Mine Your Own Business

Small Business Web Tips

There is lots of information on Internet Marketing available both in print and online, but very few focus specifically on small businesses. Here is an article that specifically targets 5 mistakes that brick and mortar small businesses make on the Web. To summarize:

1. Failing to Understand the Basics of Internet Marketing
2. Unreasonable Expectations
3. Having a Subpar Website
4. Google Centrality
5. Misunderstanding Social Media

The article provides lots of information on these five tips and provides a lot of helpful examples. The article also inspired many interesting comments and Tweets so you might want to check those out as well. If you're still interested in further information, you can check out our post from December 10th of last year, Web Site Suicide, which views this topic from a different perspective.

Recession Benefit

We've done numerous postings on the terrible toll the recession has taken on everyone and especially small businesses, now comes an interesting article from the Wall Street Journal that points out one benefit of the awful economy. It describes how for small business owners that have weathered the economic storm there has never been a better time to expand the size of your establishment. The reality is that commercial rents are down 44% from their peak in October 2007. The other great thing about the current commercial real estate market is that better locations are available, still at greatly reduced costs.

if the combination of reduced rents and better location has got you thinking of considering an expansion or move, what is the best way to take action? The article describes how some business owners have used brokers, but a lot of them have just found a new location by exploring areas they are interested in themselves. This has the advantage of watching traffic in the area and also observing the other businesses in the area. There are a lot of food examples in the article that might give you some ideas.

Not Too Late

We did a lot of postings in December and January about possible trends in many areas for 2010 and we even posted one, 2010 Resolutions, that linked to an article that had a New Year's Resolution Generation tool. If you didn't get around to making any resolutions (procrastination can be a curse) or simply didn't want to make any, there may be a new site that might entice you to set and achieve some goals for 2010. The enticement is that you can receive merchandise and services for meeting the goals.

There is a new program called Staples stickK to it! Business Challenge (obviously sponsored by Staples) that has a four step process for completing your goals redeemable for Staples merchandise and services. The four steps are:

1. Select you goal
2. Get a Referee
3. Earn EasyPoints
4. Achieve Success

Sound Interesting? You can read more about it and register here.

Customer Referrals

How would you like some inexpensive and uncomplicated ideas to increase sales and profits in our present difficult economy? It sounds attractive and here is an article that gives 7 tips to do this by increasing customer referrals to your business. The 7 tips from the article are:

1. Talk to your customers.
2. Serve their needs.
3. Engage your customers.
4. Get your employees involved.
5. Hire customer friendly.
6. Post reminders.
7. Celebrate good news.

Some of these are pretty obvious without reading the whole article, but it is worth reading because it does provide further details and examples that will help any small business implement at least some of these ideas. After all what could be better than using satisfied customers to get more satisfied customers?

A Different Buy Local Trend

We've done numerous postings on small businesses and buying local in the past. Most of the buying local trend in the past has been encouraging consumers to shop at small local stores such as in the 3/50 Project. Now comes a new article from Business Week that takes a very different approach describing a new trend of some small business groups encouraging big buyers such as hospital, colleges, and governments to shift some of their spending to small businesses in their community. The article gives several examples of the big impact that can have on local economies and also provides some advantages to the large institutions for more buying local.

Imagine if you had a vacuum shop located near a hospital and were able to persuade them to purchase some of your product line. The lowest price might not always be the only factor in getting the business. In the article they describe how University Hospitals in Ohio state factors such as superior service or the location of a supplier are big factors for them. Think about dropping off a vacuum for repair and having a very quick turn around , instead of sending it back to the vendor for repair or just junking it and replacing it. That is just one advantage for large institutions to buying local and we're sure you can think of many more.

A Word to the Wise

There was a short article recently in USA Today about how the IRS and several states are keeping a close eye on companies that are changing the status of employees to independent contractors. Since many small businesses legitimately use independent contractors as mechanics, teachers, etc. we thought it might be a good idea to post something the use of independent contractors. The article describes how businesses can save up to 30% in payroll, so states are acting more aggressively during these tough times to shore up their struggling budgets.

At the end of the article are two excellent links that give some very good information on the differences between employees and independent contractors and in what situation to use each. Some of the best advice is in the article Should you hire an employee or independent contractor?. The point it makes is if you are going to use independent contractors, make sure and check with your attorney to make sure you are well within the law, and talk to your accountant to make sure all necessary tax forms are completed and done correctly. In these times the IRS and states are going to make sure small businesses are in complete compliance.

 

Long Life Tips

This posting will be a little different than our normal posting on small business matters, but it is about an article that seems worth sharing. The article  How to Live 100 Years was in Time recently and describes how more and more people are living to 100 or more and are still very active even in their advanced years. The article cites several scientific studies that seem to indicate two important factors in healthy aging, genetics and life style. The encouraging finding is that while genetics do play a role, the right life style can have a big impact on anyone. Also encouraging is that scientists are making big advances in understanding the aging process.

There are a lot of great links to other articles in the piece and if you get interested in improving your physical fitness to increase your odds of living to a vibrant old age, you can check out a posting we did last month about Two Health Articles that provides some tips. The Time article also describes that while exercise is very important, a healthy diet and exercising your brain are also key components.

Employees and the Recession

We did a lot of postings on employees and the recession in 2009 because both have such a huge impact on any small business. The recession has had a negative impact for most businesses and employees can make or break a business. There was an article recently in The New York Times about small business owners and employees that gives some great tips on how to manage and treat your employees. The writer owns five small businesses in the Chicago area, so he should certainly have some experience in this area.

One of the last points he makes in the article is that sometimes letting a problem employee go is the best thing for the employee and is always the best thing for your business and your other employees. Now for the link between employees and the recession that is not mentioned in the article. With the current national unemployment rate at 9.7% there a lot of very qualified people looking for work. Now might be the time to assess your employees and make some changes. Hopefully you are happy with all your employees, because firing is never fun for either party, but if you have some problem people this should be a good time to take care of the problem.

Small Business Backup Option

In November last year we did a posting on some options for small businesses to use in backing up their computer or computers in Something Really Scary. That posting and the related article focused on external hard drives and flash drives and mentioned very briefly the option of online backup. The main point was that every small business should do some type of backup on a regular basis.

This posting is about an article from Computerworld on a company that has designed some online backup specifically aimed at small businesses. Carbonite has been in the online backup business since 2006 and they have taken their current product and incorporated requests from small business users to create Carbonite Pro. Read the article for some of the new enhancements and make sure and check out the Tweets and comments at the bottom of the article for some more online backup options. One nice thing the article mentions is the you can try the product for free for a month. If you have to do a backup that should make it a little less painful.

Pricing Points

We ran across a great article from Inc.com that provides a very comprehensive overview of pricing. The article starts by describing just how difficult it is and also how essential it is to do pricing correctly for any business. After some general discussion on some pitfalls with regard to pricing, the article provides the following five factors to consider when setting up pricing.

• Know Your Customer
• Know Your Costs
• Know Your Revenue Target
• Know your Competition
• Know Where the Market Is Headed

The article gives a lot of good material to consider when thinking about the above points. The final points the article covers is When and How to raise or lower prices and the importance of monitoring the pricing you eventually set up. After all, the price of products can either make or break your business.