Tag Archive for: WordPress websites York Region

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5 Genius Facebook Marketing Ideas for Your Business

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Facebook marketing may seem tricky at first, but once you get the hang of it – you will be able to take your brand’s online presence to new heights in no time! Check out these 5 hacks which will help you generate traffic and successfully target the right people.

  1. Specify Your Target Market

Facebook allows a highly complex level of ad targeting and is undoubtedly one of the main reasons to be excited about Facebook marketing as a whole. You can target a specific group of people based on their exact language spoken, age, geographic location, hobbies, interests, # of kids, and so much more. Hopefully, you’ve already dedicated time and resources to analyzing your customer base and forming buyer personas. And now you can put those personas to use and advertise directly to the people that are most likely to be interested in your products or offerings.

  1. Target Your Existing Leads

Using Facebook’s ‘Custom Audiences’ feature, you can target leads you’ve captured from your newsletter signup or other lead generation efforts, or even a group of your current customers that you’re trying to upsell. In addition to focusing on insanely targeted audiences, you should also be creating ads for the clients/customers you already have, but in an even more personalized way. For example, if you have a list of people who downloaded a guide titled “Introduction to Building Your Own Website” – you can upload that list and target these people with a custom ad that discusses the next steps for taking their website to the next level.

  1. Clone Your Main Revenue-Generating Audience

Once you’ve acquired enough data, you can actually clone your top-performing Facebook audience! Facebook’s has a ‘Lookalike Audience’ feature which allows you to take an audience you already have and expand your reach by finding new leads that have similar characteristics. In other words, you can duplicate your best customers. It really is that easy! 

  1. Humanize Your Brand with Employee Photos

Facebook’s foundation is built on connecting people. The original intent of Facebook was to interact with friends, and not necessarily advertise your business, but it’s easy for digital marketers to forget this. Focusing solely on product-related messages will only take you so far. Showing the people behind the scenes will allow you to connect with your audience in a more relatable and human way.

  1. Make Effective Use of Emojis

According to AdWeek, 92% of online users use emojis, and frequent users feel emojis express their feelings more accurately than words. Emojis are kind of like dogs and babies – (almost) everyone loves them! In short, use emojis in your Facebook marketing posts to add personality and emotion to your text.

And there you have it! And you never know, by putting these 5 hacks to use – Facebook Advertising may soon become your fastest-growing marketing channel!

Questions? Get in Touch!

Until Next Time,

Deanna

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Top 5 Reasons to Start Using Instagram to Boost Your Business

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Instagram is an excellent tool to increase awareness, reach new customers and clients, network with industry professionals, and build your brand. On Instagram, you are in complete control of exactly how you want your brand to be represented online. If your business is not already on Instagram, these 5 reasons outlined below will surely give you the push you need!  

1. More people are using Instagram than ever before 

According to Hootsuite, Instagram has over 1 billion active users, 500 million of which use the platform daily. And what’s more – 38 percent of these users check the site multiple times a day. And with engagement on Instagram being 10 times higher than on Facebook, you don’t want to miss out on all those potential eyeballs on your business! 

2. Use stories to make your business more relatable 

The best way to show your customers/clients that you are more than just a faceless company, is to take full advantage of the app’s live posts, IGTV, stories, and highlights features. You have full creative freedom to choose what you post on here – you can show a behind the scenes look on how products are made, bits and pieces of your employee’s personal lives, live Q&A sessions – the possibilities are endless! Remember that live posts and stories are an excellent (and cheap!) way to build rapport, trust and credibility with followers, as well as show that there’s a human side to your business. 

3. Use hashtags & geotags to increase visibility 

As a start-up or existing small business, you may be intimidated by the competition, but with the proper use of hashtags and geotags, you are in full control of making your brand stand out from the crowd. Hashtags are essentially keywords that summarize what your post is saying. Also, many people will be able to find your business by searching up key words that relate to your product/service. It also helps Instagram show your content to users with similar interests.  

Geotags on the other hand help your posts reach a local audience – making it easier to network with those near you. Make sure you are tagging your physical location (if you have one) or the cities/towns you serve. You can also check in at local businesses and events to increase your visibility even more!

4. You can effectively and creatively engage with your customers

On Instagram you can connect with your followers daily through likes, comments, shares, and much more. The more likes and comments you get, the more visible your company becomes. You can get more likes by taking high-quality photos, using local hashtags, and partnering with other brands. Also, you can get super creative! Show the public that your brand has personality by mixing it up with contests, polls, vivid images, live videos, and more. 

5. Keep an eye on your competition

Your company can use Instagram to keep an eye on your competitors and see how they interact with their followers. Watch carefully to find out how often they post, what they are posting and how they engage with their followers. You can use the information you gather to better define your own personal strategy. 

BONUS Tip

How frequently you post also has a huge impact on building and maintaining your follower engagement. Here at Rosewood we firmly believe in quality over quantity. We strongly encourage posting engaging, original content 2-3 times a week rather than sharing filler posts or re-posts daily. Therefore, for our clients we typically post 3 to 7 times a week to effectively increase their visibility and following.

One final take away – more people are paying attention to Instagram than ever before, and you may be missing out on millions of potential customers/clients by not leveraging Instagram to boost your business. Take these 5 tips and use them to start building your Instagram presence today! 

Questions? Get in Touch! 

Until Next Time,

Deanna

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WordPress vs. Wix & Weebly

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If there is one question I get asked more than any other, it’s ‘Why WordPress?’

The simple answer; because it’s the best.

But, for those who like to know the Hows and Whys of things, here is the long version. Below is my breakdown for why I choose WordPress vs. Wix and Weebly, with as little boring technical jargon as possible.

The Benefits of WordPress

SEO:

WordPress allows for every page, post and image to be optimized for SEO. And it has tools that check your Readability and SEO scores on every page and blog post you create. Quality of code (below) also impacts your SEO.

Quality of Code:

The quality of code (the symbolic arrangement of data that makes computer programs run) matters, period.  For the most part, if you know what you’re doing, the theme you choose will have quality code. For more on this, see the negatives of WordPress.

Ease of Use by Clients:

Rosewood has researched a wide range of WordPress themes and narrowed it down to only those that have full customization options as well as an easy user interface.  We want all of our clients to at least have the opportunity to take over their own simple updates on a regular basis if they so choose.  We include basic training in our packages. However, our goal is that our websites make our clients so busy that they need to outsource back to us. It’s a win-win!

Open-Source:

WordPress is open-source (resources that have been designed to be publicly accessible and editable) and has been since is creation on May 27th, 2003.  Since then, developers from around the world have created plugins for basically every functionality you can dream of.  Some are free, and some are premium.  The only real issue that arises is that you really need to do your homework before committing to a plugin.

APIs (Application Programming Interface)

Here’s where we get a little technical.  An API is “a software-to-software interface that enables two applications to exchange data among each other.” (source). Because WordPress is open-source and the platform is world-wide, WordPress has tons of APIs; meaning almost everything integrates with it. From MailChimp to PayPal, to Stripe and Salesforce. Whatever you need, someone has most likely already created the API for it.

The Benefits of Wix & Weebly

Ease of Use:

Wix and Weebly knew they couldn’t compete with WordPress on most levels, so they really went after the simplicity component.  Wix and Weebly are so simple, anyone can use them.  But what I always say is, just because you have a website, doesn’t mean anyone can find it.

Quick & Simple

You can have a Wix/Weebly site up within a few days by yourself.  These sites are best suited for people who just need a website as a passive portfolio.  These sites will rarely actively find leads for you.

The Negatives of WordPress

Quality of Code:

Not all websites are built the same, and not even all WordPress sites are built the same.  Some themes (which is the core layout design of your website) have terrible code quality and rank poorly in Google.  This in turn reflects poorly on your SEO.

That is why it is critical to really know what you’re doing and do your research. Rosewood VA stays up to date with theme developments and updates to see which ones are the best for visual performance as well as code quality.  Currently we have narrowed it down ONE SINGLE THEME!  But hey, if something better comes along, you bet we’ll know about it first!

Complexity:

New clients are often hesitant when I recommend WordPress because they’ve heard it’s hard to use and requires custom coding knowledge.  This USED to be true.  WordPress five years ago was no where near as sophisticated as it is now.  Like I say, if you know what you’re doing or have someone to get you started in the right direction, WordPress can be wonderful.

Cost:

Having a website developed by a professional is not cheap.  In the same way that having professional photography is not cheap. However, what really matters at the end of the day is your ROI (Return on Investment).  You need to determine what that ROI is for your business. If you invested X amount in your website, how many leads/sales through that site are required for you to break even and then start turning a profit?  I know that with WordPress you will get there faster than with Wix or Weebly, even with those options being free.

The Negatives of Wix & Weebly

SEO:

With Wix & Weebly you have almost ZERO SEO.  From experience, new clients have come to me with Wix and Weebly sites that they have built themselves. They look okay, but they don’t rank well at all in Google.  And that’s even with them contributing to a regular blog.  These platforms just don’t have what it takes regarding Keywords and Performance needed for Google/Bing SEO scores. And no one wants to end up twelve pages down in a Google search.

Limited Integrations:

Wix and Weebly, and even the free Blogger version of WordPress, do not have the capacity for integrations with specialized applications. Developers haven’t invested the time and resources to create these integrations. You may get basic functionality, but it can be difficult if you want to set up sales funnels, opt-in-offers, etc.

It is clear from the above list why I recommend WordPress over Wix & Weebly. However, regardless of which platform you choose, it’s more important to do your research when deciding which company to work with.  Web design involves trusting a company to not only build a beautiful, engaging website but also to achieve your business goals for that website. Good website design should be beautiful and functional!

Watch for my upcoming blog featuring questions you should be asking your current or potential web developer before entering an agreement. The web design process should be fun! And my goal is to educate and take the stress out of the project, so you can enjoy the journey!

If you’d like to discuss your website needs with us, or for more tips like these you can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Don’t forget to sign up for our monthly newsletter as well for more education and inspiration!

Deanna

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