Welcome to the West Wing Week, your guide to everything that’s happening at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. This week, President Obama held events in Oregon and Ohio focused on promoting growth and winning the future through investments, concentrating on innovation and small business growth. Also, the President convened his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness at the White House.
Archive for the ‘Small Business’ Category
One of the worst aspects of the current economic reality is the continuing level of unemployment. While it continues at or around the 10% mark, it’s going to depress the amount of money spent on Main Streets up and down the US. People worried whether their next pay check will arrive are preferring to pay down their debts rather than spend. Combine this with the unwillingness of the banks and credit card companies to be more generous with credit limits and you have a perfect storm for small business to weather. It’s therefore welcome to see the Small Business Jobs Act. No matter what your politics, the idea of $12 billion in tax breaks for business is good news. Whether it will actually do anything to create jobs is anyone’s guess. You will not find a single incentive for hiring a new employee. The government is working on the theory that, if your business makes capital investments, this will eventually create more jobs.
Given two-thirds of all new jobs have been created by small business over the last three years and you understand why this breaks are targeted to the smaller businesses. Starting with the self-employed, your tax bill is going to be lower by about 15% if you pay your own health insurance premiums. The current position is that, if you employ people, the payment of their health premiums is deductible from the gross revenue of the business. But the premium for your own insurance is only a personal deduction. Just for 2010, the premiums will reduce the net earnings from your own employment. There are also changes to the system for claiming tax refunds which now allows you to go back for five years, the start-up costs limit is increased and the repayment period extended, the first year expensing deductions are doubled and the scope is extended to include leased property improvements even though they are not capital equipment, and the depreciation allowances are expanded.
Finally, you can now withdraw some of your retirement savings to help cover your immediate trading losses during start-up. This is only a snapshot picture of a complex set of provisions. Further, more tax changes and breaks will probably appear during the remainder of this tax year. So you had better huddle with your accountant or tax advisor to advise you on how to take advantage of everything on offer. With the Administration on the hook to take action on unemployment, the small business market can expect more help. That some of this will affect small business insurance is inevitable. Just as the health insurance deductions have been modified to encourage more small businesses to maintain adequate plans, you can expect to see more breaks and allowances for investment. This spins off into insurance territory because, if the rate of depreciation on plant and equipment is increased, this writes down the value for insurance purposes, and so on. You may find it worth your while to have an insurance audit at the end of this tax year to ensure you have up-to-date values in place, e.g. on rebuilding costs for property insurance, the replacement of fixtures and fittings, and so on.
In order to finance a start-up business, banks may require a guarantee from the Small Business Administration. Investigate business financing with tips in this free entrepreneur advice video from aprofessional business consultant. Expert: Emily Gasner Contact: www.tmcworkingsolutions.org Bio: Emily Gasner is the program director for Working Solutions in San Francisco. Working Solutions is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides business advice to under-served micro-entrepreneurs. Filmmaker: Sam Lee
- Small business?
- Faced with difficult times?
- Problems operating your business?
- Poor credit history?
- Can’t get a grip of cash shortage ?
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Nothing succeeds like success. And Success in having your ambition achieved of a booming business is just another milestone in small business with the help of Small business experts.To keep your business alive and your assets in your hand get loans, renewals and repay with less stringent requirements.
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Many small business owners do not see the importance of public relations to their company. Often owners think that PR is for big corporations, that you have to be a trained journalist to participate, or that public relations are not worth the time and money for a small business. This is unfortunate because public relations can be among the most cost effective investments for a small company. In addition, there are many options for an executive who is interested in launching a public relations campaign for a small business. Ranging from consulting to campaign outsourcing to public relations toolkits, it’s possible for today’s small business owners to come up with a PR plan that works for them, their company and their budget.
Hiring a public relations firm to manage a PR campaign is a great investment for a small business. The PR Firms can use its expertise to write press releases, identify newsworthy angles for your company, develop a social media campaign, and target media appropriate for your market. Though this can often be expensive, the results of an expertly crafted and individualized PR campaign can pay for the cost many times over. Going the other direction, it is often possible for small business owners to run their own PR campaigns. Doing some research can point you in the right direction—but it still takes an extensive amount of time to develop the appropriate materials and figure out how to go about distributing them. And if there is one thing that most small business owners have in common, it is a complete lack of free time! Fortunately there is a third option for business owners who do not have the time to develop a PR campaign from scratch but also do not have the budget to hire an expert firm to handle their public relations needs. Business owners can purchase PR toolkits designed specifically for small companies and can use them to develop and run their PR Campaign. In addition to providing detailed instructions as to the process of creating press materials and distributing them to the appropriate media contacts, public relations kits for small businesses generally include templates that make it simple for the owner to fill in the appropriate information and be done with it. PR toolkits have proved popular and helpful for companies in a wide variety of industries.
Do not underestimate the value of a Small Business Public Relations campaign. Getting your company into the public eye is critical if you want to attract new clients. Fortunately, thanks to the development of small business publicity kits, owners can take advantage of the power of PR without spending an inordinate amount of time—or money.
If you own a small business, you know, or should know, the importance of social media to market your business – effective management of social media marketing is an inexpensive way to promote your product and gain new customers. Social media for small business can take time and effort, but at little or no cost to the small business and there are several ways to succeed with your effective management of your social media marketing.
You already know your product, now you need to understand your customer – what is he/she looking for, where are they looking online already, research your competitors, make your customers find you – that’s effective management of social media marketing.
You may want to create a ‘fan’ page on Facebook (or now a ‘like’ page) where you can build potential new customers based on the content you post – if people like your updates, they will ‘like’ your page, great social media marketing, and free! You can create a Twitter account, link it to Facebook, and post about your business, product, and create a following that will see your tweets. You can link your Facebook and Twitter so your management of social media marketing for small business is effectively linked and shortens your time spent on both. Create a blog, which can also link to Facebook, Twitter and many other sites, talk about your product, but don’t do a hard sell, make it informative, just like you would with Facebook and Twitter, and share responses to your product, customer reviews, and always have a LinkedIn account where you can obtain reviews and feedback.
Don’t do the hard sell when managing social media marketing, always make it personable, offer advice, insight, information, coupons (very popular) and links to related sites that will have a back link to you without it being noticeable, it’s all about content, not the sale. And always encourage everyone else you engage with with social media marketing to offer their feedback too. It creates that ‘relationship’ which is what the SOCIAL in social media marketing is all about!
James Hickey
Master Business Consultant
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