Alberta Business Marketing

What a concept, is your social media generating revenue for your business?  Directly or indirectly?  Are you making a return on your social media efforts either a return on the investment or a return on the opportunity.  We are in business to serve the community and to get paid for providing these services, correct?  Enough of the fluff.  Is your social media activities generating leads, prospects and interest from those who will buy your products and services.

When did this “group hug” thing start to over take good business decisions with social media?  Many of my colleagues in traditional marketing may never say “Go ahead and send out your postcard campaign and share information on what someone else is doing”.  So why is this acceptable behaviour in social media?

When did we lose our focus around what are business is truly here for?  Was is Napster?  Was it software piracy?  Was it this Freemium mindset? Was it illegally downloading movies?  Is it this lifestyle or behaviours that have swung our society into this mindset about not promoting our organizations or offering our products for sale.

Sure, you know what…believing others before the corporate message has been around for a long time.  It is called “word of mouth” and referrals from colleagues is nothing new, we have been doing it long before Facebook or even computers were on every desk.  But, some folks out there are telling business that social media is not for promoting your business or attempting to reach new markets.

Hey, I even drank that kool-aid until I met with my banker and he told me…great stuff Stuart but how are you going to pay your mortgage?  We don’t accept your goodwill here?  That was all I need to hear!

Your business is in business to serve the community and to get paid accordingly for these services you provide.

BTW, I am not talking about a free ticket to SPAM but we need to make sure our messages are around service, education and then “YOUR CALL TO ACTION”.

I highly recommend we focus on serving our community and also focus on the bottom line of our business.  Understand real marketing metrics and not some “social currency” that is truly worthless in the real business community.

You are in business to serve and get paid for the services you provide.

Tags: banker, Business/Finance, Computing, Facebook Inc, Napster, Social Landscape, social media, software piracy
Posted in Alberta Business | | Comments Off

Welcome to the age of the Internet.  I think it is pretty safe to claim this now.  Just look around you and there is no doubt that our online world is just as important as the face-to-face relationships we have.  For some, online is more important.

Cloud Computing For Business

One of the biggest shifts has been in business.  Business is now starting to embrace “the cloud” and the power of online applications.  Need proof, next time you fly, how many printed boarding passes do you notice?  How many people are using the smart phone to store their boarding pass?  More and more everyday.  Big business and small business are leveraging the power of the Internet to run their day-to-day business applications.

Even Microsoft has started to take notice. Well, they have been for a long time, at least 4 years since the first time I heard “Software + Services”.  Businesses across North America are flocking to Microsoft’s Online Solutions.  Many of them are turning to the Microsoft BPOS solution or solutions delivered by Microsoft Partners each day.  The online solutions market is heating up and taking off at an extremely fast pace.

The reality of the market today is that many small businesses are turning to Microsoft BPOS now versus having a server sitting in the back room doing nothing but email.  The next versions of the Microsoft Small Business Server will have a version that is cloud-equipped.  My understanding is that it will do nothing but authenticate your users and store files.  Sounds like a Foundation Server.

Join us for a free webinar

Ulistic is hosting a free webinar on Tuesday to help you get answers to hosting your business applications on the Internet.

Join us on Tuesday, July 20th at Noon Eastern/9 AM Pacific for a no charge 60 minute webinar that is geared to help you get some answers on what online service you should turn to.  Is it Google?  How about Microsoft Office Web Apps? Do you need a CRM?  What sort of backup strategy should I have?

Lots of questions and our goal on Tuesday is to help you get some answers.  Real world answers and the facts about the best online solution for your business.  For the past 6 months, I have been doing my own research, testing out many different online platforms.  We have also installed many different solutions ranging from Google Apps, Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite and Hosted Exchange through one of our partners.  I have had my frustrations to say the least.

I will have these real life stories plus intelligence on what some Calgary business owners have been quoted recently and what you should expect to pay the service you choose.  The truth is this, everyone has an opinion, everyone has a favourite and everyone’s needs and tolerance for techy stuff is different.  What works for some, doesn’t work for others.

It is your decision, I can only share with you what I know.

Register for Is Your Business Ready For The Internet webinar on Tuesday.

Tags: Business IT, Business/Finance, Calgary, Cloud applications, cloud computing, Computing, day-to-day business applications, Everything as a service, Google Inc., Human Interest, Internet culture, microsoft, Microsoft Corporation, microsoft office, Microsoft Partners, North America, Office Web Apps, online applications, online platforms, online solution, Online Solutions, Online Suite, online world, smart phone, smartphone, Software plus services, Technology/Internet, web 2.0, Web applications, Web Apps, Web conferencing, Windows Server, Windows Small Business Server
Posted in CRM | | Comments Off

Probably not…but I think I took a good step forward on Saturday.

I have been a huge supporter of the blogging platform WordPress for many years.  Like many of you, I cut my teeth on the free versions of WordPress and Blogger.  However, when I started to take blogging seriously, I stumbled on a company called Siteground.com and the rest is history.  Blogging is now part of my daily routine and this blog reaches thousands of folks each day.

WordPress offers one of the most reliable and easy to use blogging platforms available today.  Over the course of my regular business day, I work with many Calgary and global companies on how they can leverage blogs in their business.  Ulistic offers a wide range of blogging consulting services for business.  From blog consulting to coaching.  Contact me if I can help you with your business blogs at anytime.

WordPress is evolving to a fully functional web development platform.

For many years WordPress has strictly been used as a blogging platform.  For a while, some of the leading web developers started developing great looking websites on WordPress.  However over the past little while WordPress has become more acceptable in the mainstream web development world.   WordPress is now making serious moves towards offering a full-featured and rich content management system and web development platform.

On Friday, I met up with a good friend of mine and fellow WordPress blogger in Calgary and we immediately jumped into sharing tips and tricks on how we can make our WordPress blogs really sing.  I shared a few great plugins that I have found and started to use every day.  Many of our Ulistic clients are also leveraging these great additional functions on their WordPress blog.  Some of the plugins allow you to scroll testimonials, perform grammar/spelling checking and a wealth of other great added features.  You can even send a thank you note to those folks who leave a comment on your blog.

Then my friend shared with me a service he has been using and having some great success with, headwaythemes.com.  Headway is a blog development platform for WordPress.  You can see it on this blog, this weekend I changed the layout of my blog to a headway designed blog.  It took a bit of playing around at first, but after you learn how it really works and read the manual  or watch the YouTube videos it is quite awesome.  Headway takes all the confusion of CSS and HTML  and offers a powerful interface for you to develop your own professional business blog.  Upload your own header, change colours and really take ownership of your blog.

Don’t kiss your web developer goodbye just yet, but here is another web tool you can take advantage of for your blogs.  Your web developer combined with Headway can really make your blog rock n’roll.  I am not a developer, but as an avid blogger and marketing professional…I get this and the power a great locking blog can do for business.

Headway only works on your hosted WordPress blog.

Sorry folks…you need to have your own hosted version of WordPress to make this work.  If you have your blog hosted on the free WordPress servers, you can’t take advantage of the power headway offers.  However, don’t worry I have a solution for you.  Get a hosted version of WordPress with your own domain name for only $9.95 for the first year.  Click Here – Cheap WordPress Hosting.  After the first year, your hosting is only $120 for the year.  Great deal to get started.

Headway is about $90 for a personal version which allows you to run it on 2 of your websites, upgrade to the developers version for about $160.00 and use it on unlimited sites.  This is an awesome tool for WordPress, if you are serious about your blogging – this service if for you.

Tags: Akismet, awesome tool, blog, Blog hosting services, Blog software, Blogger, BuddyPress, Business/Finance, Calgary, Computing, content management system, Content management systems, functional web development platform, HTML, mainstream web development world, PHP programming language, Siteground, Technology/Internet, ulistic, USD, web developer, web developer goodbye, web developers, web development platform, web tool, wordpress, World Wide Web, YouTube Inc
Posted in Blogging | | Comments Off

One of things I miss about not being at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner conference besides not being able to see all my buddies from Microsoft and through the partner channel is all the great announcements that come from this annual pilgrimage from Microsoft Partners.

I tuned into Steve Ballmer’s keynote address on Digital WPC this morning just in time to hear the announcement of Windows 7 Slate amongst all the talk of the cloud (FY2011 is going to rock).  Microsoft is getting into the iPad type game with full force.  I kinda thought they would and no better place to announce it.  WPC I heard has over 14,000 delegates in attendance this year.

If you don’t think the cloud is for real…watch the keynote address from Steve Ballmer.

This will be my only year off from WPC.  I look forward to WPC2011 in Los Angeles.

My good friend and fellow blogger Karim from Techvibes summed up the announcement on his blog.

This year one of the most important things that we will do in the smart device category is really push forward with Windows 7-based slates.

They’ll come with keyboards, they’ll come without keyboards, they’ll be dockable, there’ll be many form factors, many price points, many sizes.  But they will all run Windows 7. They will run Windows 7 applications. They will run Office.

They’ll (the tablets or slates as Ballmer calls them) come from the people you would expect — from Asus, from Dell, from Samsung, from Toshiba, from Sony.

I can’t wait to see one and compare it to my iPad.  I do love my iPad but it has limitations when it comes to working on documents.  If the Slate will run Office, I may just switch.  After all, Office is the make or break application for me.

What do you think?  Leave a comment.

Tags: Blogger, Computing, iPad, microsoft, Microsoft Corporation, Microsoft Partners, Technology/Internet, World Wide Web
Posted in Alberta Business | | Comments Off

Our clients at Ulistic challenge us from time to time.  Encouraging us to think outside the box when it comes to functionality with their online marketing, blogging and social media.  I would like to believe that my 15 years of experience as a Calgary IT consultant helps me understand how things work technically and then I love to put my creative layer over top and see where things go.  It is pretty cool and without great clients to push us…we would never be where Ulistic is today.  Thank You.

Blogging platforms are a dime a dozen.  Everyone has their favourite.  For me, when it comes to blogging platforms, WordPress is a hands down winner. I have used Blogger, TypePad and a wealth of other options and personally I haven’t used a platform that is as feature-rich plus offers the ease of use many small business marketing professionals are craving for with all of their online marketing solutions.

During a recent Internet Marketing Coaching call with one of our clients in Tampa, FL. I was challenged by them to add particular functionality to help with getting their message out online.  They needed to add a signature component at the end of each blog post so they don’t have to constantly type in a calls-to-action or quick blurbs about their business.  Sounded pretty simple and with my experience I knew WordPress would already have something I could recommend to my client.

The WordPress community did not disappoint.

I stumbled upon this great new plugin for WordPress which met our client’s need.  The FT Signature plugin designed by FullThrottle Development offered everything they  and we were looking for to meet this particular requirement but all now we have something we can use with all of our fully-managed online marketing clients.

The FT Signature plugin provides bloggers and clients of Ulistic, the ability to append a signature file at the end of each of their posts.  Just like you would with Microsoft Outlook.  You will see a great example of the FT Signature plugin in action at the end of this post.

It is customizable with a bit of HTML knowledge and can be turned on or off when you are composing your blog post.  This is a pretty powerful plugin for the WordPress platform.

If you haven’t heard of FullThrottle before, they provide full service web development in Raleigh, NC. Thanks to the team at FullThrottle for helping us out.

Learn more about how to automatically insert your signature on a WordPress blog today.

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Ulistic focuses on serving the needs of Canadian Small Business, REALTORS, and Information Technology firms across Canada and United States. Helping your business understand, deploy and leverage social media, search engine optimization and online communications to generate business opportunities and make an impact inside your community and industry.

My business partner David and I are business professionals first. We understand what it takes to run a successful small business.

I invite you to reach out to me personally at 403.775.2205 or email Stuart at scrawford@ulistic.com.

Tags: Blog software, Business/Finance, Calgary IT consultant, Computing, Content management systems, florida, FullThrottle Development, HTML, Microsoft Corporation, North Carolina, online marketing clients, online marketing solutions, Online Solutions, PHP programming language, Raleigh, recent Internet Marketing Coaching call, social media, tampa, Technology/Internet, ulistic, web development, wordpress, World Wide Web
Posted in Online Marketing | | Comments Off