Toronto Small Business

Twitter adds Business Pages Along With Redesign

admin — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:11:23 +0000

Twitter is allowing brands to create Facebook/Google+ style brand pages. This feature, along with a redesign focused on usability & discoverability of content, was rolled out this week

Twitter is following in the footsteps of Google who recent launched Google+ brand pages.

List of Twitter features

Social Media: Comment on Facebook’s Timeline Takes Off

admin — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:57:35 +0000

Jeff DeChambeau, a Senior Analyst at T4G, an IT services company, made a comment on a start-up community site (Facebook timeline is too awful to be an accident) on how Facebook is manipulating user behaviour to increase brain activity and increase susceptibility to advertising , along with a link to his personal blog.

Result: 35,000 hits in 24 hours.

Then CBS News/Techtalk contacted him and created an article on over-sharing information around the topic and quoted him.

Nice to see a positive example of an insight being spread around the Net.

Toronto Small Business Workshop Series

admin — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 18:17:35 +0000

Debbi Arnold of D.A. Consulting is presenting Small Business Workshops at the Miles Nadal JCC (750 Spadina Ave, at Bloor). The next two are:

Time Management: November 4, 2011. 10:30am-12:30pm. Learning effective time management skills to set yourself up for success

Marketing 101: November 11, 2011. 9:15am-12pm. Learn marketing fundamentals to build a successful business.

Each seminar is $40. Register online via Paypal at http://www.daconsult.ca/

Content Marketing – Good for Small Business

admin — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 14:02:07 +0000

Here’s a good article that covers the kind of things we do for Toronto Small Business clients after the essential web site optimization has been done. Content curation, blogging, white papers, photos, videos and article syndication all support the promotion of a small business’s expertise in a particular domain:

Why Content Marketing is King

To find out more, contact bernie

Deal Sites – another Internet Flame-out

admin — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 13:17:04 +0000

While an on-line “daily deal” from the likes of Groupon can increase the exposure of your small business, there are three downsides:

You damage your brand with poor on-line reviews from one-time users of your service or product
You can negatively impact your value proposition with existing customers, who will now expect to pay less.
If not careful, you will lose money on your discounted offer.

For more, read this New York Times article on deal sites

Free Business Assessment Tool for Small Business

admin — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 15:58:43 +0000

Bruce Hunter, CEO of Lighthouse 360 reports that 93% of business owners have no plan on how to increase the value of their business. Much of this stems from the entrepreneur “working in the business” rather than “working on the business”.

Bruce has a useful tool on his website – a free business assessment tool that can get a small business owner started down the path of thinking more strategically around the growth and how to manage it.

Will “Daily Deals” Hurt Your Small Business Site’s Reputation?

admin — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 16:17:19 +0000

The number of daily deal sites like Groupon and LivingSocial continues to grow but research shows that deep discount offers may be doing more harm than good for a small business’ on-line reputation.

According to a study by Boston University and Harvard University, small businesses that run ‘daily deal’ promotions on Groupon are likely to see their ratings on Yelp drop thereafter.

The data gathered included over 56,000 reviews for 2,300+ merchants who ran 2,500 deals on Groupon. The analysis seems to show the two sides of the deal-of-the-day website – from one perspective, the number of reviews for the business on Yelp goes up because of the daily deals (which for some could be seen as a good thing). However, the average rating scores from reviewers who reference daily deals are 10 per cent lower than scores coming from “business as usual” reviews.

There’s no explanation offered for why the customers using Groupon gave less positive reviews on Yelp, and the report leaves business owners pondering the question: is it worth running daily deals (expensive but can bring in new customers), if it’s at the expense of a lowered on-line reputation on user review sites like Yelp?

Auto Makers use Social Media as part of R&D

admin — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 15:31:26 +0000

While world-wide car manufacturers don’t fit the profile of most Toronto small business (especially when it comes to social media marketing resources), I found this article instructive in showing several ways how investing time in social media actually has business payback:

Kia redesigned the seats for their Optima SX sedan after noticing complaints from consumers and automotive writers on the Internet.
Ford invites consumers to submit their vehicle improvement ideas directly to the automaker via a website called thefordstory.com.
Nissan (with three Twitter streams and Facebook pages for each of its vehicle brands) social media is becoming the de facto process to receive and resolve customer-service issues.

Rest of Article from Industry Week

BOSS Toronto Business Networking Event

admin — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 17:46:43 +0000

BOSS System, a premier B2B Toronto business networking organization in the GTA, is having their big quarterly event this Thursday Sept 7 at the Old Mill Restaurant/Convention Centre in Toronto’s West End. There will be presentations, vendor exhibits, structured networking to build business contacts and give-aways as well.

TorontoSmallBusiness.com, in partnership with SouthCostaRica.com, is giving away one week’s accommodation at the luxury vacation Villa Mariposa as a draw prize.

For event details, visit the BOSS website

Conversion: Your B2B Web Site should be a Sales Rep

admin — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 14:36:40 +0000

When looking at sales funnel development for a B2B web site, I am struck by the similarities between the expectations for a website and those for a human sales rep.

Sales Rep	Website
Develop Pipeline	Capture traffic
Differentiate Company and Solution	Convince visitor you have their answer
Close	Convert visitor into prospect

It follows then that the web site has to show elements that mimic a sales rep, especially when guiding a visitor down the path towards becoming a client.

Site navigation and properly placed CTAs (Call to Actions) that lead the visitor to make a commitment (such as signing up for a newsletter, webinar or whitepaper) are essential to ensuring your site becomes the lead generator you want it to be.

Follow this link to learn more about conversion