Tag: Web Toaster

Hey, Have You Heard About Influencer Marketing?

Posted on January 31, 2017 by BTI Admin - Content, Marketing, Tips & Tricks

Influencer marketing: a key component of business and sales which has been around for a very long time, is slowly evolving into a much more accessible platform due to the emergence of social media. Typical influencer marketing is the process of targeting key customer influencers, and hiring them as advocates for your business. This marketing avenue selects specific individuals that are influential towards the focal business’s target market.

The Good

Often, key influencers have an extremely broad reach, as well as creative campaigns that drive sales and benefit both your business and theirs. When working with an influencer that shares values and interests with your brand, you are directly communicating with a relevant audience that shares similar interests with your brand as well. Additionally, influencer marketing has a positive effect on your SEO, the more links that are shared for your website, the better your SEO becomes. Established influencers have been around for quite a while, so partnerships can not only boost ROI, but also boost the credibility of your brand. If viewers or followers believe in their influencers and trust their opinion, endorsements of your brand will not be taken lightly. Finally, influencer marketing’s most profitable benefit: it requires little work on your part. That’s right, when you sign up to partner with an influencer, the campaigns, man hours, and dedication to promote your product are mostly on their end. Of course, your responsibility continues to be micromanaging the campaign remotely, but with an influencer, you can remain out of the spotlight, while your ambassador promotes your brand for you.

The Bad

Influencer marketing’s main criticism is the risk involved in selecting the right influencer. Unfortunately, there is an opportunity for error in picking the ideal influencer, and given the nature of mass media, unless your product or service directly correlates with the values and purpose of your influencer’s channel, page, or feed, you will be reaching out to a sizeable audience that might not care for your business at all. This being said, the problem can be eliminated or the risk may be reduced through heavy research and strategizing prior to launching your campaign. The good news is that Web Toaster’s team of marketing and brand specialists are fully equipped to handle your business’s influencer marketing all on our own! Rapidly expand your brand through influencers in any medium, including (but not limited to) Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and Instagram.

The Bottom Line

All things considered, influencer marketing is the way of the future. Given how accessible the internet is, social media has allowed us to leverage the popularity and influence of individuals all over the world, and use them as a marketing outlet. This process not only benefits you as a business, but a strong relationship will have a positive outcome for your influencer as well. Despite the arduous research and strategizing, influencer marketing can result in a very high ROI if implemented correctly, and Web Toaster would love to help you get started today!

What Is Social Media Marketing?

Posted on January 5, 2017 by BTI Admin - Social Media, Tips & Tricks, Website Design

Is there really a problem with social media marketing? Do you question whether the time, money, and effort you put into social media nurturing is worth it? We believe there is a HUGE problem with social media: the term itself.

“Social media” is an umbrella term that incorporates dozens of websites and apps, each with unique features, benefits, and drawbacks. The problem is that all of these unique platforms are being grouped together and companies feel that in order to have a successful social media presence, they need to be involved in every social media platform. This stems from the rise of social media in 2006, when to say “social media presence” meant being involved with Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter, which were all of the major platforms. However, over the past 8 years, there has been rapid growth in the social media industry and dozens of apps and websites now fall under the term, but many marketers are stuck in 2006, when it was the norm to participate in all of them.

How is this a problem? A simple rule of economics is that specialization is necessary for an efficient and profitable economy – the same holds true for social media.

These problems may occur when involved in an excessive amount of platforms:

1) Unique Customer Relevant Content – Customer Presence = Poor Following

You may be providing unique, customer-targeted content for each platform, and spending a lot of time to do so, but since your customer presence may not be strong in all these platforms, the returns and following generated from your efforts and investment may not meet expectations.

2) Reusing = Irrelevant = Inconsistent Following

Another alternative is that you are saving time by posting the same content on multiple platforms, however, customers use different platforms with different expectations. For example, the same post may be very successful on Facebook but irrelevant on Twitter, making your Twitter presence and following suffer.

3) Platform Relevant Content – Customer Relevant = High Following

A third possibility is that you have a strong following in all your social media platforms, and have spent a lot of your budget in doing so. However, the demographics and content of different platforms vary greatly. In this situation, it is likely that content was created to match the audience on each social media channel, rather than to match the company’s target audience. Though following will be high, this does not translate into business because the content is not targeted at your potential customers.

So what is the solution? Strategic social media nurturing! Brands should treat their social media strategy the same way they’d treat any other marketing communication tool. Research each individual platform and strategically plan your approach. Consider the following for each platform: who is the target audience? What are the strengths and weaknesses? What are its unique offerings? Where are your competitors? Can you realistically provide effective content on that platform?

For a great example of effective targeted social media use, look at Apple, who for years only nurtured Twitter accounts. Apple recently joined Tumblr because they felt that Tumblr “separates itself from a creative standpoint”. They specifically use this account to advertise their iPhone 5c because its target audience matches up with Tumblr’s audience; 56% of Tumblr users are under 34, which is the same for the iPhone 5c.

Don’t let social media become a problem. Use effective targeting, strategy and planning to maximize its benefits and minimize waste. If you need a hand in coming up with strong, relevant, targeted social media strategy, we’ll be happy to help.

Fresh Is Best: The Importance Of Staying Up To Date

Posted on December 15, 2016 by BTI Admin - Content, Copywriting, Maintenance, Tips & Tricks, Website Design

You have just made the decision to create a new website for your business. It looks awesome, runs fast, generates additional revenue, and acts as a powerful representation of your brand. Time to unplug the mouse and keyboard and call it a day? Think again.

The key to a successful website with a long life is regular updates and maintenance. A website, after all, is a dynamic product that represents your business, and is really never a “finished product”, as there is always room for improvement. The Internet is an ever-changing environment; with newer technologies and software’s being developed each day, the code behind your website eventually becomes dated. Outdated code can result in performance interruptions over time; some sites can suffer from broken links, slow loading pages, security vulnerabilities, and a plethora of other complications. Performing regular maintenance on your site keeps it running smoothly, and ensures that your customers enjoy a positive website experience.

Being up to date doesn’t stop at back end maintenance; every business can keep their content dynamic by regularly adding blog posts, testimonials, and internal news. You can even link your social media to your website and have it posted for you when you upload new content. This way, customers, clients, and leads that follow you on various social media can be notified when new content is added, thus driving traffic to your site. Got an e-commerce store on your site? Regularly updating products will make your store seem more “kept”, and encourage consumers to regularly visit your website. Having a consistent flow of product updates will give consumers a reason to visit your site and keep current with what you have to offer. The same goes for company news, insights, and updates.

Don’t give your web visitors any reason to feel uncertain. Problems with your website or outdated content can make your brand illegitimate. So regular content and maintenance updates will not only ensure brand legitimacy, but also make your visitors feel comfortable and confident in your brand. Check out Web Toaster’s content marketing packages to help you keep your content fresh, without having to lift a finger. Also, don’t forget to take a look at our “Hosting, Maintenance, & Support” packages for a great night’s sleep, knowing that your website is vacuum-sealed and always fresh.

Fail To Plan? Plan To Fail: The Importance Of Website Planning

Posted on December 4, 2016 by BTI Admin - Content, Copywriting, Maintenance, Tips & Tricks, Website Design

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Arguably, one of the most difficult steps in building a website is the planning process.

A good website will take hours of planning, mapping, proofing, and revising. Many small business owners fail to give planning the importance that it merits, and this is where the problems start. Your website is your business’s digital storefront, and its existence is just as important as any other aspect of your business. Therefore, it should be allotted just as much time and attention as you would give any other facet of your day-to-day operations.

Imagine constructing a house with no plans; the process would be full of headaches, messes, and would take much longer than if it was planned out beforehand. The same way, a webpage should be meticulously planned out as well. The planning process generally should involve setting a purpose, a budget, roles, a target audience, organizing information architecture, and content creation. A well-planned website will have a predefined structure before it is built, and will be proofed multiple times before launch. It’s easy to neglect internal projects for revenue-generating work, but the key is to treat yourself as a client and deliver the same (if not stronger) strategy and quality of work that you would for someone else.

Although websites are flexible, and can be changed, poor planning often can result in poor communication, and inconsistent back and forth between involved parties. Sometimes, this can force developers to make assumptions that might not fulfill the vision of the business, requiring them to backtrack and further prolong the process. Web Toaster provides all our clients with an easy-to-use questionnaire, which helps us get a feel for your business, and allows us to tailor your site to your vision. We also provide a straightforward content form, which will help you map your website and each page’s respective content. Web Toaster’s proven method streamlines the planning process down to the last detail, making your website creation an easy and stress-free process.

Time For A Facelift? (Part 1): 5 Reasons To Update Your Website

Posted on November 29, 2016 by BTI Admin - Content, Maintenance, Security, Tips & Tricks, Website Design

Your website advertises you, your brand or business – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Use your site to show off what you do and give people the opportunity to interact with your business. When you have a great site, you become visible to the millions of people who go online every day, connecting with them at any time, and learning more about your business and brand grow. Updating your site isn’t just a facelift, it means updating everything inside and out: your brand, relevance, and security. Stay ahead of the competition and find out why you should update your site:

1) Great Design Matters.

A new design can go a long way for your site. Great design makes it easy for users to find information, learn what you’re about and contact you in a snap. Nothing is worse for your business than a poor first impression with an outdated design, broken links, or difficult navigation. Let users find out who you really are with a great layout, visuals that tell a story about your brand, and an experience that leaves them coming back to visit.

2) Faster Loading Times.

Research suggests that 47% of users expect a site to load within 2 seconds; if more people are leaving your site than engaging with it, this could be a symptom of poor design or a slow web host. Google tends to rank faster loading pages higher on the search engine than slower loading ones. A few tips to speeding up your site can be to get rid of old or unused content, reducing the file size of your images, installing booster plugins, or moving to a content delivery solution (CDN).

3) Finding You Easily with Good SEO.

Don’t you hate it when you can’t find what you’re looking for? So do users. Having good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) makes it easier for users to find what they’re looking for right away and stops you from becoming invisible. Search engines rely on metrics of relevance and importance based on what people do: discover, comment, share, and link to. A well-constructed site allows search engines to crawl your site with greater ease, and improves how users interact with it – contributing to a better overall SEO ranking.

4) Utilizing Online Metrics to your Advantage.

There are many tools that track and analyze incoming visitors to your site. For example, Google Analytics is a free tool and available when you sign up for a Gmail account. Other paid digital marketing tools allow more detailed breakdowns on customer insights, how your products are doing or seeing how your keywords are ranking.

Utilizing online metrics can tell you a lot about users coming into your site, and using this data can help you figure out how to make their online experience better by improving your site. If users are navigating directly to your products page, consider making your home page focus on feature products. Or if the majority of your visitors are using Internet Explorer 8, consider updating your site to accommodate them. Use this information to help understand your clientele better and apply these changes wherever possible.

5) Boost your Search Engine Ranking with Updated Content.

Great site content helps users connect with your brand and establishes you as an authority in your industry. Consider having a blog with tips or advice, integrating your site with social media, or having a featured page with events, latest news, or media coverage that you or your company has been featured in.

Having an updated site leaves the impression that you’re on top of things and a company that users can trust. Search engines love fresh content; if they see fresh content every time they index your site they will boost your rankings. When a site hasn’t been updated in a while, your ranking may begin to drop for important keywords.

Interested to see how Web Toaster can help you make the best first impression? Then let’s Get Toasting!

Time For A Facelift? (Part 2): 5 Questions You Should Ask Yourself

Posted on November 9, 2016 by BTI Admin - Content, Maintenance, Security, Tips & Tricks, Website Design

Building a website is a daunting task. This domain of pages essentially represents your business in a big way online, where the world can see it. So, typically it is critical that your website is always performing and looking its best. The following are five questions you should always ask yourself before hitting “publish”.

1) What’s Your User Experience Like?

User Experience, or UX, looks at how humans interact and engage with technology, in order to build the best web experience possible. 88% of online consumers are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience, so it is a very important factor to consider.

Having a great UX means that your site is easy to navigate, users are able to find information easily, and the site is purposely designed to maximize user engagement. However, UX isn’t just a design payoff. According to Jasmine Henry, “User experience carries a significant, measurable ROI for organizations… brands with exceptional UX win repeat visits, and eventually, new customers.”

2) Is Your Site Achieving Great Results?

What is the objective of your website and how does it play into your business or brand? Are you trying to drive sales, generate leads, or establish authority in your field?

If you’re not seeing the results you want, try getting your site audited to see where it’s falling short. An audit can determine why you’re not seeing results you want and suggest ways that you can meet those goals. An audit and update will re-structure your site to align more with your business objectives, while fitting customer needs, and generating the results that you are looking for.

3) Is Your Site Secure?

Updating your site isn’t just about looks, it is about what’s underneath too. Having an updated site means having the latest security patches and bug fixes to keep hackers out and stop them from wreaking havoc on your site. Poor security puts you at risk for losing private customer information when your site becomes compromised. Also, once a site is hacked, viruses can spread easily to other users or even be blocked on search engine sites. After a site has been hacked, it becomes very difficult to recover from.

4) Is Your Site Mobile-Friendly?

If your website is not responsive, it will not show up as a Google search result when users are browsing on their smart device.

To put this in perspective, in 2014, there were 18 million smartphone owners in Canada and 7.8 million tablet owners. According to the Toronto Star, Canadians spend 33 hours per month online, and almost 50% of that is tied to mobile devices – even more importantly, 1.3 million Canadians a month will exclusively use mobile devices to access the Internet.

If your site isn’t mobile, then you’re invisible to this growing number of consumers!

5) Is Your Site AODA Compliant.

By January 1, 2021, the Ontario government requires all sites to be compliant under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA). Although it seems like a long time from now, there are requirements that are currently being phased in.

As of 2016, Public Service Organizations and large companies (that provide goods, services or facilities to third parties and have over 50 employees) are required to have new content and intranet be AODA compliant. Accessibility requirements for these organizations include, but are not limited to: large print, high contrast visuals, and recorded audio captions or descriptions.

Guidelines that dictate these standards are governed by the World Wide Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0). Companies and organizations that fail to ensure AODA compliance are subject up to a $100,000 fine!

A Picture Worth A Thousand Words : How To Choose Great Photos For Your Site

Posted on October 28, 2016 by BTI Admin - Content, Tips & Tricks, Website Design

You’ve probably heard this quote about a million times: “A picture is worth a thousand words”. When choosing images for your site, this statement couldn’t be more true. While beauty is in the eye of the beholder, don’t select any pretty picture to go to your site. Think about what you want to say with your photos and how these photos tell a story about your brand.

Want to make the right impression with your photos? Here are some tips to help you out!

1) Choose relevant photography that aligns with your website’s purpose.

As you choose the photos for your website, take a second to think about the purpose of your site and who the audience is. Typically your photos should speak to your target audience while tying into what your business is. Users tend to make a lot of assumptions about images without reading its correlating copy. Choose images that communicate the message you’re trying to convey.

2) Is It Useful?

Choose photos that are simple, self-explanatory, and effectively communicate what the product, service, or site is all about. Photos can help enhance a user’s understanding of your product, so think about the context of the photo: does it help them understand something? Does it teach the user how to use the product? How does it apply to the user or their business?

3) Quality Matters.

One of the golden rules of choosing images is to choose high-quality images. Having small, grainy, and pixelated images on a site can be annoying to downright infuriating depending on your audience. While high-quality images tend to be large, there are numerous image compression sites and programs that can reduce the file size so it doesn’t slow your site down or eat up memory.

When working with images, an important tip is to not stretch the photo. This will destroy the quality of the image. Keep in mind, you can always crop the image to make it smaller, but it’s harder to make a small image larger.

4) Don’t just Google It.

While Google makes it easy to find images, it doesn’t mean that they are free to use and the majority of them are copyrighted. Unless you have permission from the original owner or hold the license that grants the permission for you to use that image, the Google image cannot be used under any circumstances. If you’re caught using a copyrighted image from Google, companies can take legal action against you for unauthorized use of their material and demand a high settlement fee.

5) Use unique photos for your site.

Stand out from the crowd and use your company’s own branded photography. Using actual pictures of your staff, office space, and product shots that tell a story about your brand. If you have to use stock images, not all images are created equal. Expensive stock sites offer pictures with better quality, natural-looking images while cheaper stock image sites tend to have pictures that are more cheesy and artificial. Another great option is using royalty free images which allows you to use the image for free, even for commercial use.

Interested in making the right first impression? Find out how Web Toaster can help you!

No-Stress WordPress: What Makes It A Super CMS?

Posted on October 2, 2016 by BTI Admin - Content, Maintenance, Security, Tips & Tricks, Website Design

Every day at Web Toaster, our designers and developers are hard at work creating sites left, right, and center. In order to offer great sites at affordable prices, we build our sites on WordPress because it’s a flexible platform that allows us to customize what you want in the time frame you need.

Here are the reasons why we use WordPress and how it can benefit your business:

1) Easy-To-Use.

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to learn how to use WordPress. Bloggers, businesses, and novices alike use WordPress because of its user friendly interface and their all-in-one platform makes it easy for you to manage your site. If you’re posting a lot of content, WordPress makes it easy to post, and schedule them ahead of time.

2) Flexible and Customizable.

As a platform, WordPress can be used for everything to a personal blog, eCommerce site, online brochure, or a personal portfolio. At Web Toaster, we love WordPress because of its endless possibilities for design and different customizations that suit your business needs. WordPress has numerous features and extensions that enhance your site’s functionality and can create the website you’ve always wanted.

3) SEO Friendly.

If you want to aim for the top on Google, you’re in luck! In order for your site to rank high, your site needs to meet various predefined parameters. The more parameters you fulfill, the higher your site ranks in search results. Everything from faster loading times, being mobile friendly, having specific keywords or descriptions all play a part in your Google ranking.

WordPress has the basics covered, already being optimized for mobile, and plugins that can help you monitor analytics and managing your keywords. However, if the basics don’t cut it. The Web Toaster team has got you covered with enhanced packages that can help you outrank the competition.

Interested in what Web Toaster can do for you? Let’s talk!

On-Site Insight: 4 Things You Need To Know Before Building A Website

Posted on September 21, 2016 by BTI Admin - Content, Tips & Tricks, Website Design

So you’ve finally decided that your business needs a website. Great! But now what? What’s the next step? Before the Web Toaster team can drop a line of code, we start the first step with you. Half the battle in creating a site is developing the stuff that goes on the site. This means research, writing content, and creating a purpose for the site. Without these assets, we can’t design or structure a site.

Want to get the ball rolling? Here are a few things to have before we start building:

Establish the purpose of your website

You know that you need a site, but why? The purpose of your site will dictate the objective you are trying to achieve with it. Are you showcasing your work to potential clients? Or maybe you want a platform to sell your products. If that’s not the case, then think about what your customers want and why they’re looking at your site for it. The purpose of your site will drive everything from the design, functionality, content, and results.

What are your competitors doing?

If you don’t know what your competitors are up to, a quick Google search can help you get up to speed. Looking at your competition allows you see what they’re doing right and what you can do better. Part of having a website is allow your business to be seen, especially when the majority of people are turning to the internet for information. Research your competition, read reviews, observe what they’re doing, and use this information to gauge what your site should feature.

Think about how you’re communicating to users

Your website is up 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In a world where we’re constantly connected users want to know what’s going on all the time. Your business is constantly changing and you should have a method for keeping users updated when something happens. Do you plan on having a blog? A latest news page? Or maybe social media integration? Whatever you decide, your audience needs to know!

Write content for your website

After the purpose, pages and functionality has been established, the grunt work begins with the text. Writing is all about the details. Readers can easily be deterred if your text contains typos or spelling mistakes. Keep your audience in mind and write content that is appropriate for them; some require very technical information while others need simplified content. An average site has a Home, About, Portfolio/Product/Service, and a Contact page. Make sure you have the appropriate text for each section and consider if your site needs any additional pages that need text as well. If you’re lost for words, check out this article (link) or take advantage of our copywriting services (link)!

Are you ready to build or update your website? Let Web Toaster lend a hand!

Vacuum Sealed Security: Keeping Freshness In & Hackers Out

Posted on September 21, 2016 by BTI Admin - Maintenance, Security

As of October 2015, WordPress CMS powered 29.7% of all new sites. Even more impressively, 25.5% of the Internet is powered by WordPress. Why? To put it simply, WordPress is a phenomenal resource for web developers and business owners as it is easy to use and learn, open source and modifiable, SEO friendly, extremely versatile, and was built with security in mind.

Unfortunately, as with any open source resource, malicious parties can hack websites that do not take their security very seriously. According to Forbes, roughly 30,000 websites are hacked each day due to particular vulnerabilities, which WordPress sites are not exempt from. Typically WordPress CMS users experience unusual activity on their websites as a symptom of a security breach. This could come in the form of spam, or abnormal increases in traffic; possibly from foreign countries. Additionally, many hacked websites suffer from spontaneous redirections to other pages, unknown admin users, and unapproved content additions. Web security is extremely important because the credibility of your brand relies on the stability of your website.

Typically, more cautious WordPress users take precautions to “harden” their websites. These precautions typically include maintaining the latest WordPress version as soon as updates are released, constantly updating plugins and ensuring that they are from trusted sources, strengthening passwords, and using credible themes. It is also advisable to use a trusted host to keep your website online.

As a small business owner, keeping track of web security and having to take care of breaches can be a tedious and technically intensive task, which many do not have the time or expertise to handle efficiently and effectively. Web Toaster is here to save you time and effort, and maintain a strong brand for your company. Part of our value is our website maintenance and security packages; Web Toaster offers 24/7 website monitoring for malicious activity, so our skilled team of developers can manage any sort of breach without you lifting a finger.

Treat your website to Web Toaster’s vacuum-sealed security, and sleep soundly every night knowing that your website, business, and brand, are in good hands. Learn more about Web Toaster’s Maintenance Packages here.

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