First and foremost, Congratulations to our new President Elect, Barack Obama, may the change America voted for begin!

With Congratulations aside, lets talk about how small businesses will be affected by the new President’s policies. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, over 99% of all employers are a small business, that’s out of the approximate 25.8 million businesses in the USA. There are many benefits that Obama and Biden are suggesting will develop such as improving access to capital and investing in innovation and development, as well as cutting health care costs.

Health Care

Most small businesses are unable to provide their employees with health care and benefits because they simply can not afford it. Health care is expensive and usually require a minimum number of employees to be qualified for any type of discounted rate, not to mention the lack of choice in providers. Typically businesses will forego investing in healthcare options in order to allow for lower administrative costs and room for paychecks and growth for their employees.

Barack Obama is planning to reduce this burden by offering a new Small Business Health Tax Credit. This is intended to help small businesses provide health care to their employees. This credit will provide a refundable credit of up to 50% on premiums paid by small businesses on behalf of their employees.

In addition, you’re provided with access to a Low-cost National Health Exchange, which means you’ll have new opportunities as a small business to buy low-cost, high quality health plans. You’re reimbursed for a portion of the costs given you meet requirements. The plans will also lower health care cost by providing innovations that improve chronic care management and increase the insurance market competition.

Tax Relief for Small Businesses

In an effort to reduce burdens on small businesses, Obama has proposed that he will eliminate all capital gains taxes on small and start-up businesses to encourage more innovation and stimulate job creation. Obama and Biden will also support small business owners by providing a $500 “Making Work Pay” tax credit to almost every worker in America.

If you’re self-employed small business owners, you pay both the employee and the employer side of the payroll tax, under the new Obama plan, you’re burdens will be drastically reduced from the double taxation.

New Loan Programs

Obama is making it much easier for small businesses to receive business loans. He has cosponsored the bipartisan Small Business Lending Reauthorization and Improvements Act, which means, the Small Businesses Administration’s loan and micro-loan programs will be expanded, providing start-up and long-term financing that normally the small business owner can not receive.

Entrepreneurs

Obama and Biden plan on supporting and creating a network of “public-private business incubators” to support entrepreneurs’ development and ideas. These “incubators” will provide help specific and critical to entrepreneurs creating start-up companies. This includes help in business plan design, actual physical space, any identity or address problems that may affect the business, advice and financial planning.

Female Business Owners and Minority Business Owners

Women own over 28% of US Businesses, however have a hard time getting loans. Obama and Biden are encouraging the investment in women-owned businesses, as well as increasing support and reducing discrimination. Also, the Women Owned Business contracting program signed into law by President Bill Clinton will be implemented by Obama.

Less than 1% of the $250 billion in venture capitol dollars has been invested in the 4.4 million minority business owners. Obama plans to strengthen the Small Business Administration programs that provide the capital to minority-owned businesses. Outreach programs will be initiated to help with loan applications will also begin.

Sources:

http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/SmallBusinessFINAL.pdf

With the economy not in the best of spots right now, small businesses are at a loss of what to do when it comes to continuing to captivate their customers. This is especially true in instances where the service or product is not a necessity for the consumer. In addition to your current advertising and marketing plan, there are some other ways that you can reach out to your community and continue to increase your business.

Get involved in your community and take advantage of city festivals, fairs, or community gatherings. These events provide a low budget way for you to reach hundreds of consumers in your community. We all know that word-of-mouth advertising is the best way to create buzz about your business, so in addition to your online local advertising, like CityWaboo, get out in your community and show them what you’re all about. Participate by setting up a booth, handing out flyer’s, menus, gift certificates, t-shirts or any other collateral items you’d like to hand out.

Create a theme day at your business, maybe a contest for your customers, for example, if it’s close to Halloween, tell your customers that if they come into your business in costume you’ll offer a discount, free item, or candy. Are you an online business, if so, you can still create this theme by creating an online contest, or even just changing your home page picture. If it’s Christmas, hand out candy canes to your customers and throw on a Santa hat to get a quiet chuckle.

With the economy in such bad standing, people shop where it’s most affordable, most of consumers choices are driven by affordability. That means to compete in the market right now, not only do you need to make sure you are offering competitive prices for your industry, but also that your customer service skills are top notch! It’s often assumed that if a service is offered at an affordable price, there’s gotta be a catch-prove your clients wrong and let them know that they’re money is being well spent.

Make sure your staff and team is on-board and knows the expectation, especially if you’re in a business that requires person-to-person interaction. No one wants to deal with a bad attitude, especially if they are paying you… so what’s the solution, make sure your working incentives for your staff. If they have a great day, don’t hesitate to let them know. How does this correlate with captivating your customers? I assure you, if you’re staff is rude, irritable, snappy, short-tempered, or lousy with their service, your customers are not going to be enthusiastic to come back to your business again, it’s also likely you’ll begin a negative word-of-mouth buzz around your business instead.

Encourage your clients to write reviews on sites like Yelp and CityWaboo so that you can monitor how your business is doing, what your customers love and what they hate.

Making your business stand out from the competition is key. Providing a fun experience for the customer makes your business unforgettable because you’re clients will have had such a pleasant interaction within your boundaries. Experiences are what drive repeat customers. Make sure that you’re offering an incentive for both the client and your employees, everyone likes something for free or discounted, and it never hurts to acknowledge good work. Keep your customers captivated by participating in low budget activities, creating those personal relationships, and projecting your business in a positive uplifting light.

So what is a business owner to do? They have to start cutting the fat, and usually the first thing that they look to cut is the advertising budget, not realizing that the customers that are trickling in might just be due to the advertising and that those customers may even disappear if the advertising budget is cut.

What I propose to our clients is to ride out the tough times and instead of canceling or cutting their advertising budget in full, try instead to streamline and optimize their campaign and look for free or low budget campaigns. Here are few suggestions on what and how to get started. Most of these are online, but do not require extensive computer or internet knowledge.

1. Free local listings on major search engines and directories. This has been talked about extensively in many blogs and forums. Here are some popular sites you might want to start with.
   https://www.maps.google.com
   http://listings.local.yahoo.com/csubmit/index.php
   http://listings.yellowpages.com/Services/ServiceClaimSearch.aspx
   http://advertise.citywaboo.com/signup/
2. Email Newsletter marketing is another free or inexpensive way to get in touch with those clients that have not come in to your store lately. Companies such as Constant Contact give you a 60 day free trial, and you can send up to 2500 emails at once for $30 per month. You can send as many times as you wish. Although keep in mind that you do not want to overdue it. Constant Contact provides many templates to use and is on a very user friendly format. We use them at CityWaboo to send out our weekly and monthly newsletters.
   http://www.constantcontact.com/pricing/index.jsp
   http://www.ratepoint.com/
3. Social networks have become very popular in the last few years. Make sure that you have a profile on them and are actively updating it. I’ve begun using the 2 hours I spent at night watching TV, to instead get onto to the social networks and add information to my business and personal profiles. Right now, the name of the game is optimization, and most of the social network sites populate your information on the major search engines.
   http://www.facebook.com/
   http://www.linkedin.com/
   http://www.myspace.com/
4. Local city guides have streamlined their operations in the last couple of years, and although most charge a small fee for enhanced listings, it is well worth it for all of the features your business receives. When we first started CityWaboo.com one of our first conversations was; what can we give our advertisers for $39.95 per month that would make a positive influence in their bottom line? Well we packed in a lot. By far, I think the features advertisers get on CityWaboo are unmatched by many companies. http://citywaboo.com
   http://local.com
5. In the same token as the National City Guides, there are local directories that cater to specific cities or specialties. For the past 4 years we have been operating a local directory called http://www.burbankglendale.com with great success for local businesses in the Burbank and Glendale community. Most of the time the investment is less then $30 per month and gets your business in your immediate community. These types of websites are community based so to find them look in your local community newspapers and chamber of commerce directories.
6. Pay per click or pay per lead models of major search engines is yet another way to get your business or website on search engines. Although many general keywords are expensive to be in the top results, most specific keywords are relatively inexpensive and can start for as little as .10cents. Make sure you specify your daily budget and make use of all the free tracking and researching tools that are provided. For Google.com visit http://www.google.com/adwords section. For Yahoo Search Marketing http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/

The key is to remember that whatever you do, make sure that you track and analyze your results. It is imperative that you find out where every customer in your store or on your website is coming from. And remember economic times will eventually get better, if you remember to be frugal and result oriented now, imagine what you will be able to do when the times are better. Invest your advertising dollars wisely, track and record your results, and thoroughly analyze the results thoroughly and you’ll be on the track to increasing your visibility, traffic, and success!

The Democratic National Convention came and went, and now its time for the Republicans to have their chance. So who where the losers and the winners? No I don’t mean in politics, this is a CityWaboo Blog. The local businesses in Denver and Saint Paul should have capitalized on the tens of thousands of visitors that were hungry, sleepy, and wanted to party. Well maybe not party.

Most of the delegates that are at the convention are from out of town, so to find a place to eat, sleep and even find a local cleaners will undoubtedly result in a search for restaurants, hotels and cleaners in Denver or Saint Paul.

Here is where local businesses need to capitalize on the large amount of traffic that major search engines like Google and Yahoo, and local city guides such as CitySearch.com and CityWaboo.com receive. Just thinking ahead for couple of months can result in great short term business; which can translate into a positive long term reputation.

There are influencers in any arena, as I was flipping through the channels, I caught a glimpse of one of the local political reporters doing a story on what and where the delegates are eating and they were showcasing a sandwich spot 5 miles from the convention. I thought wow national coverage for a local sandwich shop. You can not buy this kind of publicity.

So what can that sandwich shop do to have more of a lingering effect from the national converge and also capitalize on the thousands of people that will come through their doors in the next 5 days; given that these people might not ever come back to Denver or eat at that sandwich shop again?

Below I am outlining some of the steps any business can take to make sure that their online marketing efforts are positive, lingering and can capitalize on busy times to offset the time of the year when business is slow.

1. Have an online presence. If I am ordering flowers or looking for a place to eat, at least I want to see what’s on the menu.
2. Check your business profile on major search engines. Type in your business name in Google or Yahoo search and see where your business profile is populated. You will be surprised at what you see. It’s like a market research on your business in 10 seconds or less.
3. Check the popular review sites such as Yelp, CitySearch, and CityWaboo to find out what your customers are saying about your business.
4. Don’t be disheartened about bad reviews, it is a chance to see what you are doing right and wrong.
5. Add your business to the above sites if you do not see them listed. Most sites will give you the opportunity to add a free profile. For an extra couple of bucks a day many site like CityWaboo.com will give you an enhanced profile, with all the bells and whistles like pictures, special comments, bold business name, multiple keywords and more.

Now that you have your profile created, it is time to put it into use.

6. Identify key events or situations that you might want to capitalize. For florists, one of their busiest days is Valentines Day, for that sandwich shop the Democratic National Convention.
7. Each customer should be treated as a potential ambassador for your business and should be used to spread the word about your business.
8. Start directing your satisfied customers online to rate, review and recommend your business. This can be done in multiple ways.
9. CityWaboo offers business card size postcards that have your business information on one side and an invitation for the card holder to go on CityWaboo and rate, review and recommend your business.
10. Having a laptop or a computer in a corner, and having your customers rave about you right there and then.
11. Collecting customer email addresses at time of check out, you will be surprised how many people will actually give you their personal email addresses. Sugarcoat it with a discount offer. Use those emails to direct them to the review sites. (contrary to popular belief of sending them straight to your company website: see # 12)
12. Every business has heard of word of mouth advertising. Websites such as CityWaboo, Yelp and others have taken this concept to the next level. In particular CityWaboo brings back search results with local member recommendations and if you sign in, you can also see your friend recommendations. So the more people recommend your business, the more chances for your business to be shown. The best part of all— it’s free.

    Monitor your results; the best campaign is the one that is followed. So take advantage of busy times and convert those one time customers into ambassadors for your business.

For more information about Eduard Arakelyan and other business marketing information please visit www.citywaboo.com

Some of you may experienced a few hiccups on the CityWaboo website yesterday, this was due to the overwhelming traffic on the CityWaboo website late yesterday afternoon. With so many people on the website, our servers temporarily crashed. If you were trying to access the site and could not, that is most likely the reason. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate all of the feedback that everyone has given us. Stay on the look out for the new and improved CityWaboo coming soon!

Of all the options available in advertising, why pick online local advertising? The answer is quite simplistic, as online local advertising provides the business owner a reach unobtainable through traditional mailer campaigns as well as giving the business visibility to new clients. In this day and age, more and more people use the Internet for finding the mass of their information and major search engines have capitalized on this knowledge. Local online advertising targets your local market specifically, but also populates major search engines and drives traffic to your ad. In turn, this traffic typically turns into new clients and increased business and increased business translates into dollars.

When a company targets locally, you streamline your business online, cutting your competition down tremendously. Instead of competing against all of America or the world for that matter, you’re now competing in your local market. When potential customers search for a service in their community, the business is more likely to appear in the search results because they’ve streamlined who they service as opposed to putting the business in a national perspective.

Those businesses that hold a national standing, still highly profit from local online advertising, as they not only drive traffic to their business nationally, but also to the specific business locations. In the event the business does not have physical locations, online local advertising campaigns still focus attention on one group of people at a time allowing the company to personalize and really speak to that particular community. This type of advertising gives companies visibility to clients that normally the business may not interact with, expanding the client base and community popularity. With everything in the business realm shifting towards local and with competition ever increasing, locally promoting businesses is quickly becoming the most effective and affordable form of advertising.

Last month, I wrote about Why Local Businesses Should Be Like the Jerk, which examined the basics associated with businesses being listed in local listings and results. Now I want to take a look at the logical next consideration: How can businesses respond when they receive less-than-favorable reviews?

Being listed is one thing, but once your business gets noticed, some customers may post negative reviews about it. What’s a local business owner to do about this unwanted publicity?

Based on our first-hand experience and observations of other local web publishers, local businesses tend to react in one of three ways:

• Flame the publishers: Businesses that receive poor customer reviews on local sites sometimes contact the site owners or publishers directly, asking them to remove a negative post or, in some cases, remove their business from the site altogether. This is often accompanied by some mention of our esteemed legal system. Many local business owners and their legal counsel are not well-versed in the immunities available under federal law to publishers of websites that provide open forums for both customers and those same local business owners to post messages. Federal law shields these publishers from liabilities associated with messages posted by third parties.Still, in certain cases, publishers can and do oblige, especially if the negative post violates the site’s terms of use. Sometimes it is a judgment call, and placing the publisher in the middle of sparring factions is not the best solution for anyone. If the post is simply a freely expressed opinion, such as ‘the service at this business was disappointing,’ most site owners stand firm, because a local site’s life and legitimacy involves providing a forum for all valid opinions.
• Get directly involved: Better would be to view the review as constructive criticism pointing out issues that may need to be addressed. It is often difficult for businesses to know how customers perceive their product or service, and here are customers interested enough to tell them. Granted, some reviewers write untrue reviews for unkind motives, but that brush is too often used to paint over legitimate reviews. Presume innocence until proven guilty.Engage the reviewer and the community in a conversation online. Comment on the review if that functionality is available, or write another review responding to the first, but always clearly state you are the owner. Your potential customers are reading the reviews, and this is a way for everyone to see there is a human behind the business and that issues are being addressed. There is a growing trend of businesses using this new medium to reach out and extend some old fashioned customer service. These interactions often lead to positive outcomes, with consumers being impressed that the business owners cared enough to respond.Avoid the temptation to become directly involved by writing a review pretending to be a customer. These are easily spotted and do more harm than good for the integrity of the business.
• Simply let it play out. As hard as it might be for a business owner to read a negative consumer review about the business, odds are good that if the business is a good one, other consumers will weigh in with positive views to balance or even contest the negative ones. With the wisdom of crowds, the community generally outs the truth.

There are more than 15 million businesses and more than 300 million people visiting them in this country. Not all of the visits will be perfect. Some customers will make the effort to express what they thought, good and bad. From there, the decision is up to the businesses on how to respond. Talking about the issues is always best. Turning an unhappy customer into a happy one is good for business. It will be interesting to continue monitoring what local businesses do to ensure the accuracy of their core data and address the expressed opinions of their local customers

Written By Chris Linnett.
Where he blogs regularly about all things local.

Business owners always ask me, what is the best way for me to advertise my business on internet? Here is my advice to current and future businesses interested in increasing their online visibility and “Ad Value”.

First of all, what do I mean by “Ad Value”? It refers to the effectiveness of your overall advertising campaign online. For example, Business A and Business B are both paying the same amount of money for the same service provided by an online yellow page provider like CityWaboo.com. Business A follows the steps outlined below and increases his “ad value”, Business B has not even looked at his listing since his initial sign-up. Business A has a higher ’Ad Value’ and hence a higher customer response from CityWaboo.com then Business B.

Follow these steps to make sure you have an effective online campaign.

1: Make sure all of your contact information is correct. If your customers can’t reach you, you can’t sell to them. You can do a business directory search to find your business and check information.

2: If you are offering a discount or a promotion, it needs to be clear and explain what the customer has to do to redeem it. If they need to print out the page and bring it in, make sure you specify that.

3: Do you have all of your pictures loaded and updated?

4: The special comments section should have all of the important information you would like customers to know. It should include a hook, something that sets your business apart from everyone else in the directory.

5: Web sites are an everyday part of operating a business. A comprehensive business profile is the next best thing if you don’t have a website.

6: Tracking is an important element of a successful ad campaign. Each business needs to know where their customers are coming from: Referrals, Friends, Repeat Customers or Advertising (New Customers). You will be surprised if you track your customers for one month. It will give you a valuable insight into your operation and at the same time dissolve some of the myth that “…I don’t need advertising…”

7: Know your sales or marketing representative. Keep in contact with them periodically. They will evaluate your advertising campaign and make recommendations on how to better it. Our marketing advisors make sure they contact all our advertisers every 60 days.

If you take the steps above, you should be able to increase your “ad value” and effectively reach new customers. As always if you have any questions or concerns please contact us.

CityWaboo is a Community-Built City Guide to help you share your opinions about the businesses and services you’ve tried. Just go to the business you want to rate and click the “Write a review” link. Here we will give you tips on writing great reviews of local businesses. You’ll find guidelines along with examples of well-written reviews to rouse the writer in you.

Be objective and truthful. Tell us how you really feel and why. Useful reviews are detailed and specific, and give the reader a feel for your experience. Think about what kind of information you want when you ask a friend or coworker to recommend a restaurant, service, activity, or business. Here are some of the kinds of questions you might want to answer in your review:

• Did the experience meet or exceed your expectations? Are you planning to go back soon?
• How did this store compare to other, similar businesses in your area? Do you feel like you got what you paid for?
• What did you like or dislike? If you had to wait in line, was it worth it?
• Would you recommend this to your friends? Your parents? Your boss?

Stay “on topic”.Present facts, not fluff. Did the cashier smile and say thank you? Were the towels in the gym clean? Was the salesperson well-informed and helpful? Did the contractor finish ahead of schedule? Was your soup lukewarm? Did the roof really stop leaking? Did the delivery arrive on time? Did the performance knock your socks off?

Please: Don’t spoil it for others. Don’t abuse the service. Reviews should not harass, abuse, or threaten another’s personal safety or property, make false statements, defame, impersonate someone else, contain profanity, sexually explicit, illegal or otherwise objectionable content, as determined by CityWaboo. Don’t post personal information. Never assume that you are completely anonymous and cannot be identified by your posts. Reviews should not include personal information, such as email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers or credit card numbers belonging to you or others. Don’t post multiple or commercial reviews. Reviews should not include multiple posts by the same user or posts that have spam, commercial or advertising content or links, otherwise it will be reported by other CityWaboo members. Don’t copy or otherwise infringe others’ material, trademarks or other intellectual property. Reviews should include your own, original thoughts. We want to hear from you! Don’t upload HTML, viruses, or other malicious code. Reviews are for text only comments. Please help to protect the CityWaboo Community-Built City Guide. Reviews are for CityWaboo users only. Our rating system is for CityWaboo users to help other CityWaboo users. Businesses listed in CityWaboo are not allowed to post reviews about themselves or other listed businesses. For additional information or questions please feel free to email us feedback@citywaboo.com

• Priority placement above competitors’ businesses
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