Get Your New Business Off The Ground

Most successful businesses are not overnight successes. This knowledge can make starting a new business seem daunting since you are venturing into unknown territory. The risk of defeat is very real but it’s also important to remember that many success stories are born from failure. Staying motivated and organized could mean the difference between your small business making it and falling apart.

As Jeremy Bloom -- author of ‘Fueled by Failure: Dare to Fail. Dare to Succeed.’ and co-founder/CEO of Integrate -- expressed in Entrepreneur:

“Don’t be afraid to aim high. Google wasn’t built in a day, and you won't reach your primary goal in a short time, either”. 

When getting your new business off the ground, there are a few things you can do to ease the stress during this process.

First. Have a mentor. An adviser can provide invaluable insight and constructive pointers. Having someone with pertinent experience -- to act as a sounding board and help you discover which questions you should be asking -- is a great resource to have when building your business. You can find people within your own personal network as well as within your extended professional network. Is there a person outside your network whose work has impressed you? Utilize social media. If you notice this professional replies to direct tweets, try reaching out! Twitter is an easy way to catch the eye of even the busiest of entrepreneurs.

Second. Make a plan. Putting a plan in place is one of your tickets to success. Your idea could be fail-proof, but without a strategy this won’t matter. You should understand what makes you different from competitors, who your target audience is, and how you plan to reach those customers. Additionally, identifying long and short term goals are a great way to stay on track and will leave you feeling accomplished as you cross things off your list.

Third. Define individual objectives. If you aren’t pioneering this business endeavor entirely alone, identify the role of each person involved. Once roles are established make sure there is a clear understanding of expectations. You can hold your employees and yourself accountable by writing out tasks on a team white board and checking things off as you go along.

If you are a rising business less than a year old, consider becoming a part of BBB’s New Business Sponsor Program. This program offers you tools and knowledge for nurturing your new business.

For more information you can trust, visit us a bbb.org/boston, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

How to Help Customers Find You

Think about the last time you wanted to make a purchase that required some research, whether it was a new car, a new TV, some furniture, or a bike for your child. What was the very first thing you did? If you’re like most people, your answer can be summed up in one word: Google. When consumers are in the early stages of buying something, they are likely to turn to Google. So how can you use this to your advantage? Read on for some ways to make yourself more visible online and offline.

Online Commenting. This is a very effective way to drive traffic to your website. Write brief but meaningful comments on sites that are relevant to your business. You can also write reviews of books about your industry on sites like Amazon or Google Books. Participating in this type of online discourse will allow you to network with other likeminded people in your field, and eventually make your name more recognizable on the web. Furthermore, frequent commenting on well-chosen sites can increase the likelihood that people will find you on search engines like Google.

YouTube and Podcasts. These are valuable resources for you to use in your search for new customers. Do not dismiss YouTube as solely a website for young people watching viral videos. Many businesses are now using YouTube channels to post all kinds of videos such as tutorials, product demonstrations, and mini-advertisements. Include the link to your website so viewers know where to go for more information. The same goes for podcasts; for people on the go, they are a necessity. Consider using this medium to communicate with not only prospects, but current customers as well.

Smartphone apps. Apps are a must for any brick and mortar business. By registering for popular apps like FourSquare, Google Places, Yelp, and GoWalla, you can take advantage of the ever increasing use of smartphones by current and potential customers. Most of these apps are available for iPhones as well as Android and Blackberry phones. People use these apps not only to find the location of a business, but also to link to the business website and read reviews by other users.

Here are some more ways:

Signage on cars
Fun signage/banner/T-shirts for your clients to display
Testimonials
Online/printed Reviews
Follow up cards, emails and phone calls
Seasonal promotions for your community
Sponsor charities and causes in your community
Weekly workshops and/or presentations in community hubs
Partnering with other businesses
Referral exchange – where you refer business to them and they refer business to you.
Sporting/community event meet and greet
Offer online/offline contest and give-a-ways
Joining or starting organizations and clubs

Many of the methods listed above are low-cost ways to help customers find you. Make the most out of your online presence, but don’t forget to also make it easy for your local community to find you offline as well.

What have you done to help your customers find you?

How to Improve Your Credit Score

Whether you like it or not, the ugly truth is your credit report and credit score have a great deal of power. They serve as key tools that measure the financial risk you pose to lenders. The higher the score, the lower the risk. Credit scores and reports are used to determine whether or not you are approved for a mortgage, loan, or even a bank account and can positively and negatively affect the interest rates on your credit cards and other borrowing methods. Therefore, it is extremely beneficial to do what you can now to improve your credit score and resolve any errors on your report. This will prevent this information from haunting the remainder of your financial life.

According to a recent Federal Trade Commission report, more than one-in-four credit reports contain errors. Make sure to check your credit report for errors or potential fraud once each year. You can order a free copy of your credit report from the three major credit reporting agencies once every 12 months by visiting www.annualcreditreport.com. The site is run by the three credit reporting agencies: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Keep in mind that this is the only free resource to receive your official credit report. Do not fall for any other company that advertises “free” credit reports because these companies will make you sign up and pay for other services.

After you check out your credit report, the next step to take is to fix any errors. Contact each of the three reporting agencies to report the errors, and begin the process to correct them. This often requires sending in a letter, including your name and address, exactly which items you’d like to dispute and why. Include copies of supporting documentation and a copy of your report with the errors circled or highlighted. Also contact the provider of the incorrect information and have it fixed on their end, so the problem does not reappear in the future. If you still encounter issues, visit The Federal Trade Commission to learn more about your rights when dealing with credit reporting agencies.

It’s always good to be building good credit because this will help you out in the future. Here are some quick and easy tips on how to maintain a good credit score or make some necessary improvements:

• -Keep track of your bills and make sure to pay them on time.
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• -Do not max out your credit cards. Keep your credit card balances low, and try to limit your purchases to less than 25% of your credit limit at any time, even if you always pay off your bills in full.
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• -Limit the number of credit cards you open, including retail store cards. They may come with great perks, but many cards show lenders that you tend to borrow money at high rates over short periods of time, which signals risky borrowing behavior.
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• -Keep open old cards with a long credit history. They may help your credit score because the length of your credit history accounts for 15% of your score. The higher the average age of your accounts, the more it could improve your score.
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• -Remember to pay traffic or parking tickets or even library fines. If these bills end up at a collection agency, it could drop your credit score by as much as 100 points! Make sure to also keep records of these sorts of payments, in case you need to dispute an error.
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For more information, visit BBB’s Managing Credit – Made Simpler. There you will find tips on paying off balances, managing your budget, getting financial help, and protecting yourself from credit fraud.

How to Maximize Your Time Spent on Social Media

Please raise your hand if you've ever felt like you were wasting your time on social media.

FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ are just some of the few tabs you have open at any given moment. The activity feeds of all the sites are constantly streaming by with pictures and jokes that have no impact on you or your business. As the minutes pass ten, twenty, sixty you realize you are not spending your time wisely, especially when other aspects of your business could use the help.

Well, don’t worry there’s good news: With a little discipline and a couple set blocks of time, soon you will be in control and able to accomplish what you need efficiently and quickly.

Follow these next few steps, and we’ll walk through how to wisely spend your time on social media. When we’re done you’ll know exactly how to maximize your time spent and get a maximum return. Let’s dive in.

5 Steps to Maximizing Your Time on Social Media

1.) Track your time on the computer for the week.

Before you start diving into the restructure of your social media habits, we need to monitor how you currently spend your time on the computer throughout the week. You want to establish the three or four main time syncs of your current computer habits. Then, you can decide whether these habits are valuable to you and your business before completely start from scratch.

Keep in mind that some of your habits might be on the correct track, but just need to be completed in a more structured manner.

Nothing to overly analytical about this process, keying in on a few points creates our base for improvements.

2.) Brainstorm list of social media values.

After you've monitored your computer habits for the last week, now you must figure out what values you hope to achieve through social media. Similar to the first step—create a list of why you use social media and also what you wish to accomplish using it.

You can refer to How to Set Social Media Goals for specific examples.

3.) Set focused blocks of time.

Whether you plan on devoting anywhere from 20 minutes all the way up to a few hours, breaking up your efforts into focused blocks of time is one of the main focuses of optimization.

Start by choosing any combination of morning, noon and afternoon to be your designated social media times. For example, let’s say you want to devote 45 minutes a day to social media. Break that 45 minutes into multiple 15 minute segments and for those 15 minutes focus only on replying, updating and curating your social media feeds.

4.) Choose your most important goals and stick with them.

Some days you might feel short on time during your predetermined social media sessions. Without risking falling back into your old unstructured way of doing social media, during these times prioritize your most important goals first.

 Making sure to reply to comments and tweets is much more important than scheduling a post for next week, so the less pressing matters can be pushed back to later in the day or sometimes different days all together.

5.) Modify based on results.

Once you are settled into your allotted social media times, the next step in the process is fine tuning. A few times a month or whenever you have reached a milestone you should re-evaluate your goals.

Highlighting the differences between the goals that are currently be fulfilled and those that are not fully being reached, allows you to devote more resources and time to certain areas. Eventually you will find a balance that allows you to pursue all your goals equally.

There you go, now you are ready to manage your social media in a more consistent and efficient way. And you know what the best part is? Now your social media will work for you, instead of the other way around.

Have any more questions about common social media tips? Don’t hesitate to ask.