marketing on curation alone. At least, I don’t believe that you can do it ethically, or for very long, if it’s the only thing you do. I strongly believe that curation adds value to the Internet when done properly. But I don’t believe that it adds enough value to transform you into a genuine authority on its own. That said, I’d like to direct you to a little Facebook Page called Just Girly Things. A Facebook Page with an engaged audience a full three times larger than its subscribed audience. While the Page doesn’t seem to make this clear anywhere (again, not so ethical), most or all of the content posted on this page is reposted from elsewhere on the Web. This hasn’t stopped them from reaching an incredibly broad audience by posting content that people can’t seem to stop themselves from sharing. For a more business-related example, take a look at Shopify’s Facebook Page. On a platform where it’s most common for brands to reach less than 1 percent of their audience, Shopify is reaching about 10 percent of them. Why? When they could be spamming their audience about their sweet new hardware kits for their iPad POS system, instead they’re posting inspirational quotes from their Pinterest boards. And those Pinterest boards are made up of curated content. As a curator, you have a few basic responsibilities:
Curation is also useful as a way to test audience responses and learn intuition about what kind of content propagates through your network. You can leverage this knowledge to produce your own bite-size content, a crucial differentiator that will make your social presence even more valuable. Finally, familiarize yourself with Fair Use and any other applicable laws when you choose to leverage content curation for marketing purposes. There is a fine line to walk here, and while social networks have changed the way things like this are approached, you need to be aware of the legal risks involved. 3. Empowering UsersBy now, most of you are probably familiar with the term “user-generated content,” but understanding how to leverage it and use it as a marketing tool isn’t quite so obvious. Your audience and customers don’t work for you. You can’t tell them what kind of content to produce, or even to produce it in the first place. How do you use this to generate sales? For starters, I just want to be clear that this stuff works. Peer-reviewed science has demonstrated that social media activity produces sales. And that, by far, the most influential communications are the information-rich communications between consumers. But what can you do to get those information rich interactions started? Contests Photo contests like the Guardian’s “Own the Weekend” or Burberry’s “Art of the Trench” can massively reinvigorate a brand, expand your reach, and connect you with your audience. Photos get conversations started, especially when the stated goal of the contest is to create a photo worth talking about. You can take this to the next level with Vines or videos. Forums If your audience is of sufficient size, it’s never a bad idea to set up a forum on your site. While social networks have become the dominant place for people to interact online, forums are still the most heavily used platforms for discussions revolving around a specific subject. Since brands are often subject-driven, forums are incredibly powerful. Ask questions Nothing gets people talking quite like a question. Simple, open-ended prompts designed to get ideas flowing are especially effective. Make it easy User-generated reviews have been central to Amazon’s success, made all the more useful by the fact that the reviews are easy to write and vote on. Sites like Imgur, someecards, and Cheezburger owe their success to the ease with which people can upload images and generate memes. The more tools your users have at their disposal to generate content, the more user-generated content you will have. With enough quantity, you get quality. And if you have a rating system in place, the most shareable content will rise to the top. Moderation is a Crucial Part of the User-Generated Content Process It’s crucial not to get overbearing with your moderators, but at the same time, it’s important to maintain a brand identity. You want to create an environment where people feel welcome to have their own opinions. But you don’t want Internet trolls to turn the place into a mess of hate, brand-bashing and crude jokes. Put a clear and concise moderation policy up, and enforce it. Where possible, allow users to vote on comments and content, or to flag them, in order to put some level of self-moderation in place. While user-generated content is a great way to expand your reach and build a connection with your users, it can backfire terribly if you fail use it to develop a brand identity and a sense of values. The goal of these user communities should always be to build a core following and a corresponding identity for your brand. ConclusionBy now it should be clear that when you “let others do the marketing for you,” you’re going to be doing a lot of work. This isn’t about reducing marketing costs. It’s about building a connection with influencers and with your customers. It’s about building a culture around your brand. Community Talking Photo via Shutterstock The post 3 Ways To Let Others Do the Content Marketing for You appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| UPS Considers Delivery Drones Too Posted: 05 Dec 2013 08:00 AM PST
Not so fast Amazon! Earlier this week, the ecommerce giant claimed it is planning to unleash a swarm of flying package delivery drones at some point in the future. While some may still consider the idea silly and impractical, one of Amazon’s biggest delivery partners apparently does not. The buzz on the Web suggests UPS, which handles much of Amazon’s current delivery along with FedEx, has also been testing flying drones. A spokesman for UPS told The Verge recently:
The UPS vision for flying drones in the package delivery process seems quite different, however. One expert suggests the company is much more likely to use these vehicles to make deliveries from airport to distribution hubs, media sources report. Earlier this week, Chris Ciaccia of The Street, speculated UPS and FedEx would not sit still and watch a major customer cut them out. FedEx has apparently also looked at unmanned aerial delivery. Some Still Think It’s CrazyStill others maintain the idea is simply impractical and won’t save money or improve efficiency at all. Marcus Wohlsen of Wired insists drone delivery doesn’t make sense for Amazon because:
Instead, Wohlsen insists Amazon’s announcement had more to do with an effort to dominate the news cycle. The announcement broke in time for Cyber Monday, one of the most important shopping days of the year. And others in the Small Business Trends community have suggested additional ulterior motives. Lower Costs Are Good For BusinessWhatever the outcome, small businesses are probably better off with shippers like UPS and FedEx also looking at cutting costs. Lower costs and higher efficiency for these companies means small businesses that need to ship to customers won’t be left out in the cold. Octocopter Drone Photo via Shutterstock The post UPS Considers Delivery Drones Too appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| How to Search For Images For Your Blog – Faster Posted: 05 Dec 2013 05:00 AM PST
I’d like to share a little trick we’ve learned to find just the right image for that article you worked so hard on — and find it fast. Currently we use Shutterstock images to add visual interest to articles here on Small Business Trends. We love Shutterstock images because they are high quality and interesting. Now we could go directly to the Shutterstock website and search for images. Often we do just that. But there’s another way to search — a way that saves us time. We search Google first, to find Shutterstock images. That’s right. Shutterstock images are indexed in Google. Google’s image search is detailed and intelligent enough to narrow down the search results quickly — and get us started in a matter of a minute or less. Google search is fast and easy. You plug in a keyword to find images by subject matter. You can narrow down the search by color (something we often do). Best of all, with Google search you can load hundreds of results on one page almost instantly. Only after we find a promising image through Google, do we jump over to the Shutterstock.com site. There we can either refine our search, or expand on it. And then we can download the image under our Shutterstock licensing agreement. Don’t get me wrong. Shutterstock has great search tools right on its site — and we use those tools. But using Google as the first step this way saves us time. Here’s How to Search for Images – FasterStep 1 – Go to Google.comGo to Google.com. Use the site search command (site:[url]). That limits your search ONLY to one site’s content. You can also add a keyword for the subject of an image. We’re going to use the keyword “shopping.” In the Google.com search box, type in the following: Site:http://shutterstock.com shopping Step 2 – Click on Images SearchThe results that come up initially will be standard Web search results, i.e., text. You want to click on the “Images” tab right under the search box. See image above, underlined in red. Voila – you should see lots and lots of images. Step 3 - Select “Search Tools”Click on the “Search Tools” button. This will open up some drop-down menus, allowing you to narrow down your search. So simply use those menus. Let’s say you want to search by color. We often search for a nice warm color such as yellow, orange or red (warm colors get people to take action – see the psychology of color). You also can narrow it down by type of image. For instance, let’s say you just wanted a fun clip-art type of image — you could search “Clip art.” Or maybe you want an image with a person’s smiling face in it — for that you select “Face.” Step 4 – Jump Over to ShutterstockOnce you find a promising image, click back to the Shutterstock site. From there you can do related searches for similar images. Maybe the one you chose is good, but you want one slightly different. Often a photographer will have a selection of similar images. You can expand or narrow your search to find just the right image you want. And that’s all there is to it. P.S. these instructions “should” work with other stock image sites if you substitute the URL when you search. However, we haven’t tried many searches on other sites. We do know that this method works very well for Shutterstock.com images. The post How to Search For Images For Your Blog – Faster appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
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