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Stephen Lau - OttawaKiosk.com
The Ottawa Kiosk web site is a tourism and business portal for Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and the region. In business since
1996, Ottawa Kiosk is the trusted destination site for thousands of Ottawa residents and travelers everyday of the year.
They receive over 250,000 visitors monthly to OttawaKiosk.com and are also a Google trusted resource as it refers to them
thousands of visitors for key Ottawa business and consumer related terms.
They have developed the Official Web Sites for many of Ottawa's tourist areas, namely the ByWard Market, Somerset Village, Somerset Heights, and Preston Street (Little Italy) as well as have also developed the Official Ottawa Festivals web site and the Ottawa Convention Guide. Other initiatives that OttawaKiosk.com is involved in are Ottawa's Real Estate portal, Ottawa Living and Ottawa's used car portal, AutoCatch.com. One of their goals is to contribute towards a paperless society... doing their part in contributing towards preserving the world we live in.
OttawaKiosk.com is proud to have the support of hundreds of local businesses who support their online Ottawa directory, and with a 95% renewal rate, they must be doing something right - delivering sales and leads for their clients. OttawaKiosk.com would like to invite you to use the Ottawa Kiosk whenever you need to find an Ottawa-based business, company, service or organization. They are also part of a network of local directories across Canada called CanadianKiosk.ca, as well as the Canoe Travel Network, a Quebecor Company. As the World Wide Web grows everyday, they hope you will find their "kiosk" an efficient and easy tool to use.
Stephen's craft talk started off with him telling members about the purpose of a directory. It used to be, in the past, when
people knew your name they looked you up in the White Pages directory. If they didn't know your name, they would look you up by category in the Yellow Pages directory. This is no longer the case, now we have online Search Engines and directories.
The internet is a means for telling people where to go to find the products and services they need/want. These people have
already made the decision to buy, so the only reason for them to use a directory is to find a product or service and if you are not in the directory you can't drive people to your website. The internet is an inbound mechanism and a business needs to be on one of the first pages or with someone who is on one of the first pages in order to get the most traffic to their site. Being a trusted resource for Google allows Ottawa Kiosk to offer this advantage to their clients. Working toward their goal of being a digital marketing partner, Ottawa Kiosk can give their clients not only access to new clients, but also to clients who are looking for a change.
Stephen spoke to members about how Ottawa Kiosk began as his business partner Craig's Masters project and then took off and steamrolled into what it is today. He outlined some of the services that Ottawa Kiosk can provide their clients including:
- Directory Listings
- Banner Advertising
- Email Newsletters
- Coupons
- Google Map Listings
- Google Analytics
- Videos
One of the interesting things that Ottawa Kiosk provides is the ability to track their client's listings and provide specific
statistics regarding traffic and inquires to the site. Once a listing has been set up by Ottawa Kiosk, they are able to
monitor it for their client or set up an admin page that can allow the client to make changes themselves. Clients can also look at adding additional pages or a coupon area and the listing now acts as a mini website.
Another of the services that Ottawa Kiosk offers their clients is the monitoring of social media accounts (Twitter, Facebook,
Linked-In etc.) and websites on their behalf. Stephen explained that by having someone monitoring your accounts it gives your company the benefit of having someone there to provide immediate feedback to your customers (i.e. - Thanking someone for their comment/business). It also allows you to have someone research or remove unfavourable feedback (i.e. - Negative or vulgar comments). Stephen was able to demonstrate this by showing members the online application, Google Places and providing examples of companies with negative comments that were outdated but still showing online, and unfavourable comments that were believed to have been posted by a competitor.
If you would like to learn more about Ottawa Kiosk and the services they offer, visit www.OttawaKiosk.com. Contact Stephen Lau at (613)288-9133 to find out about how Ottawa Kiosk can work for you.
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