While larger companies have the resources to hire experts and try various tactics, small businesses must become
social media “experts” themselves – developing strategy, implementing and monitoring. And along the way, they will ask and answer the same core questions over and over:

• Are we connecting with customers through social media?
• Are we finding new customers?
• Can we monetize our social media efforts? In other words, is there tangible payoff?

There’s a great article in The Wall Street Journal that details pros and cons of social media from the perspective of two very different small businesses. Read it here:

What can we learn from the social media frustrations and successes of these two businesses?

• There’s no one-size fits all. Learn from other businesses’ efforts but be sure to approach your foray
  into social media from your understanding of your business and your customers.
• Know your customers. Even anecdotally, are your customers spending a lot of time on Facebook or Twitter? It may appear that the whole world is tweeting non-stop. But your customers may not be. If that’s the case, you’re wise to skip these entirely.
• Make the commitment. You’re no stranger to working in the evenings and on weekends. At least at first, this maybe when you’re doing social media. The main thing is following through once you’ve made the decision to take the plunge. The Internet is littered with abandoned blogs and Facebook pages that haven’t been updated in a year or two. This is counterproductive and more detrimental than just passing on social media altogether.
• Have clear goals. Maybe you just want to stay connected to an important group of customers. Maybe
  you want to sell products and realize a quantifiable return on your social media investment. These are all
  legitimate objectives; just make sure you have clearly articulated yours, so you’ll know whether you’re
  achieving them.
• Have a strategy. When social media madness hit big, business rushed in, in all directions. Often they failed to ask fundamental questions like Why are we doing this?  What do we hope to accomplish? How will we know if we’re successful? Formulate a clear social media strategy that matches up to your stated goals.
• Some tactics may just naturally make sense. Some forms of social media inherently lend
  themselves to certain kinds of businesses. For example, a community ice rink that frequently holds special
  skating events needs to be able to easily get out updated dates and times to their customers and uses
  Facebook to do this. A pair of freelance writers wants customers and prospects to see samples of their
  writing, so they started a blog.
• It’s OK to go slow.  For many businesses, full-blown, integrated social media will get the best results. Otherscan be more conservative. Still others may find that social media just doesn’t help much at all. It’s OK to try a little at a time, observe, evaluate and make adjustments accordingly.
• Be patient. Depending on your objectives, it may take awhile to see the results you’re looking for. Give it some time.

While everyone talks about the difficulty small businesses have in getting bank or even SBA loans,
who would have thought that the country’s unbelievable losses in home values would also have a direct, significant (and negative) impact on small business financing?

Well, the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland was thinking about it and set out to investigate. The study, conducted in 2010, drew on a variety of data sources and small business owners themselves who participated in focus groups. An analysis of the findings was published last year.

The authors say that in some areas, absolute conclusions can’t be drawn due to the variability
in small businesses themselves and in data gathering and reporting. And it is nearly impossible
to determine the exact size of the impact. One reason is that no one knows how a draw on a home equity line, for
example, is actually used, for personal expenses or as business capital.

That said, however, there are a number of other findings that are definitive:

• Actual percentages vary among data sources, but the fact is that small business owners have been more
  likely to rely on their homes as a source of capital – either by borrowing against home values or by using
  home equity lines of credit.
• Small business owners have also tended to borrow larger amounts – again, either when using their
  homes as collateral or in taking out or drawing on home equity lines of credit.
• During the housing boom (roughly 2000 through 2007), small business borrowing increased across
  the board, including home equity-based borrowing.
• In the years since the downturn, small businesses have reported difficulty in accessing credit
  due specifically to reduced equity in real estate.
• Small business credit is calculated to be as much as $24.5 billion below where it would have been had
  the growth in home equity lending continued.

Read the entire commentary here:
http://www.clevelandfed.org/research/research_publication.cfm?id=25&y=2010&DCS.nav=Local.

Everyone agrees small business borrowing has dropped for a variety of reasons, including decreased demand for
credit, declining creditworthiness of small business borrowers, an unwillingness of banks to lend money to small
businesses and tightened regulatory standards on bank loans. But the authors conclude that there are other
factors that aren’t so obvious and are more difficult to offset. Lower home values are a prime example of something that has put a notable constraint on the ability of small businesses to obtain the credit they need to finance their businesses.

This Federal Reserve analysis poses interesting challenges for policy makers, because solutions are far more
complicated than previously thought and will be neither quick nor easy. As new questions arise, old ones may
also be revisited, including the wisdom of relying heavily and long-term on your home value and home equity to
finance your business. Particularly for cash flow, alternative forms of financing, including business cash advances, are becoming increasingly attractive to business owners.

Believe it or not, you can do more. But first you have to wrap your head around a seemingly counterintuitive notion:
To do more, do less. And you need to be smarter about how you do less.

Think about how a typical day unfolds.  Hour after hour of endless decisions, fire-fighting, problem-solving. As time
speeds by, you may feel like you’re swimming in molasses. But you press on, because there’s so much more to do
before you finally call it a day. Although you have that sinking feeling that you didn’t do nearly what you’d hoped, there’s
always tomorrow, probably a repeat of today.

Time to regroup, to stop and consider what experts now say about how we should all approach our work
to get the most — and best – from ourselves.  Do less, they say, and watch your productivity levels soar!

 1. Surprise! We aren’t computers.  It sounds obvious, but we keep asking our brains to operate like the
technology we’re so dependent on.  It’s not working. We think we’re accomplishing more with long hours of frenetic
activity, but studies show that quality and efficiency suffer a lot. Prolonged multi-tasking, for example, has even been
shown to reduce IQ!

2. We’re sprinters – not marathon runners.  Experts say that our ability to function at a high capacity
diminishes in less than two hours; in fact, 90 minutes appears to be the optimum stretch for concentration and focus.
You can force yourself to stay at your desk and soldier on, but you see diminishing returns: Your productivity can fall to
30 or 40% of your peak efficiency as the day drags on.

3. Take (real) breaks.  After a solid 90-minute stretch of working intensely, then what? Is your idea of a “break”
taking time out to read? Return emails? Watch cat videos on YouTube? No way! Researchers say that true
breaks involve mental and physical refreshment and are critical. Get up, go for a walk, even run an errand if you can.
Simple, 15-minute breaks refuel and get you prepared to attack your next 90-minute stint of work.

4. This means lunch, too. Years ago people took two- and three-hour lunches. Now we’re wolfing down fast food
or leftovers at our desks – while we continue to work. There’s got to be a happy medium, and experts say that taking
time for lunch is necessary for stamina and clarity. Take no less than 30 minutes – 45 minutes or an hour if you can –
and preferably, leave the building. At a minimum, leave your desk.

5. Stop multi-tasking.  We frantically multi-task because we believe that we’re “getting more done.” We also think
that multi-tasking is a bell that can’t be un-rung. Wrong on both counts. Multi-tasking, experts say, only gives us the
illusion of getting more done, when in fact, we’re just creating multiple distractions for ourselves. Quality and
efficiency suffer. Finishing one thing before going to the next is a habit that can be re-learned by staying in the
moment, drawing boundaries around the task at hand and fiercely protecting them.  

6. Un-plug. The work week now includes evenings, weekends and vacations. We’re afraid to be unavailable;
panic sets in if we’re not connected, even for a short period of time. Now we know that we MUST un-plug some
of the time to be able to be able to function well. A consultant recently wrote about his anxiety when he decided to
take the “unplugged plunge” over the holidays. But he reduced his uneasiness by doing things like setting exact
start and stop dates and listing his cell phone number for emergencies in his “out of office” email message. Ultimately,
he found that nothing blew up, clients didn’t leave, the world didn’t end. And he even learned in the process that most
of the Google searches he had previously been doing throughout the day weren’t so important after all.

What trends?

This week, for example, the National Association of Home Builders reported home builder confidence reached the highest level in more than four years this month. That is particularly good news because the housing market has been the most troubled since the recession began. While conditions are far from ideal, analysts think the industry’s free fall has finally passed its nadir.

Then there’s employment, which is arguably the most important component of a healthy economy. Once again, conditions are not ideal, but recent indications have been promising. Earlier this month, the U.S. Labor Department reported a dip in the jobless rate to 8.3 percent – still high, but the lowest since February 2009. That was largely based on the addition of 243,000 new jobs in January.

Furthermore, manufacturing activity has been steadily improving, marking the 30th month of consecutive growth in January, according to the Institute for Supply Management. Consumer activity has also been steadily improving. The Commerce Department reported this week that retail sales climbed 0.4 percent last month, stemming many fears of a relapse in spending trends. The notoriously ailed U.S. auto industry has also shown gains, with 2011 marking the best sales year since 2008.

But what does it all mean?

For small business owners the sting of the recession may still be felt. The National Federation of Independent Business continues to blame weak consumer sentiment and excessive regulation for stalling growth in small business confidence, despite reporting five straight months of gains in its Small Business Optimism Index.

“Nothing happened last month that would significantly improve the small business outlook,” said NFIB chief economists in a statement this week. “Washington is at a stalemate … Congress has failed to pass a budget for over 1,000 days, and without discipline on spending or any budgetary priorities, there is no path to fiscal sanity in Washington.”

“U.S. debt is now larger than our GDP, and headed in the wrong direction,” he added. “This does not make for a comforting future, a fact reflected by low consumer and small-business owner optimism.”

But the NFIB, frequently critical of Washington and the Obama White House, has held to something of a glass-half-empty position on the economy. While the federal deficit is certainly a concern, one that trickles down into other areas of the economy, it is less relevant to small businesses than it is to fiscal policy hawks and global investors.

What about average Americans?

Nationwide, sentiment regarding the economy shifts from market to market, region to region. But one thing is clear: No matter how overblown the perception that Washington policy has anything to do with economic vitality, it’s sure to play a role in the upcoming presidential election.

“Voters are becoming more optimistic about the state of the economy and, at the same time, are viewing the president more positively,” The Daily Beast points out in a recent blog post. “A New York Times/CBS News poll finds that President Obama’s approval has hit 50 percent, the highest it’s been since May 2010, as Republican voters are also disillusioned by their party’s candidates for the presidency.”

However, the source noted, that figure may drop markedly once a Republican presidential candidate is chosen.

What’s a small business owner to do?

Focus on your operations. Don’t blame the economy for your problems. Finding a scapegoat will only allow you to shed blame. View these market challenges as just that: a challenge. Mold your marketing, inventory and financing strategies according to shifts in customer demographics, and don’t allow yourself to become dejected. After all, as this long recovery has shown, pessimism only breeds more pessimism.

Dave Brock, founder of consulting firm Partners in Excellence, argues that the reverse strategy is preferable.

“Too many organizations design their processes from the inside out, rather than the outside in,” he tells the blog BizSugar. “They always get it wrong, or its effectiveness is seriously limited. It’s always so much easier and impactful when you start everything from the customer point of view.”

But how exactly do you develop a business plan or idea that focuses on the customer first? For one, it helps to put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Washington Post contributor Tom Ehrich argues that too many organizations fail to accomplish this rather simple task.

“Like it or not, customers arrive with certain expectations. Ignore them at your peril,” he writes. “Imagine how many automobiles would sell if dealers could abandon their much-loathed system of point-of-sale haggling and up-selling and just sold cars in a manner that customers enjoyed.”

Your customers have a much higher capacity for rational discourse, complex information and seemingly esoteric data than you may assume.

But what does this mean for your customer service strategy?

Every organization needs to build brand loyalty – whether a small mom-and-pop shop or a tech startup sensation. The customers and clients who keep coming back to you are the main source of your business – treat them as such.

“Too many ‘providers’ – in politics, business and religion – come across as having a low opinion of their constituents,” Ehrich adds. “People tend to be good judges of what matters to them. Voters know this recession better than their would-be leaders seem to know it. Believers seem to take their faith more seriously than those institutions that seek to enroll them as members.”

That being said, let’s take a look at customer loyalty, namely how it impacts your business.

Customer loyalty 101

According to the National Business Research Institute, 80 percent of people do not complain about receiving poor customer service – they merely leave and offer their business somewhere else. This underscores not just the importance of top customer service, but consistency as well. You simply cannot afford to have one employee who under-performs in the service department – nor can you afford brief lapses in service quality. This is even more crucial during the startup phase, when every sale – indeed every penny – counts.

So you may be thinking, “My customer service is top-notch and I have no need to rethink my strategy.” But think again. The same NBRI study shows 80 percent of business owners think their company offers a “superior customer service experience.” However, more than half of customers disagree with this sentiment.

So what’s the solution?

“Providing quality customer service is the most important factor in any customer loyalty strategy,” the NBRI explains. “The better you treat your customers, the more likely they are to return.”

And, as mentioned above, returning customers are integral to your business’ success. A recent American Express survey found 70 percent of consumers were willing to pay up to 13 percent more with companies that provide quality customer service. And the NBRI’s research goes even further:

“A 5 percent increase in customer retention can increase profits by up to 125 percent.”

But that’s all just data. It doesn’t show you exactly how you can improve your service standards and performance. To that end, focus on what makes you, your business and your industry unique. Just like a good business plan starts form the outside, so does you customer service strategy: It helps to put yourself in your customers’ shoes.

“Too many consulting firms fail to recognize the realities of making something work in organizations,” Brock adds. “Each organization has its own personality, capabilities, capacities. There is no right answer (the theory) but there are best answers for each organization.”

More importantly, you need to evolve. Don’t grow complacent. If you find a strategy or even an employee is not making the grade, give it the axe and start over again. There’s no such thing as a uniform customer service strategy.

But it’s important to recognize the importance of the people around you – that is, your partners and employees. Inevitably, you will come to rely on them for various tasks – be it applying for a loan, obtaining a business line of credit, developing a budget or dealing with a problem client. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. As a business owner and a manager, you need to gauge these attributes and apply them accordingly.

However, many entrepreneurs hold that innovation is notoriously difficult to vet – let alone identify. Especially at the startup stage, companies don’t have the resource to recruit top-tier innovators. So how can small business owners foster innovation and creativity in-house?

“Often, innovation in a company stalls because team members don’t fully understand each other’s roles, duties and jobs,” writes Anita Campbell for the American Express OPEN Forum. “This can become especially problematic as your business grows beyond startup size.”

With this in mind, heed some of these tips and tricks for building and attracting innovative minds for your organization:

Open up your company culture

Creativity and innovation are virtually impossible in a restrained or heavily structured environment. As an entrepreneur, you know what it’s like: Inspiration can come from the most inane, improbable sources. Most often, it comes after you take a break from extended periods of intensive thought. But, ultimately, muses vary from person to person, so you need to forge a work environment that is open and devoid of hierarchy.

“You’ll be surprised at how little, say, your parts department might understand about what marketing does, and vice versa,” Campbell adds. “Having employees in various departments share what they do all day, the challenges their department is facing, and the problems they are trying to solve can be an eye-opening exercise for everyone on staff … and inspire some great innovative ideas.”

Look to customers for inspiration

What pleases your closest clients and customers? What annoys them? This latter question may be more important, as it alludes to a problem that you, as the innovator, need to solve. Consider accumulating all your client concerns or complaints in one centralized location, such as a whiteboard or company blog. Offer your workers incentives or rewards for solving each of those problems. As an example, Google is famous for its innovative workplace, and many of its workers are encouraged to spend a certain amount of time each day working on their personal projects. Might that be something your own employees would enjoy? If nothing else, it would certainly build job satisfaction.

Strike limitations where they stand

Finally, be wary of any and all barriers or restrictions. Do you have any rules in place that, for instance, limit finance people from attending marketing meetings? Are you or your executives not easily approachable? If so, eliminate these rules. Even if it’s not directly related to innovative capacity, recognize that the more bureaucratic or structured an organization is, the more intimidating it is and the more free thought will be hindered. Remember: The best ideas often come from the most unexpected sources.

As popular as tech-enabled as ecommerce sites are, it can still be difficult to figure out whether you’re growing or not. With brick-and-mortar shops, your small business financing efforts, customer volumes and inventory needs should offer adequate indication of growth, but these are less apparent in an online environment, where numbers and metrics are your main tools. Here are three imperatives to consider in gauging the growth of your ecommerce startup.

Drive sales

Are you selling your own products, or those of others? This is an important distinction that should be considered in comparing your service to supposedly similar ones. You also need to consider your product mix, sales incentives and up-sells to make sense of your sales volumes.

“In the case of aggregators such as flash sites, ‘sales’ can mean something else entirely,” writes Rudina Seseri for Inc. magazine. “They often report and market themselves based on the value of gross sales. For them, ‘gross sales’ really means the value of the merchandise sold through them, not the amount of money that goes to the ecommerce site itself.”

Build traffic to your website

Generating traffic to your site is like the Holy Grail of ecommerce. It has little to do with money and a lot to do with creativity and efficiency. While there is no single, across-the-board strategy for generating sufficient traffic, the most important goal is to measure and manage your return on investment. Where your traffic is coming from and the various marketing efforts you equip to harness those trends is important, but their success will vary from channel to channel.

“Once you’ve determined your target customer profile, and you understand where they go online and off, spend the initial phase of your program testing and experimenting until you find the magic trigger,” Seseri adds.

Convert traffic to sales

As esoteric as it may be to rely on metrics to influence your marketing, inventory and sales strategies, it is worth it to understand. These figures offer a first-hand look at where your visitors are coming from, what they’re doing on your site and even what influences them to buy – to an extent that storefronts simply cannot match.

“Some visitors are coming to your site ready to buy from you,” Seseri writes. “Others may be coming to your site because some third-party partner of yours offers them a reward for doing so. They have no intention of buying. These two kinds of traffic will have very different conversion rates.”

Accordingly, timely payment of goods and services is viewed as paramount in establishing a consistent and reliable budget. But oftentimes this is simply out of one’s hands. Some customers procrastinate on payments, while others are late altogether. So what’s a business owner to do? Here are some small business financing tips for ensuring that your customers pay for your goods and services in a timely fashion:

1.) Contracts – Some companies, particularly those in the construction industry, issue contracts that mandate debtors cover legal fees in the event of a payment dispute. Under these agreements, the client is notified of the arbitration process and their contractual agreement to pay for the service provider’s expenses. As few individuals would be willing to go down that road they are likely to pay up then and there.

2.) Discounts – Everyone likes a discount. While you may be reluctant to chip away at your profitability by offering lower costs in exchange for timely payment, it may save you a headache in the long run. If you’re in an industry or dealing with a customer that is known for late payments, this may be a particularly attractive option.

3.) Penalties – Establish in your contract that late payments will result in penalties, and make this point clear to your customers from the get-go.

“Let customers know that a small interest amount will begin to accrue following the due date if you haven’t received any payment,” suggests the National Federation of Independent Business on its website. “Of course, if a customer has been prompt in the past, you can always decrease or waive the penalties if they agree to pay by a given date.”

4.) Demand up-front or early payment – Deposits and down payments can help ensure a consistent cash flow. While they may be a turn-off to customers, the right amount of a requested deposit should be viewed as fair by both parties. Also, consider demanding the completion of payment before shipping your goods or completing the service.

Other alternatives

Ultimately, however, there is no single strategy for ensuring timely payment of goods and services. The best idea would be to deploy a mix of the above strategies and to adapt your standards to the payment needs of your customers.

Still, there are always going to be some delinquents, and you be forced to turn to debt collection agencies and services. The NFIB explains:

“After 90 days past due, accounts depreciate at a rate of approximately 15 percent per month, according to industry experts,” the NFIB points out. “Outsource the job to a fully bonded agency that’s a member of the American Collectors Association or the Commercial Collection Agency Association.”

“Debt collection is probably not the task you had in mind when you became a small business owner, but it is necessary to keeping your business healthy,” the site adds.

Build a cash cushion for further protection

Any small business owners would agree: Some things are simply out of your hands. Whether it’s a delinquent customer, a natural disaster or an economic collapse – the safety of your business is not entirely in your control. For that reason, you need to build up a cash reserve, or a “rainy day fund,” for when you truly need it. Exactly how big that pool of capital is depends on your business and the industry in question, but six months of retained earnings is a solid target, the NFIB reports.

“[At that point] you’re in a position to go bargain hunting,” the site adds. “Is one of your competitors going out of business and selling their equipment or inventory at steep discounts? Having extra cash positions you to capitalize while saving money.”

As your cash reserve continues to grow you can use the capital to reinvest in expansion, such as new equipment, hiring and construction additions.

Other ways to build up a capital pool include reducing inventories, improving collection standards and cutting back on overhead or direct expenses.

Whatever your strategy, know that sufficient and reliable cash flow is an imperative of business financing for small business, especially in a down economy or fragile market.

Of course, banks are not the only avenue for small business financing. There are plenty of alternative lending options, such as business cash advance programs, microlenders and crowdfunding platforms. But whatever your chosen method of financing, it’s imperative that you work on building both your personal and small business credit scores.

SCORE, a nonprofit entrepreneurial consulting firm focused on financing, suggests adhering to the “Five C’s” of good credit health. They are: capacity, collateral, capital, conditions and character.

“The five C’s are very important,” John Seelinger, a California-based volunteer for SCORE, told Inc. magazine. “You can’t afford to be sloppy or haphazard with them. The underwriting process may be different, but the fundamental five C’s are always there.”

1.) Capacity

Capacity refers to your organization’s ability to pay off its debts. In your loan application, you need to explain exactly how and when you plan to repay a loan or business line of credit. This means listing all possible sources of revenue and capital that can be tapped to pay off your dues.

“Not only do you need to state your revenues and expenses, but you also need to indicate the amount of your cash flows and the timing of your cash flows with regard to repayment,” writes Rosemary Peavlar for About.com. “Capacity also refers to your credit history.”

2.) Collateral

After capacity, collateral may be the most important consideration lenders will make in assessing your loan application. Essentially, this refers to the various types of asset security you can offer your banks in the event of a default on your debts. It may be properties you own, or it may be in the form of a personal guarantee of repayment by another party, whether an individual or a loan backer such as the U.S. Small Business Administration.

You should keep in mind that collateral is even more important to lenders in a tight credit market, as risk is higher in a down economy.

3.) Capital

This refers to how much you, personally, have invested in your business. Lenders want to see that you have made significant investments in your venture, including the volume and quality of the capital invested.

“Often times a small business owner who is just starting out will go to a bank and ask for a small business loan,” Denise Beeson, a commercial loan officer at Bay Sierra Financial, told Inc. magazine. “The bank is not going to lend them any money if they have no personal investment in their business.”

4.) Conditions

This refers to the overall economic climate and market environment of both the lender and your specific industry. In a tight market, it is much more difficult for a small venture to repay its loans, but it is also more difficult for banks to obtain adequate capital for their own lending imperatives. Accordingly, banks will want to know how you intend to use their money, as well as the current trends within the industry.

5.) Character

Whether you like it or not, lenders are going to make subjective judgments about their prospective clients and loan applicants. Based on the information you offer them, they will decide if you are reputable or trustworthy in regards to paying off your debts and ensuring a return on investment for them. For this reason, you need to provide all manner of educational background and experiences that highlight the bright aspects of your character and your business.

Although demands for franchise business loans, secured business loans and similar financial assistance rose among small companies, banks reported “little change in standards on commercial and industrial loans,” according to the survey, which was based on responses from 56 domestic banks and 23 United States branches of foreign banks.

The findings of the latest survey contrasted the results of the previous study, released in November, Bloomberg notes. In the November survey, more banks reported a decrease than a rise in demand. When analyzed in conjunction with the most recent study, the results provide indicators that both banks and businesses may be backing away from what Drew Matus, senior economist at Stamford, Connecticut-based UBS Securities, terms “the ‘buckle down’ approach.”

“If a firm wants to expand they typically need to borrow money to do it,” Matus told the news source. “At a minimum this suggests we should still be looking for decent job growth over the next three to six months.”

The economy was expected to add 145,000 jobs in January, according to the median estimate of a Bloomberg News survey of economists. This was a decrease from December’s gain of 200,000 – but not an entirely unexpected one, given the demand for seasonal employees during the holiday season.

Figures issued by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics after Bloomberg released its estimate revealed that total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 243,000. Job growth was widespread in the private sector, particularly manufacturing, professional and business services, and leisure and hospitality.

However, according to a recently released report by the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), almost as many firms cut workers as increased hiring. NFIB surveyed 2,155 firms and reported a “break even” number in hiring, CNBC reports. Specifically, 11 percent of small business owners added an average of three workers per firm, while 11 percent reduced employment by an average of 2.9 workers per firm. Although the employment reduction figure may seem disappointing, it was in fact the lowest percentage of small enterprises cutting workers since 2007, which NFIB chief economist Bill Dunkelberg said is a promising sign.

“The market was looking for 150,000, and we got 257,000,” he said of the hiring findings, as quoted by the news source. “We’ll rejoice, and hope for another good month next month.”

With regard to small business lending, Diane Swonk, chief economist with Mesirow Financial in Chicago, said she sees an uptick.

“We know anecdotally that big businesses are relying on small businesses for core innovation,” she told CNBC. “There is some seed capital, which explains some of the small business lending.”