Would your workplace social media policy hold up to NLRB scrutiny?

That some employers routinely ask job applicants to hand over their Facebook passwords was provocative news in May when two U.S. Senators asked the Attorney General to investigate the legality of the practice. Employers demanding to snoop around inside a potential hire's Facebook account? Why not ask prospective employees to hand over their personal diaries and family photo albums too? The sleaziness of the practice just seemed obvious.

But the National Labor Relations Board has determined that employers need guidance when it comes to writing workplace social media policies. The independent federal agency recently released a report focused on employer policies governing employees' use of social media.

"Employee use of social media as it relates to the workplace continues to increase, raising various concerns by employers, and in turn, resulting in employers' drafting new and/or revising existing policies and rules to address these concerns," wrote Lafe Solomon, Acting General Counsel

American Bankers Association outlook for business is mildly positive

More and better credit will be available to businesses in the next six months, continuing into next year. That's the prediction of the American Bankers Association, which this week issued a forecast for U.S. economic performance predicting growth of 11.5 percent this year in loans to businesses.

The trade group, which represents the $14 trillion industry that has taken much of the blame for the U.S. recession, stated that "the significant increase in credit growth shows that the banks are doing their part to make loans that will help drive the economic recovery." Whether or not you agree, additional forecasts made by the group are mildly encouraging for small business owners.

ABA Economic Advisory Committee chairman George Mokrzan said that consumers will also experience more opportunities for credit. An increase of 7.4 percent in loans to individuals will lead to stronger consumer spending in the second half of this year, he said. The group expects consumer spending, which represents

Patti Wunder, owner of Easton Place, generates leads on Twitter

Patti Wunder was savvy from the start about leveraging social media to generate business for her one-woman handmade stationery and digital branding operation, Easton Place. She built a beautiful website, writes an engaging blog, has posted hundreds of enchanting photos to Flickr, produces a monthly e-newsletter, keeps her Facebook page up-to-date, pinned feverishly to Pinterest until copyright concerns led her to drop it, and has a busy storefront on Etsy.com.

But she says her @easton_place Twitter feed has translated to the biggest sales of all.

Wunder's stationery products, which she calls "fine paper lovelies," hark back to pre-Internet etiquette. In the age of Evites and Facebook birthday greetings, her hand-drawn cards printed on high-quality stock seek to sustain the disappearing tradition of the U.S.P.S.-delivered invitation and the calligraphy note.

But 140-character electronic messages have turned out to be a winning way for her to find new customers. In the two-plus years

Getting a business loan is confusing and difficult for most

Yahoo! Small Business Advisor readers who want to understand "why small business lending is such a confusing mess" will be interested in a new columnist debuted yesterday by The New York Times "You're the Boss" blog.

In the blogger spirit of curating web content, I'll summarize what Ami Kassar says, and point you to his full column for more details and so that you can follow him from here.

The Times' "You're the Boss" blog features 14 writers with various perspectives on "the art of running a small business." Kassar's expertise comes from running a loan broker called MultiFunding that he says has worked to help hundreds of entrepreneurs navigate the capital-seeking process.

Kassar calls the small-business lending market "highly inefficient" and "poorly understood." He explains:

"There are now loan products out there with annual percentage rates of 4 or 5 percent and others as high as 60 or even 80 percent. In part, this is the unintended consequence of the big banks' tightening up

Women entrepreneurs often dislike discussing money, says business coach Linda Tomb

Business coach Linda Tomb takes a three-step approach to helping women entrepreneurs find startup success. Once she has helped her clients get control of their time and sharpen their focus, Tomb turns to their relationship with money.

"Your relationship with money is the relationship you'll have the longest," Tomb tells entrepreneurs. "Unless your business is really just a hobby, you must take a good look at how your business will make money."

It might seem like obvious advice for anyone trying to start a business, but Tomb says many women she works with do not like to talk about money. And yet, at her speaking engagements, everyone has questions about money. So, Tomb pays special attention to the topic with her coaching clients.

Be able to explain your business
First she tells women to hone their approach to the outside world. "If you're going to make money doing something, you have to be able to explain what you do," she says. "It's astounding to me how many people think they're

customerdialogLast week we started this new blog series rounding up some of the best small business reading from here on Yahoo! Small Business Advisor and also elsewhere. We continue this week with some great advice and success stories.

You should also take a look around some of what Yahoo! Small Business has to offer. Besides our domain name, web hosting and ecommerce products, we also have just added an innovative marketing dashboard that you can try for free even if you don't use our other products.

We also have a tools section within Yahoo! Small Business Advisor where you can quickly and easily create a press release with a wizard, track packages, calculate loans and look up zip codes.

We had an interesting set of stories in this week at Yahoo! Small Business Advisor that included the following:

The inconvenient history of Silicon Valley. (It turns out that the entrepreneurial capital of the US was created on the back of LOTS of government support.)
Four signs you're a terrible communicator.
How

If you claimed the Small Employer Health Insurance Tax Credit last year, congratulations. You are one of few employers who not only qualified but persevered through complex calculations.

Health care tax credit too complex for employers

According to a report issued this month by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, fewer than 12 percent of the businesses that were expected to claim the credit in 2010 did so. The GAO study, conducted at the request of Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee ranking member Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and House Small Business Committee Chairman Sam Graves (R-MO), found that 170,300 small businesses claimed the credit in 2010 at a cost of $468 million.

The numbers fall far below the estimates of government agencies and small business advocacy groups, which suggested that between 1.4 million and 4 million businesses would be eligible to claim the credit and that the cost of the credit would come to $2 billion in fiscal year 2010 and $40 billion from fiscal years 2010 to 2019.

According to two

findcustomers

By Carol Roth

Ask a small business owner what his or her top challenge is and most will rank "getting new customers" amongst their top issues. With customers more distracted and so many options to choose from, this can be even more of a challenge nowadays. Below, find four tips on how to generate more leads and customers in efficient ways that won't break the bank.

Leverage Your Existing Customers: There's no better way to garner more business than directly and indirectly from customers that are already having an amazing experience with your business. Directly, talk to your customers about how you can earn more of their business, either through increased purchasing frequency, increased size of purchases or by meeting more of their needs with additional goods and services.

Additionally, customers tend to spend time with other individuals or businesses that look a lot like them. That means that your customers are likely a connection point to other ideal customers for your business.