Thanks to you, 2012 has been a year to remember!

This year our small business experts ran over 100 small business webinars for more than 20,000 entrepreneurs across North America. Though we love being busy, we also believe in taking some time to recharge our batteries too!

That’s why, after December 15th, there won’t be any more live webinars until the New Year. In the meantime you can take a look at our other small business content. You can:

• Watch recordings of our small business webinars
• Subscribe to our small business blog for the latest marketing, management and social media tips
• Download a free ebook or other small business templates
• Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn

We hope that by providing these free resources to you we’ve helped you grow your business this year. From our family to yours, we wish you the happiest of holidays and warm wishes for the New Year!

The post Happy Holidays from the BizLaunch Team! appeared first on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Experts, Tips and Advice | BizLaunch Small Biz Blog.

This past summer we surveyed over 200 business owners in North America to see how they are using social media for business. If you operate a B2B business and are curious to know how you can connect with other business owners on social media, keep reading!

How Business Owners Use Social Media

How many business owners do you know? Would you consider most of them to be social media savvy? According to a recent survey from BizLaunch, 78% of small business owners are now using social media as part of their overall marketing efforts.

Why Small Business Owners Use Social Media

According to the research, the top three reasons why business owners use social media is to build awareness, get more leads, and to interact with their customers. This makes sense when you think about how effective social media can be in each of these three areas. The top three sites most used by business owners are Facebook (69%), LinkedIn (50%), and Twitter (48%). It is surprising that more business owners aren’t using LinkedIn for business since it can be an effective tool for sales and networking.

Challenges that Small Business Owners Have on Social Media

According to the research, the top challenges that business owners face with regard to social media is using it properly, getting interaction from their followers, and finding content to post on their accounts. These challenges are common to all companies whether they are big or small and we cover a few tips later on in this post about how to overcome some of these frustrating problems.

How Often Small Business Owners are Using Social Media

49% of survey respondents reported to using social media at least once a day or more, and 52% said that they normally check their social media accounts before 12 pm. The survey also asked business owners what causes them to start or stop following a particular brand on social media. The number one reason that small business owners follow a brand on social media is because the company provides them with interesting information. The number one reason they stop following a brand is because the content posted is not relevant to them.

Why Small Business Owners Want Good Content

This goes to show that small business owners want good content. They want to better their current situation in some way, so by providing educational tools, videos, or articles you can help them grow. This type of small business content marketing builds trust with your followers who will then think of you the next time they need a product that you are selling.

A Few Best Practices for Marketing to Small Business Owners on Social Media

- Choose a few accounts that your customers are on and do a great job of posting and interacting with customers on those sites.
- Don’t try to be everything to everyone.
- Follow the 80/20 rule. 80% of the time post content about your industry and 20% of the time post about your products/services to get more interaction from your followers. You should also share photos as these seem to get more interaction from followers on Facebook.
- Set up a few Google Alerts for your industry and share the links that are making news in your particular area of business.
- You can also re-purpose content that you already have from whitepapers, research or presentations in new ways. Infographics like the one in this post are a great way to share top 10 lists, research, or just about anything.

To see more results from this research you can download the eBook called, “Best Practices for Reaching Business Owners on Social Media,” or visit Bizlaunch.com for more information.

The post 78% of Business Owners are Now Using Social Media – BizLaunch Research appeared first on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Experts, Tips and Advice | BizLaunch Small Biz Blog.

Webinars can be a great tool to market your business. Here are 10 reasons why you should consider using them as part of your marketing strategy.

They are:
1) Affordable
2) Convenient
3) Measurable
4) Another way to share or re-purpose your content
5) Educational
6) Time sensitive
7) Interactive
8 ) Engaging
9) An inbound vs. outbound marketing opportunity
10) Not geography based, so people can attend from anywhere.

To attend a free webinar please visit www.bizlaunch.com

The post Top 10 Reasons to use Webinars in your Marketing Strategy appeared first on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Experts, Tips and Advice | BizLaunch Small Biz Blog.

How did you become an entrepreneur? Was it something you always wanted to do or did you have an ‘ah ha’ moment that propelled you into a new career path?

For Roxanne Pettipas it was her dog that inspired her to start her own business. Before that, Roxanne was working as a supply teacher and she and her partner had been splitting their time between Toronto and the Bahamas. Eventually, Roxanne grew tired of coming home to an empty apartment so she decided to get a daschund named Buddy to help keep her company.

“I used to take Buddy out for walks using this little neck collar, and after a while I thought he had developed allergies because he would gag and cough every time we were out,” she said. Roxanne admits she didn’t know much about dogs at the time, but she quickly realized that Buddy was choking from the pressure that the collar was putting on his throat. Roxanne searched far and wide for a solution to the problem, but every harness she found was bulky and awkward with too many clips and clasps. “Buddy wasn’t happy and neither was I, so that’s when I decided to make something for him.”

Perhaps it was her background as an art teacher that made her so industrious, but instead of waiting for someone else to produce an acceptable harness Roxanne decided to create one herself. “At the time I was using a soft pliable tire rubber in my art class, so I used that material to create the very first Buddy Belt.” She then consulted a shoe maker and a clothing designer to help her understand how to work with leather. “I had to learn it all,” she said, “Whether it was working with an industrial sewing machine, or learning about patterns, dies, and templates, it all stemmed from wanting to create something comfortable for Buddy.”

Like a traditional collar the Buddy Belt has one buckle that is fastened between the shoulder blades instead of around the neck. The animal’s front legs are then extended through the two holes underneath the collar that helps reduce strain on the neck.

Once Buddy starting sporting his new harness around the neighbourhood, the orders started rolling in. After spending countless hours at the library making patterns, Roxanne developed 11 different sizes of Buddy Belts to meet the needs of teacup, toy and standard size dogs. As Roxanne became heavily invested in her idea, she was offered a full time teaching job. At that point Roxanne found herself having to choose between her business and the teaching career she always wanted. In the end she decided to pursue Buddy Belts full time. “It was a hard decision, but I knew I’d regret it otherwise,” she said.

What I took away from interviewing Roxanne is that you can turn a problem into a business idea. If other people are having the same problem as you, there may be a gap in the market for a new product or service that addresses that problem.

If you want more information about Buddy Belts please visit the website.

The post Turning a Problem into a Business appeared first on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Experts, Tips and Advice | BizLaunch Small Biz Blog.

Let’s face it – we love our smartphones. Whether we use them for entertainment, navigation or staying connected to friends and family, our obsession with mobile phones is here to stay. Not only are our phones great for personal use, but increasingly we are using them for business as well.

M-commerce – otherwise known as mobile payments or mobile money offers people the ability to pay and accept payments through their phones. M-commerce is not an overly new concept as for years people have been purchasing ring-tones, songs, and games through these devices. Recently a number of new merchants have entered this area, but many smaller businesses are beginning to cash in on this trend as well.

As a result, the m-commerce industry has experienced exponential growth over the past few years. Mobile payment transactions totalled $240 billion in 2011 according to a report conducted by Juniper Research, and they project that the market could grow to $670 billion by 2015. Another study conducted by Group SJR and Liz Claiborne Inc. found that 47% of smartphone owners and 56% of tablet owners who have already purchased on their mobile devices, plan to purchase more products in the near future. In my opinion, small businesses should accept mobile payments not only because the industry is growing at a rapid rate, but also because it allows them to increase their profit, expand their customer base, and create new opportunities to sell and market their products.

Though there are countless benefits of using mobile payments, there are many small business owners who still do not accept debit or credit payments in their business at all. Artists, photographers and tutors are among this group of entrepreneurs who still rely on cash as their primary method of payment. According to Moneris – Canada’s largest credit and debit card processor – there are potentially over 1 million of these small businesses in Canada alone.

Not accepting credit or debit has placed these businesses at a disadvantage in the past, however a new service from Moneris is hoping to change that. PAYD allows small business owners to capture more sales by allowing them to accept credit card payments through their smartphone or tablet. What makes the service unique is that the card reader can be plugged into the audio port of most Apple, Google and RIM devices. The mobile card reader allows the small business owner to swipe the customer’s card for a fast and secure payment.

The service will be made available later this month, but If you’re interested to learn more please visit https://getpayd.com.

The post Getting PAYD with Moneris appeared first on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Experts, Tips and Advice | BizLaunch Small Biz Blog.

If you ask a business owner what their most valuable asset is – most will tell you it’s their employees. Though this answer is cliché and overused, people really are the most important part of any business – large or small. Employees are key drivers of customer loyalty, revenue, sales and profit and without a happy workforce, your business will surely suffer.

If you notice an increase in any of the following areas it could be an indication that there is a problem with employee morale. In particular, you should watch out for an increase in:

• Absenteeism
• Employee turnover
• Customer complaints
• Employee complaints
• Theft and/or sabotage and,
• Conflicts between departments, employees and managers.

If these problems go unaddressed they will negatively impact your bottom line. You can’t afford to have a disgruntled workforce as every customer, employee and supplier can use the internet to share their bad experience with hundreds, thousands or even millions of people (remember the Dominos pizza incident?).

This is exactly the situation that Karin Lindner tries to prevent with her business. After working in the manufacturing industry for years, Karin started KARICO Solutions to bridge the gap between disgruntled employees and the managers who desperately need to keep them motivated. “There is a lot of unused brain power in North American companies and that needs to change,” she says. Karin believes that many organizations are not using their employees to their full potential and that employers need to realize that their workforce is a good source of innovation. That’s why meeting with employees is the first thing she does when assessing a problem with employee morale.

Karin works in a six step process where she meets with groups of 9-to-16 employees to complete a two hour workshop where they share their feedback with her. “Employees almost always see different issues than management,” she adds. After meeting with employees, she will meet with management and provide them with the three most important issues that are contributing to the problem. Once that is done, she will work with managers and employees to immediately improve one or two key areas. Karin believes that one of the biggest mistakes that many businesses make is trying to change too many things at once. “People get overwhelmed when they have a large list of things to improve on,” she says. Karin also believes that every relationship is a combination of give and take and that people must focus on their own behaviour before pointing the finger at someone else. “You have to be able to take responsibility for your own actions first before you can expect the environment to change,” she says.

Through her experience Karin has found that it’s usually the simple things that have the biggest impact on employee morale. For example, if employees have been complaining about a clogged sink, you should take the time and resources to fix it. Acknowledging these simple problems shows employees that you care and they really are your most valued asset.

If you’re looking for more information, stay tuned for the release of Karin’s upcoming book called, “How can we make Manufacturing Sexy – A Mindset of Passion and Purpose.” You can also attend a free webinar or follow us on Facebook for even more information on this subject.

The post Why Employee Morale Matters appeared first on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Experts, Tips and Advice | BizLaunch Small Biz Blog.

The number of people who actively use Facebook has reached epic proportions. Last year the site had approximately 500 million active users and over this past year it has grown to over 800 million users. As the number of users continues to grow, so too does the amount of time we spend on Facebook. According to one article, Facebook accounts for about 16% of our total time spent online.

Perhaps one reason people are spending more time on Facebook is because they’re enthralled with games that can be played on the site. If you’ve ever played a game on Facebook – you know how addicting these games can be. One game I’ve been obsessed with recently is called Mousehunt. Founded by a social gaming company called HitGrab, Mousehunt has been attracting hundreds of thousands of players since its inception in 2008.

This week I sat down with HitGrab’s Co-Founder Bryan Freeman to hear about how he started the company. “I used to work at a dotcom,” he said, “but then I started doing some marketing work on the side to make a few extra dollars.” After earning seed money, Bryan and his Co-Founder Joel Auge decided to start a new venture. “Originally, we started out doing some web-based experiments to see what stuck,” said Bryan. After dabbling in a few different areas, the duo started working on Facebook development and noticed there was a bigger opportunity in creating games for the popular website.“One night we came up with a concept about catching mice, and when we shared it with everyone at the office they thought we were mad,” laughs Bryan. But after the initial shock, the team saw the potential for the game and then they spent the next couple of years developing it.

The game’s revenue model is similar to many online games. The game is completely free for people to play, but players can buy additional features if they want an enhanced gaming experience. I was shocked when I heard who the paying audience was made up of. “In Singapore we have an audience that’s really young, in the UK we have an audience of middle aged women, and in the US it’s completely mixed,” he said.

The widespread appeal of the game is a big part of HitGrab’s success. As HitGrab employees shared the game with their friends and family members, the game went viral and more people started joining all over the world. “It really was amazing to see how fast the game caught on, and we were shocked to see our players come from all over the world” said Bryan. To reward their success, Facebook gave the company 1 of 5 coveted grants for $250,000.

The post Hunting for Success in Social Gaming– Profiling HitGrab appeared first on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Experts, Tips and Advice | BizLaunch Small Biz Blog.

This may sound like the beginning of a personal ad, but when you’re hiring someone to work for your small business it’s all about finding the right person for the job.

Finding the right person can be hard. Most small business owners will agree that hiring is one of the biggest challenges they face and yet there are so many qualified people looking for work. Even if a candidate has a stellar resume and awesome interview skills there’s still no guarantee that the person will be a good fit for the business.

“Hiring is broken,” says Ben Baldwin the Co-founder of a hiring application called ClearFit. According to Ben, the rates for employee turnover, retention and success of new hires haven’t changed much in the past thirty years. “Currently there are 6.5 million small businesses with payroll in North America who spend 60 billion dollars every year on hiring through job boards, newspapers, and recruiters. Most of these businesses don’t know how to find the best job candidates, so they spend a lot of time guessing and about half the time they get it wrong.”

Getting it wrong can be extremely expensive when you consider the amount of time and resources that are spent on recruitment, selection, and training activities. “If you’re a small business it’s basically make or break,” says Ben. Larger companies can usually eat the costs of hiring the wrong person, but for small businesses who need to get it right – the mistake can be fatal if things don’t work out.

That’s where ClearFit comes in. Ben noticed that so many businesses were having issues with the selection process that he decided to make the process easier and more effective. ClearFit is an all-in-one hiring solution that gives small businesses all the tools they need to hire the right employees. The company has partnership agreements with popular career sites like Monster, Workopolis, and Career Builder, so businesses can get candidates the same way they normally would, but ClearFit will provide a rating of how well the candidate matches the job. This is done by asking each candidate to answer questions that are based on the company’s core values and then the answers are used to develop a PDF report that compares the applicant’s motivation, personality and drive to top performers in similar roles. To narrow down the search even further, ClearFit will also provide their clients with interview questions and sample responses that will help them select the best candidate.

The company’s biggest goal for the future is to fix hiring, and they are well on their way. ClearFit has helped thousands of customers hire the right people so they can be sure that they’ve found ‘the one.’

For more information please visit www.clearfit.com . For even more information, attend one of our free small business webinars.

The post I’m looking for ‘the one’ appeared first on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Experts, Tips and Advice | BizLaunch Small Biz Blog.

Unless you’re an accountant you probably hate accounting. Heck I’d even bet that most accountants probably hate accounting, but it’s an essential part of any small business. Accounting – when done correctly – helps small business owners record transactions, prepare financial statements and tax returns, and also maintains order in their day-to-day business operations.

Unfortunately many small businesses are still relying on a shoe box full of receipts to prepare their records. The shoe box method can be dangerous because it can lead to creeping expenses, overdue accounts, cash flow shortages, data insecurity, added personnel costs, audit risks and even bankruptcy (eek!). These risks are very real, so I asked Kirk Simpson President and CEO of Wave Accounting why so many small businesses are still using this method.

“People don’t start small businesses because they love accounting,” he said, “They start them because they want to be a photographer, or real estate professional or a life coach.” For many small business owners accounting is the necessary evil that comes with running the business they are passionate about. And naturally, the tasks that small business owners hate the most are often the ones that they tend to neglect.

“The accounting process is very painful and very manual for small business owners,” he continued. Even with the help of online spreadsheets and expensive accounting software, many small business owners still find the task daunting. According to Kirk the problem with traditional accounting systems is that they aren’t intuitive for small business owners. “Many of the accounting programs still make you manually enter your expenses. At Wave, we atomize the process as much as possible so there is less manual entry.” Through partnerships with financial institutions, Wave will automatically import and categorize small business banking transactions into the software so business owners can see where they are spending their money.

Another problem with accounting software according to Kirk is that it makes small business owners keep their business and personal spending separate. ”The reality is that many small business owners use the same credit card on the weekends to buy diapers as they do during the week to buy office supplies.” Wave makes it easy for small business owners to categorize their spending based on whether it’s for business or personal use.”

The secret to the company’s widespread success and adoption is that they developed the service based on the accounting needs of small business owners (what a genius idea!). “We spent a lot of time developing the software based on how small business owners actually work, not the way an accountant, bookkeeper or software program tells them they should,” he said. With over twenty years of combined experience in the digital media and small business accounting industries, both Kirk and his co-founder James Lochrie strive to keep the perfect mix of utility and usability at all times. Maintaining this fine balance has helped them become a leading provider of free accounting software and is why thousands of small businesses are starting to use their service.

The key thing to take away from this is that accounting doesn’t have to be difficult. With the free tools that are available, small business owners can be more informed when it comes to running their business. Being more informed not only leads to better organization at tax season, but it also ensures that small issues are dealt with before they turn into major problems.

For more information about this topic, attend one of our free small business webinars.

The post Get out of the shoe box and into the Wave appeared first on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Experts, Tips and Advice | BizLaunch Small Biz Blog.

It seems like ‘Made in China’ is branded on just about everything we buy these days. From clothing, to electronics to furniture – so much of the manufacturing process is being conducted outside of Canada. And, while I’m not opposed to outsourcing, I don’t believe it’s the best solution for every small business.

Just ask Ricky Pacheco – Founder of Pop49 – a Mississauga based company that provides signs, point of purchase materials, and other promotional items for a variety of businesses. “99% of what we make is sourced from Canadian suppliers,” he said. “We support a lot of small businesses in Mississauga, and if we can’t find a small business to use here, we’ll expand our search to the GTA.” Ricky noted that he will use a Canadian company wherever possible, and he will only outsource to the US or China when a Canadian supplier does not exist.

Just as I was about to praise him for his dedication, Ricky insisted that his strategy isn’t all altruistic. “Logistically it just makes more sense. We have a lot of customers who need things in a rush and if we buy everything locally we have a lot more control over the final product.” This is understandable since there are a lot of risks with using international suppliers such as geopolitical instability, inadequate vendor capabilities, and decreased managerial control over things like product quality and delivery timing. For small businesses whose livelihood’s depend on exceeding the needs of their clients; the risks simply aren’t worth it.

Not only is it important to meet and exceed the needs of your client as a small business, but it’s also important to build relationships with them as well. “By maintaining control over our product we’ve built trust with our clients who know we always deliver on time and under budget,” said Ricky.

Meeting your obligations can help you build a reputation for being reliable. Being reliable and building trust with your customers can also help you get more repeat and referral business. As the 80/20 rule states, 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers, so keep your current customers happy.

In the end it’s up to you to decide whether or not outsourcing is the right decision for your small business. But, before you do business with a company located across the Globe, you must consider whether or not the benefits outweigh the potential risks. Make your decision carefully as the future of your business may depend on it.

For more information about Pop49 or custom designed point of purchase materials please visit www.pop49.com.

The post Buy Local: It Makes Cents appeared first on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Experts, Tips and Advice | BizLaunch Small Biz Blog.