What’s in a name? Sometimes business names are so painfully literal, and other times they leave you wondering how the name has anything to do with the company.
How did some of our household tech favourites come up with their names? I think you’ll be interested to find out.
In the month of March, Community Futures of Grande Prairie is offering some inexpensive video-conference learning sessions to help small businesses to learn important skills. Topics covered include everything from marketing, succession planning, to GST/HST basics. These sessions range from $30 to $50, making it very affordable. This is a great opportunity for new & small business owners to learn more about starting & running a business. See the schedule and contact information below.
A lot of clients have been asking about Facebook contests – what should they do and how should they do it?
Really wanting to present the best options for our clients, I set out to do some research about Facebook contests and how to get the most return. What I found was surprising.
It turns out that many of the ideas that I found do, in fact, break Facebook’s Promotion Guidelines. And when you break them, Facebook can shut down your page.
As of this writing, the most current Promotion Guildelines were updated on May 11, 2011. And the rules are something to pay attention to.
Tim Horton’s evokes a strong, almost nationalistic attachment, leaving Canada’s long-time icon—the beaver—with just a little gnawing concern. President’s Choice transformed a mundane household activity into an innovative and exciting experience for Canadians across the nation. (And in the words of Steve Levy, Ipsos Reid research company’s president: “Nothing says trustworthy like someone who can deliver a chocolate chip cookie and banking service.”)
According to the latest poll, both of these brands make up some of the most influential brands in the country.
So what exactly does it take for a brand to have influence?
Today the world has lost an incredible visionary who has changed our lives and shaped our culture. Our thoughts go out to everybody who’s life has been touched by Steve in one way or another. May you Rest in Peace, and thank you for everything you’ve done for the world.
As a web design company, we very often run into clients who have a domain name (e.g. yourcompany.com) registered but have no idea where it was registered or how to access it. This often happens when the domain was registered by an employee or previous owner that has left the company and didn’t pass on the details when they left. This can create a lot of headaches when you need to build a new website or change something about your email setup in the future. This article shows you some simple steps you can take to safeguard your domain registration and avoid problems down the road.
Considered the companion of many speakers and the buddy of the board room, PowerPoint has taken the corporate world by storm.
And when done well, that storm has the potential to pack a real punch.
Unfortunately, think Sleepy Hollow meets Donald Trump. PowerPoint has become an office activity that more often than not leaves audiences sweating profusely, fighting off an overwhelming sense of doom.
And sometimes it just puts us to sleep.
Plenty has been written on PowerPoint and how to use it effectively. We’ve seen our share of good and bad PowerPoint presentations, so we’d like to share this video by Don McMillan that demonstrates some hilarious insight how NOT to use this tool.
…Beware, you may recognize yourself…
When it comes to email marketing, the warning my buddy’s mom would shout out to us when we were kids sprinting out the door for the evening plays in my head. “Remember,” we’d hear her shout out just before the screen door muffled her voice, “just because you can doesn’t mean you should!”
The same wisdom applies to email marketing. There are a few simple rules everyone should keep in mind that will not only be appreciated by the recipients, but just makes for good customer service. And we all know that good customer service translates into sales.
Landing page design is to websites what AdWords is to an advertorial spread. It is all about focusing down to the bare essentials of what will convert a shopper into a buyer. To get the kind of focus you need to develop a high converting landing page, imagine that every single pixel on the screen costs $1,000 to use. Then you will have the right mindset for developing a successful landing page.
With so little space available—both on the screen and in your customer’s attention span—how do you maximize your Return on Pixels (ROP)?
Yes, we’re well aware that there’s still plenty of snow on the ground BUT it’s spring and you know what that means?
SPRING CLEANING! Time to purge and toss out or recycle the outdated, the outgrown (sigh), and the clutter that seems to creep into your home or office taking over every corner and cranny.
A customer calls us, interested in our services. We invite them in to meet with us to discuss their project in more detail. The meeting is fantastic. After an hour of talking about their project and ideas, showing them some of the things we can do, and having a few side-tracked laughs together, we shake hands, and agree to send them a proposal for their project. We quickly get to work preparing a detailed proposal outlining how we are going to solve their problems with our products and services. We send out the proposal, looking forward to a positive response.
It takes work to keep a foothold above your competitors. You might have a great product, but success truly comes with leaving your customers with a good impression.
Reviewing your brand and making sure it keeps its appeal with your target audience is a sure way to help you accomplish this. While your logo is only one part of your overall brand, it is a key element, and one that packs a lot more punch than people often realize.
