Posts Tagged ‘small business week’

2011 year in review: top 5 posts

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Rogers RedBoard Biz year in reviewFor small businesses, the end of the year is the perfect time to do your business planning for the year ahead. From getting your financial books in order to setting business goals, the end of the year is a great time for planning for what’s next.

It’s also a great time to reflect on the accomplishments of the past year, which is what we’re doing here at RedBoard Biz. We’ve had a great year covering news and information to help power your business so to end the year, here is a recap our top 5 posts of 2011.

  1. LTE now live in Ottawa: On July 7, we announced the launch of Rogers LTE network in Ottawa. For small businesses, this launch meant a better experience with CRM tools, real-time video conferencing and multimedia communications. To help show the business benefits of LTE, we did a series of videos with Rogers Reade Barber and looked at things like online collaboration, LTE devices and a Remote Worker Healthcare application over LTE. In September, we rolled out LTE to Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
  2. Can WiFi Calling work for your business?: In March, we announced WiFi Calling for businesses. This service allows you to make calls by connecting to an office, home or public WiFi network and move seamlessly to the Rogers wireless network when WiFi is no longer available. The great thing about this service is that it can help businesses predict costs, extend coverage and it can also be deployed easily. To help us talk about WiFi Calling for business, we talked to industry analyst Jon Arnold in the first video in our RedBoard Biz video series, which featured 13 videos over the course of the year.
  3. Share your know-how: Small business week contest: Small business week was October 16-22 and to celebrate and acknowledge all the hard-working small business owners out there, we decided to host a three week long contest where RedBoard Biz readers shared their tips, ideas and insights for a chance to win a new BlackBerry smartphone. Your feedback was amazing. So amazing that we took your comments and summarized them into three additional blog posts highlighting some of our favourite responses.
  4. M2M: Machines are talking: You may have heard the term M2M being mentioned at some point this year so in this post, we wanted to take some time to explain Machine-to-machine technology (M2M) and what it means for your business. It turns out this was a topic you were interested in as this was among our top 5 most viewed posts of the year.
  5. RedBoard Biz celebrates 1 year anniversary: To mark the first anniversary of RedBoard Biz, we held a contest and asked you to tell us what you’d like to see on RedBoard Biz in the coming year for a chance to win a new BlackBerry. Your comments and suggestions were truly fantastic. Stay tuned in 2012 to see some of these topics featured on our blog.

On behalf of the team at RedBoard Biz, thank you for being a part of our community. All the best for 2012.

Miranda is a regular contributor to RedBoard Biz

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Share your know-how: Small business week contest

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SMB AdviceIf you’re a small business, you probably already know that October 16 – 22 is Small Business Week. For 30 years, the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) has been organizing this special initiative to support and celebrate the achievements of the small and mid-size businesses. Throughout the week—and increasingly throughout October—organizations across Canada host events and launch programs that bring small businesses together to learn, network and have some fun.

Here at RedBoard Biz, we try to do our part throughout the year to help small businesses with tips, trends, tools and technology to help you better manage and grow your business. We also understand that sometimes you would rather hear from others like you—hardworking entrepreneurs who face challenges daily and find innovative ways to solve them. That’s why we’ve teamed up with our partner Research in Motion to bring you our “Share Your Know How” contest.

For the next three weeks, we’ll post a question and invite you to share your insight in a comment (100 words maximum).  You’ll be automatically entered in a draw to win a new BlackBerry Curve 9360. In addition to iconic features such as the BlackBerry keyboard and optical trackpad, this device comes with the new BlackBerry 7 OS software, making it a powerful communication tool for business.

A contest winner will be announced each week both here on RedBoard Biz and via our Twitter account, @RogersBiz. 

Ready to share your know-how with your peers? Here’s this week’s question:  What is the best business advice you have ever received?

UPDATE (October 20, 2011, 2:00 pm): The Share-Your-Know-How contest is now closed. Thanks to everyone for your great suggestions and feedback. We’ll be announcing the winner of the BlackBerry Curve 9360 both here on our blog and on our Twitter account, @RogersBiz. The post will remain open for comments, so please continue to send us your best business advice, however, any comments received after 2:00pm on October 21 will be ineligible for the draw for the BlackBerry. Also, remember there’s still an other chance to win. We’ll be holding another BlackBerry giveaway next week. Stay tuned!

UPDATE (October 27, 2011, 9:48 am): Congratulations to Darren, our first winner in the Share Your Know-How contest! Darren, we’ll be sending you your new BlackBerry this week. Thanks to everyone who participated and make sure you check out this week’s contest for another chance to win.

Geoffrey Booth is a regular contributor to RedBoard Biz

Contest closes at 2:00 p.m. ET on October 21, 2010. Open to residents of Canada who are 18 years or older, excluding residents of Quebec. To enter, tell us in 100 words or less, in the comments section of this blog post, about the best business advice you’ve ever received.  Prize: Participants are eligible to win one (1) BlackBerry Curve 9360 valued at approximately $349.00 each. One entry/person. Odds of winning depend on the number of eligible entries. Mathematical skill-testing question to be correctly answered to win. No Purchase Necessary. Full rules here.

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Small but mighty: A look at small business in Canada

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Twenty-five years ago, the federal government established Small Business Week to recognize the contributions that small and mid-sized businesses make to our economy.

Just what kind of impact do they have on our day-to-day lives? Check out these stats from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB):

  • Small businesses with fewer than 50 employees represent 97.8 per cent of total businesses in Canada.
  • Small firms with fewer than 50 employees employ 31.3 per cent of Canadian workers.
  • The vast majority of Canadian exporters (85.5 per cent) are small businesses, each with fewer than 100 employees.
  • In 2008, there were 2.6-million self-employed Canadians, making up 15.4 per cent of the total workforce.
  • In 2008, 12 per cent of total job creation was attributed to the self-employed.

Check out the full report from the CFIB here.

At Rogers, our commitment to small business goes well beyond October, supporting entrepreneurs through programs such as Celebrate Small Business, Innovations@Work and the Coalition Committed to Growing Small Business. You can read all about our products, services and programs for small businesses at rogers.com/business.

Do you do work with a small business, or are you self employed? Tell us about your experiences and what you’d like to see from us.

Geoffrey Booth is a regular contributor to RedBoard Biz.

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