p14, v6.29 — Business News & Trends

Business News & Trends

Mountain Views News Saturday, July 21, 2012

MVNews this week: Page 14

BUSINESS NEWS & TRENDS

Mountain Views News Saturday July 21, 2012

BUSINESS TODAY

The latest on Business News, Trends and Techniques

By La Quetta M. Shamblee, MBA

ARE YOU
LISTENING IN
SOCIAL MEDIA?

Good listening skills can get you far in life. Just like live interactions, I think good listening
skills are important in social media too.

It’s important to feed good content into social media but also beneficial to let your
connections know you are listening to what they are saying. Think about it… if you had a
customer come into your store and tell you something fun, you most likely would nod, smile
and probably ask questions and participate in the discussion. If you simply stared at them
with no expression, they wouldn’t feel connected to you. It’s the same in social media. If you
want to build connections, you need to nod (“like” the post), participate (“comment” on a
post) and if they say something really magnificent you might “share” it with others.

Where do you listen:

Facebook “Home” (see screen shot):

Think of the “home” area as your ears on Facebook. As your connections share their news on
Facebook, it feeds through your “home” area (which is also called the news feed). Let your
connections know you are listening by commenting or liking their posts. If you are low on
words and don’t want to comment, a simple “like” of a post will do the trick. It’s like giving a
smile, nodding your head and making good eye contact.

Twitter Feeds:

In Twitter, you listen to the people you are following in the feed (Tweets). To be part of the
discussion select RT (retweet) and you can share it with the people following you or select
“reply” which allows you to comment on what was said and strike up a conversation.

LinkedIn Groups and questions:

The best way to build connections and participate in valuable discussions on LinkedIn is
by joining groups. Search for groups that share common interests, audience and industry
talk. Listen to what people are saying in these groups and participate in their posts. Just like
Facebook, you can comment and like a post.

Essentially, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are modern communication tools. Just like the
telephone, you use these tools to speak, listen and stay connected with people. You will get a
lot out of social media if you spend half of your time listening, responding and participating
in threads of discussion. Keep in mind, when you participate in a discussion on social
media, it puts your brand in front of an audience.

About MJ: MJ and her brother David own HUTdogs, a creative services business that also
specializes in Social Media Education for business owners. Join their conversation on
Facebook and get good tips and tricks about social media, www.facebook.com/hutdogs

HIRED HELP MAY HELP YOUR BUSINESS GROW

Recently, for the very first time I hired a
project assistant on a temporary basis for
sizeable one-month contract that I needed to
complete for a client. I retained her services
on an independent contractor agreement.
The project involved communication and
sharing documents with at least four other
individuals and I knew that I would do a
much better job by having a qualified person
in place to serve as my communications hub
for the project. It was a costly decision that
required more than 15% of the total contract,
but in the end, it was one of the smartest
business decisions I’ve ever made.

The project required extensive proofreading,
editing and a significant amount of back-
and-forth e-mails to reformat documents.
In addition to having extensive copywriting
experience, the project assistant was also
well-versed in converting documents into
versions that could be used by all parties
involved. Whenever I needed an update or
assistance with follow-up, she was on top of
it. This allowed me to focus the majority of
attention to creating content for my client, but
it also reduced my stress level tremendously.

Too often, sole entrepreneurs and small
business owners underestimate the benefits of
bringing “extra hands on deck” as a business-
building strategy. I have had the opportunity
to share this experience with collegues who
prepare business and marketing content for a
living. Without exception, each one of them
has requested the contact info for the project
assistant who worked with me. They too,
have prolonged the agony of operating as a
one-person shop to the detriment of being
able to build their consulting practices into
larger, more lucrative enterprises.

If you have reached a plateau and have the
desire to expand your business by increasing
your sales, market exposure or other aspects
that you deem important to increasing your
profits long-term, it’s time to consider bring
extra hands on deck. First, determine what
your goals are over the next six months.
Will you be able to accomplish this with
your current staffing? If not, hiring an
employee or an independent consultant on a
temporary basis is an option. With so many
qualified professional currently out of work,
it is easier to find individuals with expertise
that you need to work on a per-project basis.
It will also provide the opportunity for you
to assess the person’s skills and suitability
to working on additional projects with you,
or consideration for bringing them on as
temporary or permanent staff in the future.

My recent experience of hiring the project
assistant taught me the first-hand the value
of delegating a specific set of tasks to a person
who was well-qualified. I have learned that
it is easier than I thought to increase my
capacity to generate additional revenue.
It’s not necessary to commit to an ongoing
payroll expense to put adequate staffing in
place to move your business to the next level.
It’s possible to do it one project at a time if
necessary.

OMG! OH MY GOSH DID YOU
KNOW…………….. By Patricia Richardson, M.B.A

QuickBooks permits you to track time worked on various jobs. Time can be
tracked for employees, subcontractors (vendors), or owners. QuickBooks
2012 has added Batch Timesheets to their timesheet functionality.

QuickBooks Pro and QuickBooks Premier provide three different ways to
track time.

Time Single Activity. Use the Stopwatch to time an activity and enter the time data. QuickBooks
automatically records the time on the employee’s weekly timesheet.

Weekly Timesheets. Use the weekly timesheet to enter time worked by each employee on various
jobs during the week.

Online Timesheets. Enter billable hours from any Internet-connected computer. Download the
timesheets into QuickBooks to process paychecks.

The new feature allows the user to select multiple employee or vendor names when entering hours.
It is a great addition to QuickBooks because it saves time entering the same hours for multiple
employees or vendors, and is very useful if this is something that happens week in, and week out
(for example, hourly employees who have the same hours every week and never work overtime).
It makes payroll processing faster and easier. In addition, if invoicing customers for these hours it
is faster and easier as well. In fact, in the new feature Batch Invoicing for Time and Expenses, if
there are common hours and common expenses, these two features together (possibly combined with
memorized transactions for expenses) can make invoicing quick and easy, meaning that invoices get
issued faster and payments received faster.

Anyone who does time tracking for more than one person, in which two or more employees have
similar or identical hours, should use this feature. In fact, this can be used for two or more employees
who have similar, but not identical, hours. Hours specific to each employees can simply be edited.

Another QuickBooks 2012 enhancement includes Batch Invoicing for Time and Expenses. Many
QuickBooks users need to keep track of time and materials/expenses and want to charge them to jobs.
QuickBooks has just made this task easier.

To improve profitability in the future, a business should evaluate which customers and jobs have been
profitable in the past. This information permits a business to improve profitability by:

• Increasing business in profitable areas
• Improving performance in unprofitable areas
• Discontinuing unprofitable areas

To determine which customers are profitable it is necessary to look at sales for the customer as well as
the associated costs. In previous versions of QuickBooks posting unbilled costs (time and expenses)
to a customer happened individually at the point of invoice origination. The new Batch invoicing for
Time and Expenses is great because it saves time by allowing you to select customers with unbilled
time, items, expenses, and mileage, and create invoices for all of them with a couple of clicks. After
activating this feature, billing for all expenses becomes easier now as the system will generate a list of
customers with these expenses and asks if you want to invoice them.

This feature is great for your customers who have regularly scheduled expenses (which could be
recorded as memorized automatic transactions) and time (which can be recorded in batches across
many customers). It is for customers who do not use multicurrency and who have only one Accounts
Receivable account and generally only one invoice template.

Patricia Richardson the owner of Monrovia Computerized Business Service and is a local accountant,
educator and trainer working to help business owners realize their business mission and vision by
empowering them with tools and training in areas that may not be their core competency. For additional
information, patti@qbworkshop.com.

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