Day after day, severe flooding in Iowa, Nebraska, and Missouri communities along the Missouri River is becoming a larger and larger threat.

The painful thing is waiting to see what happens.  Or what doesn’t happen.

Long term planning for disasters is a great thing for businesses to plan out in advance. However, businesses are usually busy doing business, and these long term disaster action plans are never written down and put into place.

Although it is a little late to initiate a full disaster continuity plan, there are a few things a business can do help them stay in business during and after disaster hits.

The Plan To Stay In Business!

1. Take a moment to map out or assess how your company functions internally and externally

a. Determine which staff, materials, procedures and equipment are absolutely necessary to keep the business operating.
b. Identify operations, procedures and processes within your company that are critical to survival and recovery.
c. Determine staff functions critical to survival and recovery and make plans to be able to cover these functions in case staff is tied up elsewhere

2. Identify Customers, suppliers, vendors and other businesses you must keep in touch with

a. Identify any suppliers critical to business that may be affected by the disaster and make sure you have back up options
b. Create or update contact list of all major customers, suppliers, etc and devise a sound way of communicating with them as things happen
            i. Utilize website, facebook or other online tools to help you stay in touch and keep customers, etc updated
            ii. Utilize email to keep customers, etc updated

3. Plan what to do if your store or building is inaccessible.

a. Determine if and how you could do business from home or a different location
b. Seek out new location (The Council Bluffs Chamber of Commerce is identifying relocation spots in this area).
c. Contact other businesses you work with to see how they could help with office space, retail space(selling your items in their store), etc.

4. Pack up essentials: Comprehensive Checklist from CIRAS here: http://www.ciras.iastate.edu/publications/FloodPlanning_6.6.11.pdf

a.  Financial information is imperative for a business to have in order to file for insurance, recovery loans and grants, etc. The main documents businesses need are: 3 years of company financials, 3 years Tax Returns, receipts and deposit slips from current year(especially if books are not up to date) Insurance policies, customer records, etc.

4. Communicate plan with Employees

a. Plan for internal response – who does what, when
b. Collect or update cell phone numbers, emails, etc from all employees and contractors
c. Plan for emergency evacuations and other high emergency situations.

Ready.gov has a great general guide to flood preapartion for households and businesses

http://www.ready.gov/america/beinformed/floods.html

CIRAS – Center for Industrial Research and Service at Iowa State Extension offers this detailed checklist for businesses of all sizes in case of emergency evacuation.

http://www.ciras.iastate.edu/publications/FloodPlannin_6.6.11.pdf

As with all of their consulting services, there is no charge for the confidential assistance provided by the IWCC SBDC for preparing for disasters as well as assistance in the aftermath of a disaster.

For more information on how the Iowa SBDC can help businesses before, during or after disasters: IWCC SBDC Disaster Assistance for Small Businesses

Other great resources for monitoring the 2011 Missouri River Flood include:
Council Bluffs Iowa Chamber
Iowa SBDC
2011 Missouri River Flood Facebook page

Fremont County Flood Facebook page

Many of my clients are still unaware of what SEO is or why it matters to their small business… so I am posting this to go back to basics.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of being found and getting traffic to your websites via the free or organic listings found on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. When someone searches via one of these major search engines, the search engine scours the internet to find the best match for their users search. This is different than SEM or Search Engine Marketing Techniques where business pay to try to get top results. The results for  SEM show up on the top and the far right side of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). The advertisements are labeled and usually shaded.

The organic listings fall below the top ads and have proven to be the most important listings and tend to get more clicks by users.  

So how do you get ranked high on the organic searches?  The search engines operate on many different algorithms and look for certain things on your website that are relevant to what is being searched for. The main thing to keep in mind is that the search engines want their users to find the most relevant information based on the search they entered in.  If you asked a Google employee what to do to get a better ranking they probably would tell you to have a really good business. 

SEO can be a very time consuming and frustrating process and I will continue to contribute more posts on this subject. In the mean time here is a short list of things to be aware of.

1. Keywords – Keywords are the words that are entered into search engines as users seek out information.  As a small business you should be researching what your main Keyword or Keyword Phrase is. What would people type into Google when they are looking for your service or product?
2. Website Content – Your website content needs to be optimized for the search engines AND for your user. You should have your keywords in the content in prominent places but you need to make sure that the content is still useful and relevant for the visitor.
3. Links – Links are fast becoming the most important factor in SEO. Links can come from your own page or from on outside website (incoming links). The search engines are looking for incoming links to your site that are relevant and important. Relevant links are links that are coming from web pages or content that have a subject matter that is relevant to your website.  An un-relevant website would be if you asked your uncle who has a website for his pig farm to randomly place a link on his website for your gift store website.  Important links are links coming from very popular high traffic links.  A link coming from the Omaha World Herald on the best places to shop in Omaha would be a very relevant, important link to a gift store owner in Omaha.
4. Good and Bad Practices. It is important to understand that Google and the other search engines are becoming smarter and smarter every day.  They have ways to distinguish between good SEO best practices (white hat) and less reputable tricks. Read my recent post on White and Black Hat SEO at the Iowa Small Biz Talk Blog and remember a simple rule: If you are doing something on your website solely to increase your ranking and NOT to please your customer, then it is probably a black hat tactic.

I hope that this very basic introduction to SEO was helpful for you and your business and stay tuned for more tips.  In the mean time, If you are very new to the concept of SEO, a good place to start is Google’s “Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide” and SEOmoz’s “Beginners Guide to SEO”.  As always feel free to share your comments and questions below.

NOTE: Iowa Western Community College and The Council Bluffs Chamber will be holding “Getting Found on Google (and other major search engines) – best practices for local marketing efforts, website content and SEO.   April 26^th 2011 – 8:30 to 12:00 noon. $40.00.

Register here if you are interested.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimizing the content of your webpage  so that your site is easily and readily found by your potential customers who are using search engines to research their purchases. SEO is necessary and although time consuming, can be done fairly easily.

Whether or not you choose to tackle your own SEO on your website or you choose to hire an SEO to do it for you, you need to know that there are good, ethical SEO practices (White Hat) and there are BAD, unethical SEO practices (Black Hat).  Some professional SEO’s do use black hat practices whether they know it or not, so it is important that you know some basics.

The major search engines (Google, Yahoo and Bing) frown upon black hat practices and before you know what happened, could blacklist your site from their indexes and you will not be found at all by your customers and potential customers. Just recently JC Penney.com was ousted in a Newyorktimes.com  article for breaking Google’s basic regulations and was penalized by the search engine.  Closer to home, I have had at least 5 businesses who suddenly lost their high ranking. They had engaged in some bad practices because of bad advice and without even knowing it and were banished from the search engines and lost a lot of business. 

Here are some of the biggest culprits in Black Hat SEO practices and things you as a small business need to avoid.

1. Key word stuffing – The correct keyword phrases in your content is very important, however as soon as the keywords outnumber the useful and relevant content of your site you may be keyword stuffing.  Keyword stuffing also includes the practice of hiding keywords in the background of your page by making them the same color as the background.  
2. Cloaking Your Content this practice involves designing your Website so that search engines see one thing while human visitors see another. This is commonly called “cloaking,” or using “doorway pages”
3. Link Brokering – Google favors sites that have relevant links from relevant websites.  They do not like the practice of businesses buying links on other  websites, especially if those websites do not relate at all to the website in question.  As a small business you want to seek out websites, bloggers and even directories that will help your customers find your webpage.  You want to avoid link farms, link exchange programs and link brokering schemes.
4. Duplicating Content – This involves having duplicate pages on the same domain or sub domain and could for the short term result in higher results for your page. 

This is not an exhaustive list of black hat practices.  A good rule of thumb is if you are doing something that doesn’t benefit your reader at all and is done solely to achieve higher rankings, then it is probably a black hat practice.

 I highly suggest that before embarking on any SEO or website project, that you as the small business read Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.  I would also suggest downloading Google’s Search Engine Optimization Startup Guide.  And finally, before hiring an SEO read Google’s recommendations for hiring SEO’s .

The  Iowa Western Small Business Development Center is a free service serving Council Bluffs, Iowa and Southwest Iowa.   If you need help with SEO or anything in your business, contact us. If you are in a different area or state contact your regions SBDC through the ASBDC.  Iowa’s other SBDC offices are listed at the Iowa SBDC website.   

If you have any experiences with SEO firms or black hat practices, please share them in the comments.

One of the biggest reported problems for small businesses is less than reliable employees. This seems to be especially true for service types of business who hire employees to help them work in more jobs/hours.

Today I was sitting with a client who is a successful business, running a successful commercial service. He told me that hiring the right employee was the toughest thing. He had gone through many employees, each with their own horror story . As we were talking, I happened to ask how he hired. His answer was through referrals from friends and occasionally he used Craigslist. I then asked him if he held formal interviews with candidates. He did not.

Interviewing before hiring seems like common sense, however, I am betting that this is somewhat common in small service businesses. When a very small construction company or service provider needs help they need it tomorrow.  My advice is to slow down and set down a process for hiring. Although you may not hit an exact deadline, it could avoid hiring the wrong people. This process does not need to take weeks and involve countless interviews and second interviews, but there should be a process none the less.

1. Prepare a job description for the job you want to hire for along with a list of skills and attributes you would like to have

2. Gather a list of potential employees. Whether you do this through referrals, workforce development or job listings it doesn’t matter. The point is to gather more than one potential candidate.

3. Sit down either formally (at your office) or informally at a coffee house or restaurant and meet face to face with candidates. Tell them about the job and ask if it is something they are familiar with. Are they comfortable with the hours you need them to work. Do they have the skills you need or are they capable of being trained? Do they have the same outlook on work ethics as you do. There may be more formal steps you want to take in this process, but at least meet with several candidates first. You may be surprised at how easy it is to see just by meeting with them if they are a fit with your company. I would also suggest that you adhere to state, federal, and industry regulations when hiring. You can research this through the Department of Labor, Iowa (or your states) Department of labor or Workforce Development offices as well as your States Economic Development agency to check for industry regulations.

Do you have hiring stories you would like to share? Please leave additional hiring advice and/or your own stories of hiring gone bad below in the comments.

Picture credit: Tensafefrogs

Every once and a while it is nice to toot our own horn!  Check out the www.inc.com article featuring what they label as 10 of the most helpful SBDC’s in America (inlcuding the IWCC SBDC in Council Bluffs Iowa.)

We are so proud to be a part of such a great and rich national network whose main mission is to help businesses thrive and grow!

Thank you to our partners and clients for making us the best we can be!

Here are the links!

Inc.com’s 10 most helpful SBDCs

Iowa Western CC SBDC Feature

picture credit to: By soylentgreen23 Christopher Walker

As a Small Business Development Center Director I see countless individuals who have a dream to start a small business. 

As you know the first thing that needs to be done is a Business Plan.  But where do you start? How long does it have to be?  At what point do you see if this small business possible?

I advise for businesses to start with numbers. You want to know how much you will have to make in the business to pay your bills and make enough money for it to be worthwhile.

Since you are working with a new business it is all new and the numbers are all guesses, so how do you know if the business will work if the numbers are all basically plucked from the sky?  Market research, demographics, and industry reports can all help us judge if there is a viable market, but this is busy work and can be time consuming. 

I usually start with three simple sets of numbers.  Note that I say “Start”, because this is only the beginning to your research.  With that being said, here goes…

1. Start Up Costs – Add up all of the costs that it will take to key open your business on grand opening day. This everything you need to spend before you open.
   • Building/Land
   • Building renovations – or build out
   • Equipment
   • Furniture/Fixtures
   • Organizational costs
   • Other Costs – website, professional fees, signs, uniforms, cards, brochures, outside services, etc.
   • Deposits
   • Initial Inventory
   • Working Capital – Money needed for at least 3 to 6 months of operating plus  1 to 3 months of inventory. If your company will bill out for payments outside of 30 days, you will need more working capital

 Total these expenses and figure out how you are going to finance this project.  Keep in mind that your contribution to this should be at least 20 to 30% for lenders/investors to be interested. If there is an amount that you need to get financed figure out your monthly loan payment. Start with a sample term of 5 years and 7% interest on non real estate and 20 years and 7% interest on real estate/land.  Use  Bankrate.com to calculate your payments.

2. Operating Expenses – These are your “fixed” operating expenses.  The bills that will come to you month after month AFTER you start your business.  These may include the following: 

•  
  • Advertising/MarketingUtilities
  • Rent
  • Telephone/Cable/Internet
  • Insurance
  • Real-estate Taxes
  • Office Supplies (not inventory)
  • Professional Fees/Outsourcing fees
  • Licenses/Dues
  • Postage
  • Auto/Travel
  • Salaries
  • Owners Draw/Salary

3.  Income/Sales projections – This is where the guessing begins.  Don’t let it intimidate you. By coming up with a preliminary guess you can work the projections into the costs of the business and visually see if you the numbers will work and if you will make money.    If you have a pretty solid idea of what the project will cost for start up and operating, you can guess at the sales numbers to see if your plans will cash flow.  Keep in mind that once you try to sell this idea to a banker or investor, you will have to back up your sales guesses with solid research.

 To start:

•  
  • Nail down what you think your pricing structure will be. What will the product cost you and what will the price be to customers. Create a menu of services with prices and costs listed next to them.
  • Outline an average week  or month of total sales including costs . How many widgets will you sell on Monday, Tuesday, etc… or how many will you sell in an average month.  Take this average month and increase or decrease the amount during busy and slow months.  Now you have projected income on a monthly basis for a year.
  • Figure out what the percentage of your total sales per month will be in cost of goods or services sold. Total sales minus your COGS will be your Gross Profit per month.

4. Create a financial projection by using the above numbers. SCORE’s national website has a free Financial Projections Worksheet that works great. 

If you need extra help call us at the Iowa Western SBDC or if you are in a different area or state contact your regions SBDC through the ASBDC.  Iowa’s other regions are listed at the Iowa SBDC website. SBDCS are a free resource to help you start successfully. 

Picture credit to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/farleyj/ 

If you are a small local business in the Council Bluffs/Omaha metro or in Southwest Iowa or anywhere else in America,  your main market is  more than likely  the people and businesses  in the community or region that your business is in. 

While the internet seems the least likely place to market locally, it is actually quickly becoming the best, most powerful place to leverage your local customers.

Why?  Because your customers are looking online to find information on what to buy and because the search engines including Google, Bing and Yahoo are creating powerful tools to help consumers find what they are looking for in their communities. As a local or regional business, the single most important thing you can do to optimize your marketing efforts is to optimize your website and internet presence so your local market can find you. Being optimized for local internet search will optimize any offline marketing efforts that you engage in.

How, as a small business do you leverage these tools and make sure your customers are finding you?  Here are some quick tips to get you started.

1. Discover your local keywords.

Keywords are those words or phrases that your customers will type into search engines to help them find what they are looking for. If they are looking for a House Painter they will probably type in a geographical term to localize the search to a certain area. An example would be “Council Bluffs House Painter” or “House Painters in Council Bluffs”.  As a local business you should  figure out the industry term customers are using to find your type of business as well as the geographical terms they are using when looking in your particular market area.  A good tool to use for this is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. If you use Google Anayltics on your website, you will also be able to monitor how people search to find you.

3. Localize Your Website Content

Search engines work by taking the search(Keywords or Keyword phrases) from the consumer and “spidering” through indexed websites looking for matches to those words.   There is a lot more to it than that, but it is the first step in optimizing your website for local search.  Your small business website should have your main keyword phrases AND local Geographical keywords in the content in appropriate places.  Be careful NOT  to over stuff your pages with your keywords.  Search engines will see this as “cheating” and your clients will find it awkward.  Listed below are a few main things to take action on concerning content and keywords:

1. Place keywords and local keywords in Headlines, Links and in your content when it is natural or makes sense.
2. Place your address and key contact Information on EVERY page. Place the address in the template of your design in the same place on every page so that it looks natural.
3. On your Contact Us page include a Google map.  You can customize your own map with photos, directions and descriptions at Google My Maps
4. Include community resources and information on your website.  Think about having a blog that talks about local events, have local links to community businesses and resources and/or  include local contributors on your blog.
5. Include your local keywords in your metatags. Specifically in your Title Meta Tags.  You may need to talk to your website host or designer to help you with this.

3. Claim and Build out Local Directory Pages

Google, Yahoo and Bing have all developed local directories.  For the most part these are free, but some do have some fees built in to use certain features.  The most important thing for you as a small business, is to go to these search engines and claim your listing.  While claiming your listing, make sure that you fill out EVERYTHING completely and thoroughly and use your industry keywords in the description.  Because this is a local listing, you do not need to add your local keywords.  Take advantage of the amenities that each directory offers and post photos, videos, etc where you can. 

Here are the links to get you started

Google Places www.google.com/places/

Yahoo Local Directory local.yahoo.com

Bing Local Listing Center https://ssl.bing.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx

Another resource that will help you get listed on all of the above is Getlisted.org.  

4. Encourage Reviews and local Links

Reviews from outside websites are even better than website testimonials and are extremely visible and helpful in local searches.  As a small business make sure that your business has listings on review sites like Yelp, Insider Pages, Citysearch, and Merchant Circle as well as review sites that may be specific to your business or industry (Restaurant reviews on Urbanspoon)

Once you are appropriately listed on these review sites, ask for reviews from customers.  Customers can review you on your Google place page or any of the other number of review sites.  Google gathers all of the reviews and they all show up on your place page.  You may want to use the reviews (good ones) on your website as well instead of testimonials. 

Finally, work locally through successful business, media and local celebrities to get local links back to your page.  Links are always great for search engine optimization and getting local recognition will help to boost your local listings. Start this process by trying the following tactics

1. Find and network with local bloggers
2. Network locally offline and encourage an online relationship through facebook, etc.
3. Start a local group on line (try Meetup.com)
4. Find media/bloggers who are interested in your industry and participate in their blogging and social media efforts.  Be careful not to use a sales pitch. They will respond better to your shared expertise, sans advertisement. 

 The Southwest Iowa SBDC has gathered these tips through research and many online resources and most recently through a webinar held by Duct Tape Marketing Founder John Jantsch.  Mr. Jantsch blogs frequently about Local Marketing among other very useful topics for small business.

If you have questions or more to add, please comment below.

Yes, you read that right. Here’s a chance to share your business idea and possibly get a $1,000 grant. The team at MyEntreNet has created a monthly contest for those of you who want to start a business. Each month, MyEntreNet will give away a $1,000 grant for the best business idea, as voted on by site visitors.

More information can be found at www.DreamBigGrowHere.com. The contest is limited to Iowa residents only.

What’s your dream?

by Julie Mierau

We all know that physicians pledge to “first, do no harm.” But do you know Google’s company motto? “Don’t be evil.” Yep, it’s true. That’s the guiding principle at arguably the world’s premiere Internet-based company.

Pretty big statement for a pretty big company. But why not something equally as ambitious for a small company? How about this: “Remember, our customers pay our bills.” Or this: “Tell the truth.” Or even: “I’m doing this my way.”

Give it some thought and let me know what your motto should be. For me, I’m going with this: “A wordsmith at heart.”