Author name: Treefrog Editorial Team

Insights from the senior strategists at Treefrog Inc., a full-service marketing agency founded in 1989 in Newmarket, Ontario. We write about marketing strategy, pipeline, revenue operations and AI for growing companies.

Close up of a microphone with a stage and audience out of focus in the background
Marketing Strategy

How to Become a Key Opinion Leader in the Digital World

/

A Key Opinion Leader.

“What’s that?” you ask.

“A Key Opinion Leader is a person who successfully combines expertise and passion, both online and off”
– Sean Stephens

A mainstay in the pharmaceutical and life sciences fields, the concept of Key Opinion Leader, or ‘KOL’, has infiltrated digital spaces as an adjunct to the popular, and perhaps cliché, concept of ‘Thought Leader’.

What makes a Key Opinion Leader? In the medical field, a Key Opinion Leader is a person with long-standing respect, who builds their influence and reputation by speaking at conferences, developing new theories, being published and re-quoted in journals, popular press, and by others who possess considerable influence. A KOL is a person who other professionals look to for answers and guidance because they have distinguished themselves by pushing the boundaries of their field.

Pharmaceutical marketing teams look for KOL’s to act as product advocates – someone who will give their ‘stamp of approval’ on the efficacy and effectiveness of the product. As advocates for the drug brand, KOLs are used to generate increased revenue by capitalizing on their popularity.

Within the realm of digital media and marketing, a KOL possesses social, rather than purely academic, influence. This social variant of a KOL is open to regular, everyday people who can become influential to their peers or “following”.

Out of our discussion with two real-life Key Opinion Leaders in the digital world, Treefrog Inc. CEO Sean Stephens, and Perfect Community Manager and local entrepreneur Lucas Chang, we’ve assessed how both content and social media can help launch and support your KOL career.

Get Social

“It’s critical to be involved and accessible.”

Sean Stephens and Lucas Chang both agreed that Key Opinion Leaders don’t necessarily need to be high profile, but they do need to get out there and be social.

If you are interested in becoming a KOL, it is critical that you make yourself accessible to your community, both in person and online. It is also important that you ensure to leave a positive impact on those you encounter, making your followers feel valued, heard, and more informed after speaking to or hearing from you.

To accomplish this, take advantage of various speaking opportunities and attend conferences in your field of expertise. Afterward, make time to shake hands, exchange contact information with those who may present further opportunities to you, and join in for pictures. The more you are seen, the more you will become recognizable and established.

Another key tip is to be engaging and active on various social media platforms. Social media will allow you to access a wider audience, as well as to spread your message instantly. By leveraging social media, your material has greater potential to be shared, liked, and commented on.

You should also consider pitching interview topics with both local and national media, increasing your platform’s visibility. Not only will producing this material build your resume, but it will also provide documented proof of your ability to lead and educate, establishing a more concrete reputation.

Make Strategic Connections

“In order to develop an opinion that isn’t just fluff, you have to surround yourself with people who are also equally engaged in the same material as you.” 

Using the analogy of iron sharpening iron, Sean Stephens stressed the importance of surrounding yourself with people who are passionate about the same material as you; yet don’t necessarily share your same exact opinion. Stephens went on to explain that Key Opinion Leaders gain credibility when they engage with other leaders and not only express their personal opinions, but also actively listen and learn.

Social media can significantly support these types of connections as social websites like Facebook contain customizable group and event pages where meetings can be set up, conferences can be advertised, and discussions can be had.

While Lucas Chang reminded us that there is still a lot of value in face-to-face interaction, social media now plays a huge role in guiding people to an actual in-person meet. Think about it. When you read a book or article that genuinely interests you, you are more likely to reach out to the author, through either social media or email. Once an online relationship is fostered, you are then more apt, (and likely more comfortable) to meet and interact with that person in real life.

Using social media as a tool, there are limited boundaries with whom you can connect with online and in person. Why not give it a try?

Become A Specialized Expert

“A KOL is a person who successfully combines expertise and passion.” 

By attending local events and networking, you can begin to build your personal brand and reputation. However, Sean Stephens reminded us that the social persona of a true Key Opinion Leader is only valuable if based on validated expertise.

KOL’s must responsibly invest in themselves, as well as their area of interest, consistently working to develop their opinion by further investigating the subject. KOL’s can become experts through online research, meeting with others who are interested in their same field, and through receiving accreditation.

Above all, creating quality publishable content will position your brand as reputable. Experts become known when their novels, theories, and opinions are published on websites or in credible magazines, newspapers, and journals. Without a foundation of content, your ‘expertise’ will be seen as just talk.

Be Consistent & Present

“Always go to the things you say you’re going to go to.” 

Sean Stephens expressed that one of the most valuable things a KOL can be is consistent and therefore reliable. He stressed that absence and lateness do not go unnoticed and that being considered inconsistent can ruin a reputation. Stephens also claims that there’s a notable difference between being present and truly having a presence both in person and online.

In a digital era, online presences can either make or break a Key Opinion Leader. When a person chooses to support a social media account by following and engaging with it, that person is essentially saying, “I like what this page has to offer me” and “I’d like to see more”. However, when media platforms are neglected, or if the posts do not reflect the messaging a follower initially followed that page for, that person is likely to un-follow and disengage with the account.

If you commit to having a social media page, be sure that you are able to set ample time aside to support that page, making frequent, appropriate, and applicable updates, which will keep your audience interested.

When strategized correctly, social media can launch your brand towards success, but when not executed well, these failed campaigns can damage your reputation.

Be Passionate

“When you can tell that someone is passionate, whether it be quietly passionate, or overtly passionate, you want to hear more about what they have to say.” 

While anyone can educate themselves on any topic, especially in a digital era, both Sean Stephens and Lucas Chang believe that passion is what sets regular experts and Key Opinion Leaders apart. When a speaker is truly passionate, their level of excitement will naturally transfer to their spectators, leaving a lasting impact.

To build one’s passion into a credible opinion, you must allow yourself to continuously learn and rediscover the meaning behind your passion as it grows. In a technology-obsessed world that is constantly changing, a KOL must be adaptable, finding new ways to keep their message interesting, informative, and up-to-date.

One of the most powerful ways to express passion is through open, genuine, and relatable online posts. Key Opinion Leaders can demonstrate love for their specialty by writing exciting articles about new finds in their field, sharing promotional material for related events on Facebook, posting pictures of themselves in action on Instagram, and more. When audiences physically can see that a Key Opinion Leader is consistently engaging with their area of interest, that person’s passion becomes believable.

Be Practical

“Any person can come up with an idea, but a majority of people never execute those ideas.”

Lucas Chang explained that aspiring KOL’s must pick a specialty that they are naturally passionate about, and then must find a way to make their dream practical. Chang claimed that most people fail in becoming a KOL when they are full of ideas and yet are unable to make their dream a tangible reality.

However, with incredible advances in technology, becoming a Key Opinion Leader has never more achievable. Social media sites are built with the intent to connect people to the things and people they find interesting, expediting one’s ability to gain momentum and success.

In the past, Key Opinion Leaders relied on content alone, to build a reputation of expertise. However, the value of printing words in a book is fading. Content now needs to be supported by the internet, making the sharing of content practical and accessible to more people.

It is then opportune for potential Key Opinion Leaders to leverage social media to support their written work, preventing incredible ideas from just being stored and ignored on a dusty bookshelf. You never know, your message might even go viral.

It is not enough to simply want to become a known expert; you must also be willing to put in the work to make it happen.

Too busy to do it alone?

Through expertise in the development of engaging social media campaigns, as well as content writing, Treefrog Inc. can help establish your Key Opinion Leadership.

By managing your social media profiles, building your website, developing blog topics, and more, the Frogs at Treefrog Inc. can customize your path to success, helping to relay your message to the right audience.

Hand on a laptop keyboard
Marketing Strategy

Search Engine Changes and How They Affect Your Content

/

Updates in Search Engine Optimization have brought content marketing full circle. Nowadays, Google actively abolishes websites that include keyword stuffing, multiple thin pages, misleading information—in essence, Google is encouraging us to be better writers.

But isn’t this the way it should have always been?

When you are able to develop content that is genuinely useful and interesting to your audience, that same audience is more likely to engage with your material, increasing the success of your website and business. This type of content will then also naturally improve your websites SEO results, as well as improve the quality of your online presence.

Below we explore this, as well as some other major search engine shifts, which directly affect how you should be approaching your website content. Understanding where search engines are headed will not only help to keep your website competitive, but will also ensure your message is reaching the audience it is intended for.

So with that, let’s dive in!

A Mobile-Friendly Shift

Is your website mobile-friendly? You’ve likely already run into this question many times.

Updating their Search Quality Ratings Guidelines, Google has recently given extra emphasis on the importance of having a mobile-friendly website. As users are more frequently using their mobile phones and tablets (over laptops and desktop screens) to search for information, websites that are not mobile-friendly may fall behind. When people are unable to access, navigate, and read all of the information on your webpage with ease, they are likely to lose interest and abandon the site.

To have a mobile-friendly site means that when a person accesses your web content on their handheld device, they aren’t forced to “pinch and zoom” to get at the content. Google also recommends having a design that is responsive to the size of various screens, which is the preferred route to having a separate site for mobile devices and a separate website for desktop.

Google’s shift to mobile-friendliness affects content by forcing us to think about how someone is consuming content via the medium. After all, mobile devices have smaller reading screens, and people consuming content on mobile are often opting for a quick ‘snack’ rather than a full course meal. While content developers could still write the same detailed content as they always have, mobile users are not likely to keep scrolling and scrolling down, committing to read a long post in its entirety. When most people go looking of for an answer on their phone, they want a quick and tightly packaged response. So – while large-screen webpages have much more physical room for the development of information, writers have had to adjust to the idea of keeping marketable content as concise as possible. Content writers have also been forced to articulate an answer within the first paragraph of content – ensuring a reader receives what they’re looking for before losing interest and leaving the page to look somewhere else.

Long-form content still has a place on mobile, there’s no doubt. If it didn’t, there would not be such wide adoption of e-books on mobile. However, the medium encourages us to focus heavily on our target audience. Are they likely to consume this piece of content on a smartphone? If so, then perhaps we should consider length, the images we opt to use, our desired calls to action, etc. We not only need to think about the reader, but also consider how the reader will best engage with the content we’re putting in front of them.

Link building as PR

It’s no longer common practice, nor is it particularly effective, to purchase or incentivize links that deliver a user to content. Even asking for links is often now considered outdated. It’s far more applicable to acquire links organically; in other words, have people come across or land on your page because they want to, not because you’re asking or positioning them to.

So – how do you receive these organic engagements? Hard work. Link building isn’t what it once was—it’s now essentially a Public Relations strategy. This practice involves reaching out to bloggers and industry publication editors as an expert in a specific field, providing links to applicable sources that may benefit that organization’s developing stories. Positioning your webpage as a reliable resource validates your page as useful, and drives traffic to your site. By acquiring links from media sources naturally—because they were genuinely interested in linking to your article—the next time Google crawls from those outlets to your content, it will give your website that much more credibility, and thus improve SEO.

Engagement VS. Keywords

Traditionally, the importance of populating a webpage with keywords for search engine ranking took precedence over user happiness. SEO departments worked vigorously to compile data concerning which words, when optimized, would lure the most users to a page. SEO would pass this data on to content writers for keyword-focused content to develop.

However, a major shift has occurred. No longer are SEO specialists identifying keywords for the use of content developers – the value of content itself, is now taking priority.

Web developers realized that keywords were getting traffic to a webpage, but that content, which was created only for the purpose of including a keyword, was not providing customer-focused information. Without creating content with user intent in mind, people would stray from these pages quickly – damaging the website’s SEO performance.

Searchers normally have one of three main reasons to conduct a search online: transactional (want to buy), navigational (want to go to), and informational (want to learn). Businesses must now think of content not only in terms of the audience that they’re trying to reach, but also in terms of matching that audiences’ intent. The more you are able to focus your content on what the searcher wants, the more effective you will become at solving both reader and customer problems.

Voice Search Is on the Rise

Siri. Love her or hate her, there’s a lot to be said about what she can do. Siri, Apple’s on-board automated assistant, can help with tasks such as remembering a date, booking an appointment and sending a text message to a friend.

What is of increasing interest is how people are using automated assistants like Siri to search the web. If you ask Siri a question she can’t answer, she’ll take to a search engine (Siri uses Bing)—and that query data gets tracked. Similarly, Google Now will track voice searches from Android device users in the same way as text-based queries are tracked.

The main difference is in the way that people search via voice. They are more inclined to use natural language—including stop words like “and”, “if”, even “please” in their query. This has necessitated a search engine to decipher the true meaning of a query, while sifting through far more specific information. For example, we’re not typing “cheetah running speed”, we’re asking a search engine: “OK Google, how fast can a cheetah actually run, in kilometers per hour?”

These spoken questions are very specific, “long tail” queries. The issue is that they don’t hold enough search volume to gather trend data from. You’d be far more likely to get search query volume for something like “cheetah running speed” rather than the longer variation.

The beauty of the long tail query is that it is so specific that you have a great chance of ranking highly for it. For example, if you were to create a piece of content called “How Fast A Cheetah Can Run In Kilometers per Hour”, and you optimized the heck out of it, your chances of your content ranking when someone searched for that query would be very high.

How does this effect content? Google is pushing a shift for content to adapt to the: who, what, where, why, and how questions that audiences are asking – providing more user-friendly and immediate answers. This then challenges content writers to use alternative methods of communicating information, such as blogging, as a way to specifically target searcher intent – developing content based on common user interests and concerns.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-peggs/how-voice-search-is-changing-seo_b_8926708.html

Search Ads Disguised

You may not have noticed, but Google has been transforming their small search result “Ad” indicator.

Over the course of AdWords history, Google got rid of the yellow backdrop (sometimes called the sandbox), introduced the small “Ad” icon, changed the icon from yellow to green, and most recently changed the icon again to be an outline; arguably even more indiscernible.

While these new design shifts may seem small, the change holds great significance. Basically, Google is trying to blur the lines between what is a paid and what is an organic search result.

It would seem that Google has done this to intentionally blend and disguise paid ad results with organically listed results, making the difference between the two less obvious. This is likely to increase visits to paid-for ad sites, as many users previously became accustomed to skipping past advertisements – noting the yellow indicator and moving to the organic green results instead.

It is then more important than ever to have engaging content on your web pages, increasing the flow of natural traffic to your site, as well as positioning your brand in a competitive place on Google’s result list.

With great content, organic users will spend more time on your site, increasing your popularity. It is also becoming critical to invest in SEO research, understanding how to make your website competitive with other paid-for advertisements.

As Google continues to improve its algorithms, it is important to keep your website’s content up to date and on trend. More than ever before, businesses must work to understand their customer demographics through detailed analysis, to get a clearer sense of what these users might be searching for. Our web content needs to be informative, helpful, and engaging for our audience, otherwise people just won’t bother reading it.

While it may seem hard to keep up, the team at Treefrog is passionate about keeping on top of industry shifts. Should you need us to help navigate your business through these changes, we’d be happy to help.

Close up of hands. One is typing, the other holds a pen.
Creative Strategy

5 Ways a Content Audit Will Revitalize Your Website

/

Content marketing is all about creating and sharing information online in a strategic way to generate interest in your products or services, develop awareness for your brand, and build trust in you and your company. You can target the information and the way you share it to reach your ideal customers, whether they’re actively searching for you at that time or not.

Generally speaking, the content you share out into the world should bring readers to your website and make them want to connect with you and ultimately do business with you. If you want to engage them and keep them coming back, your content has to be relevant and current.

So, how’s your online content?

Having a comprehensive and engaging online presence has become key for successful marketing, but building quality content takes time. And time can change the relevance of content you’ve written in the past.

When was the last time you really looked at the content on your website? Is there outdated information on it? Are there holes in your content that you need to fill? Is your best content buried and difficult to find? Are you out of content ideas and looking for a way to re-engage? Do you know if your content is bringing visitors to your site and is it resonating with them when they do see it?

Enter content auditing.

A content audit involves reviewing and assessing the information on an existing website to identify flaws, errors, and areas for improvement and growth. An audit can revitalize your online presence by refreshing and re-organizing content, identifying new potential, optimizing search results, and preparing for the future by thinking ahead.

Refresh

Keep them coming back for more with updated content

A content audit will help to ensure your website’s content is up to date and relevant to the marketing goals you are pursuing. If you built your site years ago, and you haven’t worked on it since then, odds are you have content that has expired or is no longer applicable to your current services.

When performing a content audit, content marketers will take note of various ways they can help to refresh your individual pages by adding and highlighting new features, removing or updating outdated information, and looking for opportunities to amalgamate redundant or “thin” content. Search engines aren’t keen on lightweight pages that don’t provide value to users. Sometimes you can combine information from multiple pages to create one high-value page instead. Auditors will also review your content for any grammatical errors or spelling mistakes made by the original publisher.

Having a fresh perspective and a new set of eyes to analyze your content will help to fill in any gaps your content has, as well as to help develop a more user-friendly flow.

Organize

Good content is a good start, but it must be found to be appreciated

It is also a content auditor’s job to find new ways to improve the organization of your website content. You may have the best content going, so it may not be necessary to re-write the material itself, but readers must also be able to find it easily as they navigate your website.

Do you have a dedicated place on your website for blog entries or articles? Where can users access that in your menu structure? Sometimes minor adjustments to how you organize your information and even how you label it can make a big difference in how often readers find it, read it, and connect with you, generating leads for your business.

Discover

Mining for gold in your website content

The day to day of running your business probably includes countless conversations with your clients. They ask questions, and you use your expertise to inform and advise them. You probably don’t realize what a goldmine of content exists in your experience and your day-to-day interactions.

Your website and social media have the potential to have those conversations 24 hours a day when you have the right content. The content marketers who audit your site can help to identify opportunities for new articles and posts that will proactively share the information your customers and prospects are seeking.

These opportunities could include highlighting key advantages in your services pages, or it could mean coming up with new topics for your blog.

A good content auditor will also look ahead to consider all areas for potential growth, including new pages or articles to write, optimizations for your existing content, and opportunities to build connections within your content with linking strategies.

Optimize

Making sure your content finds the people who need it

Content marketing differs from traditional marketing in the way that people tend to seek it out, wanting to consume it, rather than being pressured or forced to consume it. When someone ends up on your website page, it’s usually because they are searching for information related to what you offer. It is then content’s job to keep that potential customer on the page, convincing them of why they should do business with you and not someone else.

However, landing on your page doesn’t happen purely by chance – there is a reason people end up on your website and not someone else’s. A lot of this has to do with SEO or search engine optimization – the process of increasing the visibility of a website or webpage in search engine results for specific keywords.

Your auditor will use their knowledge of SEO and your target audiences and keywords to develop to optimize your content for the right terms in the right way. When done well, there is no “stuffing” of keywords – it’s a subtle blend of the right words, written in a way that users will want to read.

Content marketers also think beyond your website and search results to other ways you share your content. The topic and tone may be adjusted depending on whom you’re talking to and how you’re reaching them, whether through search engine results, social media sharing, or email marketing.

Plan For The Future

Think ahead

A content audit will not only benefit you in the now but will help you to better prepare for the future. Following the completion of your content audit, you will receive a list of recommendations along with a proposed plan to implement the suggestions into your website. It may result in a few content formatting fixes, or it may suggest adding articles or blog entries to your digital presence.

In competitive markets, it is essential that you look ahead. It is important to note that creating engaging content for your website shouldn’t be a one-off event. Content marketers can work with you to format material that can be consistently augmented and updated, such as creating a blog and posting a new content article every week or month. Allowing for regular content updates will keep your business’ online presence fresh, organized, optimized, and relevant as new trends continue to emerge.

Anytime is a good time to spring clean your website content. Let’s talk about your content concerns and put you on the road to content marketing success.

A woman's hand write on a notepad on a table
Marketing Strategy

What Is Your Strategic Marketing Plan?

/

Knowing which direction to take your business and how to get there requires a comprehensive and actionable marketing plan

Digital marketing trends come and go as each year passes. Being aware of them and planning to take advantage of them to give your business’s revenue a lift is useful, but concerning your strategic marketing plan, you need to take a broader view and consider both short- and long-term goals and methods.

Your marketing plan is a detailed roadmap your company will travel throughout the year. It should encompass everything including who your customers are, what your content marketing strategy is, the marketing and promotions budget you will adhere to, the campaigns and tactics you will deploy and more.

Seven Essential Steps to Strategic Marketing Planning

Every business is idiosyncratic and requires a clear marketing plan pertinent to its overall revenue goals and aims. Although there is no universal strategy your organization can adopt and follow, there are a series of established and sensible steps you can take to create an annual marketing plan that will suit your needs:

  1. Establish a Practical Promotional and Marketing Budget. Your budget will dictate what you will be able to achieve monthly, quarterly, and annually. Promoting and marketing events, products and services, and your company’s philosophy on doing business costs money. If your company’s marketing budget is modest, you will need to be creative, and allocate funds to the most important initiatives you will plan throughout the year.
  2. Revisit and Refresh Your Customer Personas. Customer or buyer personas are representations of your different customer segments, both real and desired. To get an accurate picture of who your customers are, you will need data derived from existing customer surveys and interviews, as well as other sources such as Google Analytics or Facebook Insights. Broadly defining your ideal customer personas will help your team understand who your customers are, what their needs are, and how your company can help them.
  3. Understand What Your Differentiators Are. What does your business do differently than all of your competitors? What is your unique selling proposition? What are your core values and your company’s key messages? Knowing what’s distinct about your company, its products and services, how they apply to your targeted customer persona segments as well as the messaging you will use for various media types will help you prepare a well-rounded content campaign or editorial calendar.
  4. Detail What Your Marketing Goals Are. What do you hope to achieve in the new year? Determining what your marketing goals are should go hand-in-hand with what your business’s overall goals are. Is that an increase in sales per quarter? Be realistic and ensure your goals are precise and well understood by everyone on your team.
  5. Evaluate Your Website and Marketing Collateral. Does your corporate website look outdated? Is it awkward to navigate? And is it a responsive website? What about all of your digital and printed marketing collateral? Make it an annual exercise to reassess all of your marketing channels and properties and ensure they are targeting the right audiences, and parlaying the right messages.
  6. Review Your Sales Strategy. Do you have a comprehensive and flexible sales strategy with achievable sales targets quarter-over-quarter? Or are you flying by the seat of your pants and making it up as you go? Although it is an important part of a holistic marketing strategy, your sales strategy should focus on increasing sales and meeting your quarterly revenue targets. It should include details about the customer’s journey both pre- and post-sale.
  7. Define Metrics to Measure Performance. You can’t determine success or failure or shift gears if need be without data that validates what worked and what didn’t. Once you’ve identified the key performance metrics you want to track, and the tools and methodologies you’ll use to measure your success, host regular meetings with your sales and marketing teams to decide if any changes are required and how to go about them.

Once you’ve reviewed how your company performed the previous year, and upon completing these steps above, you should be ready to craft a practical marketing strategy for the new year that will help your company meet its objectives.

Does your business need help defining its marketing plans and achieving the goals you want? Let us help. For more than 20 years we’ve been helping businesses of all sizes and in various industries grow their online presences and revenues.

Close up of hands. One is typing, the other holds a pencil.
Creative Strategy

Why Writing Good Content is Important and How to Start

/

From your company’s site search engine ranking to the number of quality sales leads you receive, good storytelling and valued content reaps reward

Whether your company’s digital marketing strategy is successful or not depends on one key element: consistently producing and publishing great content.

Online and offline, we are bombarded by an unending stream of corporate messaging and advertising wherever we look or go. Naturally, we ignore content that does not interest us or that we regard as hype.

Entertaining and interesting content that centres on your audience’s interests or needs, meanwhile, spikes engagement levels, builds brand loyalty and trust, strengthens your website’s organic search engine ranking, and lifts your sales figures.

Think about it. You’re a consumer, too. When you’re online, what grabs your attention? Content and messaging rife with corporate jargon, spelling errors, and poor grammar? Or content that clearly and succinctly addresses a challenge you face, is educational, or useful to you in some way?

Can You Tell Your Customers’ Story Effectively?

Fifteen seconds. According to digital content analytics company Chartbeat, that’s about the average length of time visitors to your website spend reading your content.

And don’t be coaxed into thinking if someone socially shares a link to one of your webpages or blogs that they read it first. Some social sharers do, but many don’t. A joint study by researchers at Columbia University and the French National Institute revealed, “though social networks commonly measure a story’s popularity in shares, researchers found that 59% of all links shared in their sample went unclicked, and presumably unread.”

But here’s more promising news: data from the Pew Research Center finds smartphone users will spend an average of one to two minutes reading news articles provided they are well-written and of interest to them. Additionally, having a mobile-friendly website goes a long way toward attracting and retaining mobile-based audiences.

Nevertheless, it still presents you with a formidable challenge. And if you’re still reading this article, consider you need to be able to produce impactful, compelling, and SEO-optimized content that is of interest to your intended audience for a broad range of digital and print properties, including:

  • Webpages
  • Blogs
  • Thought-leadership articles
  • Customer-facing emails
  • Social media channels
  • Infographics
  • Digital and traditional advertisements
  • Printed trade show marketing collateral
  • Case studies
  • White papers
  • Video scripts
  • Podcasts

In light of the above, there are other important factors to weigh. Can you tell your target customers’ story well? Can you write concisely about how your company and its products and services solve people’s problems? Do you have the time to do it on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis consistently? And do you have the bandwidth and know-how to track the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts?

Admittedly, that last one was a trick question. Determining how strong your content’s performance is (the return-on-investment) at increasing your sales leads and revenues is no simple feat. Why? Because content marketing is a long play, and you need to decide which metrics are important to track.

For example, many companies and publications are taking a different approach to online measurement. By switching from solely tracking the number of pageviews and click-thrus to including time-on-site and other attention-focussed metrics, their goal is to try to infer which content resonates with their audiences most.

Good Storytelling Creates Value

Good storytelling stirs interest and creates meaning, fosters contemplation in its readers, and in turn, becomes valuable to your intended audience. But not everyone is a natural storyteller. And not many business owners or leaders can commit the time to writing engaging content for all of their company’s marketing needs.

You need to be able to weave a compelling tale; to sell without selling. In short, you may need to hire a ghostwriter, aka an anonymous writer, to tell your customers’ story (and subsequently yours) to the world.

Some of the world’s most important literary works were written by anonymous writers. And the practice of hiring a professional writer to write on another’s behalf is as common today for everything from business books to marketing collateral to thought-leadership articles, blogs, and company websites.

But you’re keen to write your company’s content yourself. Okay, what do you need to do? How much time can you commit to writing? And how do you go about writing stories and marketing content that appeals to your existing and prospective customers intellectually or emotionally? Try these tactics:

  • Find the right topics. The notion of brainstorming with others is dead, and besides, there are no guarantees it will work. Does that mean you need to dismiss collaborating with a group of people altogether and go it alone? Not necessarily. Conferring and working with trusted sources to come up with important topics and an editorial calendar, or to discuss how to approach writing about a particular subject can produce great results. Most importantly, think about your customers and the questions they have for your company. Arrange to have an informal discussion with one of your longtime customers to get their thoughts if you’re uncertain. Or tell a story about how you failed at something – reading someone else’s account of how they mucked up badly, but who ultimately learned from the mistake and went on to succeed never gets old. You can also create a list of what are referred to as “evergreen topics”. Evergreen stories are based on broad subjects that have lasting appeal like why content marketing is important.
  • Manage your time efficiently. Just as you would plot the tasks involved in conducting any other aspect of business, build an executable schedule that divides up the work you need to do, and don’t waver from it. As you begin to write, different things will occur to you, so allow for lots of revision and editing time.
  • Research your topic. Once you know what to write about, hop online and find statistics, as well as the supporting or opposing points of views of others and link to them (or cite them accordingly). Depending on what your topic is, and if you can’t find useful sources to cite, you can always get help from a librarian in your community.
  • Write your first draft. Ernest Hemingway is famously quoted for allegedly remarking, “The first draft of anything is shit.” Whether he uttered those words or not, there is truth in the sentiment, and it is this: don’t get emotionally attached to the first draft of anything you write. Let it ferment in your head. Read it aloud. Have others proofread it for errors. Get the feedback of others you trust, and don’t be hurt by their constructive criticisms, mull them over. Then revise your first draft – and second, third, or fourth drafts if necessary.

Any literate person can write, but writing well is hard work, and you need to be damn good to attract and retain an audience, especially online.

It takes a significant amount of time to adequately research, write, edit, and produce good content for different media types and audiences. You need to discover what your brand’s voice is, determine your writing style, and commit to the craft on a daily basis.

In her 1969 autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, American poet, author, and civil rights activist Maya Angelou wrote, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” I couldn’t agree more. But sometimes, you need a professional writer’s help to tell that tale effectively and generate the reaction you desire.

Are you ready to tell your story to the world? Drop us a line and tell us what your content marketing and storytelling wants and needs are.

Dew on spider silk
Marketing Strategy

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

/

101 Information

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is essential for having a prominent web presence and attracting more visitors to your website. People primarily use search engines to find what they need on the web, including your products and services. You need to be visible on search result pages in order to be found by prospective clients.

SEO is about maximizing the quality of your web pages on multiple levels so that they can be properly indexed by search engines. Search engines have a variety of criteria they look for in a website. Google’s search ranking algorithm changes over 500 times a year, to give you an indication of its complexity.

Ultimately, search engines are looking for the best answer to a searcher’s question. If your site provides the best answer, and it is also technically sound, and if several other websites are linking to it as an authority on a given subject, your changes of ranking will be higher than a site that has none of these things going for it.

The SEO Process

There’s no way to summarize all the intricacies of SEO in a single post. That would be like fitting War and Peace onto one piece of foolscap. The following general tips can help you to attain higher organic search engine raking and maximize traffic to your website.

Determine the best keywords to win relevant traffic. Keywords are the words and phrases that people use to search for information, so you want to select terms that are specific to your business, and write content to reflect those terms so that people can find your pages.

Create original, quality, useful content for all web pages. Use your keywords naturally and with an appropriate density (i.e. use them in a meaningful way; search engines don’t like overstuffed keywords). Including keywords in page titles can also be advantageous to your ranking. If your content is good enough, then other sites may even link to it, and these backlinks can be beneficial to search engine ranking.

Continuously add new and fresh content. Encourage visitors to come back again and again by giving them something new to read. Post multiple articles offering information about your products in a way that informs and educates. This content increases your site’s depth and expands potential visibility of your primary keywords.

Don’t forget the Metadata. Create unique, informative Meta Tags and Meta Descriptions for each page, so that you entice searchers to click on your page from search results.

Create on-site links. Make sure you have sufficient links from your content text to relevant pages throughout your website. This helps users find pages they may not have seen otherwise, and it helps crawlers identify authoritative pages on your site that are linked to often.

Navigation matters! Have a solid architecture to facilitate easy understanding and navigation, so that visitors and search engines can easily move around your site and find what they are looking for with as few clicks as possible. Adding a site map to your website is also recommended.

You should also submit the site map for your content-rich site to search engines or directories to make them aware of your site.

Professional search engine optimization (SEO) strategists use various tools to monitor ranking performance. As the search engines keep changing their search algorithms, SEO strategists have to be on their toes all the time, constantly monitoring the keywords and reworking the information, analyzing your website to keep it competitive in ranking results.

Among all other forms of marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) is integral in getting traffic to your website. Combining SEO engineering and quality content is the best path to ranking success.

Geometric metal ceiling
Technology Strategy

What is Web Design?

/

Design is the process of collecting ideas, and aesthetically arranging and implementing them, guided by certain principles for a specific purpose. Web design is a similar process of creation, with the intention of presenting the content on electronic web pages, which the end-users can access through the internet with the help of a web browser.

Elements of Web Design

Web design uses many of the same key visual elements as all types of design such as:

Layout: This is the way the graphics, ads and text are arranged. In the web world, a key goal is to help the view find the information they seek at a glance. This includes maintaining the balance, consistency, and integrity of the design.

Colour: The choice of colours depends on the purpose and clientele; it could be simple black-and-white to multi-coloured design, conveying the personality of a person or the brand of an organization, using web-safe colours.

Graphics: Graphics can include logos, photos, clipart or icons, all of which enhance the web design. For user friendliness, these need to be placed appropriately, working with the colour and content of the web page, while not making it too congested or slow to load.

Fonts:  The use of various fonts can enhance a website design. Most web browsers can only read a select number of fonts, known as “web-safe fonts”, so your designer will generally work within this widely accepted group.

Content: Content and design can work together to enhance the message of the site through visuals and text. Written text should always be relevant and useful, so as not to confuse the reader and to give them what they want so they will remain on the site. Content should be optimized for search engines and be of a suitable length, incorporating relevant keywords.

Creating User-Friendly Web Design

Besides the basic elements of web design that make a site beautiful and visually compelling, a website must also always consider the end user. User-friendliness can be achieved by paying attention to the following factors.

Navigation: Site architecture, menus and other navigation tools in the web design must be created with consideration of how users browse and search. The goal is to help the user to move around the site with ease, efficiently finding the information they require.

Multimedia: Relevant video and audio stimuli in the design can help users to grasp the information, developing understanding in an easy and quick manner. This can encourage visitors to spend more time on the webpage.

Compatibility: Design the webpage, to perform equally well on different browsers and operating systems, to increase its viewing.

Technology: Advancements in technology give designers the freedom to add movement and innovation, allowing for web design that is always fresh, dynamic and professional.

Interactive: Increase active user participation and involvement, by adding comment boxes and opinion polls in the design. Convert users from visitors to clients with email forms and newsletter sign-ups.

Treefrog’s Toronto web design professionals create excellent User Interface (UI) Design for a satisfying web experience. They use critical planning and analysis for the design and they pay attention to individual client specifications, converting the intricate process into a simple and elegant piece of art.

Abstract close up of a plant
Marketing Strategy

Why Are SEO Discovery and Audit Services Important?

/

Effective SEO isn’t solely about how your website ranks in an organic Google search

Search engine optimization (SEO) is vital to your company’s online presence. The purpose of SEO is to obtain high visibility for your website on Google, Bing, Yahoo! and elsewhere by ensuring it ranks on the first page of the organic searches people perform. In other words, SEO makes it easy for your customers to find you online.

An oft-misunderstood online marketing tactic, SEO is an increasingly vast and complex methodology, and it’s one of many crucial elements comprising a holistic digital marketing strategy. Search engines rank websites based on multiple factors; no one digital marketing method alone will rocket your website to the top of Google’s list and keep it there indefinitely, and that includes SEO.

The effectiveness of SEO is reliant on many other components and services including:

Done well, SEO can improve your search engine rankings, thereby increasing your website’s organic traffic, and in turn, helping you score new customers, earn more revenue, and realize a high return on your SEO investment. But understand SEO isn’t only about your site’s ranking. One of your webpages may be ranking well for a keyword you’ve identified as relevant to your business, but if visitors to that webpage aren’t finding what they need quickly upon arrival, they’ll “bounce” or go elsewhere. Thus, user engagement is a major factor in Google’s determination of the value of any website. If large volumes of visitors are leaving your website rapidly, it will hurt your overall SEO ranking in the long run.

Research from multiple sources has quantified the value SEO provides for companies in both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) industry verticals. For instance, when conducting online procurement research an estimated 89% of B2B professionals start with a generic search. From a B2C perspective, about 72% of consumers who perform an organic search for a specific product or service visited a store or business within 8 kilometres of their location, and four out of five consumers use a search engine to find businesses in their vicinity.

However, like all things within the realm of business, there is no magic wand to wave that will produce instantaneous results. SEO involves research and analysis. Among the first steps to improving your site’s SEO ranking requires what’s known as an SEO discovery and audit session. It helps to determine which of your webpages are ranking as per targeted keywords, which ones aren’t, and what needs to be done to improve overall performance.

“Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different.”
– ALBERT SZENT-GYÖRGYI DE NAGYRÁPOLT

Learning about Your Business and Customers

Before an in-depth site audit is performed to gauge the health of your website’s current SEO ranking and how it can be improved, a pre-audit discovery session is required. An integral part of an effective SEO strategy, the purpose of a discovery session is straightforward: it sets the stage for an organized, useful, and strategic audit.

There are five things an SEO discovery session should include:

  • A comprehensive client interview. We need to learn about your business and industry and your products and services. We need to know who your existing, and prospective customers are, the lexicon you and they use, how and where they connect with you online, and what’s driving online conversions or sales today.
  • Determining what your goals are. A goal without a plan is but a wish. Setting realistic, executable goals serves two important functions: it clarifies what it is you want to achieve with your website, and how compiled data should be measured.
  • Access to real-time analytics. Assuming your company uses Google Analytics to track how online traffic arrives at your site, how long visitors dwell on your webpages, and whether they buy or bounce. The more historical data you can provide, the better it is during the audit phase and for plotting your future. If your business uses or has used Google AdWords, the data it can provide helps paint a more complete picture of your website’s performance to date.
  • What keywords you think are best and why. Forget about your current SEO ranking for the time being. In the discovery session, we need to have a clear understanding of the keywords you think are relevant to your business, and why you think your customers would use those keywords to search for your products and services.
  • The quality of your site’s current content. How often do you refresh your website’s content? What is the quality of the content on your site? Your content needs to be well-written, impactful, and it should accurately and succinctly articulate what benefits your business and products provide. If it’s rife with spelling errors, poor grammar, and rambling, incoherent jargon, it will severely diminish your SEO ranking.

Auditing Your Website

With the discovery session complete, we conduct a thorough SEO audit of all of your web properties, and subsequently, provide you with the details of that review and our strategic recommendations that are tailored to your company’s needs.

Our SEO audits and assessments typically include:

  • Competitive intelligence on your competitors
  • Keyword analysis and recommended targeted keywords
  • Reconfiguring your Google Analytics and AdWords to reap more insightful data
  • Local search optimization for Google My Business and other directories
  • Gauging your site’s mobile responsiveness and how mobile search impacts your SEO
  • The usefulness of your inbound links versus your competitors’
  • Recommendations about your site as a whole to improve engagement and increase visitor conversions

An in-depth SEO audit and discovery session takes the guesswork out of what resonates with your existing and potential customers, and it helps to determine a path forward based on data and your business’s strategic goals. It also lays the foundation for building your ongoing marketing plan to ensure you’ve got inspiring and effective content and messaging, a high-quality, responsive web presence, and above all, a compelling reason for the world to land on your pages first and foremost.

Do you have questions about SEO and its effectiveness in conjunction with other digital marketing methodologies? Talk to us. Whether your company is big or small, a startup or a recognized brand, we have the expertise and the experience to optimize your site and boost your website traffic.

Man making an online purchase on his computer tablet
Technology Strategy

Choosing the Right Small Business E-Commerce Solution

/

Should you integrate an out-of-the-box hosted platform with your website? Or is a customized on-premise solution a better option?

Your website is a contemporary extension of your business but with more important details about you, your employees, and how your products and services help solve your customers’ problems. In a hyperconnected world fuelled by e-commerce, the onus is on business owners and leaders to determine what the best e-commerce solution is to build into their sites.

Whether your company focuses on the business-to-consumer (B2C) or business-to-business (B2B) market (or both), the questions you need to answer are the same: Should you pick a hosted, out-of-the-box software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution? Or go for a more customizable on-premise platform?

Whichever way you choose to go, the solution should be a unified, user-friendly platform that is scalable and which integrates an online store with accounting, point-of-sale, inventory and subscription management tools, and other finance-related functions.

There are, of course, a number of elements you will need to consider, including:

  • If taxes are based on the location of the shipping warehouse or the shipment’s destination
  • Are shipping charges determined by a package’s weight, size, or destination? Or do you charge a flat fee?
  • Inventory control and management
  • Do you need to connect point-of-sale systems from bricks-and-mortar locations?
  • Cross-border customs clearance
  • Fluctuating currency exchange rates
  • Product discounts or seasonal specials
  • Overall reporting and metrics

“Here is a simple but powerful rule: Always give people more than they expect to get.”
– NELSON BOSWELL

Which E-Commerce Platform Is Best for Your Business?

When it comes to picking an e-commerce solution, the good news is there are options aplenty.

For most small businesses on tight budgets, Shopify has emerged as one of the most popular. Treefrog has integrated Shopify’s and other platforms with many of our clients’ sites, but we also provide custom-built e-commerce solutions.

Although Treefrog can integrate your site with any e-commerce platform you want, most of our clients that have selected a hosted solution have chosen one of the following platforms:

  • Shopify. Possibly the most popular and widely used e-commerce and shopping cart platform used by small- and medium-sized businesses today, this Canadian company’s solution features a broad range of options. It is easy to set up, has an intuitive user interface, add-on apps, 24/7 support, and its API integrates seamlessly with enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and other software.
  • Volusion. This platform features a comprehensive set of shopping tools, round-the-clock support, a user-friendly interface, extensive security features, and a mobile-responsive storefront. Volusion integrates seamlessly with Amazon and eBay, and through its social store builder tool, you can list your products on Facebook. It’s scalable, but the basic version sets a limit on the number of monthly transactions by restricting bandwidth, meaning service charges may apply if you exceed it.
  • Bigcommerce. This feature-rich solution includes many customizable templates, is easy to use and has an intuitive user interface, 24/7 support, no transaction fees, and has smooth integration with several e-newsletter services and Alibaba. It too is mobile-responsive and provides in-depth metrics and reporting.
  • Magento CE. An open source e-commerce platform that is available in four variations, the Magento Community Edition is an out-of-the-box solution that you must host on your server, or with its partnering company, Zoey. It includes bundled features including smooth integration with Google Analytics, in-depth sales reporting, and many third-party integration options but it is not PCI-compliant. Existing small business users provide community-based support.

Additional Things to Consider for Your Website

Once you’ve determined which e-commerce solution suits your business best, and taking a 360-degree view of your company and its online presence, there are other considerations to weigh:

  • A payment gateway. If you’re going to establish an online e-commerce platform, you will also need a payment gateway to facilitate online credit and debit card transactions. A payment gateway is an e-commerce enabler. It’s vital, and it provides a secure link between your site and the banking system. In essence, it provides a merchant-centric, single, automated portal to manage online financial transactions cost-effectively, quickly, and easily. It also makes it easy and flexible for your customers to buy from you online.
  • Readable, compelling content. If “content is king” then context must be queen. The importance of producing content online regularly cannot be denied, but to be regarded as a thought leader in your industry, your content needs to be persuasive, well-written, and it must provide value to your intended audience, or they will pay it no mind.
  • Search engine optimization (SEO). A widely used methodology to drive website traffic organically through the use of high-quality content, SEO maximizes your site’s content to rank well in search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo!.
  • High-quality images and design. There is no shortage of cheap, do-it-yourself (DIY) website builders available online promising anyone can create a professional-looking site in mere minutes for free or for only a few bucks. Lest we forget, you most often get what you pay for in this world. A well-designed website with high-quality images lends credibility to your business. A less-than-stellar online presence will hurt your business, not help it.
  • Using social media tools. More than 2 billion people use social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn on a daily basis. Since sales success requires cultivating relationships, your website should incorporate the use of social media tools, and social media marketing should be a part of your overall marketing efforts. Social tools will also help drive traffic to your website.

Do you have questions about e-commerce platforms and which one is best for your business?  Let’s talk. We can help you determine whether or not you need a custom-built solution or an off-the-shelf platform. Our expert programming team have experience customizing and integrating several e-commerce solutions with our clients’ websites.

Two people working and pointing at a laptop.
Creative Strategy

5 Steps to Creating Knockout Content Campaigns

/

An effective content campaign can help your company reach new audiences and generate more sales leads. Learn how to build focused, impactful content campaigns that will resonate with your customers

It’s common knowledge that content marketing is what drives traffic to websites, improves a site’s search engine optimization (SEO) rankings, and generates sales leads. But how do you use content effectively to do that? And what’s the difference between content marketing and a content campaign?

Content marketing encompasses many types of content including blogs, email broadcasts, social media posts, pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements, podcasts and videos, e-newsletters, and more. Its purpose is straightforward: to create and share content for free that is informative and entertaining, and helps your firm build trust with readers so they will become your customers.

In general, content marketing is designed to draw people to your website and entice them into your sales funnel. It’s the most critical ingredient in the commercial digital marketing stew. According to a 2015 poll of marketers conducted by Smart Insights, 29.6% ranked content marketing ahead of all other marketing techniques in importance, including marketing automation (12.8%), mobile marketing (11%), social media marketing (8.9%), and PPC marketing (3%).

A content campaign is a long-term, focused effort to drive awareness of your company and its services, or to change an impression people have of your company with content you have created that centres on a single topic.

Your content campaigns are not sales pitches. They contain targeted, relevant, useful information that is designed to educate or answer your readers’ questions. They address specific issues that your desired audience cares about while positioning your company as a thought leader in your industry. For example, a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning company may launch a content campaign each autumn explaining to homeowners how they should winter-proof their homes to help reduce their energy bills.

How to Build an Impactful Content Campaign

At one time, some companies would produce irrelevant, forgettable content stuffed with keywords as a means of spiking their SEO rankings. Thankfully, that methodology has fallen by the wayside. Now, search engines determine their rankings based on both keywords and valuable content.

There are five steps you need to take to develop a useful and impactful content campaign:

Be credible. Building trust demands credibility. That is to say, readers (or consumers) are more inclined to trust a company that consistently provides positive, personal experiences, quality products, useful information, and which responds to problems when they arise quickly and transparently.

Serve your audience with knowledge. Understanding quality, relevant content is the glue that holds your company’s sales funnel together, give your audience what they value: answers to questions they may have. Do it well, and you’re more likely to increase your sales in the short- and long-term.

Use keywords strategically. Using a select number of keywords is useful but don’t rely on them solely. From an SEO point of view, it’s important to use them to help people find your content, but keywords alone won’t help you create fantastic content that will resonate with people. It’s also critical to understand that SEO techniques are useless without meaningful content. Content is the foundation on which SEO sits.

Tap into your team’s creativity. Brainstorm with your colleagues and come up with interesting topics for content campaigns that will capture both your existing customers’ and desired prospects’ attention. Sometimes, you can discover terrific topic ideas simply by scouting Twitter hashtags relevant to your business or targeted audience.

Define what your goals are. What is the objective of your content campaign? Is it simply to give sales a boost? Then ponder how a content campaign can achieve that since using content to make a blatant sales pitch rarely works. Is it to increase email subscribers? Now flip the question and ask yourself, “how will someone who reads your content benefit from it? What matters to your targeted audience?”

Measuring the Results

After you’ve published your content and run the campaign, analyze the results to see what worked and what didn’t. Make changes where required, then begin anew. Bear in mind that determining a return-on-investment (ROI) on your content campaigns is not a straightforward calculation, and don’t lose sight of the big picture: you’re playing the long game with content. It’s a brand-builder, it inspires trust, and it helps position your company as an industry leader.

When measuring results to determine the ROI, you first need to know:

  • How valuable each new visitor to your website is and the length of time they spend at your site
  • How valuable is improving your visibility on Google
  • What the worth is of new visitors to specific product pages on your company’s site
  • The level of importance to place on the growing number of your social followers

Are you looking for a digital marketing partner to help you grow your company’s sphere of influence, and in turn, its revenues? We can help. Tell us what you want to achieve and let’s get started positioning your business as an authority in your industry.

Scroll to Top