The Qebot Marketplace and Platform is here to simplify technology for small and medium sized businesses

San Francisco, CA. March 8th, 2016. Technology and software for the small and medium sized business industry is getting better by the day. Software companies like Gusto and Zendesk are building enormous businesses by offering powerful, yet easy to use technology for the enormous SMB sector. But with new technologies popping up constantly, where can small businesses go to discover these systems? Moreover, how do they know they are quality companies and if they need eight different platforms, how does a small business owner keep up with it all?

Enter Qebot, a platform and marketplace targeted toward the small and medium sized business industry. Releasing an update for March sporting a new look, and upgraded analytics, Qebot is tackling the fragmented market head on. Partnered with some of the most highly rated SMB technologies available, such as Sendible, Mailjet, Uberall.com, and Shout About Us, Qebot consolidates the different technologies that a small business owner may need or want to run their business into a single, easy to use and manage portal.

Operating as a marketplace, Qebot offers business operator’s free access to the platform, where they can manage web analytics, user and multi-location access, an upcoming free loyalty program, and an open market to browse, discover, buy, and manage technologies that could help them run their business. By consolidating these technologies, Qebot is able to reduce time on day-to-day operations, decrease pricing on best-in-class technologies, and help cross-functionally measure marketing and sales campaigns to drastically increase conversion and sales.

“If you’re a small business owner, there are a ton of great marketing and operations products at your disposal, but unless you know what you’re looking for, you’re going to miss a lot of great resources or the prices will be out of your budget,” says Matthew White, CEO of Qebot. “That’s where we come in. We unify top-notch technology so business owners are not only able to find the best tools for their needs, but they can now purchase and manage it all through one portal. No more switching from web app to web app. Manage it all in one place, for a lower price tag, to save time and resources.”

Currently targeted to small businesses, franchises, and agent-oriented organizations (real-estate, insurance, financial planning), the Qebot platform has seen exceptional growth over the past year. In Spring 2016, Qebot plans to roll out their operations offerings as well, which will allow business owners and managers the opportunity to purchase tools like accounting software, payroll systems, and scheduling technologies, among a host of other partnered services. These products can be purchased a-la-carte and will be integrated into a single, easy to use platform at approachable prices for business owners. No bundling, no packaging, just the applications a small business needs. See how it works here.

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About Qebot: The Qebot Platform and Marketplace is the online portal to help small business owners discover and manage the digital tools they need to run their business and grow. Consolidation that provides better data analysis, cheaper tool pricing, and reduces time and resources spent on day-to-day tasks.

About Uberall.com: uberall.com is the leading Online Presence Management provider in Europe. The Berlin based technology company connects online customers with local businesses. uberall.com offers a unique platform, which enables companies of all sizes to manage their online presence (contact info, opening hours, images & videos, products & events, status updates etc.) across all major online directories, apps, maps, navigation systems, and review sites. Beyond helping local businesses being more easily found online, uberall.com monitors all relevant social platforms for customer interaction and allows local business to better engage with their audiences. uberall.com’s clients range from international corporations with thousands of branches to channel partners serving thousands of owner-operated local businesses from all industries.

About Shout About Us: Shout About Us is an industry leading SaaS based platform that provides local businesses an A to Z solution to manage their online reviews. The Shout About Us platform helps businesses increase on-line reviews/ratings, drive customer engagement, and gain useful business insights. 

About Sendible: Sendible is the leading social media management platform that enables companies of all sizes to efficiently and cost-effectively implement and manage a successful social media strategy. With more than 125,000 business users across the globe, UK-built Sendible, manages, monitors, tracks and analyses across the social sphere saving businesses time and resources while highlighting opportunities for growth.  As a pioneering platform borne out of the explosion of social media’s effect on marketing communications in late 2000s Sendible is praised by the business community for its unique ability to generate live leads. 

About Mailjet: Mailjet is a powerful all-in-one email service provider that enables online businesses to send transactional and marketing email and better understand their contacts send after send. Mailjet’s intuitive tools and powerful APIs give senders the right amount of analytics to get the most value from each recipient, campaign and inbox. Founded in France in 2010, Mailjet is a market leader for email infrastructure and deliverability and serves more than 32,000 customers globally such as Galeries Lafayette, TagHeuer and Sketchfab. For more information, visit www.mailjet.com.

Watch our blogging related webinar to see more tools that make business blogging easier!

We all know the importance of maintaining a business blog. It’s crucial for website ranking and also for converting site visitors to customers. The challenge is that blogging can be a chore to keep up with.

Thankfully, there is a ton of technology available to make your life as a blogger easier. Here, we’ll focus on staying organized. With a couple free tools to plan out a blogging schedule and track the editorial process, you’ll have no trouble consistently publishing great content for your site.

Content: Managing the Editorial Process Using Trello

We love Trello’s simple, visual approach to project management, and running our blog editorial process is just one of many ways we use Trello over at Qebot. Click here for free access to the template used below.

If you’re new to Trello: Trello projects are called “boards" (the template used here is an example of a board). Trello boards are made up of columns, or “lists" (here, Ideas, Writing, Editing, etc.). Lists are made up of individual items, called “cards,” which can be dragged between lists.

This functionality makes Trello great for moving projects through phases: When you’re ready to start writing a blog, move its card from the Ideas list to the Writing list. When it’s read for editing, move it to the Editing list, and so on.

Coming up with new blog ideas

Keep all of your blog ideas in one place! At Qebot, we use the Ideas list of our Trello board. Oftentimes, you’ll be struck with an idea for a blog topic spontaneously. With the Trello mobile app, you can easily add a new blog idea card from anywhere, without the risk of it being lost as a random note.

Trello is also great for fleshing out ideas. Team members can add comments to cards, creating a discussion around a blog topic, and vote on which ideas they like most.

Tracking your blog from ideation through publishing

Trello makes it simple to manage a blog through each phase of the project, from ideation through publishing. Once you’ve committed to a blog idea, simply drag it from the Ideas list to the Writing list, and assign an author by adding one of your team members to the card.

The blog can be project managed right from the card. Authors can create todo lists for researching and writing tasks, and they can enlist the help of other team members by adding them to the card.

Once a blog is written, its author can move it into the Editing column, and assign an editor. Edited blogs get moved to the Ready to Post column, and posted blogs get moved to Published.

One simple template gives you a repository for your content ideas, a platform for team collaboration throughout the writing process, and a way to track your blog from start to finish. Access the free Trello board template here!

The Big Picture: Maintaining a Blogging Calendar Using Excel

While Trello is great for managing the editorial process, it’s also important to maintain a high-level calendar of your blogging activity. A blogging calendar ensures that you have enough content prepared to release regular blogs, and it will keep your authors accountable for writing deadlines.

There are plenty of tools to that will work for creating a blogging calendar, but we love a simple spreadsheet. Download our free Excel template. Or if you’re collaborating with many users in your company, give our Google Sheets version a try. 

When it comes to content marketing, we always recommend businesses set goals that they can realistically meet. For small businesses new to blogging, we suggest starting with one blog a week.

Creating a link between Trello and Excel

Once you’ve committed to one of your blog ideas, move it to the idea column in Trello. Click on the card to open its details, and then click Share and more… Copy the card link to your clipboard and head over to your blog calendar spreadsheet.

Paste the Trello card link in the Trello Link column of your calendar. Now you have direct link to your Trello card as it moves through the editorial process.

Filling out your calendar

Complete the Title and Details columns, so you have a general idea of what the blog will cover. If you haven’t thought of a title, make sure you have the Trello Link field complete, so you don’t lose track of your project.

The Author and Post Date columns may seem unnecessary, but we find them helpful in making clear who’s doing what and when each blog is due. Your blog authors will appreciate it too, knowing there’s a place where all deadlines are laid out.

Remember: blogging is a marketing activity! Use the Keywords and Target Demo columns to make sure you have a clear idea of which keywords you want to rank for and who you’re targeting. Once you’ve decided on targeting, consider how you will convert your readers. Do you want them to download content? Fill out a web form? Include your call-to-action in the CTA column to make sure it’s included in your blog.

Stick to this procedure and you should find it much easier to keep up with your blogging goals. The best part is, both tools are free! Shoot for a blog a week, at first. Before you know it, content marketing will feel like second nature.

Download the templates:

• Blog editorial template (Trello board)
  

• Blog calendar template (Microsoft Excel version)
  

• Blog calendar template (Google Sheets version)
  

Watch our blogging related webinar to see more tools that make business blogging easier!

Want to learn more about how Qebot can help you grow you business? Check us out at qebot.com.

WEBINAR TRANSCRIPT:

Intro

Thank you for joining us today for our monthly Qebot Coffee Break – This is a 15 minute, hyper focused webinar series aimed at providing quick, easy to consume marketing and business operations tips to help you run your business more effectively. Today’s Coffee Break will focus on using technology to help you streamline your business blogging strategy.

Host

My name is Matthew White, CEO of Qebot, and I’ll be your host for today. Qebot consolidates the tools and applications that small and local businesses use to manage their marketing and day-to-day operations into a single portal, decreasing time, effort, and resources necessary to build your business.

How to interact with today’s webinar

Today’s webinar is being run through Go-To-Webinar. Please use the question feature as shown on the screen to ask questions throughout the presentation. To keep our webinar on schedule, we’ll answer the most pertinent questions at the end of the webinar. Question and Answer will be limited to only 3 minutes, so if we do not get to your question, please email us at

success@qebot.com

, and we’ll respond to you directly. All attendees will receive a link to the recording of this webinar for reference.

Why you should be blogging for your business

Let’s start with why you should be blogging for your business.Regularly blogging for your business can be one of the most effective marketing tools you can utilize. Just a few of the benefits of blogging include:

• improving SEO and ranking
• driving potential customers to your site
• showing your expertise in your industry
• and, engaging with current and past customers.

So why isn’t everyone blogging constantly. The real issue is that it’s hard to get started, and keep yourself on a regular content schedule. It’s a process you have to start, and then be diligent in continuing, and it can leave a lot of businss owners feeling overwhelmed.

Today, we’ll go over some tips and technologies to make it easier.

Creating a blog schedule

First, you have to get organized. Organization is the key component to those that maintain an active blog, and those that give up. Here is an example of a great tool that can help you stay organized, and create a quality content marketing schedule that is easy to follow. If you’d like a copy of this, shoot us an email to success@qebot.com, and we’ll email you a link to download it.

Using Trello to manage your blog topics

I’m also a big fan of using a tool like Trello to organize your ideas, and keep a place to put and keep track of blog ideas and topics. As you can see here, you can place your blog topics in the ideas tab as they come to you, and move them along as you decide to write on that topic, and post it. This can be especially helpful if there are more than one person blogging for your business.

Blog topics using the Qebot keyword search tool

Now that have a tool to organize, it’s time to come up with topics. The social media tool available in the Qebot platform is a great resource to come up with great ideas for blogging.

Blog topics using the Qebot suggestion tool

Another great tool is the suggested content tool in the social tool on Qebot. This allows you to filter and read articles on certain topics that are relevant to your industry or community. This way you can see what people are finding interesting, and give it your spin.

Writing your blog

So now you have a schedule and a topic. Time to get to writing. The free blogging platform on Qebot allows you to write and post blogs to tumblr, and, if you have a Qebot website, right to your own site. With the simple interface, you can post blogs with images, videos, and compose your text however you want it to look.

Social distribution

Lastly, it’s time to distribute your blog to the world. The social media tool within Qebot allows you to quickly post your blog to all of your social channels, and engage with your readers.

Newsletter distribution

Then use that email list that you’ve been working hard to create to get your blog out to potential and past customers. Reiterate to your contacts how knowledgeable you are about your industry to maintain those connections, and ensure that when they need your services or products again, you’re on the top of their mind.

FINALE

Blogging should be one of the top tools in your content marketing strategy. And with technology to make the job easier, blogging can actually be a lot of fun. Start testing out some subjects and work on finding your tone. Remember: blogs are meant to share your voice and your expertise to your readers, so keep it professional, but don’t make it stuffy and boring. Keep your content conversational, so readers will want to continue consuming your content.

Wrap Up

Thanks for joining us today. We hope you found this topic to be interesting and informative. If you’d like to see more Coffee Break topics, visit us on our blog at Qebot.com/blog, or go to our youtube channel by search Qebot. If you’d like more information about how the Qebot platform is helping business owners manage their marketing and business operations in a more simplified way, visit us at Qebot.com to discover the different tools and applications we offer, or email us at

success@qebot.com

to get a free consultation.

Find Out More

Thanks again for your time today. Please keep a look out for next month’s date and subject for our Qebot Coffee Break series.

Want to learn more about how Qebot can help you grow you business? Check us out at qebot.com.

Make sure to join us on December 17^th at 11am, PST for our webinar Creating a Business Blog. Register here.

Keeping up a regular blog for your business can be one of your most challenging, yet effective, marketing tools. The positives that come out of blogging for your business include improving SEO and ranking authority, providing content that attracts customers, engaging with current and past customers to keep them loyal, showing your expertise in your industry, and simply building a brand for you and your company. But keeping up with the rigorous schedule of continuously deciding on new content, writing compelling copy, distributing your blog on the web, and engaging with readers can leave a lot of business owners feeling overwhelmed.

Here are some tips and technologies to help you stay organized, come up with new content ideas, and more easily distribute your blogs.

Get organized

We’ve mentioned this before about blogging: staying organized is probably the most important aspect of maintaining blog activity. You can read more information about how to get and stay organized here. You can also download our content marketing scheduling tool here.

Coming up with ideas

There are a lot of great tools that you can use to find new content within your industry and community to post about. The Sendible tool, available in the Qebot platform, keeps you up to speed on your industry while providing fresh ideas for business blog topics.

Use the Keyword feature build a keyword-based feed of content useful to your industry. An example of this might be “home health care” in San Francisco, as shown below. This will keep you up to date with the happenings in your community, so you can engage the conversation with your thoughts, perspectives, and useful information you have to share about the subject.

Another useful tool to keep you informed about what’s going on is Sendible’s Suggested tool in the Qebot platform. This tool is extremely effective in showing you news articles that might be great for reposting to your social media, but can also be a great source of inspiration for your next blog. Use the content in the articles to see what people are actively engaging with, and then provide your own insight on those topics.

Time to write

You’ve now scheduled out when you need to post your blog, and you’ve come up with a great topic for your next piece of content. So where do you post?

The most effective place a business can post a blog is to their own website. This is where you want to drive traffic and eventually convert new customers. Make sure that your website provider gives you a simple and effective way to compose and post your blogs. You want your blog to be exciting and attractive, so add some imagery, a header, and valuable links to other content or other blogs you may have written, to keep the reader engaged. Long form text gets boring to most people, so use the blogging tools at your disposal to break it up and add some color and bullet points. Once finished writing (don’t forget to proofread!) publish your blog, and ensure that it has posted correctly to your website.

Distribute your blog to your awaiting readers

The time has come to share your blog! You’ve put in the effort and time to write a quality piece that your readers will love. Now you just have to get it in front of them. Here are two great ways of doing just that:

1. Social Media

By using the Sendible social media tool through Qebot, you can distribute your newly posted blog to the world via all of your social media channels with the click of a button. Simply copy the URL of the blog and paste it into the compose window, along with a fun message to attract readers. Choose the social media profiles you want to share to, schedule a post time, and hit send. Viola! Your blog is now posted to all of you social media profiles, and you can measure and engage your readers right through the portal.

2. Email Newsletter

Have you built yourself a nice customer or prospect list that you would like to share your blogs with? Use the Mailjet email marketing tool on the Qebot platform to compose a beautifully designed email newsletter to drive people to your blog. Put the heading of the blog, as well as the first sentence in your newsletter to catch the attention of your reader, and then include a link to the actual blog to drive visitors to your site.

Blogging should be one of the top tools in your content marketing strategy. And with technology to make the job easier, blogging can actually be a lot of fun. Start testing out some subjects and work on finding your tone. Remember: blogs are meant to share your voice and your expertise to your readers, so keep it professional, but don’t make it stuffy and boring. Keep your content conversational, so readers will want to continue consuming your content.

Happy Blogging!

Make sure to join us on December 17^th at 11am, PST for our webinar Creating a Business Blog. Register here.

Want to learn more about how Qebot can help you grow you business? Check us out at qebot.com.

qebot:

Want to learn more about blogging for businesses? Register for our upcoming 15 minute Coffee Break webinar on Thursday, December, 17th at 11am, PST.

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Starting and maintaining an informative blog for your business can be one of the most rewarding, challenging, and productive marketing tools you can develop as a business owner. A blog is a great way to bring fresh, new content to your website, driving higher SEO for your online properties, as well as branding you and your business as an expert in your industry. If you want to drive clients to your business and build trust, start blogging.

Running a blog means keeping up with your industry and consistently delivering new content—a lot to ask if you’ve never posted content online. If you’re a beginning blogger, here are a few tips to help you get going.

Develop a blogging schedule

When it comes to creating new content, it’s imperative that you set up some sort of regular publishing calendar as well as set aside specific time to write. Make sure you are real with yourself about what you can and can’t do. If you know you’ll only have time for one post per week, set aside that time, and don’t skip.

To keep yourself on track, create a weekly content calendar. A simple spreadsheet is a great way to lay out your publishing schedule and makes it easy to collaborate if you have multiple blog writers in your company. Download our free blog schedule template or build your own—whatever you use, have a plan and stick to it!

Come up with blog topics

Beyond creating the content itself, one of the next most challenging parts of keeping a business blog is coming up with relevant, interesting subject matter to write about week after week. For me, ideas for blogs often come to mind randomly—never during any scheduled “blog writing” time.

Make sure you record these random inspirations! The beauty of our mobile devices is you have a great place to take notes at any time, wherever you are. Whether it’s a spreadsheet or a simple note file, I recommend keeping all of your blog ideas in one place. Download our free blog schedule template and check out the Topics sheet for an example of how to record and track your blog ideas.

Be enthused and interesting

Staying engaged as a writer can be difficult at times, as not all business topics are all that interesting. But, if you can press your enthusiasm into your writing, it will come through to your reader. Whether you’re writing a targeted how-to guide or a fun weekend read, make your content easy to consume, keep things interesting, and get your point across with as little fluff as possible.

Make sure to distribute

If you are going to take the time and effort to write a blog, make sure you do a good job at distributing the content. Here are a few things to keep in mind to maximize your reach:

• Make sure your content includes keywords and #hashtags aligned with your SEO strategy
  
• Don’t forget other SEO-related components, such as page meta titles and descriptions
  
• Share on social media
  
• Distribute through email marketing
  

Distributing your content across the web, and giving others the ability to like, comment, and share your information, goes a long way in developing a brand of industry expertise and a following of potential clients for your business.

Blogging is a great way to really humanize your business. It gives your target audience something to connect you and your industry with, and it allows you to communicate with your peers. It can be a challenge to get started and maintain a quality content marketing schedule, but you’ll quickly find that content creation gets easier the more you do it. Keep at it, and you’ll start to see the fruits of your labor: more business, industry respect, and a fantastic sense of accomplishment.

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Register for our upcoming 15 minute Coffee Break webinar on Thursday, December, 17th at 11am, PST where we’ll dive into more tips and technologies to help you build your blogging strategy!

Want to learn more about how Qebot can help you grow you business? Check us out at qebot.com.

Join us for our upcoming Qebot Coffee Break webinar!

Please register for Qebot Coffee Break: Creating a Business Blog on Dec 17, 2015 11:00 AM PST at:

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/7398628407990141953

Qebot Coffee Breaks are 15 minute, hyper-focused business tutorials that provide quick tips and insights into local business marketing, management, and operations topics.

In this week’s webinar, Qebot CEO, Matthew White, will discuss business blogging and show how technology can make blog management easier.

All webinars will be recorded and available on the Qebot blog at blog.qebot.com

Want to learn more about how Qebot can help you grow you business? Check us out at qebot.com.

Help! What to Do When You Run Out of Ideas for Social Media - Join us for a 15 minute webinar, showing how to use technology to make your daily social posting more efficient, with high quality content.

Want to learn more about how Qebot can help you grow you business? Check us out at qebot.com.

Even the most seasoned content marketers run into creative lulls—and every business owner is busy. You will have days when you simply don’t know what to post to social media. While there are countless articles online to help stimulate your social media imagination, technology can be a lifesaver when you simply haven’t the resources to generate original content.

Use your competitors for inspiration

Take a look at what your competitors are talking about. You won’t likely want to promote competing companies by engaging their content directly, but competitors’ social posts can be a good source of ideas and a bellwether for customer sentiment and interest.

Sendible keyword monitor for “Chipotle” revealing the restaurant’s Halloween promotion

Sendible’s keyword feed shows you which of your competitors’ posts are seeing the most engagement. Use this knowledge to find similar articles online (from more agreeable sources) that are more in line with your company’s values and more appealing to your niche in the market.

Let technology do (almost) all of the work

If you’re really short on time, tools like Sendible’s content curation  and recommendation engine through Qebot will suggest fresh content based on posts you’ve already shared and what your fans are likely to engage. Here’s a sample of suggested content the recommendation engine sent our way this week:

Not bad! We even shared one of the suggestions via Qebot’s Twitter.

If you’re having trouble executing your social media strategy as a small business owner, let technology do most of the heavy lifting. There are plenty of tools available, so have a look around.

We love Qebot’s Sendible integration because it makes social media management simple: access all of your social media profiles, clearly see when your audience is active, schedule posts when it’s convenient, and even get suggested content from around the web. Visit qebot.com to check it out.

Want more? Join our upcoming Coffee Break webinar. We’ll spend 5–10 minutes running through how you can use technology to make your life as a content marketer a whole lot easier.

Want to learn more about how Qebot can help you grow you business? Check us out at qebot.com.

Author: William Hilton, COO at Qebot

This week, we’re taking a look at how to use technology to optimize social media engagement for business. Tired of reading? Join our upcoming Coffee Break webinar, where we’ll take 15 minutes to run through a few of these concepts live.

Today, we’re covering that lingering question: what is the best time and day to post to social?

Post when people are online

Maximize your reach by posting to social media when your audience is most likely to see and engage your content. This may seem obvious, but it’s important to keep in mind because if you post when your audience is inactive, the reach of your content is immediately hamstrung.

If you’re unsure when to post, start with times that users are generally busy on social media, and experiment from there. The best times to post will vary by such factors as your industry and target demographic, so keep an eye on what’s working for your specific business.

Facebook Post Engagement Probability by Time of Day

The only way to know the best times to post is to look at your own data. Tools like Sendible’s reporting, available through the Qebot platform, show you exactly when users are consuming your posts. Drill into your data! Break things down by day of the week, time of day, and social media platform to find out when your audience is really tuning in.

Schedule your posts

The rub? The best times to post are often the least convenient times for you, as a business owner, to be fussing with your social media accounts (1pm and 3pm in the example above!).

Your LinkedIn audience may be actively engaging your posts on their 8am commute to work—right when you’re trying to open your storefront for the day. Your Facebook audience may active as they tire of work at 3pm—right when you’re securing last-minute deliveries for the evening dinner rush.

Make your life easier by scheduling posts ahead of time. While many social conversations happen in real time, much of the content you create can be shared with social posts that are scheduled ahead. You can post your blog the night before and schedule your social posts for the following day. Or set the promotional social posts for the month leading up to a sale, and forget about it!

Recurring Weekly Promotional Post Scheduling

Sendible through the Qebot platform is great for scheduling posts as well. Find a time that works for you, create your content calendar, schedule your posts, and go back to focusing on your employees and customers during those core business hours.

If you’re a business owner running your own social media campaigns, social media management software can be your best friend! Go to qebot.com to learn more about the Qebot platform, or join our upcoming webinar to see how easy social media for business can be.

Want to learn more about how Qebot can help you grow you business? Check us out at qebot.com.

Author: William Hilton, COO of Qebot