Small Business Blog
Our small business blog contains information which you should find helpful in running your business. If you have a suggestion for a topic, contact us and if we publish the topic on our blog - you'll get a gift card!
Creating Your Business Partner Vision Board; A How-To Guide
When courting a business partner, you spend a great deal of time working out who you’re looking for, what they can do you for your company, when the best time to sign them on will be, where you’ll find the best candidates, and why you want one at all. Don’t forget to cover all of the important how’s: How will you work together? How will you divide the work? How will your business thrive?
Is Your Website Feeling Lonely? Tips to Attracting The Customers You Want
You spend hours, days even, hunkered down at your desk examining websites to decide how best to direct your designer for optimum customer engagement. You’ve lost sleep over it, you’ve learned more jargon than you thought possible about a field you had no interest in until last week, and you’ve talked to everyone and anyone you’ve come in contact with to ask what they like and don’t like about websites.
Anything They Can Do, You Can Do Better: Marketing Experimentation for the Nervous Small Business Owner
We’ve all been there: you experience a piece of exquisite marketing and think, “I can do something like that.” You do a little research, mention it to the staff, and put a plan in place. And it works! Which is a beautiful thing! So you keep your eyes peeled for inspiration regularly. Excellent.
The next time you see a marketing strategy you want to try? Don’t just flatter with imitation: do better.
It’s Blue-Screen-of-Death O’Clock: Do You Know Where Your Backups Are?
What’s Holding Your SMB Back? We Think You’ll Relate To This Revelation
How much of your productivity is wasted in meetings and email? We’re at the point in our technology-dependent society to recognize that “just a few minutes” on email devolves into an hour, and that meetings often result in more meetings. How do you break the cycle and make more time to your money-making tasks?
Is that your business on your sleeve, or last week’s lunch?
Social media marketing is, at its heart, an experiment; but the one thing that marketing professionals can agree on is the consumer’s appreciation for brand transparency. That’s why photos on your company Instagram of your dog’s visit to the office, and posts about admitting failure get a lot of response. In being clear about your brand’s identity, you make it easy for customers to grant you their unwavering loyalty.
Heat Mapping Provides Hot Stuff for your Website Analytics
One of the most difficult analysis to grasp in business is your website’s return on investment. You paid thousands of dollars for your website, you’re still paying for service and backups, someone on your staff has to update it with each new promotion or blog post…but is it even doing your business any good? Google Analytics, and other analytical tools built into your website do a great job explaining where your customers are coming from, (both geographically and from which website or search engine), what pages get clicked on, and how long customers stay for an extended visit. And this is all incredibly valuable. Adding a heat map-like measurement into your analytical toolshed, (let’s be real people, we’ve got so many apps we’ve graduated from a toolbox), can show you how customers are interacting with your website.
Don’t Have Time For Your Small Business Blog?
One of the top items on any intern’s To-Do List has got to be social media. Managers think: At last, we can have someone dedicated to this mess and the rest of us can get on with business! The catch is that the intern doesn’t understand the heart of your business, is only here for a few months, may not have a mature grasp of social media for business: and you just handed them the mic and pushed them centre stage of your marketing strategy.
*wince*
Social Media AND a Website? Small Businesses Really Can Have It All!
If you stumbled upon a magic lamp and the genie granted you 3 wishes, how many of you would want more time? Everyone! As a small business owner you are strapped for time every single day, working around the clock, taking heat from the family for checking work emails at Grandpa’s 90th birthday party, and waking up from nightmares about missed orders and falling so far behind the competition that you drown in a sea of debt and disappointment.
What goes on my business card?
Designing the perfect business card is an art. Your perfect business card is stylish, memorable, succinct, and easily read at a glance.
Start your design by nailing down the information you need to present:
Key-ping Things Safe: Password Managers and your Online Security
The internet kicks serious butt. From websites giving you lessons on any topic, to ones that are your favourite time-wasters, the possibilities of engaging the digital world are endless. But with many websites comes many accounts to use them, and with many accounts comes many passwords. Juggling numerous passwords can be difficult, and can complicate managing numerous accounts. By using the following tips, you can help make your passwords and online experience safer and stress-free.
Who’s the Boss, You or Your AI?
When technology works, it’s a wonderful thing. Therefore, when we work with technology, we are wonderful, right? That’s why we have the internet in the home and office – heck, even the printer is wirelessly connected to the information super highway now!
SMB Marketing Media Tips: Photos vs. Vector Graphics
You understand the value of imagery in your small business marketing strategy, especially with regards to social media. Choosing just the right images from stock catalogues is a fun task, especially on Friday afternoon, and you look forward to taking a little brain break while indulging in some artistic inspiration. While you’re gearing up to scroll through the search results of “nature background” again, keep vector graphics in mind, too.
Stress Busters for Small Business Owners
With the weight of the company resting on your shoulders small business owners frequently find themselves in a routine of late nights, early mornings, and a constant supply of caffeine coursing through their veins. When you leave the office on a rare free afternoon and squint at the sun wondering what that bright orb in the sky is, or you’d just like to sleep through the night again, it’s time to practice stress management.
Your Customers Can Find Your Business Online, But Do They Even Want To?
Small business owners of the world, we know that you are looking at refreshed annual budget and planning marketing strategies that will light up your sales like a fireworks display on the first of July! You are dreaming of investing in a new machine, adding to your staff, and expanding your sales reach to another province! This year, dreams are gonna come true!
The Art of Moving Your Office Without Losing Your Favourite Pen (or your mind)
At some point in the long, invigorating life of your business, you’re likely going to have to move to another location. Maybe you’ll grow to a larger facility, maybe you’ll downsize for efficiency, but either way you’re going to have pack and unpack EVERYTHING. Take a look around at your desk right now. Just the thought of packing that alone might have you in a cold sweat. Lucky for you, we’ve done the office moving thing more than once, and we’d like to help out first-time and fifth-time office moving parties.
What even IS Social Media Marketing these days?
As an entrepreneur 10 years ago, you sat at a seminar surrounded by your peers to learn how to use social media for marketing purposes. At that point, all any of us business folk really knew about social media was the mere existence of Facebook, Twitter, and My Space, and our disinterest in using it at all. But then some big corporations figured out how to these platforms to talk to customers and drum up some pretty sweet advertising, and of course, we all wanted in. The problem was, no one really knew how to instruct the corporate world on social media marketing savvy because it was all a huge experiment.
Busyness is Not Good for Business Owners
Whether by nature or necessity, to own and manage a small business means that you’re a perfectionist. Things have to get done right, or they don’t get done at all because you can’t afford to go back and make mistakes twice. Your AI assistants have assistants at this point, you’ve got different ring tones for everyone in your family to help you decide if you should answer the phone during a critical moment, and you haven’t taken a vacation in years.
Wait! Before you Charge that Business Expense to your personal card…
You gotta spend money to make money; we all know this truth. Problem is that when you’re running a small business, money does not grow on trees. As much as you hope that an angel investor will land on your shoulder and help make your dreams come true, it’s not a reasonable expectation. When you’re ready to move from your home office to a leased work space, or you need a new machine, or you have to pay a vendor, it’s so tempting to just reach into your wallet and throw down your personal credit card.
Hire Google Home for your Business
Google Home is a nifty device from the golden age of technology that can be synced with phones and devices, allowing you to - among other things - stream music and control Netflix without using a TV remote. Google Home’s functionality extends to a whole host of verbal commands that can improve your daily routine besides enabling binge sessions for favorite shows on Netflix. Take a look at these Google Home game-changers for your business.
