Which ones are right for your business?

Social media are internet services that let you interact with others and share and create content through online communities.

For example here are links to some of the Accountants First social media websites:

Social media present great marketing opportunities for businesses of all sizes.

Why does Advisory Accountants recommend social media?

You can use social media to:

• promote the name of your brand and business
• tell customers about your goods and services
• find out what customers think of your business
• attract new customers
• build stronger relationships with existing customers.

Advantages of using social media

Advisory Accountants has found that social media marketing has many advantages:

• broad reach - social media can reach millions of people all around the world
• ability to target particular groups – many forms of social media (e.g. Facebook) allow businesses to target specific groups, often in particular locations
• free or low-cost - many forms of social media are free for business, and paid options are usually low-cost
• personal - social media allow you to communicate on a personal basis with individual customers and groups
• fast – you can quickly distribute information to many people
• easy - you don’t need high-level skills or computer equipment to participate in social media. The average person with a standard computer should have no difficulty.

The risks! A heads-up from Accountants First
Of course, marketing through social media also has its risks. These include:

• wasted time and money for little or no tangible return
• the rapid spread of the wrong kind of information about your business (e.g. incorrect information accidentally posted by you, negative reviews posted by others)
• legal problems if you don’t follow privacy legislation and the laws regarding spam, copyright and other online issues.

It’s important to be aware of these risks and to have strategies in place to avoid them if you decide to get involved in social media marketing.

Key social media services
Different types of social media are good for different marketing activities. The key social media services are:

• Facebook - a social networking site that allows you to have conversations with customers, post photos and videos, promote special offers, and more
• Twitter - a ‘micro-blogging’ service that allows you to send and receive short messages from customers and potential customers
• Youtube - an online video-hosting service that lets people share their videos
• Blogs - internet sites that contain a series of entries or ‘posts’ about topics of interest to the author, much like an online ‘diary’
• Coupon sites - websites that offer discount coupons for goods, services and events
• Online photo sharing services - websites that allow users to store, organise and share their photo collections
• Location-based marketing sites - websites that deliver targeted marketing messages to customers in particular locations, through mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets
• Customer review sites - websites that feature customer reviews of goods and services.

Getting started with social media

If you aren’t already familiar with social media, the terminology and the range of different services can seem daunting at first. But we at Advisory Accountants believe it’s worth learning more. Most social media services are affordable and easy to use, and they can put your business in touch with customers like never before.

Check out Accountants First social media for a better idea of how to use social media to boost your business profile.

You may have heard or read about the well publicised tax case of two Christchurch surgeons Penny & Hooper who used company structures and family trusts to artificially lower their salaries to avoid a higher personal income tax rate.

The Supreme Court sided with the Inland Revenue when it ruled that “income derived from personal exertion should belong in its appropriate taxation band and should not be inappropriately diverted away”.

Inland Revenue concession to make a voluntary disclosure granted after the outcome of the Penny and Hooper case runs out at the end of this month.

Those who make a voluntary disclosure before 31 March 2013 would be required to make adjustments for only the last two income years.

Those who did not come forward might incur not only penalties, but Inland Revenue might also reassess their tax position over four years.

Advisory Accountants have developed our Shareholder Remuneration Kit for our clients, and a procedure to help you by assessing the risk that the Inland Revenue will disagree with the tax positions taken.

Please urgently arrange a meeting with me, so that we could assess the risk and advise whether we need to do a voluntary disclosure to Inland Revenue.

Should you require any further information, please let me know.

A tip from Advisory Accountants : Changing circumstances in your business and in New Zealand tax laws mean that you may not be legitimately claiming everything you are entitled to.

As a valued Advisory Accountants  client we would like to explore with you all options specific to your business that have a bearing on how much tax you are paying.

Overpaying tax doesn’t make sense

The Director of Accountants First has prepared a special program to this end and would like to go over it with you to explain the various legal tax opportunities available.

Call Advisory Accountants to arrange a meeting at a convenient time to check that you are currently claiming all the expenses you are entitled to.