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Arborist

It’s Time to Remove That Tree: Signs to Spot

Trees provide massive benefits to any property in Toronto. We can count on the lush foliage to provide a colourful backdrop for our homes, for shelter and natural shade from the harsh sun, privacy from neighbors, and for clean air for our lungs. Summing up all these benefits, planting trees all over the neighborhood is a wise step towards living green and healthy.

However, trees become less a refuge when they start becoming weak and unhealthy. Leading factors that cause a tree to become sick are typhoons and pest infestation. In extreme (and very likely) cases, these factors can damage a tree’s branches or split the trunk of a tree, which can endanger properties, vehicles, and people.

These instances can be avoided by spotting the warning signs of an unhealthy tree. Call the nearest arborist when your tree has the following symptoms:

1. Presence of deep cracks in the trunk – Trunk health reveals a lot about the well-being of a tree. To know if a tree is unhealthy by looking at the trunk, check for deep fissures and cavities that may develop at the trunk over time. Cracks are a manifestation of a deeper problem that may impact the stability of the tree.

2. Root damage – Heavily damaged roots are also a telltale sign that it’s time to remove a tree. Weak and decayed roots indicate that a tree is not firmly attached to the ground and might fall over if not removed right away. If you see spaces between the tree and the ground or if the tree is leaning to one side, it can mean that the roots are not strong enough to hold the tree in place.

3. New branches growing at the base of the tree – New branches growing at base of a tree may seem to indicate that the tree is growing healthy, but don’t be tricked. This could actually be a sign that the tree is distressed and, as a response, has produced tiny sprouts in random places. Excavation, soil compaction, and excessive sun exposure are some of the factors that can put a tree under stress.

4. The tree is growing in close proximity to man-made structures – If the tree is already encroaching on man-made structures (e.g. a tree planted beneath power lines is already growing into them), then you need to get an arborist to remove the tree before it gets meshed in the lines. Failure to remove the tree immediately might turn your property into a fire hazard. In the same manner, trees that encroach on homes also need to be removed. A large branch might snap off and may damage your property or worse, injure somebody inside.

If you’ve spotted these signs on a tree in your property, contact an arborist near you right away to prevent any accidents or disasters from happening early on. There are various companies that offer tree removal services in Toronto that you can contact as soon as possible. Rely on the professionals to deal with the unhealthy tree in a safe manner.

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Tech News

The Rise of the Blockchain Era, Part 2: Digital Currency

In our first blog, we delved into the blockchain technology and how it changed the way global market moves. Blockchain allowed Bitcoin and Ethereum, both digital currencies, to become global successes and instant attractions for investments.

Just like any piece of technology, the central principle of blockchain was developed by various inventors through the years. The idea of digitizing currency — and removing third-party systems like banks and other financial institutions — dates back to the 1980s with inventor David Chaum. Chaum invented DigiCash, a secure digital currency that aimed to prevent double spending by utilizing cryptographic protocols that made its transactions anonymous.

But the Internet was too young for the technology: at that time, e-commerce was not yet fully integrated with the Internet. It was also a concept too advanced for consumers who still prefer to deal with banks for transactions. Eventually, DigiCash failed; it had to declare bankruptcy in 1998. By the time the Internet was more accommodating to digital currency,DigiCash was already acquired by another digital currency company

Pre-Bitcoin Digital Currencies

After DigiCash, there were other startups that tried to replicate its technology and attempted longevity. Some succeeded, while some failed for some reasons:

  • CyberCoin in 1994

CyberCash, a credit card payment processing company, wanted to provide small payment schemes for its customers through its own digital cash called CyberCoin. No matter the amount of payment, CyberCash could insure each account for up to $100,000, which made its digital coin successful. But in 2000, the Y2K bug crashed CyberCash’s computer systems that the company had to file for bankruptcy.

  • E-gold in 1996

Douglas Jackson wanted to develop a gold-backed currency that allowed borderless transaction. Through Gold & Silver Reserve, Inc., he created E-gold that attracted over five million accounts, even merchants started accepting it. But because of the ease it offered, it became the favourite currency of extortionists and money launderers. U.S. federal government eventually forced E-gold, which ran on a centrally controlled system, to shut down under allegations of money laundering and operating without a money transmitting license.

  • WebMoney in 1998

WebMoney is a Moscow-based company that developed one of the first decentralized digital currencies. It also offers a wide range of financial services such as peer-to-peer payment solutions, merchant services, online billing and payments, and Internet-based trading platforms. Like E-gold, WebMoney also attracted many users, including cyber criminals. Unlike E-gold, however, WebMoney already prepared for illegal activities and made some changes to prevent those from happening. WebMoney now supports currencies in pounds, dollars, rubles, and bitcoin

  • Liberty Reserve in 2006

Liberty Reserve also attempted to create a system that allows centralized anonymous money transfer. Users could create accounts on the platform and transfer money to anyone without verification. But just like its predecessors, Liberty Reserve also attracted many cyber criminals that authorities from different countries forced it to shut down.

  • Perfect Money in 2007

Perfect Money became popular after the demise of Liberty Reserve. It is another digital platform that allowed multiple currencies and is more secure since the platform requires verification. Perfect Money, however famous it is, is not available in the United States or to any of the country’s citizens, wherever they may be located.

  • Bitcoin: The Current Star

It was in 2009 when a group of programmers under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto launched Bitcoin (BTC). Unlike other predecessors that came before it, Bitcoin has so far become the most bankable digital currency to date – already reaching $10,000 per BTC – because of its blockchain technology. Through blockchain, it was able to successfully merge two unique features:

1. A Decentralized System – Bitcoin works on a decentralized system so there is no central point of control to make it vulnerable to attacks.
2. Better Algorithms – It solves issues on anonymity and double-spending because of its algorithms.

These features allow Bitcoin to support user-to-user transactions — eliminating the intermediaries — and making it so that government authorities will have a harder time trying to shut it down.

Our Forecast for 2020

With more people turning to their smartphones and computers for transactions, it is foreseen that individuals will start adopting digital currency on a larger scale, too. With this development, Bitcoin and Ethereum — along with other emerging digital currencies — may continue to have rising prices.

It also comes with a disadvantage, however. Digital currencies attract cyber criminals although Bitcoin and other popular digital currencies are yet to be seriously attacked. Another thing to consider is blockchain’s scalability. Computers – or nodes — record the same transaction into a blockchain. All these computers have the same transaction history, meaning this would require storage larger than 100GB. The world would need to upgrade storage size to accommodate more nodes for many years — and transactions — to come.

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Tech News

The Rise of the Blockchain Era, Part 1: Ethereum

Before gaining a clear understanding ethereum and its rise to digital fame, it is better that we first understand the technology ethereum is based on — blockchain.

A blockchain is a public ledger initially used to record and confirm anonymous transactions and shared between many parties. Since it is a shared service, transactions run on decentralised nodes. All data or transactions aren’t stored in just one server or database. It does not rely on a centralised network, which lowers the risk of losing data compared to transactions only run in one central system.

In the blockchain system, a transaction is recorded into what is called a block. Once a block is filled with recorded transactions, it joins a permanent ‘chain’ of blocks. Then, the system generates another block to record digital transactions.

Bitcoin vs. Ethereum

In recent years, blockchain has become synonymous with bitcoin. Bitcoin, after all, is purely a digital currency and can only be transferred from one owner to another by creating a record in the blockchain.

Ethereum also shares the same principle. The difference between bitcoin and ethereum, however, is that while bitcoin is a digital currency, ethereum is a platform. More particularly, it is an open software platform that allows developers to build and deploy codes, programs, and applications.

Bitcoin uses blockchain to record the transfer of ownership, while ethereum uses blockchain technology to allow it to record and store codes or programs. What also makes ethereum unique is that it allows applications to be “built and run without any downtime, fraud, control or interference from a third party.” For users to run a program on ethereum, they need to mine ether, the currency used in the platform.

Ethereum started in 2013 with programmer Vitalik Buterin. Buterin, who worked with bitcoin that time, wanted to make the digital currency more customisable. He especially wanted bitcoin to have smart contract features so it can automatically determine payments, and since bitcoin did not take it up, Buterin decided to create his own platform which soon became ethereum.

Facts in Brief

1. Year 2014 –

  • Buterin started working with Dr. Gavin Wood who developed the Ethereum Virtual Machine, the runtime environment for the platform’s smart contracts. Buterin and Wood co-founded Ethereum.
  • Swiss company Ethereum Switzerland GmBH owned and developed the first Ethereum software project. Buterin and Wood launched a pre-sale of ether to kickstart the Ethereum network, and sales reached more than $14 million.
  • Investors received more than 60 million ether, while 12 million ether was allocated to the development group formalised under a non-for-profit organization called ETH DEV. Buterin, Wood, and Jeffrey Wilcke became the three directors of ETH DEV.
  • ETH DEV brought together Ethereum developers from around the world in an event, DEVCON-0, to discuss various Ethereum technology topics and innovations.

2. Year 2015 –

  • ETH DEV, with the participation of various developers, launched the Ethereum Bounty Program to help improve the security and reliability of Ethereum.

3. Year 2016 –

  • The Ethereum Frontier network was launched, finally allowing developers to write and deploy smart contracts and decentralised applications.
  • Homestead, a protocol upgrade to the Ethereum network, was launched.
  • Ethereum reached more than $150 million worth of sales, making it famous. Its fame also brought a lot of dispute in the crypto-community market, which led to the split of the network into two groups: Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC).
  • The foundation, miners, developers, and business partners decided to detach themselves from ETC.

4. Year 2017 –

  • Ethereum further increased its distributed denial of service attacks and deflated the blockchain to improve its defence against spam attacks.
  • Social trading and brokerage company eToro included Ethereum trading, which helped the platform reach a daily volume of $450 million.

Early Predictions

By late 2017, some already predicted that ethereum is set to surpass bitcoin by 2018. As of this year, the highest price for an ether already reached $1,440.

Ethereum’s unique advantage is its ability to create and run smart contracts, and more developers and investors are seeing this as a factor that would boost the platform’s demand. By 2020, most have the following early predictions:

  • The price of an ether may reach the benchmark of $2,000 — even as high as $5,000.
  • Only main cryptocurrencies like ethereum — especially those with something more unique to offer — will survive by 2020.
  • Ethereum will help fully decentralise digital exchanges as its demand continues to surge.
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Dental

SEO Techniques Effective for Dental Practices

People nowadays are using the Internet to search for products and services. This makes Search Engine Optimization (SEO) significantly important to small businesses, such as dental practices. Keep in mind that new patient inquiries, also known as leads, that come from the search engine are the most superior type of inquiries next to word-of-mouth and recommendations. Read more

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What-is-Quality-Content-in-SEO
 Search Engine

What is “Quality Content” in SEO?

One way to make your business website relevant in today’s market is by featuring blogs. It is an effective inbound marketing strategy worth investment. However, you cannot call random articles you post on your website a “blog.” A blog is defined by original, quality content that stands a good chance of placing your brand at the top of the competition.

The purpose of this article is to enlighten you on what quality content is for SEO and marketing.

What Is Quality Content?

Quality content is essential to SEO success. Largely, it means having content that exceeds your site visitors’ expectations. If you sell online, attract more clients to your website by creating content that gives customers good reason to stay and browse through all your pages. Content is what influences the ranking of your website on Google’s and other search engines. To offer real value and increase your traffic, acquaint yourself with Google’s standards for quality content.

1. User Demands

Search engines check the quality of your content by determining if you provided what the user wanted. The Google’s core ranking algorithm that was rolled out in 2016 changed how quality content was considered regarding user demands. Gaming sites, for example, are ranked highly because they feature fewer texts, but fulfill what most gamers want. Content value is not necessarily about the text, but how the user responds to the content.

Consequently, if you want to rank better in SEO and marketing, understand your target audience and create content that is relevant to them.

 2. Create Attractive Key Content

The part of your website that features the primary purpose of your business or brand (including videos, texts, images, games, or reviews) should be well-crafted and written with expertise. While writing this part, try as much to stay away from using common phrases or content that is already available on thousands of other websites.

Create-Attractive-Key-Content

3.  Supporting Content

SEO demands content that is helpful and tailored towards the main purpose of your site/brand. The body of the text ought to help readers/customers find exactly what they want. Good content provides value to anyone visiting the website and encourages them to continue exploring the pages. One of the best ways to do this is by linking to other articles on your site.

Supporting-Content

4. Site Layout

Quality content and supporting information are not enough to garner high rankings or gain more traffic. How you present content is another determining factor. If your website is difficult to navigate, a user is likely to move to a competitor’s site. For this reason, a website needs design that:

  • Places quality content at the top of the page for easy accessibility
  • Ensures advertisements appear after the main content

Your web pages don’t (necessarily) have to be pretty; if they’re easy to navigate, you’ll get higher rankings.

5. Placement of Ads

Although they do not necessarily affect your rating, how you place advertisements is what matters. Beautiful design and good content should be followed by a clear line that shows what is content and what is a commercial advert. Design and organize your page appropriately.

Placement-of-Ads

6. Article Length

Quality isn’t necessarily determined by the length of the blog or content in your article. SEO is rewarded when you have information on your page that adequately satisfies what the user is seeking. The topic and purpose of the article are big “selling points.” A better way of knowing if your content is long enough is to check those that rank high on search engines (e.g. Screaming Frog).

7. Trustworthiness

Content that reflects expertise and trustworthiness are often associated with high traffic. This is because the two qualities make the information appear reliable. This implies you sell services or goods that are trustworthy. Your content demonstrates that your company is reliable. This is particularly the case with financial, legal, and medical marketing online. This aspect might get you positive reviews, which is a great way of attracting more new customers to your website.

However vague the term “quality content” may be in SEO marketing, it is imperative to:

 

 

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Marketing, Online Marketing Trends, Social Media

Why Content Marketing Services in Canada Are Vital

Content marketing services in Canada will help you in both of these areas. A professional company will show you what needs to be done within your content.

What you put on your website and blog is content. Better content helps you to rank better in the search engines. It also helps you to improve your conversion rates so you obtain more customers.

Learn About the Algorithms

The search engine algorithms are constantly evolving. It’s important to work with content marketing services in Canada to learn more about it all. Otherwise, you run the risk of having too high of a keyword density, not enough of the right keywords, or insufficient backlinks.

When you follow the algorithms, it allows you to rank higher. The search engine spiders will find the right information on your site and show you in a more impressive spot on a search engine results page.

Convert More Customers

You want customers to enter a sales funnel when they arrive on your website. The more information you provide, the easier it will be to convert website visitors into customers. This means knowing more about what they want and what they need. If you talk to them and give them the right information within all of the content, you push them further into the sales funnel until they make a purchase.

With the help of content marketing services in Canada, you can ensure that your content is achieving your goals.

Get a Better Return on Investment

Often, you write your own content. Then you rewrite your content because the initial content isn’t getting the job done. You could be wasting months trying to get it right. When you use content marketing services, you tap into the expertise of marketing professionals. You get the help you need to churn out quality content so that it converts your customers. Once consumers visit your website and don’t like what they see, you might never get them back. It’s why you have to focus on quality content from the very beginning.

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Marketing, Online Marketing Trends, Social Media

How to Revive an Ailing Social Media Campaign

Running a social media campaign should be a snap, right? After all, you’re tapping into a form of engagement used by billions of people around the world and it’s pretty much free.

While this sounds great, the fact is that social media campaigns require careful planning and tracking to target the right audience among those billions of potential consumers. So, if you’re not seeing the expected results with one of your campaigns, here’s what you can do.

Make Sure You’re Targeting the Right Searchers

Whether you’re using organic or paid efforts, a successful social media campaign is one that’s directed at the right audience. Go back and consider who you are targeting and whether or not your campaign is likely to appeal to those particular searchers. Part of the problem may be that your intended audience is too broad and not defined enough.

Change Platforms

Just because “everybody” is using Facebook and Twitter doesn’t mean either of these platforms is right for your campaign. For instance, social media campaigns that are more visual in nature will likely perform better on visual platforms like Pinterest and Instagram. A B2B campaign would likely get more attention if LinkedIn is one of your platforms.

Run a Multi-Platform Campaign

You don’t have to put all of your eggs into one basket. If you’re not seeing results from a campaign limited to one platform consider a cross-platform campaign that includes the same message delivered in ways that are appropriate for each platform. Include links to your other social sites to allow multiple ways for visitors to stay engaged.

Experiment with Different Mediums and Tactics

The problem with your campaign may be the types of content you’re using. Mix things up and add relevant images and videos if it makes sense to do so. Video alone can increase engagement more than 50 percent over content with mostly text. Also consider making a contest part of your campaign or posting fun questions. People love excuses in order to participate via social media.

Before you start tinkering with a social media campaigns, make sure it’s really in need of resuscitation. It can take several weeks to get a strong following and direct the right kind of attention to your social media efforts. However, if you’re still not seeing results after waiting patiently, then dig a little deeper into your stats to see what’s going on and consider some of the tips mentioned here.

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All About SEO

How To Make SEO and Web Design Work Together

Your Website Design And SEO Can Make You A Success

Something to keep in mind when building a website for your company is to market your products and/or services and reach a broad range of consumers. In order to do this, you want to have a well-designed site with content that meets your search engine optimization purposes. More and more, companies are realizing just how necessary it is to use a quality website with a professional appearance, easy-to-navigate set-up, and content that will place well in search engines. It is the advertising of the present and of the future and it will make all the difference for those who are looking to get their brand and services out in the spot-light.

We know that website design is extremely important in helping your company to not only get attention, but to look good doing it. People who are searching for products or services will be turned off if the design looks cheap and shoddy, whereas websites that are clean and well-organized make people want to take their time to shop or order services. It is important to spend money on having your website done by professionals and it is equally as important to ensure that you have search engine friendly content that will get you noticed.

Creating a website that stands out aesthetically while providing consumers with easy to read content and that appears at the top of the list in search engines will mean more to your company’s success than you could imagine. When it comes to truly taking advantage of having a website for your company, you can’t solely focus on one aspect while forgetting the other.

Following are some things to keep in mind while designing websites and creating quality content:

  • In this day and age, most internet users and browsers will distrust a company if the website is poorly designed or if it is difficult to maneuver or navigate, especially if it comes to ordering and paying online.
  • Consumers also will quickly switch to searching for another website if the content and material is difficult to read or doesn’t provide them with the quick answers that they are looking for.
  • If your website appears after the second page on a search engine, consumers are less likely to check it out.

How to Marry Great Web Design with Search Engine Optimization?

Now that you understand that search engine optimization and the appearance and design of your website are equally as important to each other, how do you go about creating a site that will reach both goals?

Some important things to remember when creating your website with consumers in mind are:

  • Create an easy-to-navigate interface.
  • Provide engaging content that is easy to read and provides consumers with pertinent information.
  • Define your market and demographic in order to create content and design that will catch consumers and clients attention as they search for what you have to offer.
  • Make sure your content clearly states what services or products you offer which will keep them browsing your information.
  • Ensure that your website provides browsers with a simple and clear way to contact you which is what having a website is really about.
  • Create creative and attention-grabbing H2 and H3 tags and blog titles.
  • Have your website design team work hand in hand with your search engine professionals to ensure an end result that looks put together and professional.

This last point is highly important as this is where design and optimized content come together and making sure that the whole team is on the same boat in the direction that you want to take is what will make the combination of the two components a complete success.

Gone are the days of billboards and advertising in newspapers. Social media, websites, and the internet are the medium that people use to find what they want and to sell what they have. It goes without saying that if you want people to hire you or your services you will want to make sure that you have done your best with the platform that you have for advertising. While it may seem time consuming and costly, the end result of having eye-catching content and an attractive website design will help you to make more money than what you invested in it.

In Conclusion

It is important to keep in mind that the content on your page should include the services or name of the products that you sell. This is the key in optimizing search results that will lead browsers to your page. Also, remember that the look of your website means a lot to consumers and can turn potential customers away even if you are using the best search engine techniques and methods. Create something you can be proud of for your company and you can be confident consumers and clients will take notice.

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5-Magical-strategies
 Business

5 Magical strategies in Making Your Local Business in Toronto Very Popular

Marketing is like high school – popularity matters. This is because your marketing strategy can make or break your brand’s identity in Toronto which is why it is imperative that you do your very own research on what best suits your business and what could slow it down or even damage it.

To make it easier for you, here’s 5 magical marketing strategies to make you popular in Toronto.

1. Understanding the Trend

Get-A-Cool-Tech-Job-with-Hackernest!

Probably the most common and most over looked strategy is understanding the market trends. Though it is true that you do need to understand your target market but if you overlook the trend that surrounds it, you would be shooting arrows blindly.

Research on what your targets are mostly talking about now and see how you can coil that to your favor. This way, you can always make sure that what you’re dishing out is super relevant to their lives. But this would still depend on your niche. If your niche is somehow a far stretch on what the trend is, you would then need to find a way to make them talk about it. Sponsored posts and hyper creative ideas are what sparks the curiosity of the market.

Flexibility is also key because the fact remains that trends come and go. Therefore, you would need to become the best chameleon you can be.

If you can’t beat the trend, brew one that can.

2. Targeting the soft spots

Everything-You-Need-to-Know-About-French-Spanish-Language-Exchange-Meetup

Emotions is one of the most used strategy the marketing world has ever discovered. This makes anything easier to relate to and understand compared to keeping it serious and straightforward.

Emotions allow people to tap into their own experiences and memories and morph any brand and rationalize it the way they feel it. Take real estate for example. A lot of people would see regular advertising for it to be too serious. To make it more approachable, marketing firms inject a sense of family into it by connecting a $ 1.5 million dollar studio-type condo unit to the sense of independence and pride, to which most of us can relate. The same goes for things like fashion and food. The most popular brands are able to harvest these emotions and turn them into sales.

3. Squeezing the juices out of the internet.

The internet is a free tool to use for your marketing strategy. It’s just sitting there waiting for you. But because of its broadness, you would need an expert to take care of it for you, most especially if you are still new to the concept of internet marketing.

Internet marketing entails being able to handle all sorts of online-based media. Examples are social media platforms and search engine optimization. These two alone could greatly help in making your business more popular in Toronto that it already is. This also reflects the market trends connected to your target market. With the 97% of the people nowadays who are always browsing on the internet, it shows that the average attention span of a human being when it comes to anything online is between 9 seconds to a minute – much like a goldfish, really. So, if you are able to captivate their attention for more than that, then it’s a win!

4. Going simple

local-seo

Marketing overkill is gone. Gone are the days of people trying so hard in creating a concept to help rake in the sales. The best marketing minds are actually heading towards a simpler, more grounded approach. Even luxury brands are keeping it minimal.

The trick here is that the senses have less details to mind. The less the details and more specific they are, the better the absorption. Take a perfume brand for example. Though they can go ahead and go berserk with creative visuals and such, they would rather opt for a sleeker ad because it’s easy on the eyes and less details to think about to make sure that the target market is able to remember only the important stuff – the emotion of the fragrance and what the bottle looks like. The same goes for clothing brands, real estate, telecommunications and etc.

Less is more.

5. Creating Buzz

The-Best-Thing-To-Do-After-Posting-Your-Event

Now, you do not to create something controversial to do this. You just need something captivating enough to make people want more of what you’re selling. Start a promotion that would run for months to come. People love promos, always have and always will.

The logic behind it is that people always love to take risks. The human race, after all, were programmed that way. When there is a certain need or want, risks are always involved and you can capitalize on that.

There are just 4 parts on creating a successful promotion. (1) A prize that almost no one could say no to. (2) A good set of fool proof mechanics that will help decide on who wins. (3) A good study on how long it should last. Tip: The bigger the prize the relatively longer the duration of the promo before the grand draw. This is because the buzz created by the big prize will draw more people in and would entice them to send out multiple entries for more chances to win. But to take caution, don’t stretch it out too long as it can back fire and they would lose interest in it. (4) Making sure you can commit and deliver the prize on the expected date of delivery. Would you be happy to receive your brand new car 6 months after you were announced as the winner? I think not.

See? It’s so simple that it looks like magic! To know more, talk to us.

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Events

Tuesday’s Multi-Lingual Cultural Exchange Blog

A new language helps you identify with and be drawn into new cultures. A different language will help you spend time and communicate with people from other countries, and, when visiting foreign places, it won’t just help you ask for directions. By speaking the native tongue, visitors can discover places and events most tourists never see. Understanding and speaking the language of the people around you reflects a respect for their culture, and may help you make new lifelong friends and associations. Read more

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