Starting A Business
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Congratulations! You’ve taken the big step in starting your own business.
We've provided a number of tips to help give you that competitive advantage:
Develop your company’s image and profile!Your name, corporate colours and logo are all important in helping you to connect with your clients. When choosing your company name, it’s important to ensure that you can also secure the corresponding domain name.
You can securely check to see if your name is available by going here: https://secure.tomahawkhosting.ca/clients/domainchecker.php
In fact, companies like Tomahawk can help you choose an appropriate domain name, if you’re having difficulty.
Watch out for words that can have different spellings but pronounced the same, such as four, for and 4. When spoken, www.My4Deers.com can be mistaken for www.MyFourDears.com.
Another issue that people run into is the use of symbols such as apostrophes in their names because you can’t have apostrophes in domain names. So, Mike’s Business Advice as a company name might have a domain like www.mikesbusinessadvice.ca.
Professionalism is KeyNow that you have your domain name registered, you’re going to need a web site. It’s important that you hire a professional organization. After all, your web site is going to be representing you and your business. People do judge books by their cover and the professionalism of your web site will be a key to your success.
The cost of building and hosting your web site is something you might consider an important decision criteria in choosing who to go with. However, technical support and reliability are just as important especially if you aren't technically minded to begin with.
What happens if you need to make an urgent change to your web site but your riend's daughter who designed your web site is away for 2 weeks on vacation? What happens if that web genius who works from his house who built your web site decides to take a job in Vancouver and moves away? How about that techie colleague who said he'll do those updates for you but,3 weeks later, you're still waiting. The fact is, none of these people are accountable to you and have no stake in the success of your business. A professional organization, like Tomahawk, is directly accountable to you and you success is Tomahawk's success.
Content is King!People are always looking for information, facts, statistics, etc. Make sure that your site is content-rich! The more content and information you can provide, the better. By using a Content Management System (CMS), you can easily update your home page or the news page of your web site on a weekly or monthly basis. It's also great for search engines, like Google, when it comes to indexing your site.
When writing your content, first use word processing software to ensure there’s no spelling or grammatical errors. You can download a fully-featured office/productivity suite for free from Oracle! Just go here: www.openoffice.org. Once you're happy with your content you can coopy and paste it into your web page.
Don't just stop there...keep your site fresh with new and updated content. Have a news, spotlight or what's new section. A number of marketing gurus suggest that the best way to attract instant public attention to your site is to create and distribute a compelling Top 10 list related to your business but also of public interest. These are especially popular around various holidays such as Valentine's Day or New Years.
Promote, Market, Advertise!Once your web site is ready, you’ll need to let people know it’s up. Make sure that both your web site and e-mail address are on your business card and any other business documentation you produce, such as brochures, letterheads, flyers, etc.
Most cities and towns have community portal web sites that have free listings in their business directory. In Carleton Place, you can list your business on:
Tracking Your Traffic!Now that you have your web site up and running and have advertised it, you need to start tracking its performance. That’s where free services, like Google Analytics, are extremely helpful: http://www.google.com/analytics/
Create New Traffic!If the traffic to your site isn’t as high as you’d like or if you believe you can do better, attracting visitors requires Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You can click here to read all about how SEO works and why it's important:
Get Involved...Get Networking!Networking is critical to your business success because word-of-mouth is a very powerful tool. Join your local Chamber of Commerce or BIA and attend their various workshops and networking opportunities. Here are some local examples of these organizations: |
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