As a job seeker, you can often expect to speak with an HR professional before moving onto interviews with employees within the department for which you’re applying.

It’s critical you prepare well for your HR interview. Oftentimes, a company uses their HR department to screen candidates and decide which candidates are most qualified to move forward in the interview process.

But an HR professional has different goals when interviewing than your direct hiring manager does. While your hiring manager will ask questions specific to the role, the HR professional is interested in gaining broader insights regarding culture fit and whether you demonstrate the company’s values.

I spoke with Alexa Matthews, a recruiter here at HubSpot, who pointed out some additional benefits to the screening process — “It’s an opportunity for a great first impression. In the first call, a candidate can often convey things that are not written on their resume. We take that information so that we can be their advocate and make recommendations to hiring managers throughout the process.”

Additionally, Alexa mentioned initial interview screens help candidates learn more about the role and evaluate their interest in the company. At the same time, these initial interviews help HR professionals set a candidate up for success, by learning what is required of the role, and providing the candidate with feedback throughout all stages of the interview process.

To help you prepare for any questions you might receiving from an HR professional, we’ve cultivated a list of nine, along with the best sample answers.

HR Interview Questions and Answers

1. Tell me about yourself.

One of the more traditional questions in this list, “Tell me about yourself” is nonetheless a helpful question for HR professionals to get a sense for how this conversation will go, and in which direction they should steer future questions.

Ultimately, you’ll want to be prepared to describe past roles, how those roles demonstrate your strengths, and what you want in a company and role moving forward. Additionally, make sure to include why you believe this role is a good match for your talents.

You might say something like, “Well, I graduated from ABC University in 2015. Since then, I’ve worked my way up at Company X, from an intern blogging on the content team to an Associate SEO Strategist. Along the way, I’ve learned I work best in collaboration with a team, as opposed to more solitary roles. As an SEO strategist, I’ve discovered I enjoy the analytical side of marketing, and possess strengths that allow me to excel in those types of roles — in fact, as a result of my SEO efforts, traffic to our site has increased 13% over the past two years. I’m now looking for new challenges and believe your company, and this role, is a fantastic next step.”

2. Why are you interested in this position?

This question is a critical indicator as to whether you’re interested in this company and role in particular, or whether you’re simply applying to any role in the field. For instance, it’s not a good sign if you say, “Well, I’m interested in social media, so this role seemed like a good fit.” Instead, you want to mention specific qualifications of the role itself, and demonstrate how those qualifications align with your personal strengths. Additionally, it’s important you mention how you can help drive results for the team.

For instance, you might say, “Through my last role I’ve learned I’m passionate about creating content for social media. I’ve managed to grow our Instagram audience by 7%, and with my team I created a successful Facebook campaign that cultivated an increase in sales by 12%. I’ve followed your business on Instagram and Facebook for a few years and appreciate your brand — more importantly, I see this role as one in which I’d truly be challenged and able to use my strengths. In particular, I believe I’d excel in the client-facing aspect of the role. Meeting with clients to collaborate on social media marketing objectives and goals is something I believe I’d find exciting and purposeful.”

3. Why are you leaving your current job?

This is an opportunity to outline positive benefits you hope to gain by transitioning into a new role. However, one of the biggest mistakes you can make when answering this question is focusing on negative aspects of your current employer, rather than discussing positive aspects of the new company.

An HR professional will mark it as a red flag if you talk poorly about your current employer or company. It illustrates someone who isn’t very professional, has a negative attitude, and could bring toxic energy into their new work environment.

To avoid those traps, say something like this — “I appreciate everything my current employer has done to help me grow, and I believe working for a small start-up over the past year has helped me develop leadership skills earlier than I could’ve at a larger corporation. However, I am now interested in transferring the skills I’ve acquired here to a larger organization, where I believe I’ll find more growth opportunities in the future.”

4. Can you describe a work or school instance in which you messed up?

This is an intentionally tricky question. It’s meant to glean insight into whether you can learn from past mistakes. If you can’t think of any past errors, it could be an indicator you aren’t capable of accepting responsibility for your own mistakes. However, creating a long list of past mishaps could make you look unqualified for the role.

You’ll want to answer this question succinctly, and point out an error that doesn’t represent a lack of character. Consider one, well-intentioned error you’ve had in the past, mention it, and then talk about how you grew from that experience.

For instance, you might say, “In my prior role when I first became manager, I took on too many tasks myself and quickly became both overwhelmed, and less efficient in my role. Additionally, my team members were frustrated because they felt there was a lack of collaboration on our team. I quickly recognized I needed to learn to delegate tasks and collaborate on projects with teammates, and became a more successful manager as a result.”

5. Tell me about a time when you experienced conflict with a co-worker and how you dealt with it.

The HR professional isn’t interested in hearing about that time your co-worker said something snide about you in the kitchen, or when your manager overheard you gossiping about a client to a friend.

Instead, this question is asked to gain insight into how you handle professional conflict. At the office, conflict is bound to arise, particularly when you’re working closely with many different people. It’s critical you know how to handle conflict without pointing fingers. Your answer should primarily focus on the solution, and should show a level of empathy towards your colleagues, rather than focusing on the problem.

You might say something like, “I had a deadline I needed to meet, and I was working with a designer who promised me her designs in time. When the deadline approached, my designer wasn’t ready. It made us both look poorly in front of our clients. To resolve the issue, I discussed the problem privately with my designer. She told me she was stressed out and overwhelmed, and simply needed another week on the project. I told her that was fine with me, but in the future, we needed to be transparent and honest with each other. Moving forward, we established guidelines and became more efficient teammates.”

6. What do you know about our company?

This is a fantastic opportunity to impress the interviewer. Ultimately, this question aims to gauge your level of interest in the company. The more you’ve researched prior accomplishments, company values, and basic information regarding the product or service, the more you can demonstrate a genuine desire to work there.

For instance, you might say, “I know your company is ranked the number one web design firm in Massachusetts. Your mission statement in particular appeals to me. I also know your company emphasizes continual learning and growth, two aspects I find incredibly exciting. I’ve spoken to Jen and Mark, two marketers at your company, and they’ve described the work environment as one full of passion and innovation — which is something I hope to find in my next role.”

7. How would you improve our current product or service?

An HR professional wants to know whether you’re innovative, a quick-thinker, and if you’ll bring new ideas to the role. There isn’t necessarily a wrong answer, here — you just need to show some creativity, and planning in advance will help. Consider potential problems they might be experiencing with their product or service, and how your unique skill set can fill that void.

For instance, you might say, “I’ve noticed your product is in English, without current translation options. I believe your product could benefit from multilingual translations, which would help you appeal to a wider demographic. This could help you become more of a global leader. As someone who is fluent in French and Spanish, I’d like to potentially help spearhead a project that moves the product in that direction.”

8. How would your current manager describe you?

It can be awkward to brag about yourself, so while this question may seem weird, it’s really the HR professional’s tactic for hearing how your current boss views you in a work environment. To feel less uncomfortable answering this question, thoughtfully consider your last performance review, and use direct quotes from your boss in your answer.

For instance, you might say, “Well, during my last performance review, my current manager told me she appreciates how quickly I take constructive feedback and use it to improve in my role. She’s grateful that she never needs to repeat areas of improvement to me — once she gives me feedback, I take it seriously and make sure she never needs to bring it up again. She has also described me as diligent and trustworthy, two aspects I believe are critical for excelling in any role.”

9. What questions do you have for me?

When an HR professional asks you this question, you might be eager to end the call and say, “Nope, no questions.” This would be a mistake. Having thoughtful, smart, strategic questions demonstrates your interest in the role, as well as your potential value as a future employee. They want to hire candidates who will ask questions and move the company forward, and this can’t happen if you accept everything as-is.

At this stage, you should consider what your genuine concerns are regarding the role. You might ask the interviewer, “What are the company’s values? What characteristics do you look for in candidates in order to represent those values?” Or, perhaps you’ll say, “What do you enjoy most about working at Company A?”

Additionally, you might ask questions regarding the role specifically, like “What do you see as the most challenging aspect of the role?” or “Are there opportunities for professional development within the role and department as a whole?”

Ultimately, an interview isn’t just about allowing an HR professional to form an opinion of you — it’s also a chance for you to get a strong sense for whether you even want to work for the company. So use this last question to your advantage. 

Ask any professional athlete or business executive how they became successful, and they’ll tell you they mastered a process. By figuring out which of their habits led to success — and which didn’t — they could improve their efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity at work.

The same logic applies to teams and project management. If your team follows a process while working on a project, you’re more likely to develop products or services that effectively solve your customers’ problems.

The waterfall methodology is one of the most widely-used software development processes in project management, and it’s rooted in logic and sequence. So if you want to leverage a proven process for your project management efforts, read on.

The waterfall model has six stages: requirements, analysis, design, coding, testing, and deployment.

Picture Credit: Software Testing Material

During the requirements stage, developers write down all the possible requirements of a system in a requirements document. The document defines what the system should do, but not necessarily how it will work. Developers will base all the software’s future development on the requirements document.

In the next stage, analysis, developers use the requirements document to examine and flesh out the logical or theoretical design of the system without accounting for its hardware or software technologies.

The project will then move onto the design stage, where developers alter the logical design of the system to make sure it works with the system’s hardware and software technologies.

Once developers finalize the system’s physical design, the project enters the coding stage. In this stage, developers will reference the system’s requirements and logical and physical specifications to write its actual code.

After coding the system, quality analysts, beta testers, and other testers will use the system and report any bugs they find. Developers will patch the most pressing issues. This is known as the testing stage.

Finally, the project enters the deployment stage, where developers release the system to their market, support their customers, maintain the system, and upgrade it to meet their customers’ evolving needs.

Advantages of The Waterfall Method

If you’re considering using the waterfall method for your next project, here are the five main advantages your team will most likely experience:

1. Developers can catch design errors during the analysis and design stages, which helps them avoid writing faulty code during the coding stage.
2. The project has clearly defined milestones, so developers can work toward concrete goals and easily measure their progress.
3. Developers who join the project can easily get up to speed — all the system’s requirements are in the requirements document.
4. The waterfall method structures and organizes the project. From design to release, developers know exactly what to work on.
5. Developers can accurately estimate the project’s cost — all the system’s requirements are defined during the first stage of the model.

Disadvantages of The Waterfall Method

Like every other project management process, the Waterfall Method has its disadvantages. Here are the three main ones to consider before using the method for your next project.

1. It’s challenging for customers to define the exact functionality of a system they prefer during the early stages of development — they must wait until developers finish building the system to see if it actually fits their needs. If the final product isn’t up to par, developers must redesign the system, which is extremely challenging and expensive.
2. Since developers finalize the system’s requirements during the first stage of the waterfall method, they can’t change or refine the requirements during the next stages of the development cycle. This non-stop tunnel vision can sap creativity and innovation during development.
3. Developers can’t move onto the next stage of development unless they complete the previous one, so the waterfall method can take longer than other project management processes like the agile method, which allows developers to iterate an entire system in short bursts of time, called sprints.

In today’s marketing landscape, your website has become a more powerful tool than ever. Your website is a 24/7 salesman, and as such, it has the potential to be your most powerful asset and the centerpiece of your marketing efforts.

However, rapidly changing digital trends can make your website feel old and outdated. While sometimes a redesign might be ideal, you may not have the time or money to invest in such a large project. To help you overcome this challenge, we’ve put together a list of 10 simple ways you can improve your website to make it more helpful and useful.

Your website is the core anchor for your digital marketing efforts. Designing a great website user experience requires understanding the problems different visitors have to solve.

1. Use white space.

On more than one occasion I have heard clients complain that there was too much white space on their site and that this unused real estate ought to be used for advertising more of their services. However, white space is essential to good design. White space makes your content more legible while also enabling the user to focus on the elements surrounding the text.

According to Crazy Egg, white space around text and titles increases user attention by 20%. White space can also make your website feel open, fresh and modern and if your branding is consistent with these then it can help you communicate that feeling to the user. One downside of white space to keep in mind, however, is that it does indeed take up space.

If you’re trying to get a lot of content above the fold (above the part that is immediately visible without scrolling) having too much white space might be replacing some valuable information. The key is to find the balance between what is most important to communicate at the top and surround that with some space to highlight the image and/or text.

Consider the website, Sara Does SEO, by Sara Dunn. In her UX, there is a lot of white space right from the start, pulling your attention to what Sara looks like and what can do for you. This allows the reader to focus her attention on the most important things. Each section of the homepage also provides one clear header and a few supporting points, making it easier to digest information. 

Check out her website below.

2. Optimize your page speed.

One of the most frustrating experiences for users of the web is waiting for a page to load for too long. With the rise of the mobile devices, people are accessing content all over the world on many different platforms. While browsing online at Starbucks or while watching TV on their laptop, they expect a fast result for the content that they want.

When they don’t get it, they usually bounce. Slow page load is an interrupting experience for the user and it can be a source of frustration and often users simply don’t have the time to wait.

According to Section.io, an extra five seconds of page load time can increase your website’s “bounce rate” by more than 20%. Whoa.

So, where do you go from here? Get your score. Google offers a free service where you can get information on your page speed. Google will also offer you some suggestions for improving your load time on Mobile and Desktop. 

To improve your page speed, start by compressing all your images before loading them onto your website. Image file size is one of the leading causes of a slow page speed — using websites like compressor.io can help you dramatically speed up each webpage you own.

Learn more about decreasing your website’s bounce rate in this blog post.

A great example of speedy load is Barnes and Nobles. No matter what device your own Barnes and Nobles loads quickly. Taking the extra caution to load some important elements first so that you know that the content is on its way. See for yourself.

3. Use attractive calls to action.

Your customers are already accustomed to following visual cues to determine which content is important to them. Calls to actions (CTAs) that are clearly marked with an action word enable your website users to more easily navigate your site and get exactly what they want in the location they expect to find it.

In creating buttons for your website you should think about color and the psychology of color. In a study done by Maxymiser, researchers were shocked to find that hey achieved an increase of 11% in clicks to the checkout area of the Laura Ashley website, by testing color variations and action messaging. Different colors evoke different messages. Think about the message that you want to evoke for a user (trust, experience, intelligence) and choose your colors wisely.

A second thing to consider is the actual words you use for your buttons. The words should include a verb or an action word that excite the user to do something. Choosing the right words or psychological triggers is highly determined by the level of emotional identification that word prompts. No emotional connection means no action. So make your words bold, time sensitive and action-oriented.

A great example of the good use of calls to action is WUFOO. The company’s entire page is action-oriented and uses buttons to encourage the user to go to the next step. At the end of the page, you’ll see the use of time-sensitive language like “Sign Up Now” and action-oriented language like “Get Started.” These are active action words that prompt and guide the user to move forward.

4. Use hyperlink differentiation.

When you add a link to any page, you’re saying you want the user to click there. Make sure links are easily identifiable by visual cues. Underlined text and differently colored text draws the attention of the reader and lets him or her know this is a link to be clicked on.

In a study done by Karyn Graves, she shows that the regular web user sees blue and underlined text as links and knows to click on them. Exploiting user expectations and what they already know about using the web is tantamount to success.

When it comes to hyperlink differentiation, you do not need to reinvent the wheel. Sticking to convention can be your best ally here. A simple way to test how effective your links are is to blur and remove the color from the design and see what stands out.

When hyperlinking, also stop to think about the length of the hyperlink. The longer the link titles the more easy to identify they are. For example: “To check out the GE Website click here.” vs. “Check Out the GE Website here.“

5. Segment key information with bullet points.

Bullet points will enable the user to quickly get all the information they want: benefits, ways you solve their problem, and key features of a product/service — all in a short amount of time. This will make your propositions more attractive and enable your user to get all the information they need. Additionally, you do not have to go the traditional route with a simple circle.

With tons of cool icons out there, you can also get creative with your bullet and help the reader further with images that represent your point. Why do this? Because it forces you to isolate the most important points you’re trying to make without getting caught up in terminology or specifics.

One great example of non-conventional bullets comes from One.org. On this page, they use icons as bullets to highlight their accomplishments in a way that is easy to read. Also, notice the white space surrounding the bullets that allow you to focus on each section.

6. Use images (wisely).

People across the Internet are getting smarter and faster at judging company websites before deciding if they want to browse the site further. When they first visit your site, they can easily pick out a generic stock photo they’ve already seen elsewhere or that resembles the non-personal style of stock photography. Using stock photography can decrease trust and also stand out as generic and non-unique. Unfortunately, these associations carry over to your business as well.

In a case study done by Spectrum, Inc. of Harrington Movers, a New Jersey and New York City moving company, they were able to increase conversion on a page by simply replacing a stock photo with an image of the actual team of movers. They got the same increase in conversion and confidence to the page by adding a picture of their actual moving truck versus the stock photo. (Read the full study here.)

Bottom line? While stock photography can be high quality, it fails to create a connection between the user and the brand.

Ultimately, no stock photography will be as capable of conveying your brand, services, and products the way that you want to. Only your own actual images can do that while also speaking clearly to your potential customer. Use images strategically and place them in your website to support the content and allow the users a visual break from text, but make sure they are relevant and non-generic.

Check out this infographic on real images versus stock photography.

7. Include well-designed and written headings.

Your headings and content should be driven by what your potential customers are looking for. Including keywords in your title is also very important for targeting your message and attracting the right audience.

Search engines typically give headings more weight over other content, so choosing the right heading and making it stand out can significantly improve your search ability. But more importantly, headings guide your user through the site, making it easy to scan through and find content that speaks to them directly.

A great example of well-designed headings with consistent content comes from Tilde. Here you can see that the headings stand out in size and color and accurately describe the content that follows.

8. Keep your website pages consistent.

Consistency means making everything match. Heading sizes, font choices, coloring, button styles, spacing, design elements, illustration styles, photo choices — you name it. Everything should be themed to make your design coherent between pages and on the same page.

In order to provide your user with a beautiful experience as they navigate through your site, it is important that they know they are still in your website. Drastic design changes from one page to the other can lead your user to feel lost and confused and to lose trust in your site.

“Am I in the right place?” Is a question I often find myself asking when navigating through inconsistent sites, and when I do, I usually end up leaving. Inconsistencies in design lower the quality of the products and services you’re providing, according to the user.

Winshape Foundation is a great example of consistent design. All of its pages follow one common pattern: navigation on the right, big header, sub header with a background image and some content below. I know that no matter where I click, I’m still on their website, as all their styling is consistent. Check it out here.

9. Catch your 404s.

While search engines don’t punish you severely for soft 404 errors (page not found), a user will. When a user approaches a link or an image, they are expecting this link will take them to the next place they want to go.

Simply put, encountering a 404 error page annoys your user, and makes them rethink spending their time on your website (when they probably could go elsewhere for a faster solution). Next to slow page load time, running into 404s is another highly frustrating event for a user and it completely disrupts their journey throughout your website.

To check if you have any 404s you can set up Google Webmaster tools on your website and check crawl errors. Here’s how. You can also use this free 404 checker.

As an additional resource, you can also make sure that when your user lands on a 404 it provides them with the option to get back on track. Check out these cool examples of 404 pages.

10. Be responsive & mobile-friendly.

Technologies have advanced to meet our needs to be mobile. Websites are also a significant part of this evolution. It’s imperative that your website is mobile-friendly and easy to navigate no matter what type of device they use to access it.

Recently, Google started penalizing sites that aren’t optimized for mobile devices, making the need for responsiveness even more crucial. This is probably the single-most valuable way in which you can improve your website’s usability. If you’re not sure whether your website is mobile, you can use this free tool.

I hope these tips have given you some ideas on how you can revamp your website to be more user friendly without shelling out the dollars on a complete redesign. To see more examples of useful websites, check out our free guide below.

You never get a second chance to make a first impression — that’s why your homepage is undoubtedly one of the most important web pages on your website.

For any given company, the homepage is its virtual front door. If a new visitor doesn’t like what they see, their knee-jerk reaction is to hit the “back” button.

That’s right — unfortunately, a lot of people still judge a book by its cover.

What makes a website’s homepage design brilliant instead of blah? Well, it takes more than looks alone — it also has to work well. That’s why the most brilliant homepages on this list don’t just score high in beauty, but also in brains.

But before we dive into the examples, let’s dissect some of the best practices of homepage design.

All of the homepage designs shown here utilize a combination of the following elements.

Not every page is perfect, but the best homepage designs get many of these right:

1. The design clearly answers “Who I am,” “What I do,” and/or “What can you (the visitor) do here.”

If you’re a well-known brand or company (i.e., Coca-Cola) you may be able to get away with not having to describe who you are and what you do; but the reality is, most businesses still need to answer these questions so that each visitor knows they are in the “right place.”

Steven Krugg sums it up best in his best-selling book, Don’t Make Me Think: If visitors can’t identify what it is you do within seconds, they won’t stick around long.

2. The design resonates with the target audience.

A homepage needs to be narrowly focused — speaking to the right people in their language. The best homepages avoid “corporate gobbledygook,” and eliminate the fluff.

3. The design communicates a compelling value proposition.

When a visitor arrives on your homepage, it needs to compel them to stick around. The homepage is the best place to nail your value proposition so that prospects choose to stay on your website and not navigate to your competitors’.

4. The design is optimized for multiple devices.

All the homepages listed here are highly usable, meaning they are easy to navigate and there aren’t “flashy” objects that get in the way of browsing, such as flash banners, animations, pop-ups, or overly-complicated and unnecessary elements. Many are also mobile-optimized, which is an incredibly important must-have in today’s mobile world.

5. The design includes calls-to-action (CTAs).

Every homepage listed here effectively uses primary and secondary calls-to-action to direct visitors to the next logical step. Examples include “Free Trial,” “Schedule a Demo,” “Buy Now,” or “Learn More.”

Remember, the goal of the homepage is to compel visitors to dig deeper into your website and move them further down the funnel. CTAs tell them what to do next so they don’t get overwhelmed or lost. More importantly, CTAs turn your homepage into a sales or lead-generation engine, and not just brochure-wear.

6. The design is always changing.

The best homepages aren’t always static. Some of them are constantly changing to reflect the needs, problems, and questions of their visitors. Some homepages also change from A/B testing or dynamic content.

7. The design is effective.

A well-designed page is important to building trust, communicating value, and navigating visitors to the next step. As such, these homepages effectively use layout, CTA placement, whitespace, colors, fonts, and other supporting elements.

Now, get ready to learn about excellent homepage design through the following 22 real-life examples.

1. FreshBooks

VIEW ENTIRE HOMEPAGE

Why It’s Brilliant

• It’s easy to consume. There is much debate on whether short or long homepages work better. If you choose to do the latter, you need to make it easy to scroll and read — and that’s exactly what this site does. It almost acts like a story.
• There’s great use of contrast and positioning with the primary calls-to-action — it’s clear what the company wants you to convert on when you arrive.
• The copy used in the calls-to-action “Get Started for Free” is very compelling.
• FreshBooks uses customer testimonials on the homepage to tell real-world stories of why to use the product.
• The sub-headline is also great: “Join over 10 million small business owners using FreshBooks.” FreshBooks expertly employs social proof — 10 million is a big number — to compel its target audience to join their peers and try the tool.

2. Airbnb

VIEW ENTIRE HOMEPAGE

Why It’s Brilliant

• It includes the destination and date search form that most visitors come looking for, right up front, guiding visitors to the logical next step.
• The search form is “smart,” meaning it’ll auto-fill the user’s last search if they’re logged in.
• The primary call-to-action (“Search”) contrasts with the background and stands out; but the secondary call-to-action for hosts is visible above the fold, too.
• It offers suggestions for excursions and getaways Airbnb users can book on the same site as their lodgings to get visitors more excited about booking their trip on the site. It also shows which of these offerings are most popular among other users.

3. Mint

VIEW ENTIRE HOMEPAGE

Why It’s Brilliant

• It’s a super simple design with a strong, no-jargon headline and sub-headline.
• The homepage gives off a secure but easy-going vibe, which is important for a product that handles financial information.
• It also contains simple, direct, and compelling call-to-action copy: “Sign up free.” The CTA design is also brilliant — the secured lock icon hits home the safety message once again.

4. Dropbox (Business)

VIEW ENTIRE HOMEPAGE

Why It’s Brilliant

• Dropbox carries over its simple design and branding. It includes only what is important: A large, relevant image with supporting copy, and a “Try free for 30 days” call-to-action button
• Dropbox’s homepage and website is the ultimate example of simplicity. It limits its use of copy and visuals and embraces whitespace.
• Its sub-headline is simple, yet powerful: “The secure file sharing and storage solution that employees and IT admins trust.” No need to decode jargon to figure out what Dropbox really does.

5. 4 Rivers Smokehouse

Why It’s Brilliant

• Drool. That’s what I think when I arrive at the website for 4 Rivers Smokehouse. Combined with great photography, the headline “Brisket. 18 years to master. Yours to savor.” sounds like an experience worth trying.
• The parallax scrolling guides you on a tour through the services, menu, and people having a great time — a great use of this popular design trend.
• The only negative? I don’t live close enough to this place. Boo.

6. Cobb Pediatric Therapy Services

VIEW ENTIRE HOMEPAGE

Why It’s Brilliant

• The headline and sub-headline appeal to the visitors’ emotional side: “Work With a Company That Gets It”; “Trust us. We’ve been there too! We’ll find jobs where you can thrive.” That value proposition is unique and compelling.
• It’s hard to tell from the screenshot above, but the headline is on a rotating carousel that caters to specific personas, from job applicants to people searching for a therapist for their schools.
• There are several pathways visitors can take when they arrive on the page, but the calls-to-action are positioned well, worded simply, and contrast with the rest of the page.

7. Melyssa Griffin

VIEW ENTIRE HOMEPAGE

Why It’s Brilliant

• Melyssa immediately demonstrates social proof “Join over 200,000 others…”
• She qualifies a visitor’s reason for visiting her website with a quick survey, and each option links to a different content offer.
• She adds a face to her brand. She isn’t just a random website; she makes it clear she’s a human whom people can connect to.
• The page uses bright colors without being overwhelming and makes it easy to understand what Melyssa’s central business offerings are.

8. Jill Konrath

VIEW ENTIRE HOMEPAGE

Why It’s Brilliant

• It’s simple and gets straight to the point. From the headline and sub-headline, it’s clear exactly what Jill Konrath does (and how she can help your business).
• It also gives easy access to Jill’s thought leadership materials, which is important to establishing her credibility as a keynote speaker.
• It’s easy to subscribe to the newsletter and get in touch — two of her primary calls-to-action.
• The pop-up subscription CTA uses social proof to get you to join her thousands of other fans.
• It includes news outlet logos and testimonials as social proof.

9. Evernote

Why It’s Brilliant

• Over the years, Evernote has turned from a simple note-saving app into a suite of business products. This isn’t always easy to convey on a homepage, but Evernote does a nice job packaging many potential messages into a few key benefits.
• This homepage uses a combination of rich, muted colors in the video and its signature bright green and white highlights to make conversion paths stand out.
• Following a simple headline (“Remember Everything”), the eye path then leads you to its call-to-action, “Sign Up For Free.”
• Evernote also offers a one-click signup process through Google to help visitors save even more time.

10. Telerik by Progress

Why It’s Brilliant

• “Stuffy enterprise” isn’t the feeling you get when you arrive at Telerik’s website. For a company that offers many technology products, its bold colors, fun designs, and videography give off a Google-like vibe. Just one important aspect to making visitors feel welcome and letting them know they’re dealing with real people.
• I love the simple, high-level overview of its six product offers. It’s very clear way of communicating what the company does and how people can learn more.
• The copy is lightweight and easy to read. It speaks the language of its customers.

11. eWedding

Why It’s Brilliant

• For those love birds planning their big day, eWedding is a great destination to building a custom wedding website. The homepage isn’t cluttered and only includes the necessary elements to get people to starting building their websites.
• The sub-headline “Over 800,000 wedding websites built!” is great social proof.
• It’s included excellent product visuals, a great headline, and a call-to-action that reduces friction with the copy, “Start website.”

12. Basecamp

Why It’s Brilliant

• For a long time, Basecamp has had brilliant homepages, and here you can see why. It often features awesome headlines and clever cartoons.
• The call-to-action is bold and above the fold.
• In this example, the company chose a more blog-like homepage (or single page site approach), which provides much more information on the product.
• The customer quote is a bold and emphatic testimonial speaking to the benefits and results of using the product.

13. charity: water

Why It’s Brilliant

• This isn’t your typical non-profit website. Lots of visuals, creative copy, and use of interactive web design make this stand out.
• The animated header image is a great way to capture attention.
• It employs great uses of video and photography, particularly in capturing emotion that causes action.

14. TechValidate

Why It’s Brilliant

• This homepage is beautifully designed. I particularly love the use of whitespace, contrasting colors, and customer-centric design.
• The headline is clear and compelling, as are the calls-to-action.
• There’s also a great information hierarchy, making it easy to scan and understand the page quickly.

15. Chipotle

VIEW ENTIRE HOMEPAGE

Why It’s Brilliant

• The homepage is a great example of agility and constant change. Chipotle’s current homepage is all about the forthcoming holiday, which it uses as a unique value proposition to get you to start clicking through your site. When I think Chipotle, I don’t necessarily think about catering, but the site is a great reminder to consider different uses for the burritos you already know and love.
• The food photography is detailed and beautiful, and it actually makes me hungry looking at it. Now that’s an effective use of visuals.

16. Medium

VIEW ENTIRE HOMEPAGE

Why It’s Brilliant

• This is perhaps one of the best uses of whitespace I’ve seen. It allows Medium’s app tagline and photo to take center stage while still drawing your eye to the darker section titles on the site.
• Medium makes it easy to sign up — on the site, or with a simple text message to your mobile phone. I’m much more responsive to a text than an email, so this is a great strategy to keep people engaged in the signup process.
• The homepage uses social proof to get visitors to start clicking around: The “Popular on Medium” and “Staff Picks” sections let me know where to find high-quality content.

17. Digiday

VIEW ENTIRE HOMEPAGE

Why It’s Brilliant

• Unlike other online news publications that inundate homepages with as many headlines and images as possible, Digiday’s first section showcases just one article. Its featured image (in this case, a scary one) is eye-catching, and the headline is just asking to be clicked now that the visitor has an idea of what they’re going to read.
• The top of the homepage, where websites normally showcase a ton of different sections and options to click through, only has one icon to click — which leads you to a subscription page.

18. KIND Snacks

VIEW ENTIRE HOMEPAGE

Why It’s Brilliant

• The bold colors produce contrast, making the words and images stand out on the page.
• The CTA — “Shop KIND” — is clever. It urges the visitor to click to learn more while making a play on the word “kind” — implying that it’s a good choice to shop there.
• KIND Snacks’ tagline is straight up brilliant — when I read it, the message immediately resonated and made me want to read the snack bar’s label.

19. Ahrefs

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Why It’s Brilliant

• The color contrast between the blue, white, and orange colors is eye-catching and makes the headline and CTA pop.
• The sub-headline and CTA are a compelling pair: To be able to start tracking and outranking competitors for free is a great offer.
• The homepage presents a multitude of options for the visitor, but it isn’t cluttered thanks to the solid background and simple typography.

20. A24 Films

VIEW ENTIRE HOMEPAGE

Why It’s Brilliant

• The film company’s homepage is made up of only trailers for its new films. We know video content is format audiences want to see more of, and this is a great strategy to showcase A24’s work in a highly engaging way.
• At the top of the homepage, A24 immediately offers a myriad of ways to get in touch via social media and email — something I appreciate as a visitor when so many other sites bury contact information at the bottom of the page.

21. Ellevest

VIEW ENTIRE HOMEPAGE

Why It’s Brilliant

• “Invest Like a Woman: Because money is power.” These headlines are powerful and make me want to learn more about the product — both as a woman, and as someone interested in making smart financial choices.
• The images show, rather than tell, one of the company’s value propositions: a desktop site and mobile app that move with you.
• “Get Started” is a great CTA — in fact, we use it ourselves here at HubSpot. When clicked, it takes visitors through a few simple steps to set up a profile and start investing.

22. HubSpot

VIEW ENTIRE HOMEPAGE

Why It’s Brilliant (If We Do Say So Ourselves)

• The LEGO characters catch your attention (because they’re cute), then they cleverly illustrate and reinforce the messaging in the headline and sub-headline.
• It bears another eye-catching “Get Started” CTA — with bonus microcopy detailing our free versions users can choose to upgrade in the future.
• Throughout the homepage, our bright blue and orange color themes keep returning to draw your eye to links and CTAs.

Looking for more inspiration? Check out these incredible About Us pages.

As a marketer, data is your lifeblood. To gain support for your new idea or prove the value of your most recent campaign, you need data backing it up. But, for many people working in a primarily creative role, pulling and analyzing data can be a challenging task.

Not only do you have to export your data, which really means opening up a jumbled spreadsheet bursting with an endless amount of metrics, but you also have to configure the data to report it correctly. If you don’t filter out the unnecessary metrics, your data becomes much more difficult to analyze.

Data analysis can be a taxing process, requiring a ton of time and energy. But in an industry that moves as fast as marketing, there’s no time or energy to waste. Fortunately, Google offers a solution to this prevalent problem. 

Their data visualization tool, Google Data Studio, can pull and visualize your data into engaging reports within seconds, saving you countless hours on configuring a bottomless spreadsheet and analyzing a bunch of numbers packed into Excel.

And since Google Data Studio can produce easy-to-understand reports, the tool will help you accurately extract insights from your data and prove that you’re producing results.

With Google Data Studio, you can visualize your data in numerous charts, graphs, and pivot tables, like time series, bar charts, pie charts, tables, heat maps, geo maps, scorecards, scatter charts, bullet charts, and area charts. The tool also lets you customize your reports and dashboards’ logos, images, shapes, background, font, object properties, and more.

If you want to share or collaborate your report or dashboard with someone, you can do it all on Google Marketing Platform. Google Data Studio even has templates to help you quickly and easily set up reports and dashboards.

To learn how to use Google Data Studio, better understand your data, and present it to your team in a more visually appealing way, check out the tutorial below.

Google Data Studio tutorial

1. Login to Google Data Studio.

Just like Google Analytics, Google offers a robust free version of Google Data Studio. To access Google Data Studio, visit datastudio.google.com and sign in with the same account that you use for Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

Google Data Studio is part of Google Marketing Platform, so its interface will look like Google Drive’s interface. Your Data Studio portal will only store your Data Studio documents, which are separated into two categories: reports and data sources.

2. Create a new report.

In the reports section, click the “+” button at the top left or bottom right of the screen. A blank page should appear.

If you want to quickly create a data report from Google Analytics, Search Console, Google Ads, YouTube Analytics, Google Sheets, or Google BigQuery, you can use one of Data Studio’s report templates.

3. Connect your data.

To connect data to your report, click the “Create New Data Source” button at the bottom right corner of the screen. You can connect your report to 18 Google data sources and 98 partner data sources, if you already use a Data Studio partners’ tools.

Once you choose your data source, you need to let Data Studio connect to your Google Analytics account. After that, select your account, property, and view.

Next, a spreadsheet of fields or metrics that your data source tracks will pop up. Press the “Add To Report” button at the top right corner of the screen to connect the data to your report.

4. Customize your report.

Your report will be a blank grid that you can add different types of visualizations to. Before you add your visualizations to your report, though, you can customize its layout and theme.

If you want to add another data source to your report, click the “Resource” button and then press “Manage added data sources”.

Click the “Add a Data Source” button and pick the data source you want to connect to your report.

5. Add a visualization.

There are a ton of different ways you can visualize data in Data Studio. You can create a time series, bar chart, combo chart, pie chart, table, geo map, scorecard, scatter chart, bullet chart, area chart, and a pivot table. You can also add text, images, and shapes to your report.

Once you choose your visualization, drag its preferred size on your report and release. Your visualization should immediately appear.

6. Edit your visualization.

In the right sidebar of your report, you can edit your visualization’s data source, dimension, metric, and date range.

You can also sort your data, filter it, add another Google Analytics segment to your visualization, and edit its style.

Additionally, you can turn one visualization of a certain data set into another visualization. For instance, you can change a bar graph into a time series of the same exact data.

 

Once you finish your first visualization, you can add as many as you want to your report.

Data Analysis Made Easy

Data analysis might be the last task on your to-do list every day, but with Google Data Studio, you can pull and configure your data much faster than you can with Excel. This gives you more time to extract insights from your data, proving your campaign’s results and — most importantly — green lighting your next idea.

Watch any commercial break in full, it seems, and you’re almost guaranteed to see an ad for some sort of voice assistant device.

In the past two months alone, Amazon, Facebook, and Google have all announced the release of either new or new versions of their own video smart speakers: voice-assistant-enabled devices that are also equipped with video capabilities. 

Portal, Facebook’s video smart speaker

But before the video smart speakers came along, there were the voice assistants themselves: the Siris, Alexas, and Google Assistants of the world that with a touch of a button or a simple vocal command can answer our questions, make phone calls on our behalf, or schedule reminders. 

It’s that first task — answering our questions — that may have the greatest long term potential. At least 20% of all mobile search queries on Google, for instance, are done by voice: a number that many predict will continue to rise. 

But where do internet users themselves see voice search going — and how does it align with how they prefer to seek information online today? We decided to find out.

Voice Search Predications: Current and Future Preferences

We asked 800 internet users across the U.S., UK, and Canada: How do you think searches for information online will change within the next five years?

About a third of respondents believe that, while most searches will be done by voice, text searches won’t be completely eradicated. 

But when it comes to a future where voice search overtakes text completely, about a quarter of respondents identified that as their predictions.

That was especially true among respondents in the U.K., where the highest number of respondents — 35% — said that they believe most searches will be performed by voice within the next five years.

That most respondents foresee a future where most searches will be done by voice, but text search will still remain, is reflected in some moves by the companies that build voice assistants.

When Google recently revamped its Assistant app, for example, it made it easier for users to enter commands or search queries by voice and touch — after discovering that nearly half of all interactions with it included both.

Source: Google

It also aligns with what appear to be current user preferences, which we discovered when we asked another set of 800 internet users across the U.S., UK, and Canada: How do you prefer to search for online information?

Interestingly, most users still prefer to search by text — on their desktops — while a slightly smaller number prefer to search by text on mobile.

If most users still prefer to search by text, how can voice overtake it as the preferred method of seeking information online?

It could be a matter of scale. As automation begins to appear in a growing number of facets in our day-to-day lives — such as in cars, restaurants, and retail — consumers will adjust according to the “new normal.”

Historically, this phenomenon has repeated itself with many advancements in technology. Just as millions of consumers have acclimated to an increasingly digital world — with the permeation of things like social media, streaming entertainment, and online video potentially replacing cable — the trajectory of voice search adoption could follow a similar path.

“I think a lot of consumers are frustrated with poor voice experiences,” says Senior SEO Content Strategist Aja Frost. “As the technology gets better, it’ll be easier and easier to get the right answer on the first try.“

That trajectory may also play out with the growing adoption of voice-equipped devices, such as smart speakers. According to Nielsen, 24% of households reporting having a smart speaker, which is an incremental increase from the previous year.

“As people become more comfortable with voice assistants on their phones … they’ll also become more accustomed to basic voice searches,” Frost explains. “It’s not a huge transition from, ‘How many tablespoons in 1/4 cup?’ and ‘What’s the weather outside?’ to, ‘What are the best Indian restaurants in X neighborhood?’ and ‘How do I unclog the dishwasher?'”

As always — stay tuned.

If you’re anything like me, you take about four minutes choosing a filter for your Instagram photo, and about four hours deciding on a caption.

Worst of all, after much creative effort and advice from friends, I’m usually barely able to write a caption that goes beyond, “Had a fun day with friends!”.

And I’m a writer — go figure.

Next time you’re contemplating a caption to go with your Instagram photo, take a look at our complete list of captions for any mood you need to evoke.

Funny Instagram Captions

1. My favorite exercise is a cross between a lunge and a crunch … I call it lunch.
2. I need a six month holiday, twice a year.
3. I tried to be normal once. Worst two minutes of my life!
4. Started from the bottom now we’re … still at the bottom.
5. There are 16 year olds competing at the Olympics and I still push on pull doors.
6. Namast’ay in bed.
7. That awkward moment when you’re wearing Nike’s and you can’t do it.
8. I’m just a girl, standing in front of a salad, asking it to be a cupcake.
9. What if I told you, you can eat without posting it on Instagram?

Clever Instagram Captions

1. Patience — what you have when there are too many witnesses.
2. Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s the Clarendon filter.
3. It’s okay if you disagree with me. I can’t force you to be right.
4. Life is short, false … it’s the longest thing you do.
5. There may be no excuse for laziness, but I’m still looking.
6. You have stolen a pizza my heart.
7. Seven billions smiles, and yours is my favorite.

Savage Instagram Captions

1. What’s a queen without her king? Historically speaking, more powerful.
2. Be a little more you, and a lot less them.
3. I’m an acquired taste. If you don’t like me, acquire some taste.
4. Well behaved people don’t make it into history books.
5. I’m sunshine mixed with a little hurricane.
6. I do a thing called what I want.
7. They say good things take time… that’s why I’m always late.
8. I’m not bossy, I have leadership skills.

Song Lyrics for Instagram Captions

1. “I’m gonna live like tomorrow doesn’t exist.” — Sia, “Chandelier”
2. “I live for the nights that I can’t remember, with the people that I won’t forget.” – Drake, “Show Me a Good Time”
3. “I hope you never lose your sense of wonder.” — Lee Ann Womack, “I Hope You Dance”
4. “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.” – John Lennon, “Imagine”
5. “Feeling good living better.” — Drake, “Over My Dead Body”
6. “Say oh, got this feeling that you can’t fight, like this city is on fire tonight” — OneRepublic, “Good Life”
7. “Time makes you bolder” — Fleetwood Mac, “Landslide”
8. “If I fail, if I succeed, at least I’ll live as I believe” — Whitney Houston, “The Greatest Love of All”
9. “The rest of the world was in black and white, but we were in screaming color.” — Taylor Swift, “Out of the Woods”
10. “Lightning strikes every time she moves” — Calvin Harris, “This Is What You Came For”
11. “We aren’t ever getting older” — Chainsmokers, “Closer”
12. “Sing with me, sing for the years, sing for the laughter, sing for the tears” — Aerosmith, “Dream On”

Did you know an Instagram post with at least one hashtag averages 12.6% more engagement than a post with no hashtags?

Hashtags are powerful. They can help your posts reach a target audience, attract followers in your niche, increase engagement, and develop a more positive and recognizable brand image.

Here’s the thing, though: with great power comes great responsibility (#spiderman).

Hashtags can skyrocket your business to new heights, but if used too frequently or without a clear strategy in mind, they become pointless and inefficient, e.g.: #happy #superhappy #ecstatic #jumpingforjoy #whatsanothersynonym.

We want your business’s Instagram posts to receive optimal engagement, so we’ve put together an ultimate guide for using Instagram hashtags in 2018. With this guide, you won’t just attract followers — you’ll attract the right followers.

Why are hashtags important?

Hashtags are essentially Instagram’s sorting process. With around 95 million photos posted on Instagram every day, it’s difficult for Instagram to efficiently deliver the right content to the right people. Hashtags help your post get discovered by viewers most interested in seeing it.

Krystal Gillespie, HubSpot’s Social Media Community Manager, explains the importance of hashtags this way: “Hashtags are like a funnel. For instance, #marketing is incredibly broad and attracts all types of posts. We’ve found #digitalmarketing or #marketingmotivation gives us a more specific, targeted reach. The audience searching for these hashtags are also trying to narrow their search to what we offer related to Marketing, so we’re actually reaching more of the right people.”

Essentially, hashtags are a better way to categorize your posts. They help you reach a target audience, and more importantly, they help your target audience find you. These users are more likely to engage with your post because your post is exactly what they wanted.

Adding one of the most popular Instagram hashtags to your post doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll see more interaction. Since the hashtags above are so popular, they are being used by millions of people, so your post will most likely be obscured by the competition. Narrowing your hashtag topic is important, but we’ll get to that next.

Here are some of the top Instagram hashtags of 2018.

1. #love

Instagram users build their photo galleries on good feelings. For this reason, the #love hashtag is ever present next to the pics of friends, family, vacations, and beautiful scenery.

2. #instagood

Occurrences of this hashtag are inspired by the @instagood Instagram account, which scours the Instagram community for excellent photos and videos that are just too #instagood not to share. Add this hashtag to your content for a chance to be reposted.

3. #me

This is the quintessential selfie hashtag, indicating to the Instagram community that the photo it’s captioning is a picture of you.

4. #cute

#Cute puts your content in a pool of Instagram photos and videos that elicit “awes” from all over the Instaverse. If you think your puppy is the cutest puppy that ever lived, it deserves a photo with this esteemed hashtag.

5. #tbt

#Tbt stands for “Throwback Thursday,” and encourages Instagram users to post an old photo of themselves or an event they’re reminiscing over. Everyone likes content from the good old days — here’s your hashtag for enjoying the nostalgia.

6. #photooftheday

Managing a business account? This hashtag is a surefire way to attract more followers and repeat visitors. If you plan to post daily content, all around a common theme, add the #photooftheday hashtag to increase your exposure.

7. #instamood

#Instamood is all about the vibe or emotion a photo or video elicits. Pretty scenery, a day at the beach, or a night out with good people were all prominent under the #instamood hashtag in 2018. Landscapes are a popular starting point when figuring out what to post on Instagram, according to Jumper Media, and they fit into this hashtag perfectly.

8. #iphonesia

#Iphonesia is dedicated to the burgeoning community of Instagrammers in Indonesia.

9. #food

Meal pics are the bread and butter (no pun intended) of a people-oriented Instagram account — and 2018 was no exception. Use the #food hashtag to caption your next delicious Instagram photo.

10. #motivation

On Twitter, #MondayMotivation encourages inspiring quotes and messages to help people start the week off on the right foot. On Instagram, the #motivation hashtag has come to caption anything from a photo of a user after a big gym session, to a computer screen right before he or she gets to work.

The above 10 hashtags might have helped define Instagram over the last year, but there are still plenty more that end up trending every year. The following hashtags can help inspire photos and videos that Instagram users always seem to find captivating — and are sure to in 2019.

1. #life

This one goes out to all the photos and videos that encompass the essence of your life.

2. #travel

Away for the weekend? Show your followers where you are, using this hashtag to indicate you’re traveling somewhere new.

3. #fitness

Get in on a trending community of workout warriors with photos and videos from your best exercise sessions, using the #fitness hashtag to share the moment.

4. #repost

Reposting is a common function on Instagram that allows you to share content from other users, with credit back to the original user. Use the hashtag, #repost, to tell others on Instagram that you were inspired by this photo or video.

5. #igers

#Igers is short for “Instagram users.” If you’ve got a photo or video that encompasses the Instagram community, show your solidarity with this colloquial hashtag.

6. #instadaily

This hashtag is similar to #photooftheday — one of the most popular hashtags of 2018 above this list — and is perfect for Instagrammers who post every day.

7. #followforfollow

Interested in building a fast list of followers on Instagram? #Followforfollow tells everyone who browses this hashtag that you’ll follow users who choose to follow you. This hashtag is always trending highly.

8. #likeforlike

#Likeforlike is similar to the #followforfollow hashtag explained above. Use this hashtag if you want to increase engagement on your Instagram account, telling users that you’ll like their photo or video if they like yours.

9. #nofilter

Instagram offers so many different filters to help enhance photos, it’s practically assumed that any picture on Instagram has been edited. But if you’re posting a pic that was beautiful all by itself, let the world know that this gem didn’t need a filter to look so nice.

10. #ootd

#Ootd stands for “Outfit of the Day,” a hashtag dedicated to Instagram users who love showing off new clothing and styles on a regular basis.

11. #fashion

#Fashion is a fairly self-explanatory hashtag. Fashion brands and clothing models alike are some of the most prolific users of this hashtag.

12. #fun

If it’s not fun, it’s not Instagram-worthy. Make it known to millions of Instagram users that you had a blast in your latest photo or video with this popular hashtag.

1. Keep your hashtags organized.

To create an efficient hashtag system, you can use Excel or an Instagram analytics tool. If you choose an excel sheet, you’ll need to manually keep track of which hashtags you use, how often, and which ones correlate to your most popular posts. Over time, you’ll see relationships between certain hashtags and your most popular posts, and this can help you decide which hashtags work best for your brand.

If you have a more advanced social media team, you might want to consider a tool like Iconosquare, which automatically stores top hashtags and provides reports on which hashtags reach the most people.

For smaller businesses with limited budgets, Krystal Gillespie says that, “an excel sheet is the best way to start. Once you get more advanced I would highly recommend using a tool to track the data. A manual system can get overwhelming when you’re posting three times a day and using about 20 hashtags per post.”

2. Figure out your magic number.

Most top brands — 91% of them, to be exact — use seven or fewer hashtags per post, so it’s easy to assume that’s the magic number for everyone … right? Krystal explains that this isn’t always the case: She told me HubSpot has been more successful with hashtags ranging in the low 20s.

The point is, you can’t know how many hashtags work best for you until you test it. For HubSpot, it took the team several months to find a number that worked best, and during our trial period, we ranged from seven to 30. Give yourself the same flexibility for trial and error.

3. Narrow your hashtags.

There are two big reasons more specific, smaller-volume hashtags are better for your brand: first, you can compete in a smaller pool. HubSpot, for example, doesn’t typically use the hashtag #marketing because it’s too broad. If you search #marketing, you’ll find pictures of restaurants, inspirational quotes, before-and-after hair style pictures, and memes.

The randomness of #marketing leads me to the second reason specific hashtags are a good idea: as a user, I’m more likely to find what I need if I search for something specific, and when your business comes up for my specific search request, I’m more likely to be happy with what I found.

Krystal explains: “Keeping a hashtag close to the interests of your brand really helps. We try to use hashtags tailored for a specific topic and then narrow it down further — for instance, we’d use #SEOTips if our marketing post was mostly about SEO.”

Think of it this way: #dogs is more popular, but it has a wide demographic. If I search #goldenretrieverpuppies and I find your post, I’m more likely to engage with it because it’s exactly what I wanted.

4. Research what other people are hashtagging.

An easy way to generate hashtag ideas is to make a list of your followers or competitors and research what they’re hashtagging on their own photos. It can also be particularly helpful to research what influencers in your industry are hashtagging — by definition, influencers are people with a large social media following, so they must be doing something right.

5. Test out related hashtags.

When you type a hashtag into Instagram’s search bar, Instagram shows you related hashtags in the scroll-down menu. Instagram also delivers related hashtags on the next page after you click on a hashtag. This is a simple way to create a longer list of hashtags to try out.

6. Follow your own hashtag.

Another way to use Instagram hashtags for your marketing purposes is to follow your own hashtag. Krystal explains, “On Instagram I actually follow the hashtag #hubspot so I can find anyone who talks about us and connect with them. As long as your account isn’t private, people will be able to find you via the hashtag.”

Following your own hashtag is an effective way to engage with other people talking about your brand and develop better relationships with them.

7. Create a brand campaign hashtag.

This is the trickiest item on the list, but if done successfully, it can pay off big time. Some businesses have successfully attracted followers by creating their own campaign hashtag. A campaign hashtag needs to be funny, clever, or at least memorable in order to work.

Campaign hashtags are particularly useful for promoting a new product or upcoming event, or even just inspiring people. Red Bull, for example, encouraged followers to post Red Bull pictures with a #putacanonit hashtag (see what I mean about clever?). LuLuLemon, rather than running a more traditional ad campaign, developed a positive connotation for their brand by asking followers to post real, active pictures of themselves with a #sweatlife hashtag.

Now that we’ve covered the importance of using Instagram hashtags for your business, you might be wondering how to search for Instagram hashtags within the app, or how to use the search function to find related ideas. If you’re unsure of the technical process for hashtag searching, here’s how:

1. Open Instagram and tap the search icon.

Instagram wants you to use hashtags, and has made it extremely easy to find the perfect ones for your post. To start, open the Instagram app on your mobile device and tap the magnifying glass at the bottom of your screen.

2. Tap the search bar at the top of your screen.

The search screen on your Instagram might first send you to a newsfeed-style page with suggested content based on topics you’ve demonstrated an interest in on social media. To switch to a hashtag search, tap the search bar at the top of this page, as shown in the screenshot above.

3. Tap “Tags.”

Once you’ve tapped the search bar at the top of your screen, Instagram will give you four options with which to filter your search. Instagram refers to hashtags as simply “Tags,” as shown in the screenshot below. Tap this “Tags” option, then tap the search bar above it, and begin searching topics for which you want to find a trending hashtag.

You don’t have to include the pound sign (#) in your search — your results will be the same with or without it — but you will need to use this pound sign in the caption of your photo once you choose a hashtag.

4. Browse hashtags based on post count and current content.

Voila! You should see multiple options for hashtags based on your search. Browse around at each related hashtag that Instagram suggests for you — you might find that a hashtag with slightly fewer posts includes photos or videos that are more in line with the content you’re posting.

Happy hashtagging!

If I remember correctly, I was about 12 years old when I met my first robot.

At that time, robots were a novel concept rarely seen anywhere beyond a science fiction movie or TV show. This wasn’t just any robot. It didn’t sound like a series of beeps and boops, nor did it speak in monotone. It conversed with me like any human would, asking me about what I had for lunch and complimenting my earrings.

Little did I know that this somewhat primitive human-robot interaction would set into motion a series of events that would bring me back to California, time and time again, for many more interactions with machine-taught, artificially intelligent beings and gadgets.

It would also progress the age-old debate that comes with advancements in technology: At what point does the benefit of technological advancement become mitigated by humans having their jobs replaced by machines?

After spending a few days in San Francisco engaging with an array of automated concepts — markets, coffee shops, and restaurants — here’s some of what I learned.

A Land of Automated Milk and Honey

A Birds-Eye View of Income in San Francisco

According to a study conducted by the Brookings Institute, San Francisco has the sixth-highest household income inequality in the U.S., with some of the wealthiest households earning over 15X as much as some of the lowest-income ones.

Source: Brookings Institute

The tech sector — which is highly concentrated in San Francisco and the surrounding Silicon Valley area — is often blamed for this income disparity. It’s said by some to generate wealth for those who reach some of the higher ranks of these companies, to “prodigious” heights that create a rapidly growing moat between tech’s high earners and, well, everyone else.

“Prodigious” is a word used by Russell Hancock, president of nonprofit Joint Venture Silicon Valley, in a 2014 interview with MIT Technology Review. “But when we used to have booms in the tech sector, it would lift all boats,” he added at the time. “That’s not how it works anymore. And suddenly you’re seeing a backlash and people are upset.”

A worker strike in San Francisco

An Increasingly Cashierless World

The growth of the tech industry leaves some wondering if it advancements bleed into the aforementioned disparity. Last week, for instance, I wrote about the experience of visiting an Amazon Go store in San Francisco: the fifth location opening of the ecommerce giant’s famously cashierless stores.

And while the experience was one that I might describe as “neat,” it got me wondering about the repercussions of an increasingly cashierless society.

The latest Amazon Go store in San Francisco, California

The Amazon Go store is far from the only cashierless retail experience in San Francisco. In the span of only a few days, I visited not only this particular store, but also, a cashierless restaurant and a self-described robotic coffee bar.

Consider that the role of cashier is filled by 3.5 million Americans. In an increasingly automated world, what becomes of them — and what should we do now to prepare for it?

A robot serves my coffee order, after preparing it without human intervention

Automation (And Growth) for All

The replacement of humans by machines is not a new concept. Similar phenomenons played out when the assembly line was created, when horse-drawn carriages were outpaced by the automobile, and when air travel became more convenient than traveling by railroad or sea.

Many argue that automation creates more new jobs than it does eliminate them, which poses the question: How can automation be built and approached in a way that actually benefits everyone involved?

An ordering kiosk at eatsa, one of San Francisco’s automated restaurants

“The transition [to automation] needs the right education and training to enable people to take advantage of the new opportunities,” says HubSpot CMO Kipp Bodnar. “We should be invest more now in that training and education for innovations like automation, which we know is only going to grow.”

And while an investment in this education and training is a worthy one, many are left wondering who’s going to fund it — in a way that builds automation in a positive manner, helping users, businesses, and employees alike grow.

A robot barista at San Francisco’s CafeX

The answer, Bodnar says, could also exist in “a partnership”: between the private and public sector, and between businesses.

Consider small-to-midsize businesses (SMBs), for instance which often “operate at a local level,” says HubSpot VP of Marketing Jon Dick. Addressing automation in a constructive, growth-oriented way creates possibilities for such businesses to invest in education and training on a community level.

And where SMBs budgets are small, larger vendors with whom they work might play a role, Dick says. “You could imagine large tech companies distributing funding through customers or partners.”

In other words, the investment in building better automation in a way that helps everyone grow — which includes having a stake in the early education and training to fill the roles it create — doesn’t have to be a foreboding one.

Rather, it leads to a crucial moment for companies to work with together. This collaboration has a ripple effect — not just for building better technology and growth opportunities for all, but for how else these partnerships between businesses could strategically evolve over time (for example, in the area of co-marketing or co-branding for future initiatives).

At the end of the day, “This is an ethical issue,” says Bodnar — one “that can have significant impact on the brands who choose to hold themselves to a high ethical standard.”

When Karla Cook, the current Editor of HubSpot’s Marketing Blog, first joined the team as a staff writer in July 2016, she realized she had more in common with most of her new teammates than she originally thought.

As a rhetoric major at Bates College, a liberal arts school in Maine, Karla spent more time analyzing political speeches and honing her debate skills than studying marketing methodologies. She had also just spent the last year and a half working as a Support Engineer at HubSpot and was working her way through a masters degree in Corporate Communications. 

In other words, she was what most corporate folks would call, a “jack of all trades”. But, as a pleasant surprise to her, so were many of her teammates at HubSpot.

On the Blog Team, five of the seven total members were liberal arts graduates with majors spanning from theatre, communications, psychology, government, and international relations. Most of the bloggers didn’t begin their careers in marketing either. Grant writing, admissions, business analysis, production, and journalism sparked most of the team’s journey into the working world.

A year after Karla joined the team, Cobloom (a SaaS growth marketing agency) released a research report about the SaaS blogs who attract the most organic search traffic in the world. HubSpot’s blog was ranked number one. 

With a team full of generalists who never studied or specialized in marketing, they still generated three times more organic traffic than Google’s own blog. So is the old saying that a jack of all trades is a master of none actually true? And why is there so much suffocating pressure put on college students to specialize in only one discipline?

As jobs become more specialized in today’s workforce, it seems logical to hone a specific skill set, especially during school.

But only learning the skills that match the exact requirements of a job today might not prepare you for your job tomorrow.

According to a study conducted by researchers from LinkedIn and the World Economics Forum, majoring in specialized subjects like marketing, finance, IT, and computer science don’t teach students the necessary skills to adapt to sudden industry changes and other fields of work, whereas broad majors like literature, history, political science, and economics do.

Mark Cuban, a billionaire investor, has also called liberal arts majors free thinkers who can quickly adapt to the rapid evolution of most industries nowadays.

Marketing is one of the ever-evolving industries that Cuban says liberal arts majors thrive in. Fifteen years ago, content marketing didn’t even exist. But, today, it’s the top hiring area in the creative job market, with 25% of executives planning to grow their team this year.

Meghan Keaney Anderson, a Vice President of Marketing at HubSpot, believes content marketing’s swift evolution will continue to accelerate. And the only way to keep up is by being adaptable.

“The world changes incredibly quickly in our industry. What is today a central skill, channel, or strategy may not be tomorrow. We need people who are adaptable and, more than that, who are fascinated by change and have a mental framework and curiosity to learn new approaches,” she says. “I’ve found that liberal arts majors in particular have a great disposition for that kind of work — critical thinking, diverse interests, and a strong inclination to understand new areas.”

Keaney Anderson suggests there may be some essential content marketing skills today that will be rendered superfluous in the future. There could even be roles sprouting up that don’t even exist right now. This isn’t intimidating to liberal arts majors or jack of all trades, though. They’ve learned how to learn and feel comfortable grasping new skills and concepts.

But one skill the industry will always need and marketers constantly need to keep honing is storytelling — neuroscience proves that it’s the best way to capture people’s attention, bake information into their memories, and forge close, personal bonds. We’re programmed to pay our undivided attention to a great story — that’ll never change.

For a story to be compelling, though, it needs good writing behind it. But writing well in the marketing world doesn’t mean scribbling the most flowery and poetic prose possible. It means logically presenting or dissecting an argument in a clear, concise, and compelling way.

According to Emma Brudner, HubSpot’s Director of both the Blog and Community Teams, diversifying your education or skillset will arm you with the critical thinking abilities needed to write well.

“Liberal arts teaches students to not only write, but also to think critically. David McCullough, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, once said ‘Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly.’ I love this quote and I think about it a lot when hiring writers.” she says. “For the type of writing my team does, being able to organize thoughts and information clearly is imperative — even more important in my experience than the specific knowledge a more specialized degree, like marketing or advertising, might instill.”

While Brudner speaks to the importance of sharpening your critical thinking skills to write compelling content, developing your creativity is just as crucial for marketing success. According to neuroscience, it’s what drives innovation.

Creativity happens when you mash seemingly unrelated concepts together to form a new idea. Neuroscientists call this synaptic play, and the more incongruent the concepts are, the more synapses occur in your brain.

Studying a variety of disciplines or working in different fields supplies you with a bank of diverse knowledge and experiences to pull from to make these creative connections. And Kipp Bodnar, HubSpot’s Chief Marketing Officer, believes a brain full of diverse inputs will lead to much more inventive ideas.

“Connecting the dots is where so much of the success in marketing comes from. When you have a marketer who has done various aspects of marketing, they are able to understand how everything works together, which helps them accomplish much more than if their focus was isolated to only one deep discipline.”

Bodnar is describing something called cognitive diversity, where having a lot of different inputs in your head lets you connect dots that have never been connected before, giving you an entirely different perspective on things. This not only enables you to be more creative, but it also allows you to challenge the status quo and push your team to do better work.

Liberal arts majors and jack of all trades tend to have more cognitive diversity than their specialized peers, which is a huge reason why Sara DeBrule, the International Marketing Recruiting Team Lead at HubSpot, believes a jack of all trades can be a vital asset to any type of team.

“For a team where the majority of people are specialized, the case for hiring someone who is a jack of all trades is that they have enough perspective on the different types of marketing that they can test the assumptions of a team, push a team to operate in a more cross functional capacity, and round out the overall experience,” she says. “Jack of all trades can also be crucial for an early stage company where it’s an all hands on deck effort and people need to leverage disparate skill sets on a daily basis and context switch.”

The Jack of All Trades Can Be a Master of All

When I was a freshman in college, skeptically studying economics at a liberal arts school, I spent countless hours scouring the internet for every article that weighed the pros and cons of a general and specialized education. Every liberal arts critic said I was going to lag behind my specialized peers at work. Every proponent said I was going to propel past them.

So after hours on the phone with my dad and getting his blessing to transfer to a school where I could major in finance, I decided to go with my gut. I took a chance on the arts. And it’s the best decision I’ve ever made.

My liberal arts education taught me how to learn, think critically, and, most importantly, write. And those skills got me a job at HubSpot. If I had taken the other route, who knows what I’d be doing. Odd are, I’d be wearing a suit to work everyday and crunching numbers in a spreadsheet, not knowing what I’d do with my career if an algorithm started doing my job better than I could.