Category Archives: Small Business
How to Get Started with Facebook Advertising for Free
Facebook is one of the fastest growing social media outlets. If your small business hasn’t engaged with it yet, then now is a great time to start because chances are your customers (and your competitors) are already there. Your first step should be creating a Page for your company on Facebook. Once you do that, you can start collecting “Likes” from your customers in the community, and interacting with them to foster brand loyalty, generate recommendations, and acquire new customers.
This post details resources you can use to get started with your first Facebook Business Page. Once you’ve done that, you can participate in the Facebook Small Business Boost program. You’ll need 50 “Likes” to be accepted into the program which offers $50 in free Facebook advertising to start and an additional $100 in free advertising if you can generate an additional 100 “Likes” by program’s end. Continue reading…
How to Know If a Hotel Review is Real
If you travel for business often, then you know how important it is to stay in a good hotel. A clean room and a good quiet night’s sleep can make all the difference when you make that big presentation the next day.
Many people turn to online reviews from sites such as Expedia and TripAdvisor to help select the best hotels. Typically the first concern is location, and after that you want to find the best experience for your money. The hotels know this, and that’s why these review sites are so important to them. So how do you know whether to believe what you read? Common sense is always your best defense. But if you’re in doubt, try the new Review Skeptic site. Continue reading…
How to Get Free PR for Your Small Business
Everyone has expertise in something, and as someone who runs a small business you probably have expertise in more areas than you might think. You certainly know quite a bit about the market you serve or the product niche you fill. You probably also have valuable experience with business operations ranging from recruiting the best employees to stretching a marketing budget. And, one of the best ways to get people to hear about your business is to share this expertise.
“Doing well by doing good” may be a hackneyed phrase, but it is not a bad ideal upon which to base your PR efforts. Very simply, if you can find media people who need the type of expertise you have, and you can get them useful information in a timely manner, then they’ll be happy to include information about your company in the content they produce—for free. Continue reading…
Donations on the rise: how non-profits can prepare
Charitable donations have rebounded to pre-recession levels, giving the non-profit industry some much needed hope heading into 2012.
Donations grew 2.4 percent in the first 11 months of 2011, to its highest point since 2007. This is great news overall for nonprofit fundraising. But what can your nonprofit do to make sure you are poised to take advantage of this trend toward increasing donations?
One of the most impactful things you can do is to make it as easy as possible for potential donors to give to your nonprofit. How? Continue reading…
Nonprofits can have InvoiceSimply Free for Life
As part of PaySimple’s Philanthropy February, we are giving our InvoiceSimply® software to nonprofits free for life. But how does InvoiceSimply work, and how can nonprofits use it to be more efficient or increase donations? Here are a few ways our nonprofit customers find it helpful. Continue reading…
PaySimple Launches Philanthropy February to Support Non-Profits
More than 27 million small businesses exist across the United States – 1.5 million of those do not work for profit. For these businesses, the goal of getting revenue is how much they can contribute back to their cause, whether it is feeding the hungry, housing the neglected, helping victims or spreading a message. The directors of many of these non-profits barely pay themselves a fraction of the revenue they work tirelessly to raise.
For all of the love and hard work philanthropists put into their businesses, PaySimple is dedicating February, the month of love, to Philanthropy.
As part of our month-long campaign, for every person who likes our Facebook page, we will donate $1 to Kids Are Heroes®, a non-profit that empowers, encourages and inspires children to become future leaders in volunteerism and community involvement.
We will also be giving away our InvoiceSimply software free for life to non-profits that register for an account before February 29th using promo code FEB4LIFE.1
Continue reading…
How to create a solid business card
Nothing conveys professionalism like a solid business card. And if you run a small business and plan to engage in any sort of in-person networking, you better have one to trade.
As a graphic designer I have designed my own fair share of business cards, and have traded more than I can count with prospective business clients and contacts. Below are some tips to help your business card have an impact: Continue reading…
How to Leave a Voicemail Message Without Ringing the Phone
There are some business situations where you want to talk to someone, but not necessarily with them. Of course there is email and texting, but sometimes there is no replacement for the emotion, inflection, and sincerity of your voice. You may want to provide your elevator pitch without interruption, leave a detailed price quote, fire a troublesome customer, or relay bad news that could benefit from allowing the recipient to reflect prior to responding.
An easy out is to call during the late evening or other off-business hours when you’re sure that the other person will not be there to answer the phone. When everyone had landlines for their businesses, that was a pretty good solution. However, now that just about everyone has gone mobile, it’s much harder to pick a time when the phone is off or unattended. Continue reading…
Will working from home become the new norm?
Everything these days seems to have gone online: marketing, meetings, online billing, customer service, networking and even invoicing. But a new trend is emerging that may someday evolve into the new norm: working online from home.
According to the Employment Review from Elance reports, the number of businesses seeking to hire independent contractors who work remotely doubled in 2011. And 83 percent of businesses surveyed said they plan to let half their employees work from home over the next 12 months. Continue reading…
BBB names Top 10 Scams of 2011 – Don’t Fall Victim!
Many small businesses are still struggling in this economy, and even a small loss, or a business disruption caused by an infected computer, can be devastating. With all the news about email scams, phishing scams, phone scams, social media scams, and identity theft, it seems like everywhere you turn these days someone is trying to deceive you. The best way to defend yourself is to stay informed, and to use common sense—if it sounds too good to be true it probably is, and if it smells fishy it probably really stinks.
The Better Business Bureau (BBB) is dedicated to protecting consumers from all predatory business, and has made monitoring and reporting on scams part of its mission. It recently published the Top Ten Scams of 2011 list. The list includes the top scam in each of nine categories: Jobs Scams, Sweepstakes & Lottery Scams, Social Media/Online Dating Scams, Home Improvement Scams, Check Cashing Scams, Phishing Scams, Identity Theft Scams, Financial Scams, and Sales Scams. Each scam is described in detail along with tips for protecting yourself. Continue reading…
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