Want to get more people talking about your brand online? Then it’s time you did some serious linking. Here are 9 ways in which you can get people talking about you on the internet and get them linking:

1. Product Giveaways: Give away your products to bloggers in your niche for free and ask for a link and a review in return; offer freebies to all the attendees at a key event; let people test your products before they are released so that they will feel like having made a difference and talk about it later; and ask past customers to give ideas for new and upcoming products.

Having branded merchandise (like pens, food and t-shirts) at hand to give away to people who are interested also comes in handy. You could also create a win-win situation by getting photographers to take great shots of your product which you can use on photo sites (which let you link back!) and letting the photographers use these shots on their portfolio websites. Building a website plugin that is fun to use and is brand specific is a great idea too. Creating a free version of your products in different formats and distributing them to interested people is another great way to get people talking about you.

And how about leaking your product? You’ll be hitting two birds with one stone; getting free press coverage and deterring the pirates while you are at it. Don’t forget to leak your product with a twist, though. Letting employees have time for personal projects might also help you boost your press coverage. Providing free apps that complement your brand (SEO analyzers, for example) can help you get people linking to your site. Or take a leaf out of the books of the cosmetics industry and offer free (micro or stripped down) versions of your products for people to sample.

Run an advert free website! You might think we’ve gone crazy but look at Facebook! They had no adverts until the right business model was put in place. So, first concentrate on getting customers, and link building and then worry about the money.

Do not ignore the importance of giving away freebies by standing in a busy town center. Alerting the press might just add some extra coverage and linking! And that reminds us; give away freebies to friends and family too. You could also get TV shows in your niche to feature your products. Offering free trials might also help you get people talking about your company online. And how does finding super fans (people who talk about your products a lot online) and offering them free products or insights into upcoming products sound to you? We’re sure they will be even greater fans. Sending your products to industry experts and asking them to share their thoughts on their blogs is a good idea too!

2. Give People Money: Yes! You get what you give! Create voucher codes and pass them to voucher websites who will then link to your site with the code in place; hold sales offering great prices; have an affiliate scheme in place; and link to someone for free (you’re sure to get them back). Paying people for giving you great content – like Squidoo does – is also a great idea. You should also consider giving away your products for free for a day; you’ll lose some money but loads of press and lots of links are things you will be getting in return. Doesn’t that more than make up for it? It sure does.

Pricing a product incorrectly for some time can also create a buzz. But be nice while you are at it. Follow the footsteps of Groupon by paying for referrals or go the Toyota way by giving money back to people who talk about your brand. You can also take an example from ASDA in the UK that gives people money back if they aren’t 10% cheaper than other brands.

3. Help Charity: Besides the feel good factor, giving away to charity is also good for linking. Donating to charities can get you on their lists of key donors on their websites. Also mention random acts of kindness you’ve done on your blog like having given away your products to those who needed them. Think out of the box and offer something unique that has charity written all over it. You could also build charity into your brand like TOM’S Shoes does. It gives away a pair of shoes to the Third world for every pair you buy. Giving products to charity auctions is another surefire way to get listed on their auction lists online. You might also want to give away products to hospitals that will (hopefully!) talk about it in a press release. Doubling any money that employees raise for charities can also get you the press coverage you want.

4. Improve your community: It’s not only about giving back to your community but getting back some (links and PR) too! Write about other companies’ products on your blog and ask for links or reviews in return; get the local press rife with news about what you’ve been doing for the community (like funding a school or cleaning the streets); train someone with an internship or give away awards to the people in your community who deserve them. How about making eco-friendly products? You are sure to get some exposure in environmental blogs or magazines.

You could also pay for someone to learn and offer them a job later on; give away your expertise or sponsor someone. Helping someone succeed with a group sourced project or helping them make their products free by paying for them are other ways in which you can get PR and links. Don’t forget to build forums where customers can share their views and make it possible for them to comment on your blog. You could also hold a flashmob and give the attendees your products for free. Alert the press about the flashmob too. You might also want to take great site imagery and make your images available for all; it gives them something to share and link to.

5. Hold Competitions: Appeal to the people with a competitive streak by offering unique product variants to competition winners or giving away money-can’t-buy prizes such as a tour of your factory or a chance to star in your next ad. Also offer a free advertising spot on your website as a prize or challenge people to beat your products. You could also make people feel important by giving them a role to play in deciding what you should offer next.

Offer a prize to the most viewed video of a song about your product and host them on your website. That way people will link to their video to get it more views, and you’ll be getting extra traffic and links. You can do the same for videos on your products.

Also consider holding a competition for your next employee and making the most-voted competitor the winner. The participants must tweet like crazy to win which means great promotion for your page!

Lady Gaga did it and so can you. Like she used Farmville to promote her new album with the chance for people to hear songs for free if they did well on the game, you can offer your product as a prize on popular sites. You could also give someone your product to set a world record, hold a competition on Twitter or give away products to Facebook fans.

6. Give Away Your Knowledge: Create a survey and give away results for free; write guest blog posts and create how-to videos; accept community questions and build an amazing, fun-to- view, niche related infographic; create a kinetic typography or ask people to tweet about a whitepaper you’ve written and given them for free; do whatever you can do to share info and create some buzz at the same time. Making to a Top 10 list and linking to everyone in it is also an excellent way to get links back. How about standing up against something you feel is wrong in your industry? You will feel like having made a difference and the best thing; it has press coverage written all over it!

7. Expand Your Network: When it comes to linking, nothing beats networking. There are so many ways you can go about this. You can host a free event for people in your industry or speak at a conference for free; attend free networking events or do something as simple as taking someone out to lunch; make a call to someone and get him to link to you or teach a class. Also consider providing lecture materials to universities or having dedicated Twitter feeds so you can respond to any mention of your brand online.

8. Alert the media: You can go ahead and get what you want by alerting the media itself! Whether it is holding a press event or distributing press releases; giving journalists a sneak peak or signing up for PR wire service; you can do a lot to get attention from the media. Also spend your time replying to HARO queries and call the local press asking if they need a source on a topic.

Photographing a celebrity with your product and passing that on to the media can create quite a buzz. Also appoint a PR person who will help journalists with their queries. This way you are sure to get some quality links.

9. Use Rewards: Providing fan discounts, improving customer security, adding new (free) features, letting the fans decided, improving customer service, recruiting brand ambassadors, building a street team; there are just so many options for you here. You can also hire mystery shoppers to go into your stores and see how the customer service is; don’t forget to let them keep the products. Rewarding early birds can also help you build some hype in no time.

Use all the ideas we’ve given you above separately or create some powerful combinations and nothing can stop you from getting those well-deserved links and great press coverage!

Do you still buy actual hard cover or paperback books? It has been reported that ebook sales are now out numbering sales of paperback books. With all the ebook services and readers on the market, is the writing on the wall for retailers that sell only hard cover or paperback?

The Canadian Press posted this article today about Google’s foray into the Canadian ebook market.

TORONTO — Google launched its ebooks platform in Canada on Tuesday, providing more competition for retailers Amazon and Kobo.
Titles purchased at the Google ebooks store will be stored online and accessible on a variety of devices, including Android and Apple tablets and smartphones, PCs and compatible e-readers such as the Kobo, Barnes & Noble’s Nook and Sony’s Reader.

Hundreds of thousands of titles will be available for purchase at Google’s store, in addition to more than 2 million public domain books available for free, the company said in a release.
The Google store also boasts partnerships with publishers including Penguin, Random House, HarperCollins, House of Anansi, Dundurn and McGill Queens University Press.

Looking for the right IT support for your business in Markham?  Contact CAT-TEC today.  We work with business in Markham, Whitby and Oshawa making sure all their IT needs are looked after.

Worried about the productivity of your business and the security of your company’s IT environment? Maybe you should get an IT infrastructure audit.

An IT infrastructure audit makes sure that the servers installed are properly configured for both security and efficiency; identifies hardware and software that are impacting upon productivity; identifies reasons as to why outages and downtime are occurring; and sees just how efficient your back-ups and confirmation are and how they are managed and monitored. And that’s not all! An IT infrastructure audit also sees to it that your security measures in dealing with viruses, spyware, firewalls, encryption, and internet intrusions are adequate. You might also want an audit to check if the software installed have been appropriately licensed.

Maybe your hardware has become too old making your business unable to compete or maybe your current network architecture doesn’t meet up to industry standards. Whatever the reason, the result is going to be decrease in business productivity and potential risks for your business. If you don’t want any of these results, go for an audit.

So, what is it about IT infrastructure audits that make them so crucial to the performance of your IT infrastructure and your business as a whole? The fact is they cover a whole lot of areas giving you insights into the factors affecting your productivity and security. Ideally, an IT infrastructure audit should include:

• Asset listing of your hardware to support budgeting, planning and management
• Listing down software installed on each machine
• Appropriateness of hardware in each machine and how this impacts upon performance
• The version of operating system, security, and patching done
• Analysis of the network design
• Appropriateness, performance, and levels of redundancy of server hardware
• Analysis of the security environment (software, policies and procedures)
• Back-up systems: hardware, software, data management, and disaster recovery planning

Now that you’ve come to know the various advantages of getting an IT infrastructure audit done, what are you waiting for? Go get an audit and improve the productivity of your business and it’s IT security.  Speak with your Markham IT support team at CAT-TEC about our complete range of IT services including network audits and reviews.

What a bummer! Microsoft Outlook 2010 doesn’t let you disable the “No Subject” warning that pops up every time you try to send an email without filling in the Subject line. Yes, it does let you send the email (without the subject) eventually but there’s no way you can send it without being forced to confirm your action. But don’t lose hope just yet, the warning can definitely be disabled but you’ll have to use Peter Marchert’s macro for that. Don’t worry; it works just fine in Outlook 2010!

So, here’s how you can enable macros (make sure you put the function in the ThisOutlookSession module under Microsoft Outlook Objects, though):

1. Click the Developer tab.
2. Go to Code group and click Macro Security.
3. If necessary, select Macro Settings in the left pane.
4. Click the Enable All Macros (Not Recommended; Potentially Dangerous Code Can Run) option.
5. Click OK.
6. Close and restart Outlook.

But before you do this, make sure that you really want it. By choosing to enable macros, you’re allowing Outlook 2010 to run all macros without permission or notification. So, this is a decision you should take depending on your environment. Plus, sending emails without subjects is considered to be rude. Even spam filters usually snag messages without subjects. So, are you sure you want to bid farewell to the warning once and for all?

Need help with your Toronto and area business IT?  Contact CAT-TEC today to learn more about our complete range of IT support services to Toronto and area business.

What Does Thanksgiving Mean To a Canadian

Monday, October 10, 2011, is observed by people all over the United States as Columbus Day. But, did you know that the 2nd Monday of every year in October is Thanksgiving Day in Canada?

There are only 4 places that recognize Thanksgiving — Canada, the United States, Liberia and Norfolk Island. So how did Canada come to recognize Thanksgiving Day? The very first Canadian recognition of Thanksgiving comes from the explorer, Martin Frobisher, the adventuresome English seaman who tried three separate voyages to the New World to discover the Northwest Passage. Each voyage ended up in northeastern Canada, right where today’s Resolution Island and Frobisher Bay are located.

On an unsuccessful trip to find the Passage, he returned home to Newfoundland. His gratitude for a safe journey and surviving the perils of his exploration led him to have a formal ceremony in 1578 to give thanks. However, the actual holiday of Canadian Thanksgiving can be attributed to the French settlers that traveled with Samuel de Champlain very early in the 17th century. The reason for celebrating was to give thanks for successful harvests.

Jour de l’Action de grâce (Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving Day) is celebrated fervishly by the Canadians as a continuance of giving thanks for a successful harvest at the end of the harvest season. While the Parliament initially references God and the churches celebrate the holiday, this day is usually celebrated in a more secular manner with all provinces in Canada, except Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia) taking this day to recognize the true meaning of the day and to celebrate.

So what does Thanksgiving mean to a Canadian? Here are some of the reasons that I was able to pull out of a hat (or off the Internet):

• Elegant dinners with turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie (oh, darn, my mouth is watering with the thoughts of such a bountiful meal)
• Time to spend with family
• CFL FOOTBALL!
• It’s not too cold — yet.
• Time to break out the spirits — fruit brandy (also known as eau-de-vie or schnapps), gin, rum, tequila, vodka, and whisky.
• Freedom of religion, of speech, of association and the right to travel
• Thankful to be alive
• Thankful for a successful business

So what does Thanksgiving mean to you as a Canadian? Feel free to let us know. We’d love to hear about it.

For Ontario merchants using Groupon; we’ve got some bad news.

You’ve probably been hearing and experiencing firsthand how getting on the daily deals site and offering discounts and coupons can be financially burdensome. But a new research conducted by John Byers and Georgia Zervas from Boston University and Michael Mitzenmacher from Harvard University has revealed that it can harm your reputation too.

A graph from the research shows that there are two distinct effects of running a Groupon offer; the first one being a boost in Yelp reviews. Well, that should be a good thing but turns out it isn’t since more of those Yelp reviews are poor. And what’s more? The volume of Yelp ratings continue increasing while their positivity keeps on declining even 6 months after the Groupon offer.

Now we don’t know why this happens. Could it be a failure to deliver positive experiences to the influx of new customers on your part? Are you confusing consumers with complex or erroneous Groupon deals? Or has Groupon become a place for bad businesses to simply get more awareness of consumers while exposing their negative elements?

So, now the time has come to think; is your reputation being affected by Groupon too?

Look what your team at CAT-TEC found out the other day.   As your trusted Markham IT support team we thought this would interest many of across the GTA.

We knw that many of you have a Facebook account, here is something you might find interesting; Facebook passwords are not case sensitive! This means there is a second password you can log into your account with. Talk about unique passwords!

If you have a Facebook password with all the characters in lowercase, you’ll still be able to log in with the caps lock key on. If you have all the characters in uppercase, you don’t necessarily have to have the caps lock key on. And if your password happens to be a combination of both cases, you’ll just have to reverse the case of every character in your password. For example, your Facebook password is foLLowUS, but even typing FOllOWus can give you access to your account. It’s just a matter of flipping the cases of the characters.

In case you are wondering if this is by design, we’ll spare you the trouble. According to Fred Wolens at the Facebook PR security team, this IS by design and they have been allowing this for a while now. And guess what? There is another form of password (other than your original password, of course) that lets you access your Facebook account. Have you ever tried to log into Facebook through a mobile device? Then you must have seen how, sometimes, it capitalizes the first character of a word. Well, it looks like you need not worry about appropriately reversing the case of your password’s first character as Facebook accepts your password even with the first letter capitalized. These other forms of password are accepted to help overcome the most common reasons that authentic logins are rejected.

So, does this have an impact on user security? According to Wolens, it doesn’t. Even after your password is accepted, Facebook still performs a number of security checks like prompting you with a verification code if you log in from a questionable device, or if you log in from two locations that are very far apart from each other. Plus, they claim that your passwords are safe. “We do not store our passwords in plain text we use several encryption technologies and techniques to maintain the security of our information,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement.

Despite all this assurance, we can’t help but wonder if this ease of use is going to turn into a security problem later on.

CAT-TEC wants to make sure that you are kept aware of any potential security risks that may impact you or your business here in the Toronto area.  Give our team a call if you are in need a quality Markham and GTA computer and IT support.

Have you seen QR codes? Those black modules arranged in square patterns on white backgrounds that can be found everywhere these days? We are sure you have. Known as Quick Response Codes, these matrix two dimensional barcodes are machine readable and contain encoded information which may be text, a URL, or other data.

Unlike linear one-dimensional codes that can hold only up to 20 numerical digits, QR codes contain thousands of alphanumeric characters of information. And they are user friendly too! Whether you have a smartphone or a dumb phone, it can easily decode QR codes as long as it is camera equipped and can scan those codes via software that is already installed on your phone. You can also use downloadable applications like Lynkee Reader or i-nigma Reader that are compatible with iPhone, Blackberry,  HTC, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia. Plus, this is an open technology which means QR codes can be created and scanned using a variety of mobile apps, giving you greater flexibility. No wonder they are becoming so popular in the United States! Did we tell you? These codes were created by Toyota subsidiary Denso Wave in 1994 and have been around for years in Japan. So, how do you use this hugely popular yet extremely simple technology to promote your business? Here’s how:

• Increase website sales: Since QR codes can lead to specific URLs, create codes that lead to certain products on your site – especially ones that are new or slow moving.
• Build your E-mail subscriber list: Create a link to your e-mail signup form and make sure to make people subscribe to your newsletter; give them a reason to sign up.
• Business cards: Keep your business card simple with a QR code that leads people to your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn pages, etc.
• Contests, discounts, sweepstakes, giveaways: Offer theses in conjunction with QR codes and get ready to go viral. You can place these codes in your advertisements or post them on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.
• Direct Mail: According to an article titled “Why There’s a Direct Mail QR Code Explosion Happening Now”, the U.S. Postal Service is basically paying advertisers to use QR codes!
• E-courses: If you are an expert at something, offer e-courses accessible through QR codes. Create a QR code that generates an e-mail that instructs your autoresponder to automatically start sending daily, weekly or monthly e-mails that contain course lessons and other pertinent information.
• Flyers: Put your QR codes on flyers too. They are still very much effective and will become even more effective if you offer discounts.
• Scratch and Win Cards Promotion: Take the excitement of scratch and win cards a notch higher by making people scan those cards.
• Free Downloads: Distribute e-books or software using QR codes. Make that free and your customers are sure to get scanning. How about offering specials if they sign up for your newsletter?
• Customer Service Help: QR codes can also be used to give customers more information about your product or service. Just create a QR code that leads to a FAQ page where customers can get answers to their questions via email or live chat. You can even tell them about upcoming products.

Finding a leader is a difficult thing to do. What qualities should you look for and how do you know if they are there? Read on and find out:

1. Integrity: Take an individual without integrity and you get a BAD leader. So, how do you know if your candidate has integrity? Just outline several hypothetical situations drawn from business case studies and see if your interviewee can recognize subtle ethical issues like trust and transparency they hold.
2. Empathy: A leader can’t possibly lead if he doesn’t understand what his followers are feeling. To see if your candidate has empathy, pay particular attention to his listening skills. You can also use crisis simulations to see how empathetic the person is to others under pressure. A discussion of a case study in which empathy plays a role comes in handy too.
3. Emotional intelligence: A leader should know what his weaknesses are and should thus be able control himself, especially when under the scrutiny his position brings along. Asking candidates about their past experiences might be helpful if you want to find out what they have learned and how honest they are in revealing not so stellar performances. Candidates who are passionately committed to career development should also be on your radar.
4. Vision: The ability to imagine a better future and the capacity to lead followers to it; this is what you should be looking for in a leader. Innovative thinking is the best way to demonstrate vision, so look for innovative thinking. Also look for candidates who are part realists and part optimists; this healthy blend is what it takes to persuade others to accept change and make something even of the worst of situations.
5. Judgment: A leader must be able to make good decisions even under pressure and this is something that takes experience and an ability to control the emotional influences that distort decision-making. To find out how good your candidate’s judgment is, use case studies which reflect issues in the candidate’s own organization. The precise answer is not important; it’s how the candidate thinks under pressure.
6. Courage: Is your candidate capable of withstanding the pressures of leadership? Facing attacks and setbacks with poise? Taking educated risks? Find this out by giving your candidate a hypothetical scenario. The answers should be evaluated according to three key elements of courage: commitment to core values, ability to navigate uncertainty, and patience.
7. Passion: A passion to succeed and a passion for what he’s doing; you’ve got to look for this in your candidate. If your candidate speaks convincingly about how the organizational mission and his personal passions are intertwined during the interview, you’ve just found your leader!

Keep these 7 points in mind when looking for a leader and you’ll definitely do a great job of finding the perfect candidate.

Looking for great Markham IT support, look no further than your team at CAT-TEC.  We are your local IT team.  We help business throughout Markham through to Oshawa.

Google and Facebook are two internet giants which are in the middle of a fierce competition. The former has had a strong hold on the online market for over 10 years and generates revenues of US$35 billion per annum via online marketing. The latter, though relatively new, is no less than Google. Facebook happens to be the most visited site after Google with over 750 million member accounts and it also happens to be threatening Google’s market dominance in online advertising, thanks to the huge volume of data that the social network holds about its members.

Though Google and Facebook are in the same competition, their advertising models are quite different. While Google’s advertising model focuses on what people are looking for, specifically using search queries, Facebook’s model allows advertisers to utilize behavioral targeting. A Facebook advertiser can focus on factors like age, gender, location, likes and dislikes which gives him that added advantage in advertising.

This is where Google Plus steps in and saves the day (for Google, at least!). The introduction of the Facebook like site – in the sense that it allows users to create profiles, enter personal details, connect with friends and join a global community online – whose Beta version was released in May also marks the introduction of the Google +1 button which is the equivalent of Facebook’s “Like” button.

Now, we can’t exactly tell how this button is going to affect the manner in which search results are returned to users (because it hasn’t been officially announced yet), but by the looks of it, the connections of a user who have historically +1ed any given search result will have these sites promoted up the list of future search results due to perceived validity and relevance of that result.

This new ranking factor, or “signal” as Google puts it, is likely to start influencing search results once the Google Plus and +1 button programs reach a critical mass, i.e. when +1s reaches a volume and velocity that indicates considerable adoption by the searching public. This is most likely to happen during the end of the year, in time for Christmas shopping season maybe. Until then, instead of keeping your hands folded, you should focus on developing a strategy that will put you ahead of the competition when Google flicks on the +1 button. Think of having the +1 button placed prominently on your site and making sure your clients, visitors and connections +1 your site. The sooner you start, the better it will be.

CAT-TEC specializes in working with Markham and area business.  We provide the best Markham IT support services available.  Give us a call to discuss how we can support your business.