Boost to business online

Chisholm Institute Project manager George Ligocki was a guest speaker at the Cranbourne Chamber of Commerce July quarterly dinner. 50544Chisholm Institute Project manager George Ligocki was a guest speaker at the Cranbourne Chamber of Commerce July quarterly dinner. 50544

By Bridget Cook
THE hype of social media and networking in today’s world was the focus of the Cranbourne Chamber of Commerce July quarterly dinner.
Held on Tuesday night, two guest speakers spoke to chamber members about how Cranbourne businesses can make themselves known online and enjoy the benefits technology can bring.
Brad Christiansen from Guvera spoke of the new company that aims to help businesses promote themselves to a specific target audience.
Guvera is a new advertising model that allows consumers to download music free, sponsored by the advertiser.
He said that with so many social media sites available, the problem is not getting online but rather connecting with consumers.
“How to do you connect to your audience and customers?” he said.
He said that Guvera allows businesses to do just that, as they are able to pick the age group, postcode and even interests of the people who can download music from their page.
“Guvera enables a business to pick their audience and who they want to reach,” he said.
“The challenge as a small business is to know who you want to target.”
Chisholm Institute Project manager George Ligocki also addressed the guests, and spoke of how Chisholm can help small businesses to make an effective website to help consumers keep coming back.
“Sometime in the future, somewhere in that social media space someone is going to talk about your business,” Mr Ligocki said.
“And in that time they are going to walk, and that could be away from your business simply because you website isn’t as good as another businesses.”
Mr Ligocki informed businesses of the series of free workshops, funded by the Federal Government, for small businesses to educate themselves on how to go online and grow their businesses via the web.
The City of Casey will host a number ‘Web Works for Small Businesses’ workshops in the coming weeks.
He said the workshops cover topics including how to attract customers and keep them coming back to the website businesses may be running, reducing the cost of marketing, identifying competitors through the internet and how to connect to social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter and Myspace.
“You leave the workshops with a great deal of value and new ideas to reinvent or start your website,” he said.
For further details on the workshops, call 9238 8550.