How Is Your Small Business Doing?


There are so many ways to answer the question above though probably many small business owners would answer it in terms of profitability. Still another way to think about the question is to consider whether you are happy and satisfied with your business, with the products or services you offer, with the company you have built, with the clients and partners who are involved in your venture. How would you answer the question? How is your small business doing?

Operations

Why I’m (still) reluctant to hire. The main point made is that the government cutting payroll taxes for employers, while certainly improving the bottom line for small businesses, is not really going to affect many to hire new employees. The risks are too great. What if you hire an over-qualified person who has been unemployed and then the employee leaves to return to their old job? What if the new hire just doesn’t work out or your business falls short of your projections? The people in government still don’t get it. Small businesses hire new employees when their sales show the need. Two suggestions as to what the government can do are presented. You’re the Boss

How to make your business greener (and save money.) “Going green” probably should be examined first as a means of cutting costs, improving profitability, and forcing you to examine your long-held business practices. This may lead to new business opportunities. Implementing energy-efficiency and waste reduction measures resulted in saving one small businessman over $100,000 and paid for itself within one year. The side benefit was that it improved the environment. Read the article to find out how to get started. New York Times

Tips & Tricks

Organize and streamline your home-based business. Are you naturally organized? If your answer is “no”, you’re going to have to learn to become organized if you’re going to succeed in a small business venture. Having a designated work place at home, having a definite work schedule, and having an effective time-management system are good places to start. Establishing priorities is also a necessity since many times you will not have adequate time to deal with everything that “needs” your attention. Bloomberg Business Week

Best ways to promote a startup business. When starting a small business, one of the concepts you must understand is that it is not whether you can build a better product at a lower cost. This is very important if you are going to be successful, but equally important is if and how you are going to market your small business and the product or service you provide. The proper use of Internet marketing tools as well as promotional items and print media needs thoughtful planning and proper execution. 365 Days of Startups

Startup & Strategy

How to figure out what your business needs to do. One of the most important concerns about your small business is to know what your business needs to do to succeed.  It is important to differentiate between what you must do and what you can do. Distractions can result in failure. One must constantly review the set of goals you had when you started your business. Those goals must be behind everything your company does. This article gives you ideas on how to evaluate your actions against your goals. Matt About Business

How to prepare to launch your startup. You’re sure you have a good product. You’re sure you have potential customers. Is it time to launch your small business? John Bradberry, in his book 6 Secrets of Success, suggests five steps to consider in preparing to launch your new venture. They include clarifying your reasons and your goals, understanding your entrepreneurial personality, mapping your skills and experience, leveraging your relationships and resources, and positioning your self for high performance. Inc.com

Marketing Trends

Viral marketing musts for small businesses. How do you know if your advertisement will “go viral”? You don’t! Viral marketing can be very effective because it provides a rapid way to get your message out to a very large number of people at an extremely low cost. However, it is unpredictable since you don’t know if your message will “catch on”. It is largely trial-and-error and wait-and-see. Persistence in trying again and again, concentrating on specific advertising, making sure the message can be quickly transferred, and that it catches people’s attention: all these things will improve the odds of the message being successful. Business 2 Community

Create your own blockbuster. Starting and running your own business is compared to making a film. There are many similarities. Five of the similarities are discussed. Just like a good film must have a distinct script, so a small business must have a business plan that is unique to your business. This is the first step that the small business owner has to take. As the business grows, change is inevitable. The small business owner must not fail to review and alter the business plan over time. Four other steps are similar to the measures filmmakers take to insure a film is a success and these are also suggested for the small business owner. The Globe and Mail

More SMB Tips

ID theft also putting small businesses at risk. Just as identity theft has become a major concern for individuals, it is an even bigger problem for small businesses. Small businesses in most cases have less legal protection and have larger lines of credit and more money to steal. Large amounts of goods can be purchased under a small business line of credit, delivered to a location other than that of the business, and then sold on the black market or sold to unsuspecting individuals. A particularly difficult and devastating situation occurs when the small business owner uses his personal information to obtain a line of credit for his business. Companies that monitor and check out suspicious shipments of goods are beginning to emerge but much more effort is needed to contain this problem. The Salt Lake Tribune

Putting “social” into social media marketing: 3 tips for interacting with your customers. What is the right way to gain the benefits of social media marketing? How do you engage your customers, build your brand, and increase your business reach? The purpose of social media is not just for you to keep putting your messages out to your contacts. The idea is to interact with your customers, listening to them and joining in their conversations. The owner of a small restaurant relates a number of ideas she used successfully in her business. The first and maybe most important is determining where your customers are online and how you can reach them. Several other ideas include the use of Twitter to engage and entice, the use of Facebook to its fullest effect, and the importance of making social media an essential part of your marketing toolkit. SBA Community

2 Comments ▼
2 Reactions
  1. Thanks for including my article in your roundup! I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the posts linked to from here!

    -Matt

  2. Great business insight! Yes it’s true, small business owners should not just consider financial profits as the thing that answers how a business is going. There are a lot of things that can define how a business is going. Even our relationship with our employees can tell how our workplace is going. Of course employees have great impact on the business productivity.