Business Plan Systems

It’s often said that small business is the real backbone of the U.S. economy.  But with fears of tax increases on the horizon, more regulation being proposed, and the continued uncertainty over the future of the economy, government is often not making it easy for these small businesses to hire, expand, or even stay in business.

Here are several articles and slideshows telling the stories of small businesses from around the country about how they’re dealing with the pressures of government regulation and taxes.

“There are three things small business can do (in response to Illinois raising taxes)—raise prices, cut payroll or cut benefits… There

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Tags: Regulation, Regulation Taxes

I just read an article on the future of daily deal sites, “4 Ways Daily Deal Sites Can Avoid Becoming Toast”.

The article has an interesting perspective on sites like Groupon and Living Social, which seem to be all the rage right now. However, what many small businesses are finding is that after promoting their coupons on these popular daily deal sites, they never see their newly-found customers again.

With the expense of the deal combined with the marketing cost paid to the daily deal site, some merchants come out at a loss: the last thing they expected or wanted from an ad campaign.

Understanding costs in advance is important when using this marketing strategy.

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Tags: Deal Sites, Sites

If you missed last weeks #SmallBizRollCall, you may have missed the first live streaming video fed via satellite split screen, from Ustream to a FaceBook Page. I dont know of anyone else whos ever done so (do you?), and Im so pleased that, with the help of my business partner husband, we pulled it off. My guest was Susan Mann, IBNs new Boston Local Director. She joined live from her studio in Springfield, Ma, and you can watch the recorded show here. (I apologize that the audio is choppy until 1:37 its clear after that. I am also told that some a few people in certain parts of the country cannot see the video at all.

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Tags: Video, Video Smallbizrollcall

A number of small business owners around the UK could be tempted to increase their use of social media following the publication of a new report.

Figures released by Fresh Business Thinking have shown that more than half of UK professionals have reported a “direct boost” to their enterprise as a result of social media.

Data from the study also revealed that 83 per cent of the businesses questioned operate a LinkedIn account, while 79 per cent use Facebook and 70 per cent post massages on Twitter.

Commenting on the study, Jemima Gibbons, author and social media strategist for AAB Engage, said: “If you’re not seeing any benefit from social media then chances are you’re going into it without a strategy, or without clear goals.

“You might be diving in and maybe panicking a little because you’re not seeing immediate results.

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Tags: Report, Social Media

You’ve decided your small business is ready to enter the social media arena, but with Facebook, Twitter and blogging available, it’s hard to know which is the right fit for your business. Thankfully there is something in between 140-character-limit messages and 1,000-word blog diatribes: enter Tumblr.

Think of Tumblr as a hybrid of social media and a traditional blog. Like a blog, it offers 20 different ‘themes’  to design the look and feel of posts.

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Tags: Media, Social Media

If you are like most website owners, you want traffic to your site.

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You want to begin by submitting your site to these high-traffic engines. This is free to do, and you can go directly to the search engines themselves and submit your site.

However, site submission is just a small portion of getting traffic to your site. You want to optimize your site for search engines so that your website will rank higher, and you will receive more traffic and customers.

Traditionally, you could try to figure out how to do this yourself or pay a professional SEO service thousands of dollars to do it for you.

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Tags: Engine, Engine Submission