blogging
How to promote your business during the holiday season 2015?
October is one month of the year where promoting certain products becomes more important than at any other time of the year. There are special sales days and of course the winter holiday season. If you have followed our series “Promoting your business online” you may have found some useful tips and tricks. If you may have misses an article let us provide you with an overview. In our series we have published the following article:
Promoting your business online: Website
Promoting your business online: Online Marketing
Promoting your business online: Website Structure
Promoting your business online: Online Advertisement
Promoting your business online: Social Media
Promoting your business online: SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Promoting your business online: Blogging
Promoting your business online: Facebook
Promoting your business online: Twitter
Promoting your business online: LinkedIn
Promoting your business online: Social Media Advertisement
In the following weeks we would like to follow up our series with additional posts starting with “Social Media Management” followed by “Social Media Management Tools”
If you are located in Vancouver and like to learn more about promoting your business online, we offer our Online Advertisement Seminar again and would be happy to welcome you in our consultation location. More information about our seminars can be found via the event list link or simply by clicking here https://teccrab.wordpress.com/event-list/
But unfortunately the upcoming holiday season also attracts those how like to find ways to trick you into providing your money to them. Those who will try to steal your identity and credit card information. Just like last year we have also for this year planed to host some events regarding Internet Security. We offered last year two different seminars with overlapping topics and combined the two into one seminar we like to call Internet Safety Seminar. You can find the seminar details at our event list or by clicking this link: https://teccrab.wordpress.com/event-list/
To learn more about us please feel free to follow the links below.
http://teccrab.com – Web
http://blog.teccrab.com – Blog
http://twitter.com/teccrab – Twitter
http://facebook.com/teccrab – Facebook
http://plus.google.com/+teccrab – Google Plus
http://www.youtube.com/user/teccrab – YouTube
Promoting your business online: Blogging
A Blog is a fantastic way to update your audience and inform them about specials, about events, new products and services as well as general information about your organization. Starting a Blog is easy but can be challenging at the same time. Today we would like to talk a little bit about some of the challenges and give you some advise how to overcome them.
Why should I have a Blog?
This is often the first question clients ask us. With so many Blogs out there, why should you start one too? The reason is simple, because you can use this platform to update your customers about situations you may not want or need to put on your website. You can also use a Blog for online promotion support, meaning you can more frequently talk about a new or existing product and “remind” your clients of its existence. Or maybe you are working on a project and want to publish updates about stages you have reached. But a Blog is also a platform that allows you to show new clients that your organization is still active. A website often reaches a stages where not that many updates happen, depending on your business of course, but a Blog allows you to be more active.
Which Platform should I use?
There are several options available. The popular once are WordPress, Blogger and Tumblr. It is advisable to check out each of them before starting your Blog, just to get an idea which one you feel more comfortable with.
What is the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org?
You can create an account and Blog with wordpress.com in just a few minutes. You will be a bit limited when going with the free version and have to accept advertisement on your Blog. If you want to be in total control you can download the software used to run WordPress at wordpress.org and install it on your web server. The software is open source and the download will be free. However if you decide to ask a professional to setup you Blog with WordPress be aware that they will charge you for their time. You also will have to pay for a domain and for hosing your WordPress Blog.
Your first Blogpost(s)
You will start with a blank page and this is for many the first barrier. Many of our clients who started a Blog had that experience and needed support to get through the first couple posts. Here are some tricks that might help you:
- Start writing about yourself, your organization, the products and/or services you offer
- Ask friends for feedback
- Try to work on a schedule for your updates
- Be aware that the first few post might only be read by a few people
How often should I publish a new post?
This depends on factors such as industry, your time, your audience and of course also your products and services to name a few. You are welcome to contact us for a free consultation where we can advise you further.
Self posting vs professional writer?
A professional writer can be very beneficial in the long run and can save you a lot of time and even money. However, we like to encourage clients to start their Blog on their own. To make it easier for our writers to set the right tone for your Blog we like to ask you to provide us with a draft for the first couple posts. After that we will just ask you for the topics and the research will be done by our team. We have different packages available that are based on your needs. All our packages are flexible and you can upgrade, downgrade and even pause services as you go. You will always have a professional team on your site for as long as you want. Services include maintaining the Blog, posting updates on your Blog as well as providing reports. If you are interested in learning more about us feel free to check out the links below:
http://teccrab.com – Web
http://blog.teccrab.com – Blog
http://twitter.com/teccrab – Twitter
http://facebook.com/teccrab – Facebook
http://plus.google.com/+teccrab – Google Plus
http://www.youtube.com/user/teccrab – YouTube
Promoting your business online: Social Media
Social Media became in the last couple years more and more important also in regards of promoting your business online. With so many platforms to choose from it is understandable that especially newcomers can feel a little overwhelmed. Today we would like to post a few general questions business owners often have and answer them.
Why should I use Social Media to promote my business?
There are many reasons to use social media to promote your organization. One very important is transparency. This may sound wired but this is actually one of the most important reasons especially for new businesses. Just imagine you find a product on a website you have never heard of, provided by a company you don’t know. Would you give them your address and credit card details without hesitation? Now imagine you find the same company on Facebook and see that they have a lot of fans plus a lot of great reviews. It is now so much easier to trust them. If the same company has not only Facebook, but also Twitter, YouTube and some other accounts were they are actively post and interact with their audience you will feel much more comfortable to use their website.
Another reason for using Social Media is feedback. As soon as you have build an audience you can ask them for feedback. For example: You have a bakery and your blueberry muffins are the best. Now you feel it is time to introduce muffins with a different flavour, but before you go and buy the ingredients you can ask your customers if they would like to buy them. And later you can even ask them how they liked them.
Last but not least you can use various social media platforms to advertise. Depending on the platform you may be able to place a banner, text or even video ad. We compared text, banner and video ads in our post Promoting your business online: Online Advertisement
Should I use every single platform?
Well, it doesn’t hurt if you secure an account with the mayor platforms, just in case you want to use them later. However, if you don’t use a platform frequently you shouldn’t mention it on your website nor encouraging people to follow you when you know you won’t use it.
Which platforms are best for my business?
General speaking you may want to have a Blog and a Facebook Page, even if you are a B2B business, a LinkedIn Page might also be a good idea. We know some business owners who really like using Twitter, while others don’t know how. Google Plus and YouTube are also great platforms and there are of course various location based services such as Foursquare and Yelp you want to check out, especially if you are a restaurant or pub owner. Depending on the nature of your business you may want to plan which platform to concentrate on and which you can keep for later. In our free consultations we help you to figure out which one might be best for you.
Social Media Expert vs Do It Yourself…
This is not easy to answer. Some business owners love to use social media and to update their audience while others prefer to leave it to an expert. In our consultation we often bring up the example of using an accountant or doing accounting on your own. Some may find it easy and do not want to use an accountant while others prefer to have one. It is up to you what you feel is best.
How much does it cost to have an agency managing my social media needs?
It largely depends on the kind of platforms you want to use, the amount of updates you would like to provide to your audience and also how many platforms the agency has to manage for you. Another factor is if you need someone for setting up the account as well as your goals. Many of our clients like to combine related services such as Social Media Management and Social Media Advertisement.
All our packages are tailor made, this is why we offer free consultations to get to know you, your goals, your needs as well as budget. We also offer flexible packages so you can increase, decrease or even pause our services depending on your current situation. To learn more about us feel free to follow the links below.
http://teccrab.com – Web
http://blog.teccrab.com – Blog
http://twitter.com/teccrab – Twitter
http://facebook.com/teccrab – Facebook
http://plus.google.com/+teccrab – Google Plus
http://www.youtube.com/user/teccrab – YouTube
MarioFit – a year later
We started working with Mario Schiopu from MarioFit.ca in September 2012. Mario is a Karate Champion, Krav Maga Instructor, registered Holistic Nutritionist & Sport Nutrition Advisor, a Certified Fitness Consultant and experienced Athletic Performance Coach, Mario is one of the most passionate researchers on Fitness, Nutrition and Healthy Aging. When he turned 50 his goal was to raise awareness for a healthy lifestyle by participating in the 2012 BC Karate Championship Tournament. He attached this goal to a fund-raising event called MarioFitFightingForKids.com to gain the motivation he needed to compete. Mario was facing in the tournament much younger champions and won in the end the silver medal. MarioFitFightingForKids.com had 7 official Sponsors and 32 official Supporters. We raised for the Children’s Hunger Fund and the BC Children Hospital more than $4,000. In summer 2013 Mario received the Champions for Change Award for this event.
Beside this fantastic achievement Mario also realized during the time we worked with him the power of social media and with our help he started updating his Blog more frequently. He is posting about various health, fitness and self defence related topics on his Blog MarioFit.ca in English and Romania.
He also became involved in the Vancouver Martial Arts Academy, started training Josh to become the next Karate Champion, gave self defence classes in various community centres, schools and even the UBC.
For 2014 MarioFit.ca has already big plans and we from teccrab inc. are very happy and excited to be part of it. If you want to learn more about MarioFit.ca please follow one of the links below:
http://www.facebook.com/MarioFit.ca
Don’t forget to sign up for the MarioFit.ca Newsletter
And also don’t forget to sign up for our Newsletter
Introducing tangledthoughts.ca
One of our fantastic clients is Craig, who is updating his Blog tangledthoughts.ca frequently. Craig is a first class hairstylists located in Vancouver Downtown and his Blog is not just about Hair.
Since April 2013 we are working together with Craig and our goal was to establish a Blog that would be informative and fun. Thanks to Craig’s excellent writing skills and his fantastic sense of humour his Blog became step by step more successful and popular.
The first steps for a new Blog as well as new Facebook Page are always a bit difficult. You start with a blank page, nobody is following your updates and we often get the question if it is worse putting so much time and effort into it. We always answer that question by referring to other clients who had the same problems when they started using social media.
In our experience the first 100 fans are always the hardest.
Craig is at the moment at 87 fans, only 13 more to go and he has his 100 fans on Facebook. Important to mention is that we managed to reach this goal with a very low budget in just a few month. Craig is using one of our smallest packages, which includes frequent meetings and tips to improve his overall online visibility.
Check out his his Facebook Page at http://www.facebook.com/tangledthoughts.ca and feel free to become a fan. Please also visit his Blog at tangledthoughts.ca and leave a comment if you like.
Craig is in our opinion an excellent example for a small business owner who is successfully using Social Media to improve his online visibility without spending a lot of money and we are very happy to support Craig and have him as a client.
If you like to learn more about Online Marketing and Social Media Management join us in our seminar which we offer at the moment for a very low price. Or fill out our Online Information Request Form to get in touch with us. We would be happy to have you as our next success story.
The teccrab 2013 Online Marketing and Social Media Management Seminar
Promoting your product and services can be challenging. For many small businesses and startups the internet seems to be a good and cheap way to do advertising. But before investing a lot of money in the wrong platform, you should know a bit more about the many different ways to promote your business, product and services online. Often a combination of more than one platform leads to a higher success than just putting everything into one online advertisement campaign.
Our weekend seminar is designed to help you to find out which platform is the best for your business. We will talk about Online Marketing in general and also talk about Social Media integration into your Online Marketing campaign. To secure that you will get the most out of our seminar we keep our groups small, only a max of 10 participant per weekend. We also decided to offer this amazing two day seminar for a very discounted price. Only $129.00 for two full days.
Included are the following topics:
Online Marketing
We will talk about Online Marketing in general. Mention the most popular platforms to promote your business, products, services or events online. Plus talk about possible combinations.
SEO and SEM
You may have heard a lot about those two. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and SEM for Search Engine Marketing, but what does it mean? We hope we can help to get a bit more light on this subject for you in our seminar.
Blogging
In our experience Blogging is especially for small businesses a great way to inform customers about your business, products, services, special offers and events. A Blog can be a very powerful tool to help you reaching your goals, even with a very low budget.
Keywords / Tags
To help your customers finding your Blog or website you will need to add keywords so that your site pops up when someone uses a search engine. Let us guide you a little by explaining how important Keywords and Tags are.
Social Media – Overview
Our second day is all about Social Media. We will start with a little introduction and we will also combine things we learned the day before into this topic.
Facebook
What is the difference between a Facebook Profile, a Facebook Page and a Facebook Group? How can you integrate them into your Online Marketing Strategy and more important should you?
Twitter
Telling a storey with only 140 characters is not easy. Is Twitter really the right platform for you? Or is it just a waste of time? Let us help you to find out.
LinkedIn
We like to call it the professional Social Media Platform. You can find here professionals from around the world, but can also use it to introduce not just yourself, but your business, products and services.
Google Plus
The Social Media Platform from Google. Some love it, some like it, some think it is not worse spending time and money on it. We would like to introduce it to you and maybe you will be surprised that you can find your audience here.
YouTube
Videos are a great way to introduce your products and services to your audience. Let us show you how you can use YouTube as a fantastic advertising platform.
We will close each day with an hour for your questions. We believe, because our groups are small, you can be sure that your questions will be answered. We are offering this seminar for this amazing price only until the end of December 2013. If you are interested check out our Event Calendar to find which weekend is best for you. The location of the seminar will be our consultation location in Downtown Vancouver.
We are looking forward to see you soon.
The new teccrab website
I am very happy to announce that we recently launched our new website and I would like to invite you to check it out. With the new design we also introduce some services we didn’t had online with the previous version. We went with the latest Joomla version, Joomla 3.0, to realize this project. The latest version of Joomla is great for those who would like to have a fantastic looking and functional website not just on a computer, but also on a tablet or smart phone. We checked our new website on an iPad and iPhone and were very pleased with the result.
Beside changing the website we as well redesigned our Logo a little bit. We will still have the crab as our symbol, but created now alos a text version, which you can find now on our Blog, Facebook Page, LinkedIn Page, Google Page as well as our website of course. For our social media platforms we added the icons of the services we offer and we think the new look is clean and fits our overall design.
Because we will celebrate in February 2013 our first anniversary we plan to have some special deals for new customers. We encourage therefore everyone to check out our Blog frequently to see what we will have for you. We already started the new year with one of our new packages, called the Google AdWords KeyWord-Broker Start. This package is especially for small business owner designed and in our opinion a great and very risk free way to check us out and start using our services.
Beside the Google AdWords KeyWord-Broker Starter Package we plan to offer IT Training. This is based on a few conversation we had during the holidays were we talked with various people about the IT Training landscape in general. Most people were not pleased with the available IT Training options, told me about their experience were the training was either very expensive or not practical. I had my share with so called IT Training Provider as well. I had the experience that classrooms were often way to big or that the teacher couldn’t reach the student because they were “hiding” behind a screen.
Our classes will be 10 students max and our first training will be very basic, but hopefully useful, practical, a little bit entertaining and not very expensive.
We are very excited to see how well this new service will perform and can not wait to welcome the first class.
I hope this short update made you interested in our services and please visit our website http://teccrab.com to see what we have to offer. Don’t forget to leave a comment to let us know how you like the new site.
Cheers for now 🙂
Simon
teccrab inc. | Blog 