Digital skills for small businesses

The Digital Skills Programme has now closed.

The campaign was launched to help show small businesses that doing more online can and will save them time and money, and that it can be done quickly and cheaply without IT expertise.

Superfast West Yorkshire held a number of free workshops inearly 2015 for SMEs in the Leeds City Region area.

Leading industry professionals hosted a series of workshops and classes all focusing on how to make the most of being online for business.

The final event was The Big Social Media SHow held in Leeds on 9th March which saw over 200 businesses attend. The event was held in partnership with Microsoft at Leeds Beckett University.

Take a look at our top tips for using social media in 2015 - we have created an infographic which you are more than welcome to share across your social networks.

The Superfast West Yorkshire Digital Skills fund is part of the national Digital Capabilities campaign (part of the Business is GREAT Britain campaign)which launched in late 2014 and is providing £2 million of funding to 22 Local Enterprise Partnerships across the UK to help small local businesses increase their digital presence

Top facts about why getting online is good for your business:

• Research released today shows that more than half of the public (55%) find it difficult to support local small firms because often these businesses aren’t online.

• Figures show that as many as 2 million (39%) sole traders and small companies are missing out on business because they have no online presence.

• Over half of customers (52%) go straight to search engines when looking to buy from local businesses, nearly double the number that ask for word-of-mouth recommendations.

Research compiled by Censuswide between 13-18 November 2014. 2,191 members of the public were polled as part of the research.

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