Many studies have shown that the faster a company responds to a lead, the more likely that company is to close. One survey found that responding to a completed form within 5 minutes versus 10 minutes led to a 900% increase in contact rate. In a recent study by InsideSales, companies were asked about how they respond to leads, focusing on lead response time, persistence, ratio between phone calls and emails, and what method companies use to make their first response. What this study found is that many companies are overestimating their lead response efforts. Here’s what the study found and steps your business can take to improve lead response contact rate and conversions.

A Response Reality Check

Many businesses who responded to the InsideSales survey overestimate their response time and initial contact methods. If your business isn’t seeing success with lead generation, it may be time for a response strategy reality check. According to the InsideSales study, immediacy refers to the amount of time it takes for sales reps to attempt their first phone call and most companies tend to have an optimistic position as to how quickly their business responds. Nearly 25% of businesses think they respond to leads within 5 minutes. The interesting part: only 5% actually do. Many businesses are more delayed in their outreach to leads thank they think and this slow response time negatively impacts their results and conversions. 20% think their company takes over a day to respond, but the truth is that 30.6% do. When just about one-third of businesses take over a day to respond, your business can gain a serious advantage over them with a faster response.

Stepping Up Your Sales Strategy

It’s time to step up your sales strategy. Since most people are likely not contacted on the first attempt (in fact, probably under half), statistically, companies need to make between four and eleven attempts to contact over 90% of leads. While most companies estimate their team makes “more than five” calls, the most common number of attempts is zero. Getting in contact with leads often requires more than one or two attempts, so make sure your sales team isn’t calling the contact only once before calling it done. Here are a few other steps you can take to step up your leads and sales strategies.

• Respond to all leads. Of the companies with web forms, only 58.6% responded to the lead. Typically, the response rate is below 70% and is an area where many companies could improve. With such a low response rate, companies are essentially throwing away a good portion of their web-based leads.
• Establish a more equal split between phone and email responses. Sales employees are brought on because of their selling skills and abilities. InsideSales found that 66.6% make their first contact attempt through email, though only 9.3% think this is the case.
• Only sending out an email is a waste of skills team members can use over the phone.
• Test different types of outreach with each lead. Some people prefer to be contacted over the phone and others prefer to receive an email in their inbox. If your form has an option for preferred contact method, make sure you’re paying attention to what the lead selects. If the form doesn’t, ask the customer in your first call and/or first email to ensure you’re providing them with the best experience.
• Use your content as part of your initial outreach. Content marketing doesn’t stop when a lead fills out a form. Your sales team can use content as a way to incentivize action from a previously unresponsive lead. Provide industry-oriented or other relevant content in your first outreach to establish the one-on-one connection.

Is your business one of the many that overestimates its response time and balance in initial outreach? If so, it’s time for a reality check. Low lead conversions could be the result of a poor response rate and turnaround time. Reevaluate your lead response strategy to determine whether or not your expectations are being met and if your team is following up as often as they should.

The post Losing Out With Leads? Take a Real Look at Lead Response Time appeared first on SOHO Today | Entrepreneurs | Small Businesses | Marketing & PR | Starting a Small Business.

Forget the one-hour interview, says the founder of energy drink company Solixir. Try these tactics instead.

In a start-up company, every employee counts, and it’s important to have top talent: talented, smart, enthusiastic person in every job. But you can’t afford to pay the salaries such employees usually command.

“The reality is you’re not going to be able to pay market rates as an entrepreneur. You need to compensate for the higher level of talent you can’t initially pay for,” says Scott Lerner, founder of Solixir, a seven-person company which makes all-natural energy drinks. “So you need to take a step back and take a careful look at the talent you’re hiring.”

That’s why the standard interview process won’t cut it for a start-up, Lerner says. “It’s not plug-and-play like it was when we hired at Pepsi,” he adds. (Lerner was a PepsiCo executive before starting his own company.) “You need to move beyond the resume and get insight into the person. You can’t do that in an hour-long interview–and references really don’t amount to anything.”

What does Lerner recommend instead?

1. Try them before you hire them.

For lower level positions, give prospective employees a thorough test by first hiring them as interns, or give college students part-time jobs with a view to possible full-time employment when they graduate. “If I can find those opportunities, especially for inexperienced folks, it covers our backside and gives them a chance to see how our company works,” Lerner says.

It’s important not to let people know they’re being considered for full-time employment during this trial period. “I’ve told them in the past it was a tryout, and it was a mistake,” he says. “It corrupts the process. If they know that’s in front of them, they may take less money, or work harder.”

And, he notes, most of the people he tries out wouldn’t make it as full-time employees. “It’s a weeding-out process,” he says. “It’s not over the course of a week, it’s over two or three months seeing them in action.”

This means Lerner must plan well in advance. For instance, if he knows he’ll need a new field marketing person in December, he’ll start looking in June for appropriate college students to hire as interns or part time. “By October or November I’ll feel comfortable offering someone a full-time position,” he says.

2. Go to lunch.

Internships and part-time tryouts work great for hiring lower level employees, but not for senior positions, Lerner notes. Yet getting the right employees in responsible positions is crucial, and start-ups can’t afford to pay competitive rates for them. “We can’t hire someone from Red Bull at a senior level position,” he says. “I’d rather hire someone with less experience but an extremely aggressive personality who’s ready to grow.”

To identify candidates who fit that profile, Lerner says it’s important to get to know a job-seeker outside the confines of the interview. Often he takes them out to one or more lunches. “First and foremost, I like to get them out of the standard environment and understand who the candidate is as a person,” he says. “Will they want to work for me? Will they work well in our culture?”

When seeking to get to know someone, it’s important to keep in mind that asking certain questions of a job candidate remains illegal, whether you do it in your office or over a burger. Lerner says he only asks candidates the same questions he’d ask as part of a standard job interview.

3. Take a tour.

You learn a lot about a potential candidate by walking him or her through your operation or marketplace. “That might be having them come along with me, shadowing me on an in-store demonstration or walking through a store and chatting about the candidates’ experiences and the energy drink category,” Lerner says. “What I’ve found is that I can learn their thought process, whether they’re going to gel with how I think about the category and how aggressive their thinking is.”

4. Don’t talk titles.

“If a person is really into titles, in my opinion, that’s the kiss of death in a start-up,” Lerner says. It might mean the candidate will be rigid about the parameters of his or her job. “You might need someone in a CFO position, but that person will also have to do other things–that’s the nature of the beast. It’s such a flat structure that you have to be a generalist.”

For instance, he says, on a recent day his company’s CFO headed to a grocery store with other Solixir employees to put drinks on the shelves. “We’d just gotten into the store and we had to put the product out,” Lerner explains. (He himself was back at the office packing up boxes for a UPS pick-up.)

In fact, he prefers to have people start their jobs with no title at all. “There’s always a job description,” he says. “But when it comes to titles, a better way is, ‘Hey Tom, you’re working for us. And we’ll figure out later what your title is.’”

The post How to Hire Top Talent on a Small Budget appeared first on SOHO Today | Entrepreneurs | Small Businesses | Marketing & PR | Starting a Small Business.

Everyone agrees that changes are needed because current rules are too complex and too uncertain (with expiration dates of some breaks every year or two), and rates are too high. The Ways and Means Committee has issued a draft that addresses some of these problems.

The measures in the draft would reform and simplify a number of tax rules affecting small businesses and their workers. The draft also offers two approaches to modernize the way in which pass-through businesses (partnerships and S corporations) would be taxed at the federal level.

Proposals addressing complexity and permanency
The Committees wants to make permanent the Sec. 179 deduction (first-year expensing) for the purchase of equipment and certain other property at $250,000 (with a phase-out starting for purchases over $800,000). This change would apply starting January 1, 2014, when the dollar limit is set to drop from $500,000 this year to $25,000.

Other proposals:

• Simplify and expand the use of the cash method of accounting after 2013.
• Increase the write-off for start-up costs to $10,000 (instead of the current $5,000 limit). Costs over the limit could continue to be amortized over 15 years. A single rule would apply to sole proprietorships, partnerships, and corporations (rather than the separate rules that now apply) starting in 2014.
• Change the due dates for business tax returns, with partnership returns due March 15, S corporations on March 31, C corporations and sole proprietorships on April 15. All filers would have a 6-month extension. Again, these changes would apply to tax years beginning after December 31, 2013.

Proposals addressing tax rules for pass-throughs
Currently, partnerships and S corporations have two distinct sets of rules for federal income tax purposes. The draft suggests two ways to change this.

• Revisions to Subchapter S and Subchapter K (the part of the Internal Revenue Code for S corporations and partnerships, respectively). This option would simplify, modify, make permanent, or change a number of rules for S corporations and partnerships.
• Create unified pass-through rules. This option would essentially end the current way in which these entities are taxed and, instead, treat them the same for federal income tax purposes, regardless of how they are organized at the state level.

Unaddressed issues
There remain many unanswered questions for these entities, key of which are the employment and self-employment taxes of partners and shareholders and the transition rules to facilitate a new tax regime for all pass-throughs if adopted.

Assessment of the draft
After reading the proposals, here are my views:

• It’s clear that some of the tax problems of small businesses have been recognized (e.g., the ever-changing dollar limits on the Sec. 179 deduction and the filing deadlines burden on tax return preparers).
• It’s also clear that the committee recognizes the need for transition rules should Congress want a new, unified tax regime for all types of pass-throughs.
• The committee ducked the key issue: on what should Social Security and Medicare taxes for owners be based (essentially distributions or profits)?
• The committee also didn’t address the tax rates that would apply on a unified tax regime. This question is particularly important in light of sentiment to drop the corporate tax rate. Should small business owners be paying federal income tax at as much as 39.6% when C corporations (including huge multinationals) may be paying 26%?

What do you think of these proposals?

The Committee is soliciting feedback on how to improve the proposals. If you want to express your views, send them to Chairman Dave Camp.

The post Tax Reform for Small Businesses appeared first on SOHO Today | Entrepreneurs | Small Businesses | Marketing & PR | Starting a Small Business.

For example an employee now needs to exceed 10% of AGI in most cases to have deductible medical expenses, and at that level they still need to make enough income to then pay 30-40% of it out in various Federal, FICA and state income taxes in order to have the money left to pay the medical expenses. This means that most Americans do not qualify for any medical deduction at all, and even if they do they all are using after-tax money.

A simple solution for years has been for an employer to establish an HRA. The HRA works for even the smallest sole proprietorship in many cases but that discussion is best left to another class. Suffice it to say the HRA was and still is one of the absolute best health care and tax planning tools available today.

The problem is one that was hidden deep in the 2,700 pages of the ACA. An HRA generally must file a Form 720 excise tax form and pay a fee by July 31, 2013. As a result of a provision of ACA known as the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute Fees (PCORI) most insurers and self-insurers will have to pay an annual $63 reinsurance fee to this institute, per covered employee. This is not the fee we are talking about in this alert-although a few of you have heard of this fee.

What we are alerting everyone to is the other hidden research fee that requires small businesses to file Form 720 and pay $1 per covered person by July 31, 2013 using IRS Form 720. Hidden in the 12/5/2012 final regulations from IRS is the provision applying the $1 per employee research fee and the Form 720 filing requirement to most HRA employer-sponsors.

Here is the summary. Although a few employers may have both an HRA as well as a self-insured general health insurance plan and are not subject to this additional special research fee, our clients generally do not offer self-insured health insurance plans. The bad news is that very few  are self-insured for general medical insurance purposes-our clients purchase conventional insurance from insurance companies and are subject to the additional special research fee if they sponsor an HRA. Therefore most if not all of our clients are businesses that are required to pay the research fee directly to the institute if they maintain a normal HRA as well as a conventional group insurance plan. (And yes this means that these employers may be paying both the $63 per employee reinsurance fee to the health insurer as well as the $1 per employee research fee to the institute.)

So how is the fee paid? Using Form 720, the employer is required to file the form for plan years ending on or after October 1, 2012 by July 31, 2013! Yes that means now for your calendar year-end clients. Do you want even more bad news? It goes to $2 per head next year.

When preparing Form 720 enter the number of covered employees calculated in the 720 instructions in Part II at Code 133 as applicable self-insured health plans, multiply by $1 each and file and pay by 7/31/2013.

The post ObamaCare: Affordable Care Act Alert appeared first on SOHO Today | Entrepreneurs | Small Businesses | Marketing & PR | Starting a Small Business.

The Illinois Department of Central Management Services (CMS) is collaborating with legislators and business associations to increase community outreach and provide resources of State programs that are available to small businesses. CMS recognizes the business community’s need for a greater opportunity and understanding of the process for doing business with the State; we are committed to delivering valuable information and offering quality services.

Our goal is to promote the economic development of small businesses by providing educational workshops and networking opportunities. You will learn about: contracting with the State, certifications, prompt vendor payment, loans, grants, and gain access to one-on-one guidance.

Make a Connection: “Connecting Communities to Illinois Business Opportunities” workshops will be scheduled at different venues throughout the year. Presentations will be given by the Bureau of Strategic Sourcing (BOSS), Business Enterprise Program (BEP), Vendor Payment Program (VPP), Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) and Procurement Technical Assistance Centers (PTAC).

You are invited to join us at our next community workshop on Thursday, June 13, 2013 from 8:30am to 1:00pm at Arturo Velasquez Technical Institute, 2800 S. Western Ave., Chicago, Illinois, 60608.

Registration is recommended; register online at www.CMS.Illinois.gov/Events.

The post Make a Connection: Connecting Communities to Illinois Business Opportunities appeared first on SOHO Today | Entrepreneurs | Small Businesses | Marketing & PR | Starting a Small Business.

In order to meet their needs, Governor Pat Quinn and the Illinois Health Insurance Marketplace established the In-Person Counselor program (IPC).  IPCs will educate people about the new system, help them understand their health plan choices, and facilitate their selection of the plan that is right for them.  IPCs will be instrumental in the Marketplace’s plan to create a statewide “Culture of Coverage” by engaging, educating, and enrolling the uninsured in Illinois in qualified health plans.

Today, the Illinois Health Insurance Marketplace is very excited to announce the release of the grant application for the In-Person Counselor program.

The Illinois Health Insurance Marketplace, in coordination with the Illinois Department of Public Health, will be accepting applications through the end June 11, 2013 from community groups and other qualified organizations who want to participate in the IPC program. The state has designated approximately $28 million in federal funds for grants to participating groups.  Organizations that are selected through the online application process will participate in a training and certification process this summer.

For more information about the application process for the Illinois IPC Grant Program, go to: http://www2.illinois.gov/gov/healthcarereform/Pages/IPC.aspx

The post Oct. 1 Illinois Health Insurance Marketplace Opens for Enrollment appeared first on SOHO Today | Entrepreneurs | Small Businesses | Marketing & PR | Starting a Small Business.

On the road to entrepreneurship, you’re sure to face many hurdles — biggest of all is often HR.

Between finding talent and hiring staffers to training employees and managing their productivity, the time you spend on human resources can be a significant drain on any fledgling startup. Moreover, if you do make a wrong move, that distraction can not only affect your small company’s culture it could also harm your business. Think about how productive you’d be if you had to devote copious minutes to smoothing over employee strife.

The best way to create continuity in your organization — and save yourself some anguish in the process — is to hire people for the long term who can add immediate value to your company. But one’s ability shouldn’t be the only factor.

Here are a couple of other key considerations to make before biting the hiring bullet:

Ensure the fit, before you buy.
Attaining a culture fit should also be a top priority. Passing on a fantastic engineer or a stellar business-development manager because they won’t mix well with others at the company can be a smart business decision. Yet, seeing if a candidate is a good culture fit is harder to determine in a 30-minute interview than skill qualifications. Once a person’s expert skill level is identified, make time to ask questions about the job seekers’ experiences have would relate to your company’s culture.

Of course, you’ll also need to have already identified the cultural nuances of your company. Hiring to that mold is the surest way to build a sustainable and productive workforce. For example, if your core employees are music enthusiasts, beer drinkers or pride themselves on being fashion forward, don’t just consider it a trend. Perhaps they enjoy weekly team activities after work. Perhaps most of your employees work odd hours, work from home or like to communicate exclusively on Skype vs. email. You may not want to hire a candidate who prefers face time.

Take your time to tease out cultural fit. If possible, have team members spend time with the candidate outside of the office.

If it’s broken, fix it.
Obviously, you’re trying to hire people because you need help. But don’t sacrifice quality for bodies. Often when you make quick hiring decisions, you’re hiring minimally-qualified people too. You know they’re not perfect for the role but you pull the trigger anyway.

But that’s a flawed strategy. Because time is your scarcest resource, you don’t have the hours, let alone the resources, to train new employees. You also don’t have the time to “hope” that they will bring immediate value to your business.

That’s not to suggest that many employees don’t grow into their positions. The problem is, as a startup, you’re running against the clock and don’t have time to know if they will blossom into their roles. You’re better off waiting for the best candidate.

In Silicon Valley, there’s a saying that one great engineer is better for a company than six mediocre ones. At early-stage businesses, this adage applies beyond the engineering department.

The post Tips for Overcoming Early HR Hurdles appeared first on SOHO Today | Entrepreneurs | Small Businesses | Marketing & PR | Starting a Small Business.

One of the most effective ways to bring more traffic to your website is by creating a viral video and publish it on YouTube. However, many people are doing that without getting any satisfying result. That’s because they don’t know the principles that will make their video viral. If you want to attract more traffic to your website by creating a viral video, here are 5 steps to successfully make your video viral on YouTube:

1. Learn From Successful Videos

Before you create any viral video, you have to look for some successful videos on YouTube. Those videos have millions of views, and they are abundantly available on YouTube. What makes them so successful and popular? Study their characteristics, and write them on your note. Investigate those videos carefully before you actually spend your time to create your video. Remember that knowledge is important before you do anything. You want to make a viral video, and you can’t do this without studying successful viral videos first.

2. Innovate On Their Success

Now that you’ve listed all the characteristics of successful videos, you should take one video as your favorite. Let’s simply say that this favorite is the best video you can find. What’s the purpose of this? It is necessary in order for you to imitate the success of this video. You will use this video as a model for your video. Then, you will innovate this video. You just need to follow the format of this favorite video and add some improvements to your video. This will create a brand new video that can potentially become viral as well.

3. Create A Simple And Beautiful Video

Your video should be simple and it should have beautiful presentation inside. A simple video will usually win the attention of your audience. Also, a video with beautiful presentation will keep your viewers engaged with it. In other words, they won’t leave your video in the middle if you can give a beautiful video presentation for them. Also, your video doesn’t need to be long. In fact, 3-5 minute video is enough to make it viral. Remember that simplicity will win.

4. Transmit A Simple Message

The message that you transmit in your video should be simple as well. For instance, you can create a 3-minute video that transmit only one message: “Life is beautiful”. Make the presentation interesting while keeping your message simple. Don’t give your audience too many messages at once.

5. Entertain Your Audience

The last thing that you need to do is to make your video interesting for your audience. Remember that there is nothing better for you to do than to entertain your readers. After all, the purpose of your audience in watching your video is to obtain some kind of entertainment in it. So, you have to focus on entertaining your audience. Remember that boring video will not go viral. In fact, it will not attract views at all.

Those are 5 steps to successfully make your video viral on YouTube. If you can successfully make your video viral, the traffic that you get to your website will be massive. Then, you can create another viral video, and then another. In this way, you will keep boosting your website with high amount of traffic.

The post 5 Steps To Successfully Make Your Video Viral On YouTube appeared first on SOHO Today | Entrepreneurs | Small Businesses | Marketing & PR | Starting a Small Business.

With small businesses one fact is true today, your business website should be a central hub for your business.

Your business website should effectively represent your brand while providing ways for your leads to easily engage you. All roads in your business should lead back to your website, making it the pivot point for all your marketing. And you want to treat your website that way.

Furthermore, having a website opens the possibility to not just market to your leads, but to create a powerful touch point for engaging your audience in conversation and building relationships with your prospects and clients.

So if you want a successful business, and I believe you do, it only make sense to create a website that fuels the growth of your business.

Yet, as a small business owner, it can be easy – or tempting – to get in the way of your own marketing. You may take shortcuts with your business website. These shortcuts can become mistakes that undermine your business goals and turn your website from golden egg to fried omelet.

The sad thing is that you may not know your making these mistakes and undermining your business website.

So let’s look at 8 common, and often critical, mistakes I see everyday with small business websites:

Mistake #1: No Clear Objectives for Your Business Website

The very first thing you should do when you plan your business website is define its purpose. What objectives do you want your website to achieve? In other words, what do you want our visitors to see, to read and to do. To do is the most important set of objectives so you want your website objectives to be action oriented. Do you want them to sign up on your list, get your RSS feed, buy a product or take a survey? Any of these can be objectives. Just make sure your objectives are clearly defined.

One more thing on objectives: if you have more than one objective for your website, you want to put them in order of importance. Then, make sure you primary objective is the most visible and easy to find on your site. Your secondary objective should take its appropriate place behind the primary…and so on.

Mistake #2: No Strategies For Reaching Your Business Objectives

Once you know the objectives of your website you want to create strategies around how you’re going to accomplish these objectives. Strategy gets into how you’re going to do what you’re setting out to do with our business website. The more thought out and researched your strategies, the more likely your marketing and your website, overall, will be successful. From a strategy comes our plan of action, which gets us into tactics.

Mistake #3: No Tactics to Achieve Your Business Objectives

If you’re like most people, you’re pretty good at thinking about what you want to do with your business website. Often, where the trouble begins is when you have go from thought to action. That’s where tactics come in.

Tactics are the actionable steps you’ll be taking to achieve your business objectives. Your tactics are, flat out, a task list of what you’re going to do and when you’re going to do it. Think of your tactics as being the implementation of your strategy. It’s how you’re going to do what you think.

Mistake #4: No Targeted Metrics to Measure Your Progress

One great thing about the internet is that if it happens on your business website, you can measure it. Which means, you can find out amazing detail about how your visitors as seeing, reading and using your website. So the only question is are you recording that information?

What’s sad is that I see so many small business owners who aren’t even looking at their most basic website statistics. Yet, it’s so much easier to know how effectively your building your list, for instance, if you know how much traffic you’re getting. And from knowing that, you can make a plan for increasing you list signups.

There’s no way else to put it, it’s a mistake if you’re not recording your website statistics and looking at them with some regularity (not daily). And it’s a further mistake if you don’t take the time to learn how to interpret your website statistics because they will tell you what’s working and what’s not working on your website.

Yet, it’s important to go one step beyond just your basic traffic stats. You want to also consider how you’re going to measure the effectiveness of your strategy and tactics so you can see how well you’re achieving your objectives. In other words, you want a solid system of metrics – even a simple one – so you can evaluate your marketing and make it work better.

Mistake #5: No Integrated Marketing Plan

So often I see small business owners thinking of their website as one part of their marketing and their offline marketing as being another part. Don’t make this mistake. Integrate the two. Communicate your offline promotions online. And even more effective, use your offline marketing to drive people to your business website. This works great when you can make an offer on your website that your offline audience wants. As I said above, your business website should be the hub of you marketing – not just online, but all your marketing.

Mistake #6: No Focus on the Value of Your Offer

I’m asked to evaluate a lot of websites for whether they’re business ready. One of the most common mistakes I see is small business owners not focusing on or effectively communicating the value of their service. Too often, the focus is on either the cost of service or the ‘unique approach we use that makes us different than everyone else.’ Yet, this just confuses the prospect because either they don’t care about the approach or they have to consider what they’re getting for the cost. In other words, they have to figure out the value themselves.

Don’t make your prospects figure out for themselves the value of the services you provide. Tell them about it. Show them what they get, what they can expect and how you will help them solve their problems. And offer testimonials of people who you’ve helped so that they can see the social proof in your offer.

Mistake #7: No Action Plan for Your Visitors

We said earlier that your website should have clearly defined objectives. Once you’ve identified what your objectives are, it’s likely they require an action by your visitors for you to achieve. So tell them to take the action. Make it exceptionally clear that if they’ve gotten this far in your website, that ‘this is the action step you want to take next.’ Could be a list signup, a free report, a set of articles – doesn’t matter (as long as it’s toward your business objectives). Just be sure you’re hyper-clear about what action steps you want your visitors to take.

Mistake #8: No Balance Between Design & Marketing Message

Having been a website designer for well over a decade, I’ve dealt with this one a lot. Often, business owners become too concerned over the visual look of their website and it gets out of balance with the purpose of their site – which is a marketing tool to promote and sell their products and services.

That’s not to say that a website shouldn’t be visually appealing – it should. For instance, I’ve had dozens of people contact me just to let me know how much they like the design of my site. Yet your website design shouldn’t get in the way of your marketing message and business objectives. It should provide a professional, attractive frame for your all-important content.

Ideally, your design will be something people see initially and get a good impression of you from. Then, as they begin to read your copy, it should fade into the background. So think of your website design not as a paramount piece of the marketing puzzle but as a frame for your marketing message. And remember, that you want to consider your business objectives in any website design.

So these are the 8 most critical mistake I see everyday in working with clients on growing their business and on developing their web presence. There are more, of course. But I’ve found these to be the biggest and most important 8 to correct.

The post 8 Common & Critical Small Business Website Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make appeared first on SOHO Today | Entrepreneurs | Small Businesses | Marketing & PR | Starting a Small Business.

It’s no small feat for a company to transition to become a social business. One would think that it’s easier for smaller organizations, but companies of all sizes face the following barriers.

1. Traditionalists are afraid of change. How many times have you heard, “What we’ve been doing has been working, so why change?” The biggest challenge is the concept of placing content in social channels where it’s shareable. The paradigm and the purpose of the corporate website and where content lives needs to be adjusted.

2. Governance stifles creativity. Trust is required to allow staff in a social business to experiment and be nimble. Stringent policies and procedures need to be flexible enough to provide guidance but not be too strict. Consider providing best practices and gain buy in across business units by providing support and gathering a collective group that meets on a regular basis and brainstorms new ideas.

3. Business functions aren’t always willing to share budgets. Cost centers can create silos when the company’s culture doesn’t encourage collaboration. Social isn’t black and white. There is quite a journey to get to the point where the insights and results from social media are being utilized by specific business functions. A company may start out with a marketing presence in the social channels, but quickly realize that customer service also needs to participate. And vice versa, customer support needs in the social channels may draw the organization into social, but information on product marketing needs to be routed appropriately.

4. Executives need to realize that it will take more than a quarter. Social media isn’t a campaign. The more engagement that is realized, the more community building that happens. That results in the optimum customer experience, but it will also require more time to measure the results. Executive sponsorship is imperative and the expectation need to be established that the effort is long-term.

5. Social efforts are managed externally by agencies. As businesses become more social, one of the priorities is to train staff and empower them to engage directly in social channels. The advantage is that business units will start to integrate roles that will take on responsibilities for content calendars, brand monitoring, finding insights and responding to them. I agree with this article that this will result in cost savings for a social business and will encourage faster evolution internally. Complete reliance on agencies makes it difficult to break down siloes and collaborate.

None of these are insurmountable. They do require a consistent strategy to ensure that none of them impede progress. What challenges or barriers do you see organizations have in becoming a social business?

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