New York SBDC Research Network

U.S. total business end-of-month inventories for June were $1655.2 billion, virtually unchanged (+/-0.1%)* from last month. U.S. total business sales were $1285.8 billion, up 0.2 percent (+/-0.2%)* from last month. June 2013: 0.0* % change in inventories May 2013: -0.1* % change in inventories

Looking for insight about how the Affordable Care Act will affect your small business and your employees? This free webinar series will help you understand key pieces of the law and what you should know about tax credits, the new small employer health insurance Marketplace (SHOP), and more. This week will feature special guest SBA Administrator Karen Mills. The series will run every Thursday through October, and the same webinar will be offered each week. Join us this week and get the facts you need to know. Thursday, August 15 at 2:00 PM ET: Click to Register Tip: Check out Business.usa.gov/healthcare to get customized ACA information for businesses of all sizes

If you want your readers to click “like” or “retweet” or “reblog” or “pin” or “plus,” you gotta ask for it. Not for nothing do two of the web’s most popular sites--BuzzFeed and Mashable--serve up big buttons at the top of each article, beseeching you to “share me now!” What’s more, these icons now include the number of shares in real time, boxing you in with peer pressure: “Don’t share me--I dare you!” This is marketing at its finest: so subliminal, you think you’re making a considered choice. Too often, however, those in the communications field blanch at making an explicit ask. We think of ourselves as marketers, not salesman. We trust in the purity of our craft, rather than tricks of the trade. Yet there’s a reason “marketing” and “business development” often find themselves in the same job title. More from the ASBDC blog .

WASHINGTON–Long-term assistance for small businesses affected by Hurricane Sandy is being made available through expanded funding to the U.S. Small Business Administration’s resource partners working in conjunction with state and local organizations. “SBA is working to harness the ingenuity of our local communities to make sure that we’re not only rebuilding, but building smarter,” said SBA Administrator Karen Mills. “This funding will provide extensive collaborative services to help small businesses recover and rebuild from Hurricane Sandy, so they can do what they do best, grow the local economy and create jobs.” SBA’s resource partners will issue a total of $13.1 million to collaborative teams, which will integrate local economic recovery efforts and bring distinct delivery of business services. This second phase of funding, part of $19 million in emergency appropriations approved by Congress, will be distributed by SBA’s resource partners -- the Small Business Development

If you’re not using video in your social media marketing, what are you waiting for? The engraved invitation came back in 2006 when Google bought YouTube. In 2011, YouTube passed Yahoo to become the world’s second-largest search engine. Video is a powerful tool, and leveraging it correctly can yield amazing results for your social media marketing. Social media video is hugely popular and includes everything from Vine (Twitter’s 6-second mobile video app) to long-form videos on YouTube. According to research by Pew Internet, http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Video-sharing-sites.aspx 71% of online Americans use social media video sites (and that study was conducted in 2011—the percentage has likely increased since then). A picture is worth a thousand words so the cliché goes and a motion picture is priceless, which is why Pew Internet described videos as “social currency” when they reported in 2012 that 41% of adult internet users share and repost videos on social media. More from

The U.S Small Business Administration celebrates its 60th birthday this week. It is a great occasion to mark and celebrate the agency’s accomplishments over the past six decades. When, following the suggestion of President Eisenhower, Congress passed the Small Business Act and created the Small Business Administration in 1953, its stated mission was to "aid, counsel, assist and protect, insofar as is possible, the interests of small business concerns," and also ensure small businesses a “fair proportion” of government contracts. The SBA still does these core functions to this day. And at the time he signed the Small Business Act, President Eisenhower said: “It is my wish that the federal government programs and policies aimed at assisting small businesses ...provide such enterprises with additional constructive assistance.” Sixty years later, the landscape of the nation has changed substantially, but SBA’s mission and its commitment to the success of small business re

The Forty Hours is Full Time Act of 2013, or H.R. 2988, which was introduced by Rep. Dan Lipinski, D-Ill., would expand the definition of a full-time employee from the ACA’s current 30-hour-per-week threshold. The ACA currently establishes that businesses with more than 50 full-time workers must provide health insurance for full-time employees who work either 30 hours a week or 130 hours per month. Many in the foodservice industry have been working to convince policymakers to increase the number of weekly hours worked to 35 or 40 since the ACA was passed in 2010. This newest measure mirrors a similar bipartisan bill that had been introduced in the U.S. Senate by Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., earlier this year. Like the House bill, the Senate version redefines a full-time employee as one who works 40 hours a week or 174 hours a month based on a 52-week year. More from Nation's Restaurant News .