Are you tired of punching the clock for someone else, but think you can’t find another job at your age? Are the kids out of the house, freeing you to re-enter the job market? Are you nearing retirement, but don’t know what you will do with all that free time – or wonder how you will manage once you retire?

For many Americans born between 1946 and 1964, retirement has a very different meaning than it did a generation ago. According to a USA Today/Gallup poll, 63% of American adults plan to work in retirement; two-thirds say enjoyment of work is the key reason. With years of valuable work experience, maturity, and plenty of energy at their disposal, today’s older workers are increasingly finding financial and personal fulfillment in running their own small businesses.

There are as many reasons for starting a small business as there are Americans reaching retirement age. Corporate layoffs, the need for supplemental income, and a desire for a more flexible lifestyle can all play a part. Advanced technology is leveling the playing field for small businesses, and many individuals approaching retirement are now able to realize their personal ambition to be the boss and reap the rewards.

If this sounds like you or someone you know, the SBA and its resource partners can help you find fulfilment in your later years through your own small business opportunity.

The Possibilities for 50+ Entrepreneurs

Owning your own small business can be an exciting change of pace, as well as a terrific way to stay engaged and productive. As a workforce veteran, you bring a great deal to the table: maturity, strong finances, and a wide network of professional contacts and associates. For many older entrepreneurs, starting a small business can be an opportunity to transform a lifetime hobby – such as fishing, investing, writing, or photography – into a lucrative line of work.

Sole proprietorships, home-based and online businesses are often a natural fit for older small business owners, mainly because they are less expensive to start and allow for more flexibility. A popular option is buying and selling merchandise through online auctions and e-tailers. More information about starting an online business can be found at Entrepreneur.com.

No matter what kind of small business you are interested in, there are some basic concepts you need to understand to help you in the planning process. Whether you are interested in starting a side business right away or intend to wait until retirement, now is the time to explore the possibilities—starting a business, purchasing a business, or buying a franchise – through the help of the SBA and its resource partners.

Getting Started

The first step: complete an SBA self-assessment to understand your readiness for starting a small business. The SBA also offers a wealth of resources designed to help entrepreneurs over the age of 50 get started: business planning, professional counseling, financial services, and much more. If you are already a small business owner, the SBA’s resources – and Resource Partners – can help you fine-tune your operation.

SBA resources can help you learn more about your market, shape a winning business idea, and build your professional network. The SBA can also help you understand the impact on your finances of small business start-up capital, taxes, and social security.

Start Smart with SBA Resources

• SBA small business planner
  Careful planning is fundamental to success. The Small Business Planner includes information and resources that will help you at any stage of the business lifecycle.
• Buy a franchise
  Business franchising offers many opportunities and this form of ownership has helped many entrepreneurs.
• Finance a business
  An integral component of starting a successful business is raising sufficient capital. There are many challenges here, but we have numerous resources are available to help you.
• SBA healthcare resources
  Did you know that small business owners may be able to deduct some of health insurance premiums from their taxes? Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) can also offer more ways to save on healthcare costs.
• Contract opportunities
  The SBA provides information on the various programs that can help you position your business for contracting opportunities throughout the Federal Government.

Before people purchase something on your website, they have to trust you. If your website does not look trustworthy, then you won’t get many sales no matter how many visitors your website has.

There are four things that you should do to show your website visitors that your company can be trusted:

1. Show that your website represents a real company

It’s amazing how many Internet businesses don’t list their postal addresses. Do these businesses have something to hide? If your customers don’t know who you are and where you live they might refrain from doing business with you.

What you should do on your own website:

If you’re serious about your business show your visitors that you have nothing to hide. List your full contact information on your website.

2. Show your website visitors why your company is better

Why should someone buy from you and not from your competitors? Is there anything that distinguishes you from the rest?

What you should do on your own website:

Show your website visitors how you’re different and why they should use your products or services instead of the ones of your competitors.

3. Show your visitors that other people tested it before

If other people have tested your products and services then it’s less risky for new customers to buy from you. Your website visitors want to be reassured that you’re a serious business.

If your company or your product has received awards then show them to your visitors. If your current customers have something positive to say about your products or services, list these testimonials on your website.

What you should do on your own website:

Show your visitors how other people benefited from your products and services and what other people say about you.

4. Offer your website visitors guarantees

Web surfers don’t like risks. That’s why guarantees will help you to sell more.

What you should do on your own website:

Show your website visitors that you’re 100% sure that your product or service really delivers. Give strong guarantees so that your website visitors can only win if they try your products.

It’s important to have a trustworthy website if you want to sell something on the Internet. Show your visitors that your business is real and that they can trust you by using the tips above.

Do you own a business? Do you run a business? Then I recommend you follow me through this simple math and some reasonable conclusions.

Assume you have a person making a $50,000 gross salary. Assume their true cost — including health insurance, overhead, work space, computers, Internet, electric power, payroll taxes, etc. — is $80,000. That person costs your company about $40 per hour.

For that calculation, I divide the $80,000 by 49 to calculate the weekly cost of $1,633 (I take off two of the 52 weeks in a year for vacation and another for national holidays). I divide that weekly cost by 40 to get $40.82 per hour. And then for convenience I round that to $40 per hour.

So, with that hourly cost in mind, I’d ask myself these questions:

1. Thinking about computers and Internet connections: Do I really cut costs by having employees working with old technology?
2. Books and magazines: I’m betting $15-20 per business book, or annual magazine subscription, on saving my people some time, generating good ideas, helping them work better. So the marketing books for the marketing team, programming magazines, business magazines, how expensive are they, really? How much do they have to help to pay for themselves?
3. Meeting expenses: how much does it cost me to start a meeting 10 or 15 minutes late? Is it worth it to bring lunch into a meeting to save my team members the time of going out to lunch?

My conclusion: spend the money. Keep your technology up to date, encourage employees to get whatever books and magazines or website subscriptions help them, and combine meetings with meals a lot.

Move over Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Another social media site is stepping up as a valuable marketing tool for businesses.

Pinterest, an online bulletin board for your favorite images, launched in 2010 and is already experiencing wild growth. The site registered more than 7 million unique visitors in December, up from 1.6 million in September. And it’s driving more traffic to company websites and blogs than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined, according to a recent report from Cambridge, Mass.-based content-sharing site Shareaholic.

Why should small businesses care? To answer that, you first have to understand how consumers are using the site. Pinterest allows you to organize images — maybe pretty sunrises or wines you’ve tasted — into boards for specific categories. When you “pin” something new, your followers will see it. They can like, comment or re-pin it to their boards. Like Facebook content, your Pinterest pins can go viral.

Brides-to-be can pin pictures of different wedding dresses to review, and people shopping for a new car can pin images of their options. When I joined Pinterest I started a board to show the Major League Baseball stadiums I’ve visited. The possibilities are unlimited.

Here’s a look at why some business owners — particularly retailers — might want to seriously consider starting a business profile on Pinterest now.

How It’s Being Used
Perhaps the most powerful business application is the ability to post images of your company’s products on your Pinterest board and link them back to your website. It works as a sort of virtual store catalog.

But remember that this is social media. If you simply display images of your products without contributing other content or sharing other users’ pins, you’ll likely find that people don’t pay much attention. After all, no one likes a self-absorbed blowhard.

Related: Emerging Social Media Sites to Attract Users

But savvy social media users know not to get too promotional. For example, Whole Foods Market pins pictures of delicious-looking food, food art and images of recycled or reused products to inspire customers to be environmentally responsible. Daniel Gordon, who runs Samuel Gordon Jewelers in Oklahoma City, pins pictures of his rings and watches, but he also has a board for images that make him laugh and other types of products he loves.

Driving Sales
Pinterest already is driving buyers to some websites. In the last six months, the retail deal site ideeli.com has seen a 446 percent increase in web traffic from Pinterest and sales resulting from those visits have increased five-fold.

“We continue the Pinterest conversation with [the] members by following their pins, and we love to give feedback outside of the shopping category — whether that means commenting on a great recipe or [giving] a heart next to our favorite pet pics,” says ideeli.com social media manager Sarah Conley. “We also see Pinterest as a growing resource to better understand our members and the larger retail landscape.”

Is Pinterest Right for Your Business?
The site does have some drawbacks for businesses. If your product or service isn’t particularly visual, your images may not tie directly back to your brand. Pinterest also doesn’t offer business-oriented features, and its search function prioritizes pin and board subjects ahead of “people,” the category that brands would fall into.

The best way to determine if Pinterest could attract buyers is simply to give it a shot. Set up an account and start pinning things that are relevant to your business but not too promotional.

Related: How to Use Social Media for Research and Development

If you run a lawn-care center, for instance, pin pictures of landscaping you find online or snap in your community. If you’re a brick-and-mortar store, pin shots of the interesting sites and people around your neighborhood and photos you take at community events. You also can search through Pinterest’s categories and add some inspirational, funny or beautiful images you find.

Then, follow interesting boards and individuals who post images that inspire you. Once you’ve done some pinning of other people’s content for a week or so and attracted a few followers, create a new board of your products. Add descriptions and perhaps the price to the images. Make sure they link back to your website and start tracking pinterest.com as a referral source in your website analytics.

Next, try creating an image of a special deal or coupon just for your Pinterest followers. Upload it to a new board for Deals. Perhaps offer a prize to the person who gets the most likes or comments on a re-pin of the coupon, and then see who shares it the most. Don’t fret about creating multiple boards. People who follow you will see them all.

In a month or two, see if you’re getting referral traffic or sales. Depending on the results, you may need to tweak your boards with new images and words.

One thing is clear whether you’re on Pinterest for personal or business reasons: the best images — be they funny, beautiful or thought provoking — attract the most attention and followers.

Social media marketing has become a powerful tool that companies are using to advance and expand their businesses. To effectively use this tool, you need to learn how to develop and manage a social media marketing and strategy campaign. Your goal is to get  your target audience to  turn their attention to your products or services. So, here’s a brief guide to social media marketing.

Social media and your business

Now that you have a social media profile on all the popular social networking sites, find new ways to use social media to leverage your business. To capture your customer’s attention, create engaging and dynamic social media layouts that draw customers to your page and get them interested in your products. Once that is done, you’ll have a platform where you can interact with your customers directly. Familiarize yourself with the different tools that are available to check up on your customers and also track target keywords social media experts recommend. Make use of social media tracking tools such as socialmention.com and socialbakers.com. There are other useful sites like Stumbleupon.com, reddit, Facebook, Twitter, and digg that help you keep tabs on what customers are saying about your brand and products.

Tracking customers

Google products like Google Alerts and Google Analytics will keep you posted on all the online activity surrounding your brand. Google Alerts will alert you every time your brand name and other keywords associated with your brand are mentioned. Google Analytics will give you a comprehensive and in-depth information on how many visitors visited your site, how long they spent on each page, and other crucial information that can help you establish and increase your brand’s presence online.

Scan competition

While you keep a close eye on your customers’ surfing habits, keep a closer eye on what your competitors are up to. Find out where they have a strong presence, how many and what type of people visit their pages. Also, pay close attention to their social media marketing strategies. This step will help you to track their progress against your own social media campaign and help you identify ways to keep your business one step ahead of your competitors.

Make it interesting

Instead of just promoting your product and service, engage your potential customers by posting posts on world events, technology news and any other trending topics that will get them interested in staying on your page. In addition to promoting your products, you can also provide customers with the option of buying your product directly through your social media site.

Now that you have your social media strategy and marketing campaign in place, use the tracking tools to monitor the effectiveness of your social media marketing strategy.

Search Engine Tools are a dime a dozen, but most only do a very tiny micro-task; substantially useful tools are few and far between.  Here are my personal favorite free search optimization tools for SEO; some may be familiar but hopefully there’s a few surprises in here for you.

Snippet Preview Tool
This allows you to enter in titles and meta-descriptions and test out how they are likely to appear on Google.  An invaluable search engine tool.
http://www.seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html

Rex Swain’s HTTP Viewer
It’s great for checking out HTTP header responses and following redirects for any page.
http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html

Search Engine Reports Free Bulk Rank Checker
This search engine tool is perfect for running a quick search engine ranking check on a prospect – drop a ton of terms in and it will bring back their ranking positions (not which page that is ranking exactly, just its rank – but that’s a fast way to assess someone’s situation).
http://searchenginereports.net/

LSI Keywords
I had previously reviewed a great site called textalyser which can perform a frequency analysis of documents.  If there is more than one URL to analzye though, it requires pasting in the text which is cumbersome.  I usually use textalyser and paste in the text from the top web pages ranking for a term to discover what related words I should be using when doing on-page optimization for that term.

Get a free quote on search engine optimization now.

But I recently found this *fantastic* search engine tool…”LSI Keywords”.   Ignore the name, let’s not argue about what LSI is, it’s a misuse of the term…but this tool will actually go retrieve the top 5 results on its own for your search, eliminating the manual steps of grabbing the URLs from the search engine and copying and pasting the content into the tool.   It also lays out the frequency charts for the unigrams, bigrams, and trigrams right next to each other so you don’t have to scroll down below the fold to see the top terms.  This is a *great* search engine tool, a huge timesaver.
http://lsikeywords.com/

Xenu Link Sleuth
The myth, the legend.  Perfect for finding broken links and much much more.
http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

Screaming Frog
This is starting to take some of the mantel away from Xenu; it can be used to check many kinds of SEO issues on a website, and is an ideal tool for performing a quick site audit.
http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/

Drive traffic to your web site, start today.

SEOQuake Toolbar
I don’t use the mozBar; not because I’m not a moz fan, but I’m trying to keep myself from being dependent on SEOMoz’s tools.   My theory is, SEOMoz is so effective and popular it seems to be taking over the entire SEO world…so if I want to compete with people who are SEOMoz believers and aficionados, then if I use search engine tools and techniques from elsewhere, perhaps that will give me an edge.   The SEOQuake toolbar is great for rapidly doing a competitive analysis on a SERP.
http://www.seoquake.com/

GoRank Keyword Density Analyzer
I use this to check out keyword density and other metrics on the top search engine results pages that are ranking for whatever term I’m trying to optimize for; it can help in figuring out how long the document should be, how often the keyword should be used, and so on.  If you’re a fan of extensive on-page optimization, you’ll really appreciate this search engine tool.
http://www.gorank.com/url_comparision_report.php

Pingdom
This tool provides a quick way to check page speed and image sizes, without having to install Firefox or Chrome plug-ins.  Since search engines now take into account page speed, using something like this is an important step in any search engine optimization audit.
http://tools.pingdom.com/

Niels Bosma’s Excel SEO Tools
I have to confess, I have had zero time to evaluate this personally yet, but its feature set is extremely exciting and it comes recommended by some very knowledgeable people.  There are a *ton* of functions this provides including the ability to scrape data from websites, manipulate backlinks, analyze analytics data, and more.  It looks so promising I felt it would be a crime to leave it out – I hope to put some time into using it soon.

http://nielsbosma.se/projects/seotools/

Online Sales Google SERP Bookmarklet
To use this search engine tool, just go to the website, click on the green button and drag it into your bookmark toolbar.  Then whenever you do a Google search, hit the button and it will transform the search engine results page into separate, nicely pasteable, titles and URLs.  It’s a super-useful tool.
http://www.onlinesales.co.uk/google-results-bookmarklet/

Facebook offers so many opportunities to reach customers with specialized advertising that almost every business can benefit from some form of paid advertising on Facebook, even if it spends only a few dollars a week.

However, it is one thing to use paid Facebook advertising sparingly—for example to tell your fans about an event—and quite another to commit to making Facebook a significant source of leads or traffic for your business. Answer the follow questions to find out if Facebook ads can be a significant source of leads for your business.

Are you a local business with a physical location?

Does your business have a doorknob that customers turn? If so, then Facebook is for you. Dentists, doctors, lawyers, veterinarians, physical trainers, gyms, specialty shops, cupcake stores, specialty groceries, beer and wine shops, restaurants, mechanics, theaters and music venues are highly likely to benefit from locally targeted Facebook campaigns, which may cost as little as $100 to $200 a month.

Facebook allows you to advertise to people who live within a few miles of your location, to advertise directly to your known customers, and to advertise directly to your customers’ friends who live nearby. Facebook is good for selling locally because Facebook makes it easy to get your message in front of your local market demographic even before your target audience has begun searching for your particular product or service.

Does your business harmonize with Facebook?

I suspect it is possible to successfully sell almost any product or service on Facebook. However, it is clear that some products sell on Facebook like magic and others are really, really difficult to sell there. The interesting question for your business is “How easy will it be to sell on Facebook?”

Some types of products or services are a natural fit for selling on Facebook — so natural that you can set up a campaign and start finding new customers in a few minutes. Other types of products and services will be a harder sale. And, Facebook may not be a good channel for purchasing clicks until you have exhausted easier channels.

The more the following statements describe your product or service, the more Facebook is for you.

Our Stuff Is Unique

Facebook is for you if you sell unique or personalized products. Facebook is the worldwide capital of individual expression. It’s the perfect place to sell customized and personalized products, items that express a person’s own tastes and preferences. It is also a great way to engage potential customers on a human-to-human level

You will not maximize Facebook’s marketing potential if you are selling products that could be listed in the “commodity” category or if customers can easily find your product at big-box retailers and national chains. Facebook is the place to sell products that don’t carry an expected price. Sell unique products, where the value is determined by the customer’s desire to have something interesting, not by the price.

We Sell to Consumers

Facebook is for you if you sell to consumers, not businesses. Facebook is a place for individuals to connect with friends and family. It is best used by businesses as a place to find and connect to individuals and individual consumers. It is not a good place to sell to other businesses. Although corporations have pages on Facebook, they are there as a sales presence to market to consumers, not as a purchasing presence to buy from your business.

We Sell Fun Products

Facebook is for you if your products are fun. It is a great place to sell events, memberships, experiences, personal improvement, travel and entertainment. Facebook is fun! It is a place where people go to connect, to play and to socialize. It is a place to feel, express opinions and display emotions.

And events, travel, and entertainment are full of fun and positive emotions. These subjects are naturally social, and people love to ask “Where have you been?,” “What have you seen?” and “Where do you want to go?”

If you provide personal improvement products, especially anything that’s new, trendy, hip or cool, Facebook is also a great fit. If your product involves some form of training, accent the social advantages more than the academic aspects, such as how learning a new language can make travel more fun.

We Harmonize With Identity, Personal Beliefs, and Convictions

Facebook is for you if your business harmonizes with a person’s identity — political affiliations, religious convictions, beliefs or social movements. Regardless of whether your company leans right or left or whatever, there are lots of people who may be predisposed to do business with you for that particular leaning. And you should take advantage of it. There are very simple ways you can target your customers on Facebook and communicate with them in ways that connect to the things they care about.

If you appeal to a variety of such backgrounds, then you can design specific marketing campaigns to cater to each of those preferences. You may have different pockets of people within your customer database, and the better you understand those pockets, the more you can target your ads, and the more you can sell.

Where does your business fall? Visit,IsFB4ME.com to help you answer that question. The site asks you 10 short questions about your business and results in a score from 1 to 10 that you can use to better understand how your business fits with Facebook.

Anyone who has started a business has his or her own rules and guidelines, so I thought I would add to the memo with my own. My “rules” below aren’t just for those founding the companies, but for those who are considering going to work for them, as well.

1. Don’t start a company unless it’s an obsession and something you love.

2. If you have an exit strategy, it’s not an obsession.

3. Hire people who you think will love working there.

4. Sales Cure All. Know how your company will make money and how you will actually make sales.

5. Know your core competencies and focus on being great at them. Pay up for people in your core competencies. Get the best. Outside the core competencies, hire people that fit your culture but aren’t as expensive to pay.

6. An espresso machine? Are you kidding me? Coffee is for closers. Sodas are free. Lunch is a chance to get out of the office and talk. There are 24 hours in a day, and if people like their jobs, they will find ways to use as much of it as possible to do their jobs.

7. No offices. Open offices keep everyone in tune with what is going on and keep the energy up. If an employee is about privacy, show him or her how to use the lock on the bathroom. There is nothing private in a startup. This is also a good way to keep from hiring executives who cannot operate successfully in a startup. My biggest fear was always hiring someone who wanted to build an empire. If the person demands to fly first class or to bring over a personal secretary, run away. If an exec won’t go on sales calls, run away. They are empire builders and will pollute your company.

8. As far as technology, go with what you know. That is always the most inexpensive way. If you know Apple, use it. If you know Vista, ask yourself why, then use it. It’s a startup so there are just a few employees. Let people use what they know.

9. Keep the organization flat. If you have managers reporting to managers in a startup, you will fail. Once you get beyond startup, if you have managers reporting to managers, you will create politics.

10. Never buy swag. A sure sign of failure for a startup is when someone sends me logo-embroidered polo shirts. If your people are at shows and in public, it’s okay to buy for your own employees, but if you really think people are going to wear your branded polo when they’re out and about, you are mistaken and have no idea how to spend your money.

11. Never hire a PR firm. A public relations firm will call or email people in the publications you already read, on the shows you already watch and at the websites you already surf. Those people publish their emails. Whenever you consume any information related to your field, get the email of the person publishing it and send them a message introducing yourself and the company. Their job is to find new stuff. They will welcome hearing from the founder instead of some PR flack. Once you establish communication with that person, make yourself available to answer their questions about the industry and be a source for them. If you are smart, they will use you.

12. Make the job fun for employees. Keep a pulse on the stress levels and accomplishments of your people and reward them. My first company, MicroSolutions, when we had a record sales month, or someone did something special, I would walk around handing out $100 bills to salespeople. At Broadcast.com and MicroSolutions, we had a company shot. The Kamikaze. We would take people to a bar every now and then and buy one or ten for everyone. At MicroSolutions, more often than not we had vendors cover the tab. Vendors always love a good party.

Zombie repellant might not be something you expect to find on the shelf at Walmart. Or, for that matter, puppy shoes.

But a public relations-savvy contest that the nation’s largest retailer announced last week could result in one of these off-beat products landing on Walmart shelves before year’s end.

For Walmart, it’s all about garnering publicity and social-media hits. But for the winner of the contest, it’s a chance to go from a virtual unknown to a distinguished product sold with roughly 150,000 others at more than 3,800 Walmart stores nationally.

“Their shelf base is probably one of the most rare and precious items in the world,” Golden Gate University consumer psychologist Kit Yarrow says.

Online contests by familiar brands continue to pick up social-media steam. Baskin-Robbins has sponsored contests to let folks create ice cream flavors. Mountain Dew has involved consumers in creating soft-drink flavors. Now, Walmart’s getting into the action.

Walmart dubbed its contest the “Get on the Shelf” program — an American Idol-style competition for small businesses. Two rounds of online voting will determine three winners, all of which will be sold online, with the grand prize winner gaining a spot in select stores.

As on the reality show, it’s the contest’s oddities that often grab public attention. Among the more unusual submissions:

•”Uggs” for dogs? Pugz Shoes — boots for puppies that are stylishly similar to Uggs — are designed to keep your pooch’s paws warm. With a faux leather exterior and a faux wool lining, they’re practical and fashionable — because dogs are people, too, right? (Four shoes — $19.99)

•Zombie repellant. Miss Stephanie’s Potions is a line of scented sprays and body washes for children afraid of monsters hiding in the closet. It includes a range of products to ease kids’ night frights, such as zombie-repelling sprays and fairy-attracting scents. (4-ounce spray — $9.99; 8-ounce bubble bath — $9.99)

•IPad pillow. EPillow, a lap pillow for tablets, allows users to get cozy with their electronics. ($29.95)

•Toilet seat backrest. The Toilet Comforter cushions your back during long thinking sessions on the porcelain throne. Grab a magazine — you might not want to get up. ($25.95)

“It’s like American Idol,” Yarrow says. “The first round is really entertaining because there are so many duds, and the duds themselves are funny and engaging.” And, she notes, they can generate buzz.

Originality is the key to gaining retail space, says Chad Brewer, president of Hugs Pet Products, which makes Pugz Shoes.

“If you don’t have something that’s really different — that’s going to stand out — you’re not going to get that shelf space,” Brewer says.

The national exposure could provide a much-needed boost for small businesses, several contestants say.

“We’re still not in the black yet, but we’re literally only a few thousand (dollars) from it,” ePillow creator Renee Anderson says.

With more than 800 video entries already, the competition is tight, but New England Consulting Group founder and CEO Gary Stibel says just because products don’t make the final cut does not mean they have lost entirely. Any publicity can generate sales, he says.

Giving shoppers a say in the company’s offerings is crucial to connecting with them, says Chris Bolte, vice president of @WalmartLabs — the social-media and e-commerce team that created the contest.

“You always want to stay closely tuned to what your customers are looking for,” Bolte says. “It’s really about getting products on the shelves that we haven’t seen.”

Then there’s just one minor issue: What aisle at Walmart stocks the zombie repellant?

If you don’t have a Facebook page for your business, it’s not the equivalent of trying to operate without a telephone and modern plumbing. But social media is something almost no business can afford to be without.

Social media allows a business to connect directly with its consumer base. A business with a Facebook page is approachable, personal and accessible.

Before the advent of Facebook, businesses relied on press releases and advertising to get the word out about sales or product developments that might interest customers. Compiling those took time and money. But the amount of information a company can disseminate now is constrained only by the number of times the person in charge of social media can hit the Post button.

The ease of disseminating information, coupled with a general lack of Facebook etiquette, can become a problem in its own right. And some common social media behavior can have serious negative repercussions. Below are four offenses business pages commonly commit.

1. Overposting

Because the only constraint to posting on a business Facebook page is the willingness and stamina of the poster, many businesses try to break their own posting records every day. Every thought the poster thinks is deemed essential public knowledge, and it’s shouted from the Facebook rooftops with gusto.

Overposting clogs up users’ newsfeeds. Your business’s postings become white noise and an annoyance. Then, they become spam.

When customers feel that your page has spammed them, they will either hide your business from their feed or delete you from their list. And once they delete you, the follower is unlikely to reverse their decision.

How much is too much? If you’re posting more than once or twice a day, you risk alienating your customers.

2. Oversharing

Oversharing is not overposting, which is talking too much. Oversharing may be treating the business’ Facebook page like your diary or your political soapbox. Treating your company’s social media page as anything except a PR platform is oversharing.

It’s fine if you want to inject a little personality into your promotion platform. But there’s a fine line between “personality” and “personality crisis,” and once you cross the line, your page is toast. People will hit the “Hide postings from…” button faster than you can say “Ron Paul Forever!!!” (Oh, and turn the caps lock off.)

3. Poor writing

Many businesses cut a corner by writing their own social media content tor farming it out to an intern with poor grammatical skills. Your Facebook feed come across like the the local furniture-store owner who does his own TV commercials. Unless that’s the aesthetic you’re going for, consider having somebody professional look it over.

And by professional, we don’t mean your text-speak-fluent “resident young person.” Bad writing (multiple misspellings, clunky prose, the overuse of emoticons and abbreviations) makes your Facebook page look unprofessional. How many people want to patronize a business projecting a voice that says essentially, “Uh, yeah, whatever”?

4. Lack of moderation

Your Facebook Wall is like your community bulletin board. So, it will probably collect graffiti. Personal musings, links to dubious sites, pictures of somebody in a swimsuit—whatever it is, random crud will clutter up your page. You have to be diligent to keep your Facebook page spic-and-span. Otherwise, you risk having a page where law has no name.

While you don’t need to put a full-time hall monitor on your page, you have to clean things up once in awhile and delete postings that don’t fit the purpose of your Facebook page.