Use the holidays to amplify customer loyalty

The holidays are all about giving. Which makes this season the perfect time to reward loyal customers who shop with you year-round. People are more attuned to the spirit of giving during the holiday season. So it’s the perfect time of year to gift your customers with bonus rewards for shopping at your small business. Vicinity makes this easy to
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How to scale your small businesses

You turned an idea into a startup business and it’s grown into a going concern. The bootstrapping and hard work has paid off but now it’s time to take things to the next level. If this sounds like your small business, you need to prepare for growth before it happens. Especially if resources are tight and you’ve got a shoestring
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Social selling tips for small businesses

Think back to 2011. If your small business was already in business, a competitive advantage was having an e-commerce website that was simple to navigate and easy to buy from. Bonus points for an appealing design and search-engine optimized website copy. But then the social media tidal wave broke. It washed away the Internet as we knew it and made
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Deepen customer loyalty by creating an emotional bond

Humans are emotional beings. Research shows that our most primitive section of brain is hardwired to make decisions based on how we feel. Early on as a species, those emotional instincts kept us alive. But nowadays our emotional reflex (ego) drives our behaviour in relationships – including our relationships with consumer brands and the person behind the coffee counter. Companies
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7 Must-Follow Twitter Feeds for Small Business Owners

As a small-business owner, it’s up to you to find inspiration and stay informed on what’s going on in the working world beyond your doors. That’s where Twitter can be useful. Follow the right people and your feed will become a bounty of important news and sage advice condensed into easily digestible 140-character hits. To get you started, here are
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Before you fire an employee at your small business, be prepared

As a small business owner you probably interview and hire employees personally. That personal involvement often makes the boss-employee relationships in a small business less formal, which means it can be awkward when you have to discipline staff or let someone go. Large companies have a human resources department trained to handle hiring and firing employees. Without that luxury, small
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Tired of boring paperwork? Five apps to reduce office headaches

Running a business means plenty of drudgery alongside moments of success and inspiration. Thankfully, new software programs—which function equally well on mobile devices and desktops—promise to automate some of the grunt work. FreshBooks The Canadian cloud-based accounting platform offers a suite of tools that entrepreneurs will find handy. It has a mobile tool to craft and send invoices right from
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5 tasks to delegate when you own a small business

When you start a small business, you often feel compelled to do every little task yourself. Being the “chief cook and bottle washer” may be necessary in the beginning, to get your small business off the ground. But it can actually hamper your growth in the long term. Taking on work that can be done by your employees (or outsourced
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