Check out my full report for insights on how younger generations are redefining mobile behaviour, including how we think about mobile ads.

The post Announcing: The 2017 Catalyst Canada Mobile Study appeared first on Catalyst.

Here are 10 tips to build your business’ content marketing strategy to get the results you want, without all the clutter:

1. Outline a clear goal

Whether you wish to improve organic rankings, bring more users to your site or just add more subscribers to a newsletter, defining what exactly you wish to accomplish with your content marketing plan is an important first step to success. Since different goals require different approaches, having a clear core goal serves a baseline to build out from. All subsequent content created through your strategy should be rooted in and contribute to this primary objective.

2. Identify a target audience

Who are you marketing your business to? Who are you creating your product for? Creating personas helps add a certain degree of creative light to your core marketing objective. Not only do personas add faces to your audience, but they also help outline what questions that audience might have about your product. Why might your target audience want your product? How are you different from other businesses in your industry?

When creating your personas, be sure to provide as much detail as possible. Get creative with them: assign names, ages, hobbies and even pictures. Because writing content that ‘Jim’ might like is much easier than figuring out what ‘male, aged 25-35, Toronto’ might like. This comes in especially handy, and provides a cohesive vision, when working with multiple content creators.

Still not sure who your audience is? Here are some tips on creating buyer personas using Google Analytics.

3. Audit existing content

To avoid creating duplicate content, look for internal linking opportunities to include in new content or to identify gaps in your existing content portfolio, run a careful report of all content on your site. Having a detailed snapshot of what exactly is on your site can help you identify gaps which need immediate attention, provide insight on new ideas for new pieces or flag outdated content which can use a revamp.

4. Brainstorm content topics

Having a well thought out bank of content ideas ensures you can deliver consistent current material. Once you asses your core goals, current existing content, target audiences and content gaps, try putting together a rough calendar or list of content ideas. This adds an overarching organizational structure to your content strategy and serves as a quick reference point to track the status of your strategy.

5. Choose a medium

Before creating your first piece of content, determine which medium works best for your target audience. Are short videos going to work better than long-form written content? Are photos the best way to convey your message? How is your content consumed? Does your target audience favour desktop to mobile?

Settling on a medium to present your content through also helps set the perimeters as to what kind of content ideas you can build on. For example, if your business is visual, photo or video might work best. Whereas, if your product is more abstract, written content might be better at conveying your core message.

6. Create

The most important, and seemingly obvious, part of any content marketing strategy is execution. Once all the wheels of your strategy are in place, it is time to start creating and to keep the momentum going. As a rule: To avoid fizzling out, never bite off more content than you can chew.

Not sure what voice to use? The art of corporate storytelling is not as hard as it sounds.

7. Publish

Once your content is complete and ready to be shared with the world, determine how best to publish your piece. Details regarding your content, such as the medium chosen for presentation, can help lead you in the right direction. If you create a video, for example, you might consider writing a short accompanying synopsis for Blog or social media posts.

Don’t have a business Blog? Here is a quick checklist for setting up this powerful platform.

Note: For measurement purposes, try to diversify your choice of channels to publish on. Posting on multiple channels provides a more robust comparative model.

8. Look for amplification opportunities

To help give your content an initial boost, try reaching out to influencers within your industry. Whether a social media personality with thousands of followers or a respected information outlet, industry thought leaders can get your message out there and give it credibility. In addition to pumping out your content, influencers may even be able to contribute to your content or include your content in their own pieces.

9. Measure

To determine where improvements are needed and to provide insight into future pieces, keep track of how your content is performing. In particular, pay careful attention to how people are interacting your piece. Understanding the implications of different behaviour can help flag positive and negative parts of your piece.

For example, if you post a YouTube video on Twitter, and it is liked and shared by many people, and the same video is posted on your Blog, where it enjoys marginal success, you might consider Twitter to be your best audience for video. But other issues could point to how it is posted on your Blog or whether your Blog is mobile-friendly.

Note: Familiarize yourself with the analytics tools of the platform you post your content on. For example, YouTube Analytics provides data on different aspects of your videos, from what times people drop off to the device type viewers use to consume your content.

10. Repeat

From applying new insights to discovering more about your audience, a good content marketing strategy is cyclical, with the lessons learned from one piece feeding into the next. Think of it like taking care of a plant: when a plant grows a leaf, we adapt our care to nurture that leaf, with the intention of growing more using the same methods. The same can be said of content, where repeated nurturing behaviour maintains a healthy system and spurs further natural growth.

The post 10 Tips to Build Your Business’ Content Marketing Strategy appeared first on Catalyst.

These agency partners deliver outstanding results for their clients using the power of search advertising, ensure that their client’s ads are in the right place, at the right time, when consumers are making buying decisions.

Every year, the Partner of the Year award is presented to the agency that best engages with Bing Ads in true partnership. It is our pleasure to announce that this year, Catalyst Canada has been chosen as one of eight finalists for Partner of the Year – and the only Canadian agency in this category.

We’re thrilled to be nominated for this important accolade, and look forward to attending the Bing Agency Awards on September 14th 2017, in New York City!

For a complete list of finalists, visit the 2017 Bing Agency Awards website.

Wonderful work, team!

The post Catalyst Nominated for Partner of the Year at 2017 Bing Agency Awards appeared first on Catalyst.

The world of voice search has been gathering steam, with big tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon investing heavily. Although voice search is still very much in its infancy, it has seen steady technology advancements more recently, most notably with the release of the first consumer products designed specifically for voice search in the home.

From simple queries like “what is the capital of Nicaragua?’ to ordering goods directly to your door through Amazon, voice search assistants have come a long way. The four aforementioned leaders envision a future engrossed in voice commands, and each have positioned their products to try and fill consumers’ needs. Although adoption rates are estimated to be slower in Canada compared to the United States, staying ahead of the curve with your marketing campaigns is essential to ensuring your business doesn’t miss out on this opportunity.

Though we don’t know exactly how voice search will play out in an increasingly sophisticated digital landscape, like mobile before it, the voice revolution is just beginning.

The Current Landscape

Google

Google has recently launched its Google Home product featuring the Google Assistant. Google Home is the only hardware product powered by the Google search engine, and thus the only device that can tap into Google’s vast array of search data and AI technology.

Google Assistant is very sophisticated at understanding and answering most questions and commands asked of it. It can draw off the knowledge graph and connect to your other Google applications.

Where Google can improve upon is the smart home space, and integration with the Internet of Things. So far, Google Home has limited partnerships with third parties to integrate into other home products and appliances. While the Home will have no problem streaming music or connecting to your Chromecast, support for third party devices is limited, which could end up hurting the Google Home’s usefulness in the long run.

Amazon

Amazon Echo makes use of Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, which is a new entrant into the market. Alexa search is powered by Amazon and falls back to Microsoft Bing when Amazon cannot answer a question.

Echo requires a very strict syntax in order to understand and answer a command, which can lead to a lot of consumer frustration. Other than this drawback, the Echo is a very actionable piece of hardware with the most support from smart home partnerships, allowing the Echo to become an integral part of any home network.

The Echo has a growing list of over 5000+ skills it can take action on, ranging from ordering pizza, to turning off the lights in your home. The biggest differentiating asset that the Echo brings to the table is its integration with Amazon, which allows a user to access their Amazon account to purchase and re-order items. It will be interesting to see if and how ads are introduced into this environment, and how they will shape consumer behaviour and buying habits.

Microsoft

Microsoft has yet to release a hardware assistant itself, but has lent its software to other manufacturers to use in their hardware devices, such as Toshiba. Microsoft has its Cortana assistant, which is already native to all Microsoft products that are powered by Bing.

Microsoft has a strong position in the voice search market as it is the underlying search engine in the majority of voice search devices available. They are in a good position to be a leader for voice search with the only main competition coming from Google products.

Apple

Apple does not yet have hardware for a home assistant, but they still have a competitive AI in Siri. Siri, which answers search queries using Bing, is found in all capable Apple products. Siri is very well integrated into the Apple ecosystem, with most functionalities in an iPhone able to be controlled by voice.

Apple does have the Home Kit, which allows you to control your smart home from current Apple products, however there is currently a limited selection of compatible hardware. The main drawback from not having an active home listening hardware device? Only the person with the iPhone can use Siri, since it is a handheld device.

Looking Ahead

Voice Search still has a long way to go before we see it in every household, but as home assistants gain more popularity and more integration with The Internet of Things, this will become an important space in which advertisers can be present.

Bing looks to gain a strong market share of voice search volume as it powers the majority of devices at the moment, but strong competition in development of new products will ultimately decide how this landscape develops in the future. Google, Amazon and Apple have strong product offerings with no clear-cut path to voice search dominance. As this market grows, it will be imperative to consider how your campaigns can grow with it so that you, and your business, are not left behind.

Altering the Digital Landscape

As consumer adoption of voice technology rises, search trends indicate that 40% of adults use voice commands daily, with 20% of voice queries completed on mobile devices. As the number of users driven to the search engine results page via voice rises, it becomes increasingly critical that digital marketers evaluate “how” voice users search and “what they search for”, in order to ensure that they appear among search results. With this in mind, the rise of voice search highlights a need for adaptability among marketers in the digital landscape. In the quest to reach consumers online, it is imperative that marketers evaluate how voice search is used in the search for solutions.

Voice queries differ from text queries in several ways, most notably, in query length. For voice-search users, queries are often long and more conversational in tone. Rather than searching for, “Nike shoe sale”, users using voice search are more likely to search for “Are Nike shoes on sale at a store near me?” As a result, voice generally produces longer-tail queries that differ in length from those generated by traditional text input.

Secondly, voice search language often integrates the “Five Ws” with question-based queries rooted in what, who, how, when and why. As a result, these queries are more likely to convey nuanced sentiments that communicate user-search intent more clearly than their text counterparts. Lastly, voice queries submitted on mobile devices are 3 times more likely, on average, to be localized, with rising interest for solutions “nearby”.

However – despite the differences reported between voice and text-based queries, users are directed to the same search engine results page. For content creators, this suggests a growing need for developing conversational and engaging content that reflects the “what and how” of voice search. In the race for adoption, content creators are encouraged create alignment between content and voice by developing FAQ pages that answer the “Five Ws”.

For paid search marketers, bidding strategies must be adjusted to account for user-intent and action-based voice queries. And lastly, rather than optimizing metadata and content for text-based keywords, SEO must target longer tail queries, ensure that local listings are optimized, and maintain accurate local data across web-directories.

The post The Rise of Voice Search: Current Landscape and Future Visions appeared first on Catalyst.

In 2017 Emerging Trends in Content Marketing, Content Marketing Account Manager Tzvi Grosman sits down with Catalyst Head of Strategy Alan Amerault to talk about Content Marketing in 2017, including current trends, which companies are doing it right, and much more.

Voice Search & How It Relates to SEO in 2017 features Director of SEO Paul Schembri chatting with Alan Amerault on the topic of voice search in 2017, and specifically how it relates to the ever-evolving world of SEO.

See all of our In the Room videos on our YouTube Channel, and visit our website to stay up to date with the industry and our services.

The post New Videos On the Catalyst YouTube Channel appeared first on Catalyst.

Topic: Digital Media Strategy for all business shapes and sizes

Date: Wed April 26th, 2017

Registration: https://www.meetup.com/Women-Digital-Network-Toronto/events/239084851/?a=socialmedia

Seating is limited, so reserve now!

We hope to see you there.

The post The Women’s Digital Network & Catalyst: Panel Event appeared first on Catalyst.

In the past seven days, Google has made some interesting updates to its keyword planner, Facebook has improved the way that customers interact with Pages, and Google has made it easier for manufacturers to promote their brick-and-mortar locations.

Keep reading to get fully informed!

The Keyword Planner Gets a New Feature

This past week, Google added an insightful new feature to its Keyword Planner tool. Under its budget planning and forecast section, you can now get forecasts for your existing keywords and campaigns.

Search Engine Land’s Ginny Marvin explains how to use this new feature:

“After clicking on the “Select from account” button shown above, there is an option to select Campaign or Keyword from a drop-down. After making your selections, the tool offers performance forecasting and various looks at search volume trends….

You can also see the forecasted impact of adding new keywords. After adding keywords by clicking on the New keywords option in the left menu, you can choose All keywords, also in the left menu, to see the daily forecasts for the existing and new keywords combined.”

Facebook Updates Pages

Have you ever wished that you could order a pizza straight from your favourite pizzeria’s Facebook page? Or book a haircut as you browsed your go-to hair salon’s profile? With the Pages update, you can now do exactly that, with new calls-to-action that allow you to “Start Order,” “Book Now,” “Buy Tickets,” and “See Showtimes” straight from a business’ Facebook page.

In a news release this past Wednesday, Facebook explained the feature:

“Last year, we made calls to action more prominent on Pages to make it simpler for people and businesses to connect directly. However, the experiences customers are directed to after clicking the call-to-action button often aren’t optimized for mobile, increasing the chance that people will drop off without connecting with your business.

That’s why we’re enhancing call-to-action buttons on Pages to allow people to schedule, order, buy and do more seamlessly on your Page. Businesses can choose to add the new call-to-action buttons to their Page and provide customers with a simple form that’s easy to complete in just a few taps.

For instance, if you’re a pizzeria, hungry customers will be able to review your menu, make their selection and complete their order with you, straight from your Page. If you’re a spa, potential customers will be able to review your services and book an appointment with you, straight from your Page.”

Google Launches Affiliate Location Ad Extensions

According to Google Trends data, search queries that contain qualifiers relating to location – such as “near me” or “nearby” – have continued to increase exponentially.

This past Thursday, Google increased its efforts to capture these users’ purchase intent with the launch of its Adwords affiliate location extensions. Manufacturers will now be able to promote their locations through their Adwords ads, pointing users to nearby locations that sell the product that’s being searched.

In yesterday’s Google+ post, the search giant explained:

“We introduced location extensions (https://goo.gl/ki6Hvl) in 2009 to help advertisers promote and drive more foot traffic to their business locations directly from search ads. We are now launching affiliate location extensions to help manufacturers drive customers to third-party retail locations that sell their products (https://goo.gl/tFq3ff)…

By promoting retail locations in your search ads, you can make them more actionable and give consumers relevant local information to drive store visits and sales. To learn more about affiliate location extensions, visit our Help Center (https://goo.gl/tFq3ff) and read best practices (https://goo.gl/E0UFl6) for turning online searches into offline sales.”

Thank you for tuning in – have a great weekend, digital marketers!

The post Weekly Roll-Up: October 15 – 21 appeared first on Catalyst.

Google to begin rewarding the facts

Articles including the schema.org ClaimReview markup or are vetted by reputable sites are going to be given a ‘Fact Check’ label. While not having the label does not discredit an article, having the Google seal of authenticity certainly makes an article more airtight.

Here’s what it looks like:

Google explains their reasoning in their ‘Journalism & News’ Blog:

“Today, we’re adding another new tag, “Fact check,” to help readers find fact checking in large news stories. You’ll see the tagged articles in the expanded story box on news.google.com and in the Google News & Weather iOS and Android apps, starting with the U.S. and the U.K.”

Communicating directly through Google?

Google is currently testing ‘Posts with Google,’ a new social platform that allows prominent individuals and organizations to communicate directly on Google to queries posed by Google users. Their responses, with text, images and video, are then published directly in search results and are shareable through social networks.

Search Engine Land explains how it will work once it launches:

“There’s no way to access actual Google Posts from the Google Posts home page. These only appear within search results, when triggered by searching by name for people and businesses approved to use the system. There’s also no way to see all the posts that a particular person or business has posted. Posts might also disappear over time, as has been the case with some US presidential candidates.”

Google pushing for more mobile migration

Google has announced that it is building a new and improved search index exclusive to mobile. This new search index is being designed to overtake and eventually replace the system which currently indexes search results for desktop.

The Next Web points out this move is only the latest chapter in Google’s mobile revolution:

“Back in 2015, the company tweaked its algorithm to give priority to websites optimized for mobile. More recently, the big G has started adding Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) in search results to offer users the option to choose websites with faster loading pages.”

The post Weekly Roll-Up: Week of Oct 8 – 14 appeared first on Catalyst.

Read on for more information and links to the full story!

Google Debuts its New Family of Hardware  

On October 4^th, Google announced the release of its new family of products, both hardware and software, aimed at making the best of Google accessible to anyone, anytime, anywhere.

From the new Google phone, called Pixel, to your own personal Google Assistant, to the totally hands-free Google Home, visit the Google blog to learn about the search giant’s new suite of products.

With the release of Google Home, the search giant is poised in direct competition with Amazon Echo. As Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan explains:

“Google bucked the odds to win the first generation of internet search, on the desktop. It proved nimble to thrive in the transition to mobile search. Now it faces a third big generational change: hands-free search in the age of internet-connected devices. Enter Google Assistant and Google Home as how Google hopes to win.”

Until now, virtually all interactions people have had with Google have involved touch. You had to touch your keyboard to type, either on desktop or mobile. You had to touch your phone, even if speaking a search, in order to review results….

Contrast that with the Amazon Echo, the surprise hit device that allows anyone to just speak to it to get the weather, news updates, order products, play music and much more….

Google Home gives Google the physical device to play in the space.”

Facebook Takes on Craigslist & eBay With the Release of Marketplace

This past Monday, the world’s largest social network made a giant leap into the world of e-commerce, with the launch of Facebook Marketplace – a new feature that allows individual Facebook users to buy and sell items ranging from jewelry to electronics to cars.

Kathleen Chaykowski of Forbes explains the details:

“To start, Marketplace is rolling out to users over the age of 18 in the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand on iOS and Android over the next few days. Facebook plans to extend the service to its desktop site and additional countries over the coming months.

For now, Marketplace can be accessed by tapping a highly-visible shopping bag icon at the bottom of the app, alongside icons such as ”Messenger” and “Notifications.” Facebook’s massive 1.7-billion person user base and the new feature’s ease of use give it a good shot of competing with more established, peer-to-peer online marketplaces such as eBay and Craigslist.

‘Marketplace is a single destination where people can discover, buy and sell things in their neighborhood and community,’ said Facebook product manager Bowen Pan in an interview. ‘The feature will also surface the most relevant items when we don’t know what we’re looking for. It’s designed for people, not big businesses.’ ”

Facebook Finished Rolling Out Secret Conversations

Another Facebook feature wraps up this week’s roll-up, as we shine the spotlight on its wildly popular Messenger service, which now gives users the ability to encrypt their conversations so that no one else – not even Facebook itself – can read them. It’s called Secret Conversations, and it offers end-to-end encryption for all users.

Andy Greenberg of Wired brings us the whole story:

“A Facebook spokesperson tells WIRED the company just finished rolling out “Secret Conversations” to all 900 million Facebook Messenger users in the past few weeks. The opt-in feature allows users to encrypt their messages so that no one can read them except the two people on either end of a conversation—not even Facebook or law enforcement or intelligence agencies. “Your messages are already secure, but Secret Conversations are encrypted from one device to another,” states a description in the app when users initiate their first encrypted conversation.

While the company’s software updates for iOS and Android haven’t explicitly mentioned the encryption feature, anyone who updates their Messenger app will now find the “secret” option on the top right of the “new message” screen.”

Want to start your own secret conversations, but aren’t sure how? TechCrunch gives us a detailed step-by-step walkthrough, offering a visual guide on how to use the new encryption feature.

Thank you for joining us – have a wonderful long weekend!

The post Weekly Roll-Up: Week of Oct 1 – 7 appeared first on Catalyst.

Google rolls out a new blog

On Thursday, Google unveiled a new blog, titled “The Keyword”:

“The Keyword is all the stuff we had across 19 blogs, in one place — so you don’t have to hop from one blog to another to find the latest update. If you’re looking for something from Google from now on, chances are it’s here”

Check out the full story from The Keyword itself.

Apple app store ads go live October 5th

Apple announced this week that they will be rolling out search ads for the app store on October 5^th, and developers will also receive a $100 credit for the first campaign. Here’s more from the full story on Search Engine Land:

“After a beta period that began in June, Apple is now opening up Search Ads for the App Store to all publishers and developers. It’s currently available for the iPhone and iPad only in the US.”

” Developers set a max daily budget and an overall campaign budget. Apple’s Search Ads use the familiar “second price auction” to set winning bid prices. Apple says that relevance and bid price will determine which ads show. (Developers will pay on a “cost per tap” basis.)

Search Ads allow for bidding on the iPhone or iPad individually. There’s a keyword suggestion tool, with popularity indicators and negative keyword capabilities. There are audience targeting features, including customer type (e.g., has not downloaded) gender, age and location. And of course there are analytics.”

Happy Birthday Google!

Google celebrated its 18^th birthday on Tuesday, September 27^th with a Doodle created by German artist Gerben Steenks. Google has celebrated its birthday on different days throughout September in the past, but officially adopted the 27^th as its birthday in 2005.

Check out the latest doodle, and all the ones that came before it here.

The post Weekly Roll-Up: Week of Sept 24-30 appeared first on Catalyst.