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What Small Businesses Need To Know About Rolling Forecasting

Budgets are no longer unchanging entities. In the midst of the information age, with transactions moving faster, business spanning the globe, and technology providing helpful tools to re-plan and re-think budgets, many small businesses are adopting a new way of thinking about their financials.

What Small Businesses Need To Know About Rolling Forecasting

Conventional budgeting wisdom offered this guidance to small business owners: create a budget and don’t stray from it. An article from CFO Magazine points out that traditional budgeting is expensive, time-consuming, and quickly becomes out-of-date within a few months.

The benefits of rolling forecasting are vast, but overall, the methodology allows small (and large) businesses greater ability to adapt to what many people say is a volatile financial environment.…

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Top 5 Online Marketing Techniques For Small Business Growth

For small businesses, deciding which online marketing techniques to use is a daunting task. With many online tools at your disposal, which ones really perform? To find out, we took a look at 15 online marketing tools and their performance rankings by 500 CEOs and other executives in professional services.

Here are the top 5 most effective online marketing techniques:

the top 5 most effective online marketing techniques

  1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – While “tagging” a website with the right keywords so that it appears in top Google spots is the broad goal, the key is to focus on crafting informative content.Including keywords in the title of your page and two to three times in the page’s text will help your page rank in Google – but it just doesn’t work unless your content is also useful to your audience.
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Too Much On Your Plate? Here Are Some Tips To Clear Your Desk Of Tasks

We’ve all been there, in today’s world, it’s hard to keep everything going at once. You have tasks from your job, home, kids, personal life, medical appointments, and who knows what else. It can be difficult to manage these tasks, even if you employ an electronic organization system.

Tips To Clear Your Desk Of Tasks

One problem with trying to manage so much from one place, is that often you have different programs for each type of task. Your home stuff is under one place, your work stuff under another, and fun stuff under something else. This makes it difficult to manage, and you probably never feel like you have a moment alone anymore.…

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Small Business Owners Charge Full Steam Ahead

Small business owners are feeling good about 2013 so far and even more optimistic about the year ahead, according to Manta’s Q1 2013 SMB Wellness Index. The survey of over 1,100 small business owners found more than half (56 percent) think the first quarter of 2013 was successful and 79 percent believe the second quarter will be positive for their companies.

While only 17 percent hired new employees in the first quarter of this year, almost one-third (31 percent) plan to do so in Q2. But that’s not where they’re putting most of their money. Thirty-one percent say they plan to invest most of their money on referrals and finding new customers; 26 percent on online advertising and social media; 24 percent on creating new products and services; and 12 percent on traditional advertising and marketing.…

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23 Small Business Social Media Dos and Don’ts

23 Small Business Social Media Dos and Don'ts

For cash strapped small businesses social media can be a cheap and effective way to promote your business/brand and increase revenue. At the same time many SMBs don’t properly utilize social media or ignore it altogether. No matter where you fall on this spectrum keep the following dos and don’ts in mind.

Dos

  1. Do set up social accounts on all the relevant social platforms for your business. If you sell hard to find car parts only known only to gearheads, Pinterest is not for you.
  2. Do use a high quality logo image that is not blurry, stretched nor distorted. Your brand is your livelihood so make it professional regardless of where it appears.
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The Importance Of Building Global Relationships To The Small Business Owner

The Internet has opened more doors for growth than business owners may realize. Global trade was once thought of as an exotic or inefficient way to do business, but in today’s tech-savvy world, communication with someone on the other side of the planet is as simple as turning on a computer. As the nation’s economic recovery slowly gains momentum, small business owners are finding that working with international partners can help their enterprises stay strong during tough times.

With the new opportunities global markets provide, small businesses often see job growth and productivity increase by up to 20 percent. And it’s not just the company that benefits, but the whole community – working with an offshore manufacturing partner can actually create more jobs at home.…

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Build A Championship Team With Document Management

When you own a business, or hold an executive position within a startup, keeping up with your brand and all of its working parts can be a heavy responsibility. In fact, it’s much like being a head coach. Your business team requires training, nurturing, direction and encouragement to reach its fullest potential.

Build A Championship Team With Document Management

A good head coach knows how to surround himself with assistants, specialists and equipment that enhance the team’s performance. A good executive will do likewise for his business by utilizing technology to track data and minimize human interference.   For example, electronic content management (ECM) can help manage office operations, while raising employee skills and productivity; ultimately helping the business to perform at its best.…

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How Business Loans Can Help Small Business

Loans are an integral part of all businesses big or small. In times of financial needs these loans can help the businesses to keep their doors open. A business can require financial assistance for various different reasons and at different phases of its life cycle.

How Business Loans Can Help Small Business

You might need a loan for starting up your dream project or to expand and modernize or to recover from a financial wreck caused due to unforeseen situations, the reasons are plenty. However, understanding the need for a loan and how the money would add to the prospects of your business is of utmost importance.

There are plenty of sources of finance available to meet your needs.

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What Every CEO Needs To Know About Cloud Computing

Small businesses thinking about a move to the cloud need to consider many factors. A CEO should study these factors to obtain a good understanding of the benefits and which type of solution is best for them.

What Every CEO Needs To Know About Cloud Computing

There are three basic types of cloud computing options:

Private Cloud

This is a cloud computing environment owned and operated by a business. Access to data stored in the cloud is available to users who are given access. This allows a business to oversee all aspects of the infrastructure.

However, maintenance and management is done in-house and storage is based on available capacity. Additional hardware needs to be installed if extra capacity is needed.…

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Is Freelancing The Answer To Today’s Unstable Economy?

The recent economic depression in the United States alerted many working professionals to just how delicate their employment situation is. Many people lost jobs and others lived with the fear of joining former co-workers in the unemployment line. Inevitably, some turned to freelancing as a way to curb their financial losses.

Is Freelancing The Answer To Today's Unstable Economy?

But for some, those freelancing efforts became not just a part-time source of income, but a full-time gig. Laid off professionals found so much success in their freelancing efforts that, in some cases, they stopped looking for new work and stuck with their new source of income.

Of course, that’s not the case for everyone who ventures into the world of freelancing.…

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