What is #HiddenCash?
If you have not already heard about this latest Internet phenomenon #HiddenCash, lets us fill you in. On Friday, one of our office space Toronto tenants told our receptionist about this guy in California that is giving away money in a unique way. He or people who work for him are hiding money and tweeting clues revealing how people can find his #HiddenCash. This social media campaign is being done anonymously. This anonymous philanthropist started a twitter campaign telling followers about places they could find “Hidden Cash.” His Twitter followers began a scavenger hunt for cash that he has hidden in various cities throughout California. The person or entity that is @hiddencash that is behind this #HiddenCash project, is hiding money in various places and sending out tweets with clues about the location of the hidden money – and quickly found his followers sharing the clues on social media. The amounts and […]
What Content are you Creating and What Content are you Sharing?
Creating new content for your blog or social media followers is not always easy, but it does not have to be hard either. The more you get to know your target audience, the more you will find out what types of information they are seeking and what they expect from you.
Getting Funding and Financially Managing Your Small Business
One of our Toronto office space for rent tenants was telling one of our office business centre staffers that he recently found funding for a second business he was starting and needed to have a second phone number for that business. Hearing about the new venture and the capital that was acquired for it, was something that got our blog writer curious. It seems that if you are you starting a new small business in Canada or operating one already, there are funding sources through the federal government and commercial banks. There are also ways of capitalizing on your existing small business to gain new investment or secure investment in a new business. When trying to gain new money to invest in your existing business, you should have professionally prepared financial statements. These statements should not only show your profit and loss, but also demonstrate a good cash flow that […]
A Look at Some of the Popular CMS Platforms
Let’s look at some of the popular CMS platforms that some of our office space tenants at our business centre, as well as some of our virtual office clients, use as their CMS website platform. WordPress is currently one of the most popular CMS platforms and it was originally developed as a tool for blogging. While its main function was to provide an easy and fast way for users to write and publish new blog content, the functionality of WordPress has grown so significantly that it is now used to power millions of very different personal and small business websites. WordPress now offers the main function of a CMS with complete control over creating, modifying and publishing content. Having the ability to create static pages and e-commerce on the same platform as a small business blog, gives businesses a single place manage their web presence. Another popular CMS is Drupal. […]
Reasons A Small Business Should Consider A CMS Website
While HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) has long been the standard for website design, ever since the www exploded onto the scene in the early 90’s. This powerful programming language not only forms the building blocks of all webpages, but it is also used to code the design, structure and content of websites. Over the past few years CMS’s (Content Management Systems) have made it easier to create, publish and edit the content of websites without having to know how to code in HTML or using software programs on the PC or FTP (File Transfer Protocal) programs to upload pages. Although a CMS still uses HTML, the software platform is a much more streamlined and automated way to create and edit website content directly on the web. A CMS provides users with an interface so they can easily create, publish and edit website content without having to code in HTML. For […]
Google + Webinars for Small Business
First off I should tell you I am a huge fan of Google+ Hangouts. The infrastructure for Hangouts provides almost all the services you get with the providers in Conducting Webinars that can Help Your Small Business on hosting Public and Private Webinars. My bias stems from being a co-host and co-producer of two Google+ Hangouts on Air and I have appeared on a few others as a guest discussing SEO and Internet marketing. The Hangouts were originally podcasts and we now have leveraged the audio portion of the Hangout by stripping out the audio and continuing to promote and maintain the podcast assets. Why Your Small Business Should use Google+ for Hosting Your Webinar The biggest advantages of doing your webinars using Google+ hangouts is: The cost is free. There is a built-in platform to promote your webinar on Google+YouTube with distribution that makes every public webinar available 24/7. […]
Conducting Webinars that can Help Your Small Business
Once you have watched and/or participated in webinar as a guest or viewer, you might start thinking how conducting your own webinar might help your small business to gain exposure to not only new potential clients, but also to educate existing customers about how better to use your product or service. The pitfalls some businesses encounter happen when they try to turn their webinar into an hour-long commercial and do not offer a benefit to the viewers or participants. Use your webinar as an online training session and not a commercial. There are three types of webinars which you can use to carry out online training; non-interactive webinars, interactive webinars and Q&A (Questions and Answers) webinars. The idea behind a non-interactive webinar is that it allows people to see your screen and hear your voice while you are demonstrating something that is useful to them. Your initial webinar experience may be […]
Attending Webinars is Good for Your Small Business
You have probably already heard about webinars or live web-based presentations. But just in case you have not, let us explain what they are. A webinar is an online event that is hosted by a group, organization or company that is broadcast to a select number of individuals who have signed up to watch the webcast or online seminar through their computers via the Internet. The idea behind a webinar is that it allows a speaker or a group of speakers to share visual content such as videos, PowerPoint presentations, interactive web pages or other multimedia content with their audience – who can be located anywhere that they have Internet access. This type of seminar can reduce the need to travel from far or even nearby locations to receive the message or teachings of the seminar. As a small business owner who is looking to learn new business techniques or […]
Grow Your Small Business With Your Growth in Knowledge
Small business owners are always looking for new ways to grow their small business, but forget that their own growth of knowledge might just be what their business needs.
Small Business Support can be Found in an Office Business Centre
Many new small businesses begin by operating out of the garage or basement of the entrepreneur whose vision actually started the business. That may work for the formative months or even the first year of that business, but there comes a time when they need actual office space. At that point the business owner must choose between traditional raw office space or finding an established business centre in a prestigious location. While traditional raw office space in a wide range of office buildings can be found at a good price, it may not come with the prestigious address or location that a starting business needs – so they can announce they have “arrived” on the business scene! A traditional raw office space can sometimes require funding that a start-up business does not have or does not want to invest in. Having to invest in capital costs for office furniture, telephone […]
Small Business Networking Groups
As mentioned in our blog Small Business Support Groups, one the best ways to get support for your small business is through peer groups such as MeetUp groups for small business. But these and other groups can also be useful in finding customers and people who will promote your business both online and face to face. Some great places to find small business networking opportunities are online groups on LinkedIn. LinkedIn has many groups dedicated to helping entrepreneurs and small businesses to not only network online, but also to find local groups who also have offline gatherings for the purpose of networking with others who may need your business service – or know people and businesses that do. Google plus also provides groups that are dedicated to small business networking, both for business-to-business networking and for business-to-consumer networking. While there are plenty of groups, the key is to find active […]
Small Business Support Groups
There are plenty of support groups for many different things, but what most small business owners fail to realize is that there are also support groups for small business owners. All a small business owner needs to do is to seek out the help and he or she will find it in many different forms and from different funding groups. There are government-funded programs as well as government and private industry co-funded programs aimed at helping start-ups get on the right track – or to give a new or early-stage business a competitive advantage. Some examples of government support for small businesses are Small Business Enterprise Centres (SBECs) and community-based providers that offer entrepreneurs all the tools they need to start to grow their businesses. There are also organizations like the MaRS Discovery District (an independent registered charity) who works with an extensive network of partners to help entrepreneurs launch and grow the […]
Still Trying to Explain Coworking Office Space
As much as we have written at length about co-working offices, many others have explained it differently for their own purposes. While the name is relatively new, the concept is not. As far back as the late 70’s and early 80’s, the concept of using a business centre without a permanent desk was explored by entrepreneurs and small business owners. The terms Shared Office, Cohousing, Hot Desking, Telecentre and others have been used over the years to describe a shared office environment by different business centres and office rental locations. Wikipedia describes it this way: “Coworking is a style of work that involves a shared working environment, often an office, and independent activity. Unlike in a typical office environment, those coworking are usually not employed by the same organization. Typically it is attractive to work-at-home professionals, independent contractors, or people who travel frequently who end up working in relative isolation. […]
When Foreign Real Estate Investors see 3 Canadian Cities in the top 3 in the World, More Will Follow!
Private real estate group Grosvenor has come out with a report called “Resilient Cities” ranking Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary as the top three most reliant cities out of 50 cities around the world. When investors read reports like this, they not only look at these cities as places to invest in real estate – they will also look at these cities to put business investments into. The Grosvenor report explains that “vulnerability is a city’s exposure to shocks in terms of both magnitude and frequency. Shocks may be due to changes in the climate, environmental degradation, shortage of resources, failed infrastructure or community strife due to inequality…..So resilience increases when cities have more adaptive capacity and decreases when they are more vulnerable.” So you ask “Why does a report by a private real estate firm matter?” Well, because investors are interested making money and not losing it due to vulnerability. […]
Office Space Sedentary? There is an App for That!
As we continue this week’s theme of discussing “Sitting is the New Smoking,” through our research we are uncovering more information that we wanted to share with our followers. It is most interesting that the battle against a sedentary lifestyle has even reached the app world, and developers keep finding new ways to keep people active and productive while at work. While for awhile there have been apps to help those who want to stay active and stay fit, the newest apps for increasing mobility in the office space have names like “Office Fitness”, “Office Fitness Free”, “StandApp”, “Limitless”, “Health Time Pro”, “Health Time LT” and “Sedentary work PRO”. These apps can range in price from free to $3.99 – but even at a higher price they would be a great investment in your health. Then there is “SmartMove” , USB rechargeable insoles, which can go in any shoe. The […]
Stay Active Even While Sitting
In our previous blog “Sitting is The New Smoking,” we talked about the health problems associated with working all day sitting down. One of the options we told you about was to work standing up. When publishing that article we fully understood that working standing up may not always be an option for you in your office space. However, you can still exercise at your desk! Here are some ways you can get exercise while working at your desk. One of the best ways to take on the sedentary effects of sitting all day is to make a point of standing up every 20 to 30 minutes, even if is to just take a stretch or to read a memo – or try standing while on you are the phone. Keeping note of how long you have been sitting is also very important. Another way to stay active while sitting […]
Is Sitting the New Smoking?
Are you sitting comfortably at your desk? You might be considering standing up by the time you finish reading this. It seems that experts are saying “sitting is our generation’s smoking.” Research is suggesting that we are spending too much time sitting instead of standing and that could have damaging effects on our physical well being. Some business experts like Nilofer Merchant spoke at the TED Conference in 2013 about this issue. Merchant said people now sit for an average of 9.3 hours each day, compared with sleeping an average of 7.7 hours daily. She also wrote an article in the Harvard Business Review called Sitting is the Smoking of our Generation, describing how she was converted from sit-down meetings to walking meetings as a way of staying healthier. Other health experts are describing sitting as a ticking time bomb of ill health just waiting to explode. The World Health Organization identified […]
Why Does an Office Business Centre Write Small Business Advice Articles?
The question of why Telsec Business Centres writes a blog that mainly gives small business tips has once again been asked in our social media channels.
Increasing Your Stock of Images for Your Small Business
In a world of convenience it is far easy to turn to Stock Photography and Image depositories to populate your website, blogs, social media and marketing materials with these of the rack images.
Building Stock in Your Small Business Using Professional Photography
One of our Facebook followers asked us to talk about Photography vs Stock Photography, so we looked to one of our office space clients Ian for the answers.