MBiz

9 MBiz May 2014 If your business has large volumes of qualifying end-of-life electronics, then EPRA Manitoba can help you make the responsible choice. Contact EPRA Manitoba to learn about their no-charge pick-up on large volumes of old electronics, and make the right choice for your business and your environment. Return for Recycling Keep Forever Throw Away Forget Until Next Year It's not trash; recycle it with EPRA Manitoba // www.recycleMYelectronics.ca Modern Earth president Philip Giles and company have worked with clients across North America, with a broad base in rural Manitoba. Giles offers some practical advice that applies to any website. "Make it easy for people to contact you. Contact information should always be visible on the screen. And make sure you do a regular audit of links to ensure they don't disappear to nowhereland," he says. "There's no secret to this. Just give clients what they're looking for. There are fantastic tools for being online, and we can provide some great solutions." Engaging customers and clients is important, so you should include any content you think people will fi nd interesting. "Marketing is going back to the old way of doing things, which is having conversations with people. It's exciting. Social media is all about having conversations now, which is a wonderful opportunity but takes more time and effort." Giles recommends setting aside time each week to maintain your website or other online platforms. "It's a commitment. You don't do it once and forget about it. When you start the process, keeping it up to date is part of what you do. You need to set aside a period of time every week to work on it. It's like a client appointment," he says. "The amount of time depends on your business. If you have a restaurant with daily specials, you might want to post them daily. But if you're an accounting fi rm that doesn't have much news, putting in half an hour a week is probably enough for you." To make matters easier, you can share messages across a variety of platforms. "When you look at building a social media presence, you need to consider that people consume information in vastly different ways. You have a different audience on Facebook than you do on Twitter than you do on your website," Giles says. "We try to help organizations link all of those up, so you only ever have to update one of them for the others to be updated. You're not having to work as hard to do it." And the process to update information is surprisingly easy, even for technophobes. "We try to make it manageable for people. We look at who the client is, what they need to do, what their technical skill level is and give them the appropriate solution," Giles says. "Honestly, if you can use Word, you can update your website content. It's that easy. We offer support, so they can just call us and get help." "I can't stress enough the importance of having a website presence in today's day and age. It is defi nitely one of the fi rst places people will look for information." MBiz_spring2014.indd 9 MBiz_spring2014.indd 9 5/14/14 8:26:04 AM 5/14/14 8:26:04 AM

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