Posted by Biz Central USA Marketing Team on August 11, 2010 under Small Biz and Entrepreneurship,Small Biz Marketing,Small Biz News,Small Biz Webinars | 
A Free Small Business Webinar on Starting your Business off on the Right Foot with Email Marketing! 
The Pew Internet and American Life Project, says e-mail remains the number-one online activity of Americans and can deliver a higher return on investment than methods such as direct mail and advertising. So as a small business, it’s important to capitalize on this trend! By adopting the right strategies and practices now, you can maximize the inbox to capitalize on acquiring new customers and retaining current ones.
We invite you to spend some valuable time with BizCentral USA and learn step-by-step effective strategies for implementing successful email marketing campaigns.
Topics of Interest:
• Email Marketing Fundamentals
• Design and Layout Best Practices
• What you Don’t see That can Make or Break your Campaign
• Building your Email Lists
• Complying with Regulations & Getting your Emails Delivered
Join us August 17th, 2010 from 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm (EST) and Learn how to maximize the inbox and start reaching thousands with one click!
Posted by Biz Central USA Marketing Team on July 13, 2010 under Small Biz Marketing,Small Biz News,Small Biz Webinars |
A FREE Small Business Webinar to Help Establish Your Action Plan for Growth!A marketing plan is a road map detailing the route you’ll take to get your business noticed by potential clients, media and future partners. By following a properly crafted plan, you’ll know what to do and why you are doing it, while avoiding some of the mistakes that can cost you money and future growth. The plan will strategically offer options to keep you motivated, organized, prepared and headed in the right direction to reach your identified goals.
We invite you to spend some invaluable time with BizCentral USA and learn how to create a strategic plan of action to market your small business!
Topics of Interest:
• Researching and Setting the Groundwork
• Developing the Plan
• Strategies and Implementation Methods
Join us for a free small business webinar on Tuesday, July 20, 2010 from 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm and learn how to commit to a plan of action that will take your business to the next level in strategic marketing!
Posted by Biz Central USA Marketing Team on July 7, 2010 under Small Biz Marketing,Small Biz News,Small Biz Webinars |
A free small business webinar on how to set the foundation for your small business brand identity!
What exactly does “branding” mean? How does it affect a small business like yours? What do people think of when they hear your company’s name? Learn the answers to these questions and more!
Brands were originally developed as labels of ownership. Today, it is what they mean to people that matters much more. Powerful brands can drive success in competitive markets, increase product awareness, and indeed become the company’s most valuable assets.
We invite you to spend some valuable time with BizCentral USA, and learn how to effectively reach your audience by strategically branding your small business!
Topics of Interest:
• What is Branding & Why is it Important to Your Small Business
• 3 Simple Branding Concepts
• Branding Guidelines
• Implementing Your Brand Strategy
Join us on Tuesday July 13, 2010 from 3:00 P.M. – 4:00 P.M. for a free small business webinar!
Posted by Biz Central USA Marketing Team on June 29, 2010 under Small Biz and Entrepreneurship,Small Biz News,Small Biz Planning |
Many people dream of being able to transition seamlessly from a hobby that they enjoy into a profitable business based on their hobby. If the business would be successful, it would be beneficial to start a business based on a hobby. Think about it -you already understand the dialect, the concepts, the community, and the psychographics and demographics of the market. This would give you a great competitive advantage! It would certainly be great to be paid for doing something that you already enjoy doing for free. But don’t run out and start your business until you have done all of the necessary research to determine if the business will be successful.
Conduct Market Research on Your Business Idea:
- Will someone pay me for my product or service?
- If so, will a buyer pay enough so I can make a profit?
- Will enough people buy my product or service so that I can make a living?
- Is there an economical way to distribute and sell my product or service?
Create a Business Plan:
- What sort of capital do I need to start the business?
- When can I expect to make a profit?
- How much income can I expect in year one, two, and three?
Evaluate Your Business Sense:
- Do you have what it takes to run a business?
- Can you have your business and the lifestyle you want?
- Will you still love your hobby when it’s a business?
Have A Realistic Understanding Of How Running The Business Will Affect Your Life:
- How will this business affect me?
- How will this business affect my family?
- How will this business affect important relationships in my life?
Decide If Part-Time Or Full-Time Business Ownership Is Right For You:
Would it make sense to leave my current employment to dedicate full time to the business?
Would it make more sense to start the business part-time until it takes off?
Find a Creative Business Angle:
- Solve a problem
- Teach others
- Sell the raw materials
- Expand into related services
Once you have conducted all of your research, you should have a better understanding of whether your hobby would make a successful business. Your business plan will tell you how much capital your business will need to start, how much you will need to charge for your products or services, how many units you will need to sell in order to break even, and your products or services profitability. Once you have an understanding of how operating your business will affect your life, you will be able to determine if you should start your business part-time or jump right in full-time. If you do decide to move forward starting your business, you will need to find creative ways to differentiate your products and services from all of the competitors in the market place.
Posted by Jennifer Nelson on June 24, 2010 under Small Biz and Entrepreneurship,Small Biz Marketing,Small Biz News |
On average 57 million adult Americans read blogs, which is good news for small businesses trying to generate awareness about their products and services. If you’re writing blogs to generate additional sales, you’re not alone. Approximately 53% of professional bloggers are interested in attracting new clients from blogging.
Persons trying to generate income from their blog write 37,240,000 blogs each year or 28% of all blogs. Of these 54% are Part-Timers, 32% are Self-Employed Persons, and 14% are Corporate Writers. Evaluating positive and negative cashflows, the mean profits for blogs with reported revenues is $57,369.20. That’s a lot of money for an activity most blog writers spend about 10 hours a week doing.
Technorati has indexed more than 133,000,000 blogs since 2002 and around 77% of Internet users read blogs according to Universal McCann. According to recent data 57% of blog readers are male, 48%, were under 30, and 82% were longtime Internet users or had more than six years’ experience online. Blog writers appear to mirror these trends, as two-thirds are male between the ages of 18 and 44. Over 75% have college degrees and 40% have graduate degrees.
Blogs are decidedly content driven but a growing emphasis is being placed on having more multimedia friendly blogs. Over 82% of respondents say that they post photos to their blog, making images the most popular form of multimedia. Of those who use media other than text, 73% say that that they create the photos, video, or audio they post themselves about half of the time. Only 13% of all respondents say that they never post any images/videos/audio to their blogs, preferring to just use text. With just-text blogs becoming the minority in today’s blogosphere, it’s important to use appropriate multimedia to make your corporate blog exciting.
Bloggers participate in an average of five activities to drive traffic to their blogs. Which is most successful? Well the jury is still out but Twitter is definitely in the top five. Blogs with greater than 100 page views a day received on average 83% of their page views from Twitter referrals. This referral percentage was constant as the audience size of the blog increased. In other words, the faster the growth of a blog, the more important Twitter became in promoting it.
It is important to keep up with your blogs statistics to see how people are finding your blog and how often they are reading it. There are many free blog statistic softwares available to blog writers but the five most commonly used are:
1. Google Analytics
2. StatCounter
3. SiteMeter
4. AWStats
5. MyBlogLog
Blogging is not just about numbers, traffic, or hits to your website. It is a great tool for small business marketing. Be careful to avoid the trap of writing for search engines rather than human beings. Blogs that read too much like an advertisement will be less successful than blogs that give your readers information they need to know to make informed purchasing decisions. Build your credibility first and traffic later. Traffic is a direct reflection of writing good content and smart advertising of your blog. Contact BizCentral USA today about setting up a blog for your website so you can take advantage of these exciting statistics.
Posted by Biz Central USA Marketing Team on June 16, 2010 under Small Biz and Entrepreneurship,Small Biz News |
A webinar about getting your financials in order!
Bookkeeping is one task that many small businesses neglect or make half-hearted efforts at doing. Both options are a mistake.
In the accounting process, you are classifying, reporting and analyzing financial data –none of that can happen without accurate, organized data. Bookkeeping is the first basic step to this process!
We invite you to spend some invaluable time with BizCentral USA and learn a number of ways to make sure that your business gets its financial house in order!
Topics of Interest:
•Things Needed to get Started
•Bookkeeping & Accounting Process
•Financial Reporting Tools
•Solutions and Tips on Record Keeping
Learn the importance of basic financial management, bookkeeping and accounting and how to master it so your business can reap the benefits! Attend our FREE small business webinar on Tuesday, June 22, 2010 from 3 pm – 4 pm (EST).
Posted by Biz Central USA Marketing Team on June 8, 2010 under Small Biz and Entrepreneurship,Small Biz Marketing,Small Biz News |
With the expansion of social networking phenomenon online, many small business owners question whether they should utilize these sites for small business marketing. If so, which sites would be the most useful to grow a business? This article will outline a few of the more popular social networking sites online and show the benefits of each site.
Currently, Facebook is one of the fastest growing and most popular social networking sites. According to Facebook.com, “There are more than 400 million active users and 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day.” The sheer number of members that Facebook has can generate great exposure for your small business. You may want to consider establishing or joining a network on Facebook based on your small business or industry category to tap into people’s affinity for the topic. By having a specific category, you will be able to keep the online interactions focused on your industry, not all of the other online clutter.
While Facebook has the greatest number of members, many professionals believe that LinkedIn is the best overall site for both networking and human resources purposes. According to Linkedin.com, “There are over 65 million LinkedIn members across the globe.” One of the main differences that sets LinkedIn apart from other social networking sites online is the fact that when you are creating your online profile, you can create a resume and then link to other like-minded professionals.
Twitter is a new type of social networking that allows you to post updates (called Tweets) as often as you want (and limited to 140 characters). When you follow other people on Twitter, you see their tweets. When they follow you, they see your tweets. It is estimated that there were 18 million Twitter users in 2009. It is also estimated that 60% of Twitter users abandon their accounts within their first month of use.
Twitter can be useful for small business marketing, allowing another channel to connects current and potential customers with your product or brand. Twitter can be used as a traffic generation tool. The placement of links within profiles and conversations can direct visitors to a specific website and is especially powerful if you pitch to early adopters and influencers. Twitter can also be used as a lead acquisition tool, however it is very difficult to target a specific subset of the general demographic and determine their level of potential interest.
No matter which social networking site or combination of sites you choose to utilize to start business, one important thing to consider is that these social networking sites should be used in conjunction with your other online presences. They should not be used exclusively in place of other online presences such as websites and blogs. If you do use these sites properly and link them to your other online presences, you will establish a great small business marketing tool to help you grow your brand, your online presence, and your small business as a whole.
Posted by Biz Central USA Marketing Team on May 27, 2010 under Small Biz and Entrepreneurship,Small Biz News |
You may be considering starting a small business and you need to decide whether or not you should operate your business from a home office or if your small business will require a more traditional office setting. Below you will see 5 reasons to operate your business from home if your specific business allows for home-based operations.
Start-Up Costs:
When evaluating your small business’ start-up expenses you will find that starting a small business and operating your business from home will usually have fewer start-up expenses. When starting a traditional office-based business you may have start-up expenses associated with 1st and last month rent, security deposits, establishing utilities, furnishing the office with desks, computers, ect. By operating your small business from home you may be able to significantly reduce these costs or eliminate them altogether.
Hours of Operation:
While many traditional offices hours are restricted to 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, home-based businesses can be open 24 hours a day 7 days a week. With an online business designed to process payment and outsource orders to a warehouse or distributer, people from around the world can purchase your products or services on your small business website while you are working, when you’re not working, while you are sleeping, even when you are sick or on vacation.
Customer Base:
Many brick and mortar business’ customers are restricted to locals or people willing to travel to the business’s location. When you operate a home-based business, especially an online business, it allows you to have a customer base worldwide.
Start Slow:
One great benefit of starting a small business from home is the fact that you don’t have to jump in with both feet right away. You can start slow by operating your business in your spare time, while remaining employed with your current employer. You should be sure that operating your small business does not violate any noncompeting clauses that you may have signed with your current employer. You can speak to your employer or legal council before starting a business to determine if starting your new home-based business will violate a noncompeting clause that you have signed.
Resources:
It today’s environment of information at the click of a button, there is vast amount of home-based small business resources easily accessible to business owners. Much of this information is available for free or at minimal cost online. You can find tutorials, forums, blogs, courses, ebooks, and other forms of information to help your small home-based business start and grow to become successful.
With all of the benefits of starting a small business and operating it from home, unless your small business industry is unsuitable for home-based business operations, you should definitely take operating from home into consideration when deciding to start a small business. Even if you decide to operate your small business from a traditional office I would still recommend that you also build and develop a small business website and web presence where you can take orders and process payments so that your small business is not restricted to local customers and your hours of operation.
Posted by Biz Central USA Marketing Team on May 11, 2010 under Small Biz and Entrepreneurship,Small Biz News |
BizCentral USA, a one-stop small business resource center, is proud to unveil their new redesigned website intricately tailored to meet the revolving needs of small business owners and entrepreneurs. The new small business website, http://www.bizcentralusa.com, acts as a “one-stop” online portal with new interactive tools and free small business resources for entrepreneurs nationwide.
The new small business website provides a wide variety of information for those seeking to start a business or grow their existing one. A few of the highlighted small business resources include:
- A Free Business Development Review: Current business owners can benefit from the one-on-one small business review that identifies business strengths and weaknesses and positions them for future growth.
- Competitor Price Comparisons: Potential clients can compare BizCentral small business service pricing against competitors, allowing for product research all in one place.
- Live Site Chat: Site visitors in a hurry will benefit from live chat functionality, allowing for immediate assistance or consultation.
- Business Startup Section: Registered users will have access to exclusive articles, how-to’s, free magazine subscriptions and special email promotions.
- Small Business Webinars and Videos: Entrepreneurs can join in live, online for one or several installments of the Small Business Webinar Series.
The small business website also includes added services with more clear process and service descriptions. Themes include: business plan writing, small business certification, incorporation, marketing, web design, small business HR, graphic design, accounting and bookkeeping.
Additionally, web visitors can share their business startup experiences and find more answers to their questions by visiting the Small Biz Blog, regularly updated with entries about all aspects of business startup and growth.
“The launch of our new website ties in with our constant effort to aid small business owners and entrepreneurs, by providing easy access to the services and small business resources critical to their success,” said Efrain Rodriguez, CEO and Founder of BizCentral USA.
About BizCentral USA
Founded in 2004, BizCentral USA is a “one-stop” service and resource center for small business owners and entrepreneurs nationwide. Their mission is to provide affordable services and solutions to small business owners and entrepreneurs, enabling them to successfully start and grow their business. For more information visit: http://www.bizcentralusa.com/.
Posted by Biz Central USA Marketing Team on April 29, 2010 under Small Biz and Entrepreneurship,Small Biz Certifications,Small Biz News |
Acquiring an 8(a) Certification can be extremely beneficial to your business. Federal acquisition policies encourage Federal agencies to award a certain percentage of their contracts to Small Disadvantaged Businesses Certified businesses.
In order to be eligible for an 8(a) certification:
- You must be a small business based on size standards for small businesses in your industry
- You must be U.S. citizen
- You must be the majority owner of the business owning at least 51%
- You must work full-time in your business
- You must run the day-to-day operations of the business
- Control of your board must be exercised only by disadvantaged persons. You must be a socially disadvantaged individual (Socially disadvantaged individuals are those who have been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice or cultural bias within American society because of their identities as members of groups and without regard to their individual qualities)
- Socially Disadvantaged Groups (African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Pacific Americans, and Subcontinent Asian Americans) Other individuals can be admitted to the program if they show through evidence that they are disadvantaged because of race, ethnicity, gender, physical handicap, or residence in an environment isolated from the mainstream of American society
- Ultimate control of your company must be the responsibility of the disadvantaged individual
- You must be an economically disadvantaged individual (For the 8(a) program this means all applicant individuals must have a net worth of $250,000 or less, excluding the value of the business and personal residence)
- You must be in business for at least two years or apply for a waiver of the two-year requirement
- You must not have any significant unresolved federal or state tax financial issues
- You must be of good moral character
- You must not operate a business that is not eligible for certification (Broker or Non-Profit)
