Coming up with fresh, new ideas isn’t easy. And when your job requires churning them out on a daily basis, it can be easy to hit a wall. (Not to mention frustrating.)

That’s why brainstorming sessions can be so helpful. But, as many of you probably know by experience, some brainstorming sessions are more productive than others.

Ever been to one where you left feeling like your team didn’t really come away with anything useful? It’s draining — and it can feel like a waste of you and your team’s time. Great brainstorming sessions, on the other hand, can be wonderfully revitalizing.

The best way to get the creative juices flowing isn’t by sitting your team around a conference table and asking them to shout out ideas as they come to them. It’s by creating an atmosphere that breaks people out of their traditional mindset.

Here are a few creative ways to help liven up your brainstorming sessions to improve your team’s output of ideas.

8 Brainstorming Ideas to Inspire Brilliance

1) Come up with bad ideas first.

The best brainstorming sessions come when everyone in the room feels comfortable throwing out all of their ideas, regardless of whether or not they’re gold. But some members on your team might be worried they’ll sound stupid or uninformed if they pitch ideas that aren’t well thought-out. Studies have shown people are especially apprehensive when people in positions of power are present — this apprehension can lead to major productivity loss in brainstorming groups.

One way to loosen people up and get the ideas flowing? Start out brainstorming sessions by spending 10 minutes coming up with a bunch of bad ideas first. You might throw one out yourself first to show them what you mean. This will help you set a much more open and playful tone than a formal atmosphere would. Gerry Graf of Barton F. Graf 9000 has his team come up with 4,000 bad ideas before coming up with good ones.

Once you’ve spent some time sharing throwaway ideas and having a few laughs, you can refocus on brainstorming ideas that could work. And who knows: An idea that isn’t so great on its own could spark some really ingenious ones that inform the direction of the rest of the meeting.

2) Break and build ideas.

One way to turn a few ideas into many is by breaking them down or building them up. If you’re starting with a really general theme, try breaking it down into parts and details and seeing if other ideas branch from it. Or, you can do the opposite, and build up a more specific idea to have it cover a broader perspective.

One way to break down or build up ideas is to have each person in the room jot down two or three ideas on their own pieces of paper. Then, have them trade papers with other members of the team, and build off their coworkers’ ideas. You can rotate papers several times, and start a discussion based off the new ideas that emerge.

3) Play word games.

Word games can be powerful ways to help remove you from the traditional mindset that tends to produce generic, unoriginal ideas. If you’re trying to get out of an idea rut, try adding a few games to your meeting to drum up some out-of-the-box thinking.

One great word exercise is creating a “word storm.” To create a word storm, write down one word, and then brainstorm a whole slew of words that come to mind from that first word. Try thinking about the function of that word, its aesthetics, how it’s used, metaphors that can be associated with it, and so on. Let the ideas flow naturally, and don’t over think it — this is meant to be a creative exercise.

Once you’ve listed out a bunch of words, group them together according to how they’re related to one another. The goal? To come up with those less obvious words or phrases your audience might associate with whatever project you’re working on.

Source: CoSchedule

You can record the word storm on a piece of paper or a whiteboard or by using this online word storm tool to create a visual map — which you can save, export, and send to the team after the meeting.

Mind mapping is another powerful brainstorming tool to visualize related terms and ideas. Create a diagram starting with a central idea, and then branch out into major sub-topics, then sub-sub-topics. You can create mind maps either on paper or a whiteboard, or by using something like MindNode app.

Finally, another word game you could try is coming up with what Creative Bloq calls “essence words”: Words that capture the spirit, personality, and message you’re trying to put across — even if they seem crazy. You might find that it helps spark other ideas down the line.

4) Create a mood board.

Combining imagery, color, and visual-spatial arrangements can help surface emotions and feelings that will spark fresh, new ideas. It’s also been proven to significantly improve information recall in comparison to more conventional methods of learning.

While there are many ways to use visual prompts in brainstorming, creating a mood board is one of the most common — especially in coming up with new branding and design concepts.

A mood board is simply a random collection of images, words, and textures focused on one topic, theme, or idea. Like with mind mapping, the visual components of the mood board can be anything branching off that central topic.

Source: Behance

Mood boards can either be physical boards (e.g., a poster or cork board) or virtual (e.g., a Pinterest board). You can also use a tool such as the MoodBoard app to help you collect, organize, and share all the visual components needed for your board.

5) Play improv games.

Nothing gets the creative juices flowing like a little improvisation. This may sound silly, but hear me out: The more relaxed and playful the environment is (without being distracting), the more your team will feel comfortable thinking and sharing freely with one another.

Corey Blake, the CEO of RoundTable Companies, told The Huffington Post about a time he and his executive team opened a brainstorming session with a series of improv games. “That experience opened our minds and readied the team for play before diving into more traditional brainstorming,” Blake said. “The result was a deeper dive into our exploration and more laughter and fun, which increased our aptitude for creativity.”

If your team can relax briefly and laugh together, your creative energy will be much higher when you refocus on the project at hand.

6) Doodle.

Did you know that doodling can help spur creative insight, increase attention span, and free up short- and long-term memory?

Sunni Brown, author of The Doodle Revolution, wrote that, “When the mind starts to engage with visual language, you get the neurological access that you don’t have when you’re in linguistic mode.”

While many brainstorming sessions are based on talking and reading, doodling helps people break out of the traditional mindset and think about familiar things in a different way, perhaps leading to unexpected connections.

What should you doodle? Here are two ideas from Brown’s book:

• Take an object and visually break it down into its tiniest parts. So if you start with the word “dog,” you might draw paws, a tail, and a collar. Thinking about all the elements of that object and the environment it is found in will allow you to view an object in a new way.
• “Take two unrelated things, like elephants and ice cream, and draw them in their atomized parts,” writes Jennifer Miller for Fast Company. “Then create drawings that randomly fuse these parts together. Like trunk-cones or melting ears. Brown has used this technique to help journalists think up unique story angles.”

Source: FastCompany

7) Change your physical environment.

Switching up your physical environment isn’t just a fun change of pace; it can actually affect the way your brain works. Neurobiologists believe enriched environments could speed up the rate at which the human brain creates new neurons and neural connections. That means where you conduct your brainstorming sessions could have an affect on the ideas your team comes up with.

Try holding brainstorming sessions in rooms that aren’t associated with regular team meetings. If you can’t change the room itself, try changing something about the room to stimulate the brain, such as rearranging the chairs or putting pictures on the walls. Another idea is to have your team stand up and walk around while brainstorming, to encourage fluid creativity.

8) Don’t invite too many people.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has a rule when it comes to meetings that applies to brainstorms too: Don’t invite more people than could be fed by two pizzas.

Now, we’ve all probably crushed a pizza on our own before, but generally speaking, two pizzas could comfortably feed between six and 10 people — but more than that, and people will be hungry — not to mention, unproductive.

Keep brainstorms smaller so everyone has a chance to surface ideas — and so the conversation doesn’t become cacophonous with interruptions and diverging tangents. A group of 10 people or fewer will still be able to feed and build off each others’ ideas — without drowning anyone out or getting too off-track.

Just when you thought you understood SEO … search changed. Again.

“Understood” is a strong word. Search engine algorithms change at such a rapid tick, it’s hard to keep up with the best strategies to optimize your blog to rank on the first page of SERPs. But this change is a biggie, so hang onto your keywords for this one.

Human search behaviors have changed, and so have the technologies used to interpret and serve up search results. Optimizing blog content to rank for long-tail keywords is no longer the best way to rank in search engine results — and your blog architecture has something to do with that.

In this blog post, we’ll walk you through the ways search has changed, the scoop on topic clusters, and how pillar pages fit into the equation.

What Are Topic Clusters?

As we mentioned before: The way people search has changed, and in turn, that’s started to change the way SEOs and bloggers create content. Here’s a basic primer — but for more details, read our latest research and blog posts about the evolution of search.

People are submitting longer, more conversational search queries.

Picture yourself before entering a Google search. If you were trying to find a place to eat sushi, would you search for “restaurants,” or would you search for “Japanese restaurants near me”?

If you’d go with the second option, you’re among the majority: 64% of searches are four words or more, and we’re seeing a growing number of these longer-form conversational search queries that help people find the exact information they’re looking for.

This is, in part, due to the rise of voice search. Between Siri and Google Assistant, 20% of mobile Google searches are conducted via voice search, and thanks to the rise of Amazon Echo and Google Home devices, this percentage will surely be on the rise.

But voice search isn’t the only reason people are submitting longer queries. For one, there’s a lot of content out there — and quality is greatly outweighed by quantity. People are submitting more detailed queries to sort through the junk get the information they need, faster. People are also skimming content more — often relying on the headers of blog posts or Google’s featured information to get simple answers to questions quickly.

Search engines are getting better at sorting through the thousands of pieces of content out there to serve up the best, most accurate results possible, too. More on that next.

Search engines are better at providing exactly what searchers want.

Google’s algorithm is constantly evolving to provide the best possible answers to searchers’ queries. Some of these changes include penalizing too many irrelevant internal links, interpreting conversational queries as an entire thought instead of individual keywords, and using machine-learning to serve up more accurate interpretations of specific terms.

What all of this means: Google is helping searchers find the most accurate information possible — even if it isn’t exactly what they searched for. For example, if you searched for “running shoes,” Google will now also serve you up results for “sneakers.” This means that bloggers and SEOs need to get even better at creating and organizing content that addresses any gaps that could prevent a searcher from getting the information they need from your site.

Now, your site needs to be organized according to different main topics, with blog posts about specific, conversational long-tail keywords hyperlinked to one another, to address as many searches as possible about a particular subject. Enter the topic cluster model.

Topic clusters help more pages rank to give searchers better answers.

The way most blogs are currently structured (including our own blogs, until very recently), bloggers and SEOs have worked to create individual blog posts that rank for specific keywords. The result is disorganized, and hard for the user to find the exact information he or she needs. It also results in your own URLs competing against one another in search engine rankings when you produce multiple blog posts about similar topics.

Here’s what our blog architecture used to look like using this old playbook:

Now, in order to rank in search and best answer the new types of queries searchers are submitting, the solution is to use the topic cluster model: Choose the broad topics you want to rank for, then create content based on specific keywords related to that topic that all link to each other, to create broader search engine authority. Using this model, this is what our blog infrastructure looks like now — with specific topics surrounded by blog posts related to the topic, connected to other URLs in the cluster via hyperlinks:

This model uses a more deliberate site architecture to organize and link URLs together to help more pages on your site rank in Google — and to help searchers find information on your site more easily. This architecture consists of three components — pillar content, cluster content, and hyperlinks:

Next, we’ll dive into pillar content — which represents the primary topic bloggers and SEOs are trying to rank for, by creating more specific pieces of cluster content.

What Is a Pillar Page?

A pillar page is the basis on which a topic cluster is built. A pillar page covers all aspects of the topic on a single page, with room for more in-depth reporting in more detailed cluster blog posts that hyperlink back to the pillar page.

Pillar pages broadly cover a particular topic, and cluster content should address a specific keyword related to that topic in-depth. For example, you might write a pillar page about content marketing — a broad topic — and a piece of cluster content about blogging — a more specific keyword within the topic.

Pillar pages are longer than typical blog posts — because they cover all aspects of the topic you’re trying to rank for — but they aren’t as in-depth. That’s what cluster content is for. You want to create a pillar page that answers questions about a particular topic, but leaves room for more detail in subsequent, related cluster content.

For example, here’s our pillar page about Instagram marketing. It provides a thorough overview of how to use Instagram, and it’s hyperlinked to specific pieces of cluster content — like this blog post about how to write good Instagram captions. In this case, we’re trying to rank for topics related to Instagram. The pillar page serves as a 101 guide to Instagram marketing, and the piece of cluster content dives into one specific aspect of Instagram marketing — writing great caption copy.

How to Create a Pillar Page

The first step to creating a pillar page is to stop thinking about your site in terms of just keywords. Start thinking about the topics you want to rank for first — then, brainstorm blog topic ideas based on more specific keywords related to the broader topic.

Think about the top interests and challenges of your core audience personas to give you ideas for pillar page content. Choose a topic that’s broad enough that it can generate more related blog posts that will serve as cluster content, but not so broad that you can’t cover the entire topic on a single pillar page.

For example, in our case, “social media” was too broad of a topic, but “Instagram captions” would have been too narrow. “Instagram marketing” is broad enough that we’re able to link many more blog posts that dive into Instagram in greater detail, but still specific enough that we could write a comprehensive pillar page about it.

Pillar pages should answer any question or query a searcher might have about a topic — which will make them want to click on your pillar page when they enter a Google search term that your page ranks for. Then, they’ll click into your pillar page to get the answers to their questions, which will link out to more specific pieces of cluster content hyperlinked on the pillar page.

For example, here’s what that looks like on our Instagram marketing pillar page:

These paragraphs cover aspects of Instagram marketing, and these hyperlinks direct to more specific pieces of cluster content related to the topic. Make sense?

If not, don’t worry — we’ll teach you more about pillar pages and how to construct them soon, along will more killer examples. Dive into our latest research to learn more about this new way to organize and build your content, and watch the video below to see how the topic clusters and pillar pages work in action.

What makes a college logo great?

Think about your alma mater for a second. Do you have a school bumper sticker with the logo emblazoned on it? A hat? A sweatshirt? A flag? Or perhaps all of the above?

If you still bleed your school colors and rock your school swag whenever possible, then chances are, your university did a pretty good job designing its logo. According to the principles of great logo design, the best logos are simple, memorable, timeless, versatile, and appropriate. 

Want to see some examples of awesome college logo designs? You’re in the right place. I chatted with my colleague, Tyler Littwin, art director here at HubSpot, to choose 12 of the best college logo designs from American universities. Check them out and learn what about their design makes them stand out — in a good way.

12 of the Best College Logo Designs

1) University of Texas

Source: University of Texas

University of Texas’s longhorn silhouette is the hallmark of classic and timeless logo design. The logo hasn’t changed since its introduction in 1961, and it remains one of the most iconic college sports logos in the world.

“Any logo that works as a single color design is fantastic,” says Littwin. “It’s simple, iconic, and has a great tie-in to the ‘hook ’em horns’ hand symbol.”

Source: Awful Announcing

2) University of North Carolina

Source: Carolina Athletics

The interlocking NC, one of the University of North Carolina’s athletics logos, features another timeless design — this time with attention-grabbing colors. Walk into a packed crowd at the Dean Dome, and you’ll see a sea of Carolina Blue, the official school color of UNC that dates back to the late eighteenth century.

Tyler gives UNC’s logo two thumbs up. “Classic,” he says. “A+ from me. Beyond the logotype, the color is a great bit of branding.”

3) Ohio University

Source: Ohio University

The “Attack Cat,” which represents Ohio University’s bobcat mascot, replaced a simple green paw print in 2002 as the school’s official athletics logo. While many OU alumni were disappointed with the change — citing it as too intense — Littwin likes the new design.

As an objective observer, he says, “It’s a good integration of an illustration with type. The whiskers create a nice baseline for the arced text. There’s also an overall nice balance: The bobcat is recognizable and ‘Ohio’ is still 100% legible.”

4) University of Oregon

Source: GoAbroad Blog

University of Oregon’s “O” logo has hidden meaning: The inside of the “O” represents the shape of the school’s track, Hayward Field, while the outside of the “O” represents the shape of Autzen Stadium, the school’s football field.

“As iconic and simple of a logo as you could ask for,” says Littwin. “I am also a huge fan of the yellow and green color scheme. It reminds me of the Oakland A’s, the Norwich Canaries, and so on.”

5) University of Notre Dame

Source: Wikimedia

The Notre Dame monogram is the university’s most recognizable logo, and it’s used for athletics and academics alike. The school’s official brand standards call it “recognizable,” “representative,” “welcoming,” and “approachable.”

As for what Littwin thinks? “I’m a sucker for really basic logotypes like this one, UNC’s, and Iowa State’s. They’re wonderfully old-school and no-nonsense. Always going to get my vote.”

Even Notre Dame’s trademarked “Fighting Irish” logo is impressively well-designed for such a unique mascot. “I prefer the stylized ‘ND’ logo, but there’s something really vintage and cool about this surly Irishman,” says Littwin. “Normally the more cartoony logos lose me, but this one is a keeper.”

Source: fathead

6) University of Miami

Source: Wikimedia

A reporter from the University of Miami’s official student newspaper said it best: “There are thousands of universities across the nation, but only one gets to be The U.”

The Miami athletics’ iconic split-U logo wasn’t created until 1973, several years after the student-athlete scholarship fund first commissioned a logo redesign. It was designed by publicist Julian Cole, the first graduate of UM’s radio and television department, and graphic artist Bill Bodenhamer, who both were also responsible for designing the Miami Dolphins’ current logo.

“If you think about it, it was quite a stretch,” said Lisa Cole, one of Cole’s daughters. “They took the U and said, ‘This is the university.'”

But it worked, and a hype surrounding the “U” developed over the following few years. It was used for slogans like, “U gotta believe.” Littwin calls it “minimalist and recognizable to a brilliant degree.”

Even an effort to find a logo replacement in 1979 by Henry King Stanford — the university’s president at the time — failed, thanks to heavy student campaigning against the change. Nowadays, as with the University of Texas’ longhorn symbol, the “U” has its own hand symbol. “Throwing up the U” means holding your hands in the air like this:

Source: PalmBeachPost.com

7) Clemson University

Source: UNC Charlotte

Clemson’s tiger paw logo is another one of the most widely recognized collegiate logos in the United States. Although it seems timeless, it actually wasn’t introduced until 1970 — the end of a rebranding campaign that began when the school first admitted women and minorities in 1950.

The logo itself represents a tiger’s paw print, rough edges and all. An actual tiger was chosen as the subject for the logo, and the print comes from a cast that was made for the design. In fact, do you see the slight indentation at the bottom of the paw print? According to Clemson’s official website, that comes from “a scar that the tiger who had been chosen as the subject for the logo had received before the cast was made.”

The genuine paw print makes for a cool design. “The rough paw print is great and somehow works when paired with the more formal-looking type lockup,” says Littwin.

Another subtle intricacy of the logo? The 30-degree angle represents the 1:00 p.m. kickoff typical for football games at the time.

8) Bowdoin College

Source: Bowdoin College

While Bowdoin’s mascot has been the Polar Bear for over 100 years, this particular version of its logo is fairly recent: It was made official by the university in 2008. A student reporter for the school’s official student newspaper explains: “The new logo is intended to serve as a consistent and timeless graphic identity for the College.”

Previously, the polar bear logo had been unofficial — and it had been represented by everything from a “cartoonish” running polar bear on student keycards, to a “more aggressive” profile of a bear with its mouth open as if it were snarling.

“Noting that in the wild, polar bears have no predators other than man, and that a ferocious, growling mascot was not the image the college was looking to project,” wrote the student reporter, “[VP for Communications and Public Affairs Scott] Hood said that there’s ‘something appealing about having a mascot that is looking directly at you.'”

Littwin agrees — that’s what makes this logo so strong. “The polar bear seems remarkably calm and composed,” he says. “I trust him.”

9) Hofstra University

Source: CAA Sports

The Hofstra Pride logo was “developed to build a strong visual identity” for its athletic department, according to its official usage guide. It’s represented by a pair of lions, male and female, that appear to be charging in the same direction. Furrowed brows and windswept manes give them a sense of determination and strength.

“The Pride conveys both the teamwork and togetherness that are traits of lions living in a pride, that have a close bond and work together for the good of the entire group,” reads the guide. It was created for the university’s athletic department in 2005.

“A very clever and awesome design,” notes Littwin. “It’s rare to see a university get both sexes of a mascot into the same logo. Well done, Hofstra.”

10) Missouri Western State University

Source: American Association of Colleges of Nursing

Missouri Western State University started using the Griffon logo in 1973, several years before the school became a fully funded four-year state college. Why a Griffon? Because “it was considered a guardian of riches, and education was viewed as a precious treasure,” reads the school’s official website.

The logo symbolizes more than just a mythical animal, though. Notice anything special about its shape? If you look closely, the outline of the Griffon resembles the shape of the state of Missouri. Check it out:

Source: ArtFire

Littwin loves the hidden message. “It’s a clever design that also works even if you don’t pick up on the geographic reference,” he says.

11) Florida International University

Source: Florida International University

The Panthers (originally the “Golden Panthers”) replaced the Sunblazers as Florida International University’s nickname in 1987 when Roary the Panther became its official mascot.

The logo represents a cool perspective — it seems to be coming out of the logo directly at the reader.

Littwin agrees. “I love the head-on perspective of this,” he says. “There’s something atypical and nicely menacing about it.”

12) University of Hawai’i

Source: Miracle Mamaki

The University of Hawai’i “H” logo was created for the athletic department in 2000. While the “H” clearly stands for Hawai’i, the school’s official website says it also represents the Hawaiian expression “ha,” meaning “breath” in Hawaiian. “The spirit of life passed on to us from one person to another, generation to generation, with lessons and success,” the website reads.

The cool patterns you see on either side of the “H” were inspired by Hawaiian kapa designs, which derive from native Hawaiian art. “I really like the kapa aesthetic and the simplicity of a one letter logo,” says Littwin.

And that’s actually pretty great.

None of us will be happy in our careers every day of every year. If that’s what you’re looking for, good luck. But you should find satisfaction in the work you do regularly.

Because as nice as it is to talk about work/life balance, it’s also important to remember just how much of your life is actually spent at work (Spoiler alert: You’ll spend roughly 35% of your waking hours working). Shouldn’t you find contentment during that time?

Here are nine signs it might be time for a new job. They’re not hard-and-fast rules, but they are signals it’s time to consider a new position. Check the pulse on the rest of your life and explore how a new job might make that pulse stronger or weaker.

9 Signs You Should Quit Your Job

1) You’ve Been There More Than 5 Years (And Still Aren’t Happy)

If you’ve been at your job for more than five years and are still totally happy, don’t panic. Instead, ask yourself if you’re still building skills, feeling challenged, and being rewarded accordingly. Getting comfortable at a job is one thing, getting complacent is another.

Powerhouse companies like Netflix actually believe job hopping is a good thing. Patty McCord, the former chief talent officer for Netflix, has said, “You build skills faster when changing companies because of the learning curve.”

According to entrepreneur and author Penelope Trunk, the learning curve flattens after about three years. Trunk believes that job hoppers learn faster, make better first impressions, and improve the bottom line quickly because they know they’ll be moving on within a matter of years.

Regardless of whether you’re pounding the pavement for a new job every five years, it’s important to routinely assess whether you’ve reached a growth ceiling in your current role.

2) You’ve Been There Less Than 5 Months

Starting a new job always comes with unique challenges. Maybe you’re not getting along with your boss as well as you thought you would. Or perhaps the daily tasks associated with your role are actually very different from what you discussed during your interview.

Before quitting a job you just started. Ask yourself three things:

Is there anything I can do to make this better?

Try talking to your boss about shifting your job responsibilities to be more in line with your expectations. Or take your boss to coffee and get to know them better.

How will I explain this short tenure to future employers?

Before you quit or start looking for a new job, decide how you’ll explain your short stint at X company to potential employers. Simply saying, “I didn’t like what I was doing” or “I didn’t get along well with my boss” might cause interviewers to pause.

Can and should you give the position more time?

Are you really sure that things won’t get better? Can you make it to the one-year mark so that you avoid some raised eyebrows on your resume in the future? Ask yourself if the challenges of leaving after a short time are worth the benefits of getting out of a negative work environment ASAP.

3) Your Job is Affecting Your Mood Outside of Work

A recent study found that about three quarters of “the weekend effect” (the increase of your happiness on the weekends) comes from the quality of your workplace.

How happy you are at your job is directly correlated to whether or not you view your boss as a partner and whether you believe you work in a trusting environment, according to the research. If you answer positively to both of those questions, your mid-week mood will more closely match your mood on the weekends.

This is another great area to regularly check in with friends and family about. Ask them if they notice you talking about work with increasing negativity, or if you’re coming home in a frustrated mood more weeks than not. Everyone has bad days, and even bad months, but if the majority of your days are ending under a cloud, it’s time to take control of your life and either adjust your attitude or your job.

4) You’re Not Learning

If you’re not learning from the people around you or solving new problems in your job, it may be time to look for something new.

In today’s fast-moving and competitive job market, it’s important to continually expand your skillset to advance in your career. If you’ve been solving the same problems for a few years, you’re likely not growing too much.

Share your frustrations with your manager and ask if there are ways you can take on more or different responsibilities within your team. Can you grow the headcount you manage or take over the new video initiative your team has been on the verge of implementing for years? If that answer is no or a vague “we’ll see in a few months,” it’s probably time to move on.

5) You’re Not Earning

In 2014, the average raise an employee could expect was 3% of their overall salary, and the actual raise they received was less than 1%. The average raise an employee received when taking a new job, however, was between 10% and 20%.

It’s important to track the monetary growth potential you have at your current company. Sure, you’re likely not going to receive a 20% raise every year you stay at your job. But if you’re not going to receive a similar raise over the course of three to four years, it might be time to look for something new or talk to your boss.

Talking about a raise can be awkward, so do your homework ahead of time to build confidence and a strong case for your argument. Research median salaries in your field on sites like Glassdoor, and adjust numbers for cost of living in your city and state, and for inflation.

6) You Don’t Align with Team or Company Culture

It happens. Maybe your company was acquired or you have a manager you don’t see eye to eye with. Regardless of the cause of the shift, it’s important that you align with the new direction. If you don’t, it can be easy to lose faith in your boss and your company, making it much harder to excel at your job.

If your new manager’s strategy includes buying email lists and spamming them like there’s no tomorrow, it may be time to look for a new position. Talk to your boss and tell them you’re having a difficult time understanding the reasons behind this new direction.

7) Your Company is Change Averse

Is your company tracking MQLs like it’s 1999? Are they unwilling to implement any fresh marketing strategies you suggest? It’s tough, but it might be time to hit the job boards. 

A company that isn’t changing with or leading the industry is one that is likely to stunt your career development and maybe even your professional reputation. If you’re working for a team that refuses to evolve, it’s easy to fall behind on industry trends your peers (and future job competition) are becoming well versed in.

8) You’re Daydreaming About Your Side Hustle

Ah, the side hustle. Maybe you teach a couple of night classes at the local community college. Maybe you offer consulting advice to young entrepreneurs. Or perhaps you make soap out of wood bark in your backyard.

Whatever your side gig, it can be a great way to develop professionally and personally. But what happens when you can’t think about anything but your side hustle? What happens when your day job isn’t satisfying you enough?

This is another time to get really honest with yourself. Poll your close advisors, family, and friends, and get to the bottom of why you’re devoting so much brainpower to your hustle right now. Whether it’s a phase, a funk, or a change you need to make, it’s important that you have enough motivation to bring the best to your day job.

9) It’s Affecting Your Physical Health

Did you develop an ulcer from last year’s Black Friday marketing campaign? Have high blood pressure at 25? If work is so stressful that it’s having a physical manifestation in you, it’s definitely time to reevaluate whether your job — or even a career in marketing — is right for you.

No job is worth taking a long-term toll on your body. Start by talking to your boss about the cause of this stress. Ask about lightening your workload, vacation, or even shifting to a less taxing role on the team. If none of that’s possible, it might be time to look for a job that’s less demanding. Acknowledge what your body needs. Own it. And never be ashamed of it.

Leaving your job is a big deal. Make sure that it’s the right choice. Never act too quickly, and be honest with yourself about the motivation behind the move. But whenever possible, choose to work for a place the empowers, challenges, and supports you. That’s a job you’ll never regret taking.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m not the most together person in the world.

I eat three meals a day, but one of them is usually takeout. I hit snooze so often it should be considered a nap. And I definitely don’t drink enough water. But I imagine I’m not alone.

There are plenty of productive members of society like myself who work and go to school and have fulfilling lives — those lives just don’t always involve waking up at 5 a.m. for morning meditation or listening to stimulating podcasts on their commutes the way so many famed morning routines do.

So here’s to the snoozers, the night owls, and the TV binge-watchers. I celebrate you, and I want to help you figure out if any of the most dreadful-sounding productivity hacks will actually work for you.

Over the course of a month, I spent each week trying out a different productivity hack to see if it made me more productive — in the morning, and throughout the day. Some of these techniques were brand new to me, while others had been feebly attempted (and abandoned) before.

Keep reading for a detailed explanation of why I went on this productivity journey, or skip ahead to the hacks you want to read more about:

• Week One: Eating Breakfast Every Day
• Week Two: Exercising Every Morning
• Week Three: Using the Pomodoro Technique
• Week Four: Freewriting Every Morning

Why I Tried Out Productivity Hacks

I spent a month this summer testing out different productivity hacks as part of a larger initiative my fellow HubSpot Blog team members participated in. Traditionally, during the summer months, we experience a slight dip in traffic due to seasonality — after all, we want you to enjoy summer vacations away from your email inbox, even if it means missing some of our blog posts.

With that in mind, we decided to take a month to run different experiments and report on the results — and I decided to devote time to testing out different productivity hacks so I could report on the results to you fine people, our readers.

I spent each week trying out a new hack — with varied results. Read on to learn more about how I became the most productive woman in the world in just 30 days (just kidding).

4 Productivity Hacks (& Results)

1) Eating Breakfast Every Day

Before the Experiment

Don’t get me wrong, I love food. But between the aforementioned snoozing and my lengthy commute time to work, eating breakfast before work was darn near impossible for me.

And by the time I got to work, which was usually slightly later than I wanted for the previously mentioned reasons, I would dive right into my to-do list — only to find myself ravenous and ready for lunch by 10:30 a.m. Or worse, scarfing down a Pop-Tart to tide myself over until my immediate sugar crash as a direct result of eating said Pop-Tart.

But starting your day with a healthy breakfast can have a huge impact on your productivity. The food we choose throughout the day impacts not only our productivity, but also our moods, focus, and energy. In fact, a study found that the more servings of fruits and vegetables people ate throughout the day, the more engaged, happy, and creative they were.

As it turns out, 31 million Americans (roughly 10% of the population) end up skipping breakfast every day — probably for reasons like mine. So I committed to a full week of making — and eating — a healthy breakfast.

During the Experiment

I quickly realized that changing the way I sleep and get up in the morning would require a lot longer than a month to complete, and I needed a healthy breakfast solution that also didn’t take too long once I finally made it into the office.

The solution? Smoothies.

Luckily, HubSpot’s Cambridge office has a fully-stocked kitchen with a lot of the materials and equipment needed to make a healthy breakfast. With the help of plant-based protein powder and spinach I brought from home, I was able to quickly make healthy smoothies that were easy to consume and fairly tasty. I can’t, however, speak for their appearance:

Look, my smoothie matches my gray desk divider!

Gray smoothies notwithstanding, this was far and away my favorite productivity hack of the experiment.

Results of the Experiment

Ironically, my interest in smoothies was to save time so I could dive right into work, but dedicating time to making and consuming breakfast before I got started with every work day helped me be more productive. I ended up taking a few minutes before getting started to a) enjoy my breakfast, b) surf Twitter without feeling guilty for procrastinating and c) prioritize my day.

Besides the health benefits of eating healthful foods first thing in the morning, I think there’s also something to be said for forcing yourself not to dive into work right away and reflect on your priorities. It’s easy when you’re swamped in to-dos to feel so stressed and overwhelmed that you start working the second your eyes open. But by making breakfast or spending your morning doing something not directly work-related, you can organize your thoughts, prioritize the mounting list of tasks we all have, and enjoy a little “me time” — and debriefing on which projects and tasks to tackle to make your day as efficient as possible.

There were definitely days when I wanted a Pop-Tart (but I promise, I didn’t have one). Also, one day that week, I decided to treat myself to a technically healthy but fairly enormous breakfast at a vegan diner. Delicious? Absolutely. But I also fell into a food coma shortly after and had a less productive day than my smoothie days.

2) Exercising Every Morning

Before the Experiment

For those of you already rolling your eyes, trust me — I know how you feel. Working out is the worst.

But actually, it’s not. Apart from the health benefits we all know and forget as our sneakers collect dust from the corners of our closets — like decreased risk of chronic disease, weight control, better sleep, and stronger muscles and bones — it can have a positive impact on your productivity all day.

Regular exercise can improve your memory retention, sharpen your concentration, help you learn faster, make you more creative, and lower stress. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t say no to literally any of those things.

I’m still in the process of recovering from an ankle injury, so I wasn’t exercising at all before starting the experiment for a week — let alone exercising in the morning. Saying I was not excited about trying out this productivity hack was an understatement, but I wanted to do it in the morning to get it out of the way — and to achieve those promised benefits even sooner.

During the Experiment

I decided to work out using 30-45 minutes Pilates videos every morning — mostly because I wanted to do something that would be low-impact on my ankle, but partly because I didn’t want to actually have to leave my house to get a workout in.

On the first day of testing out this hack, as my alarm went off 45 minutes earlier than normal and I stared at my yoga mat, I said out loud to no one in particular, “I already hate this.”

Luckily, I had a supportive family member who got up when I did and motivated me to keep going:

We’ll call our workout routine “Pilates with Phil”

Unfortunately, his support waned the longer the workout went on every morning.

Results of the Experiment

As a side effect of exercising and waking up early, I started getting tired and falling asleep much earlier, which definitely made me feel more productive at work. I felt more alert and focused at the start of my day — having already been awake for a couple of hours — and I found myself making healthier eating choices (see above) after starting my day off on the right foot. On a few of these days, I didn’t even feel the need to drink coffee once I got to my desk!

I’ll confess that, halfway through the week, I snoozed through my alarm and worked out in the evening instead — but it definitely weighed on me as one more item on my to-do list, and getting it done early in the day was far superior.

So, while I don’t think I can commit to daily morning exercise, I can confirm that getting up and moving once a day definitely made me feel more alert and relaxed, which lasted for the entire rest of the day.

3) Using the Pomodoro Technique

Before the Experiment

Before I tested out this productivity hack, I was familiar with the concept of blocking off time for specific tasks, as well as blocking off time for breaks, but I wasn’t doing it with any particular rhyme or reason.

Simply put, I would totally disregard calendar appointments I’d set for myself and would stay in a groove if I hit one — until I looked up from my computer, hours later, with bloodshot eyes, wondering what had happened to the rest of my to-do list.

Not exactly easy to follow.

So for the next week of my experiment, I decided to test out the Pomodoro Technique — and no, it isn’t a delicious cooking method as I previously thought. It calls for working in 25-minute bursts with short breaks in between. Once you’ve completed four Pomodoros (25-minute increments), you could take a longer break before starting work again.

It sounded like a great way to balance the demands of my writing workload writing several blog posts per week in addition to various other meetings and projects.

During the Experiment

I cannot overstate the degree to which this time management method did not work for me.

I downloaded the Pomodoro Technique Chrome extension to remind me of when to start working and to take a break, and I grew to hate that little tomato — a real shame, since it’s one of my favorite fruits/vegetables.

Tomatoes will never be the same.

I really missed being able to get into the groove working on a project — particularly when it came to writing blog posts, which typically takes more than 25 minutes.

I even tried hacking together my own Pomodoro Technique calendar when I couldn’t handle the tomato reminders, but the pop-up calendar reminders irked me even more.

I was in notification hell.

By the Wednesday of the week I started testing out this productivity hack, I was back to my old ways — and loving it.

Writing blocks, how I missed thee.

Results of the Experiment

The Pomodoro Technique definitely didn’t work for me, but I don’t think it’s the fault of the technique itself — I think it doesn’t work for my particular job requirements, which involve multiple daily deadlines.

When I write blog posts, I don’t necessarily need (or want) my time split into 25-minute bursts — I want to get blog posts out the door so I can get started on the next one.

My very unscientific assumption is that the Pomodoro Technique works better for people working on longer-term projects and daily tasks, rather than deadline-driven bloggers and creators turning things in every day.

4) Freewriting Every Morning

Before the Experiment

When I come home from writing blog posts all day, the last thing I want to do is sit down and write more — even if it’s creative writing on my own.

So when I read that morning freewriting can increase productivity, I was skeptical about whether or not it would work for me — wouldn’t it just be adding more work to my plate?

Before I tested this productivity hack, the closest thing I did that could be called morning freewriting was my morning tweeting. So I decided to try it out for a week.

During the Experiment

I blocked off 30 minutes each morning for freewriting when I got into the office each day and went to work. And let me tell you, it was hard.

It wasn’t that I didn’t have anything else to write about besides marketing topics for the blog — it’s that I didn’t want to write paragraphs. I wanted to write lists.

I’m in the process of moving, and I’m a bridesmaid in two upcoming weddings, and during these 30-minute blocks, I honestly couldn’t stop myself from creating list after list of things I needed to do — like this one:

A Maine wedding without bug spray is a non-starter.

I learned from this experiment that a comfy rug is essential to at-home workouts.

Over the course of the week, I eventually started writing longer pieces with more sentences and fewer bullet points — and freewriting shifted into journaling.

Results of the Experiment

I don’t know that I did freewriting exactly correctly — technically, it was freelisting. But going through the motion every morning got me in the right mindset to braindump — which any blogger will tell you is a critical part of the writing process, when you write down any and everything you know about a topic before filling in gaps in knowledge with more research.

As a side-effect of the list-writing, I believe I was a more productive worker by handling and organizing my personal to-dos before getting started on work tasks. It was a lot less stressful knowing I had an organized game plan for calls to make and research to do on my lunch break and during personal time after work too.

There’s No Such Thing as “Hacking” Productivity

Like many other things in life, there isn’t an easy way out when it comes to working efficiently and successfully at your job every single day. There will be days when you crush your to-do list, and there will be days when you eat Pop-Tarts and get hit with a wicked case of writer’s block.

My biggest lesson from this experience was that all hacks aren’t created equal — it’s about figuring out how and when you work most productively, and optimizing your strategies from there.

My strategies could still use a little tweaking, and my next big experiment will be trying to change my disastrous sleep habits to kick the snooze button to the curb. But until then, I’ll be drinking smoothies, attempting to work out, and avoiding every tomato I come across.

Customers are more inclined to engage with or purchase from brands they feel the strongest connection with. This isn’t a new development. What is new is the definition of the term “engagement” itself, or more accurately, what defines a customer’s engagement.

For many customers today, an experience is inauthentic if it’s not interactive. Meaning, they have to be able to reach out and feel like they’re grabbing the thing you’re selling, which is a far cry from the days where leaving a comment on a blog post counted as a sufficient interaction.

71% of consumers think a brand that uses virtual reality is forward-thinking. And however you feel about the term “forward-thinking,” one thing is for sure: these brands stand out and gain consumer attention.

Despite what you might think about VR, it’s not a completely inaccessible marketing tactic. Creating a content marketing strategy for virtual reality isn’t that different from a normal content marketing strategy, but it requires an understanding of engagement through interactivity.

How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy for VR

Keep Your Existing Audience in Mind

How does your ideal customer consume your content already? Is it through a weekly webinar or Q&A? Or maybe a daily vlog from the CEO’s desk? Whatever content routine you’ve created, you can continue that strategy while incorporating VR technology.

For example, if your primary medium is Facebook video, you can start producing virtual reality content on Facebook Spaces Although Spaces is still in beta, it’s poised to become a Facebook standard in the not-so-distant future. There’s no better time than the present to start thinking of ways to make it benefit your brand.

Does your business have an app? One emerging trend for app-based businesses is to infuse virtual reality content for use with a Samsung or iPhone paired VR headset. Take mega-ticket marketplace Stubhub as an example. They’ve now added a 360 degree virtual reality view to every ticket purchase, allowing customers to see the view from their actual seats.

Screenshot via Recode

These virtual views have been available on Stubhub.com for a while now, but used to be standard (rather than 360 degree) images. Thanks to the incorporation of VR, the brand has enhanced their customer’s existing experience, and helped them better navigate to a purchase.

Just think of how many times you’ve decided against buying tickets because you weren’t sure about the view. Stubhub is effectively solving this problem by tweaking their existing content to enable VR capabilities.

Don’t Just Content, Create An Experience

The notion of a content marketing strategy combined with virtual reality might be misleading. After all, virtual reality is not about the content, it’s about the user experience. Thus, your content creation strategy should aim to be immersive for the consumer, giving them an in-depth view at your product offerings.

Store “Walk-Throughs”

Take the customers through your store, showing them your best inventory and product offerings first hand, like Shopify. The e-commerce giant is about to release their all-new thread studio, which is a VR app that will take consumers into a virtual studio to view t-shirt designs and other apparel.

Image via Shopify

Once they’ve mixed and matched colors and found the design that’s best for their project, they are sent to Shopify’s print-on-demand provider, Printful. From here, they can turn their virtual vision into a real-life, tangible product. As brick-and-mortar stores continue to shut their doors, they’ll be replaced by these virtual stores that allow consumers to walk through and browse without leaving the house.

Seek Long Distance Customers — Yes, Really

Not that you should only seek customers who live far away, but VR will make it easier to craft content to a more widely located buyer pool.

Just think about how VR will transform the home buying process. If you’re a realtor, you’ll be able to take potential buyers through a completely virtual tour of your property. People from around the world can see a home inside and out like they’re visiting in person.

Forbes writes about this in their article about VR in real estate, only they add another possibility to the mix. They posit that realtors would be able to allow their clients the ability to make custom changes to the home through the VR app, helping the user experience become more interactive, and giving clients a clearer vision of what it’d be like to live in the property.

Show Consumers What Products Will Look Like

Giving consumers a visual of what furniture and household items will look like is an important way to encourage them to purchase.

Home improvement giant Lowe’s has already added a VR element that mirrors the home customization idea. Called Holoroom, it takes customers through a model home to provide a look at what the space would look like with their products.

IKEA has been adopting a similar concept for years, in the form of an augmented reality product catalog. They also recently launched an augumented reality app called Ikea Place.

Image via: Architectural Digest

For the record, augmented reality is very similar to virtual reality, only the former layers artificial elements on top of a realistic background whereas the latter generates an entirely artificial environment.

Provide an Emotional Journey

Honor Everywhere provides a virtual reality experience to terminally ill military veterans, allowing them to “visit” the war memorials in Washington D.C. Volunteers are bringing VR headsets into assisted-living centers to give to the veterans and let them enjoy the experience.

Image via WTOP.com

Although there’s nothing quite as unique as this cause, you can still find ways to take customers on an emotional journey through your own VR content.

“Emotional” doesn’t have to mean sadness: think in terms of what your audience is most passionate about and produce content that addresses those areas.

For example, if you’re writing a travel blog that doubles as an affiliate site, your goal is to truly sell the one-of-a-kind experience a customer will feel by purchasing your vacation package. Through the immersiveness of virtual reality, you can take effectively transport them to the beaches of Rio de Janiero, or atop the Eye of London in a millisecond of time.

You can even take a page out of the always adventurous MythBusters’ playbook, and give consumers a first person tour of a wrecked ship that rests in shark-infested waters.

There’s nothing like a swim among sharks to rouse people’s’ emotions.

Embrace Your Location

If the goal is to immerse your virtual audience into a new space, then it only makes sense to show them a fun location.

Offer them a virtual tour around your city, show them a famous landmark, take them to a special event. It’s mid-July at the time of this writing, so a San Diego company might want to show their audience around Comic Con — just an example.

Use Outside Content

Perhaps the most underrated — or under talked about — aspect to content marketing is the cultivation of a community of users, many of whom can contribute their own content.

Thanks to tools like Facebook Spaces, Periscope, and now YouTube, your brand can easily integrate user-produced VR videos onto your website.

Reach out to consumers through channels like social media, email marketing campaigns, and calls-to-action on your website.

What to Do as a Content Creator?

Should you overhaul your entire content strategy to make room for virtual reality? For most of us, the answer is no.

But 2017 is the year we should at least start acknowledging its existence, and begin experimenting with it. Content creators should A/B test with and without virtual reality technology, then gauge the user’s response.

Rather than dedicating your entire site to VR, start with individual posts or pages, then begin building as you see fit.

The last time I made an appearance here on the HubSpot Marketing Blog, I wasn’t shy about my love of experiments.

At the same time, I wasn’t shy in my sense that, all too often, they’re conducted for the wrong reasons. We talked about how the purpose of online experiments is to answer questions about how people use your website.

But how do you know which questions to ask? And how do you know whether experiments are even a viable option to answer your questions in the first place? Before you jump in, you need to make sure you know these things.

Not sure where and when you should start? Fear not — we’re here to help. Let’s get to it.

How to Tell If You Can Run Experiments

Before you come up with experiments to run, you need to make sure you can accurately run them. Experiments should be completely off the table until you have an established online presence and means to track behavior. To do that, you’ll need five things.

1) Traffic

In order to trust that the results of an experiment are unlikely to be influenced by randomness, you need to have a high volume of traffic. Some experiments require larger sample sizes than others — even hundreds of thousands, in some cases — but typically, you’ll need a minimum of 100 unique page views per day to reach statistical significance within a reasonable amount of time.

2) Goals

In an experiment, your hypothesis is the statement you’re working to prove. But what is it that you’re trying to improve as a result of this test? Those are your key performance indicators (KPIs) — the quantifiable measures of the experiment’s success. Without those, you have no North Star to guide the purpose of your experiment, or the objectives behind it.

3) Tracking

In order to measure and observe the performance and results of your experiment groups, you’ll need to establish which data you’ll be tracking and monitoring. In the digital realm, that might include factors like:

• Which pages are people visiting?
• Where did they come from?
• What are they doing once they arrive at those pages? Are they converting, bouncing, or taking another action?

4) Baseline Metrics

Even if you’re hoping to make improvements to your funnel, before you start an experiment, you should have an established, recorded funnel conversion rate (CVR). In other words, before you begin, you should be able to track:

Funnel visit -> retained customer

If you try to start an experiment without that information, you’ll have no benchmark to compare where you were prior to running it — and therefore, you won’t know if you’re any better or worse off as a result.

5) You’ve picked all of the low-hanging fruit.

Make sure you’ve fully built out and iterated on all of the basic requirements for your funnel to work or even operate correctly. For example, in the ecommerce sector, you might want to do something like optimize your online product catalogue. But you can’t do so until you’ve made sure every product is listed there, you have a complete online checkout system, and have a way for visitors to contact you for customer service.

We have a phrase for this step: “Don’t start hanging up pictures before you paint the walls.”

How Do I Know If I Have These Five Things?

If you find yourself asking that question, we recommend running an A/A test — an experiment where you go through all the motions of running and tracking an experiment, without actually changing anything. We do this in three steps:

1. Run the dummy test for five business days.
2. Take the test down.
3. Analyze the results.
• Do you have 500+ unique users enrolled in the experiment?
• Can you track both experiment groups full funnel?
• Is funnel CVR about equal for both experiment groups?

So, do you have those five things? Nice job — you’re already ahead of the curve. But experimentation still only makes sense when you can identify questions worth answering through quantitative research.

Identifying experiments

First things first, you need to pick a funnel that you want to optimize through experimentation. Once you have your funnel, identify the unanswered questions you have about how your audience moves between its stages. To identify unanswered questions, we need to take stock of what we already know.

Identifying who moves through your funnel, and why

Do you know exactly who’s entering the funnel and from where, with quantitative and qualitative data to back it up? How about why they’re entering the funnel, with the same supporting data? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, this is where you should start.

Next, if you look at your funnel, can you figure out why people aren’t converting between steps?

Source: Apolline Adiju

Identifying knowledge gaps for how people move through your funnel

Let’s look at the following conversion:

Basic visit > purchase

Our goal is to identify why people do not convert between steps in our funnel. To find out, we need to list reasons why we think people are not converting, and seek out data to back up our claims. We will know that we have listed the right reasons when we can account for more than 100% of unconverted users, with supporting data.

• Are people not purchasing because:
• They have unanswered questions about the product? (Let’s say this reason accounts for 5% of non-purchasing users.)
• They aren’t ready to make a purchase yet? 10% of non-purchasing users
• They don’t see how the product fits into their lives? 40% of non-purchasing users
• The product doesn’t align with what they are looking for? 5% of non-purchasing users
• There are better-priced alternatives? 10% of non-purchasing users
• There are alternatives with more or better features? 10% of non-purchasing users
• They lack confidence in the product or the company that sells it? 30% of non-purchasing users

Note: These percentages total >100% — each given user often has multiple reasons for deciding not to purchase.

If you find that you’re struggling to put together a list of reasons as to why people don’t convert, you’ll need to gather qualitative feedback from your customers.

Once you’ve put together a thorough list, take a step back and look for areas of opportunity. For example, on the list above, hone in on, “They don’t see how the product fits into their lives,” and ask, “Why?” Assuming we have product market fit, there must be something we don’t understand here. Otherwise, how can 40% of non-purchasing users be unable to see themselves using the product? It could become a fundamental question that we aim to answer through quantitative experimentation.

To boil it down: Experiments answer questions. To identify experiments, you need to identify gaps in your knowledge, and to do that, list what you do know — that will help you more easily identify what you don’t.

Next Steps

We hope that this post has provided you with the tools to identify when you should run experiments. In my next post, we’ll get into ways you can discover the unanswered questions about your funnel, and prioritize those questions to maximize your investment in a given experiment. Plus, we’ll provide a helpful framework for doing so.

How do you identify which experiments to run? Let us know your approach — and hey, we might even feature your experiment on our blog.

Mad Men fans everywhere remember the pivotal first scene where we learn just how talented Don Draper is at his job.

Faced with an almost-impossible copywriting task, he rose to the occasion to solve a huge problem for his client, Lucky Strike. In spite of research warning customers of the dangers of cigarettes, Draper delivered the iconic slogan — “It’s toasted” — to differentiate the brand from its competitors.

Now, we definitely aren’t advocating for smoking cigarettes (or many of Draper’s health choices). But fictional or not, you can’t deny the memorability and catchiness of that tagline.

It’s easy to recognize good copywriting when you see it, but there are actually several characteristics that really separate outstanding writing from the rest of the pack. Want to know them? Read on below to find out.

6 Good Copywriting Examples From Real Brands

1) It tilts your perspective.

Sometimes, all a message needs to break through is a slight shift in angle. We’ve grown so accustomed to blocking out marketing messages, we don’t even see them anymore. One of the most powerful things a copywriter can do is break down a reader’s guard with an unexpected approach. Every story has a myriad of angles — your job as a copywriter is to find the one that resonates.

The above ad from Sage Therapeutics pressing the importance of talking about postpartum depression works because instead of asking readers to care about something they don’t know, it puts them in the position of experiencing the struggle that mothers suffering do. Did they miss some readers who quickly passed by the ad thinking it was for adult pacifiers? Most definitely. But the ad resonated that much more thoroughly with those who read it.

The next time you sit down to write, try out this approach. Don’t take the topic head on. Instead, ask yourself why it matters. Each time you write down an answer, challenge yourself to push it further. Find the larger story happening behind your message.

2) It finds connections.

In 1996, Steve Jobs let the cat out of the bag. He was speaking with a journalist from Wired on the topic of creativity and explained:

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after awhile.”

Let’s say you have to write an ad for a new pair of sneakers. You could take the assignment head on. You could write about the elasticity of the shoe’s sole or the lightweight design. Indeed, many have. Or you could put all of that aside and instead draw the connection between the product and the experience it evokes.

Source: Pinterest

Two things are happening in this ad. First, the copy recognizes that for many, running isn’t about running at all — it’s about solitude, peace, and restoring sanity to an otherwise hectic life. Second, not only does Nike connect the ad to the experience of running, it actually connects to the sound that those shoes make as they hit the pavement.

This ad is about the complexity of one’s life fading away and being replaced by simplicity and clarity. As the copy progresses, the sentences simplify and the copy’s complexity is slowly replaced by the simple and rhythmic pounding of words: run, run, run, run. The same rhythm one hears when all but their footsteps have faded away. That’s connection.

3) It has a stunning lead.

The following are all headlines or leading sentences from Urban Daddy, an email-based magazine drawing attention to new products, experiences, and eateries.

• “Six days. That’s how long you have until 65% of your body is turkey.”
• “There are 8,760 hours in a year. And just one hour in which a stand will be dispensing gratis latkes with homemade applesauce and sour cream in Harvard Square. Yeah, it’s not fair. But 60 minutes is 60 minutes.”
• “Ewoks. Talk about living.”

What’s common among each of these leads? They make us want to read the next line. I mean, seriously, how much do you want to know where that Ewok thing is headed?

There’s an adage in copywriting that’s loosely credited to copywriter and business owner Joe Sugarman, which roughly states that the purpose of the headline is to get you to read the first line. The purpose of the first line is to get you to read the second line, and so on. In short, if your first line doesn’t enthrall your readers, all is lost.

4) It is born out of listening.

Seeing its plans to launch yet another gym in the greater Boston region, an outsider might have called the Harrington family a wee bit crazy. The market was already flush with gyms, including a new breed of luxury ones that seemed to be in an arms war for the flashiest perks. Gyms across the region were offering massage services, smoothie bars, and fleets of personal trainers. And GymIt wouldn’t have any of that.

What did GymIt have? An understanding of its core audience. Before launching its new gym, the brand did a ton of listening to its primary market of gym-goers. For many in GymIt’s target market, the added benefits associated with luxury gyms were nice to have, but came with a lot of baggage — namely expensive rates and overly complex contracts.

GymIt decided to simplify the gym-going experience for people who predominately cared about getting in and working out. The copy in its launch campaign and across its marketing materials reflects that understanding.

In an older blog post, Copyblogger‘s Robert Bruce put this nicely. “Humble yourself and truly serve your audience, listen to their needs and desires, listen to the language they use,” he said. “If you listen carefully, your audience can eventually give you everything you need, including much of your copy. Get out of their way.”

5) It avoids jargon and hyperbole.

Groundbreaking. Revolutionary. Business Solutions. Targetable Scale. Ideation. Evidence-based approaches. Industry wide best practices.

Have I lost you yet?

When writers struggle to convey what is truly special about their company, product, or service, they sometimes fall back on jargon or hyperbole to underscore their point. The truth is, good copywriting doesn’t need dressing up. Good copywriting should speak to the reader in human terms.

This isn’t to say you should never celebrate awards or achievements. Just be direct in the way you explain that achievement. This homepage from Basecamp does a nice job of highlighting its popularity in concrete terms.

6) It cuts out excess.

Good writing gets to the point — and that means cutting out excessive phrases, and rewording your sentences to be more direct. In an ad celebrating its “academic” readership, The Economist playfully demonstrates this below.

How do you rid excess words from your writing? It’s half practice, half knowing where to cut. This article from Daily Writing Tips is one of the most effective summaries I’ve found on precise writing. Included in its tips:

• Reduce verb phrases: For instance, turn “The results are suggestive of the fact that” to “The results suggest.”
• Reduce wordy phrases to single words: You can change “in order to” into “to.” Another example: Turn “Due to the fact that” into “because.”
• Avoid vague nouns: Phrases formed around general nouns like “in the area of” or “on the topic of” clutter sentences.
• Read the full list of brevity tips here.

In general, if you can afford to cut without losing the meaning of a sentence, do so. Push yourself to strip down your word count. Turn 50-word homepage copy into 25, then push yourself again to make that 25-word sentence into 15 words. It’s not about brevity so much as it is about making sure every word counts in your writing.

Since my last point was about getting to the point, I’ll keep this brief: Words matter. Every time you sit down to write an ad, web page, video script, or other content for your company, you have the opportunity to break through to people. Find those opportunities in your marketing and make sure that you’ve made the most of them.

Advertisers got creative in August, experimenting with the increasingly popular six-second ad format, contributing to the buzz surrounding the solar eclipse, and building a mountain of sugar in Times Square.

Let’s take a look at some of the last great ads of summer 2017:

10 of the Best Ads from August

1) SafeAuto

Say hello to the world’s worst voice assistant: a stylish wooden box named Fârnhäan. In a brutally funny take down of our growing fascination with artificial intelligence, insurance company SafeAuto developed a vaguely German-accented AI device who always gets it wrong — very wrong.

In a series of 30-second spots, Fârnhäan flubs question after question, with hilarious results. “Fârnhäan, what’s in baklava?” one man asks. Fârnhäan responds: “Sugar, cabbage, pickles, and just a touch of toothpaste for color.” Who knew?

 

2) KIND

On August 22, healthy food manufacturer KIND dumped 45,000 pounds of sugar on Times Square to demonstrate how much sugar the average child consumes annually.

Accompanied by several child-shaped statues (made of a sugar look-alike material to avoid attracting swarms of bugs), the art installation was orchestrated by Magnetic Collaborative, a London-based marketing shop.

Photo credit: KIND 

3) Canon

If you follow virtually any media site in 2017, you’ve probably heard the news that millennials are collectively killing everything from diamonds, to fabric softener, to lunch. But if Canon has any say in the matter, this ruthless, avocado-hungry generation won’t do away with point-and-shoot cameras.

To convince twenty and thirty-somethings to put down their beloved iPhones and opt for a real camera instead, Grey NY set up a wacky Rube Goldberg Machine, manufacturing some perfect photo-ops that could only be captured on a Canon — naturally.

 

4) Volvo

To showcase the unique design of Volvo’s new fastback Arteon, German agency Grabarz & Partner enlisted the help of Pete Eckert — a blind photographer famous for his otherworldly “light-paintings.”

Eckert brought his signature long-exposure techniques to the project, producing a series of mirage-like images of the new Volvo model. “The new Arteon represents expressive, avant-garde design. Pete Eckert has presented this design in a unique way,” said Xavier Chardon, Volkswagen’s head of marketing, to Adweek. “The images he has created are genuine works of art and have a very special atmosphere that only he can create.”

 

5) JetBlue

There are now souvenirs for workaholics who never take a vacation, celebrating the very place they never, ever leave.

JetBlue worked with MullenLowe to produce a line of delightfully kitschy keepsakes to remind you of the vacation you need to take. The line of mugs, decorative plates, candles, and other trinkets usually reserved for tourist trap gift shops feature phrases like: “Paper jams are my jam,” and “Remember the free bagels?”

“If your last good memory is that time free bagels were left in the break room, we feel for you,” said Heather Berko, manager of advertising and content at JetBlue. “These Office Souvenirs are just our way of reminding everyone there are blue skies and fresh air waiting to provide much happier memories.”

Photo via: Adweek

6) Carlsberg

This Danish brewery’s founder died in 1887, but that didn’t stop him from hosting a TED Talk in Copenhagen in August — courtesy of FCB agency Happiness in Brussels.

J.C. Jacobsen, who founded Carlsberg back in 1847, showed up (via actor) to give a talk entitled, “Why You Should Answer Every Question With Probably.” The topic plays into Carlsberg’s longtime slogan: “Probably the best beer in the world,” but it ended up being a surprisingly insightful meditation on the value of uncertainty.

 

7) Hitotoki

This just might be the most beautiful clock ever created — and it only took 30,000 objects to make.

To celebrate the do-it-yourself spirit their brand embodies, Japanese stationary company Hitotoki teamed up with agency Dentsu to assemble a 24-hour clock with a hand-crafted set of hands for each minute of the day — 1,440 total. Against a backdrop of lovely Hitotoki paper (of course), the team mesmerizingly assembles each arrangement using every object imaginable — cupcakes, confetti, even a miniature spaceship.

You can watch a real-time version of the Hitotoki clock on their website.

 

8) Chiquita

Is there anything bolder than slapping a logo on the solar eclipse?

Chiquita saw an opportunity that wouldn’t come along for another seven years, and they jumped on it (with help from Wieden + Kennedy). Who can blame them really? It really does look like a banana.

“It took an intense knowledge of celestial bodies and an unrelenting love for bananas, but we did it,” Chiquita wrote on their YouTube channel. “On August 21, Chiquita will move the moon in between the sun and the earth. For a fleeting moment before and after the totally overrated total solar eclipse, the sun will appear to be an enormous fiery banana. This phenomenon shall henceforth be known as the Chiquita banana sun. Please enjoy it.”

 

9) Air New Zealand

A flightless bird might not seem like the most natural spokesperson for an airline, but you’ll change your mind after meeting Air New Zealand’s latest pitchman — a tiny, adorable kiwi.

After getting some devastating news from a doctor (“You’ll never fly … because kiwis don’t have wings”), our fluffy little hero discovers that the convenient flight options from Air New Zealand still allow him to get around in the sky.

 

10) Zappos

In this series of quick, clever spots for online retailer Zappos, the creative team at barrettSF had a little fun with the phrase, “Save the drama for your mama.”

Each ad plays off an alternative version of the saying, e.g.: “Save the drama for your daughter’s diorama.”

What were you favorite ads this month? Talk to us on Twitter.

 

Did you know that 50% of Instagram users follow a business, and 60% actually use Instagram to learn about a product or service?

In fact, there are currently over 700 million Instagram users, and that number is expected to reach the one billion user milestone by the end of 2017. How’s that for a potential audience for your business?

Instagram is one of the fastest growing social networks out there — and with good reason! Businesses and individuals alike love connecting with each other through the image-dedicated platform by sharing inspiring images and videos with their communities.

For the marketers behind those brand Instagram feeds, it’s important to keep your audience engaged and loyal to your brand to really take advantage of the expanding network.  

Unfortunately, keeping your audience engaged is no easy feat. It requires constantly coming up with new ideas and creating a variety of content pieces to post every single day. 

At HubSpot, our social media team works on our Instagram content schedule well in advace, making sure to keep a stock of posts handy to schedule out everyday. If you’re a marketer wearing lots of different hats at your company, though, you may find it difficult to work far as far in advance.

But wouldn’t be great if you had your whole month of Instagram posts ready so you can have one less thing to worry about?

Not sure how? Don’t worry. We have a few tips to share.

How to Create 30 Instagram Posts in One Day

Creating a bulk of content for any channel requires a few hours of focused energy, some inspiration, and the right tools. 

Before we dig in, be sure set aside time to focus energy on your Instagram content. Start by blocking off time on your calendar to create all of your posts. Start with two hours. We promise: creating 30 posts at once will be easier than you think. 

Once you’ve found your focus, it’s time to look for inspiration.

1) Look to your favorite brands for inspiration. 

The best way to create variety is to get outside of your own bubble. Don’t just look around your office or at your past Instagram posts to draw inspiration for new posts.

Instead, start your creative process by looking at the brands you personally follow. Look at brands you admire (or even your friends) and look at what types of posts people tend to engage with. 

Getting inspiration from other people is one of the quickest ways to come up with new unique ideas. Or, if you want to even get out of the Instagram feed, check out Designspiration. It’s a great collection of designs to get your creative juices flowing. 

2) Start jotting down your ideas in one place.

As you look around Instagram and elsewhere for new content ideas, make a list of things you like and dislike. It can be anything — colors, quotes, images, types of posts, etc. 

Even if you don’t use some of your ideas right away, it’s important to keep a running list of the thoughts that flit through your mind when you’re getting inspiration. After all, you never know where that idea might eventually lead.

3) Use a mixture of phone pictures and created pictures using a tool like Spark Post.

While many Instagrammers spend tons of time each day taking new pictures on their phones, you aren’t limited to just posting photos that you actually go out and take. Instead, mix it up by having a stock of images you design alongisde those you take. 

Pro Tip: Not a great designer? No problem. Use a free design tool like Adobe Spark Post. With their free templates and easy-to-use interface, you can make beautifully designed images in no time. To get you started, we have 30 free exclusive Spark Post templates to offer you in our 30 day Instagram guide.

To get you started, we have 30 free exclusive Spark Post templates to offer you in our 30 day Instagram guide.

4) Use our 30 Day Instagram Guide and Free Instagram Templates to easily create 30 unique posts.

One easy way to come up with 30 unique Instagram posts is to focus on a new idea or aspect of Instagram each day. That’s why HubSpot teamed up with Adobe Spark and Iconosquare to create this full 30 Days of Instagram guide.

Each day is focused on a different aspect of Instagram marketing. From different content creation ideas to promotional tactics to reporting and analysis, the guide is jam packed with ideas and examples from the best of the best. 

The guide also includes 30 exclusive Adobe Spark templates for you to use to help you create your 30 days worth of Instagram posts. Check it out and get cranking!

5) Use a scheduling software like Iconosquare to schedule your content for the next 30 days. 

Once you’ve successfully created 30 (or more) Instagram posts for the month, don’t forget to get scheduling! Use a software like Iconosquare to schedule out a whole month’s worth of Instagram posts, then let yourself relax!