Social Media Tip: High Cost of Complacency

The following is an excerpt from Online Social Networking blog (Larry Brauner, author)

Companies that neglect their social media presence will suffer in several ways:

* They’ll have no influence over their online reputation.
* Their customers will view them as backward.
* They won’t receive traffic from social media sites.
* They’ll receive less search engine traffic too.

Franchise Social Media Coaching, by the minute!

That’s right! By the minute… I believe there are many franchise professionals, executives, franchisees, consultants and brokers that are interested in exploring social media, but are not quite sure how to proceed. There’s a great deal of uncertainty. Who do I call? How do I get started? What can I expect? And then, of course, how much will it cost?

I’ve heard many franchise executives express their concerns that hiring a social media consultant or coach would be very expensive. Almost like keeping an attorney on retainer! They’ve heard there are so many aspects of social media that just exploring one part would lead to others and others. All the while, costs would mount. They’ve inquired about hiring a social media trainer, but felt one wouldn’t understand franchising. They’ve thought they could learn fron their marketing people, but again they don’t understand franchising and shouldn’t there be concern about earnings claims, the franchise relationship, today’s franchise candidate, disclosure, etc?

So, as I see it, the challenge is finding cost-effective social media coaching services, that can be tapped at an equivalent pace to understanding and implementing a particular component of social media and then be able to progress as desired, and the coaching should be by someone that fully understands franchising, franchise sales, relationships, etc. And, social media. Did I get that right? Is that what you’re thinking?

Well, if I am right and it is what you’re thinking, look no further. As most within the franchise industry are aware, I have over twenty years’ experience in all aspects of franchising. Next, I am fully entrenched in most areas of social media and I’m working with over twenty franchisors in integrating social media within their marketing and development strategies. Cost effective? How’s this? I’ll charge you $1 a minute for Franchise Social Media Coaching. Yes, you read that correctly, $1! Here’s how it works.

Let me know you’re interested in social media coaching. Contact me by email at segreto.paul@gmail.com. We’ll schedule a phone call and I’ll bill you through Pay Pal a one-time, start up fee of $25 as a new client under this new Franchise Social Media Coaching program. Our “coaching” calls will also be billed through Pay Pal, this time at $1 per minute. But, once I’ve answered your questions and we’ve discussed what you wanted to talk about, the clock will stop, and I’ll ask you if you were satsified with the experience and if the amount due, based upon the call, is fair. If you’re satisfied, and we agree on the amount due, I will then bill you through Pay Pal. The only caveat, yes there is one, is that payment be remitted promptly. If you prefer, I could bill you initially for $50, and then deduct charges accordingly. Under this scenario, I would waive the start up fee of $25.

Why am I doing this? So everyone in the franchise industry, at any level, can tap into social media and all its potential benefits. We can discuss the simplest parts of social media to complex issues. Daily calls? No problem. Weekly? No problem. Need me to talk with one of your staff? No problem. Multiple people on the call? No problem, as long as they’re all from the same company. Regularly scheduled calls? No problem. Oh yeah, and no excuses because I just eliminated all your excuses not to explore social media today.

What are you waiting for? Let’s get started NOW!

New York State Passes Tax Law For Franchisors

The following article was submitted by Guest Author, Kathryn Rookes. Kathryn is an experienced franchise attorney and a member of FSB Legal, a virtual law firm. She is one of the very few franchise attorneys in the United States with experience in a government regulatory practice (Maryland Division of Securities), private practice, and as in-house counsel. With this diversity of experience, Kathryn understands the issues that franchisors face on a daily basis.

New York State Tax Law
as submitted by Kathryn Rookes, Attorney, FSB Legal

New York state has become the first state to pass a law that requires franchisors to provide detailed information on their franchisees and their franchisees’ operations to the state, so that the state can compare the submitted information to the tax returns that the franchisees file with the state. Complying with this new law can be quite burdensome and many franchisors do not even collect some of the information that must be submitted to the state of New York.

Who Must File?

The New York law applies to every franchisor that has at least one franchise in New York state that is required to be registered as a sales tax vendor. The law does not require that the franchisor itself be physically present in New York and applies even if the franchisor does not conduct any business in New York, other than having New York franchises.

The actual franchisees have no reporting responsibility under this new law, however, each reporting franchisor should let its franchisees know that it will be providing information on its New York franchises in its annual report.

What Must Be Reported?

The information that franchisors must report on their New York franchises includes:

· Each franchisee’s legal name
· Each franchisee’s phone number
· Each franchisee’s d/b/a name, if different from its legal name
· The owners’ names of each franchisee (e.g., principal shareholder, LLC member)
· Each franchisee’s Federal Employer Identification number (for an individual franchisee, this will be each franchisee’s social security number)
· Each franchisee’s New York Sales Tax Certificate of Authority number
· The beginning date of each franchisee’s unit
· Each franchise unit’s physical address
· Each franchise unit’s mailing address, if different
· Each franchisee’s gross sales, as reported under each franchise agreement
· Any discrepancies between each franchisee’s reported gross sales and gross sales of any audit that the franchisor conducted
· If known, the amount of New York state and local sales tax that each franchisee collected at each franchised unit
· The amount of royalty payments each franchisee paid to its franchisor
· The percentage of royalty that each franchisee pays to its franchisor
· The amount of sales the franchisor or its affiliates made to each franchisee
· The amount of sales each of the franchisor’s designated suppliers made to each franchisee

As you can see, the information required is quite extensive. Many franchisors will have to amend the manner in which they capture data on each New York franchise, as they may not currently be gathering all of the required information.

When Are Reports Due?

The first report under this new law is due September 20, 2009 and must contain information from March 1, 2009 to August 31, 2009. After that, franchisors must file by March 20 of each year, and each report must contain information from the end of the previous report to February 28 of that year.

Franchisees Must Be Notified

By March 20 of each year, the franchisor must provide each New York franchisee with a statement that includes all of the information that the franchisor submitted as part of its report. The statement may be in summary form, as long as certain of the required information is included. Each franchisor should send this statement to its franchisees in such a manner as to be able to verify that each statement was sent in a proper and timely manner.

Where Do You File?

Franchisors must file their information return electronically with the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance. To file a return and for additional information go to the Tax Department’s Web site. Information on how to file will be available at this site after September 1, 2009.

What Happens If You Don’t File?

Violations of the law can result in a penalty of $500 for 10 or fewer failures and up to $50 for each additional failure. If a franchisor fails to timely file an information return under the new law, additional penalties of not less than $500 but up to $2000, will apply to each failure. The total penalties assessed for each reporting period may not exceed $10,000.

Social Media Training For Employees

Yesterday, I read an informative article by Ben Parr (Mashable) about training new employees in social media. The article, “How to Train New Employees in Social Media” was posted on the American Express Open Small Business site and included the following seven tips to social media training:

1. Consider writing guidelines or a social media policy: A policy can clear up confusion and help you keep employee focus away from what they shouldn’t do and towards what they should be doing. We wrote great guides on whether you should have a policy and 10 must-haves for any social media policy over at Mashable.

2. Make it clear you aren’t policing: The focus is on ways to use social media to promote the business, rather than ways to avoid embarrassment. Make that clear to new recruits and stress that you won’t be policing. Rather, you’ll be trusting in their good judgment and their ability to control privacy settings. The Associated Press quickly learned what happens when you become overbearing.

3. Test their social media knowledge: You’re going to have to individualize each employee’s social media training. While one may have 10,000 followers on Twitter, the other may have no idea what a blog even is. Don’t assume everyone’s at the same level.

4. Have them start their own blog: If your employees have writing-specific duties, give them a homework assignment: start your own blog. The practice of setting up a WordPress account, writing posts, and promoting them is real-world education.

5. Give them required reading: Give them a good book or two on using Twitter or pitching to blogs. Give them a set of blogs (don’t forget Mashable!) that they need to read. Have them subscribe via RSS for efficiency’s sake. Finally, encourage them to subscribe to other blogs and explore their interests.

6. Hand them the reigns: They can read and learn, but you have to trust them eventually with the reigns. Once your new employees are getting comfortable, have them tweeting, making videos, and coming up with initiatives. The more they submerge themselves, the faster they’ll learn.

7. Impress upon them the importance of social media: Yes, some employees simply won’t get it unless you put it into context. Explain how far your reach goes with a single tweet, or provide examples of how businesses were hurt by an inability to understand Facebook.

Expansion Plan Includes Services To Independent Small Businesses

Small businesses operate in a variety of industries and under an assortment of business models. Franchising just happens to be a very popular business model that has been embraced worldwide. The difference, outside franchising, is the small business owner’s sole responsibility and efforts to market the business to consumers (B2C) or to other businesses (B2B).

In a franchise environment, franchisees are often involved in the brand’s local cooperatives where economy of scale prevails, making marketing much more cost-effective than for one location. Further, as many franchise organizations have internal marketing departments, or the luxury of a marketing agency, a great deal of professional experience is available to assist franchisees in developing effective marketing strategies and exploring new tools and technology that enhance otherwise mundane marketing efforts. Outside the franchise arena, small business owners must fend for themselves when developing strategies that must be innovative, just to compete. Often, trial and error becomes the norm, rather than the exception.

Well, the answer for the small business community is close at hand. Due to increasing popular demand, franchisEssentials is proud to expand its marketing and business development services outside the franchise industry. Initially, we will offer our proven services, including social media marketing, to independent small businesses within the State of Texas.

Our brand in this venture will be known as SmallBusinEssentials, and similar to franchisEssentials, is dedicated to small business success at all levels. In the near future, we will create an interactive site, similar to franchisEssentials site, with information and breaking news, relevant to the small business community.

Our services and resources, that have proven extremely effective for franchise businesses throughout the United States, in Canada and in several other international markets, will be available to small businesses across various industry segments including retail and service businesses, professional agencies, network marketing and more. Initially to be rolled out in Texas, services to be provided by staff, strategic partners and independent consultants to include:

• Integrated Marketing
• Web Development
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Content Development & Management
• Blog Development
• Local Business Listings Management
• Mobile Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Graphic Design
• Online Brand Management
• Online Public Relations
• Social Media Marketing & Management
• Social Networking
• Personal Branding
• Virtual and In-person Training in Technology & Sales

For more information please contact Paul Segreto by email at segreto.paul@gmail.com or submit your comments or questions below.