Someone shared this interesting stat on facebook:

A reminder….

1976 Montreal hosts the Olympics, 1977 Montreal wins the Stanley Cup;

1988 Calgary hosts the Olympics, 1989 Calgary wins the Stanley Cup;

2010 Vancouver hosts the Olympics, 2011…you do the math!

We have created this wall paper to support our own team, feel free to download and share with your friends! Go Canucks!

Here is the Kesler’s stat from http://canucks.nhl.com/club/player.htm?id=8470616

[Kesler Wallpaper 1280 x 800]

[Kesler iphone wallpaper]

QR code has been around since 1994 and slowly gained its popularity in North America in the last couple years. Many major brands are using QR code as part of their mobile marketing strategy. The question is, how does small business benefit from this emerging technology?

[Getting Ready]

1. Plan: Just like every marketing campaign, you need to create a plan. You need to know your audience and what makes them tick. Creating the QR Code is the easiest part and the most difficult part is to get them to actually scan it.
2. Destination: You want to take them to a mobile friendly site because the only way to scan a QR code is via a smart phone. If you are taking them to a full website where it’s impossible to read on the smart phone, forget it! If you are using a wordpress site, there are many plugins that will convert your wordpress site to a mobile site in no time (WordPress Mobile Pack)

[Creating the QR Code]

There are many QR Code generation sites out there. My personal favorite ones is Zxing: This site offers some cool functions that allows you to create your own event calendar, contact info (great for networking event), SMS message and other cool stuff.

[Marketing Applications]

1. Business Card/Name Badge: You can use the [contact info] function in Zxing, so once someone scans the QR Code, your contact info will be saved to their address book.
2. Car Wrap: Include QR code with your vehicle. Make sure you add some sort of Call to Action (like Scan Me to Enter a Draw)
3. Facebook Fan Page: Take them to your Fan page

[Pros]

1. The QR Code is “almost” everywhere so people
2. No data entry is required (eg. type in your URL or contact info)
3. Eliminate typos (unless the spelling on your QR code is incorrect to begin with

[Cons]

1. Extra effort to download the app and scan it unless the incentive is BIG enough

Click the diagram below to download a PDF version of QR Code Visualized diagram. Enjoy!

Social Media doesn’t have to be time consuming or confusing and in fact it is not.

The 1st step is to take the time to properly set up at the very least Facebook, Twitter, ByzHub, Ping.Fm and Hootsuite

After set up is complete you need to engage, entertain and educate on your profession, notice I didn’t say sell.  You need to do this on a daily basis and the way you do this is through ByzHub via Ping.FM and Hootsuite.

It is important if you are in Social Media for your business that you are still social, be as transparent as much as you feel comfortable being.

In business you have separate bank accounts, in social media you need a business side as well as a social side.  I use Hootsuite for my social side and ByzHub for my business side.

Here is what you do, you sit down and you plan 30 engaging, entertaining or educating…questions, insights, answers.

Do this from a personal side and again from a business side, you want to establish yourself as the expert in your field.  Once you have your content then you use ByzHub and hootsuite to schedule them so that they are posted on all your social media applications starting tomorrow and ending in 30 days.

Make sure business posts are on your facebook fan page and NOT on your Facebook personal page.

You will see how in the next 30 days how many people start talking to you, this opens doors and more importantly it shows facebook that you are interactive and facebook will start posting your feeds on more news feeds.  You see you don’t decide whose news feeds you end up on facebook does, so convince them to put you on many feeds.

One week after the event, 91% would say the entertainment was the most memorable part. Here are a few tips to keep the entertainment fresh and exciting at your next corporate event:

• Sophistication: Bring an air of distinction to your next corporate party with a live Jazz pianist for even just the first portion of your event.
• Tunes: Having a professional DJ service has many benefits such as the ability to play during the cocktail reception and then kick it up a notch when it’s time to dance.  The right DJ will offer a variety of music and your guests will rave to you months later.  Do you want to trust your event’s music to a ‘dude’ with an ipod?
• Fun: Audience participation can bring groups of all sizes together. Consider bringing in Dance Heads, which is taking Vancouver by storm. Imagine small groups lip syncing their favorite dance tunes while their heads and expressions are shows on a screen for all to see.  A great way to energize and engage your guests! Love Trivia? Imagine a hand held  digital entertainment unit where your guests can key in their answers on music, sports, movies or your corporate brand in a fun, interactive competitive setting.
• Spice: Consider a Latin Band and salsa dancers. Remember that all bands take breaks so, if your budget permits, hire a DJ to play in during these awkward lulls.
• No-limits: Corporate event entertainment is by no means limited to music. For added fun and diversity, think trendy…select a caricaturist, a temporary tattoo artist, a hypnotist, fire dancer, magician or comedian.

Whatever idea tickles your fancy for your next corporate event, Rule #1 is to hire a professional.  You need to make sure your entertainment provider has the highest quality of service, and will meet 

Dwayne Hartshorn was to run the Surrey auto-repair business, Bootsma would gain big brownie points with his family, and in a few years, he’d also get a healthy retirement income, say $10,000 a month.

“It should be a snap, right?” said Bootsma who has owned a successful heavy construction company for 35 years.

Not quite.

Bootsma paid $75,000 for Blue Top Auto five years ago. Bootsma had checked the books, and it looked to have potential, but when he next looked up, the little three-man shop was losing $100,000 a year.

“We were in such a hole,” he said. “At a point a couple of years ago, I could have paid Dwayne his wages every year and he could have sat at home, and it would have been cheaper.”

It wasn’t really Hartshorn’s fault. He’s an easygoing guy who had previously worked in a print shop and had no business experience. “Basically, he got one month’s training,” Bootsma said. “The former owner stayed for a month, then he was on his own.”

Finally, Bootsma had to take control.

He told everyone, “I am the owner and this is what I want you to do. I would not tell them ‘I would like you to do this.’ It was ‘I want you to do this and this and this.’ ”

That led to some interesting family conversations.

“Sometimes we just need a blow-up,” Bootsma said. “I’ve either had it with watching money just going down the drain, or they’ve had it with me telling them what to do. Usually my wife is the arbiter.”

But he soon discovered one business isn’t really like another.

“In the construction business, I send maybe four, five invoices a month. In the car business, you send 100 per month. You have to keep a hundred customers a month happy.”

There just wasn’t enough business coming through the door, Bootsma said. “We really didn’t know why.”

By the time Bootsma met business coach Kyle Oberndorf of ActionCoach, at a business networking meeting, he was ready to pay for extra help. Nevertheless, hiring Oberndorf 1 ½ years ago meant adding a monthly expense equivalent to a fourth employee. And installing daughter Tammy as receptionist and service adviser meant another family member on the payroll.

But things soon started to turn around.

The first thing Oberndorf did was to start tracking, measuring and testing everything. They tracked sales on a daily basis, studied the break-even point, set daily sales targets and wrote everything on a white board. “John was doing all the numbers himself,” Oberndorf said. “Now the team tracks it on a whiteboard, and he just walks by it everyday.”

They cut advertising costs and increased networking for word-of-mouth referrals.

They tightened up what they did for free. “Someone would come in with the ‘check engine’ light on,” Bootsma said. “We would check that out for free and tell them you need this and this and we thought people would buy the parts, but not everybody did. Now if you want us to check your engine light, we charge you 45 bucks.”

Then Oberndorf had them raise their prices from $69 an hour to a more industry standard $91.

“I was sort of resistant. I wasn’t quite sure,” Bootsma admitted. “It’s only scary for a month until you realize nobody notices. As far as I know, we never lost a single customer.”

Blue Top Auto’s billable man-hours were desperately low. They were paying for two mechanics at 18 hours a day, but billing only 4½. They are now up to nine billable hours per day.

“Sometimes by just paying attention to it, it increases,” Oberndorf said.

And, in a twist modelled on dental offices, they began rebooking customers immediately following service appointments. This increased the average dollar sale and made for time efficiency in the shop. “We went from losing six digits a year to making five digits a year,” Oberndorf said.

Bootsma can look forward to retirement income again.

“Now I’m basically breaking even, and we’re on an upward trend. I think another year and it’ll be on the profit side and I’ll be able to take some money out.”

“I almost don’t want to let this experience go to waste,” Bootsma said. “I now want to find another mechanic shop because now we’ll know what we’re doing. There’s so much potential in the automotive repair biz.”

jennylee@vancouversun.com

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Blue Top Auto

Website: bluetopauto.com

Employees: Three

Losses at its worst: $100,000 a year
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Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Owner+fixes+auto+repair+business/3692258/story.html#ixzz16BJlb9yV

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