Creative Tidbits for Small Business Success - Little things to help your business grow big

Next Wave 4 VAs 2011 Virtual Workshop Event

June 21, 2011 – 9:53 am

I am so excited to be able to pass this information along to you. The graduating class of the Virtual Assistant Program at Red Deer College is putting on a fantastic free webinar. If you are interested in working virtually or working with a virtual assistant this is a great way to network and learn great things at the same time. As a past graduate of this program, this event gives the grads and great insight into working virtually and great experience that they can pass on to their clients.

You can even join just to find out exactly who a Virtual Assistant is and how they benefit their clients from next door or around the world.

Next Wave 4 VAs 2011 Virtual Workshop Event

By Nancy Lynch | Posted in General Posts | Comments (0)

TO GST OR NOT TO GST

February 25, 2011 – 10:16 pm

I was wondering what everyone thinks about getting your GST (Goods and Service Tax) number. Of course we call it the GST in Canada, everywhere else you will have something similar just called something different.

You do not need to have a GST account or charge GST until you are making a minimum of $30,000 a year. As a new business owner and not making money right now, is it worth getting the GST number now.

It is free to apply and receive your GST number; you can determine how often you want to remit your GST to the government. For example, you might want to remit every 3 months or once a year. Once your business is booming, you will probably have an accountant that will advise the best way to remit.

The advantages of having a GST number from the start that I have found are these; it will look professional when you send an invoice to a client with a GST number already established, and you can claim back any GST you paid out.

If you make more than $30,000 and do not have a GST number, there can be a fined involved.

So for something that costs nothing, being ready for when you have clients, and getting a small rebate back every 3 months for GST paid are enough reasons for me to get my GST number. What about you?

Just some thoughts.

Newsletter Archives

2011

MAKING A PORTFOLIO FOR LINKEDIN

February 20, 2011 – 5:44 pm

Newsletter Archives

2011

How to Split Your Computer Screen

February 17, 2011 – 10:50 pm

When writing a document, do you go back and forth with the different windows to look at all you reference materials? You want to copy and paste, or just create your own thoughts on the subject by what you read, but you spend so much time changing screens. I have created a Powerpoint presenation with screen shots on how to split your screen. You can show pages side by side, stacked or cascading, and I am not sure how many screens you can split but I have had up to six pages split.

Hope this is something you can use, I use it all the time since I have learned about it.

PowerPoint Presentation You may have to preview the slides one at a time, when it is on slideshow it seems to go a bit too fast. I have it on slow but it is not slow enough, still working on it.

Just some thoughts.

Newsletter Archives

2011

By Nancy Lynch | Posted in General Posts | Tagged Nancy Lynch, Powerpoint presentation, Split your computer screen | Comments (0)

MEETINGS ONLINE, DO YOU DO WEBINARS OR TELESEMINARS, OR MAYBE BOTH.

February 15, 2011 – 10:05 pm

With the great availability of different programs, there are so many webinars and teleseminars that provide the platforms for meetings online. They can be free or they can have a cost. Have you thought about hosting a webinar or teleseminar? Have you already done so? I have attended many webinars and I believe they are a great way to provide information as well as meet people from all around the world. How exciting is that?

As stated there are many programs out there, available with free hosting or paid hosting. The most popular seems to be GoToWebinar. Although there is a cost, you can host up to 1000 people on this site. I have participated in many GoToWebinar webinars and have found them to be easy to use. Here is a link for other webinar programs that could help you decide which way to go. Most of these programs have a 30 day free trial period, which is great because you can see all the ins and outs with practice runs and find out what works best for you.

There are also free hosting webinar programs but they seem to only allow you to host between 10 – 20 people. This would probably be a great way for business to have meetings but not necessarily great for presenting a webinar. They all have upgraded packages to allow you different payment options. This would also be a great way to practice hosting webinars with a small group of people and then move up to a paid version.

Teleseminars are used quite frequently and like webinars there are free and paid programs for this platform. You can have quite a few people on line for teleseminars at no cost to the host. As a participant in teleseminars though, if you do not have a long distance program it can cost you money. This is not my favourite way to go but it is still a great option.

I am researching the free webinars for now to get experience and I would like to put on a practice run in the near future, details to follow.

Should anyone have any experience with webinar and teleseminar programs, it would be great to hear what program you use.

Just some thoughts.

Newsletter Archives

2011

By Nancy Lynch | Posted in General Posts | Tagged free webinars, meetings online, teleseminars, webinars | Comments (0)

Dreamweaver vs WordPress. How do you know which one to choose?

February 13, 2011 – 7:14 pm

Dreamweaver vs WordPress. This will always be a dabatable point with diehard Dreamweaver buffs and WordPress advocates. I designed my first websites with Dreamweaver and I really like how the program works. It teaches you alot about codes and how they work. I designed my blog using WordPress and I like working with this program as well. I did find Dreamweaver easier to pick up on but I finally got how WordPress works.

With Dreamweaver you have to know code but if you understand it you are limitless to what you can achieve with your website. Having only scratched the surface as to what can be done with Dreamweaver; I am looking forward to continually learning more. If you are someone who does not do their own updates, working with someone who uses Dreamweaver is a great way to go. You just need to say what you are looking for and it is created for you.

For WordPress, once you have decided on a template the customization comes next. Although you need to know some code, but most of the customization comes from plugins and widgets. These are great and allow you to do quite a bit with your site. All plugins and widgets do not work with all templates and it can take a while to find the one the suits you best. I use SEO Basic and find it works well so far. Some things have issues and I have to find adjustments or maybe not use it all. If you like doing the designing and maintenence yourself, this is definitely the way to go.

Both programs are great, and it all depends on how you want to maintain your site. That is one of the decisions that will help you determine which way to go.

Just some thoughts.

Newsletter Archives

2011

By Nancy Lynch | Posted in General Posts | Tagged blog, Dreamweaver, Nancy Lynch, Wordpress | Comments (0)

How Much Does It Cost To Build A Website?

February 11, 2011 – 4:43 pm

A question that so many people ask when starting a business is “How much does it cost to build a website?” When you research on the internet it can sometimes be overwhelming with the information that you receive. While researching and developing website design as a support offered by my business, and in the interest of having a fair price, I found there is quite a range of cost, and of course expertise in building a website. There are also various ways of designing websites, from doing them yourself to having someone design it for you (of course with your input). I will be doing another blog about the great benefits of both Dreamweaver and WordPress.

I am basing the following information on using Dreamweaver to build a website. The pricing is also in Canadian dollars but here is a link for a conversion chart. Here is what I found out about pricing.

You can have a website for as low as $99. This usually means they are using a template which will display ads on your site. The ads seem to relate to your type of business, but you cannot control which ads are displayed. So it really comes down to how professional you want it to look and how much control on the content and creativity you want. You can go as high as $15,000 +++ for a website, but unless you are a large business or have a big budget, it is probably more than you want to spend at this time.

For a basic site, the price seems to run about $600 to $1000. You can check out what seems to be the norm for a basic site on my website design page. This will give you a professional site with lots of room for growth. There are usually options to add to your site, for example, a shopping cart program, a sales page, or a monthly website maintenance package. All these options are available at an agreed upon rate.

You can get up and running with a great website that will not break the bank. Hope this helps you focus on what you need to get you started on your internet presence. It would be great to hear your comments.

Just some thoughts.

Newsletter Archives

2011

By Nancy Lynch | Posted in General Posts | Tagged basic site, buiild a website, cost of a website, Dreamweaver | Comments (0)

Social Media Sites. Do You Customize Them?

February 10, 2011 – 11:29 am

Customizing your social media sites, do you think about it? You have your social media set up, have completed profiles for them all, have learned to post to them and to connect them. (Favourites are Tweetdeck and Hootsuite, I am researching both) Have you learned how you can customize some of your social media to continue your company image or reflects why you are using social media?

When you customize to your company image people get to know you. I think it is an important step in social media.

Most people have wordpress and can customize their blog to what they envision. There are many templates, plugins, and widgets to enable you to create what you want. It does take time to find the right template to work with what you want to do. I use SEO Basic and I find it handles most plugins and widgets, sometimes I have to fool around with them and go to help, but so far most things have worked out they way I want, still working on some. Adding plugins is quite easy and you just think about what you want to do and search it and there is usually a plugin for it. It is great and quite a lot of fun.

Facebook has many plugins that allow you to add and customize tabs. You cannot change the existing tabs and are provided names of the tabs you can use, so you cannot create your own name perse. (I am still researching this) It does allow great features though to customize the tabs you create. I have only found one program, pagerage, that allows you to customize the background. It is a great program, the only downside is only people who have the program can see the changes, so it is basically like a desktop to you. It looks great on my end. LOL. Still researching.

LinkedIn seems to be a hard one to find customization. I have found a site but it does not really seem to help. I am still researching this one.

What are your thoughts about this?

These are just some of my thoughts.

Newsletter Archives

2011

By Nancy Lynch | Posted in General Posts | Tagged customizing social media sites, social media | Comments (0)

Database Management. What Programs Do You Use?

February 8, 2011 – 9:54 pm

Being a curious person, I was wondering what programs everyone uses to keep track of clients and leads.

Outlook with Business Contact Manager is a program that I use and recommend to clients. With Outlook, right from your email you can create a contact, task, appointments, meetings and much more. It integrates very well with all Microsoft Office programs like word, excel, PowerPoint, and desktop publishing. I have found quite a few times while registering for webinars, the confirmation comes back with a link to upload directly to Outlook calendar. It is great.

There are different programs out there like google docs that provide a quite a few of the same features and it integrates well with a lot of other programs. I still find Outlook with Business Contact Manager can follow a lead from first contact through to completion. It tracks, keeps times, and sends reminders for all aspects of projects.

It would be great to hear your thoughts and ideas about the programs you use. If you would like to talk further about Outlook please email me.

Just some thoughts

Newsletter Archives

2011

By Nancy Lynch | Posted in General Posts | Tagged database management, Outlook with Business Contact Manager, What programs do you use? | Comments (0)

Business and Social Media

January 30, 2011 – 12:21 pm

I am just starting my business and the one thing that I know is that social media marketing is a very important part of growing a business, should you desire a global business that would touch the lives of so many people. I feel this is what we used to call “warm” calling. I know many people call it “cold calling” but it helped us look at it differently. When you are doing warm calls, you are introducing yourself, letting them know what you are about and how you can help them, offering them something of value to them. Since we would like to work globally, it does not make sense to pick up a phone and make yourself known. With writing you can take this a step further and really let people see the expertise you have to offer.

I have created my web page, my blog, a newsletter, and joined Linkedin,Twitter and Facebook. Where I can create my own design (ie word press and Twitter), I make sure I keep my company image going. I have learned that I do enjoy writing and as told by many mentors, if you learn something that will be of value to your ideal client market, you write an article. People will get to know that you have something to say and would want to get to know you better.

Of course, social media is not just as easy as writing and putting it out there. You still have to research keywords, to know what your target market will be searching for. You still need to have enticing titles, as everyone says, it does not matter the content if nobody gets past the title. You need people on your sites, whichever ones you choose, that would read the content and hopefully go to your website. If you write good content, provide great information people remember this and when they, or somebody they know, needs the support you provide, it will be you that will come to their mind.

So social media marketing has started and will be a great impact on my business (and clients) as it will get me out there to the person next door or around the world.

Just some thoughts.