Member profile image

One of the most requested features that we received during the beta period was showing a profile image in Member’s detail page. Therefore, we implemented it.

When Member has a gravatar account associated his/her email address, Coworkify automatically fetches the profile image from there and displays it as part of Member info.

Below is an example of Member’s detail page showing the profile image. This helps you as space owner recognize each Member much easier and faster.

if you have any feature request, send us email at support@coworkify.com or give us feedback on our forum.

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3 Advantages Most Event Bloggers Fail to Leverage

One of the best ways to promote and cover an event is through a blog.  A blog can help spread awareness about an event as well as serve as a recap for those who missed the event.  However, many event bloggers fail to leverage some of the most important advantages that will make their promotion and coverage the most effective.

Here are three advantages that any event blogger should leverage when blogging about an event:

Incorporate Video Content from Speakers

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What better than an actual video of the speaker?  For those who either missed the event, or those who simply want to see it again (because it was just that awesome), a quality video of the speaker is crucial to creating a post that will generate traffic and shares.  In order to make the most of the video, event bloggers should keep these two things in mind:

  • Host the video from your own site.  If you host the video from your own site rather than uploading it to YouTube and then embedding the video on your site, Google will determine the original source of the video as your site, therefore ranking your site rather than YouTube.  If you upload to YouTube and then embed the video on your site, YouTube will be determined as the original source and this will do nothing for your own page’s rank.
  • Make sure your video is optimized for the web.  It’s important to remember that many people watching your video will be viewing from a laptop or mobile device, so you want to make sure that the video will be optimized for these devices.  If you’re filming with a wide-angle lens, the speaker will hardly be visible on a smartphone.

 

Utilize Guest Posts from Speakers

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Guest posts are huge for event bloggers.  If your site isn’t getting a lot of traffic, having the speaker of an event guest post on your blog before or after the event can do wonders.  Guest posts provide blogs with:

  • Credibility.   If your guest poster is well known and has been featured on well-known sites before, you will seem more credible in your field than somebody who has never utilized guest posting before.  As your blog post shows up in a Google search, people will see the name of the guest poster and automatically be more drawn to your article than many of the others around it.
  • Inbound Links.  A guest post will usually include the writer’s bio and their social media URLs at the end of the post.  These inbound links are extremely important in boosting organic search rankings, which result in better search visibility for the author’s website.
  • Networking.  Networking that results from guest blogging can result in some valuable industry contacts.  Every time somebody guest posts on your blog, you now have them as a contact.  In addition, some people may begin to ask you to guest post on their blogs as well because of the networking you have been doing.

 

Determine the Popularity of Your Event

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Do some research and find out if anybody is talking about your event.  You can track online conversations with social monitoring tools to see what others are saying about your event.  This research is extremely important in determining how successful an event will be, and here’s why:

  • It tells you what people are saying.  If you know what people are saying about your event in advance, you are at a serious advantage.  You can now make adjustments catered to any positive or negative feedback, which can totally change the outcome of your event.  You can also see what people have to say after the event, and based off of that feedback you can make adjustments for future events.
  • It allows you to acknowledge those voicing their opinions.  When people take the time to voice their opinions, its usually because they want to be acknowledged.  Giving thoughtful feedback to people can help build your reputation and relationship with potential audience members.  If somebody has a problem with your event, a response from you can change their opinion and possibly result in one more audience member.

 

When promoting or covering an event a blog is one of the best tools at your disposal, and when utilized properly, it can help you pull in a lot of traffic. These three strategies are just some of the ways that you can use your blog to boost your event’s overall impact.

Are there any other tips you would suggest for event bloggers?

How to Make Your Business Look Bigger

For a startup or a small business, having the image of a big business can do wonders for your company.  Just because your business is small doesn’t mean it has to look small.  Image is an important factor when it comes to earning the trust of customers, and that’s why people tend to trust big name brands or companies.  Here are some really great ways to make your business look bigger:

Jo Christian Oterhals via Flickr
Jo Christian Oterhals via Flickr

Give Your Website a Makeover

Having a killer website is essential for making your business look bigger because your website is usually the first impression people get of your company.  You don’t want your site to look like it was built by an average Joe with basic coding skills.  An easy-to-navigate design combined with compelling content and visuals will give your website a professional image and make your business look bigger.

Build a Social Presence

Get your company name all over the major social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pintrest, etc., and be active with them.  Social Networking allows you build a strong customer-company relationship through daily interaction.  You can post polls, ask questions, answer questions, and address concerns.  By keeping up with your social networking you will build your company’s visibility on the web as well as foster a healthy relationship between you and your customers.

Get Your Name in the Press

Media coverage is a great way to boost your company’s image.  If people are seeing your company or product featured in magazines or articles, you gain credibility instantly.  You can’t go into a pitch with your eyes closed and guns blazing.  The pitch is very important and you’ll need to be prepared to make your company seem worth writing about.  Here are some things you should know before you contact an editor or a writer:

  • Why should anyone care about your startup?  Are you fixing any problems?
  • Does your startup align with any current trends that people would want to read about?
  • Be able to answer the who, what, when, where, and why about your company.

Any sort of publication with a decent following, whether it be a magazine, article, blog post, etc., will help make your business look bigger.  If people see other people talking about you, it will make your brand one that people can start to trust.

Setup a Virtual Office Package

If you are working from home and customers see a home address as your headquarters on your Contact page, they’re probably going to question how legit your business is.  Signing up for a virtual office package that gives you a dedicated business address will quickly make your business look bigger and more trustworthy.  Instead of seeing a mailing address in a local residence, you can use a professional business address for a surprisingly affordable price.

Many virtual office packages also include mail and phone handling, so your provider can handle and forward your mail as well as provide you with somebody to answer your calls for you.  A combination of the professional business address and phone number will make your business look bigger to anybody that comes across it.

Whether you are a startup or a small business, it isn’t too hard to make your business look bigger.  If you make the necessary image adjustments, your company will look way more professional and appealing to current and potential customers.

Using Content to Drive Leads and Sales

For a lot of companies, content marketing falls to the wayside.  This is one of the biggest marketing failures a company can make.  Why?

Most consumers do most of their research online without the help or influence of advertisements.  People surf the web for information about products and services that they are interested in, and that information can easily be found within the body of some well-written content.

Instead of focusing the majority of your energy on advertisements that most people will try and avoid, why not create content that they will go looking for?

A Blog is Your Best Friend

While a blog can be extremely useful for SEO purposes, a blog can also be your richest source of content.  Blog posts can be filled with extremely interesting and useful information that consumers actually want to read.  Advertisements can be great for bringing awareness to your brand, but a lot of the time consumers are trying to close out of your advertisement as quickly as possible.

With a blog, however, you can provide all of the information that consumers are looking for!  Write really great content and then include some really compelling Call-to-Action buttons on your page, which will help you drive those leads.  Here are some interesting stats:

  • Blogs give sites 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links (Content+)
  • Companies that blog 15+ times per month get 5 times more traffic than companies that don’t blog (Hubspot)
  • Companies with an active blog report 97% more leads. (Content+)

Engage with Customers through Social Media

Social Media is a great way to share the content you are publishing with everyone who follows you on social media networks.  It is also a great way to engage with customers who have questions about your company or products, or customers who simply want to compliment or critique you.  When customers see that you are actively engaging with them, it will give your company a better image and help ensure more leads and even future sales.  Did you know:

  • Content from reputable sources is most shared (UCLA)
  • 90% of users listen to recommendations shared from friends (Voltier Digital)
  • Clicks from shared content are 5 times more likely to result in a purchase (Voltier Digital)
  • 87% of B2B marketers use social media to distribute content (Content Marketing Institute)
  • 80% of users prefer to connect with brands on Facebook (Huffington Post)
  • People spend more than 50% of their time online with content and an additional 30% of their time on social channels where content can be shared (AOL & Nielson)

Save Some Money and Write More Content

Content Marketing is one of the most cost effective methods of marketing.  Think about it.  How much does it cost to write compelling content and distribute it?  Virtually nothing when you compare it to the costs of advertising on Google.

Traditional advertisement methods are still necessary because they do work, but as many marketers are saying, “Content is King.”  Content Marketing is cost effective, and it caters to the needs of today’s consumers by providing them with useful AND interesting information.  Here is some food for thought:

  • Interesting content is a top 3 reason that people follow brands on social media (Content+)
  • 70% of consumers prefer getting to know a company via articles over ads (Content+)
  • Sources providing full-text content are 2.3 times as likely to have users return for a second visit (Pulse)
  • 68% of users spend time reading content from a brand they are interested in (Content Marketing Association)
  • People want to be in control of the content they receive: 86% of people skip tv commercials, 44% of direct mail is never opened, and 91% of email users have unsubscribed from a company email they previously opted into. (Content Marketing Institute)
  • Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing

What sort of content marketing strategies are you using for your business, and how are they working for you?

Do Shared Workspaces Increase the Bottom Line?

More and more companies are beginning to explore the idea of coworking – creating work environments with no walls that promote face-to-face collaboration.  Some argue that coworking environments can be more distracting because of all the extra noise, but shared workspaces are actually increasing the bottom line for businesses.

Here’s why:

Shared workspaces are cheap

They help save on the costs of setup, as well as the costs of adding employees.  A shared workspace provides plenty of floor space for extra workstations, and therefore fitting more employees into the same space.  They’re efficient.  As Will Ferrell’s eccentric character, Brennan Huff, from the movie Step Brothers would say when he and his brother convert their beds into bunk beds, “There’s so much more room for activities!”  And he’s right.  The open floor space creates much more room for employees, and it helps foster conversation, which is key to generating ideas and innovation.

Face-to-Face Interaction Increases Productivity

While a lot of companies are moving towards remote working and conferencing, they are losing out on that face-to-face interaction, which allows workers to brainstorm and bounce new ideas back and forth.  It’s harder to create an environment that focuses heavily on collaboration and communication with remote conferencing.  If walls are getting in the way, then so are the miles between workers when they are working from outside of the office.

ThreeFortyNine and Kap Design have put together this infographic which shows an increase in shared workspaces and a direct correlation to an increase in productivity.

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Increased Resources

Home offices aren’t necessarily designed to cater to the needs of a startup.  If your company involves more people than just you, a shared workspace provides you with a place for your team to gather, meet, and discuss outside of your living room or a coffee shop.

Shared workspaces also provide you with more resources than you probably would have access to in your home office.  With your membership you will have access to high-speed Wifi, better printing capabilities, conference rooms, whiteboards for notes and planning, and a dedicated desk and chair in a professional setting.

 

Fan of coworking, or not, at the end of the day shared workspaces can actually increase the bottom line for companies because they save on the costs of office setup, and the costs of adding employees.  A key thing to take away is that shared workspaces spaces not only help save on costs, but they create an environment where employees are more likely to collaborate and be more innovative, and you can’t put a value on that.

What are your thoughts on shared workspaces?

Hidden Costs in Your Office Rental or Lease Agreements

When signing an office lease, it is important to make sure you read all of the terms very carefully in order to avoid being taken advantage of by a landlord or proprietor.  Many times, landlords will add small things into the contract that you may not notice until after you have already signed the lease.  This is extremely important for newer or small business because some landlords will try to play on your passiveness or cluelessness.  Here are some hidden costs to look for in your office rental or lease agreements:

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Look for Hidden Costs in Your Office Rental or Lease Agreements

 

Electricity

Contracts are meant to confuse tenants so loopholes can be woven into the wording of the lease.  A lot of the time, landlords will include clauses that allow them to “survey” the space and then up the rate if they think it is necessary.  So you may start out with a fixed rate, but after a month or two you could find yourself paying significantly more for electricity than you started out.

Preexisting condition clause

Many rental or lease agreements will have a preexisting clause, which means when you move out of your office space, you are required to restore it to its preexisting condition.  If the walls were white when you moved in, and you painted them yellow, you will have to paint them back to white.  Anything you had installed must be uninstalled, and so forth.  Restoring your office space to its preexisting conditions can end up costing you a lot of money, so make sure you know what is expected of you when moving out of your office space.

Maintenance Costs

A common misconception among tenants is that building owners will cover most of the maintenance costs such as shoveling snow, trash removal, and any repairs that may be necessary.  Ask the owner what sorts of maintenance costs are covered by him/her and which kinds of costs will have to be covered by you.

It is so important to read thoroughly through rental or lease agreements in order to make sure you aren’t going to get screwed over by a property owner.  Whether you have or have not leased an office space before, you should make sure to look for these small clauses that could cost you way more than you initially planned.

Why Use A Virtual Assistant?

Could you use a virtual assistant?  Do you ever find yourself wishing there were more hours in the day to get everything done?  Even better, do you ever find yourself wishing somebody could take some of the overwhelming tasks off of your hands?  A virtual assistant can do just that.

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A virtual assistant can’t pick your kids up from school, fold the laundry, or mow the lawn, but for just about anything computer or telephone-based, a virtual assistant can be extremely useful.  Virtual assistants can answer telephones, schedule appointments, or plan vacations.  They can also go beyond the realms of secretarial services.  For example, they can do research for you online, or perform other sorts of marketing research.  Basically, the virtual assistant can handle all of the online or virtual tasks that you feel comfortable delegating, which will help make your life that much easier.

The benefits of hiring a virtual assistant:

•    Hiring a virtual assistant can be much cheaper than hiring an actual part-time or full-time assistant.  A virtual assistant can save on the costs of payroll taxes, as well as the costs of providing an actual assistant with all the necessary things needed in order to properly do the work you assign.
•    With the number of virtual assistants continually growing, there are more and more people whose expertise will meet your criteria.

When hiring a virtual assistant, you want to make sure you pick the right one.  Virtual assistants are normally freelance or contract workers, so you want to make sure the person you hire is someone you can trust.  The person you hire may be a college student, a recent grad, or even a veteran who has been doing this for years, so make sure you make your needs clear and that whoever you hire can perform.

3 Ways to Use Social Media for Events

Integrating social media into events can be invaluable in terms of promotion, engagement, and measuring analytics.  Here are 3 ways to use social media for events:

Promotion

Social Media can be a great resource for promoting your event because it allows you to reach out to a giant audience, as well as keep attendees reminded and up-to-date as the event gets closer.

Create A Facebook Event Page

A Facebook Event Page allows Facebook user to RSVP to your event, and it provides them with all of the details about the event.  Attendees can see who else is going to the event and they can interact through the comments section where you can also engage.

 

Create a Twitter Hashtag for Your Event

A designated Twitter hashtag for your event will allow you to see what guests and viewers are saying about your event during and after the fact.

Social Media Engagement

Social Media can be helpful for not only promoting your event, but also for getting people to engage DURING your event.

Hashtag

As people enter the event, provide them with a card or a flyer that has the hashtag you created for the event so live-tweeters are all using the same hashtag.  You should also have a slide at the beginning of the presentation that mentions the hashtag so people will be more likely to use your hashtag and talk about your event.

Live Stream Your Event

By live streaming your event, people who were unable to make it to your event will be able to watch it live from home, or watch it after the fact when the event is over.  This will also help people that are not present engage via Twitter and Facebook.

Social Media Monitoring Tools

There are a lot of social media tools out there that will help monitor the activity and the success of your event.  Check out these really cool and useful tools:

These are 3 of the best ways to use social media for events, and if you decide to implement them into your next event, you can expect some really great audience activity!

What to Do After Signing a Lease?

Congratulations on signing the lease on your new office space! Now that the hard part is over, you need to start thinking about what to do after signing a lease.

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Here are some of the next steps you should be taking:

Check for damages

Give the place a good walk-through and notate any existing damages or issues.  Make sure you and your landlord both sign-off on the existence of these damages, otherwise you will be charged for them when your lease is up.

Purchase any necessary equipment

Now that you have your own office space, you’re going to want to decorate it and fill it with the necessary furniture and equipment.  Do you have a desk? Chairs? Printer? Computer? Cabinets? Think about all of the things you want to have in order to make your office the best possible work environment.

Call and schedule movers

If don’t plan on moving all of your furniture and equipment into your new office all by yourself, you’ll probably want to hire a mover.  If this is the case, you want to pick a company, call them, and schedule a date and time for when they can move all of your things.

Inform the building of your arrival plans

Give the building and the landlord a heads up before you start moving your things in.  This way no one will be surprised when a moving truck pulls up outside the building and a bunch of sweaty guys are carrying couches and desks through the building.

Call the IT guy

Call the IT guy and set up an appointment with him to make sure you are set up for cable, internet, printing, and any other sort of technology related necessity.

If you’re not sure what to do after signing a lease, consider these steps and your move-in process should go smoothly.  What else would you add to this checklist in order to ensure a successful move-in process?

Welcoming New Co-workers to Your Co-working Space

Are you welcoming new co-workers to your co-working space?  If not, you should really consider doing so!

Co-working spaces are great working environments as well as places to network with other entrepreneurs.  But meeting people in a co-working space can be difficult without a little bit of help from the existing coworkers.  Whether you are running a co-working space, or you are just working out of one, here are a few things you can do to help welcome new co-workers into the community:

Take them on a tour

When new co-workers joins your community, take them on a tour of the facility and introduce them to some people you regularly interact with.  Show them popular break hangouts, or lunch spots so they can immerse themselves into the community.  A tour will help a new co-worker become familiar with the facility as well as the people working there.

Make an announcementwelcome

If your co-working space has an email system or intranet for making announcements to co-workers, consider sending out notifications of when new co-workers will be joining the community.  Encourage current existing co-workers to introduce themselves to new co-workers and help get them situated.

Host a monthly potluck

Not only is this good for welcoming new co-workers, but it is also a great community event.  Hosting a monthly potluck gives co-workers a chance to bring in their own dishes, and it allows them to network with each other.  New co-workers can easily meet people and learn about what others in the space are doing.  A lot of connections can be made between co-workers all because of a little potluck lunch.

Welcoming new co-workers to a co-working space is important for fostering the right type of community for your co-working space.  It’s kind of luck welcoming the new kid on the first day of school, or bringing a pie over to the neighbors who just moved in across the street.  Making that new person feel welcome will make their transition into an unfamiliar place much smoother, and it may even result in a friendship!