For small business owners, creating a social media policy is an effective way to help your employees interact with customers, clarify your marketing messages and protect your credibility online. Let’s look at how to create a social media policy.

What Is a Social Media Policy?

Here’s one definition:

“A social media policy is a set of guidelines that describes how employees should interact with customers online.”

In general, most policies…

The effects of this are two-fold:

• It creates a false sense of security for the owner – he thinks he is earning a significant income because, subconsciously, he relates it to the…

Why do businesses fail? The most obvious answer is that a weak economy eventually crunches the cash flow of smaller enterprises and kills them. But a different picture emerges from external administrator reports: too much failure is self-inflicted.

In fact, “poor economic…

IBM’s financing offer for SMEs is designed to eliminate many of the cost barriers they face to grow their business. IBM will offer simple, flexible lease and loan payment plan packages, some starting at as…

WHEN Steve Jobs died two weeks ago, many commentators wondered whether Apple – the company he co-founded and led through many years of profit and innovation – could continue to thrive…

Or my personal favourite: “When do you think you’ll open a proper business?” Ouch! Apparently it’s not a “real” small business until you have a shopfront, are gouged by a landlord on rent, work like a dog to…

Ed: A very interesting overall view of Business from Michael Gerber

You aren’t seeing what is possible for you, I know that.

How, you ask?  How do you know that, Gerber, when we haven’t even met yet?

It’s simple if you want to know.

I have met you tens of thousands of times as I’ve called upon people like you in business, and people like you before they went into business, people just like you who had a plan, they thought, a plan to escape from…

Tourism has always been a major drawcard for Cape Town, known internationally as a top leisure destination, but the city is also gaining a solid business and investment reputation.

According to the Western Cape Investment and Trade Promotion Agency (Wesgro) Cape Town…

There are tentative signs of a recovery in selected sectors of the South African commercial property industry.

Bobby Malabie, the chief executive of Absa Retail and Business Bank, said there had been a stabilisation and gradual reduction in its underperforming book, indicating the distress in the market was contained and not as severe as experienced a year ago, which was symptomatic of an industry that was turning.…

CAPE TOWN — The government is expected to announce a new rescue package for the manufacturing sector when Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan tables his medium-term budget policy statement in Parliament next week.

The package would be targeted at vulnerable segments of the manufacturing sector which have been most affected by the global financial crisis.

Ask any sales leader how selling has changed in the past decade, and you’ll hear a lot of answers but only one recurring theme: It’s a lot harder. Yet even in these difficult times, every sales organization has a few stellar performers. Who are these people? How can we bottle their magic?



To understand what sets apart this special group of sales reps, the Sales Executive Council launched a global study of sales rep productivity three years ago involving more than 6,000 reps across…

I boarded the BA jet for Johannesburg and discovered the airline had put Trevor Manuel and I…

14 October 2011

The 2011 Africa Small, Medium and Micro Enterprise (SMME) Awards, an initiative of the Africagrowth Institute, in partnership with governments and major organisations,  took place on the 13^th of October 2011 at the Gold Reef City Hotel, Gauteng. Red carpet was rolled out for the award winning SMMEs, dignitaries and participants from all over Africa who attended this glamorous event.  Entries for the  awards competition streamed in from SMME managers…

Being large I needed a "Sack Truck" to enable…

A competitive analysis allows you to identify your competitors and evaluate their respective strengths and weaknesses. By knowing the actions of your…