How young CPAs can make the leap from Facebook
Tom Hood, head of the Maryland CPA association and a social media evangelist, showed a lucky handful of young CPAs at the AICPA Leadership Academy in Chicago this week how to leverage social media for their careers.
He segued from talking about the role of Twitter in Iran to how young CPAs could use LinkedIn in everyday life.
Here are his eight tips for using LinkedIn to further your career:
- Find out where people with your backgrounds are working.
- Find out where people at a company came from.
- Check if a company is still hiring.
- Find out where people from a go next.
- Get the the hiring manager.
- Get to the right HR person.
- Find out the secret job requirements.
- Find startups to join.
- Build your network before you need it.
Here’s the slide deck. You’ll find more details on the LinkedIn tips starting on slide 31.
Huge market opportunity for CPAs, consultants who can boost profits, efficiency.
A new survey of 1,000 small business owners across the United States by management consulting firm George S. May International finds that 45 percent of respondents said their businesses are not profitable.
The survey also showed that 45 percent noted their accountant as the primary professional advisor they consulted for business help, while 20 percent noted “other” without specifying, 18 percent cited their attorney and 17 percent noted a management consultant.
But it’s alarming that only 60 percent said they are satisfied with their accountant’s help in making their business profitable, even though a majority of them are not profitable. In fact, 65 percent said their business is worse off this year than in 2008.
Sixty percent of all respondents cited the economy as the number one reason they are not profitable or as profitable as they could be.
“Many business owners feel that the recession is to blame for all of their woes, but that’s simply not the case and is actually part of a bigger problem,” said Paul Rauseo, managing director of the George S. May International Company. “There are plenty of small businesses making money in this economy because they are taking care of the business side of the business “controlling costs and increasing productivity.”
Aside from the economy, 29 percent of respondents cited competition within their industry as the one number reason they are not profitable; while 10 percent cited company inefficiencies in sales, finance, operations or labor; and one percent cited management.
via http://www.georgesmay.com/
Some of the best start with “Why…?”
… as in this list of 15 from Mike Schultz, author of “Professional Services Marketing,” and president of the Wellesley Hills Group:
- Why didn’t we reach our revenue goals?
- Why is our marketing budget set at its current level?
- Why haven’t we been able to implement (insert tactic or initiative here) even though we keep saying it’s a priority?
- Why hasn’t (insert tactic or initiative here) worked as well for us as we might have liked?
- Why haven’t we tried anything new or innovative in our marketing?
- Why aren’t our marketplace messages resonating?
- Why are we (or aren’t we) launching new practice areas, geographies, industry specialties, etc.?
- Why don’t more of our partners develop business and bring in new clients?
- Why don’t we have a culture of business success?
- Why haven’t we been able to build a brand as we believe we can and should?
- Why are our competitors outmaneuvering us in the market?
- Why can’t we increase our fees?
- Why do our clients pressure our fees?
- Why have some practice areas of our firm grown so well while others haven’t?
- Why haven’t we improved our repeat business rate?
