For those of you considering registration with the Better Business Bureau (BBB), here are some tips. First of all, let’s cover the basics. The BBB is an organization focused on marketplace trust for over 100 years! Its independent from the government, acts in a sort of industry self-regulation and is…
On December 4-6, 2013, Canada’s Largest Building and Construction Show, Construct Canada descends again on the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Celebrating its 25 year, Construct Canada offers more than 1050 exhibits, 200 enlightening seminars from 450 speakers for 25,000 attendees. Both Martha and I will be there to attend several…
In the past, I relied heavily on word of mouth, but these days I get the recommendations from friends AND check the online reviews to make decisions. While I think that this behaviour is partially due to being new to a city, I believe it is also because so much…
A common comment I hear in the Home Improvement industry, especially in locations with growing populations and stable economy, is “We don’t need more leads, we have enough business from word of mouth referrals”. First, I commend them and say that is fantastic, really it is. Companies with this situation…
Nearly everywhere you appear online, your reputation influences your target customers. Your reputation, made up of reviews, comments in social media can appear in many locations. The big players like Google, Microsoft and Facebook are instrumental in connecting you with your customers. When a customer jumps online to find someone…
Service oriented business are in constant contact with their customers, each interaction builds their reputation. Each time a customer has a good experience, they will tell a few friends. When a customer has a bad experience, they tell on average 12 people. A 2005 study by Informative Inc found that…
Schema.org is a set of recommendations from top search engines Yahoo!, Google, Bing and Yandex to improve the quality of search results. Originally published in June 2011, it is a major collaboration of the big search providers to standardize the optimal method of adding microdata to your websites. Until then,…
This month, GetProsOnline.com launched in Guelph, engaging the local community and sharing our story. We started our journey with the Guelph Chamber of Commerce pub night at Manhattan’s Pizza Bistro. Martha van Berkel, our VP of customer engagement, told our story, showed off our new business cards, and learned about how the…
After recently attending the Agile Conference in TorontoI took what I learned in a session on Personal Kanban and combined it with a Priority Matrix that I like to use. The results, thus far, have been amazing and I don’t think I can chalk it up to coincidence. I predict…
In a short summary, HummingBird is Google’s method to provide more precise answers to user queries. Going beyond simple keyword matching Google is working to match an answer with user queries using their Knowledge Graph and methods that look at the semantics (meaning of words) of content. Expect this will…
