Looking to launch a new career because you’re sick of a dead end gig? Technology is an exciting career path that can take you down a number of different avenues and offers great salary potential. It can also provide more laid-back work environments. If you’re miserable, it’s time to make a career switch and get your foot in the door of a place where you’ll thrive. Here are some tips if you’re looking to make the switch at the HackerNest Toronto tech job fair: Read more
Top 9 Holiday Business Concepts You Need To Know
Have you been having the idea of establishing your small business? Well, picking a better season to start a business is important. With the holidays bearing down on everyone fast, each and every individual in your neighborhood requires some assistance. Did you know that in America alone, 47% of consumers buy their gifts online?
As Garrison Keillor is quoted saying “A beautiful thing about Christmas is that it’s unavoidable, such as a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.” The article has prepared for you top nine business ideas to get started, and they will help you parlay these requirements into some holiday cash.
1. Personal shopper
Unluckily, the majority of individuals currently regard holiday shopping as more of a routine than a joy. The majority of people worry much on what gift to buy for their family and friends for the holidays. As a personal gift shopper, you can assist your customers to get an excellent gift at reasonable prices. Meet with your clients and talk about their budget and the receiver of the gift, and after that look for gifts as different price points for the persons on the list the client has. You can, as well, offer to deliver the gifts for an extra charge.
2. Holiday card design
If you are perfect in Photoshop, creating and printing a lovely, personalized holiday cards for families to send to their people is a good idea. Offering to make other customized stationary products like envelops, thank-you cards and event invitations can be helpful in making this a year-round business.
Americans spend an average $29.14 on Christmas cards alone so having a holiday card design as part of your business would earn you some extra bucks.
3. Gift wrapping services
Wrapping of gifts is a job that not everyone enjoys doing. Starting a gift wrapping service can be a good and excellent Hamilton business idea. After getting some materials required, you decide to be a mobile wrapper or talk to the authorities at a local shopping center or mall and request them to let you set a small table. Either way, print several flyers, wrap some few sample boxes and price depending on the size.
4. Event catering
Holiday festivities occur throughout the month of December, several workplaces and organizations realize that they require a perfect caterer who will make their party a success. As an experienced home cook that can prepare delicious delicacies for a large group of individuals, you can assist in alleviating the burden of organizing and preparing meals for their holiday festivities. Ensure that you are equipped with enough kitchenette space to cook the meals and the transportation means to ferry the food to your customers. Go a step further and suggest to help in cleaning up after the festive for excellent customer service. By doing this, you might earn a nice tip. After the holidays are over, you can switch to other events such as weddings and birthday parties.
5. Gift baskets
Themed baskets are a famous gift preference for the holidays. However, the majority of ready-made baskets from retail shops are costly, and individuals lack the time to buy the individual items and make their baskets. If you are aware of some great concepts for a basket, let it be movies, cooking products, desserts and bath products, you can create them and sell them as holiday gifts. Assemble items in a decorative basket, wrap it using a plastic material and put a festive holiday bow on the basket.
6. Knitting winter items
Knitting may appear as an activity that should be reserved for elderly people. Nevertheless, handmade headscarves, hats, and sweaters are famous in times of holidays. When purchased on wholesale terms, yarns are relatively cheap, and depending on your knitting speed; you will have the ability to establish your inventory and spend adequate time in marketing your stuff.
7. Holiday Decorations and Ornaments
Making and selling homemade holiday decorations sounds an excellent business concept. If you are passionate about holidays and find creating decorations to an easy task, you will get business opportunities at the community centers, craft shows, and religious institutions. All the mention places and many others hold holiday festivals where you can sell your home-produced ornaments. Small décor stuff such as table top decorations and Christmas tree ornaments have a high demand at mall shops. For that reason, make your won and sell them on websites such as Etsy. Holiday beautifications are comparatively low-priced and simple to create, and everyone is willing to pay an additional fee for personalized ornaments with photographs and some writings.
8. Wreaths and floral arrangements
Another lucrative business concept for crafters is to create and sell garlands and flowery arrangements. Buy artificial branches, pinecones, flowers and ribbons from your local craft shop, and convert them into dazzling home decorations for your clients.
9. Baked products
Gingerbread, pies, fruitcakes and cookies are all staples of holiday seasons. If your kitchen is always full of the aroma of deliciously baked desserts for the duration of the holidays, just why not acquire an extra income for it. Just package and sell the baked products since majority love providing and getting toffees and baked products during events.
The Seven Most Effective Ways to Use the Internet to Market Your Event
When holding an event for a business, a charity, or throwing a personal function that you wish to gain a lot of exposure for, it is very important that you utilize the internet for its marketing power. It is free ( for the most part) and these days there are countless ways that you can use the internet to get the word out to people about your event or cause and truly maximize its exposure, as well as, your turnout rate.
Here is a list of some of the best ways that you can use the internet to get the word out and ensure that your event is a hit:
1. Send an invite via email to all relevant people in your network. Email invitations are among the fastest, most common, and certainly easiest ways to invite a large group of people to an event. The best part is that there is a ton of room for creativity to really draw people in ad stir up a buzz about the event from within the invitation.
It may be a good idea to include links to any online pages featuring the event within the body of the email as well. If you already have an account with them, or have the budget and means to set one up, consider using BombBomb video emailing service. It will allow you to send a personalized video, created by you, that will play within the email. According to the BombBomb.com website, video emails are extremely effective in getting your potential attendees interested in your event! They say that in a survey of results of Video Email versus Traditional Email, 81% Get More Replies! That’s a huge number.
2.Create a separate page on your website offering all the details of your event. This is a great idea because it will create exposure for the people that are already visiting your site but may not know about the event yet, while simultaneously boosting your SEO. You work hard to get visitors to your site, so you night as well use that traffic for all that it’s worth.
3. Blog about the event and ask other bloggers in the blogosphere to do so as well. Blogging is great way to really get in-depth about your event and what potential attendees can expect from all of your planning. Having others blog about it too is even better because it strengthens the authority when coming from an outside non-biased party.
4. Create a promotion on Facebook If you are unsure about how to create a promotion on Facebook, do not panic. Facebook has very helpful tips and guides that will walk you through the entire process from designing the promotion to choosing the targeting and selecting the budget for the promotion. Prior to writing the content for the promotion you may want to consider doing some research on the most successful campaigns for events like yours and how they were constructed. Facebook will also allow you to track the success of your promotion so that you will know what is and is not working about it and use that information for additional or future campaigns.
5. Create a board about events on Pinterest and use pins that link back to your event’s page to attract new attendees and draw up interest
6. If you are holding a fundraiser, create a Go Fund Me page, or alternative fundraising site, that is linked to your event to draw more interest in the cause. Many times a fundraiser will draw a large crowd but ultimately have disappointing bumpers in terms of the amount of funds raised. By setting up an online campaign somewhere like Go Fund Me, you enable people that are unable to attend the actual event to become educated about your cause and ultimately contribute to it if they like. This is a very inexpensive and effective way to raise money for the event itself too if you are in need of funds to produce a successful event.
7. Organize a Facebook contest in which you offer either a free ticket or a discount on the event price. This is a great tactic because it encourages people to become and stay engaged with the event and portraits it as something that everyone should want to go to or better yet, something that they would be lucky to attend. Remember, in the eyes of the beholder, perception is everything. Holding a contest that gives away a free ticket to the winner, gives off the perception that this event is going to be a hit. The added benefit is that you will also gain additional contacts to add to your database for any future events that you may want to hold and promote the event even further when you announce your winner.
If you would like to learn more about how to promote your event or get additional advice about event blogging, check out Marketing Journal by visiting tour event category “EVENT“. Their website is full of useful content about event marketing and blogging about events for increased success. Good Luck!
The Best Thing To Do After Posting Your Event At Meetup.Com
What To Do After Posting Your Event At Meetup.Com
One enduring innovation of social media during this past decade is the meetup – a gathering of individuals impelled by a mutual interest who firstly meet and interrelate with each other online. The site was mainly responsible for this spectacle, and while a lot of social networking sites like Google and Yahoo feature various tools for offline meetings, the site remains the biggest single facilitator of offline meetings, and the foremost brands in the industry. Its user base is noteworthy, and its social tools such as desktop and mobile have fixed the standard for “Meetups” all over the net. With these dynamics in mind, the Meetup.com tool can be used as a very effective tool to achieve a number of crucial strategic business objectives. Read more
Everything You Need to Know About The French / Spanish Language Exchange Meetup
It is often difficult to keep up to date with foreign languages. Whether it is learning any new and hip lingo, or simply forgetting words due to lack of use, it can be difficult to stay proficient in the long haul. Luckily, there is a way that you can stay current on both French and Spanish in a fun, interactive way. On August 15, a language exchange will be held at Kramer’s Bar and Grill (1915 Yonge Street, Toronto, M4S1Z3, ON). If you are looking to practice both of these languages, then this is the spot for you. Read more
What You Should Know About Hiring An SEO Toronto Digital Marketing Agency
Hiring an SEO Toronto digital marketing agency to help grow your business can take a lot of research and legwork on your part. But here are some tips you should consider when looking for a good, reputable marketing firm.
The best way to get an immediate feel for whether or not an SEO Toronto digital marketing agency can benefit you is to be upfront and candid about what your business is and what its goals and objectives are. You don’t want to just be generic about this information, you want to let the marketing agency know exactly what it is you’re expecting from them.
You should discuss with them what marketing platforms they use and whether or not they can work for your business. In hiring a good digital marketing agency, you may need to adapt to some changes in how your marketing is done, but you should never hire an SEO Toronto agency who doesn’t understand your company’s direction.
Find Out About Their Communication Structure
The best way to work with an SEO Toronto digital marketing company is to have constant open lines of communication. You’ll want to know if they have a contact person or department that you can reach 24/7 in case you have concerns about how your marketing campaigns are going. You may also want a digital marketing company that does online reviews or conference meetings on a monthly or yearly basis to see if everything is performing up to standard. Never hire a company that doesn’t keep you in the loop.
Let Them Know If You Have Any Third Parties That Might Be Involved In This
If you work with a technical team whose tasks may overlap with those of a marketing team, you should discuss this with the marketing agency you plan to hire. It’s important that you don’t run into a potential conflict of interest, or conflicting jobs when working with your marketing agency. You may even want to see if the marketing agency offers any evaluation services just to make sure you have all your t’s crossed and i’s dotted.
image source from: google.com
with key words: SEO/
9 SEO secrets every business should know
Tips To Get Your Law Firm Website On The First Page of Google
Local SEO is The New SEO
There various ways to make your law firm more prestigious, including ensuring that it appears on the first page of Google’s search results. In fact, pages that appear in Google’s top search results often receive more traffic because they are viewed by Google as a trusted and knowledgeable source, prompting many visitors to select those websites over others.
To appear on the first page of Google listings may seem like a bit of a mystery since generally only about 10 businesses can actually hold those spots, but according to attorney and author Charles G. Smith, whose own SEO methods helped land his law firm on the first page of Google search, “this is where local search comes into play“.
Why Local SEO?
Statistically, about 38% of all legal consumers use the internet to research lawyers online, which means, if your law firm isn’t showing up in search engines, it could be costing your business.
When a consumer conducts a local search, local search engines produce results using location data, which narrows the first page of search results to local listings only. This is especially crucial for small businesses because it ensures that anyone conducting a local search in your area finds your website when they enter a query.
According to Smith as well as SEO marketing experts, when incorporating local SEO, the following best practices can greatly improve your search engine ranking.
- Begin with Relevant, Original Content
SEO for law firms is all about relevance, authority, and trust. To gain trust and authority in Google’s listings, businesses must provide relevant content. To produce quality content, begin with original content that supports your local SEO keywords. In addition, search engines also give preference to sites that consistently provide new content; so when possible, begin with original content, original titles and blog for your firm often to increase your authority and trustworthiness, which ultimately increase your rankings.
- Incorporate Long-Tail Keywords
Long-tail keywords are thoroughly specific keywords with a low search volume, which puts your page ahead of the search because there is minimal competition. For Instance, if you are a divorce attorney in Los Angeles, instead of simply targeting generic keywords like “divorce attorney,” concentrate on specific long-tail keywords like “the best hollywood divorce attorney in los angeles ca.”
Source: http://www.slideshare.net/reportgarden
- Include Quality Backlinks from a Local Source
Backlinks are links on other websites that direct visitors back to your site. Quality backlinks, or backlinks from websites with greater authority, help boost the credibility of your site because they tend to generate a lot of traffic. Localizing your links further increases your SEO efforts. For instance, backlinks from a local educational institution, etc. work wonders for increasing your rankings.
Other sources for quality backlinks include local business indexes, local newspapers, and blogs from other businesses.
- Get Web Citations
A web citation is any reference to your law firm on another site. Citations differ from backlinks in that a link is not required for citation strength; however, backlinks still help.
Source: http://seosherpa.com/local-seo/
To get a citation, add your profile in legal directories. Include your firm’s name, address and phone number on each page to signal to Google that your company is real, trustworthy, and relevant.
The Moz Local tool is a great place to find high quality directories online. Search for both geographic and category-terms to ensure your firm is listed properly.
- Create a Web Page for Every Location that You Serve
For maximum exposure, develop one page of your website for each specific location that you serve, and mention the location in addition to your practice area. By doing so, it will enable you to reach potential customers in each neighborhood and municipality you serve. For instance, say that your area of focus is immigration law, and you have a practice in Little Havana Miami. You would naturally want to reach out to potential clients in surrounding neighborhoods and communities. Develop an original page with the title tag “Little Havana Immigration Lawyer,” and be sure to make specific references to the location on the page.
- Include Your Address in Google My Business
Google My Business search results listings are the listings that appear in small boxes that include your company name, hours of operation, and address. Google My Business increases your visibility in Google+, searches, and map searches. If you’re not on Google MY Business, it can affect your business.
To get your law firm listed on Google My Business, simply head over to Google’s website, then sign in to include your address. Next, you will be asked to verify your listing either through instant verification or other Google request. Once your listing is approved, you can include keyword descriptions and photos to further optimize your page.
- Welcome Online Reviews
Reviews and positive ratings help increase your ranking with Google My Business. More reviews signal to Google that your business is influential in a given geographic area; therefore, it is good for businesses to encourage satisfied customers to submit positive reviews whenever possible. Some great review sites include Google My Business, your LinkedIn profile, and your firm’s website.
Follow the tips discussed above and you’re sure to be on the first page of Google in no time.
The New Android 7.0 Is About To Be Unveiled, Are You Ready To Take The Ride?
It’s been in the news a lot about the Android 7.0 Nougat. There’s been news about a Developer Preview happening. This is considered by many that last stop before the new Android is unleashed. If things go well during this preview series, the 7.0 Nougat will have its day in the sun. No more going back to the drawing board to fix what needs to be fixed.
Once this preview is over, this device will be open for public consumption. This is big news in the Android News world. This Android 7.0 Nougat is something that many of you have been waiting patiently for. Many have been salivating over this thing. It’s become even bigger than the Android 6 Device, and we all know how big that thing was.
How many of you are interested in the final preview? This preview is a first in a line of many previews. If you are, there are few things you need to know about, even before you take part. This next section will give you some idea of what happens and what people are expecting to see.
—You will get to see images for Nexus and other devices. Some of these other devices have been under a building block too. These images in the system will be seen for the first time, some of which will completely change the way you look at the Android or any of these devices.
—You will get a chance to see pre-installed apps in their bug-free form. Most of the time, the public doesn’t get to see this. All the public knows is, that it’s time to go back to the drawing board. This time you will see the way it will look before and after the big-free fix. This is something which has never been done.
—You will see the latest system behaviors, especially, when it comes to the UI. There is an API level of 24. In the past, the Final N has not performed well with this. You will see how it’s all changed. You will see permission changes. You will see out-of-this-world optimization. You will also see how Doze on the Go has changed.
Everything will be brand new at this preview. This preview is going to blow every tech geek’s mind. It’s sort of like being a kid in a candy store.
Are you ready for the new Android 7.0 Nougat? What are you waiting for? Watch the Preview and pick one up!
Convince Customers To Make A Purchase With These Conversion Rate Optimization Tricks
A company’s website is an incredible avenue for it to attract traffic. However, no amount of traffic matters if it does not lead to sales. However, a company’s website should not mainly focus on getting attention but how to turn site visitors into customers. Better yet, to repeat customers. Turning as many visitors to the site to customers is the ultimate aim of a website and should be its measure of success. Various practices and techniques can be utilized to optimize a site’s conversion rate.
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) has become the first item on the SEO guide list and rightly so. One way to improve CRO is to reduce the number of distractions on the site’s landing page. Many firms often think that by stocking their landing options with numerous options, the visitor will have more to choose from which will increase the chances of him/her turning into a customer. However, it is not the case. We often see pages with tens of menu options each with its submenu options and also links to social media platforms. Many of such options on landing pages often serve the function of being distractions.
By simplifying your landing page, you give a visitor a much more focused avenue. Moreover, each marketing tool on the site will then serve a clear and precise purpose leading to more decisive action on the visitor’s part. Reduce distractions on, and simplify the landing page for better conversion rates.
According to Convince and Convert, 4 out of 5 consumers use smartphones to shop. Also, 70 percent of mobile searches lead to online action within an hour. Given the above statistics, it is safe to say that mobile conversion optimization is a vital part of CRO. A company that improves its mobile application and website and usage will undoubtedly increase its chances of turning visitors into customers. Various practices can be used to better the mobile experience.
First, a company should ensure that their content is very visible on a mobile screen since they are smaller than PC screens. Better visibility with inviting images and easy to read material will lead to more customers.
They should also ensure faster load times. Cell network access times are slower and being a second or two faster makes a big difference in whether a site visitor will become a customer or not. Here’s an illustration showing why your site SHOULD have a faster load time:
Personalizing a website’s content would be a great way of ensuring increased conversion rates. A company should make sure that its content is relatable to the target market. The audience should feel as if as if they are the ones being spoken to through the website. Personalisation of content is, of course, easier said than done. If a visitor has a personal connection to the content on your site, the chances are that they will pay a lot more attention to the website. Personalized emails alone can increase conversion rates by ten percent according to Aberdeen.
Contrary to popular opinion, email marketing is very effective, more effective than social media in some cases. By sending personalized emails, using recipient’s real names, the site’s visitors will have a more personal experience. A company can also make use of location and demographic information to offer material tailor-made for a particular area. Providing information on deals that are within the recipient’s location, the site becomes a lot more relatable and in a sense, trustworthy giving it the feeling of a neighbourhood store.
According to CodeFuel, when videos are included in a personal email, click through rates doubled or tripled. That is, by all means, a very large improvement. Audio-visual marketing is by far, the most effective marketing techniques there is. Using videos on a company’s website grabs a user’s attention for longer than any other medium can.
One technique a company can utilize is making the video interactive. A creative interactive video especially one that can make a site visitor laugh can increase conversion rates multiple times. Every company has its target market and can create videos that will specifically target this group. This strategy ensures that a visitor who is on the cusp of making a purchase decision will automatically turn into a customer after watching the video. With the increase of smartphone usage in the globe, making video content that can easily be accessed through a mobile phone will go a long way.
Here’s an illustration showing why it’s important to make use of videos on your online marketing campaign:
Being data oriented is an optimal practice in conversion rate optimization. By being critical in data usage a company can be able to keep track of and have evidence of a variety of things. First and foremost, using various analytical tools such as Google Analytics, a firm can tell at what points visitors leave the site without making a purchase. Processes can then be streamlined from that point forward to have a higher conversion rate. Also, data can assist a firm single out and test various variables so that they can find out when and if they are useful in a visitor to customer conversion.
Useless aspects of the site can be discarded and important ones improved to improve conversion rates. Excellent data collection and usage can also be used to measure a website against the competition. The company can see how its website is regarding clicks to purchase and page load speed among other qualities. Data can be collected via surveys, analytics and tests. When everything’s well utilized it can turn into a gold mine and can undoubtedly lead to higher conversion rates.
Effective and Reliable Facebook Advertising Techniques
Facebook can make an excellent marketing tool for businesses that are looking to increase awareness of their services or products on the Internet. This is largely due to the massive popularity of the social networking site. In Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook post last April 28, 2016, it was revealed that there are already 1.65 billion users who access the site each month.
If you want to employ Facebook advertisements to get access to a specific target market, you should pay careful attention to online marketing trends. The more you know about digital marketing the better. There are also quite a few effective techniques you can try. If you want your Facebook ad campaign to be a serious success, you have to be smart and focused.
Split up your desktop and mobile advertisements on Facebook.
This can be beneficial for advertisement optimization purposes. If you want to tailor your ads specifically to desktop or mobile users, this is the way to go. Advertisements never work exactly the same on desktop and mobile devices, so this is vital.
Focus on providing a tangible “call to action.”
A good call to action is always essential for Facebook advertising success. Make it obvious what you want the people in your targeted market to do. If you want them to visit the website for your business, state that in an obvious and eloquent manner.
If you want to get the attention of people who are part of your target market, give them an offer that’s practically impossible to resist.
Few people can resist excellent savings. Use your Facebook ads as vehicles to promote your business’ fantastic offers. If you want to get people to pay attention to your business’ offerings, you have to give them an incentive, plain and simple.
Be selective about the images you use in your Facebook ad campaign.
Pictures are without a doubt the most crucial components in any advertisements. A good image will grab the attention of the people in your target market. A boring or unappealing image, on the other hand, will do absolutely nothing for your ad.
Here’s an infographic that explains why images are important in online marketing:
Facebook users tend to totally ignore dull images, and understandably so. If you want your ad campaign to thrive, you should try out numerous images before picking exactly which one to use. You should search for the image that is best for your conversions and click-through rates alike.
Don’t make the mistake of targeting people based exclusively on their pastimes and interests.
If you want to take a smart and effective approach to accessing the people in your target audience, you should also consider their behavioral patterns. Concentrating on behavioral patterns in Facebook users can often be even more effective than concentrating on interests. If you want to make the most of your ad campaign, think about possibly concentrating on Facebook users based on the web browsers they use every day. Then make distinct advertisements for users based on the specific browsers they employ.
It can also help big time to concentrate on income.
If you want your Facebook ad campaign to be a smash hit, pay attention to Facebook users’ income levels. Facebook gives advertisers the opportunity to zero in on users based on their yearly incomes. If you’re interested in getting attention from a particularly upscale or high-end audience, this marketing technique may be able to work like a charm for you.
Facebook advertisements can be extremely convenient, hassle-free and effective when you know how to use them properly. If you want to spread the word about your business and its offerings online, you should take the time to learn the ins and outs of Facebook advertising first.