One of the challenges often faced by small business is how and where to spend your advertising dollars. Before deciding, I always have to ask, have you sought out some of the free ways to advertise?

This list provides 4 ways to advertise for free, and should  be part of your advertising strategy.

1) Google Places

This is a great way to literally get your business on a map. By submitting your business to Google Places, you will have a push pin icon for your business on google maps when potential customers search for your services. The sign up is easy, simply set up your listing and then Google will mail you a postcard with a verification code. Enter the code once you receive it and your listing is live.

Sign up here: http://www.google.com/local/add/analyticsSplashPage?pli=1 

2) Facebook

This is another great one to give you a great chance to connect with your target audience. Build a branded FaceBook page and share content related to your products and services – because you really want to pay attention to the image sizes for page cover images and profile images, but it is still very easy.

The challenge with Facebook becomes continously providing content that is interesting for your target demographic so that they engage and potentially create a viral effect for your content. One big benefit with facebook is that they provide a relatively comprehensive analytics system in the way of “Page Insights” that show you your reach amongst other metrics, week after week.

Create the page here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/create/
Tips from Facebook on Cover image sizing:

“Cover photos are 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall. If you upload an image that’s smaller than these dimensions, it will get stretched to this larger size. The image you upload must be at least 399 pixels wide.” - https://www.facebook.com/help/125379114252045/

3) Google Plus

Very similar to Facebook, Google Plus is another great way to advertise for free online. The thing with Google is that they are constantly evolving this service, and one of the differences is that Facebook likes to keep things contained within the Facebook ecosystem, while Google is looking at better integration with the rest of the world. There are many advantages from an SEO perspective to having a well defined Google + page that ties back to your website and vice versa – especially in the way of verifying publisher/authorship of content.

Create a Google + Page here: https://plus.google.com/pages/create
You can check to see how to verify authorship and publisher info via Google+ by using the Google Webmaster tools provided here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/

4) YouTube

YouTube is one of my favorites. This is a way for you to create video advertising content and share it with the world. Not only does YouTube make it easy to SEO your own video so that it shows up to people searching for it, it is extremely easy to share via your own web page, blog, Facebook, Google+ and so on. You can easily track the reach, engage with viewers via comments. The key with YouTube again is similar to Facebook – you must create content that is interesting and useful to your target audience – and it would not hurt to be sure to invest in the minimum of an HD webcam and a decent microphone to ensure you are producing quality videos.

Simply sign up at http://youtube.com to get started

Conclusion

This is just my personal top 4 that I recommend and believe should in some way be a part of everyone’s online advertising strategy. Still important is to understand your target demographic, the type of content that would be of interest to them and to make sure this is only a part of the plan, not the entire plan.

Other great ways to advertise for low cost/free:

• Twitter http://www.twitter.com
  
• Set up your profile on all sites you use – they often let you link to a website -ie; your Amazon profile
• Local directories such as 411.ca, manta.com

If you have suggestions on other ways to advertise for free please leave them in the comment section, we’d love to hear and share them as well!

So you want to start an online business. Great! Getting started can seem overwhelming but as long as you have a plan, it will be easy. Here are a few steps you would go through – this was written specific to Ontario, but the process will be similar or the same in your own province or state.

I recently sent some information on to a friend who was looking to do a bit of ecommerce and was looking for some help getting started. After I sent the note off I thought this information could be useful to a wider audience and so I am sharing it here.

Business Stuff

Do your home work! Check http://www.canadabusiness.ca/eng/page/2856/ for a great start up check list on getting this going. You will need to make sure you have decided the type of business you want to start – in most cases, small online start ups should be ok functioning as a sole propietorship but be sure you understand exactly what this means and the risks associated with it.

Once you have decided that, you need to determine the business name you wish to operate as. For Ontario, once you have a name selected, you can register the name provincially here -> http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/bsnss/tpcs/bn-ne/bro-ide/rstrctns/menu-eng.html . If you are doing ecommerce and only plan to employ yourself, you can get away with just registering the business name – you can sign up for payroll and tax accounts later – but be aware that you must begin to collect GST/HST once your business hits a certain threshold. In Ontario, once you your business makes more than $30,000 annually, you must collect HST.

Since operating online is going to be a big part of how you operate, I’d suggest considering business names around a website address. To see if an address is free, you can try a site like:https://www.hover.com/. This isn’t a requirement, but it is nice if you can secure both the business name and the business website address to be the same – example Think Shovels is the business name and www.thinkshovels.com is the business website address.

Getting a Website

Consider what you want from your website, consider the following

Sample Website Functions

• Presence: Be online, let your audience find you
• Advertising: Share promotional materials with your audience
• Sales: You may want to offer commerce functionality direct from the site

Look for a designer/developer who can asst in matching up the categories that matter to you to plan that will meet those goals. For example, when working with eCommerce customers, we prefer our go to platform of Magento since we can show how it will map to the users needs of being able to manage sales/customers, easily list products, and offers some content management assistance as well – things we know will be needed for the site even though some of the items weren’t asked for directly.

When it comes to design, make sure the designer can provide samples of work for you – if you don’t like samples – you may not like the final product for your own site.

Support and Training

Another important piece to consider here is to make sure to ask about what support the developer/designer will provide once the site is live. You don’t want to get into a situation where you have invested into a nice web app and don’t know how to use it. This very critical piece may be the most commonly overlooked once when it comes to getting an app or website developed.

Getting Paid

Great, so your site is online, products are listed and now you want to make sales and get paid. You do this via a payment gateway that connects to your ecommerce site. One of the most popular online payment gateways is PayPal and signing up is an easy process. There others though, each with a different structure on how you (and they) get paid. Paypal is usually the one I recommend for those just starting out as it is very easy to get started with with reasonable costs.

Final Thoughts

1) Pick a Businessname/website address
2) Register the business name
3) Register the domain name
4) Build a Web Presence with a Website, Social Media or similar
5) Sign up for a Payment Gateway Service (Paypal for example)
6) Go make money

Anticipated Start up costs for an online business

• $15 annual recurring for Domain name
• $65 recurring every 5 years for business registration ( for small proprietorship)
• $50 SSL certificate required for Online Commerce transactions
• $60 recurring annual for basic website hosting (this will vary depending on specific needs)

Tired of emailing clients and trying to format all of your content in an easy to read, presentable manner using awkward Drag, Drop and Click toolsets? If you have content that you have a very clear vision for, but struggle to deliver to your audience, you could benefit from a website that can operate in your context, making it easier for you to get your message across in a manner that is easy for the client to understand, and is easily repeatable.

Recently, we partnered up with Canfone Inc. to work on a website for horse breeder Greg Bieker of The Brim Collection in Idaho. Greg wanted a website that he could display horses in his collection, and horses he had available for sale.

Here’s a look at how we used the Drupal platform to deliver a website that operated within the context of horses to give Greg a site that made it easy for the addition of new content for the site, and in a manner that makes sense to an audience seeking information on horses for sale, or curious of what Greg has in his collection.

Build the Context

One of the most important steps in getting a website that works for you is to plan out your context. In our example, the context is horses. Drupal was set up to understand ‘what’ a horse was in Greg’s terms. From the administration section of his website, Greg was delivered the ability to “Add a Horse” and is able to set all of the important data from name, year of birth to attaching a video and pedigree information.

Build a Meaningful Display

As much as you have a vision for your content, so does your audience, by building a view that is meaningful to them, the user experience increases positively. The information they want or need is easy to find, and navigation becomes natural. For Greg, this was achieved by applying correct terminology for horses, and grouping first by Sale or Collection, and then by age categories. To make this even easier, Greg’s site will auto group horses based on their year of birth, so no chance of a horse ending up in the wrong category. In this case, a 2 tier view as built; one as a Horse listing, and then an individual horse view showing more detailed information.

Make Maintaining it Easy

Although this is the last point I will touch on, it is linked tightly with building the context, and is probably the most crucial factor in making your website a success. If it is not easy to maintain, you will eventually stop maintaining it. Largely due to how nice Drupal has made editing content and effective incorporation of the Horse context, Greg can make changes to his content right from the main page and edit all the points about a horse.

Conclusion

The Brim Collection is a great example of how properly planned out sites can become a strong tool in a businesses collection, making it easy for the website operator to work within his context and make his content available in a manner that is understood by his audience.

Quick tips on how you can get a site that works for you:

• Look for a web developer who spends time before the project begins to understand your business and what you are hoping to achieve
• Listen to the developer to see if they are able to summarize accurately what you are looking for
• Ask questions, not only will you gain a better understanding of what will be delivered, it can often reveal cues to the developer as to what will help you most in the end
• Check references, has the developer worked on other sites that are similar to your business? Was the client satisfied that the site made life easier?
• Ask how the developer will support you in making your site a success. A confident developer will have a plan to ensure you will be successful, if no plan is present, steer clear or you might be handed a site that you have no idea on how to use

One of the questions I am most frequently asked is “Where did the name Think Shovels come from”. The idea is simply this, we sell tools for the web; it might be a website, it might be hosted email, it could be a mobile app, it could be a number of things, but we think of them as tools to a solution, not the solution.  The web is changing, with more and more options being available for engaging audiences every day, it is now more important than ever that the right tools are being put in place to meet objectives. Here are a few tips that can help in making the right selection.

1. Define your objective

Clearly understand what you are trying to achieve. I want a website is not an objective. I want to sell my products online is.

2. Determine context

Put some consideration around context, do you want people to be able to purchase products via a mobile device such as a phone or tablet, or are you trying to tap into an audience on Facebook or Twitter? These should be defined as best possible.

3. Create a Checklist

Come up with a prioritized checklist of things the tool must be able to do. For example, if you were intending to sell clothing online, your list might include :

• Must be able to define product color
• Must be able to define product size
• Must include online checkout

This list will help narrow down the wide field of options, but be careful not to make it so constrained that you can not find any options.

4. Determine timeframe

Are you in need of a turn key solution, or do you have time for development to really hone in on what you need? Understanding your time frame is really going to help narrow down the tool selection. You may need to account for time to develop expertise to deploy a tool, build a tool, and even operate the tool once it’s operational.

5. Determine budget

Have some idea of what you want to spend on the project with a range. Keep in mind this may include licensing or services depending on your final selection, but your budget should account for both.

Following these five tips will ensure you are picking the proper tools for your business, and make the selection decision easier. There are more rigorous methods to go about this, but the main point that is constant is to really make you understand the objective and separate the tool from the problem. You want to sell online, you don’t necessarily want a website, but it may very well be the best tool for the job.