The Human Side of Social Media
Far too often companies who are using their social media channels as another avenue to promote themselves forget that the people and business owners who are reading and following them are actual human beings. Social media posters need to understand what the content being provided means to their audience as a person or business entity without being talked down to. People follow your content, not your machines. We came up with a few quick tips that will help you create better content based on what your followers want to read Give your followers a reason to follow you in the first place. Are you covering the topics they want to hear? Create the content with your audience in mind. Did you create it for you or them? Your social media interactions should be a two-way conversation. Are you listening to your followers’ feedback? Read what others in your industry are […]
Once Again Telsec has Disaster Recovery for Small Businesses
Last summer when in the wake of the torrential downpour and subsequent flooding of various neighborhoods around Toronto, Telsec Business Centres received a great deal of calls from small businesses looking for temporary office space.
Technology and Innovation can Level the Playing Field for Small Business
As we have mentioned in previous blogs, for many small businesses who are trying compete against big competitors every day, technology can be a vital tool that can help them level the playing field while competing for customers dollars. With just a few pieces of technology, some apps, some accounts with social media, credit card processing and some cloud storage, a small business can be ready to take on the big boys for less than what it cost the big guys to compete. Here are just some examples of some of the solutions that are available to small business. If your business is one that works in the field or on the road, consider taking credit card or debit transactions on your smartphone or Internet-enabled device by using mobile POS (Point of Sale) solutions that will save you money on full POS systems. Big competitors have a harder time using […]
Why pay $395 for a Co-Working Office When you can Have a Semi-Private for the Same Price or Less?
Co-working has become a big trending word and new businesses are flocking to these locations because they believe this is the new way to do business. Unfortunately, they are not doing themselves a favour and they are looking bad doing it. Here are some reasons why the co-working trend is not good for a small business or start-up company. Having a business address is important; but having a business address with a P.O. box number or at a retail location makes customers question you legitimacy. Remember, in this day and age customers will Google your location – and if they see it is a storefront that looks like a over-priced coffee shop, will they take you seriously? When your customers look up 1 Yonge Street, they see a professional business building that tells them you indeed professional. When you want a private meeting with a client, are you paying extra […]
Buying an Existing Small Business
There are basically two ways of buying an existing business – buying an existing business or buying a franchise (new or existing). With a non-franchise business there is less support than with a franchise business, but there are also no franchise fees and/or royalties to be paid. For the purposes of this blog, we will not be looking at manufacturing or inventory-based businesses, but more service-based small businesses. One of the first steps that someone taking over an existing small business should consider is to do a review of its history and the way it operates. This means having a thorough look through its’ financial statements (this is best done by an accountant who knows what to look for). The buyer should also review the operating documents and practices. Some of the items to be reviewed include: Accounts Receivable Reviewing the accounts receivable and accounts history will help to determine […]
Free ways of Promoting Your Small Business Online
Now that we have talked about online marketing and establishing your budget and where to spend your online marketing dollars, lets look at some of the free way of promoting your small business online.
How are you Going to use Online Marketing to Further Your Small Business?
Once you have determined your online marketing budget, then you will want to know how to use your marketing spend in the most effective way. Again, as with our previous blog on how much attention and money you should spend on your online marketing, you have to determine the most effective ways of utilizing that budget to the fullest extent. Here are some ways to use online marketing to grow your small business: • Geo-targeting. Do you have a small business that caters to a very specific location or neighbourhood? Geo-targeting allows you to advertise to potential customers in a specific geographic area or location. Most online advertising sites will allow you to Geo-target your ads to people in specific geographical areas, right down to a zip code or postal code. • Contextual advertising. Contextual advertising will place your ad on sites related to your products and services where […]
How much attention and money you should spend on your online marketing?
Your online budget is not just what you spend on online advertising, but also the resources that you dedicate to it.
More Customer Service Tips for Small Business and Entrepreneurs
In our quest to bring small business advice to our office-space tenants and virtual office clients, we have been publishing a number of articles on our blog to help them. One of our Toronto virtual office clients suggested we post about better ways to interact with your customers to improve customer service. So here is more advice….. Decide who supports who and don’t overwhelm your staff with the number of customers they support. Your clients in a business-to-business relationship want to know who they deal with and how easy it is to get in touch with that person who personalizes their sales and service. Assign a rep to each client and give them a back-up rep they can contact in the event of a problem. Each type of business has different personalization needs between customers and the business, so overwhelming a staff member with more clients than he or […]
Cloud Backup Solutions For Small Business
In our previous blog about Cloud Storage Options for Small Business, we did not address the other type of cloud computing that is important to small businesses – back-ups. While it is easy to use a cloud storage and synchronization service for a small amount of files, it is not as easy to use them to back-up large amounts of data. This is the data that may not be used on a regular basis, but data that is still important to your business – typically files such as databases, product development records, historical data, old and archived files, and other files that are kept on your computer or server. So instead of doing our typical research, we asked some of our office space Toronto tenants what back-up services they use. While some claimed they still used back-up drives and portable hard drives to back up their essential files, some used […]
Cloud Storage Options For Small Business
If you are like many of our office space tenants, you have often found yourself at a meeting or working remotely away from your office only to discover that you do not have the files you need. One of the best solutions for always having access to your files is cloud computing – specifically data storage and synchronization on a cloud server. It was pointed out that we previously posted a blog about Cloud Servers as a Possible Data Storage and Back-up Solution, but did not give some examples of cloud services or what they might cost for a small business. It is sometimes said that there are almost as many cloud storage services as clouds in the sky, but we want to focus on business-centric cloud computing options that are scalable for small businesses. It should be noted that many of these business cloud providers offer consumer versions at […]
General Small Business Tips
So you want to start a small business, we have prepared a few tips to help your small business succeed. While these are just some simple tips, they are often the most overlooked details for starting and running a small business. General Small Business tip #1 – Make Sure You Are Your Ready for Entrepreneurship. It is easy to come up with an idea to start a business, but not so easy to actually launch and build a profitable business. Eighty percent of businesses fail in the first five years. While planning your business, you need to budget for shortfalls in sales or economic downturns. General Small Business tip #2 – Prepare a Business Plan. By not preparing a business plan, you are preparing to fail in you business. Most small businesses that create a thorough business plan that includes financial plans and budgets, market analysis, competitive analysis and competitive […]
Small Business Social Media Tips
Social media has become one of the most important networking tools for today’s small business. Companies use social media to not only reach new customers and get exposure, they also use their social media channels to retain existing customers. By keeping your presence on social media, you are keeping your brand top of mind, compared to your competition. There are plenty of free or inexpensive ways to build your social media circles, first by engaging those you know to join your social media business page. Google Plus pages for business are important because these are the pages that Google bases your local information on. Small Business Social Media Tip 1 – Learn how to market your business on social media. Even if you intend to use traditional marketing avenues, social media is an important part of reaching your prospective customers. You need to be on as many social media sites […]
Small Business SEO Tips
Small business are always trying to find advantage over the big guys in terms of being found on the Internet. It used to be the company with the most inbound links were the ones who ranked the best on the search engines.
How Re-targeting and Re-marketing Can Help Your Small Business Website
Ever notice that the ads you see reminds you of websites that you have recently visited or searched out? How did the ads know you were interested in that?
Virtual Office Tips
Companies who do not need a physical office space will often use a virtual office within an office business centre in order to have a prestigious business address to put on their business cards, letterhead, brochures and other business-related material. Some will choose to just have the mail service while others will choose the Mail and Telephone service to give them access to a live professional receptionist who answers their calls based on their instructions. Recently, Telsec introduced a new VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocols) that has an optional VoIP handset that can be used anywhere in the world (provided there is an internet connection). Here are some tips to help you use a virtual office service to its potential as well as some advice to help you find the right virtual office for you. Tip No. 1 – Don’t tell anyone it’s a virtual office. When clients call your […]
Small Business Meeting Tips
Meeting customers in person can often make or break a sale. Having the right meeting space and location are key to having a successful meeting.
Can you use a Bitcoin to Rent Office Space Toronto?
You cannot use a Bitcoin to rent office space Toronto – yet. There does not seem to be any Canadian office space business centre that is yet to accept Bitcoin transactions. There was one co-working office space that had been touted and promoted to be the first co-working office space in Toronto to accept Bitcoin transactions, but its internet domain name expired earlier this month and there is no way of reaching them. If you do not know what Bitcoin is, we will give you a brief introduction. A Bitcoin is a distributed, peer-to-peer digital currency that functions without the intermediation of any central authority. The Bitcoin portal WeUseCoins https://www.weusecoins.com/en/ has a video that gives the basics on what a Bitcoin is. But we wanted to give you a little more info, so we went to Wikipedia. According to Wikipedia “Bitcoin has been called a cryptocurrency because it is decentralized […]
Business Centres Make Your Business More Professional
When talking about office business centres, a lot of people will say that they are used by small businesses to look bigger than they are. The truth is that business centres make your business more professional – and not just because of the professional business address. Having a professional receptionist is not about having the appearance of someone answering your calls; it’s about having someone answer your calls and handling them at your direction in order to better serve your customers and potential clients. While appearances are important to a small business, having the right tools, equipment and on-demand support staff are also very important because they help firms succeed while saving on capital costs – as well as the costs of full-time support staff. The capital costs of leasing or buying modern photocopiers and network printers are burdens that a lot of small businesses do not want to assume, […]
Small Business Tips for Choosing an Office Space
Having a business address is very import for the image of your small business. We have put together these few tips to get you thinking about some of the things to consider when looking for a business address. Tip 1 – Choose the type of office space that best suits your budget. If you can get an interior office for much less than a window office, save the money. At Telsec, we have a variety of different offices and different office-space plans to fit our tenants’ budgets. You may want consider a semi-private or shared office space to save even more money. Tip 2 – Get the most prestigious business address that fits your budget. Having a good business address will show your customers that you truly mean business. Telsec is located at 1 Yonge Street, which is also home to the Toronto Star and is at the beginning of […]