Top 12 resources for small businesses:
*Updated 4th March 2016 with 2 extra resources for 2016*
As a growing business, we understand the importance of SMEs around the UK having a wealth of useful resources at their disposal. Not only to keep up to date with important business news, but also ever-changing trends.
To highlight this idea, we’ve compiled a list of our favourite business resource websites for your reference. Be sure to check them all out!
Note – these are not in order of importance
1. Smallbusiness.co.uk
Smallbusiness.co.uk provides solid advice and help guides aimed at start-ups and small businesses in the UK. They feature a section dedicated to questions answered by small business experts, covering a whole range of subjects important for SMEs.
The website is a must-read for any up and coming business in need of financial, business management, or technology advice.
2. Start Up Donut
Start Up Donut provides up to date and useful information for small businesses. They cover a wide range of important business topics, denoted by several coloured donuts, including startup ideas, business planning, sales & marketing, and business IT.
Their in-depth blog is interesting and informative, and definitely worth a read!
3. Smallbiztrends
Smallbiztrends provides a hub for small business news and advice, ranked in order of popularity and how recently an article was posted. A great source of up to date business trends and small business experts to aid your business ventures.
4. Businesszone
Businesszone is a great website full of up to date business articles on a wide range of topics, including finance, technology and business regulation. They feature a business trends section to help businesses keep ahead of the game in an easy to read format. You can sign up for a free account to access their articles and post general business questions.
5. Moz
Moz started as an SEO consulting company in 2004 and have grown to be a market leader within the SEO field — creating several apps to help businesses optimise their websites. The Moz blog is essential for any business looking to improve their SEO and online marketing efforts, especially digital marketers.
The blog features regular posts under different categories, from beginner to more advanced posts, covering all aspects of SEO.
6. SMARTA
SMARTA was founded by some of the UK’s top entrepreneurs and acts as a support platform for business owners and entrepreneurs. Their blog section always has interesting content designed to get you thinking —with tips and tricks to help you grow your business. With an impressive archive, there are hundreds of blog posts to trail through!
7. Business is Great
Business is great is a government owned website that provides inspiration to start-ups and advice for how they can grow and become successful businesses. With a ‘new announcements’ section, you can view up to date news about stories that affect business in the 21st century.
They also offer a handy resources section to help accelerate the growth of your business, along with a clever business support tool that takes you through a number of questions to assess the type of support available to you. An essential website for new businesses!
8. Bdaily Business Blog
Bdaily is an invaluable resource for businesses of every size, covering breaking news from nine sectors in the North-East, North-West, South-East and Yorkshire. They feature articles uploaded directly by their subscribers, which cover an impressive range of business topics, advice and opinion.
Their dedicated team are available to help answer your burning questions about business!
9. Business Matters 
Business Matters magazine was established in 1987 and has over 50,000 annual subscribers. Offering a wide range of support in different areas such as setting up your business, financing your business and legal issues, this magazine is UK-centric and has a great section based on businesses that are ‘Made in Britain’. This section features interviews with businesses in Britain to see their individual growth, achievements and challenges.
10. SMEInsider
SMEInsider is a premier news and analysis website that focuses on delivering the useful things that small business owners in the UK need to know. With a host of experts in the field giving insight into areas such as national headlines, support and advice for the running of a successful business, SMEInsider is definitely a website you should bookmark.
11. Federation of Small Businesses
Established over 40 years ago, the Federation for Small Businesses focuses on providing a wide range of business services to their members including advice, financial expertise, support and a voice in government. Their main mission is to help small businesses achieve their ambitions. They don’t just provide member benefits, as they also focus on delivering change that can help businesses grow and succeed. There is a handy resources section of their website that gives you access to several fact-sheets, legal documents and their blog.
12. Clear Books – Blog
Our final resource for small businesses is our very own Blog section on the Clear Books website. We publish regular blog posts covering a wide range of interesting topics, mainly for accountants and small businesses. A few examples of the content we produce are:
– ‘Commonly asked accounting questions’ (for example, What is a dividend?)
– ‘How to’ blogs (for example, How to improve your SEO)
– General interest content (for example, 10 strange facts about VAT)
– ‘Benefits of’ (for example, 5 benefits of having a website for your business)
We’d love to hear your tips for essential business must-reads too, so let us know in the comments!
Hi. I’m getting a 404 on the link above. https://www.clearbooks.co.uk/resources/time-saving
Hi there – thanks for flagging this up! The link should now be fixed if you’d like to take a look
You will need to click the link in the article itself, as the previous URL (that you copied into your reply) is incorrect. The correct URL is https://www.clearbooks.co.uk/resources/timesaving