Blog Posts by Adrienne Burke

“Sorry, no paycheck this week.” It’s a phrase completely foreign to most government workers and politicians, but all too familiar in the small business community.

More than one of every two small business owners has skipped a payday to keep their business afloat through the tough economy, according to a national Citibank phone survey of 750 small business owners/operators conducted last month.
 
Fifty-four percent of owners said they have gone without a paycheck at some point, and almost one-quarter have gone without pay for one year or more sometime in the history of their business. Many more have taken paycuts or given up vacation and family time to keep the company going: 78 percent said they have taken less profit to support the business and 70 percent worked more hours than usual.

Small business employees know the drill too. More than one-third of owners said their employees worked additional hours without pay, and 18 percent said their employees voluntarily missed or delayed a

If the recent Profit Minded post "How a Designer Turns Tweets into Sales" left you thinking that tweeting 14 times a day is beyond your capacity, here's another angle.

A tweet a day could grow your customer base.

Twitter itself has just published a 21-page guide for small business owners on how to use the platform to engage customers and "put Twitter to work for your business." The straightforward, simple, and illustrated tips are designed to show business owners how to "connect with customers, amplify your message, and ultimately, grow your business." And one tweet a day might be all you need to make an impact.

For total newbies, the guide dissects the anatomy of the 140-character tweet, tells you what to do with a hashtag, explains what it means to follow and be followed on Twitter, and shows how and why to retweet and direct-message your followers. It also offers tips on designing your profile page, and developing your company's Twitter voice with plenty of inspiring examples from well-done small business feeds.

For those

146061239With a ruling on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act expected from the Supreme Court any day, small business organizations have been re-airing their views about healthcare reform.

What the Court will decide is anyone's guess, but two surveys published this week by small business advocacy organizations predict how the decision will affect their constituents. Unfortunately, the predictions are contradictory. Further confusing matters is a question raised this week about the validity of the National Federation of Independent Businesses' claim that its Supreme Court lawsuit represents the interests of small businesses.

Consider these news items reported this week:

1. National Federation of Independent Businesses is the group that brought the lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act to the Supreme Court on behalf of its members. But the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that nearly $4 million of NFIB funding in the year it filed the lawsuit came from a Republican campaign

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

Government gets an overwhelming vote of no confidence from small business, according to a survey of 670 small business owners conducted online last October and released today by the National Small Business Association. NSBA members—who tend to represent older, more well-established small businesses—as well as non-members were polled.

The NSBA acknowledged that the survey sample was not representative of the at-large small business community: Respondents were largely Republican. And although 90 percent of those surveyed had companies with under 100 employees and more than 40 percent reported gross revenues of under $1 million, a disproportionately large number (42 percent) were from professional services and manufacturing businesses, from S-corps (40 percent), or at companies that generate more than $5 million in annual gross revenues (24 percent)—all much higher rates than a typical cross section of small business owners.

Nevertheless, the data reflect anecdotal evidence of broader

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