The times they are a changing. Not a week goes past without someone I meet telling me they are evolving their agency structure or services in some way to be ‘future ready’, yet if I ask them – “How are you changing your new business process to be stay competitive in an increasingly oversaturated and challenged marketplace?” – they often draw a blank face.

It is one of the greatest ironies of our industry that we are appalling at marketing our own businesses. Much of how we approach the finding and winning of clients is still built on ideas that emerged in the ‘Mad Men Era’, or even worse, tactics that create a feeling for clients not dissimilar to receiving those unwanted “have you claimed your PPI?” calls. 

For those agencies who aren’t part of a network, don’t have a famous CEO, can’t get coverage in trade publications or work through intermediaries, the road to growth is often long, winding and ineffective.  

For many agency owners, their approach to new business often looks something like as follows:

They decide to start an agency. 

First they pull out all their contacts from a previous life and try and get lunches with people they know. More often than not this does throw up some work, because people like to buy from people they trust. Maybe they pick up quite a bit of work and for 3 years things feel good. 

Then a niggling feeling starts to sink in. 

All their work is from referrals and they’re over reliant on one client. They’ve never really had to clearly articulate what they do and define the value they deliver for clients, so they don’t really know what that value is? They want to grow, they know they’re good, but they don’t know how to proactively approach clients in an effective way and they aren’t really clear on what makes them different and better to the competition. 

At this stage they maybe decide to bring in new business-person or outsource their prospecting activity to a new business agency. Sometimes they get meetings, but they always feel like they are ‘begging for biscuits’ because they’ve reached out to them rather than a client picking up the phone to them and saying they want to meet (the preferred scenario and result of effective marketing).

Sometimes those meetings turn into work, but more often than not they don’t and the effort that goes into creating endless creds decks and attending meetings takes a lot of time and effort for not much return. After a while they look at how much they’re paying their new business resource, compare it to what they’ve delivered in cold hard cash and realise this is a bad investment.

At this point their business is five years old and they’re at a crossroads. They wonder, “Should I make the cold calls myself? Should I go back to my Linkedin account and see if there is anyone I haven’t tapped up for a lunch yet?” They’re disheartened and they’re not really sure what works when it comes to winning new business. They decide to bring in another director like who has his own contacts.

And so it begins again.

For the last six years I’ve been telling anyone who will listen that winning new business is an art, not a numbers game. I learnt this lesson first hand working at agency brands that focused all their efforts on owning a specific place in their target customer’s mind, relative to the competition. Rather than calling clients and asking for work, these agencies took a strategic and creative approach to growing their agency built around a unique and compelling proposition. They sell the outcome of what they did, not the output.

Realising that few agencies treated new business this way, I set up a series of events alongside another frustrated business developer Sarah Bradley. The purpose of these events was to educate new business people, agency management and founders/owners on better, more effective ways to grow. To date we’ve had everyone from Neil Christie, MD of Wieden + Kennedy sharing the story of how Wieden + Kennedy built an agency brand, to Tim Williams at Ignition Consulting Group running a masterclass on how to sell value, not time.  

This year we have launched an agency breakfast talk series in London that focuses on modern ways to grow an agency. Sponsored by HubSpot, this is a very practical ‘how to’ series that will provide introductory sessions on subjects like how to win new business with social media, inbound marketing and digital marketing. We’ll also cover topics that will be of interest to more senior agency management including how people innovation is the secret to agency growth and a session on IP covering how to make the most of what you own. Tickets are available here.

A lot of words have been added to the dictionary over the past few decades thanks to social media, but few have become so widely used and accepted as “hashtag.”

For a long time, the hashtag symbol (#) was known simply as the “pound” symbol. Now, I could swear that the only time I hear it referred to as a pound symbol is when I enter my PIN number to pay my cell phone bill.

While hashtags were originally made famous by Twitter, they’re now used on many major social networks, including Facebook and Instagram. Let’s explore what a hashtag is, why they’re so great, and how they work on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

What Does ‘Hashtag’ Mean?

A hashtag is simply a keyword phrase, spelled out without spaces, with a pound sign (#) in front of it. For example, #InboundHour and #ChocolateLovers are both hashtags.

You can put these hashtags anywhere in your social media posts: in the beginning, at the end, or anywhere in between. (Read this blog post for more instructions on using hashtags.)

These hashtags tie public conversations from all different users into a single stream, which you can find by searching for a hashtag, clicking on one, or using a third-party monitoring tool like HubSpot’s Social Inbox. Note that, in order for a post with a hashtag to appear in anyone’s search, the post must be public.

What Makes Hashtags So Great?

Back in 2007 when hashtags were a brand new concept, Google’s Chris Messina realized the value of hashtags right away. He wrote that the “channel” concept of hashtags satisfies many of the things group discussions do, but without inheriting the “unnecessary management cruft” that most group systems suffer from.

In addition, Messina wrote that they’re easily accessible with the syntax on Twitter (and now on other social media networks), easy to learn, flexible, and works with current user behavior instead of forcing anyone to learn anything radically new. It also works consistently on cell phones — whereas, for example, the star key doesn’t.

A decade later, the hashtag continues to thrive. When used properly, hashtags are a great way for individuals and brands to make their social posts more visible and increase engagement. They can give people useful context and cues for recall, aggregate posts and images together, and update a group of like-minded individuals on certain a topic in real time.

Hashtags are often used to unite conversations around things like …

• Events or conferences, like #INBOUND17 or #Rio2016
• Disasters or emergencies, like #Aleppo or #PrayForNice
• Holidays or celebrations, like #WorldNutellaDay or #NationalCatDay
• Popular culture topics, like #GameofThrones or #PokemonGO
• General interest topics, like #WinterWonderland or #ChocolateLovers
• Popular hashtags, like #tbt or #MotivationMonday

The key is to use hashtags sparingly and only when they add value. Use them too much, and they can be confusing, frustrating, and just plain annoying.

How Hashtags Work On Twitter, Facebook & Instagram

Click on a social network below to jump to that section:

1. How Hashtags Work on Twitter
2. How Hashtags Work on Facebook
3. How Hashtags Work on Instagram

1) How Hashtags Work on Twitter

A Twitter hashtag ties the conversations of different users into one stream. If Twitter users who aren’t otherwise connected to one another talk about the same topic using a specific hashtag, their tweets will appear in the same stream.

Here’s what a hashtag stream on Twitter looks like — we’ll use #MotivationMonday as an example:

Most of the good stuff takes place in the center of this page. For the hashtag #MotivationMonday, you’ll see there are a few ways to toggle the hashtag stream: Top (the default), Latest, People, Photos, Videos, and More.

• Top: A stream of tweets using that hashtag that have seen the most engagement — which usually means tweets from influential people or brands that have a lot of followers. (Download our guide on how to get 1,000+ Twitter followers here.)
• Latest: A live stream of the latest tweets from everyone tweeting out that hashtag.
• People: A list of top Twitter accounts to follow related to the hashtag.
• Photos: A collage of photos included in tweets that use the hashtag. When you hover your mouse over a photo, you can reply, retweet, or Like the tweet with just one click. You can open the tweet by clicking on the photo.

• Videos: A stream of tweets using the hashtag that have videos in them.
• More: A dropdown menu that has a few great options to pick from, including “From people you follow” and “Near you.” You can also save your search here by clicking “Save this search.” To access it later, simply click into the search box on the top right of your Twitter home screen and it’ll appear as a saved search.

On the left-hand side of the screen on the #MotivationMonday stream, you’ll find “Related searches.” This is especially useful if you’re looking for unofficial hashtags for your own events and campaigns and others’.

How to Use Hashtags on Twitter

Want to get involved in the conversation, or even start your own? Using a hashtag on Twitter is as simple as publishing a tweet from a public account that includes the hashtag, like this:

A little inspiration for your #MotivationMonday. http://pic.twitter.com/EtcyUm9p4O

— HubSpot (@HubSpot)
December 12, 2016

As long as your account is public, anyone who does a search for that hashtag may find your tweet.

How to Find Hashtags on Twitter

There are a few ways to find hashtags on Twitter. If you already know the hashtag you want to search for, there are four main ways to search for it: a simple search, an advanced search, monitoring using a third-party tool, or typing it directly into the URL.

You can do a simple search using the search box in the top right-hand corner of your screen:

If you’re searching for a hashtag but want to include more details in your search, try Twitter’s Advanced Search. Here, you can search for tweets with specific words and phrases, written in a certain language, from certain accounts, near certain locations, published on certain dates, and even containing smiley 🙂 or frowny 🙁 faces.

For example, if I wanted to search for the sad #MotivationMonday tweets, I might search for the MotivationMonday hashtag with a frowny face, like so:

The results show up in a stream with different toggle options, just like our original hashtag search.

You can also use a third-party monitoring tool like HubSpot’s Social Inbox to monitor certain hashtags. These tools will put certain hashtags in a stream beside any other streams you’ve set up in the tool already.

(HubSpot customers: To set up a stream in Social Inbox, click Social > Monitoring > “+” and enter the name of the hashtag you’d like to monitor. Click here for detailed instructions on how to create monitoring streams.)

Finally, you can search for a hashtag by typing it directly into a URL like so: twitter.com/InsertHashtagHere. So #MotivationMonday can be found at twitter.com/#MotivationMonday.

If you’re searching for popular hashtags from scratch, the best place to look is the trending topics bar on the left-hand side of your homescreen. Popular hashtagged words often become trending topics — which are topics so many people are talking about that they are a “trend.” The topics bar will also show you if accounts you follow are tweeting about the trending topics.

By default, Twitter tailors these trending topics to you based on your location and whom you follow. If you want to change the location Twitter uses to tailor your trends, you can do so by clicking “Change” to the right of “Trends.” In the window that appears, click “Change” again, and then enter in the location information you’d like Twitter to use instead.

Twitter’s native “trending topics” is limited to only a few hashtags, so if you want to find more outside of trending topics and you don’t know what to search for, consider using Advanced Search to browse tweets, or a third-party application like Trendsmap.

Twitter Chat Hashtags

Along with hashtags for events, campaigns, and promotions, there are these unique things on Twitter called Twitter Chats. Twitter Chats are live Q&A sessions organized around a hashtag — either on the fly, or at a pre-arranged time.

I like how Buffer explains them: “Imagine a business networking event — but without a dress code and with a keyboard instead of a bar. The same social customs apply — courtesy and respect — and it’s a great way to meet new people with similar interests.”

There are Twitter Chats about pretty much everything, from marketing to personal finance to affinities for cats.

If you’re looking for Twitter chats to engage in, check out TweetReports’ Twitter Chat Schedule, which you can toggle by date, hashtag, and topics like writing, social media, and so on. You can also submit your own Twitter chats to be considered.

2) How Hashtags Work on Facebook

Like on Twitter, a Facebook hashtag ties the conversations of different users into one stream. But unlike Twitter and Instagram, where many people have public accounts and their posts can be seen by anyone, most people’s Facebook posts and accounts are private. This means that even if individuals are using hashtags, they aren’t searchable. The result? The hashtags you can search for on Facebook tend to be published by influencers, brands, and publishers, rather than by individuals.

Here’s what a hashtag stream on Facebook looks like, using #MotivationMonday as an example:

Most of the good stuff takes place in the center of this page. For the hashtag #MotivationMonday, you’ll see there are a whole bunch of ways to toggle the hashtag stream — even more than we have on Twitter: Top (the default), Latest, People, Photos, Videos, Shop, Pages, Places, Groups, Apps, and Events.

• Top: A stream of Facebook posts using that hashtag that have seen the most engagement — which usually means posts from influential people or brands that have a lot of followers — and your Facebook friends posting using the hashtag.
• Latest: A stream of public Facebook posts using the hashtag, usually by influencers, brands, or publishers — like a fitness guru posting an instructional workout video.
• People: People on Facebook with a name officially associated with the hashtag. For a hashtag like #MotivationMonday, there are no results here.
• Photos: A stream of public Facebook posts using the hashtag that have photos in them.
• Videos: A stream of public Facebook posts using the hashtag that have videos in them.

• Shop: Pages can now sell their products directly to Facebook users using this feature. For a hashtag like #MotivationMonday, there are no results here.
• Pages: This tab shows Facebook Pages associated with or posting about the hashtag you’ve searched for.
• Places: Places in the world with a name officially associated with the hashtag. For a hashtag like #MotivationMonday, there are no results here.
• Groups: Groups with a name officially associated with the hashtag.
• Apps: Facebook apps with a name officially associated with the hashtag.
• Events: Facebook events with a name officially associated with the hashtag.

How to Use Hashtags on Facebook

To use a hashtag on Facebook, all you have to do is publish a Facebook post to your Page or timeline that includes the hashtag.

Be sure your post is public if you want people other than your Facebook friends to be able to find it. To make a Facebook post public, click on the button to the right of “Post” and choose “Public” from the dropdown menu.

Once you publish the post to your Page or timeline, the hashtag becomes a clickable link, which takes folks to the hashtag page. Here’s what a Facebook post with a hashtag looks like:

How to Find Hashtags on Facebook

If you already know the hashtag you want to search for, there are two main ways to search for it: a simple search or by typing it directly into the URL.

You can do a simple search using the search box in the top left-hand corner of your screen:

You can also search for a hashtag by typing it directly into a URL like so: http://ift.tt/1v4E0kWInsertHashtagHere. So #MotivationMonday can be found at http://ift.tt/1RhLC23MotivationMonday.

If you’re searching for popular hashtags from scratch, the best place to look is the trending topics bar on the left-hand side of your homescreen. (Note: This is currently only available in English in select countries.) The articles and hashtags Facebook shows you are based on a number of different factors, including engagement, timeliness, pages you’ve Liked, and your location.

While most trending topics on Twitter are mostly hashtags, this is not usually the case on Facebook. You’ll see that none of the trending topics below are hashtags:

3) How Hashtags Work on Instagram

An Instagram hashtag ties the conversations of different users into one stream, just like on Twitter and Facebook. If Instagram users who aren’t otherwise connected to one another talk about the same topic using a specific hashtag, their posts will appear in the same stream.

Here’s what a hashtag stream on Instagram looks like — again, using #MotivationMonday as an example:

Notice the user interface on Instagram’s hashtag stream is much simpler than those on Twitter and Facebook. There are three things you can do from this page: Scroll through related hashtags, look at the Top Posts, and browse Recent Posts.

• Related Hashtags: All related hashtags (like #dontquit, #getmotivated, etc. in this case), which users can scroll through sideways.
• Top Posts: The nine posts using that hashtag that have seen the most engagement — which usually means tweets from influential people or brands that have a lot of followers. This is limited to nine posts.
• Most Recent: A live stream of Instagram posts from everyone posting that hashtag.

How to Use Hashtags on Instagram

Want to get involved in the conversation, or even start your own? Using a hashtag on Instagram is as simple as publishing an Instagram post from a public account that includes the hashtag, like this:

 

⬆️ #motivationmonday

A photo posted by HubSpot (@hubspot) on Dec 12, 2016 at 5:04am PST

As long as your account is public, anyone who does a search for that hashtag may find your Instagram post.

When you write a new post and start typing in a hashtag using the # symbol, Instagram will actually suggest hashtags to you based on their popularity. Check out the suggestions I got when I typed in the incomplete hashtag, #Motivation:

How to Find Hashtags on Instagram

If you already know the hashtag you want to search for, the only way to search for a hashtag on Instagram on your mobile device is through a simple search. You can do a simple search by clicking the magnifying glass at the bottom of your screen, which brings you to the “Explore” tab. From there, type the hashtag name into the search box at the top of your screen, and toggle your results by “Tags”:

If you’re searching for popular hashtags from scratch, the best place to look is in Instagram’s “Explore” tab. Here, you’ll find popular posts liked by people whose posts you’ve Liked, or posts that are Liked by a large number of people in the Instagram community.

Go to the “Explore” tab by clicking that magnifying glass at the bottom of your screen. Check out posts there to browse trending hashtags by scrolling down.

What About Using Hashtags “in the Wild”?

Although hashtags were born and work best online, you can point people to them in real life. Try placing hashtags in relevant and well trafficked public locations — like in pictures or posters, menus, stickers, and so on — to encourage people to search for that hashtag online.

What other hashtag tips do you have for Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram? Share with us in the comments.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in February 2016 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

With the new year well under way, we thought it might be fun to check in on how those resolutions are going. Are you eating more vegetables? Doing more community service? Achieving better work-life balance?

That last one is tricky, and might even conflict with other goals, like getting a raise or being more productive. It’s hard to say, “No,” when we’re trying to be as industrious as possible and do something like earn a promotion.

But worst of all, when we say, “No” to the important people in our lives — bosses, spouses, or kids — it tends to come with guilt. More than half of us say we’re too guilty to even leave our desks for a break. If something like that makes us feel bad, how can we possibly be expected to feel good about turning work down? 

As it turns out, it is possible to say, “No” in a way that’s respectful, productive, and free of guilt. Our friends at Business Backer came up with five ways to do so, and compiled them into this handy infographic. So read on. And please — just say, “No.”

The landscape of web design is constantly evolving. 

Something that looked modern and fresh yesterday can appear dated seemingly overnight, and trends once dismissed as irrevocably passé can unexpectedly cycle back in vogue. 

To help you prepare for wherever the web design tide takes us in 2017, we’ve put together a list of 13 trends to keep a close eye on. Check them out below, and get inspired to tackle your web design projects this year with style.

13 Web Design Trends to Watch in 2017

1) Bold Typography

More and more companies are turning to big, bold typography to anchor their homepages. This style works best when the rest of the page is kept minimal and clean, like this example from French agency Big Youth. 

2) Cinemagraphs

Cinemagraphs — high-quality videos or GIFs that run on a smooth, continuous loop — have become a popular way to add movement and visual interest to otherwise static pages. Full-screen loops, like this stunning example from Danish agency CP+B Copenhagen, are sure to hold visitors’ attention for longer than a quick glance. 

3) Experimental Compositions

To stand out in a sea of tidy masonry style layouts, some designers are opting instead for more eclectic structures. Design director Will Geddes displays samples of his work in this unexpected collage of overlapping images. 

4) Bright Gradients

Kaleidoscopic gradients are coming back in a big way. Zurich-based agency Y7K illustrates a perfect example of how to make this two-tone effect look fresh and modern, with their full-screen, gradient-washed homepage. 

5) Vivid Layers of Color

Staggered, stacked layers of color add depth and texture to a simple site layout, as seen in this stylish example from Portugese designer Melissa Meio-Fio. 

6) Straightforward, Simple Text

Some websites are cutting out images and prominent navigation sections altogether, relying on a few choice lines of straightforward text to inform visitors about their company.

Danish agency B14 uses their homepage real estate to simply describe their mission statement and provide links to samples of their work. It’s a modern, uncluttered approach to presenting information. 

7) Illustration

More companies are turning to illustrators and graphic artists to create bespoke illustrations for their websites. After years of flat design and minimalism, adding illustrated touches to your site is a great way to inject a little personality, as seen in this charming example from NewActon (designed by Australian digital agency ED). 

8) Ultra-minimalism

Taking classic minimalism to the extreme, some designers are defying conventions of what a website needs to look like, displaying just the absolute bare necessities. The site from designer Mathieu Boulet is centered around a few choice links to his social profiles and information. 

9) Duotone

These parred-down, two-tone color schemes look cool and contemporary, like this example from Australian Design Radio.

10) Mixing Horizontal and Vertical Text

Freeing text from its usual horizontal alignment and placing it vertically on a page adds some refreshing dimension. Take this example from director Matt Porterfield, which mixes horizontal and vertical text alignments on an otherwise very simple page. 

11) Geometric Shapes and Patterns

Whimsical patterns and shapes are popping up more frequently on websites, adding some flair in a landscape otherwise ruled by flat and material design. Canadian design studio MSDS uses daring, patterned letters on their homepage. 

12) Modular Design

Modular design is certainly sticking around in 2017. It’s a foolproof way to create a clean, accessible website that keeps visitors interested. This example from design studio Waaark offers a twist on modular design: When you hover over the dividing edges between modules with your cursor, you produce an unexpected ripple effect. 

13) Overlapping Text and Images

Text that slightly overlaps accompanying images has become a popular effect for blogs and portfolios. Freelance art director and front-end developer Thibault Pailloux makes his overlapping text stand out with a colorful underline beneath each title. 

What web design trends do you think will really take off in 2017?

“Snapchat isn’t about capturing the traditional Kodak moment. It’s about communicating with the full range of human emotion — not just what appears to be pretty or perfect.”

Snapchat CEO and co-founder Evan Spiegel wrote this in the first post on the Snap Inc. — then Snapchat — blog back in 2012, when users could only send photos, and only on iOS devices. Since Spiegel’s blog post, Snapchat has already had a huge impact on social media and content marketing.

Ephemeral, or disappearing, messaging has skyrocketed in popularity since Snapchat was introduced. In fact, since Snapchat’s arrival to the social media scene, Facebook and Instagram have launched their own versions of some of Snapchat’s most popular features. We’ve predicted that competition will continue to grow between Snapchat and other popular social networking apps as all the landscape continues to innovate new products to distinguish from one another.

In this post, we’ll dive into the full history of Snapchat’s journey from photo sharing app to major social player. 

What Is Snapchat?

Snapchat is a one-to-one and group messaging app that lets users send photo, video, and text messages that disappear after several seconds. Roughly 150 million people use Snapchat every day, and they consume around 800 hours of video per second. That’s like watching every episode of “Game of Thrones” 13 times, per second.

In addition to its messaging features, Snapchat features Stories (photo or video messages that can be replayed for 24 hours), Memories (saved photos for sharing later), and stickers to embellish messages. The app has been widely adopted, especially among teenagers and Millennials: 26% of people surveyed between the ages of 12 and 24 said they used Snapchat the most, second only to Facebook.

Now that we’re all up to speed, let’s dive into some of Snapchat’s major developments and achievements over the last five years — and what we might expect from five more.

The History of Snapchat

2011: Snapchat, then Picaboo, launches

Spiegel and his co-founder, Bobby Murphy, told Forbes that they met at Stanford University and created Picaboo, the first version of Snapchat, in the spring of 2011. They wanted to create an app that would send photos that would eventually disappear, and the initial Picaboo app was launched in the iOS App Store in July — to little fanfare.

This led them to integrate a workaround solution to the screenshot problem: Users could take screenshots on their iPhones, rendering the disappearing effect of Picaboo messages useless. Instead, they built a notification so users would be able to see if someone took a screenshot of their disappearing photo.

In September, Spiegel and Murphy rebranded the app as Snapchat, added the ability to caption photos, and relaunched in the iOS App Store. They focused on the app’s technological innovations more than branding and marketing to make the experience more organic and cool than traditional advertising. In case you’ve forgotten, here’s what early snaps looked like back then:

Source: Forbes

2012: Video arrives

In May 2012, Spiegel wrote Snapchat’s first blog post and set the tone for what users could expect from the app in the coming years. “We’re building a photo app that doesn’t conform to unrealistic notions of beauty or perfection but rather creates a space to be funny, honest or whatever else you might feel like at the moment you take and share a Snap,” he wrote.

In October, Snapchat for Android launched in the Google Play store, which helped increase its user base and contributed to the next big milestone in October. After a full year in operation, Snapchat users were sending 20 millions snaps per day, or roughly 25 snaps per second.

By December, Snapchat users were sending 50 million snaps per day, and the app rolled out an update that introduced the ability to record and send 10-second videos. The best part? Instead of having to toggle between two different photo and video recording modes, as with camera phones, users could simply hold down the photo capture button to record a video.

2013-2014: Stories and Chat

In October 2013, Snapchat launched Stories — an ephemeral narrative of snaps that users could post for their friends to view for 24 hours. Brands and users started using Stories to share a fuller picture of what they were up to while still maintaining the hallmark disappearing factor.

In 2014, Snapchat ramped up innovation and launched a slew of new features and updates. First, it introduced Chat in May, the messenger that still featured disappearing messages via text, in addition to the ability to see when your friend was “here” in the chat window so users could start a live video chat. Next, Our Story was rolled out in June, offering Snapchat users around the world to contribute photos and videos to a public feed of snaps from popular events.

Snapchat rolled out Geofilters in July that let users customize their snaps with filters and embellishments according to what city they were snapping from.

October marked the beginning of Snapchat advertising, and ads started appearing in users “Recent Updates” section alongside all of their friends’ stories. Users had the option to skip viewing the ads if desired, and like other Stories, they disappeared after 24 hours. Here’s what their first ad, for the movie “Ouija,” looked like:

Source: Adweek

In November, Snapchat worked with Square to create Snapcash, which allowed users to easily send and receive money directly from Snapchat into their bank accounts. Snapchat took another step into the world of monetization with Community Geofilters in December 2014. Users could create their own Geofilters or purchase branded filters for their business or sponsored event.

2015: Discover and Lenses

In January 2015, Snapchat started offering many new ways for advertisers to earn money from its huge audience — then roughly 75 million users. Snapchat introduced Discover, a new page easily accessible from the Snapchat home screen that featured short-form ad content from a variety of different publishers and channels like Vox, BuzzFeed, CNN, and Food Network. Here’s what it looks like in action:

Next, Tap to View was introduced. Where before, users had to hold their fingers on their phone screen to view snaps, now they only had to tap once to start watching. In June, Snapchat rolled out sponsored Geofilters to advertisers who wanted to pay for brand exposure in any given location. Here’s what McDonald’s first sponsored filter looked like:

Source: Los Angeles Times

In September, Snapchat launched the next big thing for avid selfie-takers: Lenses. When users turned their cameras to be self-facing, by holding a finger down on their face, users could choose from a wide variety of Lenses to change their look. From puppy ears to barfing rainbows, selfies got a lot more creative. Check it out below:

Source: Snapchat

Finally, by December 2015, the Financial Times reported that Snapchat users were watching 6 billion videos per day just three years after video recording was launched on the app.

2016: Memories and rebranding

The year 2016 marked a period of tremendous change and explosive growth for Snapchat. In February, Snapchat rolled out on-demand Geofilters for the entire Snapchat community, allowing users to create filters for parties, weddings, and private events. Next, Snapchat started auto-advancing Snapchat Story plays. If a user started watching one Story and it ended, the next one would automatically begin playing.

In April, Snapchat hit a huge milestone when Bloomberg reported it was generating 10 billion video views per day — 2 billion more views per day than Facebook had reported in November 2015. And by June, Snapchat had amassed 150 million daily active users — surpassing Twitter. Snapchat also rolled out more video ads in June — ads that started appearing in between friends’ Stories when users starting watching them.

Snapchat Memories were introduced in July, which let users save content on their devicefor later editing and sharing. This change made content less spontaneous and more curious, leaving some marketers wondering in what direction Snapchat was headed. They also introduced a collaboration with Bitstrips to create Bitmoji, a personalized avatar Snapchat users could create and incorporate into their snaps and Stories. Here’s my “hump day” Bitmoji as a Snapchat filter:

By August 2016, Snapchat’s competitors for attention in the social media space had started laying down the gauntlet. Instagram unveiled its own version of Stories, and Facebook launched filters and stickers on its photo app.

In September, Snapchat rebranded, and the company was now called Snap Inc., parent to Snapchat and Spectacles, a new sunglasses product that let wearers record Snaps in circular format for 360-degree viewing. In response to less-than-favorable reactions to Snapchat Stories auto-advancing, the Story Playlist feature was launched in October. Users could now choose a group of users whose Snaps they wanted to auto-play instead of it happening by default.

To add to the fanfare, eMarketer predicted that Snap Inc. would earn $1 billion in advertising revenue in the year 2017, and the introduction of its application program interface (API) certainly supported that claim. With this algorithm, Snap Inc. could sell ad space to third parties automatically instead of relying on a sales team, meaning it could now make more ad dollars, and faster.

In November, Snap Inc. filed for a $25 billion initial public offering (IPO), signaling to the world that the company was ready for rapid growth and expansion in the coming years. Additionally, Instagram launched its own version of ephemeral messaging to keep competing with the friendly yellow ghost.

Snap Inc.’s final Snapchat innovation in 2016 was the introduction of group messaging in December. Where users previously had to individually select the group of users they wanted to send a particular Snap to, users could now save a group of people to send messages that disappear 24 hours later — just like Stories.

What’s Next for Snapchat?

We think that ephemeral messaging will continue to grow in popularity, and we’re anticipating continued competition between Instagram and Snapchat, too. Advertisers are already spending more money on social media advertising than on TV ads, and we predict that platforms like Snapchat will continue innovating new ways to serve ads that are useful — and not disruptive — for their audiences.

P.S. Want a peek inside our own Snapchat strategy? Follow HubSpot using the handle hubspotinc.

What’s your favorite Snapchat feature? Share with us in the comments below.

What makes a good story? Is it the happy ending? Maybe it’s the valuable lessons, or the hilarious, unexpected plot twists. But what makes a story just that — a shareable, captivating narrative — is the experience it describes. It’s the who, what, where, when, and how. It’s the tale of what happened.

As marketers, we love good stories. We seek to tell them through the messages and content we put out there. But while we’re great at telling those stories, what we don’t do nearly enough of is creating them. And that’s where experiential marketing comes in.

It’s not that experiential marketing is anything new. There are entire summits and programs dedicated to it, and the majority of marketers that use it say it yields significant results. And while we may have seen examples of its execution, many of us are still left asking — how can I do that?

We sought to find out. We looked at some of our favorite examples of experiential marketing, and looked at some of the things they have in common. Here’s what we found, and the tips that you can take into account as you plan your own experiential marketing initiatives.

What Is Experiential Marketing?

According to a CMO magazine article on the topic, experiential marketing “is a mutually beneficial interaction between customer and brand in an authentically branded engagement.”

It’s authentic in the sense that it goes beyond sending messages to your audience, digitally or otherwise, and requires creating a live opportunity to interact with your brand, instead. As for its mutually beneficial nature, the consumer benefits by experiencing your brand in a tangible way — and you benefit when that content is shared. Consider that 49% of attendees at branded events create videos of it , a significant percentage of which is shared on social media. People talk about remarkable experiences, and the brands that create them.

It might sound a bit like event marketing, which makes sense — experiential campaigns do tend to be event-centric. But even when they are, the emphasis isn’t so much on the event format, but is rather on the type of interaction that people can have with a specific brand.

But what does that look like, and how can you pull it off — especially with a limited budget? Here are some of the best practices we’ve found.

7 Experiential Marketing Tips

1) Take advantage of VR.

Marketing tools like virtual reality (VR) and 360° video are steadily on the rise. More than half of consumers are more likely to buy from a brand that offers VR experiences — and when a video comes in a 360° format, viewers are more than 2X likely to watch it in full.

I’ll never forget what Michael Rucker of OmniVirt — makers of 360° video content delivery technology — told me when I interviewed him about this kind of media. Its power, he said, is in its ability to give the user a “sense of autonomy” — one that provides an immersive experience, but still puts the viewer in control. He challenges brands to ask, “What are those experiences?”

That’s why VR can be an experiential marketer’s best friend. Like 360° video, it allows users to become immersed in something beyond their current surroundings — like an experience that your product or service provides. Shell, for example, used this technology to virtually transform users into a drop of V-power fuel and follow its path through an engine. That’s not something that human beings would ever be able to tangibly experience otherwise, which is what we think makes it so cool.

For that reason, we challenge you to ask yourself the same question that Rucker posed: What are those experiences that your brand can create? Once you know the answer, turn it into a VR experience — here’s a great guide for doing so on a budget from CinematicVR — and bring it to the user.

But where and how can you do that? That brings us to our next step.

2) Find people where they already are.

One of the core tenets of inbound marketing is to avoid interrupting your audience. Instead, the best way to turn strangers into customers is to bring them to you , instead of fighting for their attention in a sea of marketing messages. Experiential marketing is no exception, which is why it’s often best executed when it takes a “you’re already there” approach — knowing where your audience is already hanging out, and engaging them there.

It can work on a number of different levels. There’s the approach of installing something small but noticeable where your audience already exists, like Google did with its Impact Challenge. The search engine giant wanted to involve the San Francisco Bay community in deciding where to make a multi-million-dollar donation, and installed large, interactive posters in places where people “had the time to make a difference” — like bus shelters, food trucks, and restaurants.

That approach creates excellent opportunities to create experiences with local businesses, especially those whose products or services complement yours. We’ll talk more about partnering with other brands in a bit, but working with other businesses on these initiatives can benefit everyone involved, especially if it enhances the experience and helps you both reach previously untapped audiences.

3) Transform the space.

Every year, the city of Austin, TX is taken over by an event known as SXSW: A self-described conference and collection of festivals that “celebrate the convergence of the interactive, film, and music industries.” And, it’s chock full of experiences created to promote the work of the above industries — like when Warner Bros. converted a local tattoo shop into a branded one that was named for a notable character from the movie Suicide Squad.

Source: Suggest

Granted, most of us aren’t creating experiences with the budget of a major Hollywood studio, nor are we marketing a hopeful box office hit. But that shouldn’t stop you from transforming a space into a branded one — especially if it’s one where your audience might already be, as noted above.

When Netflix revitalized the TV series “Gilmore Girls,” for example, it teased the premiere date by converting neighborhood diners around the U.S. into a famed diner that the show’s characters often frequented. And while we don’t believe it’s necessary to take your experiential marketing to a national level, we do love the idea of partnering with a local business to create a branded experience like this one, according to your product or service.

Don’t be afraid to think outside-of-the-box with this concept. Use things like holidays and seasonality to your advantage — for example, brands can use a holiday like Valentine’s Day to transform something that’s typically part of the “daily grind,” like a train station, into pop-up date night environment.

But that’s not limited to B2C brands. Companies within the B2B sector can partner with a consumer-focused business — like a local restaurant or coffee shop — to convert the space for something like “advisory speed dating,” where learning about your product or service becomes a fun, interactive, and inviting experience. Here’s an example of how Progressive Insurance by creating a pop-up motorcycle shop:

4) Seek out brands to partner with.

Of course, when you’re looking to transform a space for an experience, it’s probably not the best idea to just show up and take over. Not only do you likely need permission, but you also need to provide incentive — how is this partnership going to benefit the proprietors?

That’s a fundamental piece of co-branding: Ensuring that you both stand to benefit from the partnership. Creating an experience together can accomplish that, but you’ve got to be strategic about it. When you begin to plan your experience, do so with a partner in mind — with a contingency plan, of course. As you begin to determine what the experience will look like, start thinking about the co-brands that would complement and enhance the experience for participants, rather than making it redundant. You should each bring different elements to the table, for example, instead of duplicating each other’s efforts.

The same goes for the people who you want to to draw to the event. A co-brand that already shares your audience might not accomplish much — the goal here is to reach a population that would be interested in your brand, but might otherwise be difficult to reach. That goes for your partner, too, in that it should stand to benefit from exposure to your own audience.

Google once creatively pulled this off with Zappos. While it was marketed under the pretense of being a “takeover” — in that Zappos playfully sabotaged Google’s cupcake giveaway with a guerilla bargain of its own — we suspect the entire thing may have been planned to benefit both brands. Watch this video to see how:

The takeaway: Zappos and Google created an experience that required an “exchange” of both brands’ product and service. The audience was more likely to interact with both of them that way, earning them both exposure. So when you work with your co-branding partner, build an experience that allows the audience to engage with both of you — and at a place where they’re likely to already be present.

5) Teach people something.

If you’re wondering what’s stopping people from learning more about your brand, here’s a thought — it could be that they simply don’t understand it. Maybe that’s why 58% of customer experience experts say that simplifying products and processes should be a business priority .

But in addition to creating the valuable, teachable content that helps your audience learn more about your product or service, consider building an experience that accomplishes the same thing. That’s what Facebook did with its IQ Live event, where the company used data on how businesses use the platform to create real-life experiences and settings that brought the numbers to life — like the IQ Mart, which was a mock retail setting used to represent the online shopper’s conversion path when using social media for buying decisions.

The experience taught its attendees something, without a classroom or lecturer in sight. In fact, 93% of them said that the experience provided them with valuable insights on how to use Facebook for business.

It’s a great example of how B2B brands can build an experience for people who aren’t sure how your product or service applies to them, simply don’t understand how to use it, or don’t think they need it. Bringing your data to life in a way that lets people interact with it and spells out how your brand can benefit them can be rather impactful — after all, 65% of people think that live events help them understand a product. Here’s how Allstate pulled that off by gameifying the subject of insurance:

6) Let people create something — together.

People are more creative than they might think. After all, 70% believe that creativity is a valuable quality to have, but only 44% believe they fully embody it .

Maybe it’s up to us, as marketers, to put our own creativity toward allowing others to express theirs. That would be quite a remarkable experience to witness and to participate in. And while it’s not exactly new — American Greetings did that at SXSW when it invited passersby to stop and, among a sea of digital conversation, do some old-school crafting. The experience, quite appropriately, was called #analog.

But it didn’t stop there. In addition to creating their own works of art, participants were invited to contribute to a coloring book mural — essentially a giant, wall-sized page with shapes to be colored in — to create one, big masterpiece that contained a little bit of everyone’s work. It’s a concept that might look familiar, especially if you attended INBOUND 2016:

 

Coloring at #inbound16

A photo posted by Kipp Bodnar (@kippbodnar) on Nov 8, 2016 at 3:25pm PST

7) Add a digital element.

As if we didn’t love the experience created by American Greetings enough — the brand also made it shareable. The title of the initiative was, in and of itself, a branded hashtag that people could use to attribute tweets and other social media posts from the engagement. That made it easy for people to share the experience in a branded way — and remember those stats about how people love to share their event experiences online? Give them an easy, creative way to attach your name to it.

American Greetings took it further than a branded hashtag, however. It created a new location on Instagram that people could attach to their photos — “Analog by American Greetings” — leaving little doubt about who created the experience.

 

Ready for an epic day at #analog featuring live art installations by @kelseymontagueart #SXSW #sxsw2016 #Repost @kelseymontagueart ・・・ My first coloring book mural is up and ready to go for @amgreetings;) This is from one of my favorite pages in the #WhatLiftsYou coloring book. If you’re in Austin come out, relax, color and take some time for yourself ❤️🎨 #SXSW #adultcoloringbook

A photo posted by American Greetings (@amgreetings) on Mar 12, 2016 at 6:24am PST

You May Now Proceed to Go Nuts — Within Reason

These tips should give you a good baseline for getting started on your experiential marketing initiatives — but at the end of the day, you’re free to run with them as creatively as you see fit. Of course, the scale of your ideas will likely match your budget, but as we’ve seen, many of these ideas don’t require a ton of money, but rather, a lot of good planning.

And that’s why we say to “go nuts” — if it aligns with your product, service, and brand, and you can afford it, give your audience every reason to not only show up, but also, stick around and share the experience. That’s applicable to every sector, both B2B and B2C. You can offer entertainment. You can offer something unexpected. Just make sure it makes sense.

What are your best experiential marketing tips? Let us know in the comments.

Anyone remember AIM — previously known as AOL Instant Messenger?

I do. I remember downloading it to get through hours of a high school computer science class. I remember insisting to my parents that, no, it wasn’t a distraction from my homework — even though, you know, of course it was. And, I remember when it pretty much stood alone in the world of instant messaging technology.

Those days are gone. Now, we have a plethora of instant messaging options — at your computer or on your phone. And with more people using mobile as the primary method of getting online, it makes sense that there’s a growing number of instant messaging apps. 

But are any of these apps better than the others? As it turns out, that depends on the scenario — like if you’re traveling overseas, trying to communicate at cruising altitude, or just want to send a text message without a cellular connection. We found some of the best messaging apps for a variety of scenarios, and make our recommendations below.

6 of the Best Messaging Apps for Different Scenarios

1) WhatsApp

When to Use It: While Traveling Abroad

Free | iOS | Android | Windows

HubSpot currently has offices in five cities. Much of the time, our employees travel between offices, especially when we all come together for INBOUND in Boston. And during those events, we have to communicate with each other, usually via mobile. But there’s a problem — sending SMS messages while abroad often results in a hefty roaming charge, and international dialing from mobile devices can be complex if you don’t have a specific wireless plan that allows it.

That’s why WhatsApp is such a popular app among our traveling colleagues. It works particularly well for folks without international data or dialing plans, since it’s free to use over WiFi.

WhatsApp is most popular for its text messaging capabilities, but includes features that allow users to place voice calls and send photos over a wireless connection, avoiding mobile international calling fees. But be careful — if you become disconnected from WiFi and haven’t disabled your device’s data roaming option, you could be charged by your wireless carrier for using the app over a cellular connection.

Source: Microsoft Store

2) Hangouts

When to Use It: When You Already Use Google Voice

Free | iOS | Android

Hangouts, made by Google, tends to be a better option for people who already use its suite of products for, say, business. Its biggest differentiator from Allo is its ability to make calls — it works well if you have an established phone number with Google Voice, and want to use that to make calls or send SMS messages. But you don’t need to have previously connected with someone specifically via Google to reach them — you can use the app to reach the contacts who are already stored in your phone. Plus, it also has a video call interface.

For example, when I owned a small business in New York, I used Google Voice to set up a phone number for it — one that had a local area code, unlike my mobile phone. Having the Hangouts App on my mobile device allowed me to make and receive calls using my business number, even when I wasn’t at my desk. That way, clients could reach me at any time, using one single phone number.

Many people are understandably confused about the differences between Hangouts and Google’s new messaging app, Allo. With the latter, contacts can still receive SMS messages from you via the app — but not from a recognizable number. We’ll explain below.

Source: iTunes Store

3) Allo

When to Use It:

• When You Want an Assistant With Your Messaging App

• When You Want to Avoid SMS Fees

Free | iOS | Android

Although they’re both made by Google, there are a few differences between Allo and Hangouts. First, Allo doesn’t (yet) have voice call capabilities — it’s strictly used for text messaging. Plus, it only works on one device at a time, as the New York Times explains.

That said, it does offer some of the same benefits as many other mobile messaging apps, in that it doesn’t require a cellular connection and is free to use over WiFi. And like Hangouts, you don’t need to have previously connected with someone specifically via Google to reach them — you can use the app to reach the contacts who are already stored in your phone. Plus, for any of those contacts who have Allo installed, the message will arrive via the app, helping them to avoid any SMS fees.

Allo’s biggest attribute is its integration with Google Assistant. Take this conversation about recipes — having the assistant included with the messaging app makes something like planning dinner that much more seamless.

4) Zello

When to Use It: When You Need Walkie-Talkie Capabilities, Without the Clunky Hardware

Free — Pricing options for different types of usage | iOS | Android | Windows

During something like a major event, managers and planners might have to get a hold of each other immediately — which, as crazy as it sounds, means that sending a text message might take too long. In situations like these, emergencies require the immediacy of something like a walkie-talkie, but without the clunky hardware.

That’s why apps like Zello are so helpful. They allow you to page someone immediately, like you would via radio communication, but don’t require any special equipment. Instead, you can download it right to your mobile device, and communicate with colleagues on there — no phone calls or SMS messaging necessary.

Source: Zello

5) Messages

When to Use It: When You Have an iOS Device and No Cellular Connection

Free | Included With iOS Devices

We’ve written before about inattentional blindness, which is essentially the psychological term for not seeing what’s right in front of us, so to speak. That’s why we couldn’t leave Messages — previously known as iMessage — off of the list. For anyone with an iOS device, it’s right there, and often provides an easy way to communicate without a cellular connection.

Take a long flight, for example. Some airlines now offer WiFi connections that allow in-flight messaging across a variety of mobile operating systems. But for those that only permit old-fashioned WiFi, having access to Messages is one advantage of using the iOS — you can still send text messages across a variety of devices, but only to other iOS users. To reach that portion of your contacts, at least, you don’t have to download a separate messaging app.

Another nice thing about Messages is its availability on MacBook devices, which allows users to send text messages to contacts via desktop — including those who don’t use iOS, as long as your phone has a cellular connection. And because that’s powered by cloud technology, it should mean that those messages are synced across all iOS devices with the same Apple ID being used to send the messages — MacBook, iPhone, and iPad, for example.

Source: Apple

6) Facebook Messenger

When to Use It: When You’re Missing a Facebook Friend’s Phone Number

Free | iOS | Android | Windows

Messaging apps that integrate with your contacts are great. But what happens when you need to reach someone who isn’t stored in your phone, but to whom you’re connected elsewhere, like Facebook?

That’s why the messenger app is so helpful. I’ve lost count of the number of times I befriended someone on Facebook — socially or professionally – but we failed to exchange numbers. What happens if we want to make plans, or exchange other contact information, like email addresses? Enter Facebook Messenger.

It’s yet another app that works without a cellular connection, too. So if SMS simply isn’t an option, Messenger provides another way to instantly connect with your network. Plus, it offers voice and video call technology.

Taking a break from social media? No problem. You can use your phone number to set up Messenger — which also syncs the app with your phone’s contacts — and you can deactivate your Facebook profile, but still use Messenger to communicate with friends.

Source: Facebook

Get the Message

Back in those days of AIM, it would have been had to believe that, eventually, it would be this easy to reach someone. For the most part, all you really need is a smartphone and a WiFi connection — with any of these largely free apps, you can use those two things to connect with the people you want to reach.

And the technology will only continue to progress. As AI continues to work its way into the zeitgeist and bots are taking on more responsibilities, this type of communication might come with even fewer technical requirements — and effort.

What are your favorite messaging apps? Let us know in the comments.

Running a business takes everything you have. Entrepreneurs pour their creativity, passion, effort, savings — their everything — into their work. And five years after they start, half of them are out of business. A decade later, two-thirds have called it quits.

But why?

For marketing firms, I believe it comes down to a lack of diligent measurement. Sure, measuring and tracking may not be the sexiest part of running an agency, but it’s the only way to ensure you’re not throwing money away.

Commit to tracking these five things in 2017, and you’ll have your most profitable year yet.

5 Metrics Your Agency Should Measure in 2017

1) Adjusted Gross Income per Full-Time Equivalent Employee

Determining your number of full-time equivalent employees (FTE) is a convenient way to measure labor. To do this, denominate employees into 40-hour-a-week units. A full-time employee is equal to one FTE. A 20-hour-a-week employee is 0.5 FTE.

Your target should be $150,000 of adjusted gross income (AGI) for every FTE. That amount should cover salaries, benefits, and overhead while leaving enough profit to reinvest in the business or offer bonuses to high-achieving team members.

Years ago, the target AGI for each FTE was $100,000. Inflation accounts for some of the increase, but marketing agencies are also hiring expensive people to fill positions on growing digital teams.

In short, the world has changed. It’s gotten more expensive.

Many marketing agencies haven’t adjusted their billing rates to keep up — and that’s a big problem. If you’re only earning $100,000 per FTE, your agency likely isn’t very profitable. Those thin margins carry extra risk when an unexpected tax bill comes due, equipment breaks down, or you need a retention bonus for a key team member.

2) Over/Under

No, I’m not talking about the score in tonight’s basketball game. I’m talking about how often you are over or under budget.

When agencies complain to me about how hard they work and how little they make — which is often — I always go straight to their over/under. How often do you go over budget? What are you writing off? How often are you under budget? By how much?

After they answer these questions and start tracking the numbers, they’re usually horrified by what they find.

Companies are willing to write off thousands of dollars’ worth of time on jobs in which they overservice their clients. Those are hours that could be spent on other clients, finding new business, or marketing your services.

The solution to this problem is often a process change. Typically, the problem is that budget estimates are too low. My advice is to add an additional 50 percent to any job estimate. Initial estimates always assume a perfect world where everything goes according to plan. How often does that happen in reality? Adding 50 percent to perfect-world estimates usually brings them firmly into the real world.

3) Profitability by Client

Agencies always keep track of their overall profitability, but seldom do they get as specific as how much profit they earn from each client. That number can hide some ugly truths.

Most marketing shops have a mix of clients. Some are easy to work with and contribute handsomely to the bottom line. Others are difficult. Some might actually be costing you money. You won’t know until you start tracking.

Once you have the numbers, decide what the minimum is you’re willing to accept. For some agencies, it might only be a 3 percent profit margin. Others might want 20 percent. It’s up to you. I personally only want clients that have at least a 10 percent profit margin.

If you see that you have clients that aren’t bringing in the profits you’d like, figure out why and what can be done to fix it. Sometimes, the problem is simply that you’re not charging enough. If that’s the case, raise your rates. If you lose the client, so be it.

Other times the problem might be subtler. It might require a conversation about how to streamline work processes and avoid delays. Insist on a solution. They’ll either cooperate and become a good client, which is great, or you’ll lose them. Again, so be it.

Losing unprofitable accounts is not a bad thing. Yes, your cash flow will take a hit. Don’t be trapped by that. Accumulating clients that provide cash flow but not profit will eventually choke your business.

4) Minimum Client Engagement

Clients come in all sizes. Some are going to be too big for your agency to handle well, and others will be too small to be worthwhile. Some will hit the sweet spot. But you won’t know the difference unless you track two things for each client: how many hours you bill and your adjusted gross income.

Once you track your gross billing and AGI for each client, establish a minimum amount they need to provide of each for you to retain them. The threshold will be obvious once you look at your data paired with the profitability percentages.

You’re going to see some clients that have few hours billed, bring in little income, and generate low profitability. These clients are too small. Some clients will be too big. Your team will spend a lot of time on these clients, but the time will be eaten up by written-off hours for redone work and overdue deliverables. This client likely won’t be happy, and the account won’t be profitable.

So how do you know what your sweet spot is? Usually, it’s when the client is big enough to generate income and small enough to service effectively and keep satisfied. And it will have a healthy profit margin to prove it.

The goal then is to move all your clients to the sweet spot. If they won’t move, let them go. Armed with your new knowledge, you’ll be poised to find perfect-fit clients.

5) Timesheets

This last item ties all the previous four together. Everyone hates timesheets, and there are some consultants who say they aren’t necessary. I couldn’t disagree more.

Timesheets are central to running a data-driven, profitable agency. Indispensable. Everyone needs to do them. Even you. Your employees are your biggest expense and your biggest asset. If you don’t trace it, how are you going to know whether you’re managing it well?

Moreover, you can’t track the other metrics without time sheets. If you don’t know the hours worked, you can’t calculate FTE or AGI per FTE. If you don’t know how many hours you put into a project, you can’t know whether you were over or under your bid. If you don’t track time spent per client, you can’t know profitability per client or income or billable hours, which leaves you guessing what your minimums should be. You’re left running everything with a hunch and a guess.

Measure Your Way to Success in 2017

If you track all five of these metrics, you’ll be able to leave guesswork behind. You’ll be able to act decisively to improve your job estimates and profitability. You’ll know which clients to move resources to and which clients to jettison. You’ll also recognize new clients that are good fits and worth pursuing and ones that are bad fits.

You’ll make informed, strategic decisions. You’ll run your agency like you’ve always wanted to.

Happy tracking.

If you’re a social media marketer, two things are almost certain: You spend a lot of time on your mobile phone, and you spend even more time teaching your friends and colleagues how to use the latest apps and features because you’re at the forefront of it all.

Social media is constantly evolving. For example, Snapchat’s parent company, Snap Inc., unveiled nine huge new features in 2016 alone. This makes marketers beg the question: How do I keep track of everything that’s changing — and still have time to do my job?

We feel your pain, and we’re here to help. We’ve rounded up our tips and tricks for keeping up with social media news that we use every day here at HubSpot. And once you have a system down, keep track of what you’re sharing on social media this month with these tools for managing your social media calendar.

10 Tips for Keeping Up With Social Media News & Trends

1) Create a stream on Twitter with popular hashtags.

The best place to find out the most recent news about social is — you guessed it — on social media. Start by creating a stream on Twitter with popular social media hashtags. You can use terms like #socialmedia, #smchat, or #inboundmarketing — if you need more ideas, check out Hashtags.org. Avoid searching for a term that’s too general (like #marketing) because you’ll quickly see a swarm of tweets flooding into your stream.

HubSpot customers can create a stream using HubSpot Social Inbox. First, start by typing your hashtag into the search box at the top of the screen.

Then, check out your results. You will see a list of people and tweets matching your search term.

If you like the sampling of results that you see, you can create a stream with that hashtag.

If you’re not a HubSpot customer, you can save searches directly on Twitter in a very similar manner. First, search for the term you’re interested in using the search bar in the top-right corner of the Twitter homepage:

Then, when you reach the results page of your Twitter search, tap the gear icon and select “Save this search.”

Then, the next time you head to the Twitter search bar, your saved search will appear for you to easily click and start reading:

2) Make a Twitter list of influencers in the industry.

The beauty of social media is that the experts often hang out there, too. Whenever there is a new announcement or update in the social media world, you’ll find influencers discussing it on Twitter.

Use the hashtags that you gathered in the previous example and pick out some of the most active people tweeting on them. Make a Twitter list based on your findings and spend some time each day running through the list to see what they have to say. And don’t be shy to ask them questions yourself. After all, that’s what social media is all about.

If you want some help getting started, here’s a list of social media experts and influencers that we admire at HubSpot. It’s a public list, so you can follow it, too.

A Twitter List by HubSpot

3) Set up Google Alerts on terms and influencers.

Now that you have a list of influencers and hashtags that you can follow on social media, you can set up a Google Alert for some of them. That way, you’ll get regular updates when they post content or are interviewed about social media.

Pick your top three favorite influencers or topics and set up Google Alerts for them. This will help you stay up to date on any breaking news in the industry. We recommend getting these alerts once a day so your inbox isn’t completely clogged.

All you have to do is type in your search term, select your frequency, and you are ready to go.

You can also choose to do this for certain social media terms or trends. The specificity of your search term will determine how many alerts you receive. For example, the term “social media” is written about every day, but “social media trends in North America” will generate more targeted alerts.

4) See what’s trending on Instagram’s Explore tab.

Instagram’s Explore tab lets users search for terms and hashtags to see what content people are sharing on the platform that day. It also serves users with related searches to see what else people are talking about. You could search for terms like “social media” or #socialmediamarketing to see what’s going on:

5) Join Groups on LinkedIn.

Discussions on LinkedIn about social media for business are extremely lively. Whether there’s an update to Facebook, a new social network that’s making traction, or a new theory on the future of social media, you are sure to find it in LinkedIn groups. Even better, you will meet a lot of other social media enthusiasts with whom you can network and ask questions.

Here are a few we recommend checking out:

• Social Media Marketing
• Social Media Marketing Strategies for Business Professionals
• Innovative Marketing, PR, Sales & Social Media Innovators Innovation Network by Gerald Haman
• Social Media Today
• Digital Marketing: Social Media, Search, Mobile & more

6) Subscribe to social media blogs.

As bloggers ourselves, we’re going to suggest that you subscribe to a few blogs that post content about social media so you don’t miss anything. If there’s a new feature or trend, it will definitely be written about in detail on these blogs.

However, more important than subscribing to these blogs is making sure you set aside time each week to read through your content. Block off as much time as you need to go through the content — that could be anywhere from 15 minutes a day or 15 minutes a week.

Here are a few blogs to get you started that cover social media:

• HubSpot Blogs
• Social Media Examiner
• Social Media Today
• Simply Measured
• Social Media Explorer
• BuzzSumo
• Buffer
• Bitly
• Adweek’s SocialTimes

7) Attend a conference, virtually or in-person.

Take the time to go to a social media conference. This will be a great opportunity to hear from social media experts in the industry and be able to ask the burning questions you may have. You will get the most up-to-date advice about running a social media campaign and what you should know when using social media.

However, it isn’t realistic for all of us to pack up and go to every single conference that talks about social media. If you are unable to attend the conference in person, you should follow along via — you guessed it — social media. Every conference or event will have a corresponding hashtag that you can follow during the conference on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Social media posts are often quotes from speakers at the event, so you’ll still get access to the content being shared.

For example, each year, INBOUND covers top social media trends, among a variety of other topics. The following stream shows people who are tweeting about INBOUND 2016 using the hashtag #INBOUND16.

8) Listen to podcasts.

An easy way to learn about what’s changed in the social media space is to listen to the news on social media marketing podcasts. Podcasts vary in length and provide lots of valuable information from social media experts and influencers in the form of interviews, case studies, and rundowns of the latest news. You can listen to episodes during your commute, at home, or just when you need a break from your computer screen.

We rounded up some of our favorite podcast episodes to learn about what’s new with social media, including:

• Marketing Smarts: How ‘Dolphin Tale’ Brought 800,000 Visitors a Year to Clearwater Marine Aquarium
• The Growth Show: Episode 100: Guy Kawasaki’s Unconventional Advice on Growth
• Hashtagged: Focusing on Creating Content and Community Versus Being an Influencer with Dan Joyce

9) Set up an IFTTT.

IFTTT (“If this, then that”) sets up connections between apps and services you already use for content discovery and sharing. When you set up an IFTTT with a Recipe, you can save time by automatically having social media news and updates served up to you according to your content consumption preferences. Here are a few we recommend setting up to keep track of social media news:

10) Set up a news aggregator on Feedly.

There are various free news aggregation RSS feeds that you can customize and subscribe to to centralize news from a variety of different sources all on one page. I use Feedly, and after subscribing to different marketing and technology publications, I set Feedly as my homepage. That way, I have to glance at the big headlines before starting work each morning.

You can easily search for topics and names of publications to add to your Feedly to keep your knowledge as current as possible.

What’s Trending?

Try out some of our suggestions and let us know if they help you keep track of the latest social media news. We’ve made some predictions about how social media will evolve in the future, so keep an eye out for more news and trends — they’re right around the corner.

What are your strategies for keeping up with social media news and updates? Share with us in the comments below.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in July 2014 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

Marketing is no longer the art form it once was. Today, the companies working relentlessly to master digital marketing are responsible for gathering, analyzing, and applying the data they produce to raise their game. All the while, laggards in the number-crunching revolution are vulnerable to losing to brands that value marketing analytics and make it an essential part of the way they operate.

While the practice of collecting and mining data to inform marketing strategy is now baked into many business strategies, there’s still immense room for improvement in turning intelligence into actionable insights.

In my work with Alexa — whose tools focus on optimizing SEO and PPC strategy — I dug deeper into five digital marketing analytics areas, interviewing experts in SEO, conversion rate optimization, PPC, social media marketing, and email marketing. And I’ve organized those findings into one helpful guide: How the Pros Turn Marketing Analytics into Effective Marketing Strategies.

If you’re looking for a sneak preview, check out the infographic below. This graphic covers fascinating data regarding the application of marketing intelligence and insights around the trials and tribulations companies encounter as they evolve their data-driven initiatives. 

Take a look and consider where your company stands. Have you managed to use marketing intelligence to improve your ROI and accelerate your success?