The Essential Guide To Small Business Insurance

More than 40 percent of employers have frozen new employee hirings, anticipating increased insurance costs from Obamacare, according to a Gallup poll commissioned by the employment law firm Littler Mendelson. But many businesses do not realize health care is only one of the insurance concerns facing them. The Small Business Administration (SBA) advises entrepreneurs of the other types of insurance that may be required, depending on the industry, location and lender's requirements.

Even when business insurance is not legally required, it may be advisable to protect the best interests of a company and its owners or partners. Get familiar with these insurance options to help you avoid financial and legal problems stemming from being underinsured:


Employee Insurance

Does the new Affordable Care Act require your company to provide your employees with health insurance? Strictly speaking, the answer is no, but you may face penalties if you are a larger employer and do not make certain levels of insurance available. For penalties to kick in, you must have the equivalent of at least 50 full-time employees. If this applies, possible penalties vary depending on your specifics. If you do not provide coverage, and at least one employee receives a premium tax credit or cost sharing subsidy in an exchange, you may owe a penalty. If you do provide coverage, you must offer specific minimum levels of coverage to avoid penalties.

State laws generally require you to carry worker's compensation if you have W2 employees. This protects you if an employee gets injured on the job.


Liability Insurance

Some small business owners incorporate as limited liability companies to protect themselves, not realizing that this is not the same as having liability insurance. Business liability insurance comes in a number of forms. General liability insurance protects you and your employees against claims of accidents, injuries or negligence. This protects you against payments involving bodily injury, medical expenses, property damage, damage to reputations and legal fees. As a rule, most businesses should carry general liability insurance, even home-based businesses.

Depending on your business model, you may need other forms of liability insurance. Product liability insurance protects you against claims involving items you sell that cause bodily harm. The service equivalent is professional liability insurance, also known as errors and omissions insurance, which protects you against claims of malpractice, errors or negligence.


Commercial Property Insurance

The business counterpart to home insurance, commercial property insurance, guards you against losses related to events such as fire, floods and crime. Commercial property insurance can cover a wide range of disasters, or it can be peril-specific. Remember to insure your company cars, too.


Home-Based Business Insurance

Some entrepreneurs who work from home may not realize their personal insurance does not cover their business. Specialized home-based business insurance can insure you against losses related to your work.


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How Twitter Can Help Your SEO

Twitter is a useful tool for assisting with SEO efforts. Considered a micro blogging platform, Twitter is one of the most popular social media sites. With such a large network of Twitter members it is the perfect place to concentrate on SEO. Here are some ways that Twitter helps.


Social Signals

Twitter sends out social signals that become visible in the search algorithm for Google. The social signs can help a website rank higher than it may have otherwise. A greater number of social signs place a greater level of importance on a website, which sends it shooting to the top of Google search results. This goes a long way in helping a website's SEO efforts.

Tweeting in order to build up SEO involves doing a few specific things.


Memorable and Impressive Account Name

Every Twitter user has a profile on the website. If a company is trying to step up their SEO efforts they will want to make sure that the account name they choose is one that people will remember. A good rule of thumb is to choose some kind of variation of the company's name. This variation should be related to what people are most likely to type into a search engine bar when looking for a company.


Insert Backlinks Strategically

While not every tweet a company sends out should include a link back to their website, some of the tweets should. It is crucial to make sure a company is not including their link in their tweets either too often or not often enough. The tweets that do include a link to the company's website will almost always drive an increased amount of traffic to the website.


Include Useful Keywords

When a company sends out a tweet they should make every effort to include a relevant keyword or key phrase into the beginning of the tweet. Since tweets are limited to a maximum of 140 characters, users must choose their words carefully. The shorter a tweet, the more effective it is likely to be. Shorter tweets are also easier for others to respond to or to re-tweet. In many cases when someone re-tweets they want to include words of their own in the re-tweet. This means that the original tweet needs to leave enough room for characters for people to be able to add their own thoughts.


Interaction with Consumers

For companies to be successful it is helpful to interact with their followers on Twitter. Commenting on and re-tweeting the tweets a company's followers post makes them feel like the company cares about them. The more friendly and approachable a company appears to be, the more people will want to give the company their business. Tweeting new website content to a company's followers encourages them to keep visiting the website, which helps greatly with SEO efforts.

These are just some of the ways that Twitter can help companies with their SEO efforts. Twitter is a valuable tool to use.


About The Author: Simon Brisk is the head of manual outreach at Click Intelligence, a search marketing agency based in London, Bristol and Cheltenham. Simon writes about search marketing tips, step by step guides and his experience in the field of online marketing.

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Until my next post on Friday with the essential guide to small business insurance, enjoy the rest of the week! See you back here on Friday!

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It's A Dog Eat Dog World: Five Pieces Of Advice They Don't Teach You In Business School

Going to college to get a degree in business can help you tremendously in the future. Potential employers may look at your educational history and place importance on the school that you attended. However, business school isn't the only place that you'll learn valuable life lessons. Whether you are in the boardroom or on the sales floor, here are five pieces of advice that they don't teach you in business school, but that you'll probably end up using in the professional world.


Promise The World, and Do Your Best to Come Through

When you are in college, it can seem a bit scary to go out on a limb and over extend yourself and your promises. However, in the real world, it is important to make sure that people know you are confident in yourself and that you have lofty expectations. If you make plans for yourself that are over the top, other people will see your desire and commitment to be successful. And when you complete your task, people will be amazed by all of your work and effort.


Step Up to the Plate

With every profession in life, the people that succeed are those that are willing to step up and lead. In college, you may feel expected to play fair and give an equal amount of work to other students. But in the business world, it's important to put yourself ahead of others and be confident in yourself to get things done. If you want to set yourself apart, you need to do the things that others will not.


If You Can't Find the Problem, It May Be You

Have you ever been in a group project in college where you keep pointing fingers at someone who isn't pulling their weight, but they seem to be oblivious to their lack of contribution? Well, the same happens in the business world. If you keep finding issues or problems with something that you are doing, but you can't pinpoint the root of the problem, it may be time to evaluate yourself. Once you realize that you may be the reason for the problem, it's much easier to begin working towards a solution.


Be Clear

In business school, you will probably learn a lot of jargon that may sound good on paper, but that does not work when used in the business world. When working with a new group of people or advertising to the masses, make sure that everyone understands your message and that there is no confusion. Just remember, the real world isn't a thesis statement that is graded by your professor, it's a message that is being understood by your peers. For example, a dentist should not be using technical terms when describing their procedures, but they should use simple ideas and words that can be understood by everyone. This can be a difficult task; however, a dental advertising service can help with this process.


Always Come Through

In the real world, no matter what your profession is, your word is your reputation. In business school, you can get away with saying you are sick and need an extra day to complete a paper. In the real world, this simply will not work, since others will be relying on your work. If you promise something, or are simply expected to do something, be sure that you do it.

You are sure to learn a lot of great lessons in business school, but there are some things that you simply will need to discover on your own.


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How Pinterest Can Help Your Small Business

Pinterest being a relatively new social media platform, many small businesses are unaware of how they can make good use of it. One main reason people seem reluctant to try this social network is because it is quite different from some of the other major social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. In order to understand how you can make use of this tool, you must first understand how other small companies are using Pinterest in their business.

Pinterest can help you build your online presence. Develop a marketing plan that is well-thought out to make Pinterest work for you. You can make use of the following ideas to use Pinterest effectively in your business.


Conduct Market research

When you are well versed with how to use Pinterest you can even benefit by understanding the market trends and knowing the preferences of users on Pinterest. After you pin something, you can check if people actually like your pin and repining it. Also, make note whether you are getting any new followers for your pin. When you do, observe their profiles to know the kind of people interested in your product so that you can add more tailored content keeping them in mind.


Promote what you sell

For those businesses selling products, Pinterest can be a very good way to showcase products to users through pictures. Share images of your best products but a better approach would be to include pictures of customers using your products. You can also add pictures giving customers step-by-step instructions on how to use your product. You can assign a pin as a product by adding the price of the product in the product description. The price must be accompanied by the dollar sign or whichever currency you plan to use. By doing so, the product will also be added to the gifts section on Pinterest.


Share videos

You can share videos on Pinterest by embedding them into Pinterest itself. Small businesses can greatly benefit from sharing videos and so this feature should definitely be used to promote your business.


Feature blog posts

Pinterest is increasingly being used by bloggers in order to give emphasis to their blog posts and also to create visual representations of their content. To make this happen, you must add graphics like photos to your blog post so that when your post is pinned Pinterest will be able to pull the right image.


Share space with others

Pinterest is more effective when used as a group activity. You can involve your employees, customers and other Pinterest users. You can assign boards to your employees or loyal customers where they can share their ideas and have discussions. This can help you learn what your customers feel and help you learn from each other too.

You can also create boards that highlight useful information from sources other than yours. You can include images from your customers and clients that your target audience might find appealing. Also, include interesting images on your company website so that Pinterest users might be encouraged to pin those pictures on their boards.


About The Author: Jessica is a content strategy specialist with Godot Media. She has years of experience helping businesses with their content marketing strategy. Her other interests besides content marketing are finance, lifestyle and even, fashion.

Did you find this article helpful? Please let Jessica and myself know by leaving us your valued comments in the comments section below.

Would you like to guest post on the blog? Please use the Contact tab above to get in touch if you write business-related articles or articles on the topics of Internet Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Social Media Marketing/Optimisation (SMO), Blogging, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

Related articles:
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Until my next post on Monday with five pieces of advice they don't teach you in business school, have a wonderful and relaxing weekend! See you back here on Monday!

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How To Survive Your First Two Years As A Start-Up

The Great Recession and subsequent recovery has been rough for just about everyone, unless you are fortunate enough to be one of the 1%. But for a lot of people, it provided the opportunity and the determination to begin their own businesses.

However, the recovery hasn't been all that kind to new business start-ups. While the failure rate for new businesses has always been quite high, the failure rate rose by 40% between 2007 and 2010.

On the bright side, there are a number of successful people who are more than willing to share their stories with newbies, and much can be learned from both their mistakes and their triumphs.


Don't Be Afraid to Fail

Sara Blakely, the founder and inventor of Spanx slimming shapewear, had this to say about advice her father gave her when she was growing up: "My dad encouraged us to fail. Growing up, he would ask us what we failed at that week. If we didn't have something, he would be disappointed. It changed my mindset at an early age that failure is not the outcome, failure is not trying."


A Handshake is Great, But Get it In Writing

Marcia Kilgore, the serial entrepreneur and creator of lifestyle and beauty brands, says a friendship in business can only take you so far. "Get everything in writing, especially with business partners. When you're starting out, things can be quite friendly and exciting, but people's memory can change due to money."


Let Your Customers Be Your Best Marketers

You might have the snazziest marketing campaign in the world, but it's a lot cheaper and frankly more convincing if you can get your customers to market for you. When you have a great product and you treat your customers well, they will tell other people about your company. Provide a good forum for feedback, do care about what your customers think, and they will not only come back for more, but they will bring others with them.


Better than the Competition

If you are not either better or cheaper, then you really have no reason to exist. Take it from Jim Koch of Sam Adams fame: "You have a viable business only if your product is either better or cheaper than the alternatives. If it's not one or the other, you might make some money at first, but it's not a sustainable business."

On a more concrete level, here are some specific things you can do to cut costs and make sure your business has a decent chance to grow:


Control Inventory

If you carry inventory, make sure you are not carrying far more than you need. Not only do you have to pay your suppliers for goods that are sitting around, you also have to shell out money for storage. Keep only enough on-hand to suffice until the next supplier delivery date.


Shorten Receivables

Make sure that your customers are paying as quickly as they should be. If your terms have been overly generous in the past, send a note to your clients that terms are changing, and be sure to BOLD the due date on invoices. Start collection efforts as soon as the payment is late.


Consult your tax accountant for any overlooked breaks

Deduct all equipment purchases as quickly as you can. If you are going to lose money this year, investigate carrying it back to a previous year. Make sure you are deducting health premiums and self-employment tax. And if you have not yet started up your new business venture, be sure to look into the tax atmosphere of the state where you plan to locate. Some states are friendlier than others.


Don't Spend Money Until You Have Money

And finally, from the founder of DailyCandy, Dana Vely: "When we used to put candy in our media kits, I would go to the Duane Reade store the day after Easter because the candy was on sale. Of course, it's important to spend on certain things in the beginning. You need good servers but you don't need Aeron desk chairs."


About The Author: The article was written by Audrey, who is working for Wallace & Associates, a Sherman Oaks CPA serving the Los Angeles area.

Did you find this article helpful? Please let Audrey and myself know by leaving us your valued comments in the comments section below.

Would you like to guest post on the blog? Please use the Contact tab above to get in touch if you write business-related articles or articles on the topics of Internet Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Social Media Marketing/Optimisation (SMO), Blogging, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

For more business tips, use this link:
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If you found this or any of my other posts helpful, don't forget to share the posts to your favourite networks using the toolbar below or by using the "+1" and "Share" buttons located at the bottom of each post.

As ever, if you want to stay up to date with the latest blog posts, don't forget to follow via Google Friend Connect (button on sidebar), on NetworkedBlogs, via Email (maximum of one email per day), on Facebook and Google+ or by subscribing to our blog feed at:
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Until my next post on Friday on how Pinterest can help your small business, enjoy the rest of the week! See you back here on Friday!

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