Web-savvy business owners in N.B. hold free event tonight at Studio 700

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You may not know it, but people are probably talking about your business right now online. Good service or bad, great product or not, they can write their review online -- on a blog, personal website, message board or via any number of social networking sites. And anyone with computer access around the globe can potentially read it.

Greg Agnew/Times & Transcript

Third Tuesday events have grown in popularity across the continent and the New Brunswick chapter is no different. It began recently with about 12 web-savvy business owners based in Moncton, Fredericton and Saint John, including Dan Martell, seen here. Now the group is opening its doors to other business owners and marketing companies.

"That's the thing people don't realize -- they have a reputation and a brand online that may be totally different from what they think it should be," says Dan Martell, director of e-business for Spheric, a web integration company based in Moncton. "People are talking about them."

It's perhaps not something small business owners in New Brunswick think about too much while they're busy just trying to keep their businesses afloat. Between stocking shelves, paying employees and simply trying to deal with anyone that walks in your door, spreading word of your company online might not be at the top of the priority heap.

That is something a group of like-minded and independent business owners like Martell hope to fix for local businesses at a gathering tonight in Moncton.

Third Tuesday Social Media Setup events have grown in popularity across the continent and the New Brunswick chapter is no different. It began recently with about 12 web-savvy business owners based in Moncton, Fredericton and Saint John and now the group is opening up its doors to other business owners and marketing companies.

Third Tuesdays are events where business owners can discuss marketing trends online, to keep up with the times and to make sure their companies remain innovative. Usually these events are held on -- you guessed it -- the third Tuesday of each month, but tonight's event was delayed a week.

Tonight's event, to be held at Studio 700 on Main Street at 7:15 p.m., is open to any small business or marketing company. Instead of just gathering to chat, short presentations are also planned to teach companies how to take advantage of the many opportunities that exist online.

"My thing about New Brunswick is, I live here, so I have this interest," Martell explains. "But most of the time, I have to jump on a plane to go to a conference to learn about this stuff, but there are experts locally that do this but there's no platform for us to talk to people about (it)."

Business owners will learn about promoting their businesses via social media such as Facebook, blogs, audio/visual podcasts and more.

"What we're going to do is teach (businesses) the new way of marketing which, I mean, in the old days we went from word-of-mouth, newspapers, TV and then online, but the problem is that today's online marketing is way different than it was five years ago," Martell explains.

"Small businesses struggle just to get online and now because there's so much content, there's like a million or billion pages created every day on Google, you're not going to be found. We're going to show them how we've helped these large companies launch new products and brands and monitor it."

Several of the dozen or so businesses involved in the Third Tuesday New Brunswick chapter help Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. integrate themselves online. Martell works for Spheric, which is based in Moncton, but the company's clients are all from east of Toronto or from the United States.

Martell says about 150 businesspeople have already registered for tonight's event, though registration isn't necessary to attend. The presentations from tonight's event will be posted on YouTube so that the lessons can be learned by others or revisited later.

Martell says the goal is to reach small business owners and marketing companies because "that's who needs to hear this most."

"People don't even realize what Google says about you," he says. "You ask the normal small business, 'When is the last time you searched for Joe's Plumbing on Google and what did it say?' You don't even know that there's a customer that had a bad experience and told the whole world."

It may sound daunting -- there are a lot of websites you can spread your name on, but Martell says once you immerse yourself in the web world, it's pretty easy to keep up to date.

"From a time point of view and all that, it's really not much work," he says. "There's free systems online to do it so it doesn't cost anything, you just need to be aware and then just go through the checklist."

n Third Tuesday Social Media Setup takes place tonight at 7:15 p.m. at Studio 700 at 700 Main St. Admission is free. Doors open at 6 p.m. and food and beverages will be available.