SOURCE: BusinessNewsDaily

By BusinessNewsDaily Staff Writer

The start of the new year ushers in a series of new regulatory, compliance, and legislative changes that could potentially affect your small business.

A new report from payroll service provider, Paychex, details the issues that should take top priority when planning how your business will operate in 2011.

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1. Tax changes – In 2011, businesses will confront the increasing complexity of the tax environment, including the implementation of a partial payroll tax holiday, the ability for businesses to expense 100 percent of their capital investments, and the retroactive extension of many temporary business tax incentives that expired at the end of last year.

2. Health care reform – A key aspect for 2011 is the provision providing business tax credits for small employers that purchase health insurance, which is effective for tax year 2010 and carries into next year. It provides, with some limitations and requirements, incentives for providing health insurance to employees. Grandfathering will remain an important component of health care reform. Health plans that existed on March 23, 2010 are grandfathered, meaning that they do not need to add many of the new protections under the health care reform law. To remain grandfathered, health plans cannot make any significant changes to the plan.

3. FSA plans – Effective January 1, 2011, over-the-counter medicines and drugs other than insulin (i.e., aspirin) will no longer be eligible for reimbursement from a health FSA unless the item is prescribed by a medical practitioner.

4. Unemployment Insurance rates/changes – Unemployment insurance (UI) funds in many states are at critically low levels due to the large numbers of people out of work for extended periods. Many employers will see a trend that promises to send state employer UI contribution rates higher in 2011 to replenish depleted UI trust funds and repay federal loans taken to allow states to continue to pay benefits. In addition, measures to reduce unemployment insurance fraud are in the works.

5. Employment law – The United States Department of Labor and many states have enacted or are considering measures to provide greater transparency to workers on the wages they are owed, especially in key areas such as minimum wage and overtime requirements, and to increase penalties on those who fail to pay their workers the compensation they are entitled.

6. 401(k) disclosures/target date funds – For employers offering 401(k) plans to their workers, regulations requiring disclosures pertaining to fees of the plan will be required; additionally, plans offering target date funds will likely see further disclosure requirements around those investments.

7. State budgetary challenges – Many states are facing critical budget shortfalls, and as such may contemplate impromptu tax/fee increases or filing changes to raise badly needed revenue. Additionally, many state agencies are reducing staff, which could result in processing delays for businesses requiring licensing or other state services.

8. Federal Trade Commission requirements – With the dramatic increase in the use of social media such as blogs, Facebook, and Twitter, the Federal Trade Commission has issued further regulatory guidance around the use of this media in advertising, especially regarding endorsements and misleading or dishonest product reviews. The agency has also recently proposed the creation of a “Do Not Track” tool for the Internet (similar to the telemarketing “Do Not Call” registry).

9. IRS enforcement – To help collect more tax revenue in this era of budget deficits, the IRS is ramping up its enforcement efforts in several areas. In 2010, the IRS kicked off an employment-tax audit program that will carry into 2011. These audits are focusing on employee misclassification, executive compensation, fringe benefits, and adherence to general employment tax filing requirements. Further, the IRS is accelerating efforts to increase tax compliance among employees who collect tips.

10. Privacy – Most states have instituted laws requiring businesses to notify customers (and, in some states, governmental authorities) when sensitive data is breached. Some states have enacted laws requiring that businesses have processes to adequately safeguard sensitive client data. Businesses handling protected health information are subject to additional requirements governing the protection of that data.

11. Employment verification/immigration – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continues to crack down on companies knowingly hiring undocumented aliens. Several different Congressional immigration reform proposals, which may present further employment verification obligations, are expected to get attention in 2011.

SOURCE: BusinessNewsDaily

By Brian Anthony Hernandez, BusinessNewsDaily Staff Writer

A new report predicts four out of five businesses will implement social media strategies in 2011—but just how they do that remains to be seen.

BusinessNewsDaily recently interviewed dozens of digital visionaries, whose eyes are locked on social media trends. They all made bold predictions for how businesses will use social media in the next 12 months. We narrowed the list to these five:

Employee recruitment shifts primarily to the web

Businesses will spend less money on paid media such as classifieds, display advertising and job fairs and focus more energy on social media sites to find new employees. Recruiters will use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other websites more aggressively to discover and learn about top candidates.

Look no further than Ted Williams, the “homeless man with a golden voice,” for a prime example of where recruiters are hunting for talent. Williams recently displayed his voice in a video that went viral online and led to overnight fame and several job offers, including ones from Kraft Foods and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

“Our online footprint will determine our personal brand and potential to employers,” said Christina Pappas, inbound marketing manager at Zmags, a publishing platform provider.

Traditional recruiting tactics already are getting crushed by social media, with 60 to 70 percent of recruiting now happening through social networks, said Josh Bersin, president of research for the consulting firm Bersin & Associates. Social media will reduce the need for outside firms to recruit for businesses.

“Companies spend millions of dollars each year on external recruiting providers, but by using online networks, they can now bring in-house the tools and secret networks which used to be owned by external recruitment firms,” Bersin said.

At the very least, Linda Pophal, CEO of Strategic Communications, expects more communication departments and human-resource departments to team up to explore whether recruiting via social media can save money.

Demand for ROI statistics intensifies, shapes staffs

Better measurable results will emerge as businesses continue to ask, “What’s the return on investment (ROI) for our social media efforts?” and the statistics will determine how businesses grow or reduce their social media staffs.

“We will see more stories validating the business impact of social media in building brands. As a result, more marketers will move from experimentation mode to making social media as foundational to their marketing plans,” said Adam Turinas, global digital director of the public-relations firm Emanate. “2010 was the year of the big standout social media campaign, but 2011 is the year it becomes part of the fabric.”

Jason Mitchell, a consultant at online marketing agency Movement Strategy, predicts the new data will influence companies to expand their social media budgets. Mitchell believes better ROI results will materialize because more bosses will understand social media and insist on improved reports.

“The people running the social media accounts will not be able to get by with just showing community growth, real dialogue and all the buzzwords that have been thrown around over the last couple years,” Mitchell said. “(They) will have to replace those with more meaningful reports like return on ad spend, lifetime value of social media users and cost per conversion.”

Real-time conversations force better customer service

Many businesses aren’t really social even if they’re on social media websites. Why? They only talk about themselves, Chris Kooluris says.

“In 2011, more companies will wake up to the fact that the best way to use social media and most of their marketing dollars is to join consumer conversations in real-time,” said Kooluris, media specialist at advertising agency JWT.
Now more than ever, customers and clients expect businesses to interact with them, and businesses’ reputations can hinge on how they respond to comments criticizing their products or services on social media.

“Businesses that don’t actively answer support questions via Twitter and Facebook will feel the sting in 2011. Smart companies have already taken advantage of these tools, but look for small businesses to become more involved,” said Ben Nesvig, marketing manager of Fuzed Marketing.

Aspire to genuinely communicate with customers, experts agree.

Advancements in location-based media ignite concerns

Innovative marketing methods using location-based tools — where customers let social media websites know their location in exchange for deals or online rewards — will surface but remain in their “awkward tween” stages.

“Instead of checking into The Gap to get a discount coupon from Foursquare, I see companies sending you information as soon as you are close enough to the physical location of things based on your phone’s GPS,” said Megan Hilts, executive vice president of the communications firm In10sity.

That’s just one of the many predictions that will sway companies to use the tools to offer discounts, coupons, free stuff and other loyalty rewards.

“More businesses will hop on the geo-location-based service bandwagon, with very good reason, and muddle their way through to ascertain how effective these can be to drive immediate offline sales,” said Andrew Kasprzycki, managing director of consumer-engagement company Proximity Chicago. “They’ll probably piss off a lot of users along the way as they learn.”

Law experts are bracing themselves for privacy debates.

“Marketers will have to find the balance point between consumers’ desire for privacy and consumers’ desire for valuable targeted advertising,” said marketing and advertising lawyer Kyle-Beth Hilfer. “We could see ‘do not track’ legislation on privacy as a result in 2011.”

LinkedIn becomes major business tool, grows to 160 million users

More business-to-business professionals will join LinkedIn to take advantage of its “groups” feature, which will target geographic and functional niches.

“LinkedIn has somewhat run under the radar but is an extremely beneficial and robust platform. They continue to innovate and introduce new features and services for the platform, which I believe will continue this year,” said Danielle Leitch, executive vice president of client strategy for MoreVisibility, a marketing firm.

Other new features include company pages and paid search advertising.

“As LinkedIn continues to add functionality and apps, more B2B professionals will get involved,” said technology columnist Mark Amtower. “I have watched the growing trend of geographic-based groups. I think the ‘groups’ area will become even more robust over the next 12 months, and I think LinkedIn will have something akin to ‘instant announcements’ for the groups in the first quarter of 2011.”

LinkedIn will soar to 160 million users, up from 90 million at the start of 2011, Amtower predicts.

SOURCE: BusinessNewsDaily

By Ned Smith, BusinessNewsDaily Senior Writer

Though 90 percent of companies have some sort of social networking in place, efforts to get employees to use the social networking tools largely fail, according to a recent study. Only10 percent of companies consider their internal social networking systems successful.

At a time when everyone seems to be friending, tweeting and linking, the vast majority of the more than 700 companies polled by InformationWeek Analytics for a research report on social networking usage and utility reported that they can’t get their employees to use social networking tools for the benefit of the business.

Nearly four out of ten (39 percent) companies don’t offer any type of e-mail integration with their internal social networks and one-third of companies don’t provide employees with a single sign-on to their internal systems. Only 8 percent of companies approach their social marketing initiatives with a coordinated team from multiple disciplines; most efforts are led by the marketing department.

In addition, the report found, most companies haven’t created policies and procedures to guide employees in appropriate use of social networking systems and don’t monitor their activities when they do use them.

The most-used function of enterpriser social networking is the online directory with Facebook-style profiles (22 percent of companies reported heavy use, followed by team or company wikis (13 percent), discussion forums (7 percent) and internal blogs (5 percent).

“It seems ironic that people are so enamored of social networking in their personal lives yet so resistant to using it at work,” said Lorna Garvey, content director at InformationWeek Analytics. “But the reality is that, if we want people to use social networking tools to achieve business goals, we have to simplify the experience for them. Things like single sign-on and integration with e-mail would go a long way.”