Small Business

Be inspired and entertained by film maker Adam Elliot when he speaks  Geelong Young Professionals on Wednesday 17th March.

Adam is the Academy Award-winning writer and director of claymation films such as Harvie Krumpet. Hear how this Melbourne man started an animation course in 1996 and accepted an Academy Award seven years later.

No matter what sort of business you run or the size of your profile, chances are that at some point it will be mentioned on the web.

When it is, will it be good or bad? Wouldn't it be great if you knew what people were saying immediately so that you could respond either way?

Google Alerts lets you monitor specific keywords in the Google search engine, and it will send you an email every day (or however often you choose) with links to new pages that match your search phrases.

This can be useful for people doing research, following a breaking news story or who are simply interested in a particular topic. But another key reason to set up an alert is to monitor your brand.

Design Victoria is running a workshop in Geelong to help local businesses create and maintain a successful media relations strategy.

Could your business profit from greater media exposure? Media relations can enhance your image, help connect with your customers and improve your bottom line.

This free workshop, held on Wednesday 10 February 2010, will show the business advantage of a media relations program that is simple to devise and implement.

Register on the Design Vic website.

The Australian Government today launched a new Small Business Support website to help people starting or running a small business understand their legal and tax obligations.

The site talks about starting a business and covers topics like tax, record keeping and becoming an employer. It also helps you understand your entitlements and has a list of places that can give you more help.

While the website layout is a little hard to understand and the visual design ugly, the content is simple and sound. If you are just starting out it will be the perfect resource to answer common questions.

There are also links from almost every topic to more information, so even if your questions are hairy you'll likely find a link to a page that will help.

Visit http://ato.gov.au/businesses/content.asp?doc=/content/00221703.htm to start using the website.

Naomi Simson is one of Australia's lauded young business entrepeneurs and I Want What She's Having is her book describing the building of her successful corporate gift business, RedBallon Days.

In my mind there's two basic types of business books: instructional and inspirational. This offering falls mainly into the second category.

I Want What She's Having is an entertaining look into the struggles and joys of business as RedBallon Days goes from a small startup to the thriving trans-Tasman business it currently is.

Negotiating is an important beginning to many projects or agreements, and no matter what sort of business you're in you will need to negotiate in one way or another with both your customers and your suppliers.

Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher and William Ury is a practical, informative guidebook to help you negotiate effectively.

Are you having trouble understanding the new Fair Work Act? Have you even thought about it yet?

This act came into affect on 1st July 2009 and controls how your small business employs staff.

Luckily, the Federal Government this week released the Fair Work for Small Business website to help small business operators to understand their rights and responisibilities.

This free site provides online webinars, email newsletters, online guides and informative whitepapers and aims to highlight significant changes and make it easy for small business employers to conform.

A new program for Small to Medium Enterprises in the Geelong region will provide sustainability tools and training to key staff members. Gordon TAFE in conjunction with government bodies invites businesses to submit an Expression of Interest to participate.

The aim of this project is to:

• ENHANCE your company’s competitive edge through cost reduction and improved efficiency.
• IMPROVE your company’s environmental performance by reducing water, electricity and waste.
• EDUCATE your staff through an engaging project-based training program, tailored to meet the needs of your business.
• IMPLEMENT real measures to make real improvements to your triple-bottom line.

Download the Sustainability Program flyer (500K pdf)

Business Victoria is running the largest ever small business festival in Victoria this August. 'Energise Enterprise' will comprise over 400 individual events focussing on helping businesses thrive in tough times.

Highlights include:

Looking for a business loan? The Victorian Government has recently launched an online business loan finder to help you find the loans suitable for you.

Enter your company type, the amount you want to borrow and on what terms, provide a little more information as required and the business loan finder will show you a list of loans available from a range of financial institutions. The list indicates fees and monthly repayments, so comparisons are easy.

At a time when finding affordable credit for Australian busineses is hard, a tool like this will make your life easier.

Answering a question this morning about how Google Analytics helps your website made me think about how important it is to target your perfect customers.

It's a fairly basic marketing principle: to create a persona of your ideal customer and then target your marketing to that person. It helps with all sorts of creative decisions, from content to colours, to think about what would appeal most to your ideal customer.

  Amid the doom and gloom talk of the current financial environment it is important that small businesses use their resources as carefully as possible. Follow these tips to evaluate your current site and make any improvements needed. With a professional website you'll attract more customers and from there more of them will make purchases or contact you - providing you an important competitive edge.

1. Clearly show people what you do

When a potential customer views your page it should be quick and easy for them to see what your company does. This means having a single, succinct phrase or short sentence as the main headline on your home page, with some brief, clear dot points and directions included below if necessary.

I recently came across these statistics that show why customers leave a business that they've got a relationship with to try somewhere new.

This highlights how incredibly important customer service is to the health of your business.

One of our clients Carl Ahlers from Prof Bunsen Science has recently used YouTube to promote one of his science toys, resulting in sales from across the globe.

Video is an exciting medium that is becoming one of the most popular communication tools on the web today, and YouTube and other video sharing sites like it allow the 'viral effect' to push your video in front of thousands, perhaps millions, of eyes.

Here's Carl's recent experience followed by four tips to help you build your own video content.