A Weekly Roundup of Small-Business News - NYTimes.com

What?s affecting me, my clients and other small-business owners this week.

The Big Story: S.B.A. Gains Clout?

The Small Business Administration is invited back to the grown-ups? table (but reaction among small-business advocates is mixed).

Trade Shows: C.E.S. Loses Clout?

This year?s annual International Consumer Electronics Show had lots to offer for small business, and Startup America firms converged on the event. And there were plenty of models ? and Justin Timberlake, too. But many feel that the show is losing its clout. Matt Ryan explains why you should be glad you didn?t go: ?Only a handful of companies are very good about keeping secrets, and they don?t typically announce products at C.E.S.? But you could have seen these 12 quirky gadgets on display. Or checked out some really strange laptops. The Neat Company introduced new scanners aimed at small businesses. Tom Simonite says there were three gems hidden in Steve Ballmer?s final keynote speech. Apple had 250 ninjas spying. TechRepublic took a lot of photos. CNET declared the winners. My favorite: this awesome toilet seat. Meanwhile, the auto industry had its own little show.

The Data: The Fed Turns a Profit

The Federal Reserve, which continues to weigh another round of easing, returned $77 billion in profits to the United States Treasury and said our economy is expanding. But one member warns of a potential rise in interest rates. Consumer borrowing jumped. Retail sales were weak in December. Economic confidence rose to a seven-month high, small-business confidence surged and Lance Roberts shows how this affects unemployment. Structural unemployment may continue for a decade. But that is not why the doomsday clock was moved. TD Bank says small businesses are expecting stable or improving revenue performance in the early months of 2012. Lending to small business was up 18 percent in 2011 (or was it?). Mall occupancy firms up. Demand for manufacturing technology increased year over year but as the dollar grows stronger American manufacturing could suffer.

Marketing: Social Media Case Studies

Google announces a new personal approach to its search methodology, plans to go after local small businesses aggressively and photographs a woman falling on the street. Here?s a quick start guide to social media. Mark Schaefer lists some excellent case studies of companies that used social media to help them develop their products. This young lady is an excellent case study of the power of viral video to get a date with Jason Segel. Derek Singleton explains how manufacturers can use social media to win more business. These 10 companies hit the bull?s-eye with their online contests. If you?re in Chicago Tuesday, check out this social media presentation on how to compete. Keep an eye on Pinterest, a fast-growing service that promises to increase Web traffic. John Sternal offers 41 ideas to get public relations exposure (but this guy got too much exposure in this French clothing ad). Laura Finlayson shares five social media rules we learned in kindergarten, including, ?Use your indoor voice?: ?Social media is not advertising and marketers need to quash any urges to use their advertising voices here.?

Red Tape: Destroying the Internet?

Inc. takes us deeper inside the fight against SOPA. The tech community responds by blacking out. White spaces are finally open for business and those crazy accountants are back with another cool video. Speaking of accounting, 1099-K forms are becoming more prominent in 2011 filings for small businesses. A new study says small-business owners prefer same-sex financial advisers. President Obama considers tax breaks to bring back manufacturing jobs. Hostess files for bankruptcy, and a blogger blames pension costs.

Around the World: Sex, Bombs and Burgers

High unemployment now places a number of rich European countries up there with the most miserable countries in the world. How bad is it? The mafia is now Italy?s No. 1 bank, and the Philippines are starting to look like more and more fun. Peter Nowak says America is exceptional because of sex, bombs and burgers, and the global economy has taken a turn for the better. These 10 American brands are popular in China. Ann Lee imagines a world without China, and a Chinese businessman warns college students about starting a business there. But c?mon, this is a country that builds 30-story buildings in 15 days!

Around the Country: Grow or Slow?

A member of Adriana Gardella?s business group talks about Goldman Sachs?s 10,000 Small Businesses program. An educational Webinar, titled ?The Playbook for Small Businesses,? is scheduled for Wednesday. In New York, a factory grows in Brooklyn, small businesses and monster rats expand and the Philharmonic is silenced by a ringing phone. Start-ups in Puerto Rico want to put the island on the start-up map. Brother and StartupNation start a grant program to help owners live the dream. You decide (because I can?t figure it out): will business travel grow or slow in 2012? Hotel rates increase and are expected to continue increasing. Small businesses are becoming big campaign stops, but this New Hampshire restaurant bars the candidates. A Washington company is again offering search engine optimization training courses in 2012.

Management: Reducing Chatter

The Better Business Bureau says be careful when you hear ?top 10? (that?s also good advice when you?re bungee jumping). An airline passenger has a few suggestions for the industry. In this video, Terry Starbucker says there are nine ways social media can make us better leaders. Joyce Rosenberg offers tips for reducing chatter in the office. Macro Man introduces 10 management terms for 2012, including Deep Sea Ten: ?Basically an idea or thought process that only the Deep Sea 10 global rescue vehicle from a 1960s puppet show could pull off.? Sally Ann Hughes offers advice for acquiring a competing business.

Ideas: Females to Follow

Would-be author TJ McCue needs our help to finance his next business book project. Springwise offers 10 business ideas and opportunities for 2012. Natalie MacNeil lists female entrepreneurs to follow on Twitter. Guess what? Are you ready for this: a study finds that people want to date someone who is attractive. A report finds that consumers intend to buy fewer televisions this year. But the future for electric cars looks good. Charlie Sheen is sane again. Life expectancy reaches a new high. Finally, an easy way to read a broadsheet newspaper.

Start-Up: If They Existed

This company will help us get that fuzzy feeling from helping a small business grow in the neighborhood. Martin Sullivan says it?s start-ups (pdf), not small businesses, that create jobs. Sarah Kessler suggests six start-ups to watch in 2012. Here are 13 start-ups that would be awesome (if they existed).

Boss of the Week: Mike O?Shaughnessy

Mike O?Shaughnessy?s company, Element Electronics, will soon be manufacturing HDTVs in the United States. ?We have watched for years as jobs have left America for other countries,? he said. ?We have wanted to and planned for producing TVs here, at home. Element Electronics wants to pioneer a resurgence of creating quality manufacturing jobs in the U.S.A.? Here?s a 3-year-old acting like a boss.

Technology: Is This Microsoft?s Year?

While Windows-based PCs are expected to continue dominating the workplace through 2013, Apple products will ?storm the corporate hardware market,? according to Forrester Research. Apple?s new chief executive rakes it in (actually he really didn?t make as much as some people think). Even so, could 2012 be the year of, well, Microsoft? Mark Fidelman says companies should be more like I.B.M. and less like Apple. A small-business management suite gets an $8 million vote of confidence. One company is counting on a rush to the cloud. Sven Rasmussen explains why small businesses should upgrade networks: ?offering wireless access in a conference room simply isn?t enough for most small businesses.? Ron Schenone exposes seven technology myths, including: ?a 64-bit O.S. will make computing twice as fast as a 32-bit one.?

This Week?s Bests

Lesson from Tony Soprano. Donald DeSantis says ?everything I need to know about start-ups, I learned from a crime boss,? including, ?cut out the middleman?: ?Sometimes the middleman?s market is so huge, that a freaking enormous business can be built simply by providing their customers a lower cost and more efficient option. Two-sided marketplace businesses are a textbook example of this type of disruption.?

Explanation of?the myth of American productivity. Michael Mandel: ?Our bullish measures of productivity suffer from an enormous statistical blind spot. Rather than wait for rising productivity to save the day ? and relying on economic policies that are essentially complacent ? the U.S. needs to adopt drastic measures if it wants to keep living standards from falling.?

Ideas for naming your product. Tom Grasty: ?In the name game, being allusive can be a powerful attribute. Take the word, Amazon, for example. For Jeff Bezos, books always were just the beginning. From the very outset, the forward-thinking entrepreneur saw his company expanding well beyond the written word. Don?t kid yourself. The selection of the name Amazon was hardly happenstance. Bezos deliberately chose a word that alluded to the business he saw downstream, rather than the actual entrepreneurial waters he set out to navigate in 1995.?

This Week?s Question: Have you thought about renaming your products or services lately?

Gene Marks owns the Marks Group, a Bala Cynwyd, Pa., consulting firm that helps clients with customer relationship management. You can follow him on Twitter.

Source: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/16/this-week-in-small-business-destroying-the-internet/

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