How to get started with your small business blog

Posted on By John Gregory
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We have all read blogs and wondered whether we could do that. But, if the concept of starting your small business blog terrifies you then here are some simple ways to get started.

Learn the experience of small business owners at the Waterloo Regional Small Business Centre – Blogging Made Easy workshop. Then download the four simple exercises to practice yourself.

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New podcast – Episode 1 – Charity Spotlight podcast

Posted on By John Gregory
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Welcome to episode 1 of our new podcast. Why you ask. Why not I counter. The 50 Charity Spotlight blog features so far have led to some inspiring conversations, and we are so in awe of the incredible work done by so many charities. This new podcast series allows us to delve back into some of those charities again to hear an update.

We start close to home with the Coldest Night of the Year Walk across Canada. Listen to my wonderful interview with Scott Brush from Ray of Hope and Brian Carney from Blue Sea Philanthropy. This interview is much more than just talking about the upcoming event. We learn much more about the fundamental issues they are others are facing and how an unexpected family of charities supporting one another has evolved.

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2017 Recommended Reads

Posted on By John Gregory
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The average CEO reads 60 books a year. Astonishing. We managed half of that, plus podcasts, papers, and blogs. Read may be too literal, after all, listening to audio books or podcasts can be just as valuable in consuming a broad spectrum of perspectives.

These 9 books had an impact on our thinking in 2017. Find out why we consider reading them a valuable use of your time.

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Digital conversion for new businesses

Posted on By John Gregory
conversion, digital conversion, inbound, convert, Futurpreneur, gregiej, Opencity Inc.

Pondering how to increase your website conversion rate is positive. You are asking the right question. In this post, we guide you on some core fundamentals to improve your conversion rate.

We appreciate that talk of digital conversion, landing pages, and the inbound methodology may represent a new vocabulary. Let us help you.

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Anatomy of adult education e-learning best practices

Posted on By John Gregory
adult education, e-learning, HubSpot Academy, Opencity Inc

In our search for best practice examples of e-learning, the HubSpot Academy remains one of the best illustrations we have encountered. As we dissect their certificates, learn how they apply the principles of adult education.

It is a pre-requisite for adult education that learners must be motivated. We see that the broad HubSpot led inbound movement achieves this admirably.

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Building a new LiDCO website | Case Study

Posted on By John Gregory
LiDCO US, Website Grader, Case Study, Opencity Inc.,

The ambition for business leaders and marketers is to stand out in a competitive marketplace.

This case study examines LiDCO’s new online presence in the important US marketplace. At launch, the 97% HubSpot Website Grader rating emphasised that the core strategic principles had been accomplished.

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Blog template to publish in under 2 hours

Posted on By John Gregory
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Create your blog post in less than 2-hours using our illustrated blog template explained here.

The original customer story published on the HubSpot Academy focussed on our tips to optimise your blog in 45-minutes. We now go one stage further, with a template to help you write and optimise your post in under 2-hours. We have used WordPress in this example.

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10 top posts from the last year

Posted on By John Gregory
Opencity Inc., top posts, hot topics, social responsibility, inbound marketing, strategy & digital communication experts, scorecard

These top posts and content resonated with you the most. They were not necessarily what we expected. The underlying topic insights will guide our future content curation.

We had lots of view and engagement analytics from among the 77 posts on the Opencity Inc. blog plus another 73 on other platforms and sites, through 2016.

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What we learned from 10,000 tweets in 12-months

Posted on By John Gregory
Opencity Inc., online authority, thought leadership, 10000 tweets

It was the great Malcolm Gladwell who described the mastery from 10,000 hours of practice. Here is our experience on how to get the most from Twitter in building online authority.

Here we explore what we learned from posting 10,000 tweets in 12-months. This was done with original tweets, not retweets and without automated scheduling. Practice makes perfect as a level of proficiency comes with repeated and intense practice. We grew the number of followers on Twitter for the International Canoe Federation by 20,000 during 2016.

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