Small Business News

Speed, cost, and seasonal increase in volume are the biggest holiday shopping season pain points for retailers.

This according to a new survey by Simplr, which looked at the pulse of small-medium sized e-commerce retailers handling customer service inquiries to determine how businesses were getting ready for the holiday shopping season. The survey also identified opportunities and challenges facing online retailers.

Many of today’s retailers are small businesses who have a brick and mortar and online presence. Addressing the customer service needs for both segments is equally important, but handling customers who may be on the other side of the world requires different tool sets.

In an emailed press release, Eng Tan, CEO of Simplr, said the survey wanted to understand how businesses approached the holidays, especially the growing contingency of businesses online.

Tan adds, “Our goal with this survey was to obtain data around the pain points and opportunities that small-medium sized businesses are seeing, particularly around areas that customer support touches, that can be leveraged to better understand the challenges they are seeing and how services like Simplr or others in the ecosystem can step in to help.”

Read more: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SmallBusinessTrends/~3/jQ5gNKBC08o/online-holiday-season-retail-pain-points.html

A robust content promotion strategy has become a non-negotiable element of a successful content marketing plan.

Simply throwing your articles out into the social jungle doesn’t yield much. Go ahead, pop on over to Twitter or Facebook and search for the terms you’re targeting. It’s a wasteland of content that people put time into with little to no engagement. If you’re putting your own content online — you probably know this already.

Some businesses choose not to keep their social accounts updated, or even worse, many choose to stop creating content.

If that’s you, stick around. This post highlights 5 places to promote content that could improve engagement and send the right traffic your way.

In the early 2000’s, chat rooms were all the rage. Now (and for the foreseeable future) social media groups are a top internet gathering place. People come to find and share opinions, forge connections and promote what they care about.

Facebook groups are often the most active, but you can find th

Read more: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SmallBusinessTrends/~3/LMNeddLjh8k/where-to-promote-content.html

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has launched a resource to raise awareness about the vital role cybersecurity plays for the 32+ million small businesses in the US.

This effort was part of the National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM) in October, which has been recognized every month since 2003. The NCSAM was established with the collaboration of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the National Cyber Security Alliance to ensure the safety and security of internet users.

As more small businesses started getting online after, the cyber threats they face has been growing with them. And today small businesses are a big of a target as anyone else in the digital world.  The goal of the FTC’s new resources platform is to keep small businesses informed and fully aware of the dangers they face with their online presence.

Rosario Méndez, Attorney, Division of Consumer and Business Education, FTC, explained how this campaign to educate small businesses came about.

On the FTC blog, Méndez said, “This new national cybersecur

Read more: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SmallBusinessTrends/~3/ZBhrHVGBr1Y/ftc-cybersecurity-small-business.html

If you peeked behind the curtains of the average self-employed entrepreneur’s office windows, what would you see? A pajama-clad couch potato eating Fruit Loops and watching cartoons while pricing flights to Fiji, or a stressed-out dynamo simultaneously juggling three conference calls, answering emails, and trying to keep two toddlers and a dog quiet?

“Perceptions of the self-employed tend to go one of two ways,” says a recent survey by QuickBooks Self Employed. “Either you believe self-employed workers have the best job ever, with a flexible schedule that allows them to take time off whenever they want, or you think they’re total workaholics, taking their job on vacation or to the family dinner table.”

The reality, as the survey found, is somewhere in between. Let’s take a closer look at the truth about self-employment.

Myth: Self-employed people work longer hours than employees.

Reality: Some do—35% of self-employed individuals work longer hours than they did as employees. But some don’t—38% work less t

Read more: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SmallBusinessTrends/~3/exzX_HkLX4s/self-employment-myths.html