Upcoming Economic Forum for Small Business Owners

On Wednesday, September 22, 2010, Gina Rubel, Esq., President/CEO of Furia Rubel Communications, will speak at the Small Business Solutions Center of Delaware County Community College’s “Your Business and the Economy 2011” economic forum. Rubel will address “Marketing and PR on a Shoestring Budget: How to Manage the New Economy.” The event will be hosted from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Terrazza in Newtown Square, Pa.

Brad Segall of KYW Newsradio will moderate the program. Other participants include: Rob Wonderling, President of the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, who will talk about “Next Gen Job Creation for the Greater Philadelphia Region;” Kim Huggins, President of K HR Solutions, who will speak about “Bridging Generation Gaps and Understanding the Impact on Your Business;” James Revels, CPA, MST and Partner with Citrin Cooperman & Company, LLC in Philadelphia, who will explain how to “Be Prepared: Small Businesses and the New Tax Code Changes;” and Andrew Miller, Chief Lending Officer for Beneficial Savings Bank, who will explain “Borrowing Money to Grow Your Business.”

Beneficial Bank of Philadelphia and the Widener University Small Business Development Center will co-sponsor the event. A full lunch will be served and admission is $10. To attend or learn more about this event, call the Small Business Solutions Center’s Danielle Cipolloni at 610-723-1229.

The Cure for the Social Media Skeptic

Posted by Katie Noonan

A great article from Business Insider highlights a challenge we are all too familiar with at Furia Rubel. All of our employees engage in social media and have for a few years now. However, occasionally through speaking engagements or meetings with perspective business we come across the social media skeptic. They're easy to recognize. They may scoff, hem and haw or scarier still- don a blank expression when the topic of social media comes up.

If you should come across a skeptic, here are some excellent ways to ease them into social media engagement.

1. Remove Barriers. Lisa Barrone of Outspoken Media encourages employers to alleviate employees' social media anxiety by taking barriers out of their way. Barriers could be anything from having to learn to use new tools to manage social media like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, or adding yet another task to their all ready busy day. It's important to first identify these potential barriers then determine how to remove them. For example, if time is an issue, Barrone suggests allowing employees to blog, tweet or connect from home instead.

2. One at a time. Personally, when I joined Twitter I found it very overwhelming. I considered myself fairly tech savvy and having used Facebook since its infancy, I assumed I could get the hang of Twitter quickly. I immediately started following lots of people and trying to engage. Over time though, I realized that I needed to sit back and observe the kinds of conversations taking place and the way people were interacting. Each social media network is like a neighborhood in a city or region of the country. It takes time to get used to how each looks, feels, and how people act, talk and perhaps most importantly, get annoyed by. So have your employees take one at a time. I would encourage employers to identify which social media network is most useful to employees. Law firms or financial service providers may opt for the conservative, business-friendly LinkedIn first, whereas a consumer services company may choose Twitter because they want to improve their customer service and start interacting directly with customers.

3. Provide Guidelines. I could not agree more with Barrone's suggestion to provide employees with guidelines for social media engagement. If members of your staff are hesitant to say or do the wrong thing when social networking, that may prevent them from engaging. If there is a social media policy in place, they'll have a better idea of what they can and can't say. No one wants to put their job in jeopardy by saying something in a public forum that could get them or the company in trouble.

4. Provide Resources. A social media policy is a great example of a resource that employees need to have in order to use social media. Other resources could be an online forum where employees can ask questions, share strategies or read about new tools or emerging social media platforms. Barrone suggests setting up a Wiki. I would also add a weekly email, call or meeting could be beneficial.

5. Success stories. The best way to stop a skeptic dead in their tracks is to provide them with a social media success story. There are plenty out there, like the Old Spice Man, Zappos, or Delta's new ticket purchasing campaign on Facebook. All you have to do is pick up the newspaper and find a recent example of a company or brand using social media to boost their bottom line to see that it works.

With proper training, support and guidelines, even the most skeptical employee can and will engage in social media. Listen to their concerns and questions, encourage them to share their good ideas and let their personalities come through in their social media profiles, tweets and blog posts. Ultimately, the success of a company's social media engagement hinges on their employees' comfort, knowledge of and ingenuity with this valuable tool.

Photo credit: http://blog.hubspot.com/

Will your Digital Dirt Come Back to Haunt you?

Written by Amanda Walsh

Just about everyone nowadays has an online presence or has “Google-ed” themselves to find out what type of digital dirt is out there about them.

In a recent Wall Street Journal online piece, "Google and The Search for the Future" editors had the opportunity to sit down and talk with Google CEO, Eric Schmidt about his thoughts on the future of the company and Internet search as a whole.

Among many interesting points in the article, one that particularly stood out was Schmidt’s views of privacy and a prediction “that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends' social media sites.”

As technology continues to grow and more and more people are sharing information via websites like Facebook and Twitter, Schmidt raises food for thought on the implications of so much of other peoples’ personal information being available at our fingertips. Will we as a society learn to turn a blind eye to binge drinking photos of a politician that resurface 20 years later? Will raunchy videos of partying on YouTube be overlooked when a professional becomes success in a Fortune 500 company? When will Internet information, be it photos or videos or tweets and Facebook postings from one’s past be taken lightly and when will it be seen as crossing the professional line? Will there come a day when aspiring professionals need to change their names to avoid their Internet dirt past?

Furia Rubel’s CEO Gina Rubel has always been a strong advocate for being careful about what information you put out on the Internet. She constantly encourages clients to Google themselves to get an idea of what is out there about them. Now more than ever it is important to keep her wise advice in mind because what is put out on the Internet, will most likely be searchable and found 10, 20, even 50 years down the road. What you do in your youth may come back to haunt you.

(photo credit: http://techvins.wordpress.com/)

City of Brotherly Love- No Love for Bloggers

Posted by Katie Noonan

Philadelphia is taking some heat this week after an article published in Philadelphia City Paper addressed the ramifications of the city's business privilege tax on bloggers who call the city home.

The Business Privilege Tax is an effort by the city of Philadelphia to garner revenue from individuals who engage in "activity for profit." Accordingly, bloggers who reside within city limits and have either real or potential profit from blogging are subject to pay a privilege license of either a one-time fee of $300, or $50 annually, in addition to a percentage of gross receipts and/or taxable net income, depending on the nature of the business, according to Mashable's Christina Warren.

The privilege tax has long been a source of controversy in Philadelphia, but seems especially preposterous in this case because of the potential it creates to tax individuals who make little to nothing from a recreational activity like blogging. Ostensibly, those who use Google Adsense on their blogs and make about 10 bucks for doing so could be subject to the tax.

Moreover, president and CEO of Furia Rubel, Gina Rubel raises the point- what if someone doesn't advertise on their blog, but uses it as a platform to position his or herself as a thought-leader in an industry. Doing so would undoubtedly create the potential for "real or potential profit," would the city attempt to tax that? It's a gray area, but they are individuals who would stand to gain a lot more from blogging than the person who blogs about restaurants they visit or their views on the Eagles preseason and uses Google Adsense on his or her blog.

It's a controversial move on the part of the city of Philadelphia, but what do you think- is it as unfair as some bloggers say it is? Feel free to leave your comments here or share your thoughts on Twitter @FuriaRubel.