Seasons Greetings, Ho Ho Ho And All That…
Seasons Greetings
We’d like to take this opportunity to wish all of our customers and friends all the very best for the festive season and the new year. It’s been quite a big year at CAS Netlink with lots of changes, new products and our new web site. Also, you’ll be hearing from us a little more regularly now that we have a much better newsletter system set up – and we’ll be sharing some info on how we set this new system up in the new year.
Anyway, do stay safe and enjoy the break!
Ballarat – Social Networking Wasteland?
Unless you’ve been hiding somewhere a very long way away from the Internet, you’ll probably already know that social networking is fast becoming a main stream form of promoting a business. It’s a very unique and useful tool as it allows you to become more engaged with your customers and potential customers.
When you look at the history of advertising, it’s always been a one way street – unless you actually stood out on the street and spruiked your wares! With social media you have two major options that simply weren’t available before – immediacy and feedback. You can tweet a special that is only available for the next few hours, post a special deal on Facebook or create a quick poll and get results almost instantly.
When I browse around Ballarat business websites though, I’m finding that only a very small percentage are using social media and most that are using it don’t really seem to know how to use it effectively. There are exceptions of course. New Generation Clothing for example, are using social media (Facebook and Twitter) to connect with their customers and attract new customers to their shops and their website. Sadly they are one of the few…
In 2012 we are going to be providing information to help other local businesses engage with their audience and use their websites and social media as a sales tool rather than just an online brochure – so keep an eye out for that in the new year!
The New Newsletter
As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, we now have a new system set up for our newsletters. It’s quite clever as it automatically takes new content from our blog and posts it out to our newsletter mailing list. Early next year I’ll be explaining exactly how we do that and what tools we use. Any website owner can set up a similar system and there’s no cost involved (unless you need someone to set it up for you which takes an hour or two).
Not A Business Owner?
Don’t think we are going to get all businessy and leave you out! One of our goals with all of our newsletters will be to provide information that business owners can use as well as some general info that is of interest to anyone. Tips, tricks, amazing facts… you’ll find it all in our 2012 newsletters!
That’s all for now, but keep an eye on your inbox (and tell your friends about us!) as we will be bringing you all the latest news, tips and miscellaneous stuff in 2012!
Gary Smith
CAS Netlink
