This redditor didn’t see the benefit of an internal newsletter. It probably sucked.

How do you turn a stale corporate internal email into something better? Keep reading.

If you’re going to create an internal newsletter, or revive and revamp your current newsletter, you want to know that it’s going to be worth the time and effort. It is!

We’re speaking from experience—at Full Stacks we started our internal newsletter (The Hundy P Gazette ) in 2023. What initially was a one-person job summarizing Slack convos and work updates has evolved into a fun, engaging internal newsletter that everyone contributes to. Even more importantly, everyone reads it!

As The Hundy P Gazette evolved, we started to notice how our lil’ newsletter was making a big impact on our remote team. Here are the biggest wins you can expect from an effective internal newsletter:

Humanize the workplace

People aren’t robots, but sometimes that can be hard to remember when you only interact with someone from the other side of a screen. When we know our colleagues as a whole—their challenges, their victories, their lives beyond the workplace—we collaborate better and feel more invested in each other’s success.

By sharing stories in your internal newsletter, the digital workplace becomes more human. It helps teams see beyond job titles to the real people behind the work.

During a hectic workday, it can be easy to get caught up in frustrations or interpersonal hiccups. But when you know your coworkers better and have some rapport and trust built, it’s so much easier to assume positive intent. Imagine you get a request from a coworker that feels really direct and maybe a little blunt. Instead of immediately jumping to “Why is she being so rude to me? This isn’t my job!”, if we get to know the people we work with we might instead think “Oh, she’s probably feeling anxious about her upcoming vacation and is actually just looking for support!”

While an internal newsletter isn’t going to solve team relationships overnight (that’s a whole other huge topic), it serves as an important, regular touchpoint that helps people connect with colleagues they might not interact with on a regular basis. By making sure that your newsletter includes personal stories and opportunities for your team to share what matters to them outside of work, you help everyone feel seen as the human beings they are, and not just the role they fill at your company.

Promote a culture of connection

Remote work offers undeniable benefits (goodbye, commute!), but it also creates new challenges for maintaining strong team connections and company culture. With team members spread across different locations and time zones, the casual water cooler conversations, coffee runs, and lunch room chats that once knit our workplace culture together have largely disappeared.

Remote teams miss these organic touchpoints, so it’s important to be more intentional and have a structured approach to promoting workplace culture—an internal newsletter can be one of those touchpoints.

One of our goals with our internal newsletter is to help bring back some of those organic conversations and connections that we were missing. Here are some of the ways that The Hundy P Gazette contributes to our company culture:

• Creates a space to share cross-departmental and personal wins
• Gives visibility to projects and people that fly under the radar
• Captures and shares highlights from a very busy Slack so no one misses out
• Offers a space for people’s interests, hobbies, and personalities to shine

If you’re catching up on messages after a focus session, it’s easy to miss a funny or important conversation on Slack or Microsoft Teams. Internal newsletters can help highlight these moments, which helps people feel part of a team versus a bunch of individuals working in silos.

If you have a strong work culture and your team members are engaged, they’re more likely to be happy. If your team members are happy, you’re more likely to retain them.

Develop skills

Not everyone at Full Stacks writes on a day-to-day basis. Some of us are busy coding, or diving deep into analytics. Giving non-writers the opportunity to write helps them find their voice and build confidence in their communication skills.

For people who write frequently, such as our SEO and ads teams, the newsletter offers a refreshing creative outlet free from the usual restraints (character limits, brand voice, and keywords!).

Regardless of your team’s composition—whether they’re seasoned writers or technical experts—contributing to an internal newsletter helps everyone develop new creative muscles and sharpen their storytelling abilities.

Beyond the written word, other skills can also be developed by contributing to a newsletter, such as:

• Knowledge sharing (translating technical concepts into accessible language)
• Storytelling
• Visual communication (screenshots, emojis, photos)
• Editing
• Collaboration

Some companies see work that doesn’t directly generate money as a waste of time, but that’s a very narrow, short-sighted way to think about collaboration like this. Teams that have a creative outlet for improving communication skills are stronger and will be better equipped to handle the inevitable stress and conflict that comes in any workplace.

Keep everyone in the loop

One key part of an internal newsletter is, of course, sharing important information: process changes, upcoming closures, reminders about employee benefit changes, etc. You know, the important but kinda boring stuff that no one really wants to read, but they do need to know.

When you have a newsletter that is 80% fun, your readers are more likely to stick around and read the informational/important stuff. If your newsletter is 100% informational, your engagement is going to suffer—no one wants to read a corporate memo.

So include those important informational items, but keep them straightforward and to the point. Having an “Important Updates” section can help. Use bullet points and link off to broader documentation if needed.

We’ve curated a list of fun and boring ideas to help your internal newsletter balance engagement with essential updates.

Fun ideas

Your newsletter needs personality! Including fun, engaging content will transform your employee newsletter from a corporate memo into something that people look forward to reading.

Here are some fun ideas to consider including in your employee newsletter:

• Brain teasers or puzzles (we like to create a Connections game)
• Recipe or restaurant recommendations
• Podcast/book/movie/TV show recommendations
• Spotify playlists or song recommendations
• Local business spotlight
• Featured pet(s)
• Fun stories (tales from vacation, celebrity encounters, the wildest thing that happened to you at work, etc.)
• Advice and inspirational quotes (this doesn’t have to be work-related!)
• Quick polls or surveys (these can be silly, or serious)
• Contests
• Memes

These ideas are just a starting point to get the wheels turning about what types of fun content can be featured in your company’s internal newsletter. Every team is different. The best content comes from your team’s passion and expertise.

You can also give enthusiastic team members their own newsletter column! For example, Liz, our resident Taylor Swift fan, keeps us in the loop with updates and fan theories, while Sammy recommends a sandwich every edition in her column, The Daily Sammy.

Boring ideas

An internal newsletter needs to be fun to draw people in, but it also needs to provide company news and updates so everyone is on the same page and aware of important changes.

Below are ideas for informational topics that you can include in your internal newsletter—just don’t only include these topics. (Otherwise it’ll be a snooze fest that no one will engage with!)

• Important changes/company updates (processes, policies, tools you use, etc.)
• Important dates (product or service launches, major client deadlines, holidays, etc.)
• Important industry news (new laws/regulations, market trends, shifts in consumer behavior, etc.)
• Meeting recaps
• Training and professional development opportunities
• Employee spotlights
• Employee work anniversaries or birthdays
• Client/customer success stories and wins
• Department highlights
• Upcoming events
• Tips and resources
• An update from the CEO

Make it easy for people to consume this type of content and be mindful of length. No one wants to read a two-page letter from the CEO, no matter how fun the rest of the newsletter was.

You’ve made it this far and you’re jazzed to start your team’s internal newsletter. Now what? It’s time to make it a reality.

Pick your tool

Our first edition of The Hundy P Gazette was in a Google Doc. We purposefully decided that it shouldn’t be “designed” or sent like a traditional newsletter.We needed it to be easy for anyone to jump in and edit (not just the designers on our team) and we wanted it to feel casual. The nice thing about Google Docs is that you can leave comments directly on different sections. Our team naturally started adding funny responses, tagging each other and making jokes.

If you have a PDF newsletter, or even if you send an email newsletter, you really lose the feeling that this is an interactive and engaging touchpoint. It becomes just a one-way information push.

We use Notion for internal documentation, so it made sense to eventually move our newsletter there. It offered the same benefits as Google Docs but also did more:

• There is very little customization you can do in Notion, so everything looks good with minimal effort:
  • It’s easy to make the newsletter skimmable with headings, callouts, quotes, and other formatting features.
  • You don’t need to think about applying your brand or using the right typography, etc.
  • You have freedom but not too much, so you don’t get caught up in designing and instead focus on the meat and potatoes.
• You also don’t need a template, you can just make a page and go.
• Since we have internal documentation in Notion, it’s easy to reference policy or process pages that already live there.
• It’s super easy to add images and videos (and for others to then download them, which Google Docs makes so hard for some reason…).

Notion not for you? There are so many awesome tools to choose from, like Canva or Figjam, which allow for layout flexibility and comments from team members—if you’re already paying for these services, it’s another way to utilize them!

Decide on frequency

How often you send out an internal newsletter will depend on how fast news moves at your company—and may depend on the size of your company too. We decided on a bi-weekly frequency. Weekly was too often for our team (we’d struggle to get enough content), and monthly was too long.

Doing something more often also makes it easier to do. If you’re creating a newsletter monthly or even quarterly, you’ll likely find it hard to get started, even if you have a process in place. A bi-weekly frequency helps build a routine—you’re less likely to procrastinate when the next edition is around the corner, but you still have breathing room and aren’t rushing to get the next newsletter out.

A higher frequency also makes it easier to remember company updates. A month is a long time. It’s much easier to reflect on what happened in the last week or two and add relevant company updates to the newsletter. (If something happened a month ago, it feels like old news!)

Based on all of the above, we believe that a two week cadence for internal newsletters is the sweet spot. It gives you enough time to gather meaningful content, is still timely, and is less overwhelming for your team.

You’ll also want to think about when your internal newsletter will get sent out. Do you send it out on Monday, so it’s something people can look forward to reading when they start their work week? Or do you schedule it on Friday, when work is winding down and people are more receptive to doing something that isn’t “urgent” or “mission critical”.

We schedule our internal newsletter for Thursday morning, which is the last day of the workweek for Full Stacks (we work Monday-Thursday).

No matter what day you choose, the most important thing is to send it when your team is most likely to be paying attention—not during lunch when people are away from their desk, or when a recurring meeting typically happens.

Create a process

Without a clear workflow, internal projects die. If you’re a marketing agency like us, treat your internal newsletter like you would a client project. You’d create tasks, assign roles, and communicate clearly. A process keeps the information flowing, quality consistent, and your team engaged.

Here are questions to ask yourself, to help you create a process for your company’s internal newsletter:

• How are people going to submit?
  • We recommend creating a dedicated email address so people can easily send submissions.
• What information do we need from submitters?
  • This is where a guide can also be helpful! Not only can it include content ideas, but it can also include specific information needed for certain newsletter features (e.g. photos for an employee highlight, what details should be shared for an event, etc.).
  • Don’t make too many rules for submissions though, you want to make it easy for people to submit!
• When will submissions be due?
  • This could be one or two days before the newsletter goes out, depending on the workload of the person who’s creating it.
• How will we track and organize submissions?
  • This could be as simple as filing the email submissions away into a folder so you know that it’s been included in the latest newsletter.
• What happens if we receive too much or too little content?
  • If you have too much content, you can save some that isn’t timely for the next edition of the newsletter.
  • If submissions are looking a little thin, get creative. Share interesting articles, mental health resources, or just fun recommendations like podcasts, TV shows, or food ideas. And if you’re really stuck? Ask ChatGPT silly questions.
• Who will create the internal newsletter?
  • This will depend on how your company is structured. This could be HR, admin, or anyone.
  • Also: who will be responsible for the internal newsletter when the lead is on vacation?
• Who will review the internal newsletter before it goes out?
  • This could be leadership, or someone on the team who has an eye for detail and is good at catching typos.
• How is the team going to be notified about the latest edition?
  • We use Slack—think about what works best for your team!

Remember that processes don’t have to be set in stone. You can always tweak it to fit your team’s needs!

Get buy-in

You’ve completed the steps above—now what? You need to get buy-in from not only leadership, but from employees too. Essentially you need to answer the question, “what’s in it for me?”

For leadership, you’ll want to touch on the benefits that we spoke about earlier in the post—humanizing the workplace, building culture, developing skills, and keeping everyone in the loop. Also discuss the resources (mostly time) that it’ll take to start doing this.

Once leadership signs off, it’s time to get buy-in from the whole team. Part of this includes highlighting that the internal newsletter isn’t just for boring corporate news, but for fun and engaging content as well. We did this by creating a guide for our team so they can see the type of content submissions we’re looking for. Setting up an easy submission process for content is another way you can increase submissions.

Being open and listening to feedback is also important. If people are asking the same question, it’s a sign that your process isn’t clear and can be improved.

Our newsletter has gone through a lot of changes since we first started it, and we’ve learned a lot along the way.

• Make it clear that contributing to the newsletter is a part of everyone’s role. If you don’t do this, it’ll feel optional. Kind of like the bystander effect—someone else will surely write content for the newsletter and I won’t have to, right?
• Create a guide for your internal newsletter. It should outline expectations (while it is a part of their job, it is not mandatory to submit every week), how to submit, and content ideas.
• Set up a reminder a few days before the newsletter goes out. We do this by setting up a simple Slack reminder that goes out to the whole team. (We get the most contributions when we remind people to contribute!)

• Make it easy to contribute! This could be sending in submissions via email, or a simple form. If it’s not easy, people won’t do it.
• Read it together as a group. This makes it more of a connection moment! We did this by creating a calendar event for when our internal newsletter releases. Since our newsletter is in Notion, everyone is in there at the same time commenting. If you don’t end up using Notion, you can create a channel in Slack for everyone to talk about it.

Start small and stay consistent! Your first editions won’t be perfect, but as your team sees their colleagues contributing, they’ll want to join in.

Our best editions are when lots of people contribute and the newsletter becomes the collective voice of our team. When people from every corner of your organization contribute their stories, recommendations, and updates, your internal newsletter changes from a one-way broadcast into a conversation.

If you want more content like this, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter as we’ll be writing more about Agency Growth in the future.

Steal our process

1. Every team member at Full Stacks is expected to contribute to The Hundy P Gazette. Some people submit three articles every edition, some less so.
2. People are not required to submit an article for every single edition. If someone hasn’t contributed for a while, or the edition is looking thin, the editors will do some nudging.
3. We created a list of article ideas for inspiration. People can choose to use the ideas or go rogue. While The Hundy P Gazette is mostly made up of non-work-related content, we also use it for client updates and important upcoming dates and events.
4. We set up an email address for people to send their submissions to. With the help of Zapier and some magic, the submissions end up in a Slack channel for the editors.
5. Every Monday of a newsletter week we send out a reminder in Slack to get those submissions in.
6. We assign three editors to put all the submissions together and contribute as well.
7. Every two weeks, we duplicate the most recent edition, update the edition number and date, and clear any content that isn’t timely.
8. Our newsletter is published biweekly on Thursdays. We have a calendar event for the team that blocks 15 minutes of time at 10 am on newsletter days. We post a link in Slack, and everyone reads, comments, and feels smug about how clever we all are.

Creating an internal newsletter that doesn’t just collect digital dust in people’s inboxes might feel like a big ask, but it’s totally doable. Focus on making it fun, relatable, and genuinely useful—something people actually look forward to reading. Start small, stay consistent, and let your team’s personality shine through. You’ll know you’ve nailed it when people are chatting about it in Slack, sharing their favorite parts, and dropping jokes in the comments.

Have an ad group labelled “generic keywords”? Uh oh. Or maybe you had an ad group that did have a strong theme, but over time you kept adding new keywords, and now it houses, well, almost everything.

Take a hard look at your ad groups and ask yourself: does it make sense if people search for any of the keywords in my ad group for them to see the same ad? If the answer is no, then you need to split out your keywords into more ad groups.

Scenario: you’re a lawyer with multiple practice areas. Instead of creating one ad group to capture all of these searches, you’d want to create specific ad groups for each type of practice area.

Generic Ad group

“family lawyer”
“business lawyer”
“divorce attorney”
“employment lawyer”
“estate planning lawyer”
“lawyer in edmonton”

Themed Ad group

“family lawyer”
“family law attorney”
“family lawyer near me”
“family lawyer edmonton”

Organizing your ad groups into themes also ensures that your ad copy and landing page align with what the user is searching for. In the above example, you wouldn’t want people searching for “family lawyer” to see a generic ad or an ad unrelated to family law—instead, create ads that highlight your experience with family cases that use a landing page focused on family law. Set yourself up for success—create well-themed ad groups!

In the future, you might do more keyword research and discover themes such as “divorce lawyer” and “child custody lawyer.” It will be tempting to add these keywords to your Family Law ad group, but you shouldn’t! Create new ad groups to test these different themes and customize your ad copy.

Broad match, phrase match, exact match… so many match types!

Let’s be clear: Google wants you to use broad match because they’ll make more money.

Broad match has a bad reputation, and for a good reason—it has a long history of being . This match type works differently than it used to. It’s a little bit smarter now—Google makes it try to sound like the best choice by calling it comprehensive matching.

If you want to test broad match keywords, pair it with Smart Bidding to compete in the most relevant auctions. I also recommend using broad match within ad groups that already have phase and exact match keywords—by having other keywords in your ad groups, broad match can better understand the intent.

Phrase match (moderate matching) comes in handy when you want a wider reach than exact match but don’t want to open it up as much as broad match. In the past, phrase match was used when the order of the keywords mattered. Now, Google doesn’t care so much about the order as long as it doesn’t change the meaning of the keyword. Google is now smart enough (or thinks it is) to match up the meaning of your keyword with a searcher’s intent.

Exact match (tight matching) is another great match type to choose, although exact match is not true to its name anymore—your ads can also appear for close variations or searches that match the meaning of your keyword (e.g. lawyer and attorney).

I recommend starting with exact match and phrase match keywords, observing performance, and then in the future test how broad match keywords impact performance.

To see what search terms you’re appearing for, select the keyword a to view the search terms report for that specific keyword. (You can also look at this at the ad group level if you want to see search terms for all keywords in an ad group.

When reviewing search terms, if you find yourself constantly having to add a ton of negative keywords, it’s time to reconsider (narrowing) your match type!

Negative keywords are keywords you don’t want your ads to appear for, and you can add them at the campaign level or at the ad group level. Negative keywords save you money! Use them.

If you’re running multiple campaigns and want them to use the same negative keywords, you’ll want to create a negative keyword list so you can apply that list to all campaigns—this way, you’re only maintaining one list, which makes it easier to keep track of and manage your negative keywords (versus adding them individually at the campaign level).

Ideally, before you start running your campaigns, you would have proactively added negative keywords that you don’t want to appear for, such as “free,” “pictures,” and “cheap.” Check out this list of negative keywords and add negative keywords to your campaigns to prevent wasted ad spend.

Scenario: Let’s just say you’re a plumber and you have “plumbers edmonton” as a keyword. It looks like it’s performing well when you look at the keyword report—you’re getting a ton of clicks. But then you look at the search terms report and find out that you’ve actually been appearing for keywords like “plumber jobs in edmonton” and “plumber salary edmonton”. Oh no! You forgot to add jobs and salary as negative keywords, so you add them immediately.

But that’s not all you should do! You’d also want to add job and salaries as negatives (the singular and plural counterparts) as well as other keywords related to jobs such as career, careers, hire, and hiring. You could even go one step further and add negative keywords such as resume(s) and interview(s)—you might not think that someone would search for plumber resume examples, but someone will.

Negative keywords work a bit differently compared to the keywords you target. You also need to ask yourself, “Are there any other synonyms, misspellings, or other close variations? Do I have both the singular and the plural version of the keyword?”

Of course, match types of negative keywords behave differently than match types of regular keywords. Google has some nifty charts to help you decide what match types you should use for your negative keywords.

Save yourself from spending money on irrelevant clicks. Use negative keywords!

Or even worse—maybe you’re only running old Text Ads or Expanded Text Ads (both ad types have been retired, and you can’t create new ones anymore). If you set and forget your Google Ads account, you might not know about the new ad type in town: Responsive Search Ads (RSAs).

RSAs are great because you can test multiple headlines and descriptions in a single ad. That being said, you might be thinking that you can get away with just having one RSA in an ad group. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. You should still test different ad templates—Paid Media Pros has a great video that talks about the different ways you can test RSAs in your ad account. Give it a watch!

Even if you have multiple ads for each ad group, you still might not be seeing great results. What’s wrong? Take a hard look at your ad copy. Is it compelling? Is it clear? Is there a CTA? Remember to write for your audience, use emotional triggers to your advantage, and emphasize why people should choose your business.

Also, do a few quick Google searches to see how your competitor’s ads look compared to yours. Is their offer better? Is their copy more enticing? Learn from your competitors and adjust your ad copy.

So you’ve created ads; that’s great! But Google Ads offers many more opportunities to make your ad stand out with assets. If you add assets, it doesn’t guarantee that they will appear (they may appear in different combinations or not at all if your quality score is low), but when they do show, your ads will yield higher CTRs! Assets used to be called extensions—as the old name suggests, they are an extension of your ads.

Types of Assets:

• Callouts: Use callouts to highlight important information, such as features or benefits. What makes your business unique? Do you offer free shipping? Do you answer the phone 24/7? Do you offer same-day repairs? Include it as a callout!
• Sitelinks: Add links to related pages on your site, such as pricing, how to contact you, related services/products, etc. You might be thinking, “But why would I want people to go anywhere but my landing page?” Don’t worry—people are still going to mostly click on your ad headline. Sitelinks give searchers an idea of what other relevant information they can find on your site.
  • Tip: to check how your sitelinks are performing, segment by This asset vs Other.
• Call: Want people to call your business? Add a phone number! You can schedule it to appear only during business hours, so you don’t get calls when you’re not there to answer the phone. This asset is clickable on mobile but just appears as text on desktop.
  • Tip: we recommend using CallRail to track phone calls that come directly from your ads. With CallRail, you can set up a phone number for the call asset, as well as a website pool to track phone calls on your website!
• Structured Snippets: This asset is great, but there are some limitations with it because it has a limited selection of choices for the header. If you don’t see something on the list that works for you, try using “Types” and include a list that relates to your ad. You also need a list (at least 3 items) to use this asset.
• Location: If you’re a local business, the location asset is a must. All you have to do is connect Google Ads with your Google Business Profile. The asset will show searchers your address, phone number, and when you’re open. People can click on your location to open up your listing on Google Maps. By adding this asset, your location can also appear as an ad on Google Maps.
• Price: Price is a sticky subject for some companies, but if price is your competitive advantage, consider using the price asset to highlight the price of your product or service.
• Promotion: Have a sale? Highlight it with the promotion asset! You can use this asset to let searchers know that you have a 20% off sale for a limited time, and you can add a promo code.
• Message: If you have the capability, and if it makes sense for your business, this asset enables people to text you straight from your ad.
• App: If you have an app, you can have it appear underneath your ad with a call-to-action to download it.
• Lead Form: This asset allows people to fill out a form directly from your ad without having to click-through to your website. The downside: there are a very limited number of fields that you can include!
• Image: This asset allows images to appear alongside your ad. You can include photos of your office, employees, or images that represent your services or products to see what performs best!

Make your ad stand out with ad assets. Which ad would you click on?

Ad assets have a huge impact on CTR! Remember to set up your ad assets, but don’t set and forget. Review, test, and see what performs best.

Check-in on your assets often to ensure that they’re approved and running! Sometimes Google’s system will erroneously flag an asset as limited due to their policy. It often makes mistakes—you can appeal their decision if the option is available. If not, contact Google support to get your assets up and running again.

By default, Google will keep “Include Google Display Network” checked when you go to set up a search campaign. This is good for Google but bad for you.

Always keep search campaigns separate from display. By including display with search, you’re sacrificing control—and if there is one thing you want to be extra careful with, it’s giving Google too much control.

You’ll want to have separate strategies for search and display campaigns, and be able to control how much budget you’re allocating towards the two different networks. You can’t do that with display select enabled.

Keep search and display separate. Enough said.

So, you set your campaign to target the city your business is located in. Don’t stop there! Click “Location options” to expand a very important targeting feature.

Ask yourself: do I want people from other states, provinces, or countries to see my ads? The answer is likely no, so select “people in your or regularly in your targeted location” instead.

You can try the recommended setting, but in our humble opinion, this setting is recommended for Google because they get more of your money. If you choose “People in, or who show interest in, your targeted location,” keep a close eye on the user location report to see if people from outside of your targeted location are converting, or if they’re just costing you money.

Getting lots of traffic from Google Ads to your site, but no one is converting? It could be that the search terms you’re appearing for don’t have the right intent. But if your keywords are solid, and you’re appearing for relevant searches, it’s time to review your landing page.

Ask yourself:

• Is the page designed in a way that makes the content easy to read?
• Are you speaking to your audience (focusing on their wants and needs), or are you talking to yourself (focused on how awesome you are)? Is the content compelling?
• Does your landing page load fast? (If it’s slow, people will bail.)
• Is your site mobile-friendly? (Google primarily crawls and indexes the mobile version of sites!)
• Does your landing page match your ad copy, or is there a message mismatch? (This is so, so, so important!)
• Do you have a clear CTA?

You can have the best Google Ads campaign set up of all time, but a bad landing page will spoil the results. Use a session recording tool to see how people are interacting with your page and identify where they are getting hung up, and use an A/B testing tool to test landing page changes and see what performs best.

Any of these conversions sound familiar?

• Visited two pages on your site
• Scrolled 80% down the page
• Viewed a specific page

Are any of these things making you money? No. So why are you tracking them as conversions? A conversion should be someone filling out a form, calling you, purchasing a product, or booking an appointment. These things lead to more business, whereas someone visiting two pages on your site doesn’t make you money.

If you aren’t tracking conversions at all, it can be hard to see how Google Ads is impacting your business. Sure, you turn Google Ads on, and you see more leads or sales, but which keywords are performing the best? Which keywords are you spending a lot of money on that just aren’t working? Without conversion tracking, you won’t be able to optimize your campaigns. Set up GA4 and start tracking conversions!

Help Google make smart choices

Optimizing your campaigns takes time and effort, but in the long run, it’s worth it. Google Ads can be the difference between your phone ringing off the hook and your phone never ringing. Ads can bring you more business than you ever thought you’d get, or it can drain your marketing budget in a hurry. You get out of it what you put in—don’t set and forget your campaigns, and don’t blindly trust all of Google’s recommendations (they really, really want your money).

Get Cooking offers team building cooking classes which are perfect for small teams. Our team is very food motivated, so cooking together (and drinking wine) was a lot of fun! We enjoyed it so much that we’ve done two cooking classes at Get Cooking. The first time we savored an Italian feast together — crostini with arugula and walnut pesto, asparagus risotto, insalata caprese, chicken thighs roasted with potatoes and porcini mushrooms, and limoncello ice cream with biscotti. In the end our stomachs were full and we walked away with recipes that we could make at home. The second time around we learned how to make Christmas canapés, which was equally delicious.

Food brings everyone together — enjoy a tasty team building experience with Get Cooking! You can choose from a variety of cuisines to learn such as Italian, Japanese, Moroccan, Indian, and much more.

Food brings everyone together — enjoy a tasty team building experience with Get Cooking! You can choose from a variety of cuisines to learn such as Italian, Japanese, Moroccan, Indian, and much more.

Have you ever thrown an axe? No one on our team had before, so we decided to try it! We went to Axehole Axe Throwing and threw axes at spruce log targets until our arms were sore! An experienced trainer will teach you how to throw axes and give you tips, so you don’t need to be an axe-throwing expert before you go.

Channel your inner lumberjack and give axe throwing a try!

You’re never too old to play laser tag. We went to Laser City (when it was located in downtown Edmonton) and worked up a sweat running around and shooting each other with lasers. We got a bit competitive, but in the end we were all winners because we had so much fun, right?

Laser tag can teach you so many things — strategy, tactics, and how really out of shape you are. You can bond over how sore you are the next day!

We learned how to operate a segway with the help of our guide and then went on an adventure around the river valley! For some of us, it was a fun and delightful trip. For others, it was a bit terrifying. We booked our tour with River Valley Adventure Co. and (most of us) had a blast zipping around. If your team loves Edmonton’s beautiful river valley and wants to experience it in a different way, this team building activity is for you.

How fast can you make a segway go? Find out!

It’s winter for 8 out of 12 months in Edmonton, so it’s important to keep your stomach full and happy. Buying an Instant Pot can help you with that — it can easily create a hot and delicious meal for the whole team to enjoy together. This isn’t a fun outing like most of the other team building ideas you’ll read here, but it is something that you can plan once a month to make the chilly winter months a bit more bearable.

You can get the whole team involved by deciding on the recipe, buying ingredients, preparing food, and eating together as you reminisce about the nice, warm summer days.

Here are a few instant pot recipes we’ve enjoyed:

• Chicken Shawarma (the best)
• Beef Stroganoff
• BBQ Pulled Pork

Is there a holiday that your team really gets behind? For us, it’s Halloween and Christmas! This year we decorated spooky Halloween houses. This let us flex our creativity and celebrate Halloween in a unique way. If your office enjoys Halloween, you could also host a costume contest or carve pumpkins.

For Christmas, we typically do a gift exchange (secret santa or white elephant), play party games, eat a lot of food, and play Rock Band. A Christmas party is a nice way to end the year, as it allows us to connect before we break for the holidays and return in January.

Since only a few people on our team have green thumbs, we went to Cory Christopher’s studio and made succulent terrariums! Cory’s workshop got us thinking about design and colour theory — it also made us wonder how long we’d be able to keep the succulents we chose alive. They’re hardy and don’t need a lot of water, but some of us have a talent for killing plants.

Cory has everything you need to create a beautiful terrarium — all you need to bring is your imagination!

Edmonton Canoe will drop your team off at the boat launch at Voyageur Park in Devon. From there, you’ll canoe (or kayak!) down the North Saskatchewan river and see a completely different side of the river valley. It’s an all-day trip, so pack a lunch and find a spot to eat along the river. The lazy current takes you downstream, so you’ll eventually make it back home even if you don’t paddle very hard. We highly recommend taking your team on scenic canoe trip during the summer!

Cozy drinks. Snacks. An endless selection of board games. What’s not to like?

Our team had a great time at The Hexagon Board Game Cafe! 10/10 we highly recommend.

Getting your hands dirty is fun! Get step-by-step instructions from an artist and get creative. We weren’t experts at throwing clay before this (and still aren’t), but we all walked away with unique mugs! Check out the pottery workshops at Viva Clayworks.

We hope that our experience with team building will help you pick an event that’s right for your team.

If you’re ready to do better marketing, check out our case studies and contact us. Our teams are stronger together!

Before you start writing, you need to ask yourself, “what do I want the main outcome of this piece to be?” With a goal in mind, you can tailor your content to obtain that goal. Content without a goal becomes convoluted and incoherent, as it tries to do too many things at once.

So before you put that pen to paper (or hand to keyboard), set a goal! Do you want people to contact you about a service? Do you want to sell a product? Or do you want to increase brand awareness? These are just a few examples—whatever your goal is, note it down and keep it in mind as you write.

Note: The goal of this post is to get small-medium sized business owners and non-profit organizations excited about the potential content has when you follow these steps.

You have a goal for the content, but who is the content going to speak to? Hint: there is a wrong answer. If you said ‘everyone’, think again! Your message won’t resonate with every single person—you want to choose an audience (or a persona) that you want to target, and speak to them specifically.

Once you’ve established who you want to speak to, writing will be a lot easier because you’ll know their motivations, pain points, needs, and interests.

Whether you have a marketing team that writes content, or frontline staff that are interested in contributing their knowledge and expertise, it’s important that everyone who writes content for your business sounds like your brand. Even if only one person on your team creates content, it’s important to establish a brand voice so each piece sounds consistent, and also because your brand voice may differ from how they normally sound when they write.

Writing in a consistent brand voice also establishes familiarity and trust with your readers—if they feel like they know you, you’re one step closer to earning their business.

Imagine reading one section of company’s website that was written in a fun and energetic voice, and then reading another section sounds corporate and cold. This will confuse visitors and make them second guess who you are as a company.

To establish a brand voice, think about who you are. What are your brand values? Who are your customers? What does your company strive to be? This can help you answer whether you brand voice should be fun and informal, or smart and professional, for example. It’s also important to think about how you don’t want to sound.

MailChimp has a great example of this on their Content Style Guide. They’re helpful but not overbearing, and confident but not cocky—identifying how you don’t want to sound further defines what you should sound like.

Brand voice is often ignored by many businesses! Having a consistent brand voice can separate you from your competition—do not skip this step.

Creating original and thoughtful content is important. Don’t take shortcuts when creating content—remember, great content takes time.

When creating content:

• Don’t copy/paste content from other sites or sources. (But you can link out to other sources!)
• Don’t look at your competitors websites and think, “I need to do that.” Instead, think, “I need to do better than that.”
• Don’t talk down to your audience.
• Don’t use stock photos that look staged and disingenuous.

Instead, do:

• Highlight what separates you from the competition—do so without saying “we’re unique” or “we’re different because…”.
• Collaborate with experts on your team, or have them write for you.
• Conduct your own original research to create unique content if you have the time and resources.
• Create your own illustrations or take your own photos.

Anticipating your audience’s questions will show that you understand their needs and pain points. By providing answers before they have to ask, you’re removing a barrier that is preventing them from taking action on your site.

The most obvious example of when you’ll answer your audience’s questions is on an FAQ page. FAQ pages are developed to answer repeat questions that come up time and time again, and because they’re common, people look for them. That doesn’t mean your business has to have an FAQ page—you may be able to answer their questions succinctly elsewhere on your site.

Other common places where you’ll answer your audience’s questions are on your about page, in case studies, and on individual product or service pages. Below are a few examples of how these types of pages can answer your audience’s questions:

• About Page — How long has the company been in business? What are their core values? Where is the company based? What’s their story?
• Case Studies — Does the company have proven results for their clients? What types of companies have they worked with?
• Product Pages — How much does it cost? What’s the quality like? How do I use the product? How will the product fit? What do other people have to say about this product?
• Service Pages — What is the service? How can the service help me? How much does the service cost? How are you better than the competition?

Understanding your audience’s needs and pain points is crucial—if you don’t know your audience (as discussed in point two), you won’t be able to anticipate their questions.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will help get your content in front of people searching on Google or Bing. For example, someone searching for “signs you need to call an electrician” will come across multiple posts on the topic written by electrical service companies.

Rand Fishkin’s Whiteboard Friday outlines how to write for SEO in 2018. To do so:

1. Solve the searcher’s query.
2. Include multiple keywords that have the same intent.
3. Include the keywords in the title tag and the body content.
   • Bonus: Use heading tags (h1, h2), include the keyword in the URL field, write a compelling meta description, and include image alt attributes.
4. Use words, phrases, and concepts that are commonly associated with your query.

Keep these points in mind, and you’ll be well on your way to writing content for SEO. (But don’t forget to put your audience first when writing!) Rand’s last point is something you don’t have complete control over—engagement. By answering your audience’s question and keeping them engaged with your site, you’ll show Google that your content has fulfilled the user’s query. If they hit the back button right away, Google will think that you haven’t answered their question, and may change how they rank your page on the topic.

Medium conducted a study which showed that 7 minutes is the average read time for their blog posts. (Medium estimates read time using the average reading speed of 275 words per minute, meaning that a 7 minute blog post is about 1,925 words long.) Does that mean every blog post you write should only take 7 minutes to read? No! Medium concluded their study by saying,

“What it does mean is that it’s worth writing however much you really need. Don’t feel constrained by presumed short attention spans. If you put in the effort, so will your audience.”

The main takeaway here is: there is no optimal length for content. Whether it’s content on your about page, a service page, or a blog post, write until your point is made! It’s important to get your main point across while also being clear and concise. Which brings us to our next point…

You can put a ton of time and effort into great content, but if it isn’t easy for your audience to read, you’ve wasted your time. Here are a few examples of things you can do to make your content look good:

• Add images to provide visual interest and break up large sections of text.
  • Tip: If you can’t take your own photographs or make your own illustrations, check out Pexels or Unsplash for free stock photos. Choose photos that don’t look too staged!
• Use subheadings to separate your content into sections—this makes it easier for your audience to pick out what they want to read.
• Use an appropriate font size and line length, to make your content easy to read.
• Make use of different formatting, such as bullet points for lists and bold text or block quotes to highlight key points.

Make your content look attractive! Visitors to your website won’t read your content if there is no visual interest, it’s hard to read, or it’s formatted poorly.

Most of the content you create will be actionable, so be sure to include a call-to-action. Steer your audience in the right direction. Do you want people to:

• Contact you?
• Sign up for your newsletter?
• Buy your product?
• Book an appointment?
• Sign up for a free trial?

Avoid using ‘submit’ as your call-to-action—be clear about the action you want your audience to take. Examples of clear call-to-actions include:

• Get in Touch
• Subscribe
• Buy Now
• Book Your Appointment
• Get My Free Trial
• Download our “Email Newsletter” Whitepaper (sometimes long buttons work great!)

For more information about creating effective CTAs, we recommend reading Joanna Wiebe’s blog.

Are you ready to improve the content on your website? Get organized! Create a content calendar to keep track of your content creation efforts—use it to assign responsibilities and set deadlines so content doesn’t get put on the back burner.

Once you have created great content that you want to get in front of your audience (blog posts, articles, infographics, etc.), promote it! You can have the best content in the world, but if you don’t distribute your content, no one will see it.

Sometimes less is more. Sometimes more is more! Research about who your audience is and an analysis of how people interact with your website can be very helpful in guiding your content process.