If you’re a digital marketer, it’s hard to imagine a day spent without social media, even before you arrive at your desk for work.

Think about it. We wake up and immediately check our social media accounts before even getting out of bed, read headlines and trending topics during our commute, and tweet our latest blog posts by the time we arrive at the office.

We schedule posts for the week ahead, film a Facebook Live interview, and report on our engagement analytics, all while keeping an eye on comments and direct messages coming in on Twitter and Facebook. We take an Instagram of our coffee art, record a Snapchat Story of our commute home, and finally sit down at home to catch up on what’s going on on our personal feeds while we eat dinner and watch television.

Sound familiar? The average user spends almost two hours per day on social media, and it’s safe to assume digital marketers spend even more time than that. This raises an important question: Is there ever a good time to take a break from social media?

We get it, this is your job. And we’re not going to suggest that you abandon your brand’s social media content calendar. In fact, please don’t. But in light of the new year, some of our readers might be considering taking a break from their personal social media profiles as part of their resolutions. We’ll dive into reasons you might take a break from social media and how to cut back on some of your social networking to strike a healthier balance.

How Excessive Social Media Activity Can Affect Your Health

In 2016, social media captured 30% of all time spent online. What’s more, a staggering 80% of social media time is spent on mobile devices. Let’s dive into how spending too much time on social media can start to affect your health.

It messes with your sleep.

Excessive exposure to screens can adversely impact the quality and duration of our sleep, especially if screens are used before bed. More specifically, exposure to short-wavelength blue light that’s emitted from tablets, computers, phones, LED lights, and the sun before bed can reduce REM sleep, lessen morning alertness, and increase the time it takes to fall asleep. In the long term, these effects can lead to insomnia and chronic sleep deficiency, which can increase the risk of persistent health issues and some cancers.

Taking a hiatus from social media would reduce time spent looking at screens on mobile devices, which could help alleviate any of the symptoms and health conditions above.

It impacts your mental and emotional wellness.

A break from social media could improve mental wellness, too. SELF Magazine asked the experts if quitting social media had any health benefits. Their answers were varied, but many agreed: Excessive social media use is sometimes linked to loneliness, social anxiety, mood disorders, and depression.

A study from the University of Houston recently linked excessive social media use with depression as a result of social comparison — you know, the feeling when you see what your friends are up to on social media and immediately start comparing yourself to them? As it turns out, feeling jealous or competitive about a former classmate’s promotion or wedding can negatively impact your mood.

It gives you FOMO.

Fear of missing out (FOMO) can be exacerbated if you’re spending a lot of time seeing what other people are doing on social media. But taking a social media break could force you to rely on other modes of communicating with friends that might be more fulfilling, such as chatting on the phone or meeting up in person.

Research shows that some Facebook users believe that their friends lead better, happier lives than they do, so try to bear in mind that people share what they want others to see on social media. Photos and statuses of your friends looking their best at a fun event most likely aren’t indicators that their life is better than yours. It’s important to maintain perspective when scrolling through social media, and if curated, edited content on social impacts your real-life feelings, it could be time for a break.

Our advice? Take stock of how you’re relating to your digital social networks. If you feel comfortable with the amount of time and energy you’re spending on your personal social media accounts, then carry on. If you find yourself staying up late at night checking your feeds, or you’re feeling stressed out by FOMO, taking a short break could be beneficial. You can download time-tracking software to get a breakdown of how much time you spend on different sites, too.

How to Detox From Social Media Without Deleting Your Account

If you think you want a break from your personal social media, here’s our advice:

1) Designate technology-free times.

If you’re feeling burnt out by overexposure to social media, and perhaps to the internet in general, designate time to completely unplug. Maybe it’s for a few hours before bed each night, or maybe it’s during the morning when you don’t have to work online. And when you do step away from the screens, make note of how you feel during that time, and afterwards. Are you less stressed?

A study conducted by the University of Maryland found that students who unplugged from all technology for just one day experienced greater focus and better quality of life. Dr. John Swartzberg warns that unplugging isn’t simple a cure-all for happiness, though. The key is to replace time spent on social media and technology with other beneficial things.

“Unplugging by itself probably won’t work some magic in your life,” Swartzberg notes. “But if you spend that digital-free time focusing on your relationships and activities you enjoy, now that can make your life better.”

2) Set social media time limits for yourself.

Along the same lines as technology-free times, try setting time limits on your personal social media use.

If you need some help committing to those limitations, you can lean on a productivity tool — such as StayFocusd — to restrict the amount of time you spend on websites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more. But before you embark on setting limits for yourself, make sure your goal is realistic. Over the course of a typical weekday, keep a written log of every time you check social media, and if it’s for work or personal reasons. You may be using it a lot more than you think, so make sure your time limits are feasible for you to achieve.

3) Prioritize other activities, hobbies, and passions.

In an article for ThinkGrowth.org, Dr. Nicole Lipkin suggests that you stop making New Year’s resolutions based on the desire to stop a bad behavior. Instead, she says resolutions have better results when they’re framed in terms of what the individual stands to gain. What activities or hobbies would you have more time for if you re-dedicated the time you spend social networking?

Instead of framing it as a social media break, you’re more likely to stick to a resolution if you’re working toward something you want, versus taking something away. Some hobbies even boost brain cognition and memory retention. Try out reading, learning a new language, or sticking to an exercise routine to replace the time you’d normally spend on social media to make your detox extra productive.

4) Turn off mobile notifications.

Because the vast majority of social media networking now takes place on mobile devices, a simple way to discourage checking your feeds over and over might be turning off mobile notifications. If you aren’t constantly notified about what’s going on online, you might be less inclined to check it on your phone so often. Navigate to your phone’s settings and choose how you hear from social media apps on your phone to take a break (indirectly, at least).

How to turn off mobile app notifications for iPhone:

Navigate to your Settings menu, tap Notifications, select the social media app from the menu, and slide the button to the left to disable mobile notifications.

How to turn off mobile app notifications for Android:

Navigate to your Settings menu, where you’ll select Sound and Notification, then App Notifications. From there, select the social media app from the menu, and slide the Block button to the left to disable mobile notifications.

Source: Make Use Of

If you’re ready to unplug, we’ll be here with information on the latest news in social media when you get back. If this article didn’t speak to you and you want to dive deeper, listen to these podcasts filled with ideas for taking your social strategy to the next level.

Will you be taking a social media cleanse? Share with us in the comments below.

Lured by the promise of greater flexibility and more interesting projects, more and more people are leaving their traditional office jobs behind for freelancing careers.

According to a 2016 study, there are currently 55 million freelancers in the US alone. That’s a pretty significant 35% of the US workforce.

If you’re a freelancer, you know how difficult it can be to grow your client base and increase the amount of revenue you earn. To help you out, we’ve compiled a list of tips to help you expand your reach and start earning more. 

7 Ways Freelancers Can Start Earning More

1) Target a highly-specific niche.

One of the biggest reasons freelancers struggle with their new business efforts is because they haven’t clearly defined a specialized niche. According to data released by Upwork, a global freelancing platform, the fastest-growing freelance niches in Q2 of 2016 were all defined by highly-specified skill sets. Here are a few examples of niches that proved lucrative for freelancers in 2016:

• Shopify development
• SEO writing
• Java development
• MongoDB

Notice that each of these areas is narrowed down to a particular platform or specific goal. Prospective clients aren’t searching for broad terms like “developer” or “writer” — they know exactly what they need, and they aren’t wasting their time by filtering through 500 “freelance developer” profiles.

Not only does establishing a freelance niche give you an advantage in getting discovered on search platforms, it can also help you build a reputation as an expert resource in key networks. By defining a unique selling point for your services, you can tap into a community of clients with similar goals and challenges, positioning yourself as the perfect resolution to their exact pain points.

2) Don’t guess your hourly rate — calculate it.

Are you absolutely sure you aren’t undercharging for your services? Determining your hourly rate can sometimes feel like a high-stakes guessing game without a definitive answer.

Ask yourself: are you paying all your bills? Do you find yourself stretched thinly between clients? Are you living the lifestyle you want to be living? If the answer to any of these questions is “No,” it’s probably time to reevaluate your hourly rates.

To simplify the process of determining your ideal hourly rate, we created a free tool that does the calculating for you: The Freelance Hourly Rate Calculator. Simply plug in a few inputs about your ideal lifestyle and business goals, and the calculator will give you an fitting hourly rate. It’s an easy way to check if you’re charging clients enough to build a sustainable and profitable freelance business.

3) Jump on upsell opportunities with existing clients.

Many freelancers overlook one of the biggest potential sources of new business: their existing clients. Concerns about coming off as too pushy or sales-y can cause you to miss out on potentially lucrative opportunities to provide additional value, extend existing contracts, and deepen client relationships.

Upselling doesn’t have to feel like a sleazy, aggressive sales process. Opportunities to upsell occur naturally throughout client relationships — you just need to learn to identify them. For instance, conversations concerning future goals or big project milestones inherently lend themselves to discussing new projects.

The next time you and your client sit down to unpack a successful campaign or discuss a project’s next steps, don’t be shy about mentioning additional areas you can help their business succeed. Just make sure you pitch new services as ideas, not just upgrades or additional costs without context.

4) Explore additional revenue streams.

Earning a steady income as a freelancer is no easy feat. Client work can come and go unreliably, leading to alternating periods of stagnant income and burdening workloads. To help avoid the income whiplash many freelancers have come to see as just part of the job, consider building up some more stable forms of revenue that complement your freelancing business.

Author David Sherwin advises freelancers to build their own products and content as a way to simultaneously supplement their income streams and gain thought-leadership status in their respective niches — which helps grow business in the long run as well.

Consider writing an ebook, starting a blog, participating in a speaker or webinar series, or even building your own app. Whatever your expertise, create content that helps build your audience and offers the chance to earn some additional revenue.

5) Leverage your connections and then leverage them again.

Word-of-mouth is still the most powerful driver of new clients for freelancers, according to a study published in Harvard Business Review. Among freelancers making over $100,000 a year, 84% of their new clients came from good old word-of-mouth.

Image Credit: Harvard Business Review

Traditional networking remains the overwhelmingly dominant way freelancers acquire new customers. As you can see in the Harvard Business Review chart above, other sources like talent marketplaces and social media don’t even begin to compare. Building a reputation worth talking about obviously doesn’t happen overnight, but all freelancers should continually look to their existing networks to mine for new prospects. 

6) Connect with clients on freelance networking sites.

Even though traditional word-of-mouth earns freelancers the most new jobs, getting your name out there has to start somewhere. Today there’s a wide variety of networking websites designed specifically for freelancers to connect with potential clients. Check out a few of the most popular networking sites below:

• Upwork
• 99designs
• Inbound.org
• Toptal
• LinkedIn Profinder
• Freelance Writing Gigs
• iFreelance

It can’t hurt to set up profiles on on freelance online communities — especially if you’re just starting out. It gives potential clients another opportunity to find you and seek out your services.

7) Consider joining forces with other freelancers.

While we often think of freelancing as an inherently solo endeavor, it doesn’t necessarily have to be. In fact, combining forces with another freelancer (or several others) in an adjacent niche can help everyone involved reach more clients and ultimately earn more.

This doesn’t mean you have to launch a startup agency. By sharing resources, referring clients to each other for projects, and even collaborating on large, more demanding projects, you can increase your capacity to take on bigger clients — which increases your earning potential.

What’s your freelance new business plan this year? Let us know in the comments below.

Let me ask: What are some of the biggest problems you’re having with your website?

Here are some we hear often: 

• The design gets outdated so quickly, and we don’t have the resources to update it every 1-2 years.
• I have trouble demonstrating ROI from my website and tracking meaningful analytics.
• I want to make improvements, but don’t have the skills.
• My website isn’t really benefiting my marketing/lead generation strategy.

What if I told you that there’s a new website model that solves all these problems? (I’m not usually one for hyperbole — but this one, I really mean.)

We call it an “inbound website,” and it’s a great partner to an inbound marketing strategy.

Gone are the days when static brochure websites fit the bill: 

You know the type, with basic information and a “contact us” page? Your website must now be an online sales platform for your business — an integral part of marketing to prospects. If your website isn’t selling around the clock, you’re missing out on leads and revenue.

The inbound website is a new way to think about your online presence.

Here’s how it works:

• Your inbound strategy and marketing funnel are baked right into your website.
• You have a dedicated web team (in-house or hired) that monitors performance and makes changes monthly.
• You typically host on a platform that makes growth-driven design easy. 

An inbound website is still a relatively new idea for many marketers, so I’d like to break down how the model works. 

Here’s are the advantages of an inbound website redesign: How it can grow leads and conversions, trade cost for value, and improve ROI for your business.

Download the free eBook, “Grow Leads and Revenue With an Inbound Website Redesign.”

1) You’ll drive conversions by creating a 24/7 marketing funnel.

Oftentimes marketers think about a website as a piece of a marketing strategy.

But starting right now, don’t think about your marketing strategy and your website as two different things.

They’re entwined. Your website is the hub for your marketing and sales strategy — a complete lead generation platform, with marketing strategy baked right in.

How does that work?

Think about how your marketing funnel works with the inbound equation. You have different elements and assets to attract, convert, close, and delight customers.

When you attract attention online, where do you drive traffic? Your website.

Where do you primarily host your blog and content offers? Your website.

Where are people converting on your offers? Your website. 

How do you host forms to gather more information about people, so you can effectively market to them? Well, you know by now.

Your inbound marketing strategy should be the driving force for your website — and should dictate your website’s organization and user pathways.

More simply, you’ll set up your website to align with the inbound methodology. 

Your inbound website funnel should include:

• A blog and search-engine-optimized pages to attract site visitors at the top of your funnel.
• Corresponding conversion elements, like landing pages and calls-to-action, to help convert visitors into leads.
• Forms and other tools to gather lead intel, so you can better nurture leads and eventually close them into customers.
• Personalization and smart content that tailors your website to customers, helping to delight

When you start on your inbound website redesign, you don’t just think about aesthetics — you consider functionality, too. Ideally, you’ll redesign your site’s entire structure in accordance with the inbound methodology. 

That is, each page serves a specific purpose, and corresponds to a specific point in the buyer’s journey.

A visit to your website isn’t random. It’s the first step on a pathway towards conversion. Each click should be logical and clearly defined — One page leads to the next, as you move users further down the journey. 

What are you left with?

A website that eventually works as a 24/7 marketing funnel, driving conversions while you sleep.

2) You’ll generate leads by showing up earlier in the buying cycle.

Did you know that buyers complete more than half of the buyer’s journey before talking to sales?

This means that your buyers are already researching and deciding on solutions long before a sales call.

The most successful companies are present in the first half of this journey — their websites help educate buyers throughout the sales cycle.

Is your website up to the task?

With a traditional website, you may publish basic information about your services. Then, you wait for website visitors to visit “Contact Us” and place a call.

It’s a far stretch from website visitor to final customer, and your website experience doesn’t nurture the gap in between. (Think of a large ravine. Now imagine that you’re expecting people to jump over that ravine to purchase from you. An inbound website model builds the bridge in between.)

With an inbound website, you nurture leads gradually, from first touch to final purchase.  

Your website is paved with content for the buyer’s journey… AKA, those three stages that buyers take before purchasing a product.

1. Awareness — Person is aware they have a problem, and they’re looking to identify and understand it.
2. Consideration — Person becomes aware of potential solutions (including your product or service!) They actively seek to understand these solutions better.
3. Decision — Person is fully bought in to the solution, and is now deciding where, when, and how to purchase. 

Do you see how your website content has a chance to address all three stages? 

By hosting content throughout the buyer’s journey on your website, you write the narrative of first how and then why your solution is best for person’s problem. 

That makes you present for that “zero moment of truth,” the critical moment when people are researching and deciding on where (and how) to purchase.

Without such a content strategy, your business will have a hard time generating leads online and driving sales.

3) You’ll see steady improvement in performance and design.

Are you redesigning your website every few years to keep with current trends? What happens in between redesigns?

Chances are, if your website isn’t improving all the time, it’s missing out on leads and sales.

That’s the genius of a growth-driven design — a fundamental part of the inbound website model.

You wouldn’t ignore your marketing for a year, let alone a month… so you shouldn’t let your website gather dust, either.

Instead of yearly redesigns, you invest in monthly changes to your website design and strategy.

Here’s how it works in a cycle:

1. Your web team (or an agency with an inbound website service) will set or revise SMART goals to pinpoint certain metrics of value to your business. 

2. They will analyze data on your website performance. They’ll monitor things like content conversion, button clicks, popups, design organization, landing pages, and the purchase path as a whole. They can use tools like Hotjar, implement user testing, and watch performance in Google Analytics or your CMS. 

3. Then, they’ll make frequent improvements reacting to the data — ideally, on a monthly basis. Then, repeat with step 1!

Marketers love this model, because they’re always aware of how a website is performing. (Now I can’t imagine going a day without knowing how my website is doing!)

You’re not waiting for the next redesign to roll around to make improvements and fix problem areas… you’re proactively committing to your website’s success.

The result? Your website is constantly showing its best face to buyers.

It’s converting at a higher rate and growing. You can head back to the C-suite to brag about your great ROI!

4) You trade one-time cost for long-term value (and prove ROI). 

When you think about a website redesign, you might be planning the appearance of your website.

But what about the functionality? What about lead generation potential, and conversion opportunities?

Many businesses use periodic website redesigns to keep their websites up-to-date — and they focus mainly on aesthetics.

This can get costly for several reasons:

1. You go into a redesign without much strategy, so you inject money without promise of ROI.
2. Redesigns can (and often do) go over budget and take longer than planned.
3. In between redesigns, your website isn’t growing and improving — meaning your investment only generates return as long as that strategy is relevant.

With an inbound website, you don’t need to cram all of your strategy for the year into one redesign — you’re constantly improving.

You can generate more value by investing month-to-month in incremental changes, instead of one big website redesign cost up-front.

There’s also immense value in being able to prove ROI: According to the 2016 State of Inbound report, organizations that can calculate ROI are 1.6X as likely to receive higher budgets. 

With an inbound website model, you’ll always be monitoring data, so you’re aware of how your site’s performing — and proving that your changes are having an impact.

5) You’ll qualify contacts with smart content and baked-in lifecycle strategy.

 According to the Annuitas Group, nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads.

It’s simple: Better educated leads have more trust in your solutions, and make more confident investments.

What does your lead nurturing process look like now? 

For many marketers, it’s either manual and cumbersome, or nonexistent.

Are you manually moving people in and out of different lists, emails, and processes — trying to figure out where the heck they are in the buying process so you can tailor to them?

Or, are you not nurturing leads at all, and applying a wide umbrella experience to everyone?

Either situation is a mess… and leaves business leads on the table.

When an inbound website is set up correctly, though, it creates a complete lead nurturing process automatically.

This makes qualifying leads a snap.

With clear pathways for the buyer’s journey baked into your website, you’ll have an idea of where people fall in your sales cycle based on which pages they visit, which offers they’ve downloaded, and which forms they’ve filled out.

You’re not piecing together different actions to try and understand intent — you’ve set up a complete customer lifecycle with your website content.

Qualifying people is as simple as seeing how far leads have advanced down it. (This is made even easier with a lead database system like HubSpot, which clearly shows how people have engaged.) 

How to get started with an inbound website redesign

Maybe you’ve downloaded a website template and are wondering how it’s going to generate leads and produce ROI.

Maybe you’re dabbling in inbound strategy elements — like blog posts, landing pages, and calls-to-action — but aren’t seeing them come together.

An inbound website will give direction to your strategy and web design.

Real success comes in combining both elements: a solid inbound marketing strategy and an inbound website to execute it. 

We see many people start with strategy planning and then try to redesign their website — but they really must happen in tandem. 

Here’s how to get started with your own inbound website redesign: 

1. Download the free “Inbound Websites” eBook if you’d like to learn more about the process and how it grows revenue.
2. Decide if your web team could handle an integration with your marketing efforts — or if you need to partner with an inbound website agency.
3. Analyze your current web hosting platform and CRM to see if they can easily sustain the inbound website model.

A note on platform: Your website’s hosting platform can make a huge difference to your inbound website.

If your website’s design relies on hard code, you’ll need someone with marketing background and coding chops (not to mention a lot of free time) to monitor the site and make improvements.

Free platforms like WordPress, on the other hand, can be a great easy-to-use hosting option. But these often don’t relate as closely to your marketing elements… and you might have to spend time managing different marketing tools. 

If you’re able to host on an automation platform like HubSpot, however, you can accomplish a lot very simply. 

For example, you can continually monitor the performance of each page. You can see conversion rates on your landing pages and calls-to-action. You can set up easy A/B tests for different elements, like forms and buttons, to see what performs better. 

Marketing automation software also tracks how each lead interacts with your website, so you can improve pages based on actual user behavior.

With HubSpot or a similar platform, you’re able to more easily monitor the success of marketing elements on your website, which makes monthly improvements smooth and effective. 

No matter which platforms and tools you choose, the principle of an inbound website is what’s important. 

Let’s recap. What is an inbound website model? 

• Your inbound strategy and marketing funnel are baked right into your website.
• You have a dedicated web team (in-house or hired) that monitors performance and makes changes monthly.
• You typically host on a platform that makes growth-driven design easy.

 Grab the free eBook, “Grow Leads and Revenue With an Inbound Website,” to learn more!

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Context, a publication brought to you by Medium’s Creative Strategy team. Follow the publication to keep abreast of the best ideas in brand storytelling.

Two years ago if you asked me to explain the concept of content marketing I would start by talking to you about planets.

Imagine you are a marketer standing all alone  —  like The Little Prince  — in the middle of a small planet. That planet is your website. Today it doesn’t get many visitors because it’s too small to notice and the universe is filled with bigger, more interesting planets.

But like planets, as you build up the mass of content around you, your website grows, and your gravitational pull becomes stronger. More content, keywords, and inbound links pulls more people your way. Content becomes your magnet.

This fundamental principle of content marketing has been a key part of HubSpot’s marketing playbook. Our “planet,” comprised of our website and blog, continues to fuel our company’s growth at a higher rate than any other marketing tactic. You may find it odd then, that about a year ago, we very quietly walked to the edge of our home planet and stepped off.

Amazing space cat by William Herring

Getting Behind the Idea of Publishing Off-Site

We started ThinkGrowth.org, an off-site publication on Medium.com. November 2016 marked the one year anniversary of ThinkGrowth.org and I wanted to share a little bit about what we’ve learned: why we did it, where we stumbled, and  — because benchmarks were hard to come by when we were getting started  — what our numbers looked like throughout the year.

Grab your space helmets. Here we go.

Let me make this very clear: you do not own your audience. Regular monthly visitors, big subscriber lists, well-trodden conversion paths give us the illusion that we own the attention of our audience  — but it is only an illusion. Attention is fleeting, and must constantly be earned.

While a lot of content discovery still happens through search, more and more people are consuming articles directly from platforms like Medium, Facebook, and podcasts. Medium has done a remarkable job with editorial curation and a loyal readership has followed, with a lot of this being driven by mobile. According to 2016 research from eMarketer, 86% of time spent on mobile devices is spent in apps rather than internet browsers. Apps like Medium have become new discovery platforms for content.

And these new discovery platforms come with notable differences in behavior. On the open web, people are searching, but on Medium, people come to spend time reading. This leads to much higher engagement on Medium and it’s this engagement, not search behavior, that fuels further discovery.

As the saying goes, sometimes you have to lose sight of your own shore to explore new lands. We have always tried to build our content strategy by paying attention to our readers over ourselves. Simply put, we decided to publish on Medium because we wanted to be where our readers are.

Breaking Through the New Publication Plateau

We’ve long admired the transparency of companies like Buffer who make a practice of openly sharing their own experiences and data. So, here’s our data from the last year. It wasn’t always pretty.

We started unassumingly on Medium. We didn’t launch with a bang or promotional push. We decided to just get some content up on the platform and see what it did. Our early posts were mostly cross-published content from the HubSpot blog (Medium makes it very easy to do this without hurting your own SEO). These first cross-posted pieces back in November of 2015 netted a few hundred views each, not too exciting.

But we quickly found that certain content just does better on Medium. As I mentioned, people come to Medium to read, not search for information on a specific topic. This makes Medium an inherently social platform where opinion pieces, personal accounts, or reaction posts often have a stronger performance than on our home blog.

Then a few months in, we attached the HubSpot handle to the publication. We saw a small jump as our social followers started to be able to find us and our content better, but the volume of views still wasn’t outstanding. We were making progress, but it was slow.

Optimizing for People After Years of Optimizing for Search

The first break-out post we ever had flew to the top of our most-read list mainly because it was highlighted by Ev Williams. And yes, while Ev is the mayor of Medium, this isn’t about Ev in particular, but rather the underlying point that Medium is a network. Anyone who has built up a following on Medium, whether it be the founder or a talented writer can have a major ripple effect on the visibility of an article just by interacting with it.

We’ve seen that interactions from highly followed readers carry the heaviest weight, but any interaction can make a big difference. We ran an analysis on the correlation between various values and views for all of our articles so far. For us, the most strongly correlated factor with views is recommends (r=0.77). What I like about this lever is that it really is about the quality of the writing. Green-hearted recommendations aren’t typically fooled by click-bait titles, keyword stuffing, or any other shortcut. Recommends come after considered reading.

Another way we started optimizing for people was opening up our publication doors. We’ve seen our best success by finding writers on the rise on Medium and syndicating content they’ve created  — exposing both them and ourselves to a new audience. Guest contributors have fueled the growth of our audience and brought in a diversity of perspectives that have made our entire anthology better. We’ve published a piece from the CEO of Litmus Paul Farnell and one from the CEO of Mattermark Danielle Morrill. We’re seeing that the best content on ThinkGrowth.org isn’t about us, nor is it necessarily by us.

Discovering the Power of a Built-In Audience

People talk a lot about the power of Medium’s built-in audience. What they don’t tell you is how expansive and varied that audience can be. One of our biggest concerns when getting started with Medium is that we would be preaching to the same choir. But after doing some analysis of our comparative audience across the two sites we discovered that only about 10% of our Medium followers were previously known to us at HubSpot.com.

This is incredibly powerful. HubSpot has been writing content for more than ten years. Our onsite blogs get more than 4.5 million visitors a month. Discovering this new audience pocket feels like we’re showing up a friend’s party after 10 years of hosting at our own place, and we find a whole new group of wonderful people, and they’re like, “Hey! It’s cool you finally left your own little planet.”

Deciding How to Measure It All

Measuring success on Medium is tricky. First, the rules for success are so different. Second, Medium stats are detached from the rest of our analytics. Third, Medium’s analytics dashboard just doesn’t allow you to go very deep. You can look at total number of views, follower count, number of interactions, time spent reading and so on — but these are very surface level.

Fans of the musical Rent at HubSpot will always remember the day our publication crossed five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes of reading time.

The day we discovered Sam Mallikarjunan was a Rent fan.

I’ll admit that as VP of Content I’m always a seduced by a good up-and-to-the-right readership chart. But neither of those may be entirely right when you think about what constitutes success on this platform.

If Medium really is a hybrid between a social network and a publishing platform, and success is determined by how engaging your content is, it may make sense to look at how active that follower base is. Heading into our second year as a publication we still plan on tracking everything (we’re data people after all) but we’d like to start paying particularly close attention to our number of weekly active readers. This is a much higher bar than views and followers alone, but we think this is the best way to hold ourselves accountable as a publication.

A T. Blake Littwin original  — used in Brian Halligan’s reflections on evolving HubSpot from a startup to “scale-up.”

Looking Ahead

Writing on Medium started as an experiment. Something that could help us stay on top of how reading habits are changing (And boy, are they changing). It wasn’t always the easiest year. We spent months studying our readership, reading advice from Medium editors (Elizabeth Tobey in particular), and talking with peers of ours like Kevan Lee who were also exploring the platform. Thanks to that advice and frankly the ruthless, almost superhuman, focus of Sam Mallikarjunan, Erik Devaney, and most recently Janessa Lantz we’re starting to get there.

We’ve learned enough in the last year to see the potential that exists when as a brand you take the risk of stepping beyond your home planet to explore new channels, platforms, and audiences. I’m happy to say that on the anniversary of our first exploration onto Medium, we’ve decided to increase our investment in that potential by spinning up a brand new team at HubSpot focused entirely on “offsite” content strategy.

We’re going to continue to iterate our publication to make it better. In the words of ThinkGrowth.org writer Sam Mallikarjunan, “We feel good about the growth we’ve achieved with the new blog and just a few writers, but there are even cooler things we haven’t done yet on Medium.”

Stay tuned.

The world is abuzz with tech talk. At the forefront, it seems, is artificial intelligence (AI) — the “technology that can do things humans can uniquely do, whether it’s talk, see, learn, socialize, and reason,” HubSpot’s Market Research Analyst Mimi An explains.

We’re quickly adopting this technology — 55% of us use voice assistant technology, for example, on a daily or weekly basis. And it certainly doesn’t stop there — messaging apps are quickly gaining traction in the AI space, too.

Two of the more notable — and rivaling — examples of this technology are Siri and Google Assistant. The latter is quite new, having just debuted in May 2016, when it hinted at the release of the Google Pixel, the mobile device to come integrated with it.

The natural question, of course: Which is better?

Zlated Media ventured to find out, putting both personal assistant apps to the test. As it turns out, the answer isn’t so simple, and neither one completely outranks the other on all fronts. The findings were worked into this helpful infographic, depicting side-by-side results of how each app functioned in response to a given task or query.

So, is there a winner? Let us know what you think.

It always feels way more intimidating to present your ideas to senior management than it does to share them with peers, wouldn’t you agree? A room full of higher-ups has a completely unique agenda and way of evaluating proposals due to their responsibility for the success of the company — and many of us marketers don’t know how to tailor our presentations to their preferences.

To make matters worse, a recent study found that office workers typically get just three minutes of consistent attention before their colleagues lose focus due to smartphones or other distractions. In order to grab and retain attention, presenters need to throw out the traditional bulleted-list delivery playbook and focus on telling a story their audience can connect with.

We’ve teamed up with the folks at Prezi to bring you the foundational free guide, How to Give a Killer Presentation to Impress Your Boss. It’s got tips on:

• Defining the why behind the what to make your audience sit up and lean in
• How to an ROI proposal to prove the value of your ideas
• Structuring your presentation for maximum efficiency
• How to respond to negative body language and earn back lost attention

Click here to download How to Give a Killer Presentation to Impress Your Boss

When it comes to building a memorable brand, it’s all about consistency.

When you’re shopping for your favorite cereal or coffee at the grocery store, you want to be able to spot it from a mile away.

The best brands stick in our brains because their presence is defined by the repetition of the same logo, fonts, colors, and images. Once we see them enough, they become instantly recognizable, bringing us a clear sense of reliability and security.

Developing a consistent brand starts with creating a brand style guide. These branding rule books help graphic designers, marketers, web developers, community managers, and even product packaging departments all stay on the same page, and present a unified vision of the brand to the public.

We’ve compiled a list of some awesome brand style guides to use as inspiration for your next branding project or website redesign. Check them out below:

20 Examples of Brand Style Guides

1) Medium

See the full style guide here.

Image via Behance

2) Wolf Circus Jewelry

See the full style guide here.

Image via Issuu

3) Ollo

See the full style guide here.

Image via Bibliothèque Design

4) Skype

See the full style guide here.

Image via Issuu

6) Barre & Soul

See the full style guide here.

Image via Issuu

7) Spotify

See the full style guide here.

Image via Issuu

8) Jamie Oliver

See the full style guide here.

Image via Issuu

9) Herban Kitchen

See the full style guide here.

Image via Issuu

10) Urban Outfitters

See the full style guide here.

Image via Issuu

11) Love to Ride

See the full style guide here.

Image via Issuu

12) Barbican

See the full style guide here.

Image via Issuu

13) I Love New York

See the full style guide here.

Image via Issuu

14) Cisco

See the full style guide here.

Image via Issuu

15) University of the Arts Helsinki

See the full style guide here.

Image via Behance

16) NJORD

See the full style guide here.

Image via Behance

17) Espacio Cultural

See the full style guide here.

Image via Behance

18) Alienware

See the full style guide here.

Image via Issuu

19) Netflix

See the full style guide here.

Image via Issuu

20) Scrimshaw Coffee

See the full style guide here.

Image via Issuu

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

In December 2016, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that Facebook has evolved from a traditional social media network into a new type of media company — one that offers a hybrid technology and news platform where content creators and readers publish, share, and talk about what’s happening in the world.

The announcement marks a shift from Zuckerberg’s previous statements that Facebook would not become a media company, and the significance is meaningful. Facebook has started taking greater responsibility for content shared on the platform, and over the past several months, it has rolled out many new features that are highly relevant for content creators and social media managers to learn more about.

We know it’s challenging to keep up with all of the breaking technology news out there, so we’ve compiled a list of recent changes and new features to Facebook for marketers to plan for.

7 New Facebook Features You May Have Missed

January 2017

Facebook Journalism Project

Facebook cemented its role as a new kind of media company with the announcement of the Facebook Journalism Project, its initiative to collaborate more closely with journalists and content creators publishing on the platform.

According to Facebook Director of Product Fidji Simo, here’s how the Facebook Journalism Project will work:

1) Facebook will work with news outlets to develop new ways of creating and distributing content on the platform.

Facebook wants to work with news organizations to help make new content formats, such as Facebook Live, 360 video, and Instant Articles, work better for publishers. Simo also mentions an interest in creating new products that better suit readers who are getting news from the platform — approximately 66% of Facebook users. One feature Facebook is launching under this initiative is the ability for publishers to share multiple Instant Articles in a single post, like a mini digital newspaper. Here’s what it will look like:

Source: Facebook

2) Facebook will provide partner journalists more tools for analyzing content performance.

Facebook Page administrators can now designate contributors so different journalists can post content on the platform, similar to a traditional newsroom. Additionally, the Facebook Journalism Project will provide more video analytics insights for publishers on the platform. Now, video content creators will be able to see more meaningful metrics for how live and regular videos perform on Facebook, such as total minutes viewed and total engagements.

Source: Facebook

3) Facebook will continue its initiative to fight fake news and promote greater news literacy.

After news broke that fake news stories outperformed real news stories on the platform during the U.S. election, Facebook announced new initiatives to make it harder to publish and easier to identify hoax news. The initiative include working with third-party fact checkers, disrupting financial incentives for hoaxers to post these stories, and making it easy for Facebook users to dispute content that they believe is fake. This system will make the content appear lower in the News Feed, produce a warning to readers that the content is under review, and the content can’t be promoted or turned into an ad. Here’s how disputed stories and warnings will appear in the News Feed:

Source: Facebook

The Facebook Journalism Project was just recently announced, and we’ll report back on any new publishing formats or changes as they evolve. For now, content creators should experiment with new capabilities and analytics as they become available in order to better measure their social media strategy’s efficacy. Video insights in particular will be highly useful as it becomes easier for marketers to create more video content.

Facebook Live Broadcasts From Computers

Facebook Live, which lets users broadcast live video from their mobile phones directly onto the News Feed, launched in May 2016. It quickly experienced rapid growth, and Facebook recently announced that Pages will now be able to broadcast live video from computers in addition to mobile phones.

This update will make it easier for users to go live, which has its pros and cons. Filming from a laptop or desktop computer keeps the camera steadier than holding a mobile phone, which improves video quality for broadcasters. On the other hand, part of Facebook Live’s appeal is in the ability to start recording a remarkable event at a moment’s notice while you’re on the go. If Facebook Live videos are staged and filmed statically from a computer, will they be as popular among viewers?

I asked HubSpot Social Media Marketing Manager Marissa Emanuele what she thought of the latest changes to Facebook Live. “The ability to broadcast Facebook Live from your laptop will certainly change the content landscape. They’re moving away from the real time/in the moment feel, and shifting to a more professional, polished tone. This could drive more consumer adoption in the future, as it can feel more natural to be on your laptop’s webcam versus holding a camera,” she explained.

Mid-Roll Video Advertisements

Recode reported that Facebook will start giving video content creators the option to insert ads into videos at least 90 seconds in length after viewers have watched them for at least 20 seconds. Facebook sources said the platform would sell the ads and share 55% of the sales with publishers — the same share that YouTube offers.

Facebook users watch 100 million hours of video per day, and most video content creators haven’t generated money because Facebook hasn’t permitted ads that run before the video content starts (as is on YouTube). When these mid-roll advertisements launch, publishers will have to create highly engaging content in order to a) get viewers to watch for at least 20 seconds, and b) continue watching the video after the ad plays.

“Mid-roll video advertisements will incentivize marketers to create video content that doesn’t just chase vanity metrics (such as views) but also focuses on retention,” Emanuele notes. “This should push all of us to create stronger content that resonates with our audiences.”

For now, marketers should beef up their video marketing skills if they want to monetize their content when this feature becomes available.

August 2016

More Independent Messenger Platform

Facebook’s messaging app, Messenger, has 1 billion monthly active users around the world, and Facebook has been evolving the app into a content sharing and communicating platform in its own right.

In 2015, users could start signing up for Messenger without a Facebook account. In June 2016, Messenger for Android users could start sending and receiving SMS messages. Most recently, Messenger started testing a new “Add Contact” feature that allows users to connect with people on the app without becoming friends on Facebook.

Here’s what that looks like:

Source: BuzzFeed

With over 4 billion monthly active users around globe, messaging apps are growing rapidly and changing the way people communicate, even outside social networks. The new features Messenger is unrolling make it more independent from Facebook itself and make it easier for new users to start communicating on the platform.

Businesses are starting to use messaging apps for customer service and communication, and Facebook is making it easier for Messenger to become a giant in that space, without even the need for a Facebook account. Social media managers should start thinking about the evolving way their audience prefers to communicate and if Messenger, or another messaging app like WeChat or WhatsApp, would be a good fit.

June 2016

More Content From Family and Friends in the News Feed

Facebook changed its News Feed algorithm to prioritize organic content from users’ Facebook Friends over content from Pages and other publishers. This move represents an effort on Facebook’s part to maintain user interest and engagement by showing them more of the content they want from the people they know, but it represents a potentially big blow to content creators who rely on Facebook for referral traffic.

For an idea of how influential Facebook is for publishers, consider this: Parse.ly found that Facebook makes up 41% of all referral traffic, which is more than Google properties. With this algorithm change in mind, content creators should ramp up their other traffic strategies, such as organic search engine optimization and email marketing to make up for traffic that may take a dip from Facebook. Marketers should also invest in quality Facebook content creation and post photos, videos, and links that followers will want to share with their circles to drive social media engagement that way.

April 2016

Save to Facebook From Around the Web

Save to Facebook was introduced in 2014, and it’s essentially Facebook’s version of Pocket or Evernote Web Clipper: It lets users save Facebook posts for coming back to and consuming at a later time. Two years later, roughly 250 million people are using this feature, and Facebook announced a new button to make it even more popular. Developers can add a Save button to any web content so visitors can save articles for viewing the next time they’re on Facebook, even if they’re looking at the content on a different website.

Here’s what it looks like in action:

Source: The Verge

Marketers could add these buttons to their articles to drive more article views and time spent on-page for busy scrollers looking to save content for reading on their commute or after work hours. “Save to Facebook is a dream come true for long form content marketers,” says Emanuele. “You no longer need to worry about closing the deal immediately. Instead, users will be able to save meaningful content that they want to read later, meaning your content doesn’t need to be created for quick, immediate consumption.”

March 2016

Live Video in the News Feed

Facebook determined that users spent 3X more time watching Facebook Live videos that regular videos, so they announced that they would begin ranking them higher in the News Feed in response to users’ preferences.

Brands who are recording live videos have the opportunity to drive even more engagement with this shift in priorities, which in turn helps their content be discovered and shared more widely. Users can also get notified when Pages they follow start recording live, so if live video isn’t part of marketers’ strategies already, it’s a great way to earn more meaningful engagement on the platform. If marketers are looking for inspiration, here’s a blog post rounding up examples of great Facebook Live videos.

What’s Ahead

Facebook changes its platform and rolls out new products all the time, so we’ll keep marketers informed as the social network turned news company continues to evolve. In the meantime, content creators should experiment with new features to see if audiences like engaging with them. For more ideas how brands can use Facebook to meet their goals, check out this blog post.

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

Experimenting with your marketing is critical for success in online marketing these days. Marketing experiments — like testing the copy of an email subject line or different landing page designs — can help you and your team learn quickly what leads to the most email opens or the highest conversion rate. The more you experiment, the faster you’ll learn.

The best marketing teams explore new ideas and experiment on a regular basis. But we know how messy planning experiments and keeping track of results can get if you’re not organized. Real, sustainable growth will only come if you build a strong, scalable growth experiment process.

To help you plan and manage your experiments, we’ve created a brand new 2017 Marketing Experiments Calendar you can download and customize yourself. This calendar will teach you how to build out processes for prioritizating, implementating, and measuring the results of your experiments. Use it to:

• Brainstorm experiment ideas, and build a backlog.
• Map out the steps needed for a new experiment.
• Prioritize your ideas using the PIE method.
• Record your results and plan next steps.

Ready to start planning your marketing experiments for the year? Download our 2017 Marketing Experiments Calendar today.

Productivity is one of those things that’s too general to master quickly. You might be trying to get more done in a day, procrastinate less, or accomplish a lot with minimal resources. All of those goals fall under the “productivity” umbrella. So how do you prioritize them?

Depending on where you are in your career, and what your goals are for the first quarter, you might have different productivity goals. Once you know what they are, however, you can prioritize them — and determine the resources you need to knock them out of the park.

We had a look at some of our favorite productivity posts over the past year, and chose the tips we believe will be the most applicable as we work our way through the next few months. Have a look, and see which ones will help you achieve the most this quarter.

11 Tips for the Most Productive Q1 Ever

1) Invest in personal assistant apps.

In 2016, Google Home was released in the U.S., furthering the conversations about voice-activation, AI, and the Internet of Things. But more than that, people wanted to know: Which is better, Google Home, or Alexa?

Technically speaking, not all personal assistant tools are created equal. Each has its own requirements, cost, and features. That’s why we looked at five of them, and evaluated which needs are best met by each one. Curious to know which one will fit best into your day-to-day? Check out our top picks in “5 Personal Assistant Tools That Actually Make Life Easier.”

2) Make the most of your downtime.

Between work and personal commitments, the modern lifestyle can be physically and emotionally draining. After all, that’s why we take vacations — or, at least, the 53% of us who aren’t afraid to take time off.

It’s kind of crazy that close to half of us feel ashamed to use that time, isn’t it? We shouldn’t be — it’s a great opportunity to slow down and do the things that don’t normally fit into our daily schedules. But once you do take a breather, take heed, and don’t overbook.

Instead, use that time to address some of the things that, as my colleague Sophia Bernazzani puts it, “have been collecting dust in your mental backlog.” Things like learning a new language, catching up with friends you’ve been meaning to check in with, or any number of things from her list of 20 ideas for productive things to do during your downtime.

3) Bookmark better resources.

It seems like there are just so many online resources for marketers, and especially for bloggers — just look at what a single Google search yields.

You might already have your favorites among the many options, but if not, here’s another place where you can prioritize according to your goals. Whether it’s staying organized, coming up with ideas, or promoting your posts, that’s what bookmarked sites are for — to keep all of your best, helpful resources in one place.

Not sure where to start? Check out the HubSpot blogging team’s ultimate list of websites that we think every blogger should bookmark.

4) Use browser extensions.

Browser extensions are one of those things that can be so helpful, but not enough of us take advantage of them. They can aid in everything from avoiding weak language in emails, to keeping the internet’s distractions at bay.

That’s why we’re partial to Google Chrome browser extensions, which can be highly valuable to busy marketers who want to make their time online more efficient. Check out our list of 28 of the best Chrome extensions for social media, SEO, content sourcing, blogging, and more.

5) Plan your content.

There’s a reason why 69% of marketers are using social media to build a following — it works, but only when best leveraged. A big part of that is making it manageable, and approaching its use strategically.

Sounds great in theory, but how does one go about that approach? Like many other things in life and in business, an effective social media presence requires proactive planning. After all, nobody wants to become one of those brands whose Facebook Page hasn’t been updated in months, so it’s important to plan and schedule your social media posts in advance.

When you set out to plan your content, check out these nine questions that marketers should ask themselves. They’ll help you break the process into manageable steps, with some helpful tools and resources to make it easier along the way.

6) Use your commute.

Commuting gets such a bad rap when in actuality, every minute spent standing on the train platform or waiting at a traffic light is time that could be spent getting something done. 

Check out our roundup of 15 easy ways to make your commute more productive, and you might even start looking forward to that part of your day. (A friendly note to drivers: We don’t advocate the use of any of the apps on that list that involve reading or typing.)

7) Try a new approach to project management.

Are you a member of the Multiple Productivity Tools Club? If so, you’ve likely spent more time than you’d like on such tasks as searching for an email, assignment card, or document — because you have so many tools and systems. Maybe that’s why over half of us are excited by the prospect of automation replacing tedious workflow tasks.

But in addition to right kind of technology, these tasks can be made more efficient with the right approach to team collaboration. That starts with strong communication among everyone working on the project, as well as the right kinds of tools — in moderation — that make the many pieces of project management more cohesive.

To help you get started, we put together some tips on optimal collaboration, to help marketers approach projects as productively as possible.

8) Experiment with to-do list styles.

Did you know that to-do lists date back to the 1700s? Since then, they’ve taken on many formats but still serve the purpose: to plan what we need to do.

Still, to-do lists are hardly one-size-fits all, and what works best for me, for example, might not be the best style for you. That’s why we compiled seven different to-do list styles to help you make the most of your daily responsibilities.

Plus, if you’re into history, there are some fun facts in there — as it turns out, your to-do list might not look so different from Benjamin Franklin’s.

9) Avoid guilt.

Simply put: Feeling bad about being unproductive will only make you less productive. And yet, we’re living among a guilt epidemic — in fact, one in five people cite it as the reason why they don’t take breaks.

But not taking breaks — and feeling bad about it, to boot — really sabotages the quality of our work. Want to figure out why we keep doing it, and how to stop it? Learn about seven ways we let guilt overtake our productivity, and some best practices for kicking those bad habits.

10) Manage long-term deadlines.

So, we’ve covered the fun facts about to-do lists. But while those can be great for day-to-day tasks, where do long-term deadlines and goals fit in?

As immediate responsibilities arise, it’s easy to lose focus on things like monthly or quarterly deadlines. It’s what Bernazzani alluded to as the “‘doom loop’ — a cycle of putting off tasks, feeling anxiety and guilt, and consequently working with lower productivity and efficiency due to these negative feelings.”

But that’s why she put together a list of tools that’ll help you complete long-term projects on time — without losing motivation. These resources can aid in the consistent progress towards your goals, and prevent you from letting that 90-days-from-now deadline fall by the wayside.

11) Learn more — faster.

Last year, my colleague, Lindsay Kolowich, posed an interesting question: “How long does it take to acquire a new skill?”

As it turns out, there’s quite a bit of misunderstood information out there in response to that question. One 1993 study published by the American Psychological Association, for example, claims that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become an expert.

Look again: That’s to become an expert. Not to learn. To learn, Kolowich writes, “is to take a deliberate, intelligent approach to your learning,” especially when you want to do it quickly. And to help you do just that, she outlines 10 steps to help you make learning a lifelong — and enjoyable — journey.

How Are Those Goals Looking?

Do they seem as insurmountable as they might have when you first returned from the holidays? With these tips, they shouldn’t.

The key is to remember that we’re not superhuman — hence that whole idea behind avoiding guilt — and even the best laid plans often go awry. But no one can expect anything more than your best. And with these resources, your best can be even better.

How are you making Q1 your most productive yet? Let us know in the comments.