Marketing Small Businesses With Twitter

For many mom-and-pop shops with no ad budget, Twitter has become their sole means of marketing. It is far easier to set up and update a Twitter account than to maintain a Web page. And because small-business owners tend to work at the cash register, not in a cubicle in the marketing department, Twitter’s intimacy suits them well.

“We think of these social media tools as being in the realm of the sophisticated, multiplatform marketers like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, but a lot of these supersmall businesses are gravitating toward them because they are accessible, free and very simple,” said Greg Sterling, an analyst who studies the Internet’s influence on shopping and local businesses.

Small businesses typically get more than half of their customers through word of mouth, he said, and Twitter is the digital manifestation of that. Twitter users broadcast messages of up to 140 characters in length, and the culture of the service encourages people to spread news to friends in their own network. (By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER, The New York Times, July 22, 2009)

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Launching Startups in Retirement

For 15 years, Dorothy Atkins kept a diary during her long train rides back and forth to work as a project manager at a large San Francisco bank. “I always used commuting time to write out my hopes and desires,” Atkins says. She also did a lot of drawing, illustrating “pearls of wisdom” imparted from friends and family, sometimes even making a card for a friend from the scribbles.

When Atkins was offered a buyout in 2002 at age 60, she was caught off guard. “The package scared me to death. I had not planned for not working,” she says. After meeting with human resources to discuss her options, she went to Nordstrom (JWN) and took comfort from a little shell-shocked shopping, buying a pair of shoes and some Godiva chocolate. Later that week, after reality had sunk in, she consulted her wish book and realized she wanted to turn her doodles into greeting cards. (By Lauren Young, BusinessWeek, November 13, 2009)

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Mobile Marketing & Advertising 2009 Report Highlights

When compared to other forms of advertising (print, Internet, TV, radio, direct mail), mobile is likely growing at a much faster rate because it is considered more cost effective, personalized, and results-driven. Mobile Marketing & Advertising 2009: Challenges and Opportunities examines the current mobile marketing and advertising market, evaluating methods companies are using to effectively leverage it as a platform to enhance brand awareness and increase sales effectiveness. The report examines the leading suppliers to the mobile marketing industry and analyzes how their products are impacting the way consumers opt-in to cell phone-delivered marketing messages and increasingly use their phones to search for, and even purchase, products and service. (Posted on November 3, 2009 by The Mobile Marketer)

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Northern Kentucky/Greater Cincinnati by the Numbers

• NKU Index: Sluggish Economic Recovery Predicted NKY/Greater Cincinnati
• CEAD Adds New Privately-Owned Residential Building Permit Data to its Website
• Cincinnati MSA Continues to See a Decline in Building Permits Authorized
• What is my home worth?
• I Need to Know: How much to pay my employees
Sluggish Economic Recovery Predicted for NKY/Greater Cincinnati
By Feng Guo (guof1@nku.edu) and Janet Harrah (harrahj1@nku.edu)
In a continuing trend, the NKU Current Conditions Index declined in August, down 0.5
percentage points, while the NKU Leading Economic Indicators Index improved for the fifth
consecutive month, up 0.2 percentage points in August. These trends are similar to those seen
nationally. Even as real gross domestic product – the output of goods and services produced
by the labor and property located in the United States – increased at an annual rate of 3.5
percent in the third quarter of

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The Rise of the ‘Homepreneur’

More than half of all U.S. businesses are based at home. These companies often are dismissed as quaint hobbyist ventures, but new research suggests that’s a mistake. An estimated 6.6 million home-based enterprises provide at least half of their owners’ household income. Together these “homepreneurs” employ one in 10 private-sector workers, and by many measures they’re just as competitive as their counterparts in commercial spaces.

Ask Stephen Labuda, the 35-year-old president of Agency3, a Web development firm he runs from his home in Cambridge, Mass. A former programmer at Deutsche Bank (DB), Labuda started building Web sites as a side job in 2003 and took the venture full time three years later. Agency3’s revenue is in the millions, and Labuda is about to hire his fifth employee, who will work remotely, like the rest of the staff and the slew of contractors he taps. “I’m not intending to go rent office space,” he says. (By John Tozzi, BusinessWeek, November 4, 2009)

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Two Kentucky High-Tech Companies Awarded Funding for Expansions

FRANKFORT, Ky. ‘ The Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority (KEDFA) awarded two high-tech Kentucky companies, Louisville Bioscience, Inc., and Laboratory and BioDiagnostics, LLC, (LabDx), state funding. The companies are anticipated to create a combined 36 new high-tech jobs at an average annual salary of over $64,000. (Manafacturing & Techonology eJournal, October 29, 2009)

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Small Business Crunches Numbers

Small business has fought the health-care bill as too costly. That made Saturday’s vote bitter to many of the nation’s roughly 30 million such entrepreneurs, if welcome to some.

“With unemployment at a 26-year high, the punitive employer mandates and atrocious new taxes will force small business owners to eliminate jobs and freeze expansion plans at a time when our nation’s economy needs small business to thrive,” Susan Eckerly, senior vice president of one of the most powerful small-business lobbying groups, the National Federation of Independent Business, said in a statement Saturday.(By EMILY MALTBY and RAYMUND FLANDEZ. The Wall Street Journal, NOVEMBER 9, 2009)

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Blackhawk Composites to Start-up in Morgantown, Kentucky

FRANKFORT, Ky. Blackhawk Composites, Inc., a start-up manufacturer of advanced aerospace composite parts, will begin manufacturing operations in Butler County. The project entails the creation of 20 new jobs initially, growing to 30 within the first year, and a more than $1.5 million investment in the Commonwealth.

Established in September 2009, the newly formed Blackhawk Composites will lease a 40,000 square-foot facility to manufacture advanced aerospace composite parts for Cessna Caravan aircraft cowls, the part of the aircraft that covers the engine. The Cessna Caravan is a large single engine turboprop used for executive and cargo transport, as well as other commercial uses such as a jump platform for skydiving. These aircraft are found in increasing numbers worldwide.(Manafacturing & Techonology, October 29, 2009)

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Small Business Gets Breaks in House Financial-Overhaul Bill

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers are adding sweeping exemptions to financial-regulation legislation that would benefit small businesses, a move that is irking some consumer groups and liberal lawmakers who contend that could compromise the effectiveness of the overhaul.

Bills currently under consideration in the House exclude thousands of community banks from oversight by the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency, and transfer oversight of small investment advisers to state regulators. The latest move came Tuesday, when a House panel voted to exempt small public companies from complying with a provision of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law, which was passed after a series of corporate scandals earlier this decade.(By KARA SCANNELL and DAMIAN PALETTA, The Wall Street Journal, NOVEMBER 4, 2009)

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Glasgow Kentucky’s Dana Commercial Vehicle Looking To Invest Millions in Upgrades

Dana is proposing a project consisting of technology upgrades, including automation and robotics, transitioning from antiquated equipment with an anticipated project investment of $6,697,500. This project would consolidate out-of-state operations into the Glasgow facility. The company anticipates retaining the existing 217 current fulltime jobs paying average hourly wages of $19.85, excluding benefits and creating an additional 155 new full-time jobs.

Kentucky approves the negotiated maximum incentive amount of $6,697,500.