Small Businesses

Dear Karen: Can you suggest budget marketing techniques? Answer: Form a marketing partnership with a business that already reaches your target customers. "Results can be impressive, because you come in as a trusted partner of an established brand, and it costs you nothing," said Shel Horowitz, coauthor of "Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green." You can also join forces with other small companies to form a larger marketing entity, Horowitz said. Social media is essentially free, and you can use it to build long-term relationships with potential customers as well as to announce promotions and new products.

President Obama will spend more than half the $730 million in government funds set aside to help small businesses to expand federal guarantees and lower lending fees to try to revive the flow of credit, people familiar with the matter said. Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner will announce the $375-million plan today as part of a strategy to bolster Small Business Administration lending, the people said.

Surfing Facebook for hours on end isn't just for personal pleasure anymore. About 90% of small businesses are dedicating time to networking online, according to a new survey. Manta, an online forum dedicated to small businesses, surveyed 600 small-business owners nationwide and found that 78% say that using social-networking platforms is just as important as networking in person -- if not more so. “Small businesses understand they need to go where their audience is,” Manta Chief Executive Pamela Springer said Wednesday.

In a perfect world, Irvine businessman Scott Griffiths says, he hopes to continue offering health insurance to the 42 employees at his chain of high-end men's hair salons. But with the full effect of President Obama's Affordable Care Act approaching, small businesses like his are facing numerous questions and concerns about the future of employee health insurance in California and what it will mean for them. These come as insurance companies step up efforts to keep their customers and win new ones.

An Apple iOS app called Snap Payroll that's designed to help small businesses figure out their employees' paychecks recently launched. The free app fromIntuit Inc.is supposed to help small-business owners calculate the correct amount of pay they owe their employees after including any federal and state taxes as well as overtime hours. "Snap Payroll frees them from relying on a spreadsheet and their own math skills to determine the appropriate pay and how much to deduct for taxes," the company said in a release.

WASHINGTON -- President Obama on Wendesday is ordering new practices meant to help small firms by speeding up payments for federal contractors, cutting paperwork and easing access to loans and tax credits. The actions come as Obama tries to fight off charges from Republicans that his latest tax plan would hurt small businesses. Obama called on lawmakers this week to extend only the portion of the Bush-era tax breaks that cover household incomes of less than $250,000 a year, allowing the cuts on higher earnings to expire -- including, according to GOP critics, many small-business owners.

How do we appropriately express just how unpopular California has become with businesses? It's like Brussels sprouts to a kid, John Travolta among masseurs, the Clippers in Memphis … you get the idea. The latest Golden State basher? A survey of more than 6,000 small businesses from Thumbtack.com and the nonprofit Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which gave California (along with Hawaii, Vermont and Rhode Island) an F grade for friendliness. Idaho, Texas, Oklahoma and Utah scored A-pluses.

WASHINGTON -- Small-business owners were less optimistic about the economy last month amid signs of another slowdown in the recovery. The Small Business Owner Optimism Index from the National Federal of Independent Business dropped to 89.5 in March, down 1.3 points from the previous month, the group said Tuesday. The measure, based on a random survey of 759 business owners, had risen for three straight months. The average monthly reading has been 90.7 since the end of the Great Recession in mid-2009.

Don't look to small businesses for a vote of confidence in the economy. Pessimistic owners are scaling back hiring plans, rethinking expansion and fretting over weak sales as they wait for stability. An optimism index from the National Federation of Independent Business slipped slightly to 92.8 in September from an August reading of 92.9. Hiring plans plunged as fewer owners hired and more slashed head counts. Job creation in September lagged the previous two months. Capital outlays over the last six months slipped, with fewer owners reporting spending on new equipment, vehicles and property.

The job outlook at America's small businesses is the worst it's ever been, according to new research. Last month, 21% of small business owners said they expected to lower head count over the next six months - the highest percentage recorded by the Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index since its launch in 2003. In July, the last time the data was compiled, just 10% of bosses said they planned to shrink employee ranks. More than six in 10 owners said they would keep their workforce steady, while 17% said they intended to boost hiring.