Monthly Archives: September 2021

Hot Business News Today

Is TikTok better than Facebook for small business ads?

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By Olivia Starling on Small Business – Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs

What is the one thing you won’t forget about quarantine? For many, it is the day they downloaded TokTok and immediately became hooked on the most entertaining social media platform to date.

You may think that TikTok is only for Gen Z and dancing, but the creativity, content, and For You Page make the app irresistible to any age group. If you don’t know what the For You Page is, it’s essentially your home feed which shows relevant content based on the videos you like and watch. Want to laugh? All the content TikTok feeds you will be funny videos. Watching puppy videos? Tok-Tok will continue to show you adorable baby animals all day long. Are you a mom? You might go down a rabbit hole of mom hacks. The algorithm of the For You Page makes TikTok exactly what you are looking for, designed just For You.

So how does a business take advantage of the rising TikTok tide? To effectively grow and scale your business, using social media ads have become a necessity. Ads make it possible for you to reach a more targeted demographic

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One in seven adults plan to become entrepreneurs

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By Anna Jordan on Small Business – Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs

One in seven adults now plan on becoming entrepreneurs, up 50 per cent from 2019, according to a report from NatWest.

The bank partnered with business schools and universities across the UK to put together the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2020. They interviewed 9,400 adults between the ages of 18 and 80.  

This growth has come about despite data saying that the number of existing entrepreneurs dropped by 25 per cent over the course of 2020.  

Clear differences within age and ethnicity were also evident. Younger people aged 18-29 were more likely to start their own businesses, while 55-64-year-olds were the least likely to do so. BAME communities have double the number of existing entrepreneurs (14 per cent) compared to the overall population (7.5 per cent).

Mark Hart, 50th anniversary professor of small business and entrepreneurship at Aston University, said: “Those ethnic-minority communities that have borne the brunt of the pandemic in terms of infection, hospitalisation and sadly deaths demonstrated their resilience by maintaining their previous levels of early-stage entrepreneurial activity (TEA rate) which were significantly higher than for the non-ethnic minority population.

“Clearly, the pandemic has had

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Expected national insurance hike to cost businesses £3.5bn

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By Timothy Adler on Small Business – Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs

The government’s expected 1.2 per cent hike in national insurance will cost businesses up to £3.5bn to match employee contributions, economists have warned.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that if £10bn of additional revenue is generated by the NI tax increase, businesses will need to find between £3bn and £3.5bn extra from April.

The self-employed will also face the NI rise, though they already make lower contributions.

>See also: Small business owners face increased national insurance contributions

Professor Len Shackleton, research fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs, described employer national insurance as a “crude payroll tax” which discourages lower-paid employment and is then passed onto workers in the form of lower pay.

Craig Beaumont of the Federation of Small Businesses told the Daily Telegraph: “Hiking the jobs tax on employees and employers would make it more expensive for businesses to create and maintain jobs.”

Mike Cherry, chairman of the FSB, told the newspaper: “This regressive levy is yet another outgoing for small businesses and sole traders to worry about against a backdrop of spiralling input prices, supply chain disruption, a deepening late payment crisis, rent arrears, rates bills returning,

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