Small Business Center

Last summer Google made SMBs owners very happy by releasing a new business dashboard for sites that claimed their Google Business Listing. The addition put actionable data and stats directly into SMB owners’ hands so they could learn about the folks visiting their site and act on the information provided. Well, now it’s FourSquare’s turn to grown up. Yesterday everyone’s favorite location-based social network revealed new plans to provide SMBs owners a free dashboard and analytics tool to give them  important stats about the people who check-in and visit their establishment.  It’s FourSquare 2.0.

According to the New York Times, the analytics features have been available in alpha for a small number of businesses for a week now. The selected businesses are able to see, in real time, who has checked in to their businesses (on a daily, weekly, 30/60/90-day or all-time basis), when they arrived, the male-to-female ratio, what times are most active for certain customers, and they get the ability to offer instant promotions. FourSquare will also offer a Staff page so that employees can interact directly with customers using the site.  It makes things significantly more interactive for business owners, which may increase a Twitter-esque adoption.

Early shots of the dashboard look like this:

And that’s just the beginning.

According to FourSquare’s Tristan Walker, the social site plans to up the information they’ll be providing. Things slated to be added include correlations between check-ins and weather to help merchants offer better rainy day incentives and the ability to tie purchase information to check-ins.

What FourSquare is really doing is taking everything up a notch. Over the past year, SMB owners have learned to use Twitter as a medium to reach out and connect with customers. We’ve used it to have real conversations, to find people talking about our brands and to encourage them to come visit our store or Web site. However, with the new analytics from FourSquare, we actually have an ability to track users and tie them to specific actions. It’s a much more interesting conversation when you can identify a former “regular”, and look at their behavior to see they haven’t been in the store for weeks.  Knowing this means you can use the Staff pages to then interact with that specific customer and give them an incentive to come back in.  It’s as much about retaining customers as it is attracting them with new deals.

And whether you’re a FourSquare user or not, yesterday’s announcement is something you should be aware of because it signals that location wars are very much upon us.

On the heels of FourSquare’s launch Twitter announced it will be turning on geolocation for tweets and Facebook will also allow users to share their location. With everyone going in the same direction, it’s probably a sign you should be paying attention. We understand social media, now what can you do to make it more locally-focused and to connect with your current customers. FourSquare is giving SMB owners a great way to look into the habits and actions of people who frequent them, and so are many of the other social networking sites. The more data you can use, the smarter decisions you can make.  Start figuring out how you can use it.

Recently I blogged about President Obama’s proposal to help community banks lend more money to entrepreneurs. For many small business owners in the Great Recession, community banks have been a lifeline.

But that lifeline could be about to snap. The Congressional Oversight Panel, which monitors the financial bailout, just released a report on the state of commercial real estate lending—and the news is not good.

“There’s been an enormous bubble in commercial real estate, and it has to come down,” panel chair Elizabeth Warren told the Washington Post. “A mortgage crisis like the one that has devastated homeowners is enveloping the nation’s office and retail buildings,” the Post reports. The fallout will hit community banks hard.

In general, large, community banks haven’t been hurt by the residential real estate crisis. But community banks issued higher proportions of commercial mortgages than did the big banks. Some 3,000 community banks have disproportionate amounts of commercial loans relative to their assets, according to the oversight panel’s report. And, as Warren says, “Every dollar [community banks] lose in commercial real estate is a dollar they can’t use for small businesses.”

Commercial real estate mortgages have shorter terms than standard residential mortgages; according to the report, some $1.4 trillion in commercial real estate debt will come due in the next three years. And Warren says, half of all commercial real estate mortgages will be underwater by 2011.

Areas most at risk? South Florida, metropolitan New York and Washington, DC, lead the nation in the per capita value of commercial real estate currently in foreclosure, default or delinquency, according to research group Real Capital Analytics.

Responding to the problems many borrowers are already having refinancing commercial mortgages. President Obama has proposed expanding the SBA’s 504 loan program to temporarily support refinancing for owner-occupied commercial real estate loans. Currently, these loans cannot be used to refinance maturing debt.

The full report from the Congressional Oversight Panel is interesting reading.

From marketing to startups, operations to policy that directly affects small business, the small business news roundup from Small Business Trends has it all. Here’s the latest installment of what we hope will become an indispensable part of your daily small business fix.

Marketing

Seth Godin talks “Creative Value.” Learn more about what he had to say at the recent “Art of Marketing Conference” in Toronto. Biz Money Matters

How helpful is Facebook for B2B Marketing? Tom Pick thinks aloud on the subject with some illuminating results. Webbiquity

Mobile marketing tips for retail. Your customers are mobile. Are you ready? The Lunch Pail

What’s missing from most newsletter sign-up forms? The answer may surprise you. Travel Online Partners

Operations

How to outsource your CFO. Why hiring outside talent to manage your small business may be key to your success. Small Business CEO

What can a horrendous dry cleaning experience teach about customer service? Read Ken Kauffman’s post to find out. CFOwise

What are you waiting for? Innovate! Here’s a look at what’s stopping you and how to get over it. Open Forum Innovation

Hey, it’s tough out there. But here are ten tips to help you deal with it. America’s Best Business Practices

Policy

Big Brother strikes again. Soon online sellers too will be under greater IRS scrutiny.  Auction Bytes

Way too much debt. Last time it was business owners and consumers caught with no more credit and too many bills to pay, but could a bubble be set to burst for Washington? National Review Online

Don’t forget those tax write-offs. There’s one particularly generous break that every small business should use. WSJ

Start-up

10 businesses you can launch from home. See if one of them is right for you. Youngentrepreneurs.com

Are you a builder or a salesman? When building a company, you can certainly go it alone, but you’d better have at least two skill sets in abundance. The Single Founder

Can big business really help entrepreneurs? Former employees turned small business owners share some thoughts with Goldman Sachs. NYTimes.com

Bookshelf

Five must-reads for entrepreneurs. Recommendations for every small business owner’s permanent library. Youngentrepreneur.com

There’s plenty of news for small business owners out there as innovations change the market and hard times yield unusual opportunities. Keep a perspective with our regular selection of small business news exclusively gathered by the Small Business Trends team Monday through Friday in our small business roundup. Here are the news items and blogs we’re watching today.

Leadership

Small business in the driver’s seat? In hard economic times when statistics show small businesses may be the answer, it’s time to step up. Tom Raducha’s Blog

Nothing happens without a vision. And usually it doesn’t come from the people who fit in. Open Forum Innovation

Improving your international business skills. Here are 21 tips for the small business planning to go global. Cindy King

Marketing

In search of a do-it-yourself marketing guide. Why asking good questions can sometimes also be the perfect answer. DIY Marketers

Save your money. 10 ways to avoid paying way too much on your marketing campaign. Entrepreneur.com

What are they saying about your business? Why testimonials remain one of the most powerful forms of marketing and why you need to cultivate them. NJ Entrepreneur

Seeing is believing. How virtual tours can boost an e-mail marketing campaign. Understanding Marketing

Public Relations

Learning from the pros. Avoid these four major screwups when doing PR for your own small business. The Netsetter

Publicizing your local small business online. Following even 25 percent of the 51 tips on this list is guaranteed to get you noticed.  Softline Solutions

Social Media

Enhancing LinkedIn for your business. Here are 11 tips to make a positive impact with the premier business social network. Paul Castain’s Sales Playbook

Adding value to your Tweets. How to up the ante when using social media to market your small business. The Rise To The Top

How Twitter and Facebook are affecting your search engine ranking. If you aren’t taking into the impact of social media on your online business reputation, you are missing an opportunity. SysComm International

Humor

It’s either the world’s best or worst franchise idea. Now all we’ve got to do is figure out whether Joel Libava is kidding or not. Franchise Follies

Policy

More doubt cast on small business aid program. Not only will a government plan to stimulate small business hiring not work but its delay is probably costing jobs and growth right now. The Entrepreneurial Mind

Show me the money. A year after a $787 billion stimulus package aimed at rebuilding the economy, a report says most small businesses haven’t seen any funding. Reuters