Personal taxes can be complicated. Business taxes can be even more difficult. If you own a small business, tax time can be challenging.The livelihood of any company is at least partially dependent on its ability to minimize its tax liability, while meeting the requirements of the IRS.

While taxes are rarely enjoyable or interesting topic, they’re a part of any business owner’s life. Getting a handle your business taxes can increase your income and help you avoid legal issues.

Check out these tax-saving strategies that are helpful for any small business:

1. Keep your tax and financial documents for at least 7 years. If you’re ever audited, you’ll need those records. Any claims made at tax time require supporting documentation. Keeping good records is an excellent idea for any small business because it encourages organization. It is very difficult to reconstruct records at a later date.



2. Know your deadlines. It isn’t all about April 15^th. While most business entities can wait until “tax day,” C-corporations are required to file within 10 weeks after the fiscal year ends, which is normally December 31^st.



3. Understand your loans. The IRS doesn’t classify most business loans as income. But the interest paid on loans is generally a deductible expense. It’s important to have records regarding the use of any loans. It might be for equipment or to finance some other activity.



4. Know the different types of audits. There are several types of audits and some are more intimidating than others.
   • Office audit: Generally this is a simple audit. You’ll be requested to report to your local IRS office to resolve some discrepancy.
   • Correspondence audit: You’ll just be asked to send in a document via mail or fax.
   • Field audit: These tend to be very thorough audits and they are conducted at your place of business.
   • Criminal investigation audit: Consult your lawyer. You’re suspected of tax evasion.



5. Pay your quarterly tax bill. This is a common mistake. If you have an employer, your taxes are regularly taken out of your paycheck. If you’re self-employed, you’re required to estimate your tax each quarter and pay it. Failure to pay this can result in a significant tax penalty. You might also end up with a bigger tax bill than you can handle in a single payment. Make a habit of setting aside a portion of your profit each month in anticipation of paying your quarterly taxes.



6. Prepare early. The vast number of tax filers wait until the last minute. If you’re expecting a refund, this can be the worst time to file. The IRS is overwhelmed with all the tax returns that pour in. However, this can also be the best time to avoid an audit. Preparing your tax return earlyleaves you time to find any missing documents and answer any questions.



7. Get help. Depending on the complexity of your business’s finances, hiring an expert to prepare your tax return might be a good idea. In theory, the money you spend ought to result in a smaller tax burden. It’s also helpful if any legal issues arise.



8. Avoid using taxes collected from employee payroll to pay business expenses. This common practice upsets the IRS greatly. When you withhold taxes, send them to the IRS!

Taxes are a large expense for any business that shows a profit. It only makes sense to minimize that expense. Consult a tax professional if you have any questions or concerns regarding your business’ tax situation.

Every successful business owner understands that marketing is an important part of their business. After all, marketing brings in new customers, profits, and long-term benefits for the business.

In thinking about marketing your business, you may have many questions, such as:

• What’s the difference between online and offline marketing?
• Is one better than the other?
• Which is the better option for you?

These are all important questions, and this guide will help you in making a decision.

What Is Online Marketing?

Online marketing involves promoting your business, product, or service on the internet via your website, online ads, or social media.

Benefits of online marketing include:

1. You can see the engagement of your content and promotions. With social media channels, you can physically see what your audience thinks of your brand and marketing. If you’re seeing lots of likes and shares of your content, then surely, you’re doing something right!
   
2. It’s easy to track your return on investment (ROI). You can track clicks and sales when using ads online, so you can easily see which ads are the most profitable for you. This will help you to make smart decisions regarding future marketing strategies and campaigns.
   
3. You can target specific demographics. With online marketing, it’s possible to drive specific types of people to your offers – people who are more likely to buy your products.

There are also some negatives to using online marketing, such as:

1. Digital advertisements can be annoying. While it’s certainly clever that advertisers can target ads specifically to you, showing you ads for products that you searched for days ago can be highly annoying and even drive you away from a brand.
   
2. The ads are fleeting. Unlike a billboard, an online ad can easily be missed or ignored. It’s easy to scroll past an ad and click to the next page without even taking notice.
   
3. Online marketing is constantly evolving. Whether it’s the latest social media platform or a change to the search engine algorithm, there’s always something new to learn. If you don’t keep up with important trends, you may find yourself being left behind.

What Is Offline Marketing?

Offline marketing is typically anything that does not involve the internet, so any magazine or television advertisements are good examples of this type of marketing.

Benefits of offline marketing include:

1. It can be impactful and easy to understand. A billboard or TV commercial will often become part of a person’s daily life, so it will usually be easy to understand and digest.
   
2. Printed marketing materials are often permanent. Unless a magazine is recycled or put in the trash, then the advertisements found within will be permanent, so they can still work weeks, or even months, after first being published.
   
3. They are memorable. Many offline ads are memorable and likely to be remembered much better than an Instagram ad for example, which is almost instantly forgotten. Think of all the popular Super Bowl ads and other commercials that we all know so well that they become part of our culture.

Offline marketing also has some negative aspects, such as:

1. It’s difficult to measure the success of a campaign. There are ways to measure the success of a campaign, but they are not as in-depth or accurate as those available for online marketing.
   
2. It can be expensive. Typically, offline marketing can be expensive. Even a small run in your local newspaper or a single 30-second spot on TV can set you back a considerable amount.
   
3. Little feedback from your audience. After running the marketing campaign, you can rarely gauge the reactions from your potential customers.

Which is Better for You?

Both online and offline marketing have their pros and cons.

Offline marketing is seen as more traditional and will be better aimed at the older generation, while online marketing is generally a better option for the younger generation. However, these are only generalities and might not apply to your business.

Plus, you don’t have to choose one over the other. Perhaps a combination of online and offline marketing will work best for your business.

You will need to understand what you want to achieve marketing-wise, what your budget is, and most importantly who your target audience is. Study your audience and go with what you think will work best with them, keeping your budget in mind. This will get you started.

Then, track what you can to determine which campaigns bring you the greatest profits. Run new campaigns and track those. Experience is the best determiner. Analyze as you go and stick with what’s working the best for your company until you find a new campaign that drives even greater profits.

Need help with your Marketing strategy? Shoot me an email – let’s talk!

Even though the search engine algorithms which determine rankings change often, there are still tried and true SEO methods that are proven to help you rise higher in the rankings throughout these changes.

Here are the Top 10 best practices for SEO success:

1. Ensure that your website is secure. Most people today are concerned with the privacy and security of the websites that they visit. Consequently, this is also a crucial ranking factor in the search engines. A secure website will always rank higher than one that isn’t secure.
   • Talk with your web host or web manager about the type of security that is most appropriate for your website. A security certificate will ensure that your content is delivered by SSL (secure socket layer).
     
   • With SSL, your website will start with an “https://” instead of “http://” and the little lock icon will show up next to the web address in many browsers.
2. Add your main keyword early into the content. Including your keyword early on lets the search engines know what your content is about. Additionally, sprinkle the main keyword throughout the rest of your content too.
   • This will tell the search engines that this term is important, which will help you rank well for this term.

3. Use unique titles, descriptions, and content. This lets the search engines know that your content is original material and can add further knowledge to the other information that can already be found on the internet about your topic.

4. Optimize your title tag for SEO. Always include your main keyword in the title tag for your website, and if possible, put it at the start of the title. This will give priority to this keyword.

5. Ensure that your website loads quickly. It’s important that you make your website load as quickly as possible. Especially with the advent of smartphones, loading time is an important ranking factor in the search engines.
   • Compress the size of images, remove any unneeded code, and consider using a content delivery network (CDN). If you use a CDN, your website will be able to serve images and other media from servers that are close to your audience, thus cutting down on the loading time.
   • Many web hosts now use CDNs to deliver content for their clients’ websites. Talk with your web host or your web manager about this priority.
   • If you have a WordPress site, there are many plugins that help you speed up the loading time for your website.

6. Optimize any images. You can do this by giving the filenames descriptive names. Using image alt text is also recommended so that the search engines can understand what images are present on your website. Properly optimized images can boost your website rank.

7. Use internal linking. The key here is to link to your main pages. So, any smaller pages can link to a larger, authoritative piece. This will help to increase the rank of the more important page.
   • Try to use the main keyword, or a variation of it, in your internal links to ensure that the search engines know what the page is about.

8. Create amazing content. Write high quality content that answers questions that your readers might have about your topic.
   • If you can answer a question in less than 1,000 words, that is fine. However, it’s worth noting that it’s important to be thorough with any answer, so you may want to write considerably more than this amount.
   • Many of the highest-ranking pages include longer, authoritative content.

9. Build backlinks to your website. Despite what you may have read online that backlinks are no longer important, please note that backlinks, when done properly, are still very important. They show the search engines that your content is valuable enough for other webmasters to link to.
   • When you first start your website, you may want to go slow when building backlinks. After a few months you’ll be able to ramp up your efforts.
   • With this strategy, you want to obtain links from other important websites in this field. Links from low quality websites that accept advertising from anyone to any website are likely to hurt your search engine rankings.

10. Look at the user experience. If you find that visitors are struggling to navigate your website or that you have a high bounce rate, which is when people leave your website after just a short time, take a close look at your user experience.
    • Perhaps your visitors aren’t finding the answers that they’re looking for, or maybe your website is broken in some way. See what you can do to improve the overall experience of your visitors.

Following these Top 10 SEO best practices will enable you to achieve higher rankings in the search engines. The higher you rank, the more traffic you should be able to achieve, and ultimately the more sales you will be able to make.

Try these tips when you need to fuel your motivation:

Keep your attention on the end result rather than the process of getting there. When you find yourself getting bogged down with a large project, remind yourself of the goal. It’s challenging to get started when it’s necessary to put in 100 hours of work or to lose 50 lbs. If your motivation is waning, focus on how great you’ll feel when the objective has been met.

Schedule regular breaks. Working for 8 hours straight might seem daunting, but knowing that you can take a break in 60 minutes can free up your mind enough to focus intently for an hour. Approach your work 60 minutes at time and you’ll be done before you know it.

Stand up and move around. Short period of intense exercise can improve creativity, sharpen the mind, and decrease stress. Find an activity appropriate for your environment.

Give yourself rewards as milestones are reached. Think of a few self-indulgences that you consider motivating. Break your work into reasonable chunks and give yourself a small reward as the milestones are met.  These rewards can be very small. A cup of coffee or a short break might be enough to get through a rough patch.

Do whatever it takes to get started. It’s surprising how motivation can seemingly appear from nowhere if you can just take the first step. Waiting for inspiration to get started is a mistake. You’re likely to notice that the work wasn’t nearly as disagreeable as you thought. You’ll probably be impressed with your progress and begin to feel motivated.  Whether it’s writing one sentence, making one phone call, or doing one pushup, do whatever it takes to get the ball rolling.

Find inspiration through a song or video. YouTube is loaded with inspirational movie clips and presentations. Maybe there is a particular song that motivates you. A couple of minutes spent on this sort of activity can be well worth the time. Consider listening to a favorite song or watching a video on your break time.  Avoid getting distracted and wasting hours. Five minutes is enough!

Use a timer. A timer is a very effective way to focus the mind and get things done. Knowing that the seconds are ticking away is very motivating.  Having a timer also eliminates the questions of deciding how much to do or when to stop and take a break. You stop when the timer stops.

Make a list of the benefits you’ll receive upon completion. Will you finally have the money to pay all of your bills and take a trip? Will you be proud to show off your body at the beach? Can you realize your dream of gaining acceptance into graduate school?  Keep the list handy and review it whenever your motivation is lacking.

Strive to further develop your ability to motivate yourself. Self-motivation is a powerful tool for creating a successful life. Remember that the most challenging task can be to take the first step. Get started and you’ll find that your motivation begins to grow!

There’s no reason why you can’t have the same habits as some of the most successful people in the world!

Increase your odds for success with these habits:

1. An incredible work ethic. It takes a lot of time and effort to grow a company. It’s necessary at first to be a jack-of-all-trades. Until you can grow enough to hire others to cover all the required skills your company needs to thrive, you’re going to have to carry a lot of weight.
2. Conscientiousness. When you own a business, it’s up to you to ensure that things are done properly and on time. The responsibilities are great. You don’t have the luxury of putting out sloppy work. It will always come back to haunt you.
3. Use time wisely. Time will always be a limited resource. How you use your time dictates how successful your company ultimately becomes. That means having the knowledge and experience to make wise decisions and the mental toughness to avoid distractions.
4. Have a plan each day. One of the keys to using your time successfully is to plan for each day ahead of time. Avoid going to bed without having a detailed idea of what you’re going to do the following day. When your feet hit the bedroom floor, you should already know what needs to be done for the day.
5. Wake up early. There are very few successful entrepreneurs that don’t get up very early. Some get up even before 4 a.m. How early you get up is up to you, but if you’re not beating the average person out of bed, you’re behind.
6. Set goals. It’s not enough to work hard and work smart. You also must know where you’re going. Goals help you make wise decisions. Know what you’re trying to accomplish today, this week, this month, this year, and 10 years from now.
7. Deal with stress effectively. Entrepreneurs have plenty of stress to deal with on a regular basis, so it’s important to learn how to manage it. Have a process for dealing with stress and anxiety. Learn to recognize what you can control and what you cannot.
8. Look ahead for obstacles. Avoid being blindsided by obstacles and setbacks. Be aware of your future. Look ahead for the challenges that you’re likely to face and have solutions in mind.
   
   • Think of all the major challenges in your life and notice that there were plenty of warning signs for all of them. The same is true with your business. Avoid putting your head in the sand and hoping for the best. Deal with challenges now while they’re still manageable.
     

What are your current habits? Can you see why your current habits have either helped you or harmed you on your path to business success? Think about what you want to accomplish to be successful and build a set of habits that will support those activities.

The person with the best habits usually wins. How far will you go with your habits?

A personal brand is much more than a flashy logo or a color palette. A personal brand goes far beyond having a nice-looking business card. A personal brand is not just about having a website with your name on it, although that’s certainly part of it.

• Your personal brand is how you present yourself, both online and offline, to your ideal audience. Your personal brand is the image you put forth. It’s what you stand for. Your values. What you’re all about. The core of who you are as a person.

• It’s the combination of your values, unique skills, experiences, stories, personality, and image, all presented authentically to your audience.
  
• Every person is now a brand. Everyone can constantly put themselves out in front of their audience. Everyone can add value to their audience. Everyone can communicate their message loud and clear. With everything you share with your audience, you’re building your brand.

• The question is whether you’re actively taking control of your brand. Do you want your brand to develop on its own, with no guidance from you, or do you want to be actively in control of the process? It’s always best to be the one in control of your personal brand.

Part 2: Why You Need To Build A Personal Brand

• Every entrepreneur, coach, consultant, freelancer, etc. should be building their own brand. If you are trying to build a business of any sort, it’s important to build your own personal brand.

• Personal branding allows you to stand out from the competition. Your competitors can’t bring what you bring to the table. They simply don’t have what you have to offer. You’re unique. Only you are you. You have unique experiences, strengths, beliefs, perspectives, skills, and insights that set you apart from everyone else. Building your personal brand allows you highlight your strengths.

• Personal branding allows you to charge a premium price. Because you bring unique value to the table – value that no one else offers – you can charge a premium price for your services.When you craft a strong personal brand, you can charge a higher price for your products and services because they’re exclusive to you.

• Personal branding highlights your expertise. A significant amount of personal branding involves the content that you share with the world. The more valuable the content you share, the more you demonstrate that you’re an expert who should be trusted. With every piece of content that you share, you establish yourself as an expert in your field. The more you show that you’re an expert, the more people will trust you.
  
• Personal branding allows you to attract your ideal audience. When you’re an expert, you attract those who need your help the most. They want help from you because you’re the expert. It also generates more referrals from others in your field. And it allows you to charge premium prices.

• Personal branding puts you in charge of the narrative. Your personal brand will evolve, whether you want it to or not. If you use social media, have an email list, write a blog, or speak to groups, you’re already building your personal brand. The question is whether you’re building the brand intentionally.

• Personal brand building ensures that you’re the one forming people’s ideas and opinions about you. You’re in control of the story.

• Personal branding increases your visibility. As you build your personal brand, you’ll become more visible. You’ll attract more fans on social media, who will share your content with their tribes, which will then attract more fans.

• You’ll also be featured in more media outlets since they’re always looking for experts. And you’ll be invited to speak at more places. As you build your brand, your platform will also grow.

• Personal branding shapes the content you share. Without a personal brand, you have nothing guiding you in terms of what content you should be sharing with your audience.
  
  Personal branding gives you guidelines as to what you should share with your audience. You should only share things that are in line with your brand. Anything off-brand shouldn’t be shared.

• Personal branding connects you more with individuals. People connect better with other people than they do with companies. The more you work to build your brand, the more individuals you’ll attract. They’ll be attracted to your values, personality, and insights. The more individuals you attract, the more you’ll build your overall business.
  
• Personal branding allows you to become an influencer. An influencer is someone who significantly shapes the opinions of their followers and has a big influence on how they behave. There are some significant benefits to being an influencer.

• Big brands want to work with influencers, which can generate revenue for you. You often receive free things from companies who are interested in partnering with you. And you frequently get requests from the media to speak or just to attend events.

Part 3: How To Build A Personal Brand

• Step #1: Determine who you really are. Building your personal brand is about sharing your authentic self with the world.
  
  Ask yourself: What unique skills do I have? What are my core values? What am I most passionate about? What unique experiences have shaped who I am? How can I most effectively serve my core audience? What do I have to offer that no one else does?

• Step #2: Determine what you want to accomplish. Once you’ve identified the core of who you are, it’s time to think about what you want to accomplish with your personal brand.
  
  Ask yourself: What would I like to accomplish, both personally and professionally? What do I want to be known for? If I could be the world’s foremost expert on a topic, what would it be? What key message do I want to communicate? If I could only give one piece of advice, what would it be? What is the “personality” of my brand?
  
• Step #3: Identify your target audience. There is a core demographic of people who will resonate deeply with you, your brand, and what you offer. This core demographic is your target audience.
  
  To identify your core audience, ask these questions: Who can I most effectively help? Who will benefit most from my skill set and knowledge? Who am I most passionate about serving? Who will resonate most with me and my brand?
  
  It can also be helpful to create a persona for your ideal client. This should include demographic information, desires and aspirations, as well as pain points and challenges that they face.

• Step #4: Determine your Unique Service Proposition. Your USP is simply your brand summed up into a single, powerful compelling statement that describes exactly what you do for your audience.
  
  A USP typically looks something like this: I help (target person) to (achieve X) so that they can (outcome). Your USP doesn’t have to say everything about your brand, but it should get right to the heart of who you are and how you help your audience. It may help to give your USP a unique name that will stick in people’s mind.
  
  Don’t skimp on this step. Creating your USP gives you a high degree of clarity about what your brand is all about.
  
• Step #5: Start treating yourself as a brand. In every communication with your audience, whether a blog post, email, podcast, social media post, etc., you stay true to your brand message. You constantly speak about the problems you solve, constantly encourage your audience, constantly voice the message of your brand.
  
  It also means creating a strong, compelling website to serve as your home base for all your online activities. It means creating a media page or media kit on your site for media inquiries. It could mean not answering emails yourself, but having an assistant answer them.
  
• Step #6: Optimize your website. Your website functions as your “home base” of sorts. It is one of the primary places people get to know who you are and what you do. Your website also functions as one of the primary ways you turn visitors into paying clients.
  
  Optimizing your website includes: having a professional logo designed, showing off your USP, using professional photos, using testimonials, presenting a clear call-to-action, creating a compelling “About” page, creating a services page, giving away free resources, creating a contact page.

• Step #7: Develop your content strategy. The primary way you’re going to build your brand is by creating strategic content, such as blog posts, videos, social media posts, emails, affirmations, and podcasts. Each piece of content you share with your audience should serve to build your brand.
  
  We recommend the “Pillar Method” for your content. The Pillar Method involves creating longer pieces of content that function as pillars, of sorts. These pillars pieces are then cut up into smaller pieces of content that are shared across a variety of social media platforms. Using this method allows you to repurpose a single piece of content in a variety of ways.
  
• Step #8: Constantly add value to your audience. It’s essential that you constantly give value to your audience without asking for anything in return. The main thing people should take away when interacting with your brand is how much value you provide.
  
  There will be times when you ask for a sale or ask someone to become a new client. The main emphasis, however, should be on adding value to your audience.
  
• Step #9: Build a community. One of the best ways to build your brand is to build a community of people who can share ideas, support each other, and reach out to you directly. You create a tribe of passionate people who care about the same things you do.
  
  Some simple ways to build a community include starting a private Facebook group where people can encourage each other and share ideas, hosting live events where you can interact personally with your tribe, or creating a membership site where people can get exclusive access to you.

Need help with building your brand? Shoot me an email and let’s talk! ♥

Despite what you may have seen online and from various experts in the field, it is certainly possible to rank your website without backlinks. The following techniques will focus more on on-page SEO, creating valuable content, and off-page mentions.

So, what are these techniques?

1. Create valuable content. When you answer a search query thoroughly, then you’re giving your readers what they want to know. This will increase user engagement on your website, which will tell the search engines that your content is valuable. Consequently, the search engines will rank your website highly for that search term. For the highest rankings, go more in-depth than your competitors, provide clear answers, and provide graphics or illustrations to help your reader understand the content clearly.
2. Try to rank for longtail keywords. These are keywords that are niche-specific and may have very little search engine traffic. The reason why you will be aiming to rank for these terms is that there is less competition, so they should be easier to rank highly for. Ranking highly for these terms will be easier and maybe quicker to achieve too. Plus, if you rank highly for lots of these terms, your overall traffic will increase. At this point, you may be able to consider ranking for more competitive search terms.
3. Get customer reviews. With local businesses, reviews submitted about your website online can affect your search engine rankings as well. For many reasons, it’s worth your time and effort to ensure that you are providing the best service possible for your customers. This will lead to great reviews and more customers!
4. Copy your competitor’s on-page SEO strategy. Visit your competitor’s website and study their content. You may think that creating longer forms of content is best when it comes to ranking. However, this is not always the case. Check whatever pages are ranking for each particular search term.
5. Build internal links. For each of your longer, authoritative articles, link smaller supporting articles in your website to this main page. This will help your longer page achieve higher rankings.
6. Ensure that your website is easy to navigate. If your website isn’t easy to navigate, your visitors will just click off your website and go somewhere else. This can lower the time spent on your website and increase the bounce rate. These are both negative SEO factors.
7. Have a mobile-friendly website. These days, most internet users will access your website through a mobile device. If your website isn’t rendering properly on mobile, this will have a negative impact on user experience, rankings, and sales. So, be sure to optimize your website for mobile devices as well as desktops.
8. Increase your page speed. Page speed refers to how fast your website page loads, and this affects your rankings. A faster-loading website improves the user experience of your visitors. No one wants to be waiting for a website to load. Chances are if they have to wait more than a few seconds, they will leave the website entirely.

9. Get an SSL certificate for your website. It has been shown that having an SSL certificate on your website increases your website rankings. These days many search engines will warn its users that a website without this certificate is not secure, which will result in a user leaving the website immediately. This harms your rankings and possibly your reputation as well.

If your website is still new and has yet to establish any authority within the niche, or if the competitors in this particular niche have very few backlinks, then it is certainly possible to rank highly for various search terms using these strategies.

As your website becomes more competitive, then building backlinks will certainly help you to continue to rank higher. But in the meantime, don’t worry about the backlinks. Draw your visitors to your secure, quick-loading website and provide quality content that they’ll want to engage with and share with others.

Need help with ranking your website? Shoot me an email and let’s talk! ♥

• Statistics show that 97% of consumers go online to find and research local businesses so if you do not have a web presence, how will they find you?

• Another staggering statistic is that 30% of consumers won’t consider a business without a website.

Your website is your number one marketing asset in this digital age. Americans spend on average 223.6 hours per week and are on their mobile devices up to five hours per day. The expectation of the average consumer is that reputable businesses will have a website and that the ones who don’t are less professional.  While that may not necessarily be true, perception IS reality!

Once I decided on an industry, I took some much needed vacation time and used that time off to gather info and research and contact vendors, etc…  Within a relatively short period of time, I was in business!  One that I was very proud of, having built it from scratch!  I built a website, secured a merchant account, developed relationships with vendors, created a catalog and threw in-home hosted parties. 

My offerings were products – high end goods.   My method of marketing was mostly word of mouth from my hostesses to their friends.  But I realized very quickly that word of mouth marketing only goes but so far.  I didn’t truly understand or fully appreciate the power of solid marketing and within another relatively short period of time, my business ended, almost as quickly as it began.

The lesson?  You can have the BEST products, goods and services, but you MUST be able to get the word out that you exist.  Marketing, strategically done, lets the world know that you and your business are here to stay.