We’ll explain what codecs are, why you need them, and how they make streaming high quality content possible.

What is a codec?

A codec is a term used to describe a computer program that can encode and decode data. Their main purpose is to compress data, particularly media. Without them, audio and video files would be too large to transfer over the internet.

A combination of “encoder” and “decoder,” a codec is used to encode data into a format that can be stored or transmitted and viewed later with its corresponding decoder. Essentially you won’t be able to play audio or video files unless they are paired with their corresponding decoder.

What is a video codec?

A video codec compresses and decompresses digital video files. The software takes large video files and compresses them so they take up less space on your computer or device. A popular video codec is MPEG, which was established by the Moving Picture Experts Group. The MPEG suite of codecs is a popular choice due to its high quality video display with relatively low data rates.

Other Common Types of Codecs

1. MP3

Most of us are familiar with MP3s. This popular audio codec changed the music industry, allowing people to listen to and share music online, store it on their phones, and computers. 

2. WAV

Created by IBM and Microsoft, Waveform (WAV) is an uncompressed audio format. Unlike MP3s it’s not meant for sharing audio files online since it takes up too much space. Instead WAV is best used in areas that need higher quality audio like radio, television, and editing music.

3. HEVC

High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) is a popular compressed video format. In fact, many phones and smart TVs already have built-in hardware to support HEVC playback. Since it doesn’t require much bandwidth, HEVC has become the go-to format for streaming. The H.264 codec is used by Vimeo and YouTube.

Lossy vs. Lossless Compression

An important distinction between codecs is whether they use lossless or lossy compression. With lossy compression, some of the visual data is left out in order to reduce the size of the video or audio data. This loss is typically minor and worth the tradeoff for the smaller size.

Media files using lossy compression are very common; an MP3 is a great example of lossy compression as they can be compressed at a number of different bitrates depending on your desired file size.

Lossless compression reduces file size by identifying redundant patterns in video or audio, which ensures no data is lost. Lossless files maintain the bit rate of the original data stream creating a large, high quality file. A WAV file is an example of a lossless audio file. Use lossless video when quality matters above all else, like a final copy of a video piece you’ve created for broadcast purposes.

Why do marketers need codecs?

Working with video is becoming a must-have skill rather than nice-to-have for marketers. While you won’t necessarily have to shoot the video content, you’ll most certainly need to share and store it.

When getting started with online video you might consider using an inexpensive camera, doing some minor edits, and posting the video on your blog or social media. As quality and production value have become more important, it is critical to understand codecs.

You’ll need to ensure you’re using the proper format to compress and share video marketing content. However, the amount of codec options can be overwhelming if you’re just getting familiar. Luckily there are codec packs, which come with a variety of codecs, that allow you to simply download the pack and go.

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• K-Lite: K-Lite comes in either Basic, Standard, Full, or Mega versions. This bundle is a good choice for newbies since the Basic tier covers most video and audio formats.
• Media Player: This pack supports most video and audio formats, plus offers installation options for both novices and those who need more advanced options. It supports standard definition up to 4K.
• Wonderfox HD Video Converter Factory Pro: While this isn’t a codec pack, it’s an excellent option for most of your audio and video needs. This tool can be used for video editing in addition to converting video formats.

Why Codecs Matter

While online video is fun to watch and an important part of your inbound marketing content strategy, it does require some technical knowledge to execute well. Codecs are involved in many stages of video production and distribution, working behind the scenes to provide a better visual experience for your audience.

This article was originallypublished in February 2011 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Would it be correct to assume a major part of your marketing strategy today is digital? Probably.

Consumers and businesses alike are almost always online and on the go – and you want to be able to reach them and observe their behavior where they spend their time.

But when you’re growing a business, this ever-changing digital landscape can quickly become an overwhelming one. With a number of other responsibilities and tasks that you need to do, how can you also efficiently create, fine-tune, and maintain an agile digital marketing strategy?

We’ve put together this guide about marketing strategies to help you improve your digital presence and grow better.

If you’re a small business and you’re unsure how to jumpstart your strategy, this digital marketing strategy template will help you get there. It includes actionable tips and templates to set you up for success.

Now back to this — are you confused about the difference between a marketing strategy and marketing tactics? We cover that below.

Marketing or not, there are three parts of any strategy:

1. A diagnosis of your challenge
2. A guiding policy for dealing with the challenge
3. A set of targeted actions that are necessary to accomplish the policy

Depending on the scale of your business, your marketing strategy may include several moving parts, each with different goals. With that said, working on your strategy can become daunting at times.

So, if you’re ever feeling overwhelmed about your marketing strategy, refer to these three steps to keep you focused on achieving your objectives.

Now, let’s look at digital marketing strategy.

A strong digital marketing strategy helps your business achieve specific digital goals through carefully selected mediums. Similar to marketing strategies versus marketing tactics, “digital marketing strategy” and “digital marketing campaign” are also often interchanged. So, how do they differ?

We cover that in the following sections.

What is a digital marketing campaign?

Digital marketing campaigns are the building blocks and actions within your digital marketing strategy that move you toward a specific end goal.

For instance, if the overarching goal of your digital marketing strategy is to generate more leads through social media, you might run a digital marketing campaign on Twitter. You may share some of your business’s best-performing gated content on Twitter to generate more leads through the channel.

1. Build your buyer personas.

For any marketing strategy – digital or not – you need to know who you’re marketing to. The best digital marketing strategies are built upon detailed buyer personas, and your first step is to create them.

Organize your audience segments and make your marketing stronger with templates to build your buyer personas.

Buyer personas represent your ideal customer(s) and can be created by researching, surveying, and interviewing your business’s target audience.

It’s important to note that this information should be based upon real data whenever possible, as making assumptions about your audience can cause your marketing strategy to move in the wrong direction.

To get a rounded picture of your persona, your research pool should include a mixture of customers, prospects, and people outside your contacts database who align with your target audience.

But what kind of information should you gather for your own buyer persona(s) to inform your digital marketing strategy?

That depends on your business — it’s likely to vary depending on whether you’re B2B or B2C, or whether you sell a high-cost or low-cost product.

Here are some starting points that you can fine-tune and tailor to your particular business.

Quantitative and Demographic Information

• Location: Use web analytics tools to easily identify what location your website traffic is coming from.
• Age: Depending on your business, this may or may not be relevant information. But if it is, it’s best to gather this data by identifying trends in your existing prospect and contact database.
• Income: It’s best to gather sensitive information like personal income through persona research interviews, as people might be unwilling to share these details via online forms.
• Job Title: This is something you can get a rough idea of from your existing customer base and is most relevant for B2B companies.

Qualitative and Psychographic Information

• Goals: Depending on what challenge your product or service solves, you may already have a good idea of the goals of your buyer persona. Cement your assumptions by speaking to real customers and internal sales and customer service reps.
• Challenges: Speak to customers, sales and customer service reps, and any other customer-facing employees to get an idea of the common challenges your audience members face.
• Hobbies/Interests: Ask customers and those who align with your target audience about their hobbies and interests. If you’re a fashion brand, for example, it’s helpful to know if large segments of your audience are also interested in fitness and well-being to inform future content and partnerships.
• Priorities: Talk to customers and target audience members to find out what’s most important to them in relation to your business. For example, if you’re a B2B software company, knowing your audience values customer support over a competitive price point is very valuable information.

By combining all of these details, you’ll be able to create buyer personas that are accurate and highly valuable for your business.

2. Identify your goals and the digital marketing tools you’ll need.

Your marketing goals should always be tied back to the fundamental goals of your business.

For example, if your business’s goal is to increase online revenue by 20%, your marketing team’s goal might be to generate 50% more leads via the website than the previous year to contribute to that success.

Use a high-level marketing plan template to outline your annual marketing strategy, identify top priorities, and more.

Download the Template

Whatever your overarching digital marketing goal is, you must be able to measure the success of your strategy along the way with the right digital marketing tools.

For instance, the Reporting Dashboard in HubSpot brings all of your marketing and sales data into one place, so you can quickly determine what works and what doesn’t to improve your strategy for the future.

3. Evaluate your existing digital channels and assets.

When reviewing your existing digital marketing channels and assets to determine what to incorporate in your strategy, it’s helpful to first consider the big picture — this will prevent you from feeling overwhelmed or confused.

Gather what you have, and categorize each vehicle or asset in a spreadsheet, so you have a clear picture of your existing owned, earned, and paid media.

Owned, Earned, Paid Media Framework

To do this effectively, use the owned, earned, and paid media framework to categorize the digital “vehicles,” assets, or channels you’re already using and decide what’s a good fit for your strategy.

Owned Media

This refers to the digital assets your brand or company owns — whether that’s your website, social media profiles, blog content, or imagery. Owned channels are what your business has complete control over.

This can also include some off-site content you own that isn’t hosted on your website (e.g. a blog you publish on Medium).

Earned Media

Earned media refers to the exposure you earn through word-of-mouth marketing. Whether that’s content you’ve distributed on other websites (e.g. guest posts), PR work you’ve been doing, or the customer experience you’ve delivered. Earned media is the recognition you receive as a result of these efforts.

You can earn media by getting press mentions and positive reviews as well as by people sharing your content via their networks (e.g. social media channels).

Paid Media

Paid media refers to any vehicle or channel you spend money on to catch the attention of your buyer personas.

This includes things like Google AdWords, paid social media posts, native advertising (e.g. sponsored posts on other websites), or any other medium through which you pay in exchange for increased visibility.

Since you have a better grasp of what this framework entails, let’s look at an example.

Say you have an owned piece of content on a landing page on your website that’s been created to help you generate leads. You know you want to incorporate different parts of the framework rather than just working with owned, earned, or paid media alone.

To amplify the number of leads the content generates, you make an effort to ensure it’s shareable so your audience can distribute it via their social media profiles. In return, this will increase traffic to your landing page. This is the earned media component.

To support your content’s success, you might post about the content on your Facebook page and pay to have it seen by more people in your target audience.

This is how the three parts of the framework are able to work together — although, it’s not necessary for success. For instance, if your owned and earned media are already both successful, you might not need to invest in paid. So, evaluate the best solution to help you meet your goal, and then incorporate the channels that work best for your business into your digital marketing strategy.

Now you know what’s already being used, you can start to think about what to keep and what to cut.

Keep track of your paid media efforts with this free Paid Media Template.

Download the Template

4. Audit and plan your owned media campaigns.

At the heart of digital marketing is owned media — and it almost always comes in the form of content. That’s because nearly every message your brand broadcasts can be classified as content, whether it’s an About Us site page, product descriptions, blog posts, ebooks, infographics, podcasts, or social media posts.

Content helps convert your website visitors into leads and customers while improving your brand’s online presence. And when this content is search engine optimized (SEO), it can boost your search and organic traffic.

Whatever your digital marketing strategy goal is, you’ll want to incorporate owned content. To start, decide what content will help you reach your goals.

If your goal is to generate 50% more leads via the website than last year, your About Us page is most likely not going to be included in your strategy, unless that page has somehow been a lead-generation machine in the past.

Here’s a brief process you can follow to work out what owned content you need to meet your digital marketing strategy goals.

Audit your existing content.

Make a list of your existing owned content, and rank each item according to what has previously performed best in relation to your current goals.

For example, if your goal is lead generation, rank your content according to which pieces generated the most leads over the last year (such as a blog post, ebook, or site page).

The idea here is to figure out what’s currently working, and what’s not so that you can set yourself up for success when planning future content.

Identify gaps in your existing content.

Based on your buyer personas, identify any gaps in the content you have.

For example, if you’re a math tutoring company and know through research that a major challenge for your personas is finding effective ways to study, create some.

By looking at your content audit, you might discover that ebooks hosted on a certain type of landing page convert really well (better than webinars, for example).

In the case of this math tutoring company, you might make the decision to add an ebook about “how to make studying more effective” to your content creation plans.

Create a content creation plan.

Based on your findings and the gaps you’ve identified, make a content creation plan outlining the content that’s necessary to help you hit your goals.

This should include:

• A title
• Format
• A goal
• Promotional channels
• Why you’re creating the content
• The priority level of the content

This can be a simple spreadsheet, and should also include budget information if you’re planning to outsource the content creation, or a time estimate if you’re producing it yourself.

5. Audit and plan your earned media campaigns.

Evaluating your previous earned media against your current goals can help you get an idea of where to focus your time. Look at where your traffic and leads are coming from (if that’s your goal) and rank each earned media source from most effective to least effective.

You can obtain this information using tools like the Sources reports in HubSpot’s Traffic Analytics tool.

You may find a particular article you contributed to the industry press drove a lot of qualified traffic to your website, which boosted conversions. Or, you may discover LinkedIn is where you see most people sharing content, which increases traffic.

The idea is to build a picture of what types of earned media will help you reach your goals (and what won’t) based on historical data. However, if there’s something new you want to experiment with, don’t rule it out just because it’s never been done before.

6. Audit and plan your paid media campaigns.

This process involves much of the same process: You need to evaluate your existing paid media across each platform (e.g. Google AdWords, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to figure out what’s most likely to help you meet your current goals.

If you’ve spent a lot of money on AdWords and haven’t seen the results you’d hoped for, maybe it’s time to refine your approach, or scrap it altogether and focus on another platform that seems to be yielding better results.

Use this free guide for more on how to leverage AdWords for your digital marketing strategy.

By the end of the process, you should have a clear idea of which paid media platforms you want to continue using, and which (if any) you’d like to remove from your strategy.

7. Bring your digital marketing campaign together.

You’ve done the planning and the research, and you now have a solid vision of the elements that will make up your digital marketing strategy.

To review, here’s what you should have solidified so far:

• Clear profile(s) of your buyer persona(s)
• One or more digital marketing-specific goals
• An inventory of your existing owned, earned, and paid media
• An audit of your existing owned, earned, and paid media
• An owned content creation plan or wish list

To provide a better understanding of what digital strategies entail, check out the following list of basic marketing strategies commonly utilized by teams across a range of industries.

Digital Marketing Strategies

1. Publish a blog.

Blogging is one of the primary ways you can market your business digitally. While a few dissenting voices claim that blogging is “a massive waste of your time,” it’s still a major play for businesses that want to attract customers who are genuinely interested in their products and services.

Why? Because well-written, well-researched blog posts often answer an urgent need for a potential customer. For instance, HubSpot sells marketing software, and our users are typically marketing professionals who create plans, campaigns, and editorial calendars for their employers. For that reason, the topics on our blog directly address these needs:

Don’t blog just because; blog with the intent to solve for the customer. To effectively do so, it’s important to understand your target audience and their pain points. That way, you can write highly targeted content that’s genuinely helpful for readers.

Recommended Reading

• Why Blog? The Benefits of Blogging for Business and Marketing
• How to Create a Successful Blog Strategy: A Step-by-Step Guide
• Blog SEO: How to Search Engine Optimize Your Blog Content
• Blogging Mistakes to Avoid According to HubSpot Bloggers

2. Advertise on specific platforms (e.g. Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or Instagram Ads).

An organic blogging strategy is only a portion of the story. It’s just as important to implement non-organic plays, such as paid advertising. Not only will this help you drive more brand awareness, it will also help you reach audiences who can’t find your business organically yet.

This is an important strategy to implement when you’re still growing your blog and not yet getting as much traffic as you want. There are a few types of advertising you should consider adding to your digital strategy:

• Social Media Advertising
• Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
• Google Ads
• Online Advertising

Nearly every platform has an option for you to advertise — either through a display network (such as Google’s) or through its built-in ad system (such as Instagram’s, Facebook’s, and LinkedIn’s self-serve advertising portal).

Here’s one example of an ad on LinkedIn:

The benefit of advertising is that it’s not dependent on a content or SEO strategy. You simply need to write a few lines of copy, decide on imagery, and launch your advertising campaigns. To ensure that your campaigns are a success, you’ll want to create an advertising plan that outlines who you’re targeting, which channels you’ll be using, and how much you plan to spend.

We recommend downloading the following template to create your plan.

Featured Resource: Advertising Plan Template

Download this Advertising Planning Kit

3. Offer free educational resources.

Your digital marketing efforts don’t stop when you get people to visit your website or click on your ads. You also need to offer them additional value in exchange for their email. While the gated content is free, users “pay” with their contact information. This practice is called lead generation, and it’s essential if you want the opportunity to nurture visitors into eventual customers.

To offer free resources, you would create a landing page that offers a single educational resource: an ebook, a guide, a template, or a kit. Think about what your customers need in their day-to-day to do their jobs successfully. Create a resource that will help them do just that. Here’s an example from HubSpot:

Follow landing page best practices to ensure the visitor is driven to download the resource for free. Limit the use of navigation menus, remove extraneous information, and remove buttons and links that lead out of the landing page. Their only option should be to download the educational content.

Recommended Reading

• Benefits of Educating Prospects With Free Content
• Best Landing Page Design Examples
• How to Create an Ebook From Start to Finish

4. Search engine optimize your digital content.

SEO is one of the most important plays you can make in your digital strategy. It will help you rank for keywords related to your products and get more eyes on your blog content, as well as your educational offers.

If your product pages aren’t earning traffic, SEO is your best bet to get those pages in front of those who are searching for those products and services. To ensure that your content engages and converts users, it’s important to invest in an on-page SEO strategy.

Not sure how to get started? Download our starter pack below.

Featured Resource: SEO Starter Pack Download Your Free SEO Pack

Recommended Reading

• The Ultimate Guide to SEO
• How to Create an SEO Strategy
• How to Do Keyword Research for SEO

5. Create an online giveaway and/ or contest.

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Giveaways and contests are another way to generate brand awareness online and boost your digital strategy. In exchange for a free product, you’ll get hundreds, if not thousands, of new followers and leads who can be nurtured to become customers.

This method is specially useful if you sell a consumer product or if you provide a service with physical deliverables. For instance, a beauty brand might choose to give away beauty products, while a photographer might choose to give away a free portrait session. Businesses that might not benefit from this strategy include B2B businesses or manufacturers — though you can certainly spin it to serve your needs, like including one free box of product for the first customers to sign up for your mailing list. That’s one potential example.

Recommended Reading

• How to Run a Social Media Contest That Gets Tons of Engagement
• How to Run an Instagram Contest
• How to Run a Facebook Giveaway

6. Organize a webinar.

If you don’t feel like a contest is a right fit for your business, then webinars are the next best choice — especially if you’re a B2B company. They’re essential for educating the public about your products and services, as well as giving interested leads an opportunity to hear about your offerings straight from a company representative. That way, they can ask questions and get answers in real time.

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Sell a complicated product? Then consider creating a dedicated webinar page on your website, where you list both upcoming and past webinars. Your customers will be able to access educational content that benefits them, and prospects will be able to learn more about your products in a more interactive format than a simple blog post or case study.

Recommended Reading

• How to Create an Amazing Webinar
• Best Practices for Webinars or Webcasts
• Webinar Promotion Tips to Guarantee Nobody Misses Your Next Webinar
• Best Live Webinar Software

7. Produce a podcast.

Audio marketing has been on the rise — all you have to do is look at the ways Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces have gone head-to-head to earn market share. While platforms such as Clubhouse are different from podcasting, the idea is the same: You get to educate and engage an audience while they’re on the go. All they need is a device that plays audio.

For inspiration, check out the HubSpot Podcast Network:

Podcasts can become an essential element in your digital strategy, allowing you to reach people on platforms other than search engines and social media channels. Plus, it’s a much more unplanned, natural medium — though of course you should plan each episode carefully and ensure you’re delivering content that actually serves your readership.

Featured Resource: How to Start a Podcast Download Your Free Guide

Recommended Reading

• Podcasting: What You Need + Steps To Get Started
• The Anatomy of a Perfect Podcast Episode, According to HubSpot’s Podcast Expert
• The Ultimate Guide to Podcast Audio, According to HubSpot’s Podcast Expert

8. Create an email marketing campaign.

Email marketing is one of the most important digital strategies you can implement today. It gives you plenty of opportunities to nurture customers who are highly interested in your products. After all, you wouldn’t be subscribed to a newsletter of a brand that doesn’t interest you, and a business isn’t supposed to email customers who haven’t signed up to its mailing list, anyway. Not unless it wants to risk diminishing email deliverability.

You can earn subscribers through your blog, through contests, and even through webinars. Any time someone gives you their email — and every time they give consent to receive communication from you — you have full permission to target them with an email marketing campaign.

Featured Resource: Email Marketing Planning TemplateDownload Your Free Template

Recommended Reading

• Benefits of Email Marketing Your Marketing Team Must Know
• The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing
• Examples of Brilliant Email Marketing Campaigns

Now it’s time to bring all of this together to form a cohesive marketing strategy document. Your strategy document should map out the series of actions you’re going to take to achieve your goals, based on your research up to this point.

Let’s discuss how our digital strategy template can help.

Digital Marketing Strategy Template

While a spreadsheet can be an efficient format for mapping your digital marketing strategy, that approach can quickly become messy and overwhelming.

To plan your strategy for the long-term – typically between six to 12 months out, you need a reliable digital marketing strategy document. But, where to start? With our free digital marketing plan template.

This template will walk you through your business summary and initiatives, help you build your target market and competitor information, and flesh out your marketing strategy — including your budget and specific channels and metrics.

Use this digital strategy template to build out your annual digital marketing strategy and tactics. By planning out these yearly plans, you can overlay when you and your team will be executing each action. For example:

• In January, you’ll start a blog that will be continually updated once a week, for the entire year.
• In March, you’ll launch a new ebook, accompanied by paid promotion.
• In July, you’ll prepare for your biggest business month — what do you hope to have observed at this point that will influence the content you produce to support it?
• In September, you’ll focus on earned media in the form of PR to drive additional traffic during the run-up.

This approach provides a structured timeline for your activity which will help communicate plans among colleagues.

Finally, here are some examples of digital marketing campaigns and their strategies to inspire you.

1. Béis: Paid Ad

Travel accessory brand, Béis, recently launched a social media campaign to announce feature updates to one of its products. And they did it in the best way: by showing instead of telling.

In a 34-second clip, the brand showed how their product performed before and how it performs now following some changes to the material.

This is a fantastic campaign as it not only highlights an improvement on a product but it also shows customers that the brand is constantly iterating and improving. Secondly, they make sure to include captions in the video to ensure that it’s accessible without sound.

2. Omsom: Social Media

Asian food brand Omsom leverages its TikTok profile to share behind-the-scenes content, recipes, and culturally relevant content.

In a recent video, the brand’s co-founder shared how it sources one of its key ingredients and how they chose the more difficult route to preserve the integrity of the food.

@weareomsom

here’s why we choose to make our lives harder as food founders! #business #sourcing

♬ original sound – Omsom

Here’s what Omsom did right: They highlighted their brand’s values while still building excitement around the product.

Sharing behind-the-scenes content is a great way to connect with your audience and share details that will simultaneously highlight your mission and/or values.

3. The General: Paid Advertising

After reports that consumers thought the brand was untrustworthy due to its low-budget ads, The General decided to revamp its entire marketing strategy.

In a commercial featuring basketball superstar, Shaq, the brand addressed the elephant in the room and introduced a new-and-improved look.

In addition, they also emphasize their credibility by mentioning how long they’ve been in business and how many people they’ve helped.

By addressing negative perceptions head-on, brands can not only change how consumers view them but also show that they are in tune with their target audience.

Grow Better With Marketing Strategies That Improve Your Digital Presence

Your strategy document will be very individual to your business, which is why it’s almost impossible for us to create a one-size-fits-all digital marketing strategy template.

Remember, the purpose of your strategy document is to map out the actions you’re going to take to achieve your goal over a period of time — as long as it communicates that, then you’ve nailed the basics of creating a digital strategy.

If you’re eager to build a truly effective strategy to help grow your business, check out our free collection of content marketing templates below.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

While brand-bashing is nothing new, the internet and social media platforms make the comments from these meanies even more lasting and impressionable.

And because some social networks like Yelp and Twitter make it easy for people to set up fake profiles, the anonymity that people can achieve on the internet makes some more comfortable with losing all sense of decency, respect, and good manners.

So what’s the best way to deal with the negative comments that crop up from time to time? Let’s find out.

Let’s discuss these strategies in detail.

1. Respond to the comment as soon as possible.

Don’t delay. Don’t let negative comments linger. The more time you let them go unanswered, the more time others have to see that someone has complained and you haven’t responded.

Instead, address negative comments as quickly as possible to prevent them from bubbling up into something potentially more damaging. A negative post on your Instagram post or a tweet at your company’s Twitter account, for example, is much less of an issue than a nasty blog post, which can have a much longer-lasting effect.

Responding quickly will show the naysayer you’re listening, and you care. It will also alert others of your dedication to your community members.

2. Be apologetic.

If someone is complaining about your products, services, or anything else, say you’re sorry. It doesn’t matter if their complaint is warranted or not; you’re better off taking the “customer is always right” approach.

It doesn’t make sense to get in a public cage match over just one complaint, and others will respect you for apologizing upfront. If the person you’re dealing with is complaining over something silly, others will realize that, too, and won’t think anything of it.

3. Discuss the problem privately.

React publicly first, then take it privately. For example, if someone is being particularly difficult, take your communication with them to a private channel.

First respond publicly, whether it’s via a tweet or a comment on their Facebook wall post, and then send them a private message so you can chat with them over email or the phone, explaining to them you’d like to discuss the matter in a way that offers them a more personal experience.

This way, you give them the attention they’re vying for without making your interaction public for all to see.

4. Appreciate their feedback.

Treat complaints as constructive criticism or feedback. Sometimes that’s all they are. People want to be heard, and they want to know they’ve been heard.

So after you’ve apologized for their unsatisfactory experience, let them know their feedback is appreciated and that you’ll seriously consider their suggestions for improvement.

Then actually follow through. Send their feedback to your product team or the appropriate person within your organization. By responding to negative feedback, you can turn angry customers into happy, loyal ambassadors.

5. Ask them how you can help, and help.

If the comment you’re dealing with is blatantly offensive and lacks context, tell the commenter you’re sorry they feel the way they do and ask them how you can help make the situation better.

Then, one of two things will happen: They’ll reply with something you can actionably deal with, or they’ll be so taken aback that you replied and have nothing more to say. Either way, you’ll have responded tactfully.

6. Don’t delete all negative comments.

There are some times when it’s fine to delete negative comments. For example, if they use offensive language or are commenting off-point, there’s no danger in deleting the comments.

However, if they have genuine complaints, deleting their comments is a huge mistake. Those with legitimate complaints can be incensed by your censoring, and remember, current and potential customers are also watching. If you delete their comments, it’ll look like you’re hiding something which isn’t good for your brand.

7. Pick your battles.

Some people make noise just for the sake of making noise. They’re attention-seekers, and they just want to stir up some controversy.

It’s important to decide what’s worth responding to. Does this person have a following? Are other people responding to what they’re saying? It’s essential to keep these people on your radar and monitor what they’re saying, but it might not always be worth engaging with them.

Here’s what each type means and tips on how to handle them.

1. Customer Complaints

These are the most common negative comments you’ll receive and the most important of the four. As the name indicates, these comments are from customers that have problems using your product or service.

How to respond to complaints:

You should respond swiftly to all customer complaints. Apologize for any inconvenience, verify the problem, and offer customers a solution.

2. Trolling

Trolls are the bane of social media, especially Facebook and Twitter. These people (or robots?) just want attention and cause problems for you. Their outrageous comments are oftentimes untrue and intend to get other people riled up. This, in turn, detracts from your social media posts and redirects attention onto themselves and their ridiculous comments. Unfortunately, they aren’t genuine customers with real complaints and are pretty annoying.

How to deal with trolls:

Engaging them might be your first reaction, but that’s exactly what they want. So, once trolling has been identified, ignore the comments altogether.

3. Malicious Comments

Comments that contain profanity and offensive language fall into this category. This goes a bit further than trolling – malicious comments are mean and insulting and may attack your brand or the character of your staff or leadership. The intent of malicious comments is to inflict emotional distress on your team.

How to deal with malicious comments:

Have clear rules of engagement and enforce these rules. For example, you can have a “no profanity” rule and enforce it by deleting any comments that contain them. Repeat offenders can be reported and blocked.

4. Threatening Comments

These comments harass or threaten your social media team, leadership, or staff. They may even target customers and other followers of your social media accounts. Threatening comments are typically violent in nature — physically, emotionally, or otherwise.

How to deal with threatening comments:

You may be tempted to respond to threatening comments by sharing your boundaries as a brand or even informing the commenter about the terms of use of the social media platform, but it’s best to refrain from engaging. Hide the comment if you can, then, screenshot the comment and report it to the social media platform, local authorities, and your legal team.

Snappy Responses Wins The Battle, But Kindness Wins The War

It may feel good in the moment to make a snarky comeback and put a troll or negative person in their place. But the majority of the time, it’s just not worth it to respond.

You can stay on top of negative comments on your social media pages by using the tips we’ve provided in this post. You can also create a social media crisis management plan to help you turn nasty comments into positive PR.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in July 2011 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Imagine you spend hours working on a cool graphic for a social media post. You finally get it just right and post it on social media. The next day, you log on and see that someone else has posted your image without your authorization and is purporting your work as their own.

Creating a watermark would help protect you against this common issue and help you with your brand recognition. In this article, you’ll learn about the type of watermarks that exist and how to create your own.

Typically, a watermark has its opacity set to 50% or less. If it’s too bold and opaque, it can distract viewers from noticing other details in the content. However, if it’s too transparent, it will easily be ignored.

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Bill Barbosa (@billbarbosaphotography)

The opacity will depend on the type of image you have and its purpose. For instance, photographers and videographers will go for a higher lower opacity because every detail of their image matters. They’re also more likely to place the watermark at the bottom of the corner of an image.

For a brand sharing content marketing tips, the watermark will likely be very opaque and placed prominently on the asset for easy recognition.

Types of Watermarks

There are two types of watermarks: visible and digital. They’re used for different purposes by different users.

A visible watermark is what most people think of when we use the term. It refers to a visible stamp, usually a logo, phrase, or pattern, that has been superimposed on an image. Content creators use this type most frequently to prevent theft and help their brand recognition.

A digital watermark, on the other hand, isn’t visible to the naked eye. Instead, the watermark is embedded into the data of the image. While this can also be used by content creators, it’s used more often by banking institutions and news organizations to authenticate media and identify its source.

Why are watermarks important?

Online, particularly on social media, content creators and brands don’t have many reliable resources to protect them against theft. Someone can easily take a screenshot or screenshot work from another user and post it as their own.

While most social media sites do offer reporting tools, there is still a lot of work to be done to protect users online against copyright infringement. One of the few social channels where repercussions are seemingly swift is YouTube, where the use of music and videos is closely moderated.

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As a result, a watermark can help you protect your work. It’s not foolproof but it does offer a layer of security.

Brand Recognition

On social media, content can take off at any time.

If you’re lucky enough to go viral, it’s likely that other pages will repost your content. You want to make sure your content has something identifiable to lead users back to your page.

Reaching a larger audience is also a great opportunity to get your brand out there and build your brand recognition.

Watermark Examples

Adobe

To prevent the illegal download of its creative assets, Adobe adds watermarks to every image a user previews.

Notice that they use two types of watermarks: One located across the entire image in gray with the words “Adobe Stock” and another on the bottom left corner in black.

This allows users to easily preview the image without using it before purchase.

Buzz Media Agency

This media agency uses watermarks in an Instagram post to share their work without the risk of another user stealing it without proper attribution.

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You’ll notice that their watermark is their logo, which makes it easy for users to find them if the image is shared on the platform or anywhere else.

In addition, it’s noticeable without taking the attention away from the other elements in the image.

PR Girl Manifesto

This brand uses a more modern approach to watermarking, one that many companies leverage when posting engaging, shareable content on social media.

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In this case, there are a few things that are different from your average watermark:

• The opacity is at 100%, making it very visible. However, it’s balanced by small font size.
• It’s not a logo or pattern, it’s the page’s Instagram handle instead.

When marketing content on social media, watermarking this way is always a good idea. It keeps your brand at the center and makes it easy for users to find your profile.

How to Create a Watermark

There are many ways to create a watermark. As such, the method you use will depend on the tools you have available and the type of asset you want to watermark.

The most popular tools to create a watermark are:

• Canva
• Photoshop
• Microsoft Word

Because Canva is the most accessible option, let’s cover how to make a watermark with this tool.

1. Visit Canva.com and create an account.

2. Select a template type or create a custom template.

   

3. Create your watermark and select your desired opacity.

   

4. Once you’re done creating your watermark, click “Share” on the top right corner. Then, select “Download.”

   

5. Check “transparent background” and download your watermark.

   
   Note: This feature is only available on Canva Pro. To complete this step for free, download the image then visit removebg.com to upload your image and remove the background for free.

6. Use your watermark on videos, images, and other content.

There you have it! Creating a watermark is a preventative measure that can help you both protect your creative assets and help you build brand recognition.

As a business leader, a big part of your responsibilities involves ensuring existing projects and initiatives within your organization are on track while creating space for smart new strategies.

But with a million and one other things fighting for your attention, it can sometimes be challenging to stay up to date.

Fortunately, there’s a tool to help you succeed: KPI dashboards.

KPI dashboards can help you check in with various aspects of your business and make sure everything’s running smoothly.

Let’s take a closer look at what KPI dashboards are and what they can do to help your marketing team succeed in 2022 and beyond.

Every department from sales to operations needs a dashboard, and dashboards are especially helpful for marketing. Between about a dozen online channels to consider (plus offline marketing efforts), numerous elements go into creating and sustaining a healthy marketing ecosystem.

A KPI dashboard helps marketers and business executives identify what’s going on with the elements of their marketing strategy that matter most, where to make changes if things start to go awry, and how to identify opportunities for new initiatives that can spur even greater success.

Getting your dashboard right takes time, but the pay-off is immense. Executives who successfully implement an effective dashboard can get better results and create a more rewarding, enjoyable work atmosphere in which the team has more room for creativity and experimentation.

The KPIs you choose should be related to your strategy and include a mix of forward-looking and backward-looking variables.

While it’s tempting to cram every metric you can think of into these reports, that’s a big mistake. When you’re confronted with a mountain of data, it’s nearly impossible to give the most critical numbers the level of scrutiny they deserve.

What should a KPI Dashboard include?

The best dashboards include only five to nine KPIs. These should, after all, be the key performance indicators behind your business playbook.

If you’re not sure which data points to focus on, think of it this way: what handful of things could totally tank your business if they went south?

Framing it that way can help you sort the vanity metrics, like the number of monthly social media impressions, from the things that matter, like cost-per-acquisition.

Benefits of a KPI Dashboard

KPI dashboards are great because they make it easy to track progress towards goals. Here are some other reasons why you might want to have one.

1. Detailed Overview

KPI dashboards offer viewers a detailed dive into the progress of an organization. Because they are highly visual, it’s possible to organize, analyze, and filter the most important metrics for any business.

Instead of wading through loads of complex data, KPI dashboards break data down in a simple, easy-to-understand form.

2. Better Decision Making

You need the ability to use accurate, up-to-date data if you want to make good business decisions — and KPI dashboards help you with that.

They show the vital operational data of an organization in one place, so KPIs are more visible. By eliminating data silos, this tool increases analytical efficiency and the ability to make the right data-driven decisions.

3. Real-time Analysis

KPI dashboards allow you to monitor the crucial performance metrics in real-time.

With this information available, decision-makers can make proactive moves and drive better business outcomes.

5 Best KPI Dashboard Software to Use

You’ll need a KPI dashboard software before creating a KPI dashboard. Here are 5 of the best around today.

1. Hubspot

Hubspot has a free KPI software you can use to quickly create visually appealing KPI dashboards that are easy to understand.

With Hubspot’s KPI dashboard software, you can also pull data from different departments to overview your organization’s performance. You’ll also not have to worry about data breaches as you can control who can access your dashboards.

2. Geckoboard

Geckoboard’s KPI dashboard software allows you to focus on the metrics that matter in your business. It’s easy to build and allows you to pull data from different sources like spreadsheets, databases, and even Zapier integrations.

3. Klipfolio

Klipfolio helps business owners visualize their data to understand how well they’re performing and make informed decisions about the future.

Kilpfolio also stores historical data so that business owners can compare performance over different time periods.

4. Databox

Like Geckoboard, Databox also pulls data from different sources to help teams monitor trends, collaborate better, and make more informed decisions that drive business growth.

Even if you have zero coding skills, you can quickly learn how to use Databox to create great KPI dashboards. Thanks to the over 70 integrations Databox has, you can also easily connect it to other platforms to collect more data.

5. Zoho

Zoho is another fantastic business intelligence (BI) and analytics platform you can use to create KPI dashboards.

The drag-and-drop dashboard builder makes the platform super intuitive even if you have no prior training. You can also access the report you create on Zoho from your phones and tablets, making it great for mobility.

Once you’ve chosen the software you want, here are some of the best tips and practices to help you create an excellent KPI dashboard.

1. Know your audience

Knowing your audience is essential to any marketing endeavor, and the same is true of creating a KPI dashboard.

Therefore, you must know who’ll work with the KPIs and the kind of information they’ll need to design the KPI dashboard correctly. For example, you can’t expect the same dashboard you create for an executive audience to work for a sales team.

2. Keep it relatively simple

Whether you’re creating a dashboard for busy managers with only minutes to spare or for a team with time to spare to delve into details, your dashboard needs to provide critical information in a simple, easy-to-understand format.

3. Include only what is needed

The heart of any KPI dashboard is brevity and utility. Therefore, stick to including only the most critical and insightful KPIs needed for meeting business and organizational goals.

4. Draft your design

The design of the KPI dashboard will depend on the composition, distribution, comparison, or relationship of the metrics.

For example, a dashboard for analyzing trends will comprise column or line charts. On the other hand, a dashboard for data composition will give the best benefits if you make it with maps or stacked charts.

Here are a few KPI dashboards examples. Notice that they’ve honed in on only the most critical metrics and display the information in clear, concise, easy-to-digest visual formats.

1. Subscription Model Dashboard

Subscription-based businesses are cropping up all over the place. From razors to clothes to meal prep kits, just about anything you could want or need in your daily life can be delivered to your doorstep regularly.

The subscription model is great because it guarantees businesses recurring revenue — a subscriber locks into your service for a set period, meaning regular monthly income for the term of service.

In this example, the leadership team has chosen to focus on metrics that give them a sense of how much monthly and yearly revenue they expect to make and their churn rate.

With this dashboard, the leadership team can quickly identify any potential issues from that handful of data points before those issues become mission-critical.

For example, let’s say the leadership team notices a steady rise in the churn rate, which isn’t ideal.

From there, they could start digging deeper, asking questions about what changes they could make to entice more of their existing customers to renew their membership.

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2. Large Ticket Item Dashboard

This dashboard from DataPine is the kind that could be useful to a marketing team in just about any industry that has a high price point — and, therefore, a high customer acquisition cost. Their focus is on nine of the biggest metrics that give them insight into their strategy’s success.

Rather than focusing on granular numbers, like Twitter followers gained or the number of likes on each piece of content shared on Facebook, they’re measuring numbers linked directly to their budget and tie in with the sales team’s efforts.

Understanding acquisition numbers and cost-per-acquisition provides valuable insight far beyond the reach of the marketing department.

Issues with poor cost-per-acquisition can indicate a need to cut ad spend, but they might also be hinting at a need to change the pricing structure for your offerings. Or they might mean that the sales team needs to shorten lead time to increase the number of acquisitions per month.

No matter what is ultimately identified as the source of the problem, having a dashboard empowers all of your teams to have informed, collaborative discussions about challenges facing your business that are backed up by actual data and numbers.

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3. Deals Closed Dashboard

Epec Engineered Technologies uses HubSpot’s reporting features to create a sleek KPI dashboard with all the most critical information, including “Form to MQL” and “First Page Seen.”

This is an undeniably helpful KPI dashboard to see whether your marketing strategy aligns with your goals. The “First Page Seen” section shows you which pages your visitors initially interact with — if that page hasn’t been updated in a while, consider optimizing it for higher conversions.

Additionally, the “Marketing qualified lead” vs. “Sales qualified lead” categories, shown in chart-form under “RFQ to MQL,” will help you tailor your strategy and determine which leads convert at the highest percentage and what you might do to even out any disparities.

4. Marketing Leads Dashboard

This dashboard made by Geek Dashboard is a fantastic example of how your marketing team can use a KPI dashboard to measure your team’s performance, particularly through leads and conversions.

It’s clear and concise, focusing on the significant factors for marketing — leads, and percent of conversions compared to goal. Additionally, the visuals help your team stay focused on the most critical aspects of your strategy to ensure you’re on track to hit your monthly or yearly goals.

KPI Dashboard Excel Templates

If you’re ready to start creating your own KPI dashboard, the good news is that there are tons of resources out there to help you get it done.

1. HubSpot

HubSpot offers dashboard templates that integrate with Excel, Google Drive, and PowerPoint, so you can easily track those all-important metrics within the program that works best for you and your team.

2. Smartsheet

Smartsheet provides Excel templates for a variety of marketing dashboards.

So whether you’re looking for a broad template for tracking big KPIs to more specific templates for social media marketing, Smartsheet has you covered.

Best of all, the templates are free to download on their website.

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3. Eloquens

Eloquens offers a marketing dashboard template with metrics that they’ve broken down into seven major categories. These categories include sales effectiveness, customer metrics, and budget metrics, and each category has several KPIs that you can choose to track.

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You’ve Created a Dashboard, Now What?

Once you’ve gotten your first marketing dashboard up and running, the real fun begins! Start pulling the numbers regularly — weekly or monthly, depending on how quickly things move in your business. Then, review it regularly and start to look for patterns.

When a number crops up that surprises you, it’s time to examine the cause.

Having all of your marketing information displayed in this simple dashboard makes it easier to identify the source of the potential issue and get feedback from the most relevant parties about what could be behind the startling data point.

Once you think you’ve identified the source of the change, it’s time to do some experimenting. If you missed your goal, try a new approach. If your numbers exceeded expectations, tweak things to lean into whichever existing strategies are most responsible for the high numbers.

Make changes slowly so that you can see how every shift in approach influences your results. Additionally, keep tracking those KPIs regularly so that you can understand the effects of each new tactic.

No matter what, you want to keep returning to your dashboard. This document should become your North Star, guiding your shifts in strategy and providing you with the information you need to understand which strategies drive the best results.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

What do you do when you have a question or want to find something? Quickly.

If you’re like most, you open your laptop or unlock your phone, pull up a web browser, and head for the search bar. Once you say or type a few words and hit “enter,” you browse the results until you click on a page that looks promising. After the page loads, lo and behold: the answer you need.

The words you type into search engines play a role in how easily you find a blog or web page- and the same goes for the way people find your website. If you want people to find your website, you must understand what keywords are, why they matter, and best practices for how to find them. In this post, you will learn how to do so successfully and strengthen your content strategy on your own (search) terms.

Navigate to what you need to know first about keywords:

What are keywords?

Why are keywords important?

What are good keywords?

Considerations for Choosing a Keyword

How many keywords should I use?

How to Find Keywords the Right Way

How to Create Unique Content Through Niche Keywords

For instance, if you were to type “bikes” into a search engine, the results would show a variety of results that correlate with those keywords:

Here, the term “bikes” is an example of a short keyword; you can count on keyword lengths to fall into two categories:

1. Short keywords that contain one or two terms
2. Long-tail keywords that contain typically three or more terms

As a result, short keywords are generally on broad topics, while long-tail keywords are all about specificity. Take a look at what a long-tail version of “bikes” would look like if you search “mountain bikes for beginners”:

Therefore, understanding which type of keywords to use on your website or blog requires performing some investigation. As you begin your keyword research, you will start to discern the difference between picking a related keyword and writing for a user’s intent.

The 3 Common Types of Search Intent

Behind every keyword is the reason the user makes the search query in the first place. This is known as search intent which falls into 3 categories: informational, navigational, and transactional.

Take a look at your keyword and think about what the user is really asking by making their query:

• If they were to search, “what are nfts” they are feasibly looking for informational content that will explain this topic in detail.
• If they look up “nft marketplace” they are likely searching for navigational content to take them to NFT platforms.
• If they type “best nfts to buy now” they are probably trying to find transactional content that will help them complete a purchase decision.

By speaking to the “why” of the search query, you can tailor each content page to fully provide value to the user and deliver the best possible experience. But to fully grasp how to provide this value, you need to know the impact of keywords and why they matter to your website in the first place.

Now, while keywords are still useful tools for conceptualizing and planning your content strategy, their effectiveness is entirely rooted in context.

For instance, say you’ve written SEO blogs about the various aspects of software. If you have been fleshing out a topic cluster to demonstrate your content authority, Google will have the context it needs when ranking websites like yours.

The keywords you include on your pillar and cluster pages will guide you to produce content on a range of user interests. But with the paradox of choice, how do you choose a good keyword? Your decision will depend on the marketing channel you’re writing for and your short or long-term goals.

Let’s dive into how to define good keywords across SEO and PPC channels to put you in the best position to benefit from your content.

What are good keywords?

What qualifies as a good keyword in SEO is different from what makes for the right target in PPC. But how do SEO keywords differ from keywords for PPC on the SERP?

Understanding this difference takes learning how to use SEO and PPC keywords to your website’s advantage.

Using Keywords in SEO

A good SEO keyword strikes the ideal balance between keyword volume, competition, relevance, and intent based on your website’s authority. Therefore, adding keywords that encompass these factors, will allow you to rank and drive traffic long-term.

Plus, because SEO keywords are free- to rank for and when users click on your content- you can receive high value from the content you produce.

While the roster ranges both on and off the page, SEO content includes:

• Blogs
• Articles
• Website copy
• Metadata like title tags or meta descriptions

Unlike the other forms, the keywords in metadata aren’t ranking factors. But best practices are to include your targeted keyword in the title tag and description. Take a look at how metadata appears on the SERP with the title tags outlined in red and descriptions in blue below: What’s special about finding the right keywords, is that it allows you to write rich content around what people are interested in and satisfy Google’s E.A.T. principle — a major Google core update from 2019. Your keywords will be your guide to writing a piece that meets a search engine like Google’s expectations of:

• Expertise
• Authoritativeness
• Trustworthiness

So before you dive into finding keywords, start by thinking about the topics that matter to your website. What are some things your audience may be searching for that would lead them to you? Have some ideas in mind? Start there.

Using Keywords in PPC

On the other side of Search are PPC keywords. PPC keywords are terms you choose to rank for in order to increase brand visibility and foster website growth. You can bid on your keyword choices, and when you win your bids, you will rank at the top of the SERP like these businesses below:

So, you can use keywords to create PPC ads promoting your products or services through platforms like Google Ads and Microsoft Ads. Then, when users select your ad, you pay for every click you receive.

Now, there are two main types of PPC keywords:

• Branded keywords are words and phrases that include your brand’s name. Their purpose is to attract customers in your audience that are near a purchase decision.
• Non-branded keywords are words or phrases that do not include your brand name. They help you gain new customers who may be searching for what you offer but do not know it yet.

Essentially, pay-per-click advertising generates immediate traffic that can convert into leads or sales. Subsequently, these conversions deliver a faster return on investment for the money and time you put into your ads. You will use PPC keywords to tailor your content to the audiences you decide to target.

When it comes down to when to apply SEO versus PPC advertising, it depends on your business goals. Will your business benefit from the long-term impact of Organic Search or the short-term results of Paid Search? While you contemplate this, remember SEO content concentrates on providing value to the reader, while PPC content focuses on promoting your products or services.

Still, the tricky part is that the internet is a busy place — making it virtually impossible to be the only person writing about any given topic. So even if you create rich content with keywords and provide the context for search engines to understand it, how do you stand out from the crowd?

Well, this is where the following keyword considerations come into play.

Considerations for Choosing a Keyword

Monthly Search Volume

Monthly search volume (MSV) is the number of times people search for a particular keyword in a month. By considering the popularity of a keyword, you can tailor your content strategy and write about new content opportunities.

To find out how many people are searching for a particular keyword, you can use keyword research tools like the one below from Ahrefs. For instance, when you type in the word “insurance” the tool provides the following MSV estimate outlined in red:

Oftentimes, competitive keywords with higher difficulties are the ones in which everyone in an industry wants to rank. For example, broad keywords like “insurance,” “marketing,” or “technology” are all going to be highly competitive because they have a high volume of monthly searches. There is also a bevy of written content on these topics vying for a keyword ranking.

The market for these and similar broad search terms is completely saturated. So getting a foothold for a search term like “marketing” would be like constructing a generic coffee shop between a Starbucks and a Dunkin’ Donuts — you may get a bit of business if a customer notices you in your area, but they’re more likely going to go to one of the established businesses they know.

For your business to truly gain SEO ranking, it’s important to consider less competitive keywords. Focusing on less keyword competition lets you demonstrate what makes you different and reach the best audience for your business.

If we return to our coffee shop example, concentrating on less competitive keywords is like branding yourself as the only ‘specialty cat cafe’ in the city. In this situation, it’s easier to stand out because you’re focusing on what makes you unique to your target buyer persona.

After all, the person looking for a cat cafe to sit in and relax is probably not the same person wanting a quick cup of coffee on their way to work — just like someone searching for “technology” is not the same person searching for “small business technology setup service.”

Intent & Relevance

We’ve established that search intent is the “why” behind the terms users search, but did you know that search engines use this intent to rank content? This relationship is called keyword relevance: how closely related a keyword or phrase is to a piece of content.

For example, say you own a website about baking and you want to target the keyword “easy cake recipes” in your content. But instead of writing a thorough article on these recipes, you write more about the history of cake. Even though this article may be intriguing, it’s not relevant to your primary keyword— and you’re unlikely to rank for your target. So be sure to keep keyword intent and relevance top of mind as you research.

How many keywords should I use?

It’s a question that has withstood the tests of time (spent on digital marketing): what are the optimal number of keywords for SEO content?

Well, for a long time digital marketers organized their entire content calendar around specific keywords — and the number of times to include these keywords on the page. They’d work with their teams to brainstorm focus keywords relevant to their products or services using keyword research tools. Then analyze all the variations of that keyword most likely to be a source of website traffic.

Unfortunately, as time went on, publications began keyword stuffing; publishing irrelevant, poorly-written content with specific keywords just to drive traffic. Eventually, search engines — largely led by Google, and the constantly-changing Google search algorithm — became more advanced. Instead, a more contextual-based approach to digital content was favored over simply keyword count.So as the power of keywords continues to shift, so does the importance of how often you use them. Yet, deciding how many keywords you should use is

still worth the consideration because it is a matter of keyword density: the ratio of keywords on your page versus the overall word count of the piece.

Aside from using a formula to calculate this ratio, you can also conduct a competitive analysis to examine the keyword density for specific keywords your competitors target.

There’s no magic trick to how to get on the first page of Google when it comes to SEO. To rank well on search engines, you need to consistently create rich SEO content and think about how it fits together in the long term. You must also be clear about your content strategy and the keywords you use to guide it.

Leveraging keywords to build your content foundation enriches your content marketing strategy and teaches you how to get traffic to your website — now, we’re going to tell you how to find them.

1. Clearly define your target buyer persona.

Having a clear understanding of your ideal audience is the key to any marketing endeavor. With keyword research, you must understand what questions you can answer or problems you can solve for this target buyer persona. At this point, it’s okay to think in broad search terms regarding what those problems or questions are.

For instance, if you’re a PR agency, you need to find leads who are interested in hiring a third party to help them run a PR campaign. To do this, perhaps you begin by writing digital content that answers the question “How to run a successful PR campaign”.

A broader content topic is a good starting point for building a pillar page for your topic cluster.

2. Narrow your focus and investigate keyword competition.

Once you determine the overarching question or problem to address, it’s time to get more specific. Getting more specific allows you to cater your content to your target audience, and it helps you leverage less competitive keywords.

I like to narrow my focus keyword by using lsigraph.com. LSI, or latent semantic indexing, is a process of generating search query variations by determining how closely a given search term relates to other search terms. Think of latent semantic indexing tools as a way of brainstorming and generating a lot of keyword ideas quickly and easily.

From there, use keyword tools like Google’s Keyword Planner to analyze a competitive keyword. This analysis allows you to determine which keywords have the most potential for your business.

3. Collect data, analyze keyword research results, and repeat.

As you create content around specific keywords, keep in mind that a great content strategist doesn’t just throw content out randomly to see what sticks. Consider using a tool like Google Search Console to track how your website is performing for your keywords.

Google Search Console can also help you see whether your traffic is increasing from keywords you hadn’t planned on ranking for and this informs your future digital content strategy. Having this knowledge is crucial to further refining your keyword planning and identifying content gaps that have significant potential to bring you new customers.

How to Create Unique Content Through Niche Keywords

What’s great about leaning into less competitive keywords is that it will allow you to build your brand authority within a specific field through clearly defined niche content. Niche content is a specialized writing topic that engages a specific audience’s interests to make a viable impact in your industry’s content market.

If we reexamine our “marketing” example above, we see how difficult it is to make an impact by writing general content on “marketing” in such a saturated market. But what if your content targets a longer, more specific keyphrase like “marketing portfolio examples” and an audience of marketers trying to build or bolster their marketing portfolio?

As you can see, although the monthly search volume for this keyword is significantly lower, it would be easier for you to get a foothold in the market thanks to this phrase’s lower keyword difficulty. To become more authoritative in your space, you need to incorporate long-tail keywords into your content strategy.

Because these keywords have less SEO competition, it’s easier to establish yourself as a content authority on a given subject — which is invaluable in SEO.

Whether you’re just getting started with keyword planning or looking to amplify your current content efforts, keep your customer persona at the front of your mind, and don’t be afraid to recalibrate your content strategy as you collect more data. Great inbound marketing is about having the right content reach your ideal potential customers when they need it, and getting smart with your keyword approach is a fantastic way to do that.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

According to Microsoft’s 2022 Annual Work Trend Index Report, 53% of employees are considering transitioning to a hybrid work setup in the next year and hybrid work is up seven points from 2021.

So, what does it take to lead a hybrid team? We’ve got a few tips.

1. Set rules of engagement.

When everyone’s in the office, many rules and behaviors go unsaid. After all, everyone is in the same space, so it’s easier to pick up on cues. However, when everyone is scattered, it changes how you approach them.

Microsoft’s report found that following the pandemic, few companies (only 28%) have met with their teams to define their new normal since switching to a hybrid or remote model.

This can lead to confusion, unmet expectations, and high attrition rates. Setting a structure around communication and collaboration allows the team to work more efficiently as it promotes cohesion among all members, despite the physical distance.

2. Leverage asynchronous communication.

Speaking of distance, it can be nearly impossible to get everyone on a call at the same time depending on where your team is.

For instance, say you have some team members in California, others in New York, and some overseas in Kenya. Those are three time zones, meaning three different work schedules.

One way to keep your team connected is to leverage asynchronous tools.

For instance, you can utilize bots within your messaging system, whether it’s Slack, Teams, or another platform, to invite your team to share updates, check-ins, etc.

With Geekbot, the software can be programmed to ask your team specific questions, then share their answers.

So, if your team is unable to sync up for daily meetings, you can still get progress updates from everyone in a channel of your choosing.

3. Have a robust onboarding process.

Having a strong onboarding process is more important than ever.

Data from the Microsoft report shows that employees onboarded during the last two years are at greater risk for attrition, are less likely to feel included within their teams, and tend to have weaker relationships with their direct teams.

Since the pandemic, new hires are relying more on their managers for onboarding – and that’s a good thing for the company.

The study found that new hires whose managers played an active role in their onboarding process were 3.5 times more likely to be satisfied with their experience.

Here are some tips to optimize your onboarding process:

• Prepare training materials and create an onboarding guide.
• Launch an internal mentorship program to guide new hires within the first few months.
• Have a welcome chat to introduce the new hire to the team.
• Send your new hire a survey about their onboarding experience to assess gaps in the process.

4. Trust your team.

Trust is the number one component of a successful hybrid or remote team. Without it, neither party is able to successfully respond to their responsibilities.

In the office, you can always keep an eye on your team. Walking by their desk to check in on a project, peeking to see if they’re actively working. When your team is hybrid, you lose that level of visibility.

As such, you’re forced to trust your team. How do you build trust? Well, it’s a two-way street and it starts with you.

Firstly, be transparent. This encompasses everything from sharing feedback on performance to sharing resources to sharing team and company-wide updates.

Secondly, create a space where your team feels psychologically safe – safe to share ideas, be themselves, learn, and challenge the status quo.

Lastly, find out what matters to each person on your team. What do they value? What are their goals? How do they like to be celebrated? How do they learn best?

Trust also extends to their work. Even though 80% of employees say they are just as productive since going hybrid or remote, most leaders (54%) fear productivity has or will negatively impact their teams, according to the Microsoft report.

Avoid the temptation to micromanage your team. Instead, set the parameters for their tasks, check in with their progress, provide resources when needed, and offer feedback. This will empower your team to do their best work knowing that they have the full support and trust of their manager.

5. Prioritize team culture.

According to the 2022 Microsoft report, the top aspect of work employees views as important – other than money – is a positive culture.

Even though your team is hybrid, you still have to work hard to build its culture. If anything, it’s even more important since you don’t have the physical environment to rely on.

When you have a hybrid team, you have to be intentional about everything – particularly connecting on a non-work level.

43% of leaders surveyed in the Microsoft report say relationship-building is the number one challenge in remote and hybrid work.

After all, you can’t just invite your team to a happy hour at a local restaurant or have an impromptu group lunch.

What you want to avoid is an imbalance where some members feel disconnected from the team because of their distance, which is pretty common. In fact, 44% of hybrid employees surveyed said they do not feel included in meetings.

Here are a few ways to make sure your team feels connected:

• Host virtual events, such as escape rooms, magic shows, and cooking classes, that your team can enjoy as a group.
• Have regular “watercooler” meetings that allow your team to gather and talk about anything non-work related.
• Create non-work-related messaging channels based on your team’s interests, like cooking, TV shows, home renovation projects, pets, etc.
• Plan annual or quarterly meetups with your team, if your budget allows.

This is your opportunity to shape it into one that fosters inclusion, collaboration, and trust.

6. Invest in your team’s equipment.

When your team works in an office, there are certain things you don’t need to account for, such as Wi-Fi, computer, headset, desk, etc.

However, if you have some people from your team working from home, they will need to have access to the same equipment to succeed in their role.

There are also nice-to-have items that aren’t needed to complete the job but can make your team happier and more productive. Think headphones and ergonomic equipment.

Instead of seeing it as an additional expense, consider it an investment into your team that will pay off tenfold.

There you have it – whether your team is newly hybrid or has always been, there’s always room for improvement. With these tips, your team will work as seamlessly as you would in person.

Home to countless cookie recipes, laughable memes, and perfect last-minute gift ideas, there’s certainly already a lot to love about Pinterest. But what if we told you that it’s possible to make money on Pinterest?

The simple truth is this: Amidst the ab workouts and IKEA furniture hacks, there lies a huge opportunity for businesses to use Pinterest to drive revenue. And with 31% of online American adults using Pinterest, this isn’t an opportunity you’ll want to leave on the table.

Can you make money on Pinterest?

Whether you are a content creator, have an eCommerce business, or are trying to drive traffic to your blog, Pinterest can be a key tool for monetization.

If your target customers are on Pinterest, they’re likely ready to buy. According to demographic data from Pinterest, 45% of adults in the U.S. with a household income over $100K per year are active on the platform. Additionally, 83% of Pinterest users make purchases based on what they see on the platform.

If you aren’t monetizing through Pinterest, now is a great time to start. To help you get a handle on how to make Pinterest work better for your business, check out the tips below.

How to Make Money on Pinterest

1. Generate traffic to your eCommerce products.

Best for: eCommerce businesses.

If you sell products online, one of the simplest ways to drive more sales is to pin your product pages directly to Pinterest. Creating pins that are linked directly to your online shop can generate meaningful traffic when paired with the keywords your ideal customers are searching for.

Before you start sharing your products on Pinterest, make sure you’ve enabled Rich Pins, which sync the latest information from your website into any pins created from your site. Product Rich Pins are able to pull the most up-to-date price, inventory, and product description from your website so you don’t need to worry about manually updating existing pins.

Rich Pins are free to use and only require adding a bit of code to your website. New websites requesting Rich Pins are typically approved within 24 hours.

2. Create pins for your affiliate partnerships.

Best for: Users with strong relationships with their affiliate partners.

Affiliate marketing is a popular tactic for marketers and entrepreneurs looking to build passive income. As an affiliate, you can receive a commission anytime someone makes a purchase from your unique link to a product or service.

To leverage Pinterest for your affiliate marketing efforts, consider creating pins that link directly to your affiliate links or to blog posts or YouTube videos that incorporate your affiliate links. By sharing your affiliate links on Pinterest, they can be found by anyone searching for that particular product, earning you a commission if they make a purchase.

Here are a few best practices to keep in mind when using Pinterest to make affiliate sales:

• Disclose when affiliate links are present. Per FTC guidelines, clearly state when affiliate links are being shared within a piece of content.
• Only share direct links. Pinterest discourages the use of link shorteners or tools that disguise the final URL when sharing affiliate links.
• Optimize your pins for keywords related to affiliate products. The beauty of Pinterest is that it operates as a search engine. When your content features keywords users are searching for, the content is more likely to generate clicks and engagement which could lead to increased sales.

3. Send traffic to your blog.

Best for: Inbound marketers and bloggers.

Whether you rely on web traffic for advertising revenue, or as part of an inbound marketing approach, you can incorporate Pinterest into your traffic-building strategy to drive revenue. Ranking for keywords on Google can be a complex, time-consuming endeavor. However, ranking for keywords on Pinterest can be more straightforward, and can lead to meaningful traffic gains.

According to Pinterest, 85% of users turn to Pinterest to start a new project or learn something new. If you’re creating helpful content that aligns with the keywords your potential audience is searching for, you can potentially capture some of this search traffic through Pinterest.

Here are some tips to help you grow your web traffic through Pinterest:

• Use Pinterest Trends to discover which keywords are trending with Pinterest users.
• Create multiple pins for each blog post that have an optimized title, description, and image that align with the keywords users are searching for.
• Save your pins to boards that have optimized titles and descriptions incorporating the keywords users are searching for.
• Create article Rich Pins from your website to incorporate the blog post title, description, and author information in your pins.

4. Join the Pinterest Creator Fund.

Best for: Creators who want to grow and monetize their Pinterest account.

In 2021, Pinterest launched the Creator Fund to help creators grow and monetize their content on the platform. These cohorts open quarterly and participants have access to unique brand partnerships and tools and resources from the Pinterest team to help them grow their reach.

This year, Pinterest announced an expansion of the program’s fund to support a wider range of creators.

Image Source

5. Share shoppable pins for your products.

Best for: Online shops and eCommerce businesses.

If you sell products online, creating shoppable pins for your products can be an effective way to increase sales. According to Pinterest, engagement with shoppable pins increased by 20% in 2021. One way to drive conversion from Pinterest is to enable Product Pins on your account.

Product pins allow online merchants to list their products on Pinterest so customers can make a purchase without leaving the platform. To set up shoppable pins, start by applying to be a Verified Merchant on Pinterest.

Below, you can see an example of shoppable pins by the skincare brand, Summer Fridays.

6. Create sponsored content.

Best for: Content creators and influencers.

Pinterest can be a lucrative space for influencer marketing. Content creators can work with brands to create sponsored content specifically for Pinterest or can negotiate a higher rate for sharing their sponsored blog and social content from other platforms with their Pinterest audience as well.

7. Manage Pinterest accounts for other businesses.

Best for: Virtual assistants, social media managers, and administrative professionals.

If you have the skills to manage and grow a Pinterest account, consider lending your services to other businesses. Many busy entrepreneurs don’t have time to manage their own Pinterest accounts despite the benefits of remaining active on the platform.

In this role, you could develop a Pinterest strategy for your client’s primary business objectives (such as growing web traffic or increasing conversions of shoppable pins), do keyword research to determine what their audience is searching for, and create and upload pins to their account.

It helps to have demonstrated experience in this area. Try creating a portfolio outlining the results you’ve gotten from growing your own or other businesses’ Pinterest accounts to share with potential clients.

8. Use Pinterest Ads to reach new users.

Best for: People selling digital and physical products online.

If you have an online business, consider running ads on Pinterest to get your offerings in front of potential buyers. Pinterest ads look like regular pins but can be strategically placed where your audience is most likely to see them including on the home feed and in search results.

To start running ads on Pinterest, make sure you have a business account. After you have your business account created, visit the Ads Manager to create a campaign and ad group.

Lastly, you’ll have the option to create new pins or select the existing pins you want to promote. Here’s how the company Daily Harvest uses paid ads on Pinterest to reach new customers.

9. Showcase your products with video content.

Best for: eCommerce businesses.

Idea Pins are multi-page video posts that are quickly gaining popularity on Pinterest. Though Idea Pins can’t link directly to web pages like standard pins can, users can tag specific products featured in their Idea Pins to make them shoppable. Cosmetics company Fenty Beauty frequently features video tutorials on Pinterest to promote key products.

Users can tag products using affiliate links, and merchants can tag products from their own businesses to drive sales. By sharing Idea Pins that feature video clips of your products in action, you can help expose new buyers to the features of your products.

With over 400 million users who are looking for inspiration and are ready to buy, incorporating Pinterest into your business strategy is a great way to engage with your audience and drive potential revenue.

College graduation is just around the corner, which means it’s almost speech season. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good graduation speech and all the platitudes that come along with it, but very few of them give guidance on how to find a job after college. 

We want to help. At HubSpot, we’re lucky enough to interview and hire a lot of recent graduates, so I’ve rounded up some advice below based on interviews, applications, and feedback we hear from hiring managers, recruiters, and job candidates alike. And for free templates and tools you can use to put the advice below into practice download this post’s complementary guide here.

But before we dive into how to find a job after college, let’s first shed some light on why the job searching process is so difficult for college graduates. 

Why is it hard to find a job after college?

One of the leading factors that make finding a job after college difficult is fierce competition.

According to Statista, the percentage of the U.S. population that have a 4-year college degree has steadily increased since the 1940s. As of 2020, 38.3% of women and 36.7% of men have completed four years of college or more.

With college degrees becoming more and more common, graduates are finding it difficult to stand out to employers. The competition can be even more intense for college students who either did not complete an internship in their field studies while pursuing their education. 

With that said, here is some advice to make finding a job after college less daunting. 

12 Tips for Finding a Job After College

1. Narrow down your search.

I asked a recent college graduate how many applications he submitted to companies each week as part of his job search. His response was, “As many as I need to get my parents off my back.”

Unfortunately, sending out countless applications isn’t strategic and is typically unsuccessful because:

• It’s hard to stick out from the pack of other applicants when you’re trying to be all things to all people. 
• You can’t properly research and follow up with hundreds of job applications. 
• Juggling too many applications can increase the likelihood of spelling mistakes, misstating goals, or missing scheduled phone screens. 

Instead, I recommend doing enough homework to reasonably target 10-12 companies. This way you’ll have the time and energy to give each application the attention necessary to ensure they’re filled out properly. And you’ll be able to better hone in on the unique skills you’d bring to the job and really stand out to employers.  

2. Talk to 10 people about their jobs.

I recommend scheduling a 30-minute, well-organized and orchestrated phone interview with someone familiar with the company or its field.  

Ask a friend who graduated recently, a neighbor from your hometown, or check in with your career services office to ask for some input. If your immediate network isn’t a great resource, get to work on LinkedIn — identify individuals with job titles that interest you and ask if they would be open to a quick conversation.

Regardless of the field you choose, you are going to spend a lot of time at work, so it’s worth investing the time beforehand to understand what roles will actually be like after you secure the job.

3. Reach out to entry level employees.

You’ll want to focus on selecting people at or close to entry level jobs as they’ll give a much more realistic sense of what your day would be like and what skills you would need to succeed. This step can help you significantly refine your search and align your applications accordingly. 

While it may be tempting to reach out to senior leaders, it would be better to wait until after you have clear context on the types of roles you’re most interested in pursuing.

4. Ask Good Questions. 

Focus on asking questions about what their average day looks like:

• What do they work on?
• Are they mostly working alone at a computer or in meetings with other people?
• How (if at all) do they interact with their boss?
• What’s the culture at their organization like?
• What do they like about it and what do they wish they could change?
• What’s the most important skill to succeed in the job they have, and why?

These types of questions are specific and give you a real sense for what it’s like to actually do a given job.

5. Listen.

Active listening can be the single most effective tool in identifying the right company and role for your skill set.

Ask your professors and advisors if they know alumni working at companies where you could be a good fit. Ask your previous employers for feedback on what you’re best at and what you can do better. The answers to these questions should help inform your job search, but you need to actively listen to make their advice actionable.

Moreover, take good notes during these conversations. I’d recommend creating a Google doc with:

• The name of the person you’re talking with

• The company they work for

• Key takeaways from the call

• Next steps

After these conversations, make clear follow-ups and carve out time after every informational conversation to thank the person who gave you their time.

6. Identify three job tracks and create a playbook for each one.

After your phone calls and interviews help you identify a few roles that really interest you, visit the career site for a few of the companies in your preferred geography that offer the roles you’re seeking. Take note of the specific skills the position demands. 

Many applicants skip this step entirely, but it’s imperative to understand what the hiring managers are seeking and what experience is most relevant to the career paths you’re targeting.

Recognizing that the best hiring managers can screen for potential and skill, you need to craft a compelling narrative for why you are positioned to succeed in a role. Does that mean you need to check every single box? Absolutely not, but you do need a compelling story for why you are uniquely suited to the position.

Far too many people send the same resume for multiple positions that require very different skills and experiences. 

To avoid this, my recommendation is to fill in the blanks of this sentence before you start on a resume or cover letter: “I would be a great (_______________) because I have _________, ________, and _______ skills as evidenced by my work with ___________ and _____________.” 

This may seem elementary, but when you’re in the thick of a job search it’s easy to get lazy and ship the same materials to everyone. Creating a clear, concise summary of why you are positioned to succeed in a given role is a great foundation for the materials you’ll create next before applying.

7. Craft compelling application materials that tell your story.

Far too many people treat creating their resume, cover letter, and any other necessary application materials as a chore to be completed or a checklist to be generated. In reality, recruiters and hiring managers scan through hundreds if not thousands of resumes on a weekly basis, so make their lives easier by creating a truly compelling narrative on your interest in the role. 

Telling a great story doesn’t mean filling every square inch of space on a page. In fact, the best resumes and cover letters use spacing, italics, and bold text to make the materials more readily digestible and enjoyable to read for the hiring manager.

When it comes to crafting your narrative for applications, don’t underestimate the role of activities outside of work: You don’t need a formal internship or summer job to show that you’re interested in and capable of blogging, or a seasoned job in sales to show that you’re passionate about engaging people.

Did you blog for your college admissions office to help recruit incoming students? You should include that experience if you’re applying for a marketing, recruiting, or human resources position.

Did you use iMovie to create videos for your university’s theater program? Learn enough code to launch a website for your parents’ restaurant? If you’re applying for any role in technical support, design, or engineering, incorporate it.

Far too many people underestimate the role activities outside the classroom can play in demonstrating your potential and drive, so don’t overlook these experiences when you’re crafting your story.

8. Google yourself.

Most hiring managers will run a quick Google search before reaching out to you for a phone screen, so Google yourself before you start applying for jobs and ask yourself what story your online presence tells. If it doesn’t align with the narrative you’re using in your job applications, invest the time and energy to change it. 

Your online presence should reflect your personal and professional interests, and with the proliferation of free publishing forums (from LinkedIn to Medium to About.me), you have no excuse not to put them to work on your behalf in the job search process.

For example, let’s say you are interested in applying to Wistia, an online video hosting platform and one of our neighboring companies here in Boston. How could you convey a passion for video if you’re not an editor, producer, or director? 

You could share remarkable videos you see online as a consumer, or blog about how video marketing can influence the sales process. You can also incorporate your previous experience with video on your LinkedIn profile, or tweet articles covering recent brand video launches, among other things.

Be honest about what your current digital footprint says about your candidacy, and then invest some time and energy to change it from a liability to an asset before you start sending your resume out.

9. Apply thoughtfully.

Before you hit submit, triple-check everything for spelling, syntax, and grammar. Everyone knows someone with a particularly good eye for catching mistakes — pay them in lunch or coffee to help you do a final check of your materials before you ship them. Don’t let a spelling or grammatical mistake be the reason you don’t land a job. 

Also, be sure that you have the right details in the right applications. Create separate folders on your computer for each company so that you don’t proudly state how excited you are to work at Company X when your application is for Company Y.

Once you hit submit, you’re not done yet. I recommend creating a Google spreadsheet with tabs for each of the job types you’re applying for, along with the name of the company you applied to, the date you applied, a link to the job on the careers site (so you can reference it easily if asked down the line), as well as the name of the hiring manager or recruiter if available.

This quick exercise makes follow-up a breeze. If you haven’t heard back within a week, sending an email to your contact to politely check in and ask if there is anything you can do to support your candidacy is a great way to show interest without being overbearing. 

Logging everything (including return phone calls, informational screens, and rejection emails alike) in one document will also minimize embarrassing gaffes such as applying for multiple positions at the same company or missing a scheduled informational interview. Plus, having a centralized location means it’ll be much easier for you to react if something unexpected comes up, such as if a hiring manager calls you to discuss the role in depth.

10. Respect the process.

Treat every element of the entire candidate experience like a formal interview. A recruiter calling you to role-play what it’s like to work on our services team? That’s part of the job audition. The emails the hiring manager sends you with details on what to expect in the interview? Your response and timeliness are part of the interview process as well. 

If you’re taking a phone call from the company, find a quiet place to talk, answer the phone appropriately, and thank the hiring manager or recruiting coordinator for making the time to connect with you.

Part of respecting the process is really doing your homework. Here’s a checklist to consider when you’re doing your research:

• Can you describe, clearly and concisely, what the company does to make money and the problem they are solving in the market?
• Have you visited their leadership page to understand the backgrounds of people running the company and how the organization is organized?
• Did you check out interview questions along with recent candidate experience reviews on Glassdoor to check out what people are saying about the company so you can ask better questions when you meet with current employees?
• Can you reference any recent news the company announced on its company news page, investor relations site, or blog?
• Have you followed the company on one or more social media channels so you can see how the organization positions itself in the market?
• If you’re lucky enough to get an interview, have you checked out the LinkedIn profiles of everyone you’re meeting with so you know their role and tenure at the company?

It’s important to treat every interaction with the company and its hiring team with the highest degree of professionalism and consideration. Visiting a company’s website on the train en route to the interview does not constitute research. 

If you expect an organization to invest in you, invest two hours to properly understand its products, people, and value proposition so you can tailor your approach and responses accordingly.

11. Pass the receptionist test with flying colors.

No one wants to work with a jerk, and if you’re rude or dismissive of the person who greets you upon arrival for an interview, chances are you’re not the type of person I want to be in the trenches with on a daily basis. Plus, receptionists usually have the ear of top executives, so if you underestimate them, it could cost you.

Treat everyone you interact with at the company as though they are your interviewer. People don’t want to work with anyone who can’t make time for general pleasantries. 

In fact, when the co-founder of Warby Parker, Neil Blumenthal, appeared on The Growth Show, he said their entire organization screens heavily for empathy and humility in the hiring process. As Blumenthal correctly pointed out, you spend most of your waking life with coworkers, so hiring people who are jerks just creates “culture debt” — a huge price that your organization has to repay for years to come.

So be nice and gracious to everyone you meet: It will pay off for many years to come.

12. Know how to accept and negotiate an offer.

If you make it through the interview experience and are lucky enough to be offered a job, don’t botch your hard work at the one-yard line.

Instead, start off by thanking the company for the offer and asking clarifying questions to better understand the role you’re being offered, the team you’ll be joining, and the salary and benefits associated with the job. Typically, you’ll receive a call from a hiring manager or recruiter with this information, and then ask for the offer to be sent in writing. 

I generally recommend that people profusely thank their interviewer, then ask for a day to review the offer in detail and return with any questions you may have. Doing so ensures they know you are interested and gives you time to pour over the materials in depth to formulate good questions to ask of your potential employer.

For an entry-level position, you have to strike a balance between negotiating a fair deal and being a high-maintenance hire. I recommend formulating a list of your questions then reviewing the materials a second time to ensure that the answers aren’t contained in the information they sent for you. 

You want to ask questions that are thoughtful, insightful, and reflect what matters most to you. In other words, if your base salary is the most important factor in your job decision, invest most of your time on the phone asking clarifying questions — not on how much vacation time you will have.

There is no better time than the present to pursue the job and career track you love, but it’s not going to fall in your lap. Follow the guide above to narrow your search, target your prospects, and prepare yourself for the application and interview process. It’s an investment of time and energy well worth making — one that will pay dividends for your entire career. 

According to Hubspot Blog Research on content and media planning, 14% of media planners currently leverage non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Conversations surrounding NFTs and Web3 have risen in the past year and continue to pique marketers’ interest. In this article, we’ll cover what NFTs are, how brands are using it, and if it’s worth the investment.

So, how exactly do they work? Well, when an NFT is created, also known as “minted,” it can represent tangible items like art and clothing and non-tangibles like music, videos, and images.

For instance, Twitter’s founder, Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet for $2.9 million in 2021. Who determines the value of the item in question? The community. Unlike real-world or cryptocurrency, an NFT’s value is speculative.

What makes NFTs so popular is that they represent the decentralization of power from the few to the many. This is particularly valuable for creators who have historically relied on third-party platforms like Spotify, YouTube, and Instagram to share their content and gain from it.

NFTs put the power back in the hands of the community by letting them decide what’s popular and incentivizing them to support what they like.

They’re so popular in fact that Open Sea’s Alex Atallah, the cofounder of the largest NFT marketplace, recently shared on Twitter that there are more NFTs on the platform than there were internet pages in 2010.

1/ There are now more NFTs on OpenSea than there were websites on the internet in 2010.

Very soon, NFTs will outnumber websites, maybe even webpages. This growth has major implications for how we should index NFTs…

— Alex Atallah | OpenSea (@xanderatallah)
March 9, 2022

For context, the platform houses over 250 million searchable NFTs. In 2010, there were roughly 200 million websites.

Let’s see what this means from a marketing perspective.

How Brands Use NFTs for Marketing [+ Examples]

Lomit Patel, senior vice president of growth at Together Labs, recently shared on LinkedIn that he believes NFTs are doing today what social media did in 2010 – drastically improve their potential for brand awareness and audience reach.

NFTs are disrupting the current marketing landscape and prompting brands to find innovative ways to incentivize their audience to engage.

“We’re moving to a market-based society where everything is going to be ownable, priceable, traceable — everything — and NFTs is just a fancy way to do that and create the marketplace around it,” said HubSpot’s CMO Kipp Bodnar on an episode of the Marketing Against the Grain podcast.

Because it’s so new, it’s a way to build buzz around your brand.

Let’s look at one brand that’s already doing this: Norwegian Cruise Line.

To celebrate the launch of Norwegian Prima Class, a new class of vessels, the brand collaborated with an artist to create six NFT art pieces. Each piece has been put up for auction, with the first starting at $2,500 and the proceeds will be donated to Teach For America.

Image Source

In a press release, the brand shared that they chose to celebrate the launch using NFTs because it’s cutting-edge technology, which reflects how they approach their products and services.

By doing this, Norwegian leveraged the buzz surrounding NFTs (basically newsjacking) to create buzz surrounding its launch.

NFTs also allow brands to better incentivize their audience through exclusive content and shift the focus to community building.

In March 2022, beverage company Anheuser-Busch hosted an #NFTBeerFest event at its flagship brewery reserved for holders of specific NFTs from Budweiser, its child company.

Just kicked off #NFTBeerFest!

Are you here? Let us know below 👇 pic.twitter.com/Rxm3aaSOhN

— Bud Light (@budlight)
March 27, 2022

Those who bought either a Budweiser Heritage Can NFT or Royalty Collection NFT reportedly enjoyed free beer, tours, giveaways, and performances at the event.

Having access to exclusive content is exactly the sort of incentive that marketers can leverage. They already do so through gated, premium offers, this is just another version of it.

“In the future, really understanding incentives is going to be a marketer’s core skillset to acquire customers,” said HubSpot’s SVP of Marketing Kieran Flanagan on an episode of the Marketing Against the Grain podcast.

(Check out this roundup for a detailed list of how brands have leveraged NFTs.)

Cons of Using NFTs

The biggest drawback of minting and using NFTs is the environmental impact.

You may be thinking, “It’s a digital asset, how does that affect the environment?” Well, the creation of an NFT consumes a great deal of energy (electricity) – depending on how complex it is – and can emit devastating amounts of greenhouse gas emissions.

Some creators are finding more sustainably conscious and less energy-intensive ways of minting NFTs. However, there is still limited data to validate these efforts.

Another con of using NFTs is that there’s still so much we don’t know. Similar to cryptocurrency, it’s subject to a lot of volatility as it is not regulated by any particular entity.

In addition, they don’t hold specific value, leaving you at risk to lose your entire investment.

From a marketing perspective, many consumers are still confused and skeptical about it, making it difficult to entice them. This is usually what happens with any new technology – early adopters face the brunt of the impact while late adopters learn from their predecessors’ mistakes.

Are NFTs Worth Your Marketing Investment?

NFTs can be a difficult sell to brands because they’re risky. It’s unclear what the future holds and it’s a bit too early to judge their impact on a large scale.

What we do know is that many of those who do use it have seen a lot of success.

In fact, 39% of those who use NFTs say they have the best ROI of any channel in their media mix, according to HubSpot Blog Research.

For many marketers, it’s still an undiscovered territory, with 16% surveyed saying they plan to use NFTs for the first time in 2022.

“How you think about acquiring customers and the cost of doing that is greatly changed when you’re using different incentives through tokens to build your business,” said Flanagan.

He adds that through Web3 and NFTs, brands get more trackable incentives. So, whether this holds value will depend on the brand and goals.

However, one thing is for sure: It’s definitely worth keeping an eye on.