Archive for the ‘Financial Guide’ Category

Some More Candid Truths About Your Corporate Blog

Financial Guide | Posted by Joseph Carr-Boyd
Feb 24 2012

A little while back, we told you about some truths about your corporate blog that you must face up to. Today, we bring you some more facts about corporate blogging that you need to incorporate into the basic approach you take towards your corporate blog. Keeping these points in mind would stand you in good stead when writing and maintaining your corporate blog.

If your corporate blog is being used merely to announce launches, releases and other product related news, you’re not blogging and you’re definitely not engaging; you’re merely broadcasting. Ideally speaking, a corporate blog must be platform for dialogue between individuals representing your organization through your corporate blog. For the reader, the conversation with these individuals is a major influence on how he interacts with, and ultimately feels about your brand.

Yet, some companies go out of their way to avoid user interaction: they’d even disable user commenting on their corporate blog.

What must be borne in mind with respect to any corporate blog is that unless you can manage to get regular back-and-forth conversations going with your readers, ‘engagement’ is not happening at all. Encourage comments and suggestions, ask for solutions and contributions; there are plenty of ways to get the two-way traffic flowing.

Some organizations make the mistake of keeping the tone of the corporate blog too much like they’re making a corporate statement. Sometimes the

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Tags: Blog, Corporate Blog
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Euro ministers agree on a Greece deal | Feb 21st, 2012

Financial Guide | Posted by Joseph Carr-Boyd
Feb 22 2012

Eurozone agrees biggest bailout in history with Greece | times

The deal, which gives Greece a financial lifeline in exchange for strict surveillance of Athens, came after 12 hours of tense talks in Brussels that saw Lucas Papademos, the Greek Prime Minister,act as go-between for ministers with negotiators for private creditors.

Tags: Deal, Deal Feb
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Tax advice of the week: Act to avoid the pensions ceiling

Financial Guide | Posted by Joseph Carr-Boyd
Feb 16 2012

If you have a substantial pension pot and think you are likely to breach the new £1.5m lifetime pensions ceiling, act fast, says Simon Bonnett of Duncan Lawrie Private Bank. The Lifetime Allowance (LTA) is to be cut from £1.8m to £1.5m as of 6 April 2012 – unless you apply for protection.

You simply need to apply to HMRC for a new personalised LTA of £1.8m by 5 April. If you don’t, you could be “taxed at the rate of 62.5% on some of your pension pot”, warns Bonnett.

Say you have £100,000 excess over the LTA: if you took it as a lump sum, you’d be charged 55% (the LTA charge) and end up with a net lump sum of £45,000. If you took it as income, you would pay a 25% charge, then be taxed at the relevant tax rate on the remaining £75,000.

A 40% taxpayer would end up with £45,000 net income assuming the normal personal income tax allowance remains, while a 50% taxpayer would end up with £37,500, ie, an effective rate of 62.5%.

So protection is worth having, but remember: to keep it, you can’t “make any further contributions or build up benefits after 5 April 2012”.

Tags: Ceiling, Pensions Ceiling
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Corporate blog: how to blog for business

Financial Guide | Posted by Joseph Carr-Boyd
Jan 24 2012

Corporate Blog’s are the latest in the online marketing strategy. Along with social media sites, a corporate blog makes for a very powerful tool to get into the eye’s of the customers. The question remains on how to manage your corporate blog and ensure that you blog for business.

The fundamental reason for your company to have a corporate blog is to have a strong online presence and representation. Everything is online. With the rapid growth of forums and social sites, one comment or post against your company, and the world knows about it. In this regard a corporate blog comes handy since you can control the extent of damage by having a simple post on the issue. The real question is however, how do you blog for business? Any enterprise undertaken, no matter how small, must give profit or else it’s a waste of time and resources. Blogging for business is not to be looked at with the traditional perception. Your business is not just on the new customers your blog will bring, but how well you keep your repeat customers happy. A corporate blog goes a long way in customer relations and that is a great help for business.

Blog for Business by making your corporate blog a part of your company

Your customers only see the end product that you provide and are in touch with just a handful of employees. The rest of the “machinery” is hidden away in offices and meeting rooms. Bring the

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Tags: Blog, Corporate Blog
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How to achieve your New Year resolutions

Financial Guide | Posted by Joseph Carr-Boyd
Jan 09 2012

Make a plan to stick to your resolutions

Another New Year. Another resolution. What should it be this time? I went on the BBC’s Woman’s Hour last week to discuss this very question. The other guest on the programme said that she didn’t fancy resolutions much. She didn’t like the “oppressive” notions of “obligation and duty” that they come wrapped in.

I’m not so sure. I rather think we could all do with a little more in the way of notions of obligations and duty. That’s particularly the case when it comes to our finances – which is why, when the other guest suggested everyone resolve to eat better chocolate in 2012, I suggested we all make a proper financial life plan instead.

“Save more” is generally one of the top resolutions made in Britain. But it is a pretty useless one: if you don’t add a proper target to your resolution, it will fall apart long before the sales are over. It is too vague to work. “Save £200 a month until I have three months’ worth of income sitting in a cash account” is better.

But taking it further and making a financial life plan with a series of targets is the best way to go. Most of us neglect the management of our money. We get it, we spend it, we save it and we invest it. But we don’t do so to a set plan. We don’t sit down, decide realistically where we want (or need) to be financially and then work to get there. The results are obvious.

So he

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Tags: New Year, Year
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War Imminent in Straits of Hormuz? $200 a Barrel Oil?

Financial Guide | Posted by Joseph Carr-Boyd
Dec 29 2011

 The pieces and policies for potential conflict in the Persian Gulf are seemingly drawing inexorably together.

 Since 24 December the Iranian Navy has been holding its ten-day Velayat 90 naval exercises, covering an area in the Arabian Sea stretching from east of the Strait of Hormuz entrance to the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Aden. The day the maneuvers opened Iranian Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari told a press conference that the exercises were intended to show “Iran’s military prowess and defense capabilities in international waters, convey a message of peace and friendship to regional countries, and test the newest military equipment.” The exercise is Iran’s first naval training drill since May 2010, when the country held its Velayat 89 naval maneuvers in the same area. Velayat 90 is the largest naval exercise the country has ever held. The participating Iranian forces have been divided into two groups, blue and orange, with the blue group representing Iranian forces and orange the enemy. Velayat 90 is involving the full panoply of Iranian naval force, with destroyers, missile boats, logistical support ships, hovercraft, aircraft, drones and advanced coastal missiles and torpedoes all being deployed. Tactics include mine-laying exercises and preparations for chemical attack. Ira Read more…

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