Get started on BT Tradespace for businesses

If you’re a business and you’re new to BT Tradespace then you’re in the right place! We are a community of people who want to buy from, and sell to people they know and trust. Our website gives you the tools you need to build trust and bring your business to life so you can promote your products and services, grow your network of customers and contacts and sell effectively.

Four good reasons to join BT Tradespace are:

1. Get noticed

It only takes a few steps to create a Tradespace and make your products and services easy to find, browse and buy. Plus, we’ve made it simple to upload and display content that search engines and visitors love so use your Tradespace to bring your business to life with images, videos and news.

2. Get more traffic

Your Tradespace is designed to help drive traffic and customers from search to you. Use your Tradespace as your sole business website or use it to promote your own website.

3. Get more leads

Face to face networking is great, but can be limited and time consuming. Now you can build online word of mouth. Simply update your Tradespace regularly, participate in the communities and watch your network grow. With customer testimonials and recommendations from businesses you can benefit from doing what comes naturally.

4. Sell more products and services

Your Tradespace gives you a location map, inbox, address book and visit us/contact us buttons as standard while letting you showcase your business with news, video, images, galleries and more… Plus, if you want to sell, all you have to do is set up your free online shop and/or bookings calendar.

Heard enough? Here’s a guide to getting started on BT Tradespace

Step 1: Sign up

[If you've already signed up, you might want to skip to step 2]

1. Click on the ‘Sign up’ link.
   You’ll find this in the top right-hand corner of the screen.
2. Click on ‘Create my business account’.
   Set up your free account to sell stuff, promote your business and make new contacts.
3. Enter your details.
   You’ll need to make sure you fill in all boxes that are marked with a pink asterisk.

There are three steps to signing up.

Step 1: Account details

• Enter your first and last name. (These details are kept private.)
• Type and confirm your email address. This is the address you’ll need for log in, so make sure it’s right!
• Type your password. The bar’s colour will change to tell you its strength (you’ll need at least orange for it to work).
• Now retype your chosen password.
• Enter a promotional code (if you have one).
• Tell us a little bit about yourself (only if you like!).
• Read and agree to our Terms & conditions.
• Check/uncheck the boxes to set what emails you’d like to receive from BT.
• Type the two texts you see in the box, using a space to separate each. Type exactly what you see – with numbers, capitals and lowercase to match the example. If you can’t read the text, click on the arrows to change the words.
• Click on ‘Continue’.

Step 2: Business details
You can check the ‘don’t display’ boxes to control what info displays on your Tradespace.

• Select your country.
• Enter your postcode and address. (Use ‘Find address’ after entering your postcode to save time.)
• Enter your business name. This will appear at the top of your Tradespace.
• Type in the URL you’d like for your Tradespace. If it’s taken, you’ll need to add letters or numbers to make it unique. We’ll suggest alternatives to help!
• Enter your business email address, then your phone and fax number with no spaces between.
• Upload a logo or image to display at the top of your Tradespace. For best results, the image should be at least 136 x136 pixels.
• To upload, click on ‘Find file’, then browse to the image on your computer. Select the image and it will automatically upload to the Media editor. You’ll see a thumbnail of your image (used for search results) which you can edit here. You can also add keywords and a title before you ‘Save’.
• Enter a title for your homepage. Use your keywords here e.g. Furniture removal company.
• Enter your strapline: sum up your business in one sentence.
• Enter your business description: write a few sentences about your business. This will appear on your Tradespace homepage and is one of the first things potential customers will see.
• Choose a colour for your Tradespace.
• Click on ‘Continue’.

Step 3: Keywords and communities

• Enter at least one keyword to describe your business. Think carefully about your keywords – they’re how people will find your business when they search BT Tradespace. Use words and phrases potential customers might use when looking for your products and services.
• You’ll now see list of communities that match your keywords.
• If you like what you see, click ‘Join’ [or 'Add' to join]. This means you’ll receive updates from the community when someone adds a post or new members join. Communities are a great way to start building your reputation on BT Tradespace.
• Click on ‘Continue’ ['Create profile'].

All that’s left to do is activate your account!

4. Go to the inbox for your email address from Step 1.

There will be an activation email from BT Tradespace. Open this email. Now click on the link in the message. (Don’t forget to check your junk mail folder for this message.)

5. Welcome
That’s it! Your Tradespace is ready to view and update.

Bonus step
Now’s your chance to let your contacts know that you’ve signed up. Invite them to view your Tradespace and perhaps join you on the website!

To create your network of contacts:

Click on ‘Add new contacts’ to create your network.
There are three ways to add new contacts to your network:

• Search BT Tradespace and find fellow Tradespacers to add to your network.
• Import contacts from your favourite networks.
• Add contacts manually by typing in their first and last names and email address.

As you add contacts, they will appear in the A to Z.

Finished adding your contacts? Click ‘Save new contacts’ or you’ll lose this info!

Success! Now you’re ready to add contacts to your message list:

• Click on the arrow ‘>’ to add contacts to ‘Selected contacts’.
• Scroll down and type your message in the box.
• Click ‘Announce’. This will send your message to your contacts. You’ll also be able to use this list in the future to announce key updates like adding a shop or online bookings service to your Tradespace.

Step 2: Enhance your Tradespace

When you first sign up you sign up to a basic Tradespace, so your Tradespace acts as a listing with only a few features. If you really want to get results from BT Tradespace, we always recommend you enhance your Tradespace for free. By enhancing your Tradespace, you can

• personalise it with a back ground header image
• add more information about your business and publish your news and views
• set up a  shop
• list your services and take bookings online
• create galleries with images and video to showcase your products and services
• Activate your free customer service community to be able to offer first class service!

Enhance your Tradespace now by logging into your dashboard and clicking on the link in the introduction or watch the video on how to do so!

Step 3: Manage your activities

Remember, your dashbaord is your one stop shop to managing everything you do on BT Tradespace. To view your dashboard simply click on the ‘My Tradespace’ link at the top of the screen to go to it. The initial things you will be is a snapshot of messages in your inbox, your transactions, your bookings, and your recent activity. However you can click into each of the following tabs to manage relevant activities.

Inbox: To manage all your messages and the testimonials you receive

Contacts: You can import your contacts list into your BT Tradespace address book, or add them manually. The importance of your contacts list is that you can choose to send annoucement messages everytime you update somethign on your Tradespace so don’t miss out driving traffic back to your site.

Transactions: You can get a view of all the things you’ve bought and sold here. This will indicate whether users are liking what they see on your Tradespace, so if you haven’t sold enough – get cracking on updating that Tradespace!

Network: Your network is key to building and growing your business. It’s about your reputation and driving traffic to your site. This section will show you all the people who have become a fan of your business (and can receive your activity updates) and people you have linked to or become a fan of. The more relevant poeple you link to the more of a player you become!

Communities: If you put in relevant keywords when you signed up, you should’ve seen communities that already exist for you to join. If nothing came up, you can use this area to create a new community or two depending on what you want to chat about. You can also manage your users and see other communities you’ve joined here.

News: Your news and posts area is effectively like a blog. We dont’ have comments, but why not publish your blog posts or write new ones here?

Favourites: Favourites right now shows your fans and businesses you like but we want to grow this to contain your wishlist of products, services, communties – so watch this space!

Manage your Tradespace: Probably the most important area of all! You can update your Tradespace homepage, change your About us descriptions, approve or disappove of testimonials people have left for you, set up a shop to list your products, set up your services area to do the same and create galleries to show off your stuff with images and video! Phew!

That’s your whistlestop guide to getting started as a business on BT Tradespace. Have a look at some of these guides for more help and don’t forget to visit/subscribe to our blog to keep up to date with all the news from us on BT Tradespace and how social media can help your business!

Take care and enjoy BT Tradespace!