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Here’s Why Hashtags are Essential For Social Media Growth

Here's why hashtags are essential for social media growth, with a woman working on a computer sitting on the side of a huge hashtag graphic.

Putting out great content but getting minimal post interactions? This could be because you are using the wrong hashtags! When Instagram first launched, they were the #butt of all jokes. Now, they can make or break your social media strategy. Hashtags can be used in a variety of different ways. That’s why it is important to be able to have a variety of relevant one’s. They are a great way to directly interact with new people within your community. Maybe it means following specific ones, or using them for strategic growth, such as the $1.80 method, (we have a blog all about this method! ) or having your target audience find you through them. Here are our top three ways you should be using hashtags on your posts:

Industry Hashtags: 

Not every industry is going to be using the same hashtags. A Chef most likely won’t use #makeupguru and a lawyer will probably not use #DIY. Choosing one’s that are unique to your industry helps to gear your content to your targeted audience. Having a baseline of seven to ten industry based hashtags can help broaden your content’s reach. When choosing hashtags that are relevant try to find some that fit into a few different aspects of your industry. A great way to find these hashtags, is to see what top accounts in your industry are using. 

Branding:

Using hashtags specific to your brand is a great way to have your clients and industry interact with your social media. Some great branding examples are brands like; Coca-Cola- #ShareACoke, KitKat- #MyBreak and Calvin Klein with #MyCalvins. As a business owner on social media, you can create your own to include in your posts. You can also encourage your clients to use them while they post about you and your business. Another great way to use hashtags and branding is for  promotions or giveaways, you can include promotion specific hashtags to get your audience excited. 

Localization: 

Businesses that cater to specific areas or regions can really benefit from using location based hashtags. Using these will help to gear your content to your targeted audience geographically. Using location based hashtags can also help to ensure that you are getting clients that you can actually service. As an owner of a landscaping business, you may use #toronto #yorkregion #GTA. By using this combination, it will help show people who stumble on one of your posts what area you cater to. This has proven successful in ensuring time and resources are better spent targeting relatable audiences . Adding locations to the end of your branding hashtag is a great tip for businesses that have multiple locations! 

All in all, hashtags are a great way to help gear your content to the correct audience and help you enhance your social media as a business tool. There are great tools out there such as buffer.com that can help you keep track of your social media growth, and even tell you what your top hashtags are. Using tools like this can help you adjust what ones to use, that way you can maximize your reach and grow your social account even more! 

Whether you are using hashtags to specify your location, raise brand awareness or create a presence in your community, they will always provide you with a wider audience reach than when not using them. So the next time you’re liking a photo, take a moment to see what hashtags they’re using, sometimes you may be surprised.

If you have questions about your social media strategy, book a complimentary introduction call with Rosewood today!

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Make your Website Faster: The Importance of Website Speed & Performance

Graphic of "How to make your website faster"

Website speed is the number one determining factor for if a visitor will actually see your website. You already did the hard work of directing them to it. Don’t lose out on potential business by having a website that takes over 2 seconds to load.

Here are our recommendations for testing your website’s speed and then improving it.

Checking your website speed 

Web Page Test is a great free tool that you can use right now to check the speed of your site. 

Google Page Speed Insights is also an industry favourite. Just enter your website’s URL and it will calculate the speed for you. 

Are images slowing your website’s speed? 

Oversize images can drastically slow down the speed of your site. A good rule of thumb is that graphic files should be PNGs while image files should be JPEGs. If your images and graphic files aren’t right, then you can always upload them into Canva, and re-download them as the correct file. 

Another great way to change the type of file is by using a file converter, you can find a bunch of these on Google. Rosewood uses Converter & Bulk Resizer

Clearing your Website’s Cache

A cache is a storage location that collects temporary data to help websites, apps and browsers load faster. So when someone is returning to your website, it will load faster, since the cache automatically stored a bunch of useful information about your site on their first visit. Clearing your cache will help to increase your website speed. A great tool to use is SEO Site Checkup, it is free and will check your site’s cache for you.

Outdated Software, Plugins & Apps

Outdated software such as the core wordpress environment, or supporting plugins could also be another reason why your website has slowed down. If you don’t have the time to make these updates yourself, let Rosewood do it for you! Contact us to find out about our Maintenance plans. 

Website speed is a critical determining factor for who actually sees your website content. People won’t wait around for ever. Make sure your website loads quickly, fully and securely for potential visitors.  Your potential clients, and Google, will appreciate it! 

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Why Every Business Should Have a Blog (Following Best Practices!)

Man reading a blog about hiring a PPC Ads Manager in Newmarket

Last week we talked about content repurposing, and how you can turn one blog post into multiple pieces of content. This time, we wanted to talk about why your business should have a blog

There are two aspects to why you should be posting blogs: Technical and Business. 

Technical Reasons For Why You Should Have A Blog

There are two very important technical reasons why you should have a blog: Increase Your Organic SEO (i.e. Impress Google), and Backlinking.

  1. Increase Organic SEO, i.e. impress Google’s algorithms and backlinking. 
    Blogging is effectively the single best way to increase your website’s organic SEO. Your SEO, also known as “Search Engine Optimization”, determines your ranking in Search Engines for relevant search terms.

    When blogging, you can write in a way that boosts your SEO score, that allows both your blog and your website to appear closer, if not at the top of the results page while Googling. This is how you impress Google’s algorithms. Google wants to show the search results that are the most recent and most relevant to the search inquiry. Examples of ways to write to impress Google’s algorithms is to include focused key words. This blog is full of them! Can you guess what they are? 
  1. Backlinking
    Backlinking is essentially any time another reputable website publishes a link to your website. This could be as supplementary info to their blog (i.e. check out so-and-so’s blog for more information!).

    The more people that find your blogs useful and link it to their website, the better your website will perform overall. This is great motivation to not only write blogs that are good for your SEO, but also enjoyable and informational to the reader. 

Business Reasons For Why You Should Have A Blog

There are three business-related reasons why you should be blogging regularly: establish your business as the expert, resonate with readers via real-world applications/case studies and create content to be redistributed on other platforms.

  1. Establish Your Business as the Expert:
    Sharing your knowledge, industry news, tips and tricks, or even news about your business through effective blogging gives you the opportunity to have your clients, customers and industry peers recognize you as an expert in your industry. 
  1. Anecdotes, Case Studies and Projects
    By sharing anecdotes, case studies and projects, you’re allowing the reader an inside view into your operations. They may even touch on issues the reader is experiencing and outline a solution to their own problem. By blogging, you are resonating with your readers. 
  1. Repurpose Valuable Content Quickly & Efficiently
    Blogs allow for a wealth of content to be redistributed with a few extra clicks. You can quote your blog and turn snippets into Canva Graphics. Then post these on your Social Media and backlink to your blog (See what we did there?!) 

Overall, blogging is a great way to drive traffic to your website, which in return will help increase brand awareness and conversions (contact inquiries and/or e-commerce sales). We understand that blogging can be a daunting task, especially if you are learning on how to improve your SEO. Here at Rosewood, we offer blogging services for all business levels, whether it’s needing help improving your SEO or because you don’t have the time to blog, we have you covered. If you are interested in blogging, let’s get in touch!  

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