Managing your social media effectively can sometimes feel like juggling a hundred different variables. When is the best time to post? How do you plan your content and stay organized? What about editing photos? Hashtags?? Worry not. We know your struggle, and have corralled our recommendations for the apps and websites that will make social media feel like a breeze. (Bonus: they’re all free!)
One of the most common complaints with Instagram is the lack of linkability. Sure, you can include a link in your bio—but what if you want to share multiple blog posts or external links in addition to your homepage? Enter Linktree. This website lets you create one bio link that leads users to an easy-to-navigate list of curated links. You can add, remove, and reorder links quickly and easily. Because when it comes down to it, social media won’t do you much good if it isn’t driving traffic to your website and converting followers into customers.
The free version of Linktree offers unlimited links, and for $6 a month you can also get access to link traffic analytics.
Posting at the right time each day on Instagram and Facebook is essential for getting your content in front of the right eyeballs. “What about the algorithm,” you ask? Good question! Yes, Instagram’s all-powerful algorithm will dictate when your post shows up on your followers’ feeds, but it’s also determined by how well your post performs. That means you still want to post when the majority of your followers are on their devices to inspire as much engagement as possible. In summary: Posting when your followers are online = more engagement = the algorithm adds your post to more users’ feeds = new eyes and increased engagement! Got it?
The other thing to remember is that the best time to post is going to be different for everyone. So, how do you know when the majority of your followers are online? Instagram and Facebook both have data available in the “Insights” sections for business accounts. Facebook will let you schedule posts for publishing later right in the platform. But when it comes to Instagram, Prime pieces it all together for you by tracking analytics (with more precise times than Instagram itself provides) along with scheduling and notification functions. There are plenty of free apps out there for scheduling Instagram posts, but they don’t offer the analytics that tell you when to post. Prime will send you a reminder right when that optimal time has arrived, making optimization a no-brainer.
Designed for simple, streamlined project management, Trello also happens to be our favorite content calendar platform for scheduling out social media posts. Trello’s kanban-based “card” system makes it easy to track ideas, adjust your calendar, and add photos, plus it allows multiple members of your organization to review content at different stages. Because even if you don’t have a large team working on your social content, it’s essential to get a set of fresh eyes on every post.
Pro tip #1: Adding the “Calendar Power-Up” will transform your Trello board into an actual calendar so that you can easily see the week or month ahead at a glance.
Pro tip #2: If you’re writing copy from scratch in Trello, download the Grammarly app to double-check your spelling and grammar as you write.
Ah, the almighty hashtag. If your goal is to build your Instagram followers and reach more people organically*, the effective deployment of hashtags is essential. Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags per post, and your best bet is to balance popular, high-traffic hashtags with less popular, more niche hashtags. Simply start typing in a few topics that are relevant to your post, and Display Purposes will generate a balanced list of up to 30 hashtags. Then you can copy and paste the entire list or pick and choose your favorites.
*Important note: If you’re looking to really scale up your social media following and boost business, organic social just doesn’t cut it nowadays. Be sure you are supplementing your efforts with paid social posts, even if you only have a small budget to do so. We know that getting started with paid social can be daunting—read our blog post for an introduction, and feel free to reach out to us about our paid media services.
Photo-editing and filters are especially key for businesses and brands with a design or aesthetic focus—but any business will benefit from clean, colorful, professional-quality photos that reflect your brand identity. There are a lot of apps out there for editing photos and adding filters, (VSCO is great, especially if your vibe lends itself to moody, faded filters) but A Color Story is our favorite for a few reasons. A Color Story makes it easy to pick the perfect filters and edit photos to fit your brand’s style, and you can also create your own custom filters for reusing again and again. The app’s newest update allows you to batch edit multiple photos and plan your Instagram grid layout in advance!
Google Analytics is one of the most powerful tools for tracking website performance and user behavior, providing valuable insights into how users interact with your website. On July 1st, 2023, Google Analytics 4 will replace Universal Analytics. This means that after July 1st, Universal Analytics properties will stop processing data, and Google will force a property migration if you haven’t proactively made the switch. But NEVER FEAR, Good & Gold is here with answers to your most pressing questions about the change and why you should make it. We’re here to help your business migrate from Universal Analytics to GA4!
With the migration to GA4, Google is making a significant shift in its approach to its data model, cookies, and privacy implications:
UA is built on a session-based data model, with goals measured by sessions rather than users. For example, if a user watches three videos in one session, UA only counts this as one “conversion”. With GA4, Google shifts to an event-based data model, which means that in our previous example, each of the three video plays count as a “conversion”.
Cookies and data privacy are challenges that Google is also addressing with the transition to GA4. As data privacy concerns arise, more and more users want to opt out of sharing their data, and as they do, the UA analytics model can no longer report on website users and traffic as accurately as before. GA4 is designed to fill these collected data gaps using machine learning and other adjacent protocols called “blended data”. It’s also designed to rely on first-party cookies, keeping user data private as they move from website to website.
Well, ya kinda HAVE to. Google will force the upgrade on July 1 if it’s not already been made. But aside from the fact that it’s required, here are five great reasons to upgrade from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4 today:
This new version of Google Analytics isn’t just a platform change or OS upgrade, it’s a whole new system. GA4’s advanced machine learning capabilities and cross-device tracking will provide you with a complete picture of your customers' journeys, allowing you to optimize your website for maximum engagement and conversion. With GA4, you'll gain powerful insights that will help you make informed decisions about your website and digital marketing efforts. In addition to the data collection model change we outlined earlier, GA4 has improved key pain points:
If you snooze on the migration and simply don’t perform it, Google will upgrade to GA4 for you. While the automated upgrade might work for smaller businesses with simple analytics set ups, businesses with robust custom tracking and any unique configuration will likely see their analytics properties breaking, leading to gaps in data collection and missed opportunities in analysis and privacy protection.
To ensure your unique business goals and objectives are properly migrated from your Universal Analytics environment to your new GA4 set-up, you’ll need to prioritize this upgrade well before July 1st. Depending on how complex your tracking needs to be, this switch can take up a month to properly configure and complete, so DEF don’t delay! Here are five basic steps to get you started:
Need some help? We’ve got your back. Ask us about our GA4 Migration Services and get the process started today! With our extensive knowledge, Good & Gold can seamlessly migrate clients to GA4, ensuring your digital marketing efforts are optimized for success!
If you haven’t noticed already, Web3 has permeated discussions about the current state of the internet. While it’s true that we are still in the early days, how it is already affecting and will continue to affect digital marketing is becoming increasingly clear, and we’re at the point where it is already having a noticeable impact.
But first, let’s start with the basics:
Web 3 is, at its core, the theory that the internet will evolve away from centralized, tightly controlled platforms (like Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon) towards a decentralized model that better incentivizes and rewards creators while expanding ownership to a broader base of users.
Tim Berners-Lee, widely credited with the ideas that formed the current incarnation of the Web, describes it as the Semantic Web, “not a separate Web but an extension of the current one, in which information is given well-defined meaning, better-enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.”
When discussing decentralization, we’re referring to anywhere you can eliminate a middleman. Perhaps you’d like to be your own bank or make money directly from content that you create without having to go through somebody else’s centralized platform.
You may have heard the term Web3 referred to as “the same as blockchain or crypto”. While it’s true that one vision of Web3 is heavily centered on those technologies, they only play a part in the full tech stack of the next generation of the internet:
Artificial Intelligence is generally a blanket term for technology that allows machines to act, learn, and communicate as people do. Machine learning is a path towards that, but needs a lot of help from us to achieve its goals. That’s where Large Language Models come in,, like ChatGPT, BERT, and the various models of Hugging Face.
These models need to be trained by people. You do this each time you use ChatGPT or give DALL-E a prompt. Ultimately these models learn from us and are a reflection of our communal feedback.
In the future these models will help guide the way toward a decentralized web by reducing the need for human moderation and intervention, significantly reducing costs, and increasing the efficiency of everything from safely using social media platforms to giving medical advice to searching for new recipes.
First, let’s talk blockchain and crypto. While it’s a small part of Web3, it’s had an outsized presence over the past few years. NFTs in particular are already changing advertising:
Non-Fungible Tokens are still in their “toy phase”, and while most people still think of them as silly jpeg, we’re just scratching the surface of what these will become. Ultimately they’ll represent any digital representation of a real-world item that needs confirmation of its authenticity or benefits from being able to be transferred or traded quickly.
Some examples:
However, for most brands, the more immediate benefits of Web3 come from two areas:
The no-code/low-code movement takes out much of the need for traditional developers and aims to enable non-coders to develop applications without the need to filter their goals through developers and programmers. Squarespace and Webflow are all excellent examples of this that you can use today!
Meanwhile, platforms like bubble and weweb will allow businesses and marketing agencies to develop full-scale applications from scratch without code. Some examples:
Many digital marketers have already been using machine learning in their day-to-day without realizing it. Google Ads’ optimization and performance campaigns work via machine learning. Additionally,, if you’ve ever used Grammarly to help improve your copywriting, that’s based on machine learning too!
Some additional great examples of tools that can help bring your efforts to the next level include:
Ultimately, Web3 in all of its forms will change the way that we create and interact with the internet and with each other, but these advances, just like the applications and platforms we use today, are tools that need your creativity and passion to get the most out of!
So, what to do with all this knowledge? At Good & Gold, we’re developing effective ways for our team to leverage these powerful new tools across all our digital marketing services. We’re also keeping a close eye on the line between staying relatable, creative, and human, and using these tools to increase efficiency and accuracy in our work. In short, we’re doing the heavy lifting so your brand can benefit from this exciting digital future organically and gracefully.
Let's get right down to it: If you’re wondering if you should be on Shopify...it’s a good indication that you should probably be on Shopify. Born in Canada, loved by 1.2 million people, there are few platforms quite like this one. Known for its robust e-commerce experience that’s baked into the core codebase, it truly is a powerhouse that allows for efficient product fulfillment and management, as well as a finely tailored user experience.
Think of it as your command center, where you have an overabundance of key product data at your fingertips that combines seamlessly with site development, and Shopify’s laboriously optimized checkout flow. Wholly customizable, businesses have the ability to deliver a premium experience that reflects their brand—all with a streamlined backend. When it comes to e-commerce simplicity, nothing really compares. Here’s an overview of the platform’s standout features:
With Shopify, the details that can make e-commerce a real headache to manage—shipping, fulfillment, payment processing, discounts, point of sale, integrations—are all built into the platform, so that you have access to everything you need from your dashboard.
The platform is built to integrate with existing shipping, fulfillment, and payment processing systems, but it also offers its own solutions. Shopify Shipping offers discounted rates with USPS, UPS, and DHL while providing simplified tools for printing labels, fulfilling, and tracking orders from the same place you manage products, customers, and inventory. Meanwhile, Shopify Payments allows you to accept credit cards and other online payment methods (Apple Pay, Google Pay, etc.), with fraud prevention features and multiple currencies available.
Regardless of the store in question, Shopify’s checkout flow is always the same: A series of digestible checkout steps with a consistent layout and design that’s proven to maximize conversions. Because while customized pages, features, and interactions to match your brand and wow customers may increase engagement throughout the rest of your website, data has proven that this rigid, rapid, recognizable approach to the transactional pages of your website is ideal for conversions.
Within Shopify’s checkout, customers navigate through four mobile-friendly steps—Information, Shipping, Payment, and Review—with helpful auto-fill features along the way to speed things along. What’s more, customers can opt to save their information with Shop Pay, an accelerated checkout system that lets them save their email address, credit card, and shipping and billing information for the next time they are directed to the Shopify checkout on any website.
Shopify’s Theme Store provides a solid head start on the design and development of your website. You can browse more than 100 Shopify-approved website templates by industry, layout style, and product volume to home in on the features that will support your brand and business goals, using your selected theme as a springboard for development.
When we work with clients to design and develop Shopify websites, we start with a deep dive into the theme store to gather a sampling of themes to leverage. We look at navigation styles, homepage layouts, collection page layouts, product page layouts, module types, and animations to get a clear sense of how each theme will accelerate our workflow, and then we begin customizing. Whether you’re building your own website or partnering with an agency or contractor, Shopify themes allow for efficient and cost-effective projects.
Shopify’s expansive App Store puts limitless integrations and features at your fingertips. Referral programs, loyalty programs, shoppable Instagram galleries, product bundling, product wishlists, customer profiles, subscription programs...if you can imagine it, it’s likely in the app store.
One benefit of powering more than 500,000 businesses in 175 countries is a seriously robust Help Center. Shopify’s existing documentation includes extensive guides to getting your business set up, migrating from other platforms, setting up products, payments, and shipping, and more. Additionally, the platform offers live support via chat, phone, and email that’s always surprisingly helpful.
The internet is a rapidly shapeshifting place, with new technologies quickly emerging, pivoting, or falling out of favor all the time. With that comes a plethora of options to face when the time comes to build or revamp your web presence. It can be overwhelming.
So, just how do you decide which platform is best for your needs? How do you wade through the new options that pop up seemingly everyday? And most importantly, how do you get off of your outdated and/or bloated platform and onto something that’s easy to manage and designed for performance? At G&G, we’ve honed our own primary toolbelt to focus on a few of our favorites that help us guarantee client success. The key, as with all website projects, is to carefully consider your goals, both long and short-term.
Client Example: Apiary Life
Quite simply, Webflow is a digital designer's dream. The in-browser design tool essentially blends visual design with code, allowing designers to design and develop at the same time. What's more, the platform allows for complex interactions and animated transitions, leveraging the power of CSS and JavaScript in a code-free environment.
Meanwhile, the platform also offers a simple interface for editors, allowing users to update page content and CMS collections without interfering with design elements, layouts, or other settings. Paired with super-simple and reliable hosting plans, Webflow is an appealing option for enhancing design and user experience while simplifying just about everything else.
Best for: Marketing websites that wow users with polished design, animations, and interactions.
Why we love it:
Drawbacks:
Client example: Oak & Oscar
Born in Canada, loved by 1.2 million people, there are few platforms on the block like Shopify. Known for its robust e-commerce experience that’s baked into the core codebase, it truly is a powerhouse that allows for efficient product/fulfillment management and a finely-tailored user experience. Think of it as your command center, where you have an overabundance of key product data at your fingertips that combines seamlessly with site development, and Shopify’s laboriously optimized checkout flow. Wholly customizable, clients have the ability to deliver a premium experience that reflects their brand—all while having a streamlined backend.
We also love that the details that can make e-commerce a real headache to manage—shipping, fulfillment, payment processing, discounts, point of sale—are all built into the platform, so that you have access to everything you need from your dashboard. And much like Squarespace, Shopify’s documentation of features, settings, and how-to’s is expansive, with robust live support to match.
Additionally, Shopify’s expansive app store puts limitless integrations and features at your fingertips. Referral programs, loyalty programs, shoppable Instagram galleries, product bundling...if you can imagine it, it’s likely in the app store.
Best for: Ambitious stores and brands that require deep functionality, fulfillment, and have a wide range of SKUs.
Why we love it:
Drawbacks:
Client Example: BurnCycle
Squarespace, notable sponsor of just about every other large-audience podcast you’ll listen to these days, prides itself on being two things: accessible and easy-to-use. That holds true, making it one of the major players in the small business and upstart e-commerce arena. It features a WYSIWYG editor with a wide range of content blocks that makes it relatively painless to pick up.
Couple that with an intuitive admin panel that also gives access to a few internal marketing tools (email campaigns, forms) or external add-ons, and you’ve got a strong out-of-the-box option. Even better, you can pop open the hood to take your style and function further with CSS customization or custom code blocks that allow for unique content types.
Best for: Simple, branded websites that need to make an impact with marketing and with limited e-commerce function.
Why we love it:
Drawbacks:
Attempting to look forward in the middle of a web revolution isn’t easy. As we mentioned up top, there is an endless flood of new tools, technologies, and product pivots (GoDaddy landing pages? Mailchimp postcards?) all vying for attention. Despite the analysis paralysis, there’s one new “platform” we’re confident in: None. JAMstack, a newly-coined term that stands for Javascript, APIs, and markup, is more of an approach to building sites than the previously standard all-in-one solution. Essentially, you choose what you like and what you need: a frontend framework like React, a server, different API functions, and a CDN (content delivery network); managed from a plethora of lean CMS options, then delivered to users.
It’s a fast and flexible approach that’s more future-proof as it doesn’t rely on one solution to handle the entirety of your site. Instead of one platform holding the key, you can pull from myriad places to create a bespoke solution. As things come and go, you can retool or pull in extended functions to help build the most efficiently served website. For clients, it means less reliance and management as well as more security. For users, it means speed. Win win!
Best for: Ultimate flexibility and picking the right tools (both front- and back-end) for your specific project
Why we love it:
Drawbacks:
Why don’t you see WordPress on this list? Wix? Well…it’s complicated. These are platforms that we DO work with, and very well may be the best option for many businesses. But the benefits are a little more nuanced, and the use cases a little more narrow.
What’s best for you, of course, depends on what you need. We expend a lot of effort internally to make sure our aforementioned toolbelt is laser-focused on a wide range of platforms that help us deliver the right solutions and results for clients. No two projects are the same, and we take pride in helping everyone find the right fit for their business goals.