Today is Cyber Monday and you know what that means.  It’s officially time to stop procrastinating and start deciding how you will approach gift giving for your business this holiday season.

Gift giving can present quite a dilemma. You’d like to show your appreciation for your clients and employees but to what extent?  What should you give?  How much should you spend?  Should you give cash of gifts?

Luckily this year I’ve got a helpful resource for you to consult.  As a gift to you, Small Business Trends has assembled a Holiday Business Gift Giving Guide.  In the guide you’ll find answers to all of the questions above along with additional advice on holiday gift giving.

Don’t delay, the holidays will be upon us before you know it.  Enjoy this free gift giving guide and in the spirit of the holidays, share it with others!

With 2012 right around the corner, your small business is likely hoping the New Year allows you and your employees a fresh start, especially if the return on investment (ROI) for 2011 has been less than stellar.

For those small businesses that struggled this year, there are creative ways to move forward in 2012 and return your company to the black.

Among the things to keep in mind are:

• Review this year – The first and foremost thing to do is to sit down and go over what did and did not work well in 2011. If you have been in business for a short time, did you meet your goals for this year or are you still in the growing process? If you have been around for some time now, how has 2011 compared to previous years? Better revenue? More turn over in employees? Additional issues with customers? Take the time to review the company’s efforts and what can be improved upon for 2012;

• Review your employees, including those in management positions – While smaller businesses tend to not have a large number of departments and managers, take the time to review these areas. Are there any issues at work regarding employee morale? Are the individuals in a management position doing their jobs effectively to the point you can leave them with a lot of responsibility? If not, what solutions do you have in place to fix these problems? The ability for everyone to work as one big unit is essential to a company’s short and long-term success;

• Review your budget for the New Year – As many small business owners can tell you, 2011 has been a difficult year. If you find that’s the case with your company, what are your budget aspirations and constraints going into 2012? For some newer companies, they’ve grown too quickly to the point now where they must cut back before they take a financial bath. Are you thinking about expanding your company in 2012? If so, is it by adding more employees, increasing your product line, increasing your office size or even considering a business proposal from prospective investors? Your budget needs to be as firm as possible going into 2012 to be able to deal with the unexpected that always hits companies from time to time;

• Review your social media efforts – How much of a social media presence has your company had over the last year? If the answer is not much, you need to seriously reconsider why you have not tapped into this tool for providing your clients and potential clients with products and/or services. While some businesses have labeled SM as a fad, most will tell you that this social networking tool is not going anywhere anytime soon. Use social media to your company’s advantage to promote your products and/or services, post links to relevant industry news and networking with others while exposing your business to more possibilities;

• Review the competition – While you must do what is best for your business, take the time to review what your competition has done over the last 12 months and may have planned for the coming year. You may find areas where you need to beef up your business as compared to what others are doing, while there may be areas you can scale back. If you learn the competition has a major marketing campaign planned for 2012, how will you counter this? Don’t be a follower, be a leader, but keep your eyes on the competition;

• Review your Web site content and keywords – Assuming you are providing content on your site that should be of value to your clients and potential clients, make sure it is fresh. Nothing will kill traffic to a Web site from search engines quicker than if you have stale content on your site. Make sure it is also keyword concentrated so that the search engines are picking up your site when various pertinent keywords are used.

While some economic forecasts are not painting a rosy picture for 2012 for small businesses, keep focused on just what you and your employees need to do to make sure the coming year is a success and not a failure.

Image from 3dfoto / Shutterstock

About The Guest Author:  Dave Thomas, who covers among other subjects’ workers compensation, writes extensively for Business.com, an online resource destination for businesses of all sizes to research, find, and compare the products and services they need to run their businesses.

To those of you who celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday, we’d like to wish you and your families a very safe and happy holiday weekend.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Image from marekuliasz / Shutterstock

3 days from now Black Friday marks the official start of the holiday shopping season.  If you enjoy reading a good business book, Small Business Trends has got your hookup. Recently they compiled 4 separate top 10 lists of the best books centered around small business topics.

Top 10 Books About Sales

10 Best Management Books For Small Business Owners

10 Marketing Books You Can’t Live Without

Top 10 Technology Books

In each article list you’ll find a thorough description of each business book along with links to where you can buy them.  So even if you’re not a big reader yourself, maybe you’re looking for a small gift for a fellow small business owner.  Use these lists as a jump start guide into choosing an awesome book for that special someone.

Image from Utemov Alexey/Shutterstock

Next week at this time those of us who celebrate Thanksgiving will be knee deep in turkey and all the fixins.  And the extra brave souls will be prepping their shopping lists for the madness that is Black Friday.

Less brazen people like myself will refrain from going shopping anywhere next weekend.  Instead, I’ll stick with shopping online like so many others will be doing on Cyber Monday.

With only 10 days until Cyber Monday kicks off the online holiday shopping season, now’s the time to take a look at how your business can take advantage of all those consumers.

First, as Nick Stamoulis points out, customers need to be able to find you and your products.  It’s a good time to take a few hours to adjust your long-tail keywords and add some striking calls to action.  Head over to Search Engine Optimization Journal to read Nick’s tips.

Running a business seems glamorous and exciting – you are not told what to do; you get to pick who you work with; you get to pick out the look of the office; you get paid the most money; get the best office; get to connect with powerful people. The list of exciting decisions truly never seems to stop; however there are plenty of boring and mundane decisions a business owner has to take into consideration – which HR software to choose; which email marketing software to choose; employee background check hassles, and finally, choosing customer relationship management (CRM) software.

For those who are unfamiliar, CRM software helps a company manage their interactions with customers and clients. The software helps to organize all business processes by making sure every department is in line which the other. Companies use CRM software for many reasons:

• Organize your sales process to help a sales team win over new clients
• Help manage existing client and customer relationships
• Increase communication between departments
• Creates a sales process that can be reproduced and repeated

In other words, this is a crucial business strategy that affects the success of the company; making this software extremely important. Yet for some reason, few business owners look forward to making the decision between software.

Fortunately, the subject does not have to be quite as boring as it sounds. Once you put all the different software options next to one another, it almost becomes somewhat of a game – which software offers the best price along with the best features, which software can do this and which software can do that. However, you must know what you’re looking for before you can begin researching software:

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We’re only a little over a month away from this year’s Free Shipping Day.  If you don’t know what that is, let me tell you.  Originating back in 2008, various online merchants participate by offering holiday shoppers one day of free shipping with guaranteed delivery by Christmas Eve.  This year’s Free Shipping Day will take place on December 16, 2011.

Last year over 1,750 online merchants participated and well over 2,00 are expected this year.  According to their website, Free Shipping Day helped to generate $954 million in online holiday sales with their website receiving 313,000 visits in the 24 hour period.  That was $300 million more sales than 2010′s Black Friday!

So, will you be signing your business up to become a part of Free Shipping Day this year? Participating in Free Shipping Day doesn’t cost your business a dime and with it’s growing popularity, online merchants should really consider doing so.  You can sign up by filling out the form here.

With open enrollment season officially underway, many small businesses, as well as their employees, are wrestling with the rising cost of health insurance.

According to a recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, there was a spike in health insurance premiums this year, with the cost of employer-sponsored health insurance increasing 9 percent for family coverage and 8 percent for single coverage.

That’s especially troubling for small businesses when you consider that they pay up to 18 percent more per worker than large firms for the same health insurance policy.

The good news: there are many ways for small businesses to mitigate those increases. Here are seven cost-cutting open enrollment tips for small businesses:

1.  Educate your employees about health insurance costs: According to recent numbers from the Kaiser Family Foundation, the cost of employer-sponsored health insurance increased 9% for family coverage and 8% for single coverage in 2011. But the fact is that most employees don’t have a good understandingof how much employers pay toward their coverage.

If you’re facing increased costs and need to ask your employees to contribute more toward their premiums, it’s time to sit down and have a frank discussion. If employees better understand the challenges increased costs present to your business, they may be more willing to accept necessary adjustments to their coverage or contributions.

2.  Employees prefer cuts in benefits to rate hikes: A recent survey sponsored by eHealthInsurance and conducted by Kelton Research shows that employees are more likely to be upset by increases in their monthly premiums than by changes to their benefits. Keep that in mind when deciding how to adjust your health insurance offerings for next year.

3.  Conduct an employee poll to find out which benefits matter most: If you find that you must cut benefits from your health plan in order to make ends meet, ask your employees to complete an anonymous poll. Don’t ask about their health or their medical history – that’s illegal – but ask them which types of benefits matter most to them: robust preventive care, prescription drugs, chiropractic, maternity care, low co-payments, vision or dental coverage, etc. This can give you some guidance when choosing which kinds of plans to offer.

4.  Consider ALL options available from your carrier, and new carriers too: When open enrollment season comes around, many employers get notices from their insurance company suggesting a few coverage alternatives, but there’s usually more to choose from. Contact your agent or broker to explore other options that might be available through your current carrier.

A licensed agent representing multiple carriers can also provide you with fresh quotes from other insurers in your area. It’s all part of doing your homework if you want to make sure and get the most for your health insurance dollars.

5.  Offer your employees more than one coverage option: Smaller businesses tend to offer fewer coverage alternatives, but there may be benefits to offering more. If you’re currently offering your workers only one health plan, consider adding a second or third to the mix. For example, you might offer a high-deductible Health Savings Account-eligible plan, and then another plan from the same carrier with a lower deductible.

The dollar amount you contribute toward employee coverage need not change, but it gives employees who want it the chance to start a Health Savings Account or to pay a little more from their own pockets for a plan with a lower deductible or more robust benefits.

6.  Get that new tax credit while it lasts: Not all small businesses can afford to offer health insurance. But until 2014 tax credits are available for small businesses with 25 or fewer employees with average annual wages of less than $50,000. You may qualify for a credit of up to 35 percent of the premiums you pay toward employee coverage. Talk to your accountant to learn more.

7.  Discourage employees from going uninsured: Some businesses will find that they’re unable to provide employer-sponsored health insurance in the coming year, or that their employees can no longer afford rising rates and opt not to enroll. If that’s the case, encourage your employees to do what they can to make sure they have some form of coverage. It gets them better access to medical care when they need it and helps keep them financially sound, which can only be good for your business.

If their spouse works, they may be able to enroll in his or her plan. If they’re under age 26, they may qualify to re-enroll in a parent’s health insurance plan. To explore government-sponsored options, they can also contact the non-profit Foundation for Health Coverage Education.

About The Guest Author: Anthony Lopez is a licensed small business insurance expert at eHealthInsurance.com. Additional tips and advice for small business owners can be found at the eHealthInsurance blog.

In today’s information age, too many small businesses are missing out on a golden opportunity to reach out to both present and potential customers.

Simply put, they’re avoiding using social media to attract and engage consumers, therefore dropping the ball when they could be scoring a touchdown.

For those small businesses not exercising their possibilities in social media, they stand the potential of falling behind their competitors and missing out on increased revenue and more.

Social Media No Longer a Fad

When social media first came into play, many people probably looked at it as a fad that would eventually go the way of Beanie Babies, New Coke and other such products that came in with much fanfare. For those who predicted such a forecast, they’ve been proven wrong.

With some 750 million users on Facebook, along with a reported 200 million using Twitter, it is obvious that many individuals use these and other such sites for more than just a fad.

Many consumers turn to social networking sites for not only entertainment and news, but to shop for products, research those products, making buying decisions and much more. As a small business owner, you are foolish to miss out on engaging with consumers who are potential customers.

Connecting Social Media and Customer Relationship Management

If you’re familiar or not familiar with the term social CRM, it is the interaction of social media and customer relationship management. What does social CRM offer the small business owner? Among other things are:

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As Michael Scott  from the popular T.V. show “The Office” would say – bosses are getting cooler and cooler. As the connecting, following, and friending age gets going, bosses and their employees are finding more ways to interact. The difference, however, between interacting face to face and interacting through social mediums is the idea that the social networking accounts come home with you, while the office is left behind at 5:00.

As someone who grew up with social media, I know that no matter how private you may set your accounts or how much you may manage those accounts, the unexpected always seems to find its way onto your page. While Twitter and LinkedIn are professional and usually appropriate, Facebook is another story.

The pictures from the party last night, the friend with a mouth like a truck driver, the friend of a friend of a friend who’s profile lets everyone see the joke comment you wrote last week—it’s all out there. The question then becomes: Should take the risk and be friends with your boss on Facebook?

Michael Scott would undoubtedly say yes, but to many, the answer is an obvious “no.” However, I realize that the line is not always so clear, and therefore I believe that Michael Scott may be right, but only in certain situations. Follow these steps to make sure that your Facebook relationship with your boss will lead to only good things:

Step #1: Keep your personal Facebook page as private as possible

Although even this does not hide everything that occurs on Facebook, it will help your cause. The best thing you can do is keep your personal Facebook account as personal as possible, which leads me to step #2.

Step #2: Do not initiate the friendship

The first thing you should do is avoid the topic at all costs. If your boss does not ask to connect with him/her on Facebook, then it is not your job to ask him/her. The best thing you can do is just leave the topic alone, even if you have nothing to hide or if your boss seems really cool.

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