Think Local Market has announced that they will be holding a new session of their popular “Byte Sized” seminars in McLennan, Alberta on January 31st and February 1st.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRLog (Press Release) - Jan 24, 2012 – Think Local Market – an Alberta online store where northwestern Alberta businesses showcase and sell their products and services locally and around the world – has announced that it will repeat its popular “Byte Sized” seminars on Internet marketing on January 31st and February 1st. The sessions will once again be led by Calgary entrepreneur, web designer, and online marketing expert David West, and are available for immediate registration at: http://svy.mk/thinklocallab

According to Think Local Market Project Manager Brad Rabiey, the decision to have David West back as the featured speaker and presenter was an easy one. “The response we got from our attendees about the November sessions has been overwhelmingly positive. People really seem to appreciate getting practical advice on things like social media, and finding customers over the Internet, and they also like that David gives it in a fun and easy style.”

He also adds that the upcoming sessions will be structured differently than they have before: “Instead of working in half or full-day sessions, we have decided to break things into one hour, forty-five minute blocks this time. That way, attendees can choose the exact programs they want to hear, and can stay for more advanced sessions if they choose to. ”

West, who has previously spoken for companies, business associations, and even government audiences throughout Alberta, says that the Think Local Market events are amongst his favorite. “There’s nothing quite like getting to work with these types of audiences, hearing their questions, and seeing how the information we give can help them to grow their businesses. Whether you have one employee or hundreds, taking advantage of opportunities on the Internet is usually one of the fastest ways to become more profitable.”

Attendees to the event will have the option of attending a number of sessions, ranging from basic web design and online marketing tips, to advanced presentations that build upon earlier lessons. Topics to be covered in these “Byte Sized” seminars include:

Search Engine Optimization Basics: Reaching the First Page of Google and Beyond

As the world’s leading search engine, Google registers more than 2 billion hits on a daily basis. That already makes it – along with the other major search engines – a marketing tool with nearly unmatched power. With the recent growth of local searches, it’s becoming even more important, whether your potential customers are just down the street, or halfway across the globe.

Social Media Marketing: From Facebook to Twitter and Other Social Sites

There are tens of thousands of business owners and managers throughout Alberta who have found that they greatly enjoy using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, but have no idea how to use them as marketing tools. As more and more business – both online and off – is driven by personal relationships and recommendations, it’s important that every company know how to take advantage of social sites as part of their overall strategy.

Using YouTube and Video Marketing to Get New Customers to Tune in

Because of the extraordinarily high volume of traffic it receives, and the fact that the site plays more than 1 billion clips each and every day, YouTube is sometimes referred to as “the world’s second-largest search engine.” While that’s not its biggest role, technically speaking, it can help Alberta businesses to find more customers if they know how to use the site as a marketing medium.

Blogging as a Bottom Line Business Tool

Even though there are literally millions of blogs in existence, many business owners and managers discount their value as marketing and promotional tools. Few online marketing avenues require so little in terms of investment, and offer so much in customer retention, market positioning, and search engine benefits as business blogs do… but only if you know how to put them to their best uses.

Registration Now Open

Due to high demand for the sessions, talks have already started to bring David back again later in 2012. Business owners, managers, and their employees who are interested in attending the January 31 sessions should register online at http://svy.mk/thinklocallab, or visit http://bit.ly/yLoDHA for more information.

Public Seminar Series in Calgary

Continuus has also updated it’s public seminar series and registration is now open to the public for 11 Byte Sized Seminars in Calgary, Alberta. Visit the public registration site here – http://bit.ly/continuuspc

For more information, including interview and photo requests, contact David West at Continuus Internet Consulting

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As we have written in the past, the sheer amount of work involved in Internet marketing – and especially social media – makes it nearly impossible for business owners and marketing managers to handle on their own. But, since so much of social networking involves personal communication, we are often asked which parts of your social media strategy you can safely outsource to others.

The quick answer is “anything you don’t have time to manage yourself.” Typically, that involves things like writing posts and updates, researching keywords and links, and responding to routine inquiries from clients and colleagues. In truth, you can probably outsource as much or as little of your social media marketing campaign as you would like, so long as you keep these three rules in
mind:

It’s still about your voice and brand. Although another person may be writing your posts or looking after your updates, they should be familiar enough with you and your organization to stick to a theme and voice that is similar to the one you would use. In other words, they should be working under your direction, not simply generating content.

You should still be involved. In addition to helping your social media consultant or community manager to come up with topics and ideas, you may want to step in and personally post updates and tweets from time to time. That will help your social media marketing be more authentic, and also keep you in closer touch with your customers.

Make it clear that you’re getting help. There’s no reason to shy away from the fact that you have others involved in your social media marketing accounts. That’s especially true in this day and age, where your customers and colleagues are going to expect that you have a team working for you. Be upfront about these relationships. In our organization, we designate our tweets with initials, for example, so it’s easy to tell who is posting a particular comment or responding to a question.

Social media marketing can be easy or difficult, highly effective or a waste of time, depending on what sort of professional help you have on your side. Keep these tips in mind and outsource the parts of your social networking plan that you would rather not handle or don’t have time for.

Do you need a professional online marketing and social media team on your side? Contact us today for a free meeting.

In keeping up on the local Calgary online marketing community, we’ve noticed an interesting trend: Roughly once every three days, a new job listing is posted by a major Alberta employer for a professional who can help them to manage their social media marketing.

What do they know that you might not? What can a social media consultant do for you?

Also referred to as a “community manager,” a full- or part-time social media consultant can help you grow your business online in a number of ways. Here are just a few of the most important ones:

Social media marketing content creation. Most managers and business owners don’t enjoy writing things like posts. Having someone else handle it for you can save a lot of time and take a great deal of stress out of the process.

Respond to inquiries and requests. From colleagues wanting to link with you to customers tweeting questions about your products, a social media marketing consultant can ensure that inquiries are answered quickly and completely.

Issue press releases and other statements. Are your customers getting the good news about your products, awards, and testimonials? If not, then it might be time to make sure that someone else is staying on top of these activities.

Looking after your online reputation. Internet reputation management is a quickly growing field, and there’s a great reason for it: What your customers are saying about you on sites like Facebook and Twitter – whether it’s good or bad – can have an enormous impact on your ability to increase your sales online. A community manager can keep an eye out for feedback to see what kinds of impressions are being shared, and make sure they’re accurate.

New positions for social media marketing are popping up all the time, because social networking sites have turned into big business. Who’s looking out for you and your company?

If you’re looking for a social media consultant you can trust, or a speaker who can explain the process of finding customers over Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to your audience, then don’t hesitate to contact us today.

I sometimes wonder if the engineers and developers at Google wouldn’t have been at home in the Renaissance, since they seem to constantly be thinking of new ways to revolutionize technology, communication, and the flow of information on a weekly basis. As it is, they are finishing out 2011 by releasing a series of new tools and toys that you should know about:

Google Insights. This is an interesting tool that lets you use the world’s largest search engine not just to find information, but also to see what others have been finding lately, too. Want to know which celebrities, music clips, or travel destinations are “hot” right now? Google Insights puts the raw data at your fingertips.

Google Music. Interested in having up to 20,000 songs in the cloud, download them, stream them to play instantly, or sharing them between smart phones and other devices? If so, then this ultra-cool service is built just for you. Google Music is currently only available in the USA, but if you take a trip down South you can activate your account while you are away from your Canadian home. Songs sell for as low as 0.49 each and you can get full albums for as low as $4.99 (US Dollars of course).

Google Chromebook. Want to know what some of the smartest engineers on the planet could do with the concept of a netbook? Not only do these devices – which are coming to big-box stores everywhere this winter – add all kinds of functionality the market, but they also have amazing group-leasing rates for organizations. This one was definitely on my Christmas list… and guess what? Santa had to order it from Amazon.com (not .ca) and delivered it to our Arizona address. You guessed it… not quite available in Canada just yet, but watch for it soon.

If you aren’t already familiar with these new  toys and tools, then I encourage you to take a few minutes to check them out. Not only are they lots of fun, but they could turn out to be incredibly useful, or at the very least, give you a sense of where the Internet is headed.

If there’s one thing you can count on, it’s that Google will likely keep releasing new gadgets, platforms, and pieces of software in 2012. And why not? Although not all of them pan out to be the way the company might envision (does anyone remember Google Wave, which was supposed to revolutionize e-mail?), those same technologies and ideas tend to pop up again later. In other words, Google doesn’t limit their ideas strictly to the products that have been launched… they hold onto the best ones and keep building on them through successive products.

Are you looking for a Canadian speaker who can help your audience to get the most out of today’s technology? Contact me today to find have a look at my speaking schedule and availability. I’ll look forward to chatting. Cheers.

When the subject of hiring a social media community coordinator  first comes up with C-Level Executive leaders, a lot of them will wonder if they really need one. After all, can’t an office administrator just post the corporate tweets and Facebook updates, without paying someone to do it for the company?

You certainly could, and lots of professionals do. In the long run, though, it usually doesn’t make much sense. You might not want to handle your own social media marketing for the same reasons that it doesn’t really make a lot of sense to do your own taxes, represent yourself in legal proceedings, or cut your own hair: You probably don’t have the time to learn to do any of these things, and someone else can do a better job of them, anyway.

In the first case, consider that finding new customers through sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn doesn’t cost a lot, but is time-intensive. It might seem like nothing to dash off a quick note or update, but you can easily spend an hour a day keeping on top of your social profiles. That’s an hour you could have spent running your business. Even more importantly, what happens on a day when you don’t have that hour to spend? Your online marketing plan comes to a halt. String too many of those days together, and you’ve got a social media marketing campaign that’s going nowhere.

But even if you can stay on top of your social profiles on your own, would you really want to? As personable and articulate as you might be, you’ll probably get better results from having a professional edit your posts, keep an eye on recurring themes and ideas, and otherwise ensure that you are creating content that’s interesting, unique, and relevant.

In other words, by setting the tone yourself, turning the day-to-day details of your social media marketing plan to someone else, and supplementing them with your own tweets and updates, you are much more likely to end up with the result you’re looking for: more leads and customers coming to you through social networking sites.

You might not need a social media consultant in the same way that you need a doctor or a dentist, but if you’re serious about taking advantage of one of the most important Internet marketing trends to come along recently, then hiring one is a no-brainer decision.

Having said all of this, it is critical that you remain involved in your social strategy. Need some help growing your organization or social media sites? Get in touch with us today to find out how easy it is to get started.

And how much do you really need to? When I speak to audiences about the growth of the Internet and online marketing, I can virtually guarantee that this question is going to come up at some point or another. It doesn’t matter whether I’m speaking to a group like Alberta Rural Development, a conference of entrepreneurs, or even a meeting of Think Local Market; people seem to intuitively grasp that there’s too much to do online, and not enough time to do it.

And so, it’s not surprising that one of the things they want to know is how often I’m actually on the Internet. My usual answer is: “Always.” I say it with a bit of a smirk, of course, and I’m obviously exaggerating… but probably not as much as you might think.

Why am I connected to the Internet on a nearly round-the-clock basis? Obviously, part of the reason is that web design, online marketing, and social media management are a big part of my career. I have to be connected to keep up with my work. Even if I were in a different industry, however, there would still be plenty for me to do just to keep up with a “normal” online marketing plan – from search engine optimization content to tweets, Facebook updates, and more.

Really, that’s what the audience members who ask these questions want to know: How can they even attempt to keep up with at all?

The realistic answer is that they can’t. There’s just too much out there. The benefits of a well-designed, continuously updated online marketing plan are too huge to ignore, and yet the to do list is more than any otherwise-busy professional can handle. That’s why outsourcing some of your online work isn’t just preferable, but practically a necessity.

Having another person or team who can look after your accounts, generate content from your direction, and otherwise keep your website and social profiles moving step-in-step with your business goals keeps the machine running. It certainly doesn’t exclude you from having any participation and input, but it takes a process that would be otherwise unfeasible and unrealistic and puts you back in control.

If you are looking for the magic formula that’s going to let you grow your business or organization over the Internet in just half an hour a day with no outside expenses, then there isn’t one. But if what you want to find is a realistic way to meet your online and off-line business goals, then the answer is to call in outside help for the activities that matter most.

To get help putting your Internet marketing plan into action, or to find out about David’s availability for a speaking event, contact us by phone or e-mail today.

If, like most Alberta business owners and marketing managers, you’re on the wiser side of 30 years old, you probably remember Bob from Sesame Street singing about the people in your neighborhood. From the policeman to the dentist, his songs introduced you to everyone you could expect to see in the real world around you, and the list was always growing.

I think back to those songs at times, especially when I’m explaining the Internet, social media, and online marketing. In fact, I like to bring up Bob in my speeches and presentations. I have two good reasons for doing this. For one thing, whether I’m speaking to authorities in the Alberta provincial government or a group of entrepreneurs in Edmonton, almost everyone seems to remember Bob and what it’s like to meet “a person in your neighborhood.” And on the other hand, it’s a great analogy for the way the Internet has grown.

In its earliest days, the World Wide Web was mostly populated with a handful of young geeks who understood the basics of HTML code. In a relatively short amount of time, however, programmers started to appear as well, and then web designers who made pages more visually appealing, followed by coders who came up with custom apps and languages. The Internet just kept growing and growing – more and more people moved into the neighborhood – until we reach the point where we have search engine optimization specialists, social media advisers, online marketing gurus, community managers, and a lot more.

As the neighborhood has gotten bigger it has become more important than ever for the owners and managers of Canadian companies to know how these different types of professionals can help them grow their organizations and compete online. Just as we have reached a point where we realize the value that comes with having the right accountant, lawyer, or IT professional, having the right online marketing team on your side isn’t a luxury… it’s just good business.

The Internet has grown in complexity to the point where it’s difficult for any business owner, manager, or executive to know everything they need to master the subject. Luckily, you don’t have to – you just have to know who the right people in your neighborhood are.

Want to learn more about Internet marketing professionals, or have David come speak to your group? Get in touch with us today to talk about your event or business situation.

If you read medical news, or happen to have high cholesterol, then you may have already seen that new tests show that the popular drug Lipitor doesn’t just improve heart health, but may also prevent other kinds of diseases, too. In other words, it doesn’t just do what it’s supposed to, but brings other positive side effects along for the ride.

Within the medical industry, these other good things that happen are called “legacy effects.” They are great if you or someone you know takes Lipitor… but what does it have to do with online marketing?

Probably more than you realize. That’s because anything you do online – from search engine optimization to social media marketing and online newsletters – tends to help everything else you do as well. In other words, if you do something that helps you attract visitors or convert customers well enough in one area, it’s likely to help you in another, too.

Here are a few quick examples, and how you can put them to use in your business:

A good SEO plan can make PPC advertising cheaper. That’s because the major search engines like Google place “quality scores” on your pages. So, the higher they rank naturally, the less you are likely to pay for sponsored traffic to your site.

Social media marketing helps SEO. With the return of real-time search results, Google and the other engines are factoring social content more heavily into their search results. So, the more you post to Facebook and Twitter, the more traffic you can receive from other sources.

Maintaining a high-quality online newsletter makes the rest of your site more profitable. That’s because you don’t just get traffic from people clicking through from your newsletter; you also get exposure from others who have been forwarded your articles, or search engines that have indexed some of your content.

The point is that a good online marketing plan is like a strong medicine. Even if you’ve instituted it to achieve one specific goal, if you handle things well enough, you’re likely to get other side benefits, as well. So, the sooner you get started, the sooner you can watch the rest of your website and company grow.

In one of its strongest anti-copying measures to date, Google is now letting users directly report websites that “scrape” content from other sources. In other words, if you catch someone copying from you, you can now raise your hand and tell the teacher.

Of course, duplicate content has been an issue for some time, but the world’s largest search engine has never had an automated system that allows business owners and webmasters to point out violators on their own. This is a great step forward for honest online marketers, and just one more reminder that it’s never, ever a good idea to copy content from a competitor.

Here are three quick implications from Google’s new scraper policy:

Don’t try to copy content. Yes, we said this already, but it’s worth mentioning again. Even if you copy content from someone else’s site and change it slightly, you are likely to be caught. And if you are, there is a better than decent chance that you will be banned from Google, which could do damage to your online business that can never be undone.

And besides, who wants to copy content anyway? Your company isn’t just like anyone else’s, so the text and images on your pages should show what’s unique about your business, and why customers want to do business with you.

Protect your own content. The crux of this issue, from Google’s standpoint, has been that certain marketing websites with “scraped” content were ranking higher than the sites that had originally created it. While that’s likely to decrease now, the fact of the matter remains that there are companies out there that would like to steal what you have, so make sure you are working with a business web designer who can protect what’s on your pages.

Keep fresh content coming on to your business site. In a larger sense, this policy reflects the growing importance that Google and the other major search engines are putting on fresh content and articles. They’ve always mattered, but going forward they will likely influence search engine rankings even more. So, if you can squeeze out one blog post a week, and regular social updates – or get social media done for you – the time to get started is now.

A lot of web designers and business owners aren’t quite sure what to make of Facebook advertising just yet. On the one hand, it’s incredibly targeted and relatively cost-efficient; and on the other, it doesn’t yet offer the same kind of scope and exposure as some of the more-established programs like Google ad words do.

As a result, a lot of people are deciding to jump in headfirst or avoid it altogether. Those might both be mistakes.

Here’s why: There is definitely an opportunity to grow your company by advertising on Facebook. But, until some of the more prevalent strategies have been tried and tested, it’s probably better to start slowly and build up your Facebook advertising campaign from there. And besides, there might be a more efficient use that lots of people are overlooking – using Facebook ads to test markets and messages.

The one thing Facebook advertising is great for, and the one true advantage it has over the pay per click systems offered by Google, Yahoo, and Bing, is that it allows you to locate a market not just by the keywords they have entered into a search box, but demographic information they have supplied about themselves.

That means you can target a specific offer to a specific group of people in a way that simply isn’t possible elsewhere. Want to know how men in their 20s respond to a special price? Put up an ad and you’ll know within a couple of weeks. Need to see whether the language you’re using resonates with seniors? Put it on a Facebook ad and find out.

The real value of this kind of testing isn’t just that it could be profitable, but also that the lessons you learn could help you tighten up your marketing and advertising in other areas, like print ads, the landing page copy on your product pages, or even your other pay per click ads. In other words, using your Facebook marketing in the right way could help make every other dollar you spend on marketing – online or off – earn a higher return.
Online marketing via Facebook advertising is still growing and taking shape, but if you are looking for a great way to use it, why not try testing different markets and messages and seeing where they take you?

If you follow news about online marketing and Internet business, then you probably already know a recently leaked memo from Groupon showed that the daily deal site has been losing money and subscribers. This revelation follows on the news that Facebook is canceling their daily deal service.

Given that this part of the Internet marketing industry was growing so quickly only a year ago, what happened? And what does it mean for your business?
Here are three quick insights you can take from the current problems daily deal sites are having:

Going cheap hurts you in the long run. Slashing prices is a great way to attract customers… but only for a little while. After that, one of two things typically tends to happen: Either buyers are drawn away by an even lower-priced vendor, or you find that you are slowly losing money on each transaction. Building a website for customers that want a combination of quality and value is a better – and more profitable – long-term strategy.

Too much competition ruins almost any business. When you have a small group of local specialty retailers, such as nail salons, for example, fighting over the same group of bargain-hunting customers, the inevitable result is that at least a few of them will lose out. Think carefully before launching a new business, or jumping into a new market, without analyzing the competition. The pool of buyers might be too shallow to support everyone.

People don’t like to be bombarded with messages. One of the biggest reasons cited for declining interest in daily deal sites is that too many people already get more e-mails than they can handle. The last thing they wanted was another item cluttering up their inbox, so once the novelty of a daily deal wore off, they stopped receiving the specials.

No matter how much money you can save them, people only want to hear from you so often. Remember that, and you’ll have a lot easier time remaining profitable in the future.

If you had to read that headline twice, or a few times, to make sense of it, I apologize. But, as subtle as it might seem, there’s a big difference between a “professional speaker” and a professional who just happens to be a speaker.

Let me explain: There are lots of men and women who can give a great presentation – one that’s fun and entertaining – but if you want real value for your money, and your audience’s time, then it pays to look for someone who is an expert in some area and has worked on their presentation skills, rather than the other way around. Why? Because to put it in the simplest and most unrefined terms, it’s fun to listen to a lot of great stories, jokes, and motivational material, but at the end of the day a keynote presentation that’s made entirely of “fluff” doesn’t do much for you or your audience.

Likewise, there are thousands of experts across Canada who are filled with fascinating, insightful information. But, if they can’t present it in a way that’s interesting and compelling to your audience, then what have you really gained beyond a couple of hours of nodding off?

Since the long-term return on investment for vague happy feelings and naptime sessions is pretty close to nil, the key to finding an effective speaker is locating a man or woman who has a defined expertise in a particular area – like Internet marketing, or personnel management, for example – and has taken the time to make it relevant and interesting. Go without either of those ingredients, and especially the first one, and your speaking dollars will have ended up being wasted.

The question of whether you want a professional speaker or a speaking professional might seem trivial, but it’s probably the most important one when it comes to getting the presentation your group really wants and needs.

If you’re looking for a speaker that’s fun, humorous, and informative, look no further. David West speaks across Canada on business and technology topics. Contact us today to find out about his rates and availability.

Meeting planners will resort to a lot of different ideas when it comes to finding the right speaker for their event, and I can understand why. Choose the right personality, one that shares a ton of useful information while entertaining your attendees, and you’ll come off looking like a hero. Go with the wrong person, and you risk looking bad in the eyes of senior management… not to mention facing questions about how you managed the budget for the meeting.

For that reason, I’m going to offer you an insider’s trick – a can’t-miss way to separate the really great Canadian professional speakers from the ones that will leave you wishing you had never heard of them: Find a professional speaker who has been hired multiple times by the same group.

On the surface, this could seem like a small detail, but it isn’t. Here’s why: For someone to have been brought in again by the same organization (regardless of whether it was for the same audience, or if it was months or years apart) says something about their work, and the reception they received. No one would pay to hear somebody twice unless they hit the mark, and they certainly wouldn’t shell out extra dollars to have them speak to a second audience if they didn’t work great with the first.

A lot of people won’t tell you what they really thought of a professional speaker, if only because they don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings or get caught expressing something negative when there’s a chance it can get back to them. But, as with all parts of life, if you follow the money you’ll get a definite answer. People vote with their purchases, and that’s a great way to find out what they really think about any product or service. So, if you’re looking for a Canadian professional speaker who is a cut above the rest, just go and find one who has been brought back multiple times by the same client.

Looking for a great speaker in Canada, and an expert on technology, the Internet, and online marketing? Call David West today – he could be the perfect presenter for your next industry event or trade association meeting!

In today’s economy, no group or trade association can afford to waste money on any part of an event. This is true for things like hotels and meals, but it especially applies to professional speakers. After all, once that presentation has been given, you can’t request another or send it back to the kitchen.

On this blog, you’ll find plenty of articles that should help you find the best Canadian professional speaker for your industry event or trade association meeting. Today, however, I would like to do something a little bit different and offer a few tips to help you get more value out of any speaker you book.

Here are four ways to turn the speaker for your next event into a better investment:

Choose a relevant topic and expert. It goes without saying that choosing the right speaker gives you better value, but it’s easy for meeting planners to go with the topic or personality that’s “hot” instead of one that has the right message for their group. Think carefully about the long-term message you want your audience to receive, and then find the person to best deliver it.

Do your homework. The more you know about the speaker’s presentation, the more you can ask them to tailor it to your audience. You might not want your speaker to completely rewrite or rearrange his or her talk, but by asking him or her to stress the right details, you can make their presentation more relevant to your group.

Give your speaker the right info ahead of time. In the same way, your speaker will very likely ask you for information about the audience, your industry, other speakers you’ve heard in the past, and so on well in advance of their speech. If you wait until the last minute to supply these details, then you’re allowing them much less time to be prepared – and lowering the chances that they’ll give an impactful session.

Make space in the schedule for a breakout session or Q&A period. Regardless of how well your speaker covers his or her topic, your attendees are likely to have questions, or want personal attention. Leave some room in the schedule for this to happen; the more loose ends your speaker can tie up directly with the audience, the more value they will have received for the time they spent listening.

Want to book one of Canada’s best technology speakers? Get in touch with David West today to find out about his speaking fees and availability.

Start gathering quotes for business web design – or any professional service, I suppose – and you’ll notice right away that there will be a general range for professional work, along with a few that seem to be a little too good to be true. But, in this tough economy, the choice is clear, right? Isn’t it smart to save a little money where you can get a great deal when it’s offered?

Before I answer that question, let me point out two very important things. The first is that, in web design and almost any other business, you are highly likely to get what you pay for. And secondly, especially in business web design, what you pay for your project isn’t nearly as important as what you get out of it. In other words, a site that seems a bit more expensive now is a steal later if it ends up doubling your profits.

With that being said, the one thing to pay close attention to in any suspiciously low business web design quote is what’s not being listed.

In other words, are you really getting a great deal, or is it that they’re just taking away the “extras” that are most important to your site?

Here are at least five things that should definitely be included in any business web design quote:

A search engine optimization and marketing plan. It doesn’t matter what your site looks like, or what it does, if no one can find it. Make sure it will be accessible on Google, Yahoo, and Bing at a minimum.

Ongoing service and minor updates. What happens if you need to change a page, or find that you left a typo on your homepage? It’s important to pick a business web design team that will still be there when you need them.

Web hosting. Hosting might seem like a minor detail, but it affects your site speed, performance, stability, and even search engine positioning. Make sure you’re getting a competitive rate for high-quality hosting.

Social media links and profiles. Sites like Facebook and Twitter are more important than ever, and your company is going to suffer if you don’t have a presence on each of them.

An ongoing plan to grow your company online. Remember, your website shouldn’t just be an online brochure, but an important part of your marketing and promotion plan. What is your new business web design company doing to help you make it more successful?

We all like to save money, and it’s tempting to go with the rock-bottom business web design quote. Before you do, however, make sure that you aren’t spending less at the expense of your company’s future.

If you want some of the best Calgary web design and online marketing, contact eKzact Solutions for a free consultation today!

There aren’t many “scandals” that can truly live up to their name, but the ongoing investigations into the Rupert Murdoch/Fox News allegations are giving us a little bit of everything: public outrage, high-tech spying, multiple police entities from different countries, and even lots of half-denials from various people in positions of power. The only thing that’s missing is salacious details from someone’s young, foreign, and impossibly beautiful nanny.

Believe it or not, however, the unfolding drama holds a few important lessons for small business owners and online marketers everywhere. Here are three things your company should definitely learn from the scandal taking place across the front pages:

It’s a good idea to update your web security frequently. Granted, most of the story in question revolves around stolen texts and the like, but the point remains: There are people out there who would love to know things they don’t have a legal right to know. Make sure that your data – and your customers – are protected online.

Better yet, you should have someone who knows what they’re doing handle it for you. From experience, we have learned that most businesses tend to put off updating their websites, and especially hosting software and security packages, far longer than they should. If you’re serious about protecting what you have online, not to mention the future of your company, then get some expert help with the job.

The public won’t forgive you for doing the wrong thing. The biggest lesson for businesses to come out of this whole thing is that if you do something terrible you will eventually be caught, and the public will be anxious to punish you for it. This applies to high crimes, of course, but also minor annoyances like selling e-mail addresses, lying to your customers, and engaging in other shady tactics. In the long run, the men and women who buy from you are your most valuable asset; remember that and treat them appropriately.

Want help avoiding the biggest blunders in Internet marketing? Then contact eKzact Solutions – One of Calgary’s best web design and online marketing team – for a free consultation today.

The biographies and presentation descriptions for professional speakers in Canada are a bit like items on the menu at an upscale restaurant – they all sound good, but you have to read between the lines a little bit if you’re going to find something that’s a good match for your audience’s appetite. That’s because lots of speakers can be great, but you need a keynote or presentation that’s perfect for your group and event.

Here are a few things you should look for in presentation titles and descriptions that can help you narrow in on the right fit:

Overall topics and focus. Obviously, if you’re looking for a speaker on Internet marketing, for example, then the speaker who specializes in human resources isn’t going to be a great match. Likewise, someone who speaks on dozens of unrelated topics isn’t as likely to have as much knowledge or background in any of them as a subject expert is, so think carefully about the type of personality you want to hire.

Energy and enthusiasm. You can tell a lot about a speaker’s personality from the couple of short paragraphs in their presentation descriptions. If they’re filled with energy and excitement, then there’s a good chance their keynote or breakout session will, too. Likewise, a lack of enthusiasm should be a big red flag that their session might let attendees down.

Short, succinct points. Unless you have hours and hours for your speaker to talk, they’re going to need to sum up what they know into bite-sized chunks. If they can’t describe what they’re going to talk about in less than a couple of pages, then don’t be surprised when they ramble on stage, too. Giving a solid, professional presentation is as much about brevity as it is detail, so look for the right mix.

Details and content. Sometimes, you’ll see a presentation that’s perfect for your group, if it can only be tweaked slightly. Assuming your speaker knows his or her material well, this isn’t normally a problem if they’ve been given enough time to prepare. Still, make sure to ask any questions you have about their content and focus beforehand, so that you can have them make any necessary adjustments.

One of the great tragedies in life, and business online, is that nothing lasts forever… and that very few things even last for very long. Get a fantastic haircut, and you’ll quickly find your hair hasn’t stopped growing; buy a wonderful suit, and you’ll notice that it’s only a matter of time before it has to be taken in or out because you’ve either gone on a diet, or need to.

In some ways, it’s the same with your small Calgary business website. Even if you invest in a high-quality design that fits your company perfectly, impresses visitors, loads correctly across all kinds of browsers, and helps your company to make more money, it’s probably going to need to be tweaked or updated eventually.

The good news is that great websites don’t have to be completely replaced very often. In fact, it’s often a matter of just making a few small changes when you need them. Here are a few things you should definitely add or review on your business website, even if you aren’t ready for a major redesign:

Social media links and integration. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you already know that social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are big business. It’s important that you have links to your profiles and content on these sites, since they can make it easier for people to find you outside of your business website, and vice versa.

Search engine optimized pages and content. Moving onto the first or second page of the results for your most important keywords on Google, Yahoo, and Bing can be an enormous boost to your business, but it’s getting harder to improve your search engine rankings all the time. For that reason, it makes sense to review your pages from time to time, to ensure that they’re optimized, and that you are still emphasizing the right keywords and phrases.

Product descriptions and prices. It goes without saying that accuracy, especially in product descriptions and prices, is an important part of the upkeep on your business website. Still, there are a surprising number of companies that regularly fail to keep this kind of data current. Whether you’re using a content management system or not, be sure that your site is up to date.

FAQs, contact information, privacy policies, and other details. More and more, people are basing their online buying decisions on how certain they feel that you’re going to do what you say you will, how quickly they can expect their order, and what they think you’ll do with their personal information. Make it easier for them to buy with clear, customer-friendly details on your business website.

For a lot of meeting planners, regardless of whether it’s their full-time job or a temporary assignment, choosing a professional Canadian speaker for a business meeting or association event is a little bit of a mixed bag. If they get it right, they’ll look good to peers and supervisors; bring in a dud, and they may not be trusted with such a big decision for a long time in the future.

For that reason, a lot of men and women I talk to about keynote presentations and breakout sessions want to find someone who’s informative and dynamic… but also want to play it a little bit safe and be sure they don’t choose the wrong person. That’s completely understandable, and I can promise you that it is entirely possible to do both.

To make it easier, here are three things to look for in a Canadian professional speaker, no matter what kind of event you’re planning for:

The right topic. All the charisma in the world won’t help you if you choose someone who doesn’t have a topic that’s interesting to your audience. When in doubt, try to stick with universal themes, like better business management, or cutting-edge marketing techniques. These are topics that almost everyone is interested in, meaning that your speaker will have wide appeal.

Membership in the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers (CAPS). While booking someone with CAPS membership doesn’t guarantee that you’ll find the exact right fit, it does allow you to have confidence that you aren’t going with someone who hasn’t given lots of presentations before, or will struggle to make their point effectively. Because CAPS has some fairly rigorous standards in place, you can feel comfortable knowing you’re going to get a professional presentation.

Humor and energy. Depending on what kind of time you have your speaker slotted for, your attendees may be tired, distracted, jet-lagged, excited to see colleagues for the first time in several months, or all of the above. It takes a special kind of stage presence to overcome these factors, meaning that your speaker’s style is as important as their topics are. Remember that, and choose wisely.

Psychologists will tell you that there are large groups of people who feel overwhelmed by “information overload,” or the ever-growing and expanding amount of data that’s available on the Internet. We regularly meet with small business owners who seem to be suffering from a similar effect – one we might call feature overload – where they aren’t sure which of the “must-have” tools and technologies need to be integrated into their next web design.

In other words, they often aren’t sure exactly how new a new business web design actually has to be in order to be an effective marketing tool.

Even though it might run contrary to a lot of thinking within the industry, we’re going to go out on a limb and say for the record that having the latest and greatest features on your business site isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be. Don’t get us wrong, there are definitely some fairly-standard features – like a good content management system, social media integration, search engine optimization, etc. – that can make your company more profitable in a hurry. But there are also a lot of things that just add to time and expense of your business site, make it more complicated for people to use, and generally get in the way of good usability.

Good design is classic. The way we code websites might change, but the basic ideas and information that most customers are looking for has remained fairly constant for thousands of years. In other words, you might use an online video to tell a potential buyer what you would have explained in a brochure 10 years ago, but the focus still needs to be on the right message, rather than on any one specific web design tool.

A good, high-quality business web design can easily last 3 to 5 years before it needs any major changes. If you find that you’re needing to redesign your business website a lot more often than not, it could be that you aren’t investing in quality layouts to start with, or are being too distracted by small changes, rather than concentrating on your most important business goals.

Having a new website for your company can be very exciting, but having one that helps you make more money month after month is usually a lot more rewarding.

As the owner of a growing web design company and one of Canada’s more popular (not to mention modest) technology speakers, it might not surprise you to know that I give dozens of keynotes and workshops on topics like search engine optimization and online marketing every year. What may surprise you, however, is that the majority of them aren’t for technical groups at all, but business associations and trade groups filled with plumbers, dry cleaners, florists, and more.

Do these folks really need to worry so much about finding customers online?

Believe it or not, they do – and in fact, the competition on the web within these industries, and most others, is getting fiercer than ever. This isn’t necessarily because the professionals and business owners in question are groundbreaking, but that they’re doing the smart thing and following their customers.

With the Yellow Pages and other forms of print advertising in a steep decline, there is a seemingly a reversible trend towards consumers looking for products and vendors online… even within their own local geographic areas. That means that businesses of all types and sizes have to be familiar with the basics of Internet marketing. Otherwise, they’re just going to have to sit back and watch their competitors quickly pull away.

Luckily, most people can learn the basics of Internet marketing in an hour or two; it doesn’t have to be a massive marathon effort. And so, for a meeting planner who would like to get a presentation that is impactful, the trick is to choose a web marketing speaker who is experienced and knows all the right concepts, but also can make it accessible by emphasizing the big picture and adding a little bit of humor.

Obviously, if you’re looking for a speaker for an upcoming industry or business event in Alberta or beyond, I would love to be that person. Regardless of whether you consider booking me, however, I encourage you to find a great technology speaker for your event – it can be a fun topic, and it’s a great thing for your attendees and the future of their businesses.

Not long ago, it was announced that the President of the United States would be opening up an official Twitter account, making him probably the last mega-famous personality on the planet to sign up for one.
Along with being an interesting factoid on the growing importance of social media and the effect it has on public opinion, the move also raises another issue that’s closer to home for most of us: You no longer have an excuse not to keep up on social media marketing.

Let’s face it: If the Commander-in-Chief of the United States can find time to send 140 characters now and again – or at least delegate it to someone else – then can you really claim you don’t have the time to do the same? After all, he’s got state dinners, economic crises, military strategies, and even a reelection campaign to contend with… and he’s doing it all on a government salary. Most of us aren’t having to make time for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn under those kinds of constraints.

Of course, we are being a little bit silly with this idea, but the point is that saying you don’t have time for social media marketing is similar to saying you can’t spare a few minutes to send out invoices, or have time to talk your best customer. It’s very likely that you are incredibly busy, but you make time in your day’s activities because they’re the ones that will keep money coming into your business every month, not to mention growing and successful for years to come.

With more than 700 million people regularly logging into Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, social networking sites represent a market that no business that’s bigger than a man and a donkey selling fruit on the side of the road can afford to ignore. They don’t just allow you to reach more people, but also to forge better relationships with the customers you already have, and encourage them to send referrals your way. How could anyone be too busy for that?

Take our advice, and the President’s example, and get started with social media marketing if you haven’t already. It is another habit you’ll have to add to your daily routine, but one that could ultimately pay you back several times over.

When it comes to choosing a keynote or breakout presentation speaker for a company or industry event, it doesn’t take long for the average executive or meeting planner to find out that there are many options to choose from… in fact, there may be too many in some cases. There are motivators, management specialists, marketing gurus, and a lot more.

But, if you’re looking for something that will be valuable to your attendees and make you look like a hero at the same time, then your best option might be to go with the technology speaker. Here are four quick reasons why:

It’s something different. Let’s face it, unless it’s one of their first few meetings or conferences, your attendees have already heard enough motivational and management presentations to fill a lifetime. I’m constantly amazed, though, at how many different groups have never had someone come and speak about the Internet, online marketing, and so on.

The Internet is a hot topic. The web has been a popular presentation topic for more than a decade, and it’s only getting stronger. Why? Because it’s still becoming a more and more important part of the business landscape. If your attendees aren’t getting online marketing right, then they are probably seeing parts of their business become less profitable than they used to be.

Your attendees probably have technology questions. In the same way, few managers or business owners understand concepts like search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, or social media marketing nearly as well as they would like. Having the opportunity to ask an expert specific questions about these parts of their business can be invaluable.

A technology presentation could have the biggest bottom-line impact. Even the best motivational speaker is unlikely to inspire lasting change in most people’s behavior, but attendees of a technology presentation can leave with a set of notes or a tip sheet that they can use right away to make more money. The more profitable your group can be as a result of the speaker you booked, the more highly they’re going to think of you and your decision.

If you ever have a few minutes to kill, and want to blow your mind, go to your favorite search engine and look for stats and figures on the size of the known universe. We don’t want to spoil the surprise, but it’s big – so big, in fact, that it defies comprehension. And strangest of all, a lot of physicists seem to think it’s still growing.

You might think this wouldn’t have anything to do with Internet marketing, but the reality is that it does. Why? Because, just like the area around and between galaxies, the Internet is massively huge – billions and billions of pages huge – and getting bigger all the time.

Even if you aren’t a physicist or web designer, this knowledge has important implications for your business. Why? Because as interesting as a growing Internet is from an academic perspective, it also means that it’s getting harder and harder to stand out and get the attention you need from potential customers.

Astronomers like to talk about how looking up into the sky can make us feel small and insignificant, in a good way, but there are few positives to having your small business website blend into a cluster of information. In order to have your pages and content stand out and attract buyers, they have to be more than tiny points of light, and more like the comets and shooting stars that streak across the horizon.

How do you accomplish this? By getting closer to your customers and narrowing in on topics, products, and services that appeal to a very specific kind of buyer, rather than anyone who has enough change in their pocket to make a purchase from your site. That means knowing as much as you can about the men and women who visit your pages, where they’re coming from, what they’re looking for, and why they should choose to do business with you, rather than one of your competitors.

The Internet is too huge for any one business to try to compete with everyone, even within a lot of niche markets and industries. That means that you have to narrow down in order to stand out among buyers. Once you accomplish that, though, it doesn’t matter how big the Internet gets – you’ll always be the brightest star in your system.

It can be easy to get the itch to imitate something you’ve seen a competitor do online, especially when they’re sitting well ahead of you in the search engine rankings, or expanding their company at a time when you’re treading water and are struggling to get by. In fact, we meet with small business owners every day who are motivated to make a change in their website or online marketing plan simply because they’ve seen someone else do the same.

There are times when a competitor’s move can inspire or necessitate doing something different, but take care that you don’t choose a losing Internet marketing strategy.

Why do we point this out? Because not everything is as it appears from the outside. Unless you have a great deal of personal insight into your competitor’s books, there’s nothing to say that they aren’t pouring a lot of time and money into the wrong things. Or, it could be that they’re drastically increasing their Internet marketing budget simply because the rest of their business is doing so badly. It’s surprisingly common for struggling companies to turn their efforts to find new customers after it’s already way too late.

To keep you from copying someone else’s mistakes, here are a few quick things to look for when examining a competitor’s website or online marketing campaign:

Run the numbers. Take a hard look at what the other company is doing and try to make an educated guess at what kind of return they’re likely to be seeing from it. You won’t have all the figures, naturally, but by talking to your web design team in thinking about prices and percentages, you might be able to come closer than you think.

Imagine what a similar activity will cost you. If you were to try the same thing, or something similar, what would the cost be? Compare that to a conservative estimate of what you think it’s earning them, and then try to decide whether it’s an idea that’s even worth considering.

See if there’s a better or more efficient way. Often times, the first business to try something isn’t the one that gets it right. See if there isn’t some way to improve on your competitor site or idea, and you might just make the breakthrough that they weren’t able to find.

Effective online marketing takes a lot more than a small business website. Contact eKzact – One of Calgary’s best web design teams – today to find out what we can do for you.

Amazing as it seems now, there was a time not so many years ago when no one, except the most tech-savvy small businesses, had regular access to a webmaster or IT professional. Granted, those people were around, but you generally called on them when you needed something fixed, not because you wanted one on staff. Now, of course, nearly everyone has an internal or contracted team to keep their small business site up and running and their technology online – to go without would quickly put your company at risk.

That’s how I’m starting to feel about community managers – men and women whose job it is to keep your online content and social profiles up to date and moving forward.

Why? Because as with all things on the Internet, change is coming faster than most of us had anticipated. Social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter aren’t just gaining steam – they are bulldozing any previous notions we had about how customers find us and communicate with us. The profiles you have on these websites affect everything from your repeat business to your online reputation, and even search engine optimization. To go without them means to give up valuable ground to other companies who would love to take new accounts away from you.

The way a community manager fits into this mix is by making sure your posts and profiles are all up to date, on point, and keeping your online marketing efforts in sync with one another. That’s why, here at eKzact, we’ve made our community manager a big part of our ongoing work, and invite you to take advantage of this service. The web (and especially social network marketing) has simply gotten too big, and too important, for most of us to keep our hands around while still running our companies – why not let a professional help us keep things moving in the right direction?

When social media was first taking off and gaining steam, Facebook didn’t really have much in the way of competition, at least when it came to users’ attention. MySpace had gotten there first, but was mainly used by the younger crowd, and Twitter didn’t offer the depth of communication and connection that a site that allowed you to connect with your friends, relatives, and colleagues did. And so it was no surprise that when Facebook announced plans to add advertising features to its site, companies of all sizes lined up around the block to give it a try.

Now, just a short while later, a lot of what made Facebook unique is starting to wear away. Other companies, like Google and Bing, are finding ways to integrate “likes” (through +1 and similar add ons) into your profile and share preferences with other users. But despite these changes, Facebook still represents a completely unique advertising environment, and one most small businesses should at least try. Here’s why: Facebook doesn’t just market based on what it thinks it knows about you – it works off of data users provide about themselves.

This might seem like a minor difference from search engine optimization, or pay per click advertising, where searchers indicate what’s on their mind at the moment. But when you think about it on a deeper level (or have worked with search engine marketing strategies for some time), you often find that what people type into Google’s query box isn’t always exactly what they meant. And with new auto complete features coming into full swing this year, it’s even harder to tell whether someone meant to find your website, or just something that was vaguely similar.

Search engine optimization and other forms of online marketing aren’t going anywhere soon, and we’re not even going to argue that Facebook is “better” at finding customers than anything else. What you should know and remember, however, is that the fact that it pulls information that people give themselves makes it one-of-a-kind… at least for now. For some products and services, that’s an online marketing edge that just can’t be matched anywhere else.

If you’re wondering whether Facebook could be a great online advertising platform for your company, contact one of Calgary’s best Internet marketing partners – eKzact web design – today for a free consultation!

There are a lot of things social networking sites are great for, like sharing news, advertising online coupons, and reaching out to new potential customers. When small businesses first get involved with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and social media in general,  however, they often don’t use them to their marketing potential.

In order to get more out of social media sites, you can’t do all the work yourself. Here are a few ways you can make your profile stronger by getting your customers in on the act:

Ask customers to submit product photos and stories. If you sell something that people interact with regularly, or depend on as part of their day-to-day jobs, then they might be able to say far more about your products than any marketing copy ever could. The more other buyers can see customers using your merchandise, the stronger impression it’s going to make in their minds.

Hold contests to find the next marketing tagline or offer. This is a great way to get customers involved for two reasons: one, you give them the chance to tell you what they’d really like to see you offer in terms of products and pricing; and two, because you subtly alert them that a big sale or event is around the corner. Why not offer a coupon or gift certificate to the customer who can help you come up with the next great social marketing idea?

Get feedback and testimonials from buyers. Obviously, few things help you sell online like positive reviews and feedback. But even if all the news isn’t good, you still win. That’s because you don’t just find areas where you could improve your company and service, but you also show potential buyers that you’re willing to listen and that their concerns are important to you.

Give discounts for passing your name along. In the same way, giving premiums, gifts, or bonuses for referrals isn’t exactly a new concept. But by making these offers on social media sites, you’re making it a lot easier and more convenient for your customers to take advantage. Give them an incentive to tell other people about the great things you do, and you might persuade them to go out and do it.

Need an online marketing team that knows social networking sites inside and out? Try one of Calgary’s best by contacting eKzact today!

To listen to most web design firms, the first thing you should do after upgrading or redesigning your small business website is to upgrade or redesign your small business website again. We say that jokingly, of course, but there’s an element of truth to it – it can easily feel like your site starts to get out dated the second it goes live, and web design companies are certainly happy to take your money when you decide it’s time for a change.

So when should you not decide to get a new small business website? Believe it or not, we can think of a few situations where it’s better to sit tight:

When you can’t afford quality web design work. Take it from a team of experienced professionals: trying to save a bunch of money by working with a bargain-basement web design company is almost always a bad idea. It’s not just that they’ll go through missed deadlines and ignored requirements; the end result will usually leave you wishing you just saved the little bit of money spent.

You can pay for a good site, but not enough of the features you really want. In the same way, the high-quality small business website is almost always an improvement if you have a design that isn’t working for you now. If you could wait just a little longer and get what you really need, though, that might be a better option. The last thing you want to do is spend a bunch of money to get a business site that you’ll want to replace three or six months down the road.

You’re already seeing record profits and sales online, and at a time when other businesses in your industry are struggling. There’s an old adage that you shouldn’t try to fix something that isn’t really broken, and that occasionally applies to small business web design. It’s okay to want to try some new features and keep up with the competition, but if you’re already blowing them out of the water, then be careful about making changes just for the sake of making changes.

More often than not, we meet business owners and marketing managers who are reluctant to make the changes and investments their businesses really need to go to the next level. If you don’t have the budget to do it right, however, or you’re already flying high above the pack, then don’t let anyone rush you into making the wrong decision.

Need one of Calgary’s best web design and online marketing teams working for you? Contact us at eKzact for a free consultation today!

That’s actually a little bit of a trick question; the reality is that they have been for a while. With major search engines like Google, they are factoring in real-time results from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media sites, the trend of merging SEO and social networking began quite a while ago. And now, with Facebook’s introduction of more search features, Google’s +1 rollout, Google Buzz, and the gaining popularity of public profiles, it’s starting to show itself in a way that the average web user can recognize.

So what should you do with this knowledge?

There are two definite courses of action. First, you want to be absolutely sure that all of your content – including and especially social media profiles and updates – is optimized just as a webpage would be. That means paying attention to your keywords, using filenames that can increase your search positioning, constantly adding new updates, and generally paying attention to the ways people can find you. Google alone figures more than 200 factors into their algorithm for each and every search; you can bet they’re paying attention to what you post on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites, and will continue to do so going forward.

The second thing you can do is get full leverage out of your social media profiles. In other words, since search engines are going to factor them in and point to them anyway, make sure that potential customers can find lots of great things about you and your LinkedIn profile, Facebook fan page, and other social networking destinations. In a perfect world, one of your social profiles would do just as good a job selling you as your company’s home page would.

The lines between SEO and social media are blurring, but if you get into the habit of optimizing your content on both ends, that can be a great thing for your business.

Is your business falling behind on search engine optimization and social media marketing? Work with Calgary’s best to get back on track – contact eKzact Web Design And Internet Marketing for free consultation today!

Recently, we wrote about community managers – dedicated professionals who update your social media profiles, post new content, and respond to inquiries. While this is still a new position in most organizations, and one with evolving responsibilities, it’s becoming clear that having one, even on a part-time basis, can be incredibly helpful.

So the question is: does your small business need a community manager to keep up social networking?

Truthfully, probably not… at lease not any more than you occasionally need a plumber, an accountant, or a dentist. That is to say, you can definitely get by without one in the short term, but is it really worth it to do all of that work for yourself?

In most of the cases we see, it’s not. For one thing, there are just too many sites, with too many new features being added all the time, to stay on top of everything. But what’s more, community managers are becoming increasingly important because of something a lot of small business owners don’t even really think about: their online reputation.

Besides just posting pictures and generating tweets, one of the most valuable things a community manager can do for you is take a look at what other people are saying back to you, and about your business. Because the Internet is becoming more interconnected – not to mention updated in real time – and it only takes one or two negative remarks to put a long-term dent in your company sales. For all of the opportunities that exist for finding new business online, it’s more than prudent to have someone who’s looking out for potential threats to your marketing, too.

So if your company is planning on profiting from social media anytime soon, and it should, make sure you plan on including community managers in the mix. They can make the whole process easier and more efficient… but more importantly, they can help protect your reputation online.

Get the most out of social media marketing by working with Canada’s premier web design and development company, eKzact. Call us today and setup a free consultation – it might turn out to be one of the best things you’ve ever done for your business.

The geniuses working at Google’s Silicon Valley offices must have been pretty busy lately. Not only have they decided to outfit an entire town in Kansas with super high speed Internet, but they recently rolled out their “+1″ feature that allows searchers to share which results they find most helpful. But rather than taking the rest of the month off, as some of us would be tempted to do, they quietly introduced another new feature: Google Guru.

Guru, in a nutshell, is a service that allows users to open up a chat window and ask simple questions they want the answers to. Experts or other users can then help them find the appropriate information, without having to delve directly into Google search interface and find results. What are some of the things people might want to find? Here are just a handful of examples:

• Current weather and forecasts
• Sports scores
• Average prices
• Currency conversions
• Time in a different part of the world
• Geographic questions
• Trivia

… and a lot more. Much of this information could be available elsewhere on the Web, but using guru has the potential to make things faster and more efficient.

From an online marketing standpoint, this probably doesn’t mean a lot for your business at the moment. That’s not to say that it doesn’t matter, however. The introduction of Google Guru means more ties between the world’s largest search engine and mobile devices, more interaction with people instead of search engine spiders, and an overall focus on helping users find the information they’re looking for with minimum effort.

As you consider your online marketing plans going forward, try to find ways to make it easier for people to locate information or do business with you more efficiently. That’s because, as Guru shows us, you’re bound to be rewarded for it sooner or later.

eKzact Web Design and Online Marketing is Calgary’s premier Internet development company. Call us today to schedule a free consultation and find out why!

If you’ve noticed something new about your Google search results today – and not everyone will, since the changes being made are gradually across different locations and browsers – you’re not alone. Google has recently announced that they’ll start adding “+1″ buttons to listings.

What does +1 mean? It’s most similar to Facebook’s “like this” tab, which allows users to point out which pages are destinations they consider to be most helpful. The results are then made public to your Gmail contacts, although this may expand in the future, and Google has some tentative plans to collect aggregate +1 data for sites and pages to see which ones are most popular.

As a web user, this might seem like a neat little feature to share which sites you enjoy. But as an online marketer, it should alert you to some deeper truths and trends. Here are three things you definitely need to know about Google’s new +1 addition:

It’s further blurring the lines between search and social media. By essentially following in the footsteps of Facebook’s like this or Twitter’s “retweet” option, Google is positioning itself less as a pure search engine and more of a social hub. Expect that these Internet giants will continue to battle it out for the lion’s share of your attention.

Online marketers will try to one up each other. You can bet that, as soon as +1 becomes widespread, companies will be trying hard to one up each other with more +1′s. Not only will it make them seem more popular and possibly spread their marketing message, but there’s the chance that it could even help their search positioning down the road, if Google (logically) decides that sites with more approvals should get higher rankings.

Quality content is more important than ever. Ultimately, what +1 does is place more control into the hands of searchers. And what sort of sites and pages will they reward? That’s right, the ones with the most helpful – and most interesting – content. Having high quality writing and video on your small business website has become more and more important in recent years. That trend is only going to continue.

Need a Calgary Web design and online marketing partner who can help you stay on top of the latest web trends? Contact eKzact today. We’ll show you what’s going on in the online world, and how your business can take advantage.

It makes a lot of sense that when clients are looking for the very best in Calgary’s Web design, they tend to focus on the actual designs they see. But while looking through samples might be a good way to pick up on someone’s artistic flair, know that great web design doesn’t end once your site goes live… in fact, that’s really only the beginning.

Granted, the process of going from concepts to code, ideas to an actual, fully-functional website can be intense. But what happens once you’re online? A lot of business owners and marketing managers don’t think past that moment, even though it’s a virtual certainty that more help will be needed.

That’s because there are always going to be issues with the coding or design, updates to your company’s products or features, new security patches for your hosting software, e-mail and server issues, or any one of a thousand other things that will eventually lead you to pick up the phone. And that, as they say, is where your web design team is really going to earn its money.

What’s more, there could be challenges with your company’s website that don’t even have anything to do with “problems.” It could just be that your site becomes more popular and you need to find ways to promote it through social media, or that you are performing well in certain search engine terms but not others. Again, this is the place where the list could be endless; the only thing you can be sure of is that you’re going to eventually want some assistance.

There’s nothing wrong with evaluating designers and other creative teams first and foremost by the creative work they do. If you really want the best for your business, however, be sure to look beyond the design — because that’s where your web design project begins, but not where it ends.

If you’re looking for a team to design your company’s next website, make sure it gets found by potential customers, or simply get your business moving in the right direction online, contact eKzact — Calgary’s premier web design and online marketing partner.

Google and the other major search engines have reported in the past few years that “image result” queries are on the rise. This isn’t all that surprising — lots of people check out pictures of nature, super-models, sports events, and more — and might seem like it has nothing to do with you and me.

The reality, though, is that people aren’t just looking up celebrities and postcard landscapes… they’re also searching for images of friends, colleagues, and vendors.

What does this have to do with you, or your online marketing? It’s simple, the bigger and better you get, the higher the odds are that someone is going to decide to try to put a face with your name and Google you for image results. Or, the more pictures there are of you online, the more likely it is that someone searching your company is going to come across one of them. In either case, think carefully about what they would find. Is it something that would help, or hurt, your professional image?

If you aren’t sure, then your first step should be to perform a similar search yourself. Many people do this and are surprised at what comes up. For one thing, there might be a lot of photos of another person with the same name but (whether obviously or not) isn’t you. And for another, you could come up with photos you haven’t seen in years, snapshots where you have been tagged on other people’s social media profiles, pictures from old jobs or news articles, and so on.

Regardless of what you find, there are two things you deftly should do: first, try to remove anything that might harm your long term professional prospects; and secondly, make sure there are at least a few places where people can find a nice, comforting, professional photograph of you. In fact, go ahead and spend a few dollars having one done if you need to — it’s a small investment with a potentially large payoff.

Most of us aren’t famous enough that we have tons of adoring fans searching out our photos online. That doesn’t mean, however, that we can afford not to clean up our image online.

Need common sense advice and uncommon Internet marketing results? Get in touch with the team at eKzact — we’re one of Calgary’s leading web design, online marketing, e-commerce, social media, and everything else you need to keep your business moving ahead on the web.