Small Business Corner

It has been over a year since I was able to post to The Voice of Batesville due to a number of issues at the ASU SBTDC that prevented me from being able to contribute. However I am back and will be posting regular contributions on issues of interest to small businesses and entrepreneurs in Independence County. Look for weekly posts on a variety of topics. Since it has been so long however I thought it best that my first post for 2010 be a little background on me and on the work I do at Arkansas State University Small Business and Technology Development Center. I apologize in advance if it looks like an “info-mercial” but thought it a good idea to give readers an idea of what I do and how we assist small businesses.

The Arkansas State University Small Business and Technology Development Center, ASU SBTDC, is part of a statewide net­work of seven cen­ters work­ing out of uni­ver­si­ties across the state. We offer eco­nomic devel­op­ment help to start-​up and exist­ing busi­nesses through con­sult­ing, train­ing work­shops & sem­i­nars, as well as mar­ket research assis­tance. Our assis­tance areas include:

· fea­si­bil­ity studies
· busi­ness plans
· mar­ket research
· finan­cial analysis
· loan pack­ag­ing
· marketing
· e-​commerce and social media marketing

All of our con­sult­ing assis­tance and mar­ket research is free of charge and com­pletely con­fi­den­tial. Our train­ing sem­i­nars gen­er­ally do have reg­is­tra­tion fees from $25 to $49 depend­ing on the type of seminar.

I have been the cen­ter direc­tor at ASU SBTDC for over four­teen years help­ing entre­pre­neurs and small busi­nesses in a fif­teen county area with a vari­ety of busi­ness needs. For more infor­ma­tion about how the ASBTDC can help your busi­ness please visit our state web­site, shoot me an e-​mail or join us on Facebook. We would love to talk to you about your busi­ness and how we might work with you.
I will be post­ing weekly arti­cles on a vari­ety of top­ics that are gen­er­ally of inter­est to our small busi­ness clients. I hope they will prove use­ful to you. We need your opin­ion so let me know what you think. I thought a good way to start would be to dis­cuss a topic that has caught the inter­est of a lot of our small busi­ness clients, Social Media Marketing. Look for that arti­cle next week about how social media marketing can work for your business.