Tips and Tricks

Lead Generation: What You Need to Get Your Campaign Started

Virtually every business out there is looking for new customers. Whether your team is actively pursuing them through advertising and marketing, or you’ve cooled off on promotional tactics due to the challenges of COVID-19 – the importance of continuously building out your pool of potential customers (often referred to as ‘leads’) is crucial. One great way to reach new leads is by building out a lead generation campaign. What is lead generation? ‘Lead generation’ is a process whereby businesses take action to look for prospective customers, often referred to as “leads”. Rather than relying on walk-ins to your physical location, or search traffic to your website, embarking on lead generating actions is a way…
Asking for Online Reviews is the #1 Marketing Action We Recommend Right Now!

Your business operations may not be ‘business as usual’ right now due to the COVID-19, but that doesn’t mean it’s time to stop promoting your products and services. While there’s no denying that sales have declined in many industries, others are in a prime position to take advantage of pivots in customer behaviour, like increased content consumption, higher volume of online purchases and stronger desire to find businesses close to home. So what do we suggest? Reaching out to customers to ask for online reviews is the #1 action we are recommending to all organizations – especially small businesses. Rather than fade into the background because…
The benefits of integrating your blog with your website

We recently wrote about the advantages of blogging using your own domain as opposed to the URL given to you by a free service like WordPress.com or Blogger. If you are blogging to support your business (which we’d advise nearly every business to consider), you’ll want to go further by integrating your blog and your website. There are four main benefits of having your blog a part of your website: Show what your company is all about. While your site may have an “about” page, your blog posts help to further and more convincingly convey your expertise, corporate values, character,…
WordPress and Web Accessibility

The YYZ is a Nice Place to Be It’s fair to say that the city of Toronto is reasonably accessible. You can access any major retailer, access restaurants, major sporting events, concerts, and most other public places. Wheel-Trans can even get you there for the same price as the regular TTC cash fare. I must say that Wheel-Trans is probably the best thing the TTC has done in a while. Yes, even the TTC can do some good once in a while. It’s Called the World Wide Web! Let’s Not Leave Anyone Out We should give ourselves a pat on…
Creating a Brand Online: Choosing a Domain Name

Trying to understand how your small business can become online friendly? Our “Creating a Brand Online” series is designed to provide straightforward advice for your small business as you create your online brand. Many companies and individuals serious about their brand decide to register a domain name – typically in the form of “yourname.com”. This domain name can be used to point to a website, and used at the end of email addresses. Basically, a great domain name can be memorable and create a unified brand identity. For those of you new to domains, we don’t say “buy” a domain name because you…
Automated Twitter Updates for WordPress: 5 Steps to Make Great Tweets with WP to Twitter

When you publish new content to your blog, don’t wait for people to just stumble on it – tell your followers on Twitter and other social media channels about it! If you don’t have a lot of time, there are some great ways to automatically send out a Tweet the instant you publish a new blog post. We’ve been using a WordPress plugin called “WP to Twitter”, which lets you customize how your tweets appear, making them more appealing, and able to be found in the Twitterverse. WP to Twitter needs special access to the Twitter application, and requires you…
5 Ways to Apply Strategy to Your Online Content

“Content is king,” is an old adage that remains true in the Internet age, an age which has more or less become defined by the proliferation of content. But not all content is created equal. This is where content strategy comes into play. Content strategy helps provide a purpose to an organization’s website, blog posts, online videos, and social media updates. Content strategist Kristina Halvorson in Content Strategy for the Web, writes: “Creating useful, usable content requires user research, strategic planning, meaningful metadata, web writing skills, and editorial oversight. It requires people. With experience. And insights. And judgement. It requires…
Feeding the Viral Loop: 9 Ways To Make Content More Sharable

Having people share your content is vital to increasing its reach and popularity because it helps introduce new people to your content. Like many of the things we learned in kindergarten, however, sharing is an essential skill, and one that adults often neglect. Because sharing is also central to the spread of online content like blog posts, videos, and applications, it’s important to encourage your audience to share your content. Like many of the things we learned in kindergarten, however, sharing is an essential skill, and one that adults often neglect. Because sharing is also central to the spread of…
6 ways to become unlikable: Is your Facebook Page alienating your friends?

Facebook Pages are great for keeping your company’s fans updated on the latest developments, promotions, and information about your company and industry. Visitors who click the “Like” button on your Page will be able to see posts from your Facebook Page when they access their Facebook timeline. “If you build it, they will come” doesn’t necessarily apply to a Facebook Page. Even if it does, your fans will grow tired of your Facebook Page if being a friend doesn’t benefit them. In this post, we explain some ways in which you could be ruining your Facebook Page, and weakening your friendships.…
Don’t lose your domain: Tips to keep your domain safe

Losing your domain is a big deal for any site owner. A client of ours recently had their domain expire because they didn’t renew their domain, leaving them without email or a working website. As anyone can imagine, this can have a devastating effect on your business and productivity. Usually, someone will notice that their website is down and figure out that they have to renew their domain name contract, and after it expires there’s usually a period when you can get it back. However, after this period, which typically lasts anywhere from two weeks to 30 days, your domain is up…
Carousels: Rotating your featured webpages to help turn heads

You cannot count on website visitors to scroll to find your content, so why not scroll your content for them? You can do this using what are known as “sliders” or “carousels”. Like their fairground counterparts, website carousels rotate — but rather than moving model horses and unicorns — they move images and links. Bell Canada is one of many major businesses that uses changing images to draw attention to its various initiatives. A carousel is actually a standard application that you’ve likely seen when visiting high-profile sites. For instance, telecom company Bell Canada features a carousel prominently on their…
The Path to Accessibility: Six AODA Questions to Ask Your Web Developer

With about 15 per cent of the world’s population living with some form of disability (pdf), accessibility is increasingly becoming an issue that cannot be ignored when, for instance, hosting an event or planning a building, yet it’s still often an afterthought for websites. (Updated January 2018) In an effort to simplify the process of making a website accessible, the W3 Consortium (W3C) set out to provide a set of recommendations to make Web content more usable by everyone in its Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. An accessible site should work with normal browsers and assistive software like screenreaders and talking…