AZ Digitals Blog: mid of january

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5 BUSINESS THINGS NEEDED BY CANADIAN BUSINESS OWNERS

If you’re on the brink of deciding to take your Canadian business global, you’re making a good move. Aimia Inc. recently released the results of a study. 20% of the Canadian businesses are enthused, this in regards to the possibility of going global. This is according to the study from Aimia Inc. A huge 90% of the businesses that have made the leap are extremely happy with the results.

Here is some advice Canadian business owners who are considering going global will want to consider.

Don’t Get Worked Up About the Prospect

One of the main reasons so many Canadian business owners are hesitant about making the leap and going global. Hence, there are issues concerning the expansion and that’s the main cause of worry. Yes, there are going to be some challenges. However, most business owners find that as long as they approach going global with a calm and collected attitude. It’s a fairly smooth process. The business owners who have successfully taken their company global. They advise handling it exactly the same way you would handle a domestic expansion.

Take Advantage of Networking Opportunities

Connected to your industry, making solid connections with international business leaders. These are the solution to counter challenges that arise when taking your business globally. It’s okay to ask them to serve as a kind of mentor. Not only will they help you deal with the red tape and other issues you’ll encounter, but they’ll also help you reach out to other important contacts.

In addition to connecting with a few mentors, do some heavy research on your competitors who have gone international. Explore the methods they used to determine why some gained a great deal of success on the global market while others struggled with the transition.

Have a Communication System in Place

Communication has always been a challenge for Canadian businesses that have gone global. It’s much harder to go to an office or plant to manage a problem when that office/plant is on the opposite side of the world. Luckily, technology has provided some great global communications program that eliminates many of the headaches business owners who took the global plunge in years past encounter. Today’s communication apps provide global businesses with an opportunity to use text/audio messages, don’t break down when cellular signals fail, and enable you to communicate directly with several people in different parts of the world at the same time.

Good apps for global business communication include:

Watsapp
WhatsApp video
Slack
Skype
WeChat
Telegram
Line
Google Hangouts

To smartphone and tablets, all the apps can be downloaded directly.

Diligently Research Global Market Trends

Before committing yourself to the global market, sit down, and do extensive research about how your product will be received on the global market. This is also the time to explore is certain countries have regulations in place that would require you to revamp your product before selling it there. One example of this is a business that sells sauces. When they broke into the global market they learned the only way they could market their product in one country was by completely changing the product’s packaging. Knowing the restrictions in advance means deciding not to market in that particular country or revamping your product.

Check to See if NAFTA Restrictions Impact Your Industry

There have been some big changes in NAFT during the past year with more changes anticipated after Mexico’s presidential election. While many smaller Canadian business industries won’t be impacted by the new trade restrictions, it’s still a good idea to look at current and predicted future restrictions and determine if they create new hurdles for your Canadian business if you decide to take it global.

Whether you’re in need of domestic or international shipping, eShipper has your back. Contact us to learn more about how we can ease all of your shipping worries.

INSTAGRAM HELPING RESTAURANTS TO CHANGE THE GAME

AZ Digital Media January 10, 2019 Blogging , mid of january , Science and Technology , september 2019

There’s no doubt that social media has changed the face of business in many ways. For Canadian restaurants i.e. restaurants all over Canada. Instagram has increasingly become one of the more popular platforms. This is for engaging guests and potential guests on the social stage.

With new and innovative add-ons for businesses such as booking tables. While on the app, the platform is helping to facilitate better and deeper engagement. No surprise Instagram has always been very business-friendly for restaurants. Not only are customers likely to post images of their experiences and dishes. But a new range of messaging tools and a more business-focused approach. This focused approach on the platform is also helping restaurants to really stand out.

Restaurants Canada’s Kartikey Bhargava, speaks with Instagram COO Marne Levine

A restaurant’s Instagram success is driven by creating a good business profile on the platform. “I highly recommend any restaurant having a business profile. First of all, it helps the restaurant stand out to their customers as being a business. Second, it gives customers a lot of really important information about who that business is,” says Levine.

The Stats That Make Instagram Worthwhile

Use Instagram and you’ll find more than just foodie snaps and videos in your timeline; the platform uses the most popular hashtags for dining and

restaurants in the world. For example, according to Instagram, 111.9 million posts have used the hashtag #yummy. And the fourth most followed hashtag with over 250,000 followers is #foodstylist.

Instagram differentiates itself from other social media platforms because of the larger number of users. These are the ones who choose to follow a particular business. With over 200 million active users who visit at least one business per day. In addition to this 150 million that further engage in conversations with businesses every month. The potential is there for all to take advantage of.

A popular tool today for engaging with users is Instagram “Stories.” Pioneered by rival Snapchat. One-third of users have started a conversation with a business after viewing an Instagram Story. Stories work simply and dynamically.

The truth is that Instagram has been at the forefront of creating a wide range of business tools that allow restaurants of all kinds to engage with potential guests and raise their profiles.

Create a Business Profile

A research shows that 59 per cent of Canadian consumers say they are inspired by content they see on Instagram and a quarter of them use this

platform to decide whether to buy something or not. Setting up a business profile on Instagram is a particularly powerful tool for restaurants where the visual side of things is so important and brand development is vital.

Assets such as allowing a user to book a table with the simple click of a button on Instagram are starting to provide an invaluable way to boost business as it is rolled out globally. According to Marne Levine, it’s key to make use of all the tools now available if you want your restaurant business to stand out on Instagram.

Direct messaging has been developed on the platform over the years and has improved since it was bought out by Facebook. Now you can get inbox management tools with filtering capabilities so that you are able to better manage engagement with customers. New buttons that allow users to book a table or pay for order means that potential customers can now take direct action without leaving their home.

Twenty-five companies are currently working on or have completed their integration with Instagram and that includes fast food restaurant A&W in Canada.

They ran an Instagram campaign over a period of five weeks to attract new, younger customers to the brand. This involved posting a series of photo ads featuring close-ups of their food which ran concurrently with another campaign on TV. Over the entire campaign, A&W registered a 39 per cent increase in ad recall.

Why Instagram is the Complete Restaurant Promotion Package

Whether you have a small restaurant or a chain of outlets across Canada, making the most of all the assets at your disposal is vital. Call-to-Action buttons in particular are improving bookings for many businesses across a variety of sectors, including hospitality.

This has changed the way we do business. In the past, where some restaurants tried to ban smartphones from the dining table, they now actively encourage guests to snap away and take videos.

Guest-generated reviews is a marketing powerhouse, but negative UGC (user-generated content) can also do the exact opposite. In any case, it may not have the slick, professionally produced quality of a formal restaurant marketing campaign, but positive UGC resonates far more with today’s consumers. If your restaurant is confident in its brand and the quality of food you produce, embracing Instagram and making use of its growing number of tools and UGC is vital.

What this means is that restaurants need to be able to respond and evolve to new additions and changes in the social media landscape. That’s going to be the really big challenge for small and medium-size outfits over the next few years.

4 STEPS TO ENGAGED EMPLOYEES

AZ Digital Media January 10, 2019 Blogging , Human Resources , mid of january

Nadine Roberts and her husband Conn both have full-time jobs outside of their roles as c-store owners, but they still find time to make staff appreciation and engagement a focal point of their business.

Nadine is a nurse practitioner and Conn is a school principal, which perhaps helps explain why they don’t seem to have trouble connecting with their employees at Suri’s Convenience in Springdale, a small community in central Newfoundland.

When you run a convenience store in a small town, there aren’t always a whole host of candidates beating down your door for jobs. But based on the Roberts’ experience, you can still find staff members who want to work hard and pay it forward.

Here are four tips from Nadine Roberts for creating a positive work environment for your employees:

Look for someone who wants to put in that extra effort.

“Being from a small town, it’s sometimes difficult to recruit employees. You don’t have many options, as there are job wanted ads throughout our small town. For me, I’m looking for somebody who’s friendly with the customers and other people on staff, and reliable with a good work ethic, means a lot,” says Roberts, who has 15 employees on staff, two of whom are part-time, while the rest work full-time hours.

“We’re a small business in a small community, so our staff, for the most part, will go above and beyond. Sometimes our grocery stores are closed and customers will come in at night and say, ‘do you have this here?’ We might not sell it on our shelf, but we might have it out back for use in our bakery, and we’ll always try to package it for them.”

Take the time to let new hires get comfortable.

At Suri’s Convenience, all new hires are initiated into the business during a session with either Roberts, Conn, or their manager, Nikki.

“We usually take the employee around on the first day and tell them what our expectations are,” says Roberts. “It’s never too stressful; it’s kind of laid-back, and we tell them what we want and what we’re looking for.”

From there, employees are paired with senior employees for the rest of the training process to help them learn the ropes in their area of focus.

With a full in-store bakery, deli bar, pizzeria, and eat-in café, Roberts requires employees with the right foodservice training. She says they either come to her with the appropriate background, or they’ve worked in other parts of the store and are ready to venture into this new territory.

Give them the chance to try something new.

“Cross-training is proven to be very great for this business, because if they can work in different areas, it’s more satisfying for them, and they’re not always in the same role all the time. We try to do that whenever possible.”

Roberts says this approach helps ensure her employees are always engaged, because not every staff member is perfectly suited for every task.

Take the opportunity to show them you care.

Roberts doesn’t have a specific incentive or rewards program in place, but she’s always eager to demonstrate to her employees how much they matter to her business.

“If any of our employees are having concerns or questions, we just try to help them out as much as possible. We give them raises based on how well we feel they’re doing, and sometimes I’ll go to the store and pick up a card to give as a thank you,” says Roberts.

CANADA AND PROVINCES AGREE TO CURB GARBAGE

AZ Digital Media January 10, 2019 Blogging , mid of january , Political Talks , september 2019

Federal and provincial governments to work on a plan to have Canada eventually produce no waste plastic at all

Canada’s environment ministers want to cut in half the amount of garbage this country produces, in a little over two decades.

By 2030, they want to reduce the total amount of waste Canada throws out by 30 per cent; by 2040, they want to cut the quantity by 50 per cent. And as part of a national strategy to curb plastic pollution in particular, Ottawa and the provinces unanimously agreed to work on a plan to have Canada produce no waste plastic at all.

Much tthe garbage Canadians send to landfills and incinerators, after recycling and composting and all the other forms of diversion, is plastic.

“Plastic pollution, as we all know is a major challenge for the health of our oceans, our lakes and our rivers,” said federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, speaking to reporters after the two-hour teleconference with her provincial counterparts.

The meeting was supposed to be held face to face in Ottawa but was downgraded first to a video conference and later a conference call. Federal officials cited scheduling conflicts that kept some ministers from being there in person; behind the scenes, the tension between Ottawa and some provinces over carbon pricing is said to be a factor.

McKenna said the focus of the meeting was plastics, not climate change, and said she was glad that the ministers could put other differences aside to find agreement on something else.

“I was just really pleased to see today that provinces, despite where there may be other areas where we don’t necessarily agree, that we can all agree that plastics is a huge problem,” she said.

Canada is trying to be a leader in curbing humanity’s plastics addiction. At the last G7 leaders’ summit it convinced five of the seven biggest developed economies in the world to sign a plastics charter, pledging that by 2040 all plastic produced in those countries will be reused, recycled or burned to produce energy. (The United States and Japan stayed out.)

The proliferation of single-use plastic packaging like water bottles, drinking straws and food wrapping is sending massive amounts of plastic to landfills. More blows into waterways and drifts to the sea. Giant reefs of plastic are showing up in the oceans and fish and sea mammals are eating plastic objects thinking they’re food.

Earlier this week, a sperm whale washed up dead in Indonesia and was found to have six kilograms of plastic waste in its stomach, including 115 plastic cups, a plastic grocery bag full of string and two flip-flops. What killed the whale is unknown because it was badly decomposed.

The lack of proper waste management in developing nations is behind much of the plastic that ends up in the oceans but Canadians are not great at recycling despite the curbside recycling systems in most cities. Only about 10 per cent of the plastic Canadians buy gets recycled.

In 2014, the average Canadian threw away 706 kilograms of garbage.

A final national plastics strategy is still in the works but the ministers agreed to require that plastic products sold here be easier to reuse or recycle, and to introduce producer-responsibility systems to make the companies that sell products wrapped in plastic more responsible for ensuring they get recycled.

McKenna said Canada is slightly above average when it comes to recycling but is nowhere near good enough.

“The reality is we have a ton of work to do,” she said.

Environment groups think this agreement is not the ton of work that is needed.

“How many more whales full of single-use plastic trash need to wash up on shores around the world before our minister of the environment and climate change takes strong action to help curb the excessive production of throwaway plastic?” said Sarah King, head of an oceans and plastics campaign for Greenpeace Canada.

King wants Canada to follow Europe’s footsteps and ban certain plastics entirely. The United Kingdom is banning plastic straws and stir-sticks, while France is soon banning plastic plates and utensils that can’t be composted.

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