Alberta Business Marketing

Being a small business owner and working in our vibrant Calgary market is truly exciting.  I can’t think of any other market that I would want to own a business in.  My friends at SOHO came through Calgary on June 2nd for their annual trade show and conference.  The Small Office, Home Office event is one of the must attends for Calgary and area small business.  Ulistic had the pleasure of sponsoring this year’s event, sharing our story as an exhibitor and also being the closing speaker.

It was great to be the closing speaker. jokingly we said that Ulistic was the headliner for the 2010 SOHO event.   I spoke on “The New CRM – Managing Your Reputation Online Is CRUCIAL“.  It was a talk on what small business can do to monitor their reputation online.  Reputation Management is very important for business especially when it is so easy for business to fall victim to a malicious person or an upset customer who turns to the web to voice their frustration or seek their attention they crave.  For a great example, see what happened to a friend of mine recently on LinkedIn.

There are a number of key reputation management tips that small business in Calgary must do in aiding to help keep on top of their reputation online.  During my presentation I really only scratched the surface simply because online reputation management can be such a deep subject.  Only so much a guy can cover in 40 minutes!   Here are a few immediate things your small business can do to watch what is being said about your business and many of them are FREE!

1. Check Yelp.com or Yelp.ca daily. Yelp is a service that allows reviews to be posted online about your business.  It is very easy for a customer to offer their praise about your business on Yelp.  I would check Yelp daily and engage when required.
2. Take ownership of your business on the Google Local Business Directory.  Google’s business directory is an online directory of businesses across the world.  Check to ensure you own your listing and when you do take ownership ensure you fill it out completely.
3. Setup alerts on Google Alerts and Social Oomph and monitor your company name, trademarks, brand names, key employees, competitors and anything else you wish to monitor.

It is too late if a prospect informs you about some negative talk online about your business.

Now is the time you take ownership on your online presence.

One of the folks in my session sent me this email…

Aside from gold medalist Carla Macleod you were the best public speaker of the bunch!

About SOHO

SOHO is an organization that empowers small business owners from all across Canada.   Moe and his crew come to Calgary annually to share their message to small business owners.  They are truly unique in what they do.  I can’t really think of any other organizations who have national coverage and also approach our vibrant community with integrity and service.  Kudos Moe…great job.  To learn more about SOHO visit their website at http://www.soho.ca.

Tags: Business, Business/Finance, Calgary, canada, closing speaker, Home Office, Immediate Records, LinkedIn Ltd, online presence, Online reputation management, reputation, reputation management, Small Office, Small office/home office, Soho, World Wide Web
Posted in CRM, Marketing, Online Marketing | | Comments Off

Even in tough times, it appears that America’s biggest businesses are still donating a lot to charity. If you check out America’s Most Generous Companies you will find some of the biggest companies on the list.

Large companies gave 5.1% more to charity in 2008 than in 2007, on average, even though the recession officially began in December 2007.

During tough times, reputation is everything. A recent survey by Boston College’s Center for Corporate Citizenship and the Hitachi Foundation found that 70% of senior executives considered reputation the No. 1 driver behind their companies’ corporate citizenship efforts. At the biggest companies, 82%. It’s no wonder chief executive officers now directly lead the corporate citizenship agendas at three out of four corporations.

You can find more details of the study on the website of The Chronicle of Philanthropy, The Newspaper of the Non-profit World.

At the other end of the scale, you have Guerrilla Giving. This is one family’s adventure in philanthropy as they describe it.

For a year (a lifetime?), we’re committed to giving away 10% of our annual gross income in daily increments to mostly random recipients. We have had experience with tithing in the past (10% traditionally) but it was often done as an after-thought, at the end of the month or at the end of the year–written as a cheque or dropped in an offering bowl. Giving like that was rarely joyful for us. Guerrilla Giving, on the other hand, is fun, adventurous, and immediate.

Giving to charities can be done for a variety of reasons. Whatever the motivation or the amount, it seems clear that charity giving brings benefits both to the givers and to the receivers.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Charitable Gifts to Drop 9% in 2009 (blogs.wsj.com)

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Charity Donations Improve Corporate Reputations

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Tags: Business, charity, giving, reputation, society
Posted in Alberta Business | | Comments Off