Cry Over the Election

Yesterday I had six panicked e-mail and telephone messages from business owners despondent over the results of the presidential election.  Some of these people won't even be impacted by increasing taxes.  They don't make nearly enough money.  In fact Mitt Romney would probably consider them part of the 47%.  All they know is that they have been told to panic over the President's reelection.

Here's some free advice.  The election's over.  It's time to put on your big boy panties and move on.  Shortly, I'll have some advice for continuing to prosper in a increasing tax rate environment.  But first, I have a few more paragraphs of ranting to put you through.

Here's a message to my fellow Republicans.  There will NEVER be another Republican president until we realize that the country is fifty percent female.  The vast majority of women are pro choice or anti anti abortion.  Use whatever dumb ass label you like.  Women will not even seriously consider voting for a pro-life or anti abortion candidate - more dumb shit labels.  Abortion was a wonderful political topic for the twentieth century.  But now we are in the twenty-first century.  The party needs to move to this century as well.  This topic is settled, because more than half of the country favors abortion.  That is how a democracy works.  You don't always get your way.

Here's another hint for my fellow Republicans.  We have to have a reasonable position on immigration.  We have no problem paying illegal aliens to mow our lawns.  We just don't want them voting.  Not surprisingly, a lot of people, apparently a majority, don't find this reasonable.  We need to stop deciding who we want to exclude and start considering whom we should be recruiting for citizenship.  Again, a little living in this century would help.  My wife read this and pointed accusingly at me.

While our beloved Republican Party drones on debating topics from the last century, we miss opportunities to improve business conditions.  Let's discuss the FCC for a moment.  FCC stands for Freaking Censorship Commission.  No I cannot bring myself to use the real "F" word, but feel free to insert it.  They are far more concerned about whether a Howard Stern clone shouts "penis" on the radio than they are about the quality and price of our cell phone service. 

We should be pressuring them to separate selling cell phone service from selling cell phones.  The service would improve and the price of both would go down.  We also need to pressure them to make wi-fi and broad band ubiquitous across the country.  These are issues that truly affect business growth in THIS century.

 

Enough ranting.  We have the government we deserve.  I would like to blame the Democrats for that, but we are more to blame.  We let the religious whack job wing of the Republican Party choose our candidates.  And they lose - deservedly.

 

Here are some thoughts on continuing to prosper in a higher tax environment.  First, quit obsessing over taxes.  The most important part of running a small business will still be earning a profit.  Yes, you will keep less for your efforts, but the effort you spend worrying about taxes is effort better spent growing your revenue.

Second, do everything you can to defer income until we get a new tax regime.  For the past few years, I have been advising against section 1031 exchanges.  A 1031 exchange is the exchange of one asset, where you have a gain, for another asset.  When you do that, you get to defer the taxes on the disposition of the first asset until you sell the second one.  This used to be a popular real estate strategy to defer taxes.

For the past few years, I have recommended against this strategy, because the long term capital gains tax rate was only 15%.  We are now almost certain the capital gains tax rate will increase in 2013.  If you did an exchange in 2012, you gave up the 15% tax rate in favor of a higher tax rate later.  That wasn't a particularly bright strategy.  Undoubtedly the clients, who didn't take my advice, will call to bitch at me soon.

Starting in 2013, section 1031 exchanges now make a lot of sense.  If the capital gains tax rate goes to 28% or more, why not gamble that rates may be lower in four years.  If nothing else, the time value of money will make the taxes hurt a little less in the future even if the tax rate doesn't go down again.

Third, C corporations may come back into favor for small businesses. I'm not certain about this.  So stay tuned for more on this as we know more about what will happen to corporate tax rates.  There has been a of of talk about decreasing corporate tax rates and removing the incredible array of special interest deductions and credits that large corporations use to basically pay no taxes.

I have recommended against C corporations since before dinosaurs roamed the earth, which was only 5,000 years ago if you believe Sarah Palin.  The double taxation on profits, even with a 15% tax on dividends, made S corporations a better tax choice.  With lower corporate tax rates, the math may change my recommendation.  As you know, I'm all about the math.  There may also be some special provisions to lower the taxes on the sales of small C corporations.  I'll be certain to let you know as this develops.  It's the least I can do since you are kind enough to put up with my rants.  I will have more suggestions as we know more about tax law in 2013 and beyond.

On Election Day, I tried to impose my solution to the immigration problem.  I stood in front of my polling place and passed out algebra tests.  That didn't make me popular.  Of course, all of the great social leaders in history, like Gandhi and Reagan, weren't successful at first.  Fortunately the Loudoun County jail has good internet access.  Otherwise, this never would have been written.  They have a great breakfast here, better than most of the breakfast places in California.  All of the breakfast places in California have "Pain" in the name.  "Pain" is French for "Let's rip off the stupid Americans."

 As always, thank for reading.  For real tax and accounting advice, please visit our main S&K web site at www.skcpas.com.  Until next time, let's do it to them, before they do it to us.

Pinterest Helps Garner Big Business for Small Businesses

Social marketing with Pinterest for your small business

Throughout the internet, imagery seems to be the most popular source of interest. People enjoy an iconic meme or a photo of the latest hot-topic. However, by considering the bigger picture, the prospect of visualization is presented. It’s easy to use and can easily influence a wide audience with minimal investment.

Pinterest has been an underestimated audience source for the business industry. Perhaps it’s because of the fact that its design was oriented around individuals sharing images they like. However, it has since grown far beyond that limitation.

Growth of the Pinterest network is extraordinary

More businesses are expanding their use for different social networks, especially the larger industries. This, of course, is a continuing trend that has opened up these industries to a larger network of individuals, contacts, and new opportunities. This radical growth has thus made Pinterest one of the leading opportunities for word of mouth marketing, by presenting an already established network that is ready to be utilized by businesses of all size. 

Pinterest is basically organized around visual appeal- the picture takes center stage and the message is displayed with simplicity so that it doesn’t distract from the purpose. Comments are applicable, but aren’t necessarily the primary intention of the social medium. Instead, it’s more about getting the attention of the audience and introducing yourself. By linking appropriately and with the right incentive, Pinterest allows you to guide the audience to primary sites, such as your webpage,LinkedIn site (with a professional profile), blogs, and other methods by which you increase your network. 

Gaining from imagery

While some social sites can be difficult to utilize or even navigate, this visual site focuses on being simple and relatively easy to use. The “Pin it” browser allows you to pin anything to your account without having to access the site or sign in. As you surf through the web, interesting imagery can pop up, such as statistical graphs or topics that apply to your business, in which case you can simply press a button and save the material. This helps the user avoid wading through the sign-in hoopla, a distraction that so many social networks tend to employ. 

“This is also a great site where you can simplify technical data that readers might find difficult to understand, such as business analysis. Information in general is often simplified through visualization, making it applicable to even the most technical fields.“ [tweet this].

Additionally, people tend to crave the taste of change regularly. This is perhaps why there are always new trends coming up, and perhaps why it’s also important to be conversant with the latest "hot topic", before everyone else. Social sites like MySpace and Facebook have in essence grown older. While their application is still viable, the introductions of sites like Pinterest generally possess a trending appeal which grabs the audience’s attention. 

"Social networks offer a wide range of marketing benefits, but not all businesses can utilize their communication outlets the same". [tweet this].

Pinterest relies on visuals, which means that your small business needs to be able to associate itself with something visual. In employing Pinterest, creativity is often essential, and it’s up to each individual to apply this in order to make their business appealing.

Beware Yelping Customers

I am reading the book, The Greatest Show on Earth, By Richard Dawkins.  Dawkins is a noted atheist and evolutionary biologist.  He has helped to clarify my thoughts on solving the U.S. immigration problem.  In a previous post, I espoused using a basic algebra test to qualify people for U.S. citizenship.  My proposal now includes testing all eighteen year olds.  Pass the test, and you become a legal adult with all rights and privileges attached.  Fail the test, and we ship your ass right out of the country.

This test would apply to everyone even if you are related to both George Washington and Abe Lincoln.  Every ten years, we would all be retested until age seventy.  Then you get to retire in total mathematical ignorance.

Around the world, anyone who shows up at a U.S. embassy and passes the algebra test gets a free ticket to the U.S and citizenship.  This is true social evolution and survival of the fittest - at least in terms of math ability.  My name is Frank Stitely, and I approved this message.

Last week, after I returned from my California conference, I had a phone message from a doctor looking for a forensic accountant for an arbitration case.  A forensic accountant reviews transactions looking for fraud.  Since we don't provide forensic accounting services, I referred him to a competitor, who does provide these services.  When I returned the doctor's call, I didn't have the phone number of my referral available.  So I told the doctor, I would e-mail him the number as soon as I could find it.

I fired up my Google machine (Tony Kornheiser's term) and searched for the name.  The  very first reference for this CPA came from 2002, so much for Google's vaunted relevance algorithm.  The reference was a complaint against the CPA.  I decided to research the complaint.  On Google, there was another reference down the page from yelp.com with another complaint.  I felt I needed to do some due diligence before making the referral.

Please keep in mind that I view a competitor the way I view toilet paper.  It is something I smear with shit and flush.  Nonetheless, I took a look at the complaint from 2002.  It was from a person, who had accepted the CPA's free consultation offer.  The man was disappointed that the CPA would not redo his tax return for free at the meeting.  He seemed to think that a free consultation involved free services.

We offer free consultations as well.  So I have a lot of sympathy for the CPA.  After all, just because you can walk into a car dealer's showroom for free doesn't mean you can drive away in a car for free.  The guy, who wrote the complaint wanted free service.  I don't blame him for asking, but the CPA biz is a business.  We get paid for what we do.  I filed a rebuttal to the complaint, but the site doesn't really allow for outside comments on the situation.  You have to be one of the parties to the complaint.  By law, the CPA involved couldn't respond to the post as it would reveal confidential client information just by responding.

I then checked into the second complaint.  This complaint was from person complaining on yelp.com about having to pay for two amended tax returns that had been prepared originally by the CPA.  If you know nothing about the income tax preparation business, you might conclude that paying for an amended return is unfair.  After all, the CPA should have prepared the return correctly in the first place.

However, I know differently.  Every year, we get notices from the IRS for clients where the IRS has information we were never given when we where engaged to prepare the returns.  Obviously, if you don't give us the information, we can't put it on the tax returns.  If we have to file amended returns in this situation, we bill for them.  Of course, if we screwed up the returns, we prepare the amended returns for free.  Again, legally, there was no way for the CPA to legally respond to this complaint.

From reading these two complaints, you might reasonable conclude the CPA is real jackass.  However, there are three problems with these sites for complainers.  First, the sites are inherently biased by something known in statistics as the nonresponse bias.  This bias arises from the tendency of customers to complain about services, but not post when they are satisfied.  Thus, seeing four complaints about a business but only one praising the business does not mean that 80% of the company's customers are dissatisfied.  Statistically, it means nothing at all.

Second,  many if not most businesses, cannot reveal the details behind a customer's complaint.  Thus, you see one side, almost always biased, of the dispute.  Do you want your service providers to post details of your purchases on the internet?  If you bitch, you should be fine with full disclosure.  Likely you are not fine with it.

Third, complaint sites, such as yelp.com, reserve the right to not publish posts, both good and bad.  They explain that they are trying to sift through false complaints posted by competitors and fake compliments posted by companies.  While they are correct that both fake complaints and compliments occur, what this really reveals is a basic lack of validity in their results.  The sites are statistically useless.

What makes the two jackasses mentioned above brave enough to post ridiculous online complaints is the lack of any personal risk.  What we need is a site called www.suckassclients.com.  Service providers, who have been ripped off by idiot customers, could blacklist the customers here.  If you bitch to Yelp, you just might get blacklisted and not be able to find another service provider, who will take you as a customer.  That would provide some balance to the complaint process.  Yes, my attorney friends, I am aware of the inherent legal problems with such a site.  So if you see such a site, it wasn't me - really.  I know you don't believe me.

By way of full disclosure, I must note that we have had one complaint on Yelp and one positive comment.  I would love to provide the full story behind the complaint, but I cannot for the legal reasons mentioned above.

Here's what you should conclude from this post.  Complaint sites are useless at anything beyond making you feel good about complaining.  You can take two really effective actions against a bad vendor.  First, just don't go back.  Second, tell your friends.  I don't mean your friends on Facebook and Twitter.  I mean your friends in the real world.  When I see someone complain on Facebook, my view of the complainer  goes down.  Complain two or three times publicly, and we all know you are a serial complainer - like me.

If someone offered you $12K for your vote in the presidential election, would you take the money?  This is the question I posed to my wife, Laura, at dinner tonight.  I estimate that the reelection of President Obama will cost us approximately $12K in additional taxes in 2013 and likely considerably more than that in the years beyond 2013.

Thus a vote for Mitt Romney is essentially the same as being paid $12K for my vote.  The valuation professional in me is screaming that the real amount is the present value of all the increased future year taxes I will pay.  I'm not in a math mood tonight.  So I am not going to calculate this exactly, but the number is somewhere around $70K.  I'm taking the money.

Thanks for reading!  As always, for real tax and accounting advice, please visit our main S&K web site at www.skcpas.com.  Until next time, let's do it to them before they do it to us.

An Examination of the Social Demographics for Various Major Networks

Social networks have taken on a great role in our lives, and a number of major networks have established themselves over a few years. It is interesting to examine the kinds of social demographic that major networks such as Facebook, Google +, Twitter, YouTube and others have.

Why is it interesting to learn these demographic facts? Well, if you are a marketer, it always helps to know about the people you are advertising to. If you are not a marketer, you are probably visiting certain networks for some other reason. Knowing the kinds of users each network has will give you a greater understanding of where you can connect with people who have goals/interests similar to yours. Below is a brief examination of the people who frequent Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

"Social networks allow you to find and connect with people who have goals/interests similar to yours" [tweet this].

Social Networks and Their Demographics

GENDER

Google Plus is the best social media site to promote gadgets, software and other products for males.  Given that more than 70% of its users are males (40% of them are single), products that will help with meeting or attracting ladies will be easier to sell.

Pinterest users are mostly (more than 80%) women. These women have been identified to be highly interested in sharing their knowledge and ideas about crafts, gifts, hobbies, leisure, interior design, fashion etc. Social media marketers are advised to open an account and promote their products in Pinterest if their product is for creative and fashionable women.

AGE

Twitter has a lot of captive buyers for you if your product is for 25 year olds or older. Whoever is composing tweets (messages) for marketing should be witty since there is a limit of 140 characters per tweet. In addition, more than 40 % of Twitter users access their accounts using their mobile phones so products related to mobile phones would be interesting to twitter users.

EDUCATION

As you can probably tell, LinkedIn is a network filled with academically-accomplished people who have a lot of money to spend. Many of them are businessmen and businesswomen. Studies show that more than 60% of LinkedIn users use the site for business. So, whether you want to make connections or help grow your business (or anything else business-related), LinkedIn is perhaps the best place to start.

INCOME

Considering the diversity of Facebook users, this site is a great venue for all social media marketers to connect with current and possible clients. Also, since around 200 million of their users access the site using their mobile phones, it is a great site to promote mobile phone devices, accessories and applications.  

YouTube’s social demographics are harder to get a clear or precise picture of; for instance, the base age demographic is said to be between 18 and 54 years (a very wide range), and 70% of the website's traffic comes from outside the U.S.

As a result, if you are going to be using YouTube to reach out to specific social demographics, you'll have a good chance of succeeding. There are millions upon millions of people of all ages, from all kinds of backgrounds and parts of the world, earning different incomes; from spoiled ten-year-olds to wise elders who just learned to use the computer. You'll find it's a true mixing pot of demographics.

However, one thing can be certain, and it's that most users go to YouTube to watch short videos and be entertained, meaning many users are looking for short thrills and don't have much patience, at least not when navigating that website. So make sure your videos are short and entertaining.

Conclusion:

Based on the above data, social network users come from all walks of life, and of varying ages. One can safely conclude that there is a huge pool of prospect clients for all social media marketers. All they (marketers) need to do is identify the right site for their product to ensure that they are promoting their product to the right clients.

Sources:

Mashable

YouTube Analytics

ReelSEO

Facebook Newsroom

Venture Beat

Amzini

Slideshare

HubSpot Blog

Ignite Social Media

Let Your Accounting Software Run Your Business

In my last post I debunked the myth that women are paid only 80% of what men earn. In this post, I will convince you that, if you believe in equal work for equal pay, 80% is way too much. Recently Laura and I took a trip to California. That will be the subject of another post, once I calm down.

Here is how I packed for the trip or for any trip. I have a packing system. First, I get showered, dressed, and ready to go myself. Then I begin packing. I pack the way I get dressed in the morning. First I pack underwear, then pants and shirts, then socks and handkerchiefs. Next I pack my electronics. This is a very important step. I need to be certain I'm not missing any cords I will need to recharge my iPhone or laptop. Finally, I pack toiletries and prescriptions. I have another set of procedures for how I pack these, but I'll spare you that in the interest of time. I close my suitcase and laptop bag. I am done, total elapsed time, one hour from shower to the door.

On the other hand, Laura spent two hours the night before the trip packing and almost two more to get ready the next day. Just before we left, she discovered she hadn't packed her bras and panties. Four hours and she hadn't packed the first items she needs each morning.

Let's compare our results. I spent one hour packing and Laura spent four hours. For those of you, who are great at math, she spent four times as much time as I did. In other words to accomplish the same work, I needed 25% of the time she spent. Based on this scientific productivity study, women should earn only 25% of what men earn. I am in favor for equal pay for equal work. You should be too. These study results are accurate to within 2%.

Does your accounting software work for you, or do you work for your accounting software? Do you find yourself entering data, or hiring someone to enter data, that then has to be reentered somewhere else to be useful? When you're traveling, do you have to lug around ten pounds of laptop and find a high speed internet connection to stay connected to your accounting data? Do you worry that, with the next storm of the century, years of customer sales information will be flushed into the nearest ocean as your file server floats down the street? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are working for your accounting software and not the other way around.

Fortunately for you, in the past year, accounting software technology has moved to the cloud. This change is bigger than any change to accounting technology since Y2K. Moving your accounting system to the cloud will make your bookkeeper more efficient, make your data easily accessible from anywhere in the world, and ensure your data will be available even if your office is bombed by a disgruntled employee.

Moving your accounting system to the cloud will make your bookkeeper more efficient by reducing or eliminating duplicative data entry. She will no longer have to enter data in multiple systems or places. In fact, in many cases, there will be no data to enter at all. The technical term for this is “zero data entry.” Zero data entry means using data for your accounting system that was produced by someone else. Cloud based accounting solutions accomplish zero data entry by accessing credit card and bank transactions directly from your bank. Very shortly, you will have access to data from your vendors and customers as well.

Wave Accounting Software (www.waveaccounting.com) is a fine example of zero data entry at work. Wave connects with thousands of banks to grab your banking transactions, such as credit card charges, electronic payments, and deposits, and enters them automatically in your accounting system. You can get a profit & loss statement with absolutely zero data entry on your part. Best of all Wave is free. I wouldn't recommend it if you need sophisticated internal control or process lots of receivables or payables. However, for sole proprietors using simple cash basis accounting, Wave is a great solution for getting your records ready for your CPA. In fact, you can give your CPA access directly to your data, no more exchanging thumb drives or CD's.

Moving your accounting data to the cloud will give you instant access to your data any place you can get an internet connection, and you don't even need broadband. Cellular access or Wi-Fi through tablet devices works fine. The reason you don't need a lightning fast broadband connection is that all of the processing occurs in the cloud. Your device, whether a desktop, laptop, or tablet computing device, just accesses the data. You can process customer orders and take credit card payments while in your customer's office or at the beach. I would add you can do this in a strip joint, but writing that just seems like cheap titillation. Trust me, I have not tried this. That's my attorney tells me to say.

QuickBooks online edition is a perfect example of having the full functionality of your accounting system on an iPad. QuickBooks has robust accounts receivable and payable capacity. You get access to all of that functionality anywhere or on any device where you can get a web connection. Previously, to use hand held devices to enter customer orders, you entered the orders on a crippled version of your accounting software that would reside on your device. Then you had to physically connect the device to your desktop computer and run a synchronization procedure. Now you can enter orders in real time directly into your system. Your shipping department can process your orders and give you a confirmation before you leave your customer's office.

Finally, moving your accounting data to the cloud makes your data more secure. That seems counter-intuitive. How can opening up your data to the world wide web make your data more secure? There are three main security risks to your accounting data stored on your server.

The first risk is physical security. The biggest risk to your data is theft. I don't mean theft by someone hacking into your server. I mean someone walking out the door with your file server – a break in. In the cloud, you don't have a server in your office. You only have workstations, and even your workstations have no data on them to steal.

The second security risk is the physical safety of your data in case your office floods or catches fire. Maybe you have an off-site backup. Maybe it will actually be restore-able. I can't tell you how many times clients have called me, because we had the last known good backup of their accounting data. They tried restoring their backups and found the backups either never happened or didn't complete properly.

The third security risk to your data is unauthorized access from outside your office - hacking. If you have any computer connected to the internet, you are vulnerable. There are plenty of free programs available to determine your vulnerability to hackers. I guarantee your vulnerability is orders of magnitude higher than you suppose.

Your accounting data in the cloud is safer than your office server for all three of the security risks. Your cloud data is safe from both physical theft and destruction. Your cloud provider does your backups for you. They know how. Their up time is measured is “nines.” Four nines is the gold standard for cloud providers. That means your data will be accessible 99.99% of the time, far better than with your office server.

Finally, your data in the cloud is more secure from hacking. The major accounting system cloud providers undergo rigorous testing and are graded on the effectiveness of their security systems. The gold standard for cloud security is “SOC2.” The testing to achieve this level of certification involves both the physical security of your data as well as vulnerability to hacking. There is no perfect guarantee of security in any situation. Cloud security isn't perfect, but it doesn't have to be. It only has to be better than what you have. It is.

Here's a message to the douche bag in the Obama campaign commercial who complains that after he and his cohorts were fired by Romney, the company was worth $100 million more. What does that say about you???? It says you're a turd to be flushed. Get a job and earn a living. Anytime a company is worth more AFTER you are fired, you weren't worth much, probably not even the water to flush you. Mitt Romney is nicer than I am. For $100 million, I would not only fire the dude, I'd beat him to death with a baseball bat. Hopefully, this guy didn't reproduce. We need to let evolution do its job.

As always, thanks for reading. If you want real tax and accounting advice, please visit our main S&K site at www.skcpas.com. We have made a whole bunch of improvements to our client center in the past week. Please take the tour.

Until next time, let's do it to them, before they do it to us.

Is your blog losing out on a huge second audience because of fear?

Tweet

There is a long standing controversy over whether or not it's OK to duplicate your blog article content on another website. The argument between search engine optimization (SEO) experts goes like this.

SEO guy- "Never duplicate your blog content on another website, Google will penalize you."
SEO girl- "When we were dating you were always such a fraidy-cat. Google doesn't penalize you unless you are trying to game the system or steal someone else's content. Just look at all the news syndication websites out there. Do you think Google is penalizing all of them?"
SEO guy- "Well, you,....you... "
SEO girl- "Wait, what's that music I hear? Are you listening to the new Taylor Swift album? Are you sure you're a man?"

Will Google penalize me if I duplicate my content?
Duplicating your blog content simply means that you take your blog article, publish it on your own site, and then post it somewhere else as well. Google doesn't particularly like duplicate content. But then again, I have serious doubts about whether or not they care to do much about it. Instead, what Google is simply trying to avoid is, for example, if you searched for articles about red swingline staplers, you don't want more than one search result that leads you to two identical articles. That's not an ideal search experience. But Google doesn't need to penalize you for posting your blog article in two different places. Instead Google simply chooses which version of your content to display, and then skips the other.

What are the options if you are afraid to duplicate your content?
Some SEO experts suggest that a duplicate posting is OK if you change a few things in your article so that it doesn't get seen as a duplicate. Suggestions include:

• Rewrite the title
• Change paragraphs to bullets
• Change advice into questions
• Change images / ALT text
• Mix and match content from a similar article
• Rearrange the first and last paragraph
• Switch from Maxwell House to real coffee

Other SEO experts suggest placing a link back to your original article and adding canonical tags (that's tech-speak, sorry) in the code. It has been suggested that if you first post your article on your site and then quickly link to it from Google+, Google might actually index the article very quickly. The theory being if the post on your site is the first one found, Google may lend more weight to it. After that, you can post your content to a second site. For more detail about the suggestions, check out the lively discussion we had on LinkedIn.

What does Google say about duplicate content?
Let's stop all this whining and shenanigans. Google themselves wrote an article about the topic. Here's snippet from the article:

"If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you'd prefer. However, it is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article. You can also ask those who use your syndicated material to use the noindex meta tag to prevent search engines from indexing their version of the content."

What does Jeff Bullas do?

Jeff Bullas is a hugely popular blogger with 250,000 followers. That doesn't make him an SEO expert, but I'm thinking he probably knows what he's doing. Jeff duplicates his blog posts. I took a look at the last three articles he posted on his blog. He then duplicated those same articles on Business2Community.com .I compared the two versions to see if they were identical. On average, Jeff only changed five words in each article. That's it. Just five words. In articles as long as his, changing five words hardly constitutes a rewrite, and thus I am betting Google sees these as duplicates. Is Jeff being penalized for his duplication? I sure doubt it. Is Jeff crying in his Uncle Tobys VitaBrits Weeties (the Australian version of Wheaties cereal) about how his SEO is in the dunny (Austrailian word for toilet)? Hell no he's not.

What do I do?
I duplicate my content. Why? First of all, I want the content that I write to appear on my own blog. When I write an article, I want my readers to read it on my site. My social sharing links point readers back to my site. Readers share the link back to my site on their social networks. I want all that SEO pointing to my site. And I want my readers to find other articles on my site. And then, after all of that, I want a whole new set of eyeballs to see my content. That's why I post it on another site. The other website contains my bio which links back to my blog. Since Google knows I own my blog, and my bio appears at the bottom of the duplicated content, Google can tell I've just re-posted the content. I'm not breaking the law. Interpol isn't going to raid my swanky pad and confiscate my laptop and my fancy coffee. Instead, Google is just going to index the article on my blog and not index the article posted on the second site.

So what say you? Just how wrong do you think I am? Do you duplicate your content?

When You Represent A Company

Outsourcing your social marketing strategy

Outsourcing is a very common practice for businesses everywhere. Whether it’s analyzing data or public relations, resources and time can be managed far more effectively by utilizing the services of other agencies that can effectively manage certain portions of your business.

However, outsourcing does not come without a cost- both financially and functionally. Specifically regarding public relations, such as social account handling and customer service, it is necessary that both you and your outsourced agency understand each other and communicate effectively. 

Be clear

The most important thing is that your outsourced agency represents your business with clarity- who is who and who said what? When it comes to social networks and associated communications with the public, it can be difficult to decide who has the ultimate authority unless you make it clear to everyone. 

When discussing recommendations and conversations- is there transparency? Is it apparent that the company has the final say in responding? Or do you promote the image that the company is wholly responsible for what is said? When an outsourced agency represents a company or brand, it can become difficult to maintain effective communication and ensure that each department has a clear definition of its role. 

Work out how to respond to the public

When it comes to social networks, responses come in all forms, negative, neutral, and positive. At times, they can even be considered as a referral for word of mouth marketing. There lies the question of how these referrals are handled by an outsourced agency. How does that particular business want to handle them? Basically, who will be in charge of responding? Does it need to go through the company or does the agency have the authority to make responses that reflect the image of the company? When you represent another company, it is crucial to make sure that each entities role is well defined before you begin designing a marketing campaign. 

Avoid miscommunication and misrepresentation of your brand image as well. Representing another brand or company will be affected by who is ultimately in charge. If you are contracted to assist, but do not have the final say in public relations, be clear about it. Allow the company to take responsibility for themselves in this type of situation, avoiding any misrepresentation of your personal brand. 

Deal well with both positive and negative feedback

Is it good to keep recommendations hidden or leave them open for public viewing? It is always possible that you will get an occasional negative response, but how it’s dealt with will decide its outcome and effect on the image of your represented brand. In many scenarios, a negative recommendation can be turned positive by handling it properly, thus effectively applying word of mouth marketing (visibility allows for others to witness expertise). Be sure that this particular topic is discussed with your represented company.

Communication is a key element to success, especially for those that represent another brand image. Whether you are responsible for an entire brand image or perhaps just in the role of administering recommendations, it is up to your company to define its role and ensure that your represented company receives the product they desire.