Application of “Comp Time” in Lieu of Overtime Pay

Small Business and the NLRB

By David D. Schein, President & General Counsel, 

Claremont Management Group

www.claremontmanagementgroup.com

Application of “Comp Time” in Lieu of Overtime Pay

A small business owner inquired about using “Comp Time” for some employees. In the private workforce sector, Comp Time can only be used for exempt employees. Those are employees who are not eligible for overtime. So, an employer’s first challenge is to identify those employees who are exempt from overtime. Second, most of the time, exempt employees are expected to work as many hours as needed and many work 45, 50 or even 60 hours a week. So, Comp Time is often just a day off to reward hard work and is not tracked on an hour-for-hour basis. Third, if an employer wants to adopt a formal Comp Time policy, such as is sometimes found in the public workforce sector, then the employer has to decide at what point to reward exempt employees with Comp Time and how to keep track of it.

Briefly, the following categories of employees may be exempt from the requirement to pay overtime:

Executive Exemption –Executives and managers

Administrative Exemption – Employees managing a functional area

Professional Exemption – Professionals, generally with a 4-year degree

Outside Sales Exemption – Actual field sales employees - not applicable to inside sales persons

Computer Employee Exemption – Fairly close to the Professional Exemption

Refer to this newsletter for more information on exemptions from overtime at: 

[Newsletter]

Some employers would like to use Comp Time for all employees, including non-exempt employees. This is hard to do under the Federal Wage-Hour law, which requires employers to establish a defined work week of 7 consecutive 24 hour periods. During that defined week, if a non-exempt employee works more than 40 hours, they must receive OT for the hours worked over 40 in the defined work week. This is true even if they only work say 30 hours the next week and could really use the pay in the next pay period. An employer generally cannot transfer hours through the "comp" process from one week to the next for non-exempt employees.

While many employers have heard about Comp Time, and some try to implement it across the board, the unfortunate outcome is that they may be found to have violated the Federal Wage-Hour laws. Employers also need to be mindful of state and local wage rules that may be even more restrictive than the Federal rules. For instance, some states require payment of overtime after eight hours in a day, and not just 40 hours in a week.

Black Hat SEO Strategies That Can Bring Down Your Blog’s Page Rank

Emma Julie Fox works as a writer for Pitstop Media. A Vancouver based SEO company that has been helping businesses across North America successfully increase their search visibility.

The Internet industry is just like any other. Blog and website owners are expected to adhere to a set of ethics that will even out the playing field for everybody. Search engines serve as the policing body that sanctions websites that are found to have crossed the line from acceptable search engine optimization practices to the prohibited.

Google by far is the strongest and most feared ethics police on the Web right now. For most blog and website owners, there’s no bigger punishment than getting penalized by Google and getting dropped from the SERPs, demoted in page rank, and removed from the search engine’s index.

Defining Black Hat SEO

Black hat SEO always incites the ire of Google and other search engines. Image source

Black hat SEO is a term coined for practices that are underhanded and manipulative in nature. Underhanded because it is practically like cheating, and manipulative because they manipulate the search engine ranking algorithms into making a website rank even if it doesn’t really deserve to land a lofty spot at the SERPs. 

This is what Google, Yahoo, Bing, and every other search engine wants to avoid. They therefore identified the following practices as black hat and deserving of heavy penalties.

1.       Link Buying

Links are considered valuable ranking signals because ideally, they are like votes of approval from other webmasters. The theory is that a webmaster will provide links to webpages that it considers valuable for their visitors. This is why there was a time when people thought getting inbound-links from just any source will give them valuable link juice and went on to purchase links or got into arranged link networks with other sites.

Today, paid links and link networks are considered black hat because the motive behind them is always to rank higher in the SERPs.

2.       Associating with Link Mines or Becoming One

One telltale sign of link buying is when a page is embedded with so many external links. Red flags flare all the more if many of those links are leading towards or coming in from completely irrelevant sites.

There can only be two reasons for this. First, if the website entered into a link buying or networking arrangement. Second, if the webmaster foolishly and naively included links that are irrelevant to his website or to an article’s topic.

3.       Copying or Scraping Content

Duplicated content is a huge offense in the SEO world today. Search engines want to give websites their due. If a site produced a very good article, then the credit should go to it instead of the thousands of others that copied the contents of its article.

Besides, duplicating or copying content violates copyright laws. Even with content that’s not patented, the offended party can still file for a complaint for plagiarism.

Duplicating content is tantamount to stealing, and that’s a punishable offense that everyone should be able to understand.

4.       Keyword stuffing

Keywords are important signals that search engines use as basis for coming up with results for search queries. Most of the time SEOs can figure out what keywords their target audience is likely to use in search engines. There’s also Google AdWords to rely on for keyword research.

The problem arises when the keyword density in an article or page is too high. It borders on search algorithm manipulation, which is again what Google and other search engines try to purge.

Keyword stuffing also tends to compromise the quality of the content. There’s only so many times you can mention a keyword in a paragraph without making the sentences sound odd, grammatically incorrect, and downright spammy.

Bear in mind that content quality is very important for Google and other search engines today.

5.       Creating doorway pages and concealing links

Doorway pages are created to rank and capture the attention of both Internet users and search engines. These are very deceitful because they generally contain mediocre content and redundant information.

But because they rank well for several different keywords, users may still end up opening these pages—only to be directed to another website that wants to sell some product or service.

Concealed links are the same. They hidden within the text or made to blend with the webpage’s background so that readers may accidentally click on them and boost incoming traffic for another low-quality site.

These two strategies are manipulative of search engines and deceive users. They are also considered as webspam. Even if there is very good content attached to these pages, these offenses can still pull down a website.

6.       Cloaking

There are those really clever webmasters that design two kinds of websites: one that appeals to search engine bots, and another that’s designed to please users. They make search engines see one thing while presenting different content to human users.

This is a heavy violation because users end up not getting what they are expecting to see based on the meta information displayed on the SERPs.

Most of these black hat practices could propel a website/blog into the first SERPs in a short time. Other than the fact that it’s unethical, why is it important then to avoid black hat SEO practices?

The results of black hat SEO may be instant, but they are only temporary. Image source.

First of all, search engines are no longer tolerant of websites that pay too much attention to technical SEO without caring about the quality of their content. It’s not just about keeping the playing field even for all Internet entrepreneurs, but also about user satisfaction.

Google for example is making user satisfaction a priority. It would not please users if their queries always generate mediocre or completely unrelated websites that nevertheless end up there because of black hat SEO. That’s why updates like Google Panda and Penguin are implemented.

Anyone even slightly familiar with SEO understands how bad the repercussions can be if a website is penalized based on these updates.

Second, even a small mistake can bring down a website that took years to build up. That happened to many websites when Panda and Penguin first rolled out and most of those who were affected dabbled in black hat practices.

Third, positive results borne out of black hat strategies are only temporary. Considering Google is very watchful of websites today, offending websites are quickly found and penalized. If your goal is long-term online success, you need to really work hard for it instead of depending on black hat strategies.

Nothing worthwhile can be accomplished in the online industry without diligence, passion, and hard work. Everyday there will have new competitors coming in, having the same hopes and goals as you. If you want to achieve true success, do it without compromising your ethics.

Web Design Trends for 2013

In today’s high tech world, one of the most important pieces of any companies marketing portfolio is their website. It is imperative that a website portrays a company in a professional and modern way. This is becoming more and more important each year and regular website updates should be a part of any marketing plan.

So what can you do to ensure that your site is portraying your company as a modern and successful company. Aside from security updates and improving functionality as user expectations warrant, updates to the design will show that your company keeps up on the latest trends in technology and style.

So here is a short list of the why’s and how’s to ensure that your companies web site is portraying your company in the best way possible.

The Why's

Mobile Devices: 2012 saw a dramatic increase in mobile devices use. Unprecedented use of mobile devices means websites must adapt to ensure the user experience is consistent regardless of device.

Big Screen Resolution: New devices include new technology. Retina display is included in many new devices. It is necessary to provide images of varying resolution to take full advantage of the new technology.

HTML and CSS improvements: Improvements to html and css combined with java script are replacing Flash. HTML, CSS, and javascript are more widely supported across browsers and platforms.

User Expectations: User expectations are ever changing based on a variety of reasons; technology, fashion, social climate etc. It is important that websites keep up with user expectations to keep the user engaged. If your website doesn't respond as expected, visitors will not likely complete a conversion or return to your site.

The How's

Content First: Content is king! It doesn't matter how well designed the site is if it does not communicate the goal to the visitor, human or bot, in an efficient, searchable, accessible, multi-platform manner, then the site is not achieving it's goal.

Responsive Design: Responsive design is a must have for 2013. Responsive design ensures the user experience is a positive experience, regardless of device. Responsive design will adapt to all the current viewport sizes as well as any new technologies that may emerge.

Simplified Design: Simplified design is becoming more popular in part to mobile devices and in part due to current style trends. Recent studies show visitors prefer simplicity, minimalism, clear layouts, app-style interfaces, design focusing on typography, less decoration, flat style, flat colors. Gone is the day of flashy, ease of use takes the lead for 2013.

Stacked Footer: Stacked footer on a desktop display is a great way to maintain simplicity while providing visitors and bots easy access to the entire site. A stacked footer is a great compliment to the desktop display of a minimalist design.

Transparencies: Improvements to CSS have made transparencies more widely supported and we are likely to see more use of transparencies in design in 2013.

Social Media Badges: Social media is still going strong. No site is complete without a full suite of social icons.

Info-graphics: Big graphics to explain complex concepts are trending on the internet and are a great way to convey data in a user friendly way on a website as well.

Vertical Navigation: I was never a huge fan of these in the past, but with the advent of responsive, simpler design, vertical navigation flows more naturally.

Circular design elements: Use of rounded corners and circular shapes is much easier with advances in css. Rounded corners provide softer edges and circular elements make design more interesting without cluttering the simplicity.

Krista Trovato

Peerless design inc.

www.pdiwebdesign.com

Local Indianapolis Partner Provider HJK Digital Solutions to Host AddressTwo Workshop

Getting Started with AddressTwo

(Beginners, Newbies, and Not-So-Techies Welcome!)

REGISTER HERE: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/5731884220

Have you just signed up for AddressTwo but aren't quite sure how to use it best for your business?

Have you been an AddressTwo user for a while but you still haven't gotten the hang of it?

If this is you, then save the date to join us for our Start Right Training for AddressTwo!

March 14, 2013

Two Sessions to Choose From

10:00am - 12:00pm

OR

1:00pm - 3:00pm

Bring your laptop and your questions and we'll walk through step-by-step how to set up your AddressTwo account and start using it to help your business grow.

In this workshop, you'll learn:

·         How to import your contacts from another CRM (or other database) into AddressTwo

·         How to set up the custom fields to make the most out of your sales cycle management

·         How to create tasks and record history items so your To-Do list doesn't look so scary (and it actually gets done!)

·         How you can leverage the power of AddressTwo to create more business in less time and with less stress

Register today to secure your seat. Because we will be actually there going through each step, each session is limited to only 10 people.

WHEN

Thursday, Mar 14th, 10am-3pm

WHERE

1060 N. Capitol

Indianapolis

REGISTER HERE: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/5731884220

You have contacts.

The right information.

You have AddressTwo.

The right tool.

Now you have us.

The right support.

      

HJK Digital Solutions

Facebook@hjkdigital

Launched in 2012 by Holly

Kile, HJK Digital Solutions works with clients (individuals, companies, and organizations) to create effective digital strategies using a combination of social media, cutting-edge technologies, and traditional marketing methods. Small business owners and entrepreneurs, especially those with a ‘brick and mortar’ business, often feel overwhelmed and anxious when it comes to creating the online business strategies. HJK Digital Solutions recognizes that this anxiety is made even worse by the vast majority of training currently available because that training is often too technical and difficult to understand or not easily scalable to a traditional business and/or small business. HJK Digital Solutions employs a variety of consulting and training developed specifically for these businesses in an effort to help those companies leverage these technologies in order to foster greater customer engagement and loyalty. Creating more meaningful customer relations through these modern methods has direct positive impact to a company’s bottom line.

clientcare@hjkdigitalsolutions.comhjkdigitalsolutions.com

Can You Sell in a 6-Second Video?

by Gary Hennerberg

Quick! Can you sell your product or service in a 6-second video?

Who knows. But we’re about to find out in a test, and we invite your participation. And in a few weeks, I’ll share the results with you. You may know about Twitter’s latest foray into “micro social” with 6-second videos on Vine.

Rather than let our opinions fly around without basis, we decided to dive into it to see if we could make it work. We’re about to test the concept and find out if we can make it a success. We’ll report on what’s happening over the next few weeks and in April we’ll have the final results. Watch this video for the full story, and comment below with your ideas.

(If the video isn’t just above this line, click here to view it)

Please share your ideas in the comments section below, or email me directly. We’ll keep you updated in our future blog posts, and we’ll find out together if all of this worked. If it’s a bust, we’ll tell you that, too. 

With so much new coming into our marketing world, the more we share successes and failures with each other, the more effective and profitable we’ll all be.

 Gary Hennerberg has helped to turnaround marketing performance of businesses of all sizes for over 20 years. After a foundation of working in direct response marketing, he has broadened his reach and navigates between traditional direct mail marketing, email marketing, video marketing, SEO, and other online marketing initiatives.

Sales Is Dead. Long Live Sales!

Ben Arment, someone that I highly admire, said that "Marketing is the act of creating demand for what you have to offer. Sales is the act of convincing someone to buy it anyway. Sales exists because demand does not." As a marketer it strokes my ego to hear that I'm so important, but in reality there is now and always will be a need to for high quality sales professionals.

Good, strong sales are predicated on relationships and trust. Sales professionals of the past have known this for decades, but the 80's and 90's saw a plethora of so called sales experts espousing sales techniques that were sure to win that next big deal. Sandler, Carew, Carnegie, Tracy and many others had systems and programs in place that if one would simply follow they could achieve high flying success.  Yes, some of those programs were probably helpful, but the truth is what all good sales professionals know: building a career is sales is about building trust with the customers they serve.

Tools and techniques may have changed, but relationships and trust are still the key components to success. Relationships today can be facilitated by social media, webinars, blog posts, emails, and yes, the phone still works. According to Google Trust is a: Firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something."  Did you read that? "A firm belief in the reliability...of someone."  That someone is you. I might also add "helpful" to that list. Do you have your interest at heart or do you really wish to serve the best interests of your clients?

When I was younger and in retail sales I considered the best sale that I ever made was actually for a competitor.  I worked at a sporting goods store that was known for outstanding expertise in everything we sold. A customer was in need of a good running shoe that would help with his particular running gait. The only problem was he wore a size 7 adult shoe. We did not have that size in stock and we could not get the shoe in time to meet his need. So, I sent him to the competitor to get the shoes and guess what? After purchasing the shoes he came back to our store and told me it was the best shoe he'd ever tried on. Not only did he come back to thank me, but we won a customer for life as I saw him back in the store several times to purchase additional shoes and sporting goods.

Building trust is also about being so remarkable at what you do that others will promote you as the expert.  To become the expert in your customers' eyes, empower them to help themselves by offering assistance and knowledge in areas beyond the performance of your product or service.

Build relationships first. Then build trust by being the reliable and remarkable expert.  If you can do that you'll find yourself facilitating purchases rather than "selling".

Mat Maynor

Mat is co-founder and chief strategy guy of Big Vision Media Group.  He has nearly 20 of experience developing marketing strategies for companies ranging from Fortune 50 to start-ups.  Connect with Mat on twitter @thinkstrategy and Facebook.

Sell the Benefits

Why do people buy from you?   I routinely ask people that question to see how they talk about their product.   All too often, I find they focus too much attention on the features of the product, how it is constructed and how it works and not enough time on what it does. 

When you offer long descriptions of the technical specifications in advertising and marketing material you run the risk of exhausting the average customer.  Until you can show a prospect the BENEFIT of your product, they don't really care how it works, even if it is cool technology.  

So instead of making customers interpret your features to discover how they can benefit from them, tell them.  Sell the benefits up front and they are more likely to ask you how you deliver what you promise.  

When asked what your product does think about what your true value, what they customer gets from using your product or service.  When you think about it from their perspective it is easier to create relevant marketing messages and see more.   

• Does your product make people feel safer, more secure, more stylish or more important because they own it?
• Is it fun, interesting or exciting to use
• Will ii make them more comfortable, take them somewhere they want to go, or let them do something they couldn't do otherwise? 
• Does your product save them time or money? 
• Will your product increase their earnings or reduce their taxes.  

People make purchase decisions to save, increase or reduce 

Benefits can be boiled down to one of three categories saving, increasing or reducing.  Where does your product fit in? Will it: 

• SAVE:  money, time, effort, or resources 
•  INCREASE:  income, investments, future opportunities or personal relationships 
•  REDUCE:  expenses, taxes, liabilities or problems

 Plan your sales presentation to focus on what the prospect needs, then help them see how your product serves their needs. When you are focusing on what your product will do for them it is easy to steer the conversation away from the lowest price. 

Remember, the value of your product or service has absolutely nothing to do with the cost to produce it.  The TRUE VALUE of your product or service is based on how much you save, increase, reduce, or improve.

Marketing Strategist, Lorraine Ball can be found at Roundpeg, helping small businesses become big businesses. 

AddressTwo 2013 EAC Established Business Award Winner

It was a welcomed break to the usual work week to attend the Entrepreneurship Advancement Center’s (EAC) annual Celebration Awards last Thursday.  The whole team here at AddressTwo—Chad, Troy, Steve, and I—all attended the luncheon and awards ceremony at the Monon Center in Carmel.  There were some exciting young businesses on display.  Michael Cloran’s keynote was thought provoking.  It was great to see several of our long-time customers.  And, the food was excellent.  But the best part was taking home some hardware.

At this year’s banquet, AddressTwo was recognized as the leader in the Established Business category (businesses with more than 1 employee and over $250,000 in annual sales).  As an entrepreneur, it’s always nice to receive some recognition amid the daily toils that go along with growing a small business.  But more than that, it was great to be able to share in the praise with the team who made it possible.  Troy and Chad have been the backbone of this company for so long, their achievements solidified our position as a strong leader in Indiana’s entrepreneurship scene.  And Steve, the newcomer to the team, is making great strides in taking our technology to new levels. 

It was an honor to be recognized as a finalist in the category, and a genuine thrill to hear our name called as the winner.  Thank you to the board and the judges at the EAC, and thank you to the AddressTwo team for all your hard work. 

-- Nick 

Sales

One of the most valuable lessons I learned about sales was from my mother.  She always says, “I’m not going to force ANYBODY to take my money.” (try saying it with a southern accent---way cooler, right?) And mama is right; buying something shouldn't be complicated.  Unfortunately, as the seller, sometimes we get hung up on the end of the process that we fail to look at everything that happens along the way.  To make sure I don’t forget (and to keep mama proud), twice a year I walk through the sales process of all of my products as if I were the consumer.  I thought I would share with you some of the things I look for that have led me to consistently increase sales year after year despite a “poor” economy.

1. Descriptions of items need to tell you what they are and why they need them. If a customer is looking at your product and they aren’t sure what it does or why they need one then they’ll likely just move on.
2. Explain to your potential customer why they need to buy one right now. Think about this: If Larry sees an ad for snow shovels in August, he is probably not going to want to buy one. BUT, if you tell Larry that he can get that snow shovel for half of what it will be in December or remind him that the best time to prepare for winter is BEFORE it happens then Larry might just buy that snow shovel from you in the dog days of summer.
3. Too many clicks is code for SEE YA! If your customer has to click more than twice to purchase something, you better look at streamlining. Clicks are like doors.  The more doors they have to go through to buy something, the more time they have to think about why they don’t need it and why spending the effort to get it isn’t worth it.
4. Make it pretty. A picture is not only worth a thousand words but it’s worth a thousand dollars (or more). Only use high quality graphics on your site and in your catalogs. Blurry images or images that look home-made don’t appear professional and will often lead the customer to think your product is inferior (even if this isn’t the case).
5. Reward the loyalists. Make sure that you are taking the time to see who keeps coming back to you and spending more money. Once you have identified them, reward them. Give them a coupon, special gift, or at least a thank you. Let them know that they’re more than just a number to you.

What other ideas do you have for making the shopping experience easy and painless for your customers? Join us on Facebook and share your thoughts! www.facebook.com/hjkdigital.