How Global Economic Meltdown Affects Small-scale Businesses

Small businesses constitute a big part of any economy. In the United States, almost half of the workforce is made of small businesses’ employees. With the financial crisis that hit the entire world in 2007, small businesses, in the U.S as well as in other places around the globe, have been the most affected by the crisis. These small businesses are affected on different levels, and it has been hard for many of them to recover from the recession. The effect of this recent recession and the slow economic recovery has led small-scale businesses to either lay off many employees or to freeze the hiring process as the profits of businesses have significantly declined. As a result, the unemployment rate is growing and economic growth is almost inexistent.

According to the 2012 Economic Report of the President, small businesses have a greater dependency on bank financing than larger businesses. The number of loans that banks make to small businesses has decreased by 31% causing small businesses to struggle through this economic hardship. Even if the economy is recovering, it is still yet not enough for small businesses to fully recover. Bank of America said that they made almost $11 billion in new loans to U.S. small businesses in 2013. The bank also plans to hire 200 small business bankers this year, many on the West Coast. Although banks are starting again to give out more loans to small businesses, unemployment rate is still as high. We ended the year 2013 with an unemployment rate of 6.7%, according to the US Department of Labor.

Even if Bank of America made a significant loan to small businesses last year, it doesn’t mean that all the other large institutions are doing the same thing. The problem with small businesses getting loans is that they are mostly sole proprietorships, which means companies with a single owner who controls all business decisions. Sole proprietors often use personal savings, gifts from friends and family, and small business loans to finance their companies. It makes it more difficult for large lenders to allocate them with the money they need to run their businesses successfully.

Because the economy depends on small-scales businesses, and nearly half of the population in the U.S is employed by small-scale businesses, it is important that these businesses have all the resources they need to turn over their losses into significant profits to enable them to be successful. With small businesses taking off again, it will result into the creation of many jobs and the expansion of these businesses, and therefore, an economic growth for the country and the reduction of the unemployment rate, which in my opinion, is still through the roof.

How Social Entrepreneurship Is Shaping Africa

How Social Entrepreneurship Is Shaping Africa

Social entrepreneurship is what everyone is talking about in development and sustainability circles today.  While Africa is known for its entrepreneurial culture, Kenya is especially known for this culture. From people who sell goods on the street to people who have big businesses to run, all of them strive for the same thing—making their business as sustainable as possible.

According to Ashoka East Africa “social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems. They are ambitious and persistent, tackling major social issues and offering new ideas for wide-scale change”.  Looking at Africa’s past, and where the continent is now headed, it’s safe to say that social entrepreneurship is the most sustainable way to social development in Africa. If this is the case for the continent, it’s even more the case for Kenya where people have proven that they can take care of themselves when the needed resources are available.

This is where Angels for Angels (A4A), a Seattle based nonprofit organization, comes in. A4A funds locally led and sustainable social projects in East Africa, including Kenya, and provides those social entrepreneurs with the financial resources they need to transform ideas into tangible actions.  They also partner with universities to teach social entrepreneurship and inspire the next generation of social entrepreneurs.

The best way to empower future social entrepreneurs is to start teaching social entrepreneurship classes in schools. The earlier the better, they say. If students learned in school the principles of social entrepreneurship, knew that it was not only a possible but a viable path, and turned those principles into actions they could change their lives, their communities and even their countries.

A good example of this is Makerere University Business School (MUBS) who has integrated social entrepreneurship in its curriculum for students to become successful social entrepreneurs and are now actively changing their communities. The same school started the SETAFRICA (Social Entrepreneurship Transforming Africa) with the help of USAID and the International Youth Foundation (IYF) to provide young social innovators across Anglophone Africa with the organizational leadership skills, mentoring, networks, and funding opportunities needed to strengthen and scale up their social ventures.

This interesting venture shouldn’t only be for Anglophone countries in Africa, but should also be the case for the remaining African countries that want to change the future of entrepreneurship in their communities.

Investing in social enterprise in Africa is one of the most successful ways to achieve sustainable development in Africa. It allows people to identify their own needs and to design projects that are serving those very needs using local resources to do so.

Bookmarking the future

Children are our future. Yet there are many kids who can’t even dream about the future because they weren’t lucky enough to be born in the right places; they don’t have what they need to be the future. Only through education can kids realize their potential, and books are a big part to any education. However, there are many kids who don’t have access to books.

If not having books weren’t enough, when those unfortunate kids have the chance to finally read books, those books often tell a story they can’t relate to. This is especially true for children in East Africa, who starve for knowledge, yet have very limited access to books.

Mikel Samaniego, President of Angels for Angels, during a trip to Kenya and Uganda in 2010, recognized the need for a book that African kids could relate to.  He also saw the opportunity to create a story that local kids could read to learn about other cultures and places around the world. So he decided to write Joseph and the Paw Paw Tree, an empowering story that teaches kids to believe in themselves, and work hard to achieve their dreams. The story takes place in a rural African village, where Joseph lives with his father, sister, and brother. In the story Joseph’s father gives Joseph and his siblings papaya (paw paw) seeds to plant and tells them that for these seeds to turn into trees that bear fruit, “it takes hard work every day, and no matter what, you have to believe in yourself.”

“The future of Africa is education.  The first step to an education is to learn how to read.  Kids need books to learn how to read”, says Mikel who has also helped create a library with donated books in Kenya.

Joseph and the Paw Paw Tree will have a huge social impact. With each book sold, one book will be donated to a child in East Africa.  While American kids can learn about cultures far away, East African kids get a story that is relevant to their lives.

Mikel and his friends took the first edition of the book to Kenya and Uganda to see if kids over there would even like it.  And they loved it.  Now he believes that his nieces and nephews will love the book, too.  He hopes it will spur some conversations about other cultures and why the world is different at a young age, and hopefully through it all, he can make a difference.

They launched their Indiegogo campaign to raise enough money to send books to those kids in the villages of Kenya and Uganda. Books cost a lot of money, and now they need a village of support to reach their campaign goal.  It will take a village to make sure that every kid in those villages has a chance to be the future

For more information about the book and how you can make a difference in a kid’s life, check:

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-coolest-children-s-book-ever

Book website: www.a4abooks.com

Manage Your Brand Strategically. It’ll Take Your Business to The Next Level

Whether you are a small or big business, or a person trying to market yourself, managing your brand is one of the most important things you have to do. Strategic branding gives you a competitive advantage in whatever market you are in, or trying to enter. Because your brand is what pushes customers to choose your products/services over another company, it is very important that you carefully choose what you want your brand to be associated with.

For starters, you need to make your brand associations simple enough to be memorable in minds of your customers. Therefore, simplicity is the key. You want people to remember you, and be able to describe what you are about in less than five words. If possible, they should be able to say one word about you or your business that summarizes what you do. For example when you think or hear Volvo, the words that come to your minds are “reliability”, “safety” and “family”. Therefore, someone who is looking for a reliable car wouldn’t go far because Volvo is the answer. It should be the same for your business. However, you have to make sure that your brand associations speak to what your customers value the most. Usually, marketers choose messages that sound good, but sometimes those messages do not align with customers’ needs.  With all the resources we have online today, it is easy to find out what your customers want and need to better serve them. You could run a survey on Survey Monkey to learn about ways to serve them. Once you know what people are expecting from you, it is easy to build your brand around those expectations to make sure it speaks to customers personally.

Besides simplicity, memorability helps your brand a lot. As a business owner, you want people to remember who you are and what you do. For this reason, you need to be very careful when you describe yourself. Your brand associations should be something really clear and easy to remember, otherwise your customers will be confused. You don’t want that. In order to do so, you must often engage with your customers to remind them of you. Remember that effective branding is all about conversation and building relationships. Because of this, it is important to find tools that allow you to do both. In my opinion, social media is the perfect tool to engage into a conversation about your brand with your customers not only to give them a chance to express their feedback (both positive and negative), but also to give yourself a chance to remind them who you are and what you do. It’s not enough to have a Facebook page/account, a twitter or an Instagram presence, you need to start the conversation and continue to participate and give feedback when needed.

Your brand is your reputation, and the quality of your reputation determines if you are trustworthy or not. If you manage your brand strategically, you will keep your current customers loyal to your brand, and will attract new ones. Research shows that when two products are of equal qualities, customers choose the product which has strong brand associations.

 

 

Related articles

• The Importance of Branding to Your Hospitality Business (staples.com)
• Building Your Brand: Proving and Differentiating Your Small Business (staples.com)
• Give Your Brand A Voice (katherinepemberton.wordpress.com)
• Are these re-brands a mistake? (thetrainingpack.wordpress.com)

Is Instagram The Next Big Thing? Cool Kids Say Yes

Now that everyone is on Facebook, including parents and grandparents, most kids are looking for something else that could still considered “cool” because their family members aren’t using it.  That other thing is Instagram.

Instagram is the next big trend in the social media world. Following the steps of Facebook, Instagram has become the app that all the cool kids use now. Some people would say that Facebook is still the hottest social media tool used today, but looking ahead, Instagram may have a powerful place in your marketing.

If a business wants to reach that particular cool kid demographic, there is a strong business case for Instagram. According to EverythingPR, 54% of Top Brands Include Instagram in their Social Strategy (for 2012) and this number will continue to increase significantly as Instagram is gains popularity from big brands and rapidly customer growth.

Nike has leveraged its presence on the social media tool by scoring more than a million followers on its Instagram page. On its page, Nike posts pictures of products and the followers do the rest–they like the picture or they comment on it. That’s free marketing and massive, instant visibility.

Not only does Instagram allow you to reach a specific niche of cool kids, but the fact that pictures and videos there can be directly shared through other social media channels like Facebook or Twitter makes it even more appealing. The social media tool becomes a one-stop shop with tremendous marketing and brand-building potential.

This social media platform works well for small businesses as well as fortune 500 companies. Success depends on how well the organization is using it. For companies selling products, Instagram is the place to showcase pictures, videos and create a buzz around them. If you use Instagram in a smart, strategic way and integrate it with your other social media accounts, you have more chances to maximize your online and mobile presence and reach more customers every day.

What Small Businesses Can Do With Social Media

I have met many start-ups and small business owners, and most of them seem to have one thing in common—they are all looking for cheap ways to advertise their products/services or to reach currents and potential customers. I understand their struggle because if I am just starting up my business and I invest all the money I have to get started, it’s obvious I have no money or little for advertisement or marketing. If you are in this situation, well, look no more. Turn to social media because it is mostly free or cheap and you will reach many people at once.

So what kind of social media can you use? what can it do for you?

First of all, there many social media sites and apps you could use. For example, if you are trying to do a commercial and have no or little money to do so, just do your short promotional video and post it on Youtube and if you are lucky, people will see your video; therefore will see that you exist or at least know what’s you’re about. But careful, though. You want to make your video as attractive (funny or interesting) as possible so it has chances to go viral. You need to make sure that the video contains all important information about your company—who you are, what services/products do you sell, your contact information, where to find you.

Another tool that can be useful is Facebook. Now with Facebook you can geo-tag your location and post an ad that will be seen by a specific niche that you choose. It is way cheaper than using conventional methods and it allows you to reach as many people as possible, plus you can decide to promote your post for a small fee. Besides that, you can still use Instagram, Twitter, foursquare etc.

There are many things that you can do with your social media. You can set up a new blog, fan page, video site, and Twitter account without paying a dime. There’s no expensive software, and you don’t have to spend money on traditional methods if this works for you. However, even though there’s a low price tag to enter the game, social media is far from free. It requires time, energy, and effort. It’s a never-ending commitment to create interesting content, listen to conversations, and respond.

Although social media seems attractive because of its low cost, it is very important that you make smart decisions about which one to use and which one is suitable for your type of business, which one gives you more visibility etc.

The only setback is that you have to be careful because if social media can help your business have more visibility and interact with customers to better serve them, it is also a dangerous tool if it is not handled correctly.

There are many things social media help you do and this article cannot cite all those things. If you are interested in learning, buy Propel: 5 ways to am up your business, a book written by my professor Whitney Keyes. It has all the information you need to know about how social media can help you achieve your business goals if you use it accordingly

Companies, You Must Leverage Your Instagram Presence

Instagram is the next big thing in the social media world. Following the steps of  Facebook, Instagram has become the app that all the cool kids are using. Some people would say that Facebook is the hottest social media used today, I wouldn’t argue completely against that assertion; however, I would say that Instagram is the next big thing and it is right here (to quote Samsung). Now that everybody is on Facebook, even the parents and grandparents, most kids are using something else that is still considered COOL because their parents aren’t using it.  And that other thing is Instagram.

Well, if a company wants to reach that particular demographic, look no more, Instagram is the real deal now. According to EverythingPR, 54% of Top Brands Include Instagram in their Social Strategy in 2012 and this numbers will continue to increase significantly as Instagram is becoming more and more popular among brands and the number or users has grown very fast since last year.

Nike for example has leveraged its presence on the social media using by scoring more than a million followers on its Instagram page. This number is very powerful as these people choose to follow Nike and it means that they either are Nike customers/consumers or they like the company to the point of following it on Instagram. On its page, Nike posts pictures of products and the followers do the rest — they like the picture or they comment on it. That’s visibility.

Not only does Instagram allow you to reach that specific niche of “cool kids” , but the fact that those pictures can be directly shared through other social media channels like Facebook or Twitter makes it even more appealing because by doing so, you will also reach those people who aren’t on Instagram, but who are using other social media sites.

This cool social media platform works well for small businesses as well as fortune 500 companies. It’s all depends on how well the company is using it. For those companies selling lines of products or introducing new lines of products, Instagram is the place to showcase the pictures of the products and create a buzz around them. In conclusion, if you use your Instagram smartly and link it to your other social media accounts, you have more chances to make the best out of your social media presence and reach more customers everyday and keep in touch with news trends in the business and what consumers want to see you doing.

How Associational Juxtaposition Works in Print Advertising

For an advertisement to be effective, it needs to be credible to the audience. Credibility or ethos is usually found in the product, or the company that sells the product. Another way to establish a product’s ethos is to do celebrity endorsement. When people see that a celebrity that they like and trust is using a product, it makes them believe in both the product and the company. In advertisement, when the ethos of a company or product and the ethos of a celebrity are combined, it is called associational juxtaposition. This just means juxtaposing an image of a product with something more desirable.

Associational juxtaposition is a technique of print advertising in which a product image is juxtaposed with an image of a person, object, or situation toward which the intended audience can be assumed to have positive feelings.

In the case of Diet Coke, Marc Jacobs’s image is juxtaposed to it because of his reputation as a good designer and a sexy man. The hotness of Jacobs makes Diet Coke looks sexy and infers that people who drink Diet Coke are sexy, or by drinking Diet Coke people become sexy. Diet Coke, a product mostly advertised to women needed a push so that the target audience will have even more faith in the product than before. By combining the strong ethos of Diet Coke as a product and Marc Jacobs’s ethos, it gives Diet Coke a positive image by making it look more sexy and accessible to people.

Therefore, associational juxtaposition is a form that functions and a function that forms. It functions to lead the audience to associate unrelated ideas as closely connected, and consequently, to transfer emotions and attitudes attendant on one to the other. Therefore, the way people feel about Diet Coke is transferred on Marc Jacobs and vice versa. Those who think that Marc Jacobs is sexy will now see Diet Coke as a sexy drink that leads to more sexiness. And those who see Diet Coke as a credible product will trust Marc Jacobs as a designer because they will feel like Coca Cola wouldn’t have hired him to endorse its product if he didn’t have a strong ethos.

Having formed the discourse, associational juxtaposition goes on to form the perceptions and interpretations the audience has of the world. These perceptions and interpretations can impact significantly ways the audience acts, reacts, and interacts with their world. This ad trains on each other’s ethos to enhance the perceptions that people had about both Diet Coke and Marc Jacobs. This new perception of Diet Coke will change the way people see it and will also change how they identify the designer and his products.  Associational juxtaposition, then, can function to form individual and collective perceptions of reality. It can build on existing ethos to make an ad more effective or transferring a strong ethos to a product that would not have otherwise to be credible.

The Problem With Online Dating Websites?

Online dating websites are now so popular that I can bet that everybody can name at least one online dating website that they either know, or use. With 90 million single people between the age of 19 and 45, no wonder why online dating websites are booming everyday. Although the need is there, what should people expect from using a website to find that special someone? Well, so many things to expect.

The biggest problem with online dating comes not from the websites, but mostly from the users. Many people believe that by joining an online dating website, things will happen just by magic. It’s not easy because you don’t meet people you are interested in in matters of minutes or days. It takes some time to meet someone who you are interested in and who you think might be interested in asking you out.

The one thing that every person joining an online dating site must learn is PATIENCE. You have to be patient about meeting people and don’t be frustrated if you don’t see anyone who interests you within a week or so of opening your account.

The other problem with online dating is that we never know who we will meet online– good and honest people, criminals, psycho, etc.

Despite the need and demand for dating and the increasing number of single people, online dating isn’t always the best option. Most people who try online dating end up giving up on their search as soon as they feel frustrated  for not meeting people they wanted to. According to Forbes magazine, 99 out of 100 online dating sites  fail, and because some have an unsavory reputation, you won’t find many Angel or VC investors who are interested. Plan to focus on that other popular tier of investors – founders, family, friends, and fools.

Maybe we should come up with a new way to meet people. If the traditional ways aren’t working for most of us, and if online dating is as unsuccessful as traditional place (bars, library etc.), then we need to come up with a new system of matching people , or at least a new way to meet people. Whether we like it or not, the need and the demand are there, and they need to be addressed.

Are new technologies endangering human interactions?

Now everyone that I know has access to internet either on their mobile or any other device. If you ask people the best invention that has improved their lives in the past 30 years, I am very sure that many people will talk about the internet being one of them, if not the best.

I wouldn’t disagree with that assentation. As far as I can remember, I have always used the internet, and I can’t imagine myself spending a whole day without accessing the internet through my phone, my laptop or any other device that can allow me to.

I use the internet to do my homework, to do research, to Skype with my family and friends back home, to get news, to watch movies and TV shows, to shop  etc. in general everyone would agree that the internet, and various devices we can access it on, have made our lives easier. For example, you don’ even have to have a pen and a stamp to write and mail a check. You can write an e-check and send it electronically. How awesome is that? We don’t have to go to travel agencies to book a flight. We can do it online and it takes less time and energy.

However, I am worried about one thing. I am just worried that pretty soon, we won’t be able to interact with people face to face, or just meet people that we randomly meet that have a positive effect on us.

Last week I read an article that at the airport in Minneapolis, most restaurants will have Ipads or other types of tablets available for customer to use. I told myself, what’s a great idea? But when I read further down and it said that people could now order their food using the tablet, many questions came to me. If people can order using a mobile device, then there is no need for a waitress or waiter. some may agree that it’s fast and good to be able to order using a mobile device, but why don’t we see the value in human interactions? talking to a server may be the only human face to face conversation that some people have in a whole day. depriving hose people the chance to smile or to talk directly to other human beings is a disaster to me. It’s like denying people water or air.

We spend most of our time using our cell phones or other mobile devices. And while we’re doing that, we’re tuning out the people who are actually in the same room as us. We seem to have long ago crossed the line as to where doing this stuff is appropriate. It’s really scary how far technology is taking us and I am worried that in the years to come we will end up not having face to face conversations with the people we live with at all. It’s already happening. For example, I live with my cousin, but I find myself talking to her on Whatsapp instead of going to the next room and talking to her face to face.

It is great that technology is changing positively our lives and making it easier to do certain things. However, it shouldn’t undermine the importance of human interactions, especially face-to-face conversations every time we can do so. I promise myself that I will do my best to communicate face to face every time it is possible to do so, and use technology devices appropriately.