Introductory Blackberry Training for Calgary Business Owners and Small Business Entrepreneurs.
3 Secrets to Unlock the inner expert in you!
Bulletproof’s Blackberry Boot Camp, 3 Secrets to unlock the Blackberry Genius in you. This introductory course will give you three new tips to provide you with some time saving features to save you time and energy with the Research in Motion smartphone. In a one hour Lunch and Learn!
Learn how to call you voice mail, secret hot keys and one other time saving tip. This Lunch and Learn on August 5 is an event you don’t want to miss. Held from 11:30 to 1:30 at the Calgary Coast Plaza Hotel, Horizon’s Bistro Restaurant, 1316 13th Street NE.
We are in the process of preparing to launch a brand new website video service for Calgary business owners. In planning since summer of 2008 we are about to launch iAmPlace.com for the newest video product to help Calgary business owners position themselves as experts in their industry.
Last December we introduced our transparent walk-on video and talking head video product at VideoSpokes.com. The iAmPlace.com product will take it up a notch. Select Calgary business owners and internet entrepreneurs will be given the opportunity to have series of video’s produced and syndicated on the internet.
This is not just another Video commercial product – no sir. We have really been thinking outside of the video box. The fact is, to be superior and compete for attention, online business owners have to do just that… think outside of the Box. These are not one off web video TV commercials. The new iAmPlace.com website will explain it in detail soon.
We are developing iAmPlace.com and the related directory of business video’s and business profiles to do one thing… bring more traffic to your marketing website. A combined strategy can not only bring more traffic, it can bring more business.
Video Alone Is Not Enough
Simply attracting people to a 60 second box TV commercial will not necessarily bring your online marketing website more potential clients. Simply put… there is more to it than just showing people a video.
The ulitmate goal being new business means that the focus has to be on an overall approach to the use of video as one of many stepping stones towards your online conversion goal. We are refining a product that combines a team to bring our clients a combined effort of a team that brings Video Production, Search Engine Optimization, designer and programmers to the same table!
iAmPlace.com is not Calgary’s first or it’s only source for web video production, marketing & distribution. The fact is, that there are other website video service providers out there that are doing some incredibly good work. As the client you need to pick the video product that is going to bring you towards your online marketing goal.
Stay tuned for more on iAmPlace.com and our new Video Product.
To Blog or not to Blog? This is the question that many Calgary Business owners are grappling with. The simple answer to this, in my humble opinion, it YES.
Blogging is a powerful way to attract targetted traffic to your strategic messaging.
Blogware, the application that drives blogs, make it so that your blog not only syndicates your message automatically, it can alert Google to your new writing, and it will keep subscribers up to date with your new thoughts. Most importantly is that a high performance blog will bring traffic via natural search and with the right planning your blog can funnel those visitors into your sales funnel. This positions your professional online marketing efforts to convert those visitors to potential clients.
Using one or more blogs as “traffic” magnets to draw relevant visitors towards you marketing efforts is an opportunity that many entrepreneurs are not taking advantage of.
Based on your online marketing budget you could start blogging for free or invest in a fully customized design to match your corporate identity.
If you are interested in Blogging, but don’t know where to begin, here are a few things that I want you to know;
Join one of the informal “Calgary Blogging for Business” lunches held every month. Meet and chat with people who are already benefiting from their business blog.
You don’t have to be the writer. Many business bloggers avail themself of a support writer. All you have to do is come up with the theme and the ideas!
Blogging can be addictive… when you start seeing your blog surface in search results - you will be hooked!
We almost all manage email, some of us more than others. A shared calendar is critical for any business with two or more people working as a team. The ability to draft and exchange documents, spreadsheets and presentations is a must have in today’s fast pased business world.
Google Enerprise will bring your small business all of this and more. There was a time, a year or so back, when the odd thing was missing, such as a todo list… well, I’m happy to report that that isn’t the case now.
Setting up Google Enterprise apps is not difficult and simly requires that our domain’s email be redirected to Goolge servers - your clients will never know you switched… when you continue to user your own business address to correspond with them.
With the core applicaitons based on Googles mail, calendar, docs and sites - collaboration is easy. The learning curve is simple enough that the average user requires little to no training past a simple orientation. An ample amount of storage space of 25 gigabytes of data storage, on my estimate, will provide about 6 years of archiving without deleting any email. Perhaps not a best practice in terms of email retention.
Using this cloud based environement also eliviates the fear and stress of losing access to your data on your own hardrive when you operating system decides to throw a “blue screen of death” or the physical harddrive rattles and burns to it’s final revolution.
We have helped clients as small as teams of two all the way up to teams of 20 convert their office environment to capitalize on the power of google Enterprise apps. While it may not be the answer for every business - at a wopping annual fee of just $50 usd per user… it is without a doubt the answer for us!
Google Enterprise Apps is a viable alternative to old fashioned desktop software that is being used by real businesses around the world - - it is our Cool Tool Pick of the Month!
I am not certain that doing something that earns you the title of “office twit” is a good thing. Over the past several weeks, after a hard debate with myself, I decided to throw caution to the wind and actually start utilizing the Twitter account that I opened in August 2008.
Twitter, it’s the simple banter of 140 character text messages, called Tweets, out to a list of other Twitter users (Tweeters) who have elected to follow you… and listen to your Tweets.
I really wanted to understand, for the sake of our clients, if there is any value in this from a business prospective.
I was sitting cautiously at around 80 followers… I started Tweeting my blog links, links to sites that were of interest and I began aggressively working to get more Followers. My account ballooned over the following weeks from the 80 follower to now over 1100 Followers.
So, what have a learned so far?
I am not trying to sell the next best bit of advice to wood-be victims of impulsive shopping via a long scrolling sales letter… so, sadly I have to report that I am not getting affiliate cheques in the mail from my Tweeting efforts.
I did effectively measure traffic increases to my blogs and marketing websites by Tweeting track-able website addresses out to my loyal followers. hmmm… loyal follows?
I did find that the VAST majority of people following me are not there because they found my mug shot attractive… nor do I believe that they find my Tweets intuitive. I believe they follow because, as I have found, to follow results in being followed. Many Tweeters will automatically follow you…if you follow them. I’ll show you mine if you…. ah, never mind.
So, who follows? The fact is that the followers are… it seems all focused on a similar goal. I think they want to sell me something. I can honestly say… I am not confident what they all sell… some of them, well, it’s pretty obvious. I think some of them want to sell me a better lifestyle, and apparently they can help me do that by taking my money in small amounts… but I sense that they will come back and eat frequently. One of them said I will earn thousands of dollars per month if I only buy their report… actually more than one of them… lots of them.
Now, as a consultant who is advising successful, real, brick and mortar type business owners how to utilize the power of the internet to market their products and services - what would I advise them…?
My jury is out on Twitter. It is early days, and like other internet marketing opportunities, the results may not be instant. We are going to continue to Tweet and continue to measure the results …then, like any effort put into marketing, we will evaluate the return on our efforts and then decide to Tweet or not to Tweet.
Calgary Entrepreneur of the Month for May 2009. High energy, engaging, dynamic - those are the words of his clients. He is a coach, a facilitator and a keynote speaker.
Having worked with Steve over the past months developing his new web presence, I can personally add, a man of integrity. Steve Zanini of Zanico’s mantra is “igniting lives daily” and I am please to announce that Zanico is our featured Calgary Entrepreneur for May 2009. Steve knows that no two challenges are exactly alike and does not offer one-size-fits-all solutions. If you can make some time for Steve, he will listen to your aspirations and immediately start to engage you…
Steve will collaborate with you to: * Create an effective team from the get-go * Align the values of an existing team * Engage and retain new employees * Re-engage disengaged employees * Minimize divisive behaviours AND * Solve office issues in a group setting Steve has successfully brought his passionate approach to medium and large organization and will immediately facilitate the development of your front-line leaders.
I look forward to the time I spend with Steve - and I know that you will too.
Visit the Zanico website to learn more about our choice for Calgary Entrepreneur of the Month.
On March 11th FaceBook rolled out the new home page update to users around the world. In general the community is squawking that they don’t like the new home page feed. It is very much like a live Twitter feed where users updates are streamed out to everyone on their friends list. Facebook has confirmed that it’s design is intended to make it faster and easier to create multimedia updates and receive instantaneous feed items from your network.
The advent of real time streaming updates to your Facebook homepage will of course bring out the e-marketers in droves. It really is an online social media marketers dream.
With the recent banter of Facebooks attempt to buy Twitter, it doesn’t surprise me that Facebook has started morphing it’s home page to function a lot like Twitter.
This month’s Cool Tool Pick of the month is Picnik.
Several months ago we found a web service called Picnik. As Calgary web developers who deliver content management systems to our clients, it was important to teach the client how to manipulate their content images prior to placing them on their websites.
Before Picnik came along, the only option was to try to teach the clients how to use desktop software to crop and resize their images. These were the most common functions that the client needs to know. Most of the commonly needed functions that Picnik offers are FREE!
For an optional, and nominal, fee of $24.95 per year you can unlock the more advances features, fonts and techniques available to premium subscribers. It is well worth every penny. The team that developed, and continues to develop Picnik, deserve our support!
With the advent of Picnik, now its really fun teaching clients to use web-based application! If you have a content managed website, blog or if you use facebook or any web based social network you should give Picnik a try!
In January I wrote a blog posting at davidawest.com about some nearly free networking opportunities in Calgary.
One visitor to the blog posted a comment; He Wrote………
Networking does work, but only when people have skin in the game. Without people running the organization for a living it will not run well. People commit to things they invest in and having a FREE membership is a disaster, I know from experience.
I think that this view is quite short sighted. The fact is that there are hundreds of people networking in this city for Free or Nearly free. Have you heard of things like the Calgary Entrepreneurs meetup? How about the Chamber of Commerce 7:15 club?
Last week the Calgary Entrepreneurs met. 25 entrepreneurs met and heard Perry Rose speak about stress in the work place. Not only is this an excellent opportunity to network, there is no membership fee, a small $5.00 drop if fee covers the organizers expense and there is always a great mix of people from various industries present. The club boasts nearly 600 registered members and meets formally 1 time per month and informally at a series of lunch and learn events. The Chamber of Commerce hosts the bi-monthly 7:15 Club. The club is open to members of the Chamber as well as potential members. There is no fee to attend. There is a breakfast buffet that you can enjoy for $7. At the last meeting, there we 60 Calgary Entrepreneurs present!
Wow! What a great turnout.
So… it seems free or nearly free networking can work!
What do you get if you mix two IT companies with a Marketing Guy?
You get a Bulletproof Infotech. In January, two professional IT service companies CompuConsult of Calgary and BulletProof Networks of RedDeer joined forces. BulletProof Info Tech was born. Throw in a third partner Stuart Crawford, a well know marketer, and you end up with a new IT company with decades of combined business and technology experience.
So…Does it Take Technicians or Business People to Make IT Happen? The model that I have observed Stuart, Rene Sloos, Jeff Anderson and Sean Tindall provide to business in Calgary and Red Deer wraps technology with a very deep understanding of business.
Want to know more about Web 2.0? Need to figure out what small business telephone system you need? How about just getting your in-house mail server to work? Bulletproof has so far demonstrated professionalism, caring for business in Calgary and Red Deer and a deep understanding of how technology works in alignment with your business needs.
Computer support companies are abundant in Calgary There are a lot of really great services out there. Having said that BulletProof is our featured Calgary Entrepreneurs for this episode visit them online today!
