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Owning a Piece of the Apple: How Small Businesses Get Started in New York

New York City presents a lot of opportunities for small business owners, but it can be daunting to navigate through the world of commercial real estate. Although the city has vacancies just like anywhere else in the country, it also has a higher concentration of new businesses starting every day. Due to this, you will need to be patient and dedicated if you are going to find the perfect place within your price range.

Tips for Finding the Right Place

1) Use a Real Estate or Rental Agent – Whether you are looking for a commercial rental or purchase, it will be much easier to navigate through all of the current listings with the assistance of a professional agent. Not only will they be able to help you avoid looking at places that are not suitable for your new business, but they will also have the inside track on any new properties that become available.

2) Set Flexible Guidelines – In order to find the right place, you definitely need to have guidelines such as the price, general location and size. However, if you are not at least somewhat flexible with your guidelines, it might be impossible to find a location for your business. Therefore, you need to determine what the property absolutely must have and what you are willing to live without.

3) Be Prepared to Move Forward – Even though it is always a good idea to look at multiple options before you commit to something, it is also imperative in New York City to be willing to move quickly. For example, if you are looking for a rental property and you find one that fits all of your guidelines, it would be unwise to leave without filling out an application. In order to do this, you will need to have all of the necessary verification paperwork with you. Keep in mind that a rental application is not a contract, so you will not be locked into anything by simply filling one out.

4) Get Pre-Approved – If you are planning to buy a piece of real estate for your new business, you will want to obtain mortgage pre-approval. By doing this, you will not only know exactly how much money you can spend, but you will also look like a much more viable buyer to the individual or business that is selling the property. In fact, whether you ask a Brooklyn Realtor or a Manhattan real estate lawyer, you’ll hear that some people will not even accept a real estate offer unless a pre-approval letter is attached. Therefore, it is in your best interests to obtain that before you begin seriously looking at your options.

5) Hire a Real Estate Lawyer – There are two main reasons to work with a real estate lawyer in New York City: to review the contract before you sign it and to resolve any disputes that arise after the contract has been signed. By hiring a lawyer who specializes in real estate, you will be able to avoid a lot of the issues that have caused other businesses to fail before they even get a chance to greet their first customer.

Even though it can take a while to find the right place within the city limits, there are definitely prime real estate opportunities available for both buyers and renters. Therefore, you simply need to utilize the tips above and take the time to visit every property that matches up with your guidelines.

Ann Bailey, a business advice contributor, shares this list to help small business owners in their quest for commercial space in New York. The Manhattan real estate lawyer group at Canfield, Madden & Ruggerio LLP has thirty solid years of experience assisting clients in all aspects of business property purchases, leases and dispute resolutions.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shinythings/151544479/

5 Top Ways to Advertise Your Business Locally

Marketing is central to the success of any business, but the size of a business substantially affects its ability to reach its customers. Small businesses often have a limited budget for marketing activities and generally confine their marketing activities to advertising. When advertising, all businesses must seek a cost-effective medium that provides a suitable number of exposures to the greatest number of customers for the least amount of money.

1. Sponsorship Banners: Promotional sponsorships like vinyl banners can be a valuable tool when advertising to the local community, and are remarkably low cost to produce. Sports programs at local schools will often allow businesses to display these types of advertisement at games in attempt to raise money. Advertising at local academic institutions allows businesses to improve their local community and raise brand awareness at the same time. Local game advertisements allow businesses to target individuals who live within a specific school district and maintain a captive audience for the duration of the sporting event.

2. Direct Mail: Direct mail is one of the most common forms of advertising for local businesses. Direct mail campaigns involve sending advertisements directly to customers in order to communicate the marketing message. Direct mail advertisements have the advantage of being highly customizable in terms of both content and format. Sizing, laminates, length, and even thickness are all variable. Businesses can produce small flyers or send entire catalogs. Unfortunately, direct mail campaigns present problems of clutter, where the recipient is so overwhelmed with marketing messages that any one particular message is likely to be lost. Additionally, many advertisements go directly into the wastebasket, thus losing any repeat exposures that a permanent advertisement might ordinarily provide.

3. Radio Advertising: Radio is a valuable advertising medium for local businesses. Radio advertisements are inexpensive to produce, offer businesses a high reach, can be targeted at listeners of specific programs, and airtime is inexpensive to buy; this results in a low cost per thousand exposures. The limitations of radio include a highly variable reach depending upon the station, the region, and the time of day, and the fact that many people rarely sit and do nothing other than listen to the radio. Listeners are often completing other tasks while listening to the radio, such as driving or working. This reduces comprehension, which necessitates additional exposures.

4. Newspaper and Magazine: Print media is a classic source of advertising. Newspapers and magazines offer businesses the chance to present their advertisement to a highly targeted demographic. Nearly every town has its own paper and every hobby has its own magazine. Businesses can create and place advertisements in such media at a low cost. It is not perfect; the limitations of modern print media include a potentially low circulation and clutter. However, for businesses who can produce eye-catching advertisements and identify publications with a high circulation, print advertisements are worth including in any advertising campaign.

5. Television Presence: Television advertising is highly effective at presenting a message to customers. Unlike most media, television advertisements allow the business to provide both visual and auditory stimuli; even if the viewer is not looking at the television or if the viewer has the television muted, the business can present its brand and its offerings to the potential consumer. Using both auditory and visual stimuli, businesses can present far more information in a television advertisement than they can in other media.

Unfortunately, airtime is expensive relative to newspaper or radio advertising. It is also less precise than other media. Confining the advertisements to a local market is always possible, but if the business specializes in a particularly narrow field, there is no guarantee that the audience is even interested in the products or services. Producing television advertisements is also more challenging than producing other forms of advertising. Creating brand awareness requires a refined touch and businesses with no video experience may be better off hiring an expert, who will usually be expensive.

When advertising a local business, the direct costs are important but targeting is critical. Advertisers must seek out media with a low cost per thousand exposures. These exposures must be aimed at a targeted audience. The advertisement should not blend in with clutter. Finally, the advertisement itself should not be excessively expensive. While every medium has its limitations, local businesses will generally benefit from community-based advertising.

Photocredit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/luahiwa/4915540290/

Hosting Your New Business: How to Buy More for Less

When it comes to starting a business, your online presence is a key factor in determining your success. While there are a variety of options available to business owners to have presences on the web, one of the most important is having a dedicated website. Unfortunately, many business owners who are starting out don’t understand what it takes to create and keep a website in cyberspace. Many think that they can simply build a site and then it will magically appear on the Internet. The truth is, however, that after a site is built, it must be hosted.

What is Hosting?

Hosting is the process of placing and keeping a website online. A hosting company is one that offers storage space on a server, and the business owner’s website is then hosted from that space. Anytime a visitor accesses the business’ website, a connection is made to the server, and the visitor pulls data from it. These central companies are generally the route that most business owners take when getting their websites online, and most hosting companies offer a variety of options regarding different types of service.

Shared Hosting vs. Dedicated Hosting

When choosing an online service, business owners must also decide whether to go with shared or dedicated options. Shared service allows a business owner’s website to be on a server along with other people’s websites. This type of plan is generally less expensive than other options, but it also has its drawbacks. Because someone using shared hosting is sharing a server with other websites, loading speeds may be affected, especially if another site on the server is bringing in a lot of traffic. Dedicated hosting, on the other hand, allows a website to be stored on its own server. This type of function is generally more expensive than shared, but it also allows websites to have faster loading times, quicker download speeds and less down time.

Costs to Control

No matter what hosting option you choose to use, it’s important to consider the costs involved. Some plans may start out a few dollars per month, while others may cost hundreds of dollars per month or more. Generally, the cost will be determined by the amount of space your site needs, the amount of visitors your site attracts and the amount of bandwidth your site uses. If you’re concerned about Internet costs for your new business site, you might want to do some research about coupons.

Discounts are available through a variety of avenues like www.hostingcoupons.com, and they can ensure savings on all kinds of web services. In fact, many business owners who are just starting out on the web use coupons to try out various hosting solutions until they find the one that’s right for their business.

When looking for a server solution, it’s also important to find one that will be able to grow with your business. As your business expands, the hope is that you will have more consumers visiting your website over time, and this may mean that you will need to change your web plan in the middle of a contract period. As a precaution, always look for a web provider that is willing to allow you to add on services with time and growth.

Ann Bailey has a small business website and shares these tips to help new site owners make decisions about hosting plans. Coupons available at www.hostingcoupons.com can assist smaller web-based businesses with start-up costs, adding to bottom line savings and business survival rates.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bgarry/6132174016/

The Rise of Video Conferencing

Every business who wants to reduce their costs will probably jump at the chance to use a free service that could help them to improve the way in which they communicate with customers and co-workers. You may think that such a tool doesn’t exist, and that your company and its employees will have to stick to traditional methods of communicating with potential clients, but the Powwownow video conferencing service is perfect for any company looking to reduce costs and improve its operations.

How video conferencing works is that it allows you to make a call to anyone in the world with the same software from your office. Using your computer, you can arrange a call in a matter of minutes and invite anyone you like from different locations to every conference call. This is perfect if you want to get clients from different countries but don’t want to spend money on travelling to their office and back.

Something else that video conferencing can help with is allowing people to work from home to communicate with the office without having to travel to and from there every day. Remote working can be made possible with the right software, with those working from home not missing out on every single development at the office. Meanwhile, workers can save money on travel costs, while business owners can spend less on office costs for computing, electricity and office furniture.

What has helped to make Powwownow the leading conference call provider in the UK is the fact that their service is easy to use. For anyone who’s worried about not being able to get to grips with video conferencing, it’s not that hard to use for the first time. Having cheap, simple technology at your fingertips is something any business owner, remote worker or even if you work from an office.

Mobile Recruiting Trends: Are you Ready?

One of the most important aspects of recruiting is learning how to properly utilize technology. After all, we no longer live in a world where you will spend most of your time looking for qualified job candidates by making phone calls or attending networking events. Most recruiters now spend the majority of their time working on a computer, tablet or cell phone, and they are able to use all of these devices to find the perfect candidates without needing to leave their office.

Which Trends Should I be Using?

If you do not currently have a cell phone or tablet that is synced directly to your desktop, then you are missing out on one of the easiest ways to recruit. After all, it is imperative to be able to access your contact lists and your calendar at all times, and setting up this connection between your computer and your mobile device will put everything that you need at your fingertips at all times. It is also important to fully take advantage of social networking sites.

For recruiters, however, LinkedIn should be their site of choice instead of Facebook. The LinkedIn site enables anyone to search for people who have specific skills or who have worked for specific companies and this can make the process of finding qualified candidates go much more smoothly. Some recruiters also make good usage of software to help them track the availability of individuals who they believe would be a good fit in the future.

Do I Really Need a Mobile Website?

More and more people are using their mobile devices to search for jobs. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise since there are now more cell phones than toothbrushes in the world, and for well over 25% of Americans, their mobile device is the primary way they access the internet. If you do not have a site that caters to these users, find a web design company to create one for you so you don’t miss out on these opportunities. After all, if a job seeker does happen to stumble upon your standard website with their mobile device, odds are they will leave quickly to find a mobile-optimized site.

While some of the new career apps have been getting excellent reviews, it is not realistic to think that an applicant that is searching through ten career sites will want to download as many apps. If you have a mobile site that offers easier to use searches and functionality, job seekers can access your information quickly from any mobile device. If you do not respond to the career-seeking mobile users with a simple interface and a great mobile experience, your competition will.

How often do Recruiting Trends Change?

Every time there is a new technological announcement, you can be virtually guaranteed that it will impact the world of recruiting. For example, when smartphones were first released, they enabled recruiters to be much more efficient since they could carry their emails with them in their pocket. Now these phones have developed so much that recruiters have easy access to specialized apps that help them find, track and contact potential candidates. It is also extremely helpful that recruiters can now access their calendar from anywhere because this helps them prevent double booking their time.

How often should I Implement New Recruiting Trends?

Although some people feel more comfortable waiting for others to test out new technology before they embrace it, you do not want to get left sitting on the sidelines. After all, if you wait six months to try a new mobile recruiting trend, all of your competitors are likely to have already used it to locate several prime candidates who you missed out on. Therefore, it is not a good idea to take a wait and see approach with new mobile recruiting trends. Even if you try something and it does not work as expected, it is better to get the jump on your competitors than to find yourself always lagging behind.

At this point, all signs indicate that mobile recruiting trends will overcome the entire recruiting industry. Therefore, if you want to be able to compete, you will need to take advantage of every mobile option that is available to you. Make sure that you implement your mobile plan immediately if you are not already using one, and keep up on industry related news to find out when each new trend surfaces.

Author Shelby Warden researches the latest trends to write articles that can help you succeed. The 522 Digital LLC web design company in Washington DC provides a wide range of services for their clients so they can complete in today’s demanding business environment. Their experts will create the perfect mobile site to keep job seekers coming back to you time and time again.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/johanl/5144798765/