3 years of being visible online, why you should join BT Tradespace
Happy anniversary to me 
or should that be to us?
Today is the 3rd anniversary of me and our same day courier business being more visible online. OK, make that being found at last online.
Today is the anniversary of day I discovered BT Tradespace and without them, I wouldn’t know any of the bloggers here, would never have got a Facebook fanpage, would never have joined Ecademy and met more of you, never started my own blogs, never joined twitter, never did any offline networking events for Business Scene, never taught twitter and never got so much more work for our business.
On the face of it BT Tradespace changed the way that I worked, how I interacted and how I joined in, in their community, and their community is one of the safest places on the web, no flaming, advice, support and help for small businesses. To say I like the place is an understatement For us the benefits have been tremendous.
So why don’t more people join BT Tradespace?
In the early days as the site grew it was clunky and slow. The Tech team were on the case and there have been several upgrades and then late 2010 the site had a complete re-vamp. I was fortunate enough to be invited to London to see the plans in the early stages, and what I saw was mind blowing. The new site was very visual and fully optimised for video
The Tradespace team have regular meetings with Google and other major players in the online world, this means their site is fully supportive of the ways of getting you more visibility on line, getting found in more search engine searches and ready to support your business. There are now spaces to optimise your blogs, your images etc and as the online world evolves, the site adapts.
A few people have said they have never got the site to work for them, and then proudly showed me their Tradespace site. There were no images, no news updates (hey! I liked them being called blogs! ) and no services added in the services section. Of course it’s going to do nothing, there’s nothing to see and nothing for customers and search engines to find! It works just like your website, if there is nothing on it – it won’t get found.
In getting to know the BT Tradespace team I have got to know more people within BT and have had lovely chats with their researchers, and my rotweiller fell in love with one of them . You get to know the people behind the products and their motivations and their passions, and many at Bt Tradespace are passionate about communication across the web. They really get involved with their community and encourage and support their community, so it saddens me when I hear people moan about them without knowing the people.
And they do moan, one person I know has such a huge grudge against BT as it should be a nationalised product, that they won’t join the Tradespace site and all he does is bitch about them. How on earth can he decide whether the site is useful or not if he doesn’t have a presence?
It’s hard for people to separate BT and BT Tradespace, Tradespace is a small team in a large corporate company.
So if you are going to do one thing today, I suggest you hop over to Tradespace and add something to your site there, add some images – the site is very visual, add a service or two and some news. But don’t sit back and wait, every few days add another image, another blog post. And keep doing it and three years down the line you will be writing about what it’s done for you, but it is a partnership and you have to do your bit to get results
Remember, if I can gain success as a transport business, and let’s face it moving goods isn’t very sexy, then what can your business gain?
If you would like to comment about your experience please do, include a link to your Tradespace.
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About Sarah ArrowSarah Arrow is the managing editor of Birds on the Blog, in real life she is the communications director of a same day courier service. She is an enthusiastic UK based pro-blogger and co- author of the soon to be published Zero to Blogger
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9 Responses to 3 years of being visible online, why you should join BT Tradespace
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hi Sarah. I couldn't agree more. At the end of the day, I loved BT Tradespace because it gives you a leg to stand on – for nothing… it may not be perfect but it's come a long way and the platform offers you some pretty nifty tools to get out there. Why look a gift horse in the mouth? Ride it and see how far/fast it can take you. … Which reminds me – must put time in the diray to get my own Tradespace put and running!
B
It's opened so many doors for me and gave us a real good online presence
I know the site doesn't feature for a lot of people when it comes to internet marketing but based purely on results, it's outperformed every single other site I belong to.
Along the way I have met such great people including fellow Birds, you and Elaine. I thought to myself the other day I used to talk about them so much and now I have so little time! A few blogs were in order to say how much I value them (the team) and the site.
Hadn't clocked that you were on BT Tradespace before you joined Eek.
I had technical problems when I first joined BT T which meant the site didn't recognise me for a while – I think it was a couple of months! Yes it was clunky – I suspect that being part of BT has been a double edged sword for the Tradespace team as the punters' reaction is understandably likely to be along the lines of : “Well throw some more money at it, then and make it smoother…”
The folk there were, and always have been as helpful as they could be within their abilities and remit. Yet maybe because it wasn't a very intuitive site to navigate and get to know people, I, for one, have never really concentrated enough sustained effort to say whether it's likely to be a viable platform for me.
Maybe it's time for another go… That means looking for account name, password, …. and no, I'm not moaning…
Twitter: Linda_Mattacks
Yes a good four months before Ecademy came on the scene, was introduced to it via another member that I met a ski-ing networking event at the IET, she made it sound very exclusive… really she did
Sarah, I am one of those that dip in and out mostly because I don't quite understand how it works. Thanks for the heads up, will make more of an effort
Interesting post Sarah. I looked at BT Tradespace a couple of yrs ago and found it to be clunky. But perhaps it's time to take another look.
A lot has gone on since then Dan, but if we talk results, £ for £ this is the network that has earned the most for my business. I have to diversify my interests across the web as it would be easy to become to dependent on just my Tradespace, well have two and several more in the offing