It’s the start of another year, which means you’re probably back in the office after vacation, hard at work on your New Year’s resolution. And if you’re a marketer, you may also be fine-tuning your strategic plan for success in 2017.

We have a variety of resources for getting your marketing plan organized for the upcoming year — between the 2017 marketing strategy kit, the social media content calendar, and the blog editorial calendar, we’ve got your content marketing strategy covered.

But before you finalize your social media strategy for the year, it’s important to look at what’s ahead to ensure that you’re allocating your time and efforts appropriately. In this blog post, we’ll dive into what happened in 2016, what we think social media managers should expect in 2017, and how to plan for these changes.

7 Predictions for Social Media in 2017

1) Live video content will become even bigger.

Live video content is on the rise — in fact, 14% of marketers experimented with it in 2016, according to Social Media Examiner, and 43% plan to use interactive video this year, according to new survey data from Wyzowl.

While there are a ton of streaming sites and platforms out there, both Periscope and Facebook Live are among the most popular — and they have the numbers to prove it.

In its 2016 annual recap, Periscope noted that users watched 110 years of live video every day using the app. And just this New Year’s Eve, live streaming on Facebook reached record-breaking numbers around the globe:

Source: Facebook

In addition to Facebook Live and Periscope, Instagram and Twitter launched their versions of live video streaming in November and December 2016, respectively.

So where should you be planning to focus your live streaming efforts in 2017?

Good question. First and foremost, you’ll want to consider where your audience already spends time on social media — and try to connect with them on those networks.

As for what to broadcast, there are a lot of brands out there that are nailing this strategy across several use cases. For example, many brands are using Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to live stream events. This approach aims to keep your followers engaged with your brand by bringing an event they otherwise might not be able to attend directly to their screens.

At INBOUND 2016, HubSpot shared Facebook Live interviews with speakers so our followers who couldn’t join us in Boston still had the opportunity to learn from the experts:

Brands can also use live video for customer service by hosting Q&A sessions and product demonstrations. These videos drive engagement because hosts can ask for comments, questions, and feedback from the audience.

Brands can also stream multiple live videos in a series, providing more opportunities for engagement, which Facebook said happens at a rate 10X higher with live videos. Here’s an example of a weekly series from Allure, where hosts demonstrate and review a new type of lipstick and ask the audience for questions and what they want to see in the next installment:

This year, keep an eye out for new features rolling out to the different live streaming platforms to amp up your video strategy. For example, Facebook Live is launching 360-degree capabilities, which would be a neat way to record a crowded event, a beautiful landscape, or a behind-the-scenes tour.

(Read more about successful strategies for Facebook Live in this blog post.)

2) Brands will lean on messaging apps more than ever.

If you’re only thinking about messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and WeChat as alternatives to traditional text messaging, think again — messaging apps are used by 4 billion users worldwide, and there’s tremendous opportunity for brands to leverage this presence.

More specifically, many brands are using messaging apps to communicate one-on-one with customers, which is completely changing the way customer service gets done. These apps provide a faster and easier way for customers to get the assistance they need, rather than being placed on hold or waiting for a returned email. Deploying messaging for customer service is more scalable and cost-effective for businesses, and by providing a better experience for the customer, brands can solve their problems quickly and retain them more easily.

For example, Hyatt uses Facebook Messenger for 24-hour customer service, where guests can make reservations, ask questions, and get recommendations for their trips:

Source: Digiday

HubSpot Vice President of Marketing, Meghan Keaney Anderson, predicts that messaging apps will eventually become a part of every online interaction. “Maybe we shouldn’t be thinking about messaging in terms of apps at all,” Anderson notes, “but rather as an evolving infrastructure.”

So far, Anderson’s theory is well-supported by the stats: A quarter of all apps that are downloaded are abandoned after just one use — except for messaging apps. In 2017 and beyond, marketers should anticipate less social networking and more messaging for instant, real-time connection with audiences.

3) Social media ecommerce will become a powerful avenue for sales.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest offer ways for users to purchase products from directly within their apps, and Snapchat started testing and rolling out ecommerce features in the spring of 2016. Check it out below on Instagram:

According to a survey from Aimia, 56% of consumers said they followed brands on social media to browse products for sale, and 31% of online shoppers say they’re using social media specifically to look for new items to purchase.

Brands should leverage these shopping habits when thinking about their social media strategy for 2017. People come to social media to interact with interesting content, so instead of sharing a photo of a product on Instagram with a “Buy Now” call-to-action, share gift ideas and product trends (24% and 16% of survey respondents relied on social media for these, respectively) and encourage online shopping without directly asking for it.

Another idea? Product demonstration videos on social media. According to research from Animoto, 4X as many customers prefer to watch a video about a new product, so share them on social media to encourage online shoppers. Here’s an unconventional “Will It Blend?” product demonstration from Blendtec to get the wheels turning:

4) Virtual reality will find its way into more and more marketing experiences.

Virtual reality is still new to the marketing scene, and in 2017, we predict the market will get even more popular. What’s unique about virtual reality is that it encourages engagement by offering an immersive, memorable experience unlike any other medium — and brands are quickly recognizing that value.

For example, TOMS uses virtual reality to shed light on the mission and impact customers are having. Its mission, “One for One,” refers to its pledge to match with each pair of shoes purchased a new pair for a child in need around the world. While visiting children who received new shoes during a trip to Peru, TOMS shot the following 360-degree virtual reality video to create a firsthand account of the impact this initiative is making:

What’s so great about this video is how transportative it is. Most customers might not be planning a trip to Peru, but all of them can see the direct impact of their purchase. The experience is improved when they use a VR headset or viewer, but the video is still viewable on mobile or desktop devices, so the brand can effectively share its story.

This year, video streaming will represent almost 75% of all internet traffic, and since audiences want more video content, brands should continue experimenting with different formats — including virtual reality — to see which audiences respond best to.

5) Ephemeral content will continue to find its place and purpose.

HubSpot Social Media Marketing Manager Marissa Emanuele artfully coined the term “Frankenfeatures,” which are born when a social media platform launches its own version of another platform’s successful feature.

One example? Snapchat started the ephemeral, or disappearing, visual content sharing trend, and Instagram recently launched a similar disappearing video feature — but with the ability to share live ephemeral video, too.

Another distinction between the two features? Instagram can save a group of users to send repeated disappearing messages to, versus on Snapchat, where users have to individually select who to send snaps to every single time.

We’re not suggesting that you abandon professional photography and marketing video production, but ephemeral content on Snapchat and Instagram is a great way to showcase the “other side” of your brand’s personality with authentic, unscripted, unpolished content. Content ideas for ephemeral stories include:

• How-to videos
• Behind-the-scenes looks
• Contests and giveaways
• Recipes
• Interviews
• “Takeovers,” or when a different user chooses what content to share
• Live events
• Daily or weekly video series
• Holidays
• Announcements or product reveals

“The most important part of ephemeral content is to be human. This is a unique opportunity to show an unpolished, lighthearted side to your brand, so don’t be afraid to share content that’s humorous or otherwise ‘flawed’ in some way,” urges Emanuele.

(For more ideas on how to brainstorm ephemeral content ideas for Snapchat or Instagram, here’s a roundup of some of the best brands on Snapchat right now.)

6) Many brands will make the shift from Snapchat to Instagram for Stories.

Instagram introduced its Stories feature in August 2016. After just two months, BuzzFeed News reported that Instagram Stories were experiencing 100 million daily active viewers — this represents two thirds of Snapchat’s total user base, period. For this and other reasons, Emanuele predicts that brands will start transitioning from Snapchat to Instagram for sharing Stories (photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours).

At 600 million users, Instagram offers a vastly bigger audience than Snapchat at 150 million users. And because Facebook owns Instagram, Instagram advertisers can target based on Facebook and Instagram insights, which means there is a bigger target audience on Instagram than Twitter.

Not to mention, Instagram lets users publish photos and videos in a permanent portfolio in addition to ephemeral Stories, so users can more easily share content with their friends.

BrandFire CEO Adam Padilla agrees with Emanuele’s prediction, also noting the adoption of Instagram by a larger number of celebrities and public figures, and a slicker Instagram interface.

Despite its rapid growth and sheer volume of content being shared, Snapchat offers fewer means of measurement and analysis for social media marketers, so Instagram may offer greater ROI in 2017.

7) Mobile advertising will grow more competitive.

In 2017, marketers should expect greater investment in mobile advertising. Here’s a rundown of what that will look like on some of the largest social networks:

Facebook is the behemoth when it comes to social media ad revenues, bringing in more than $7 billion last year — 80% of which came from mobile ads. Facebook’s News Feed algorithmic changes now prioritize content from friends and family first, so the 75% of brands on Facebook that pay to promote ads will have to get creative and design visual, engaging ads to get noticed first.

Twitter’s ad revenue is increasing, especially in the mobile format, and in 2017, they’ll likely continue experimenting with visual content, such as sponsored hashtag icons and stickers, to provide a variety of ad options to users.

As we’ve discussed previously in this article, Snapchat and Instagram will be competing for a lot of attention this year, and advertising revenue will be no exception. Where do they stand in terms of developments? Well, Snapchat recently launched a new advertising API that makes it easier to buy ad space, in addition to a greater variety of video ads and sponsored filters. Instagram, on the other hand, is doubling down on ecommerce with the introduction of Shoppable Instagram, a feature that lets users buy products directly by clicking on a CTA in the app.

According to an Adweek survey among millennial Snapchat and Instagram users about their experiences with ads, the results are roughly split — with a few noteworthy distinctions. While a greater percentage thought Instagram ads were more memorable than those on Snapchat, more millennials loved Snapchat ads than Instagram ads:

Source: Adweek

In short: Marketers should experiment with ads on different platforms to see which perform better among their audience and take advantage of the cool new features each rolls out.

What’s Next for Social Media Managers?

Social media is constantly changing, and one prediction we didn’t include above is to prepare for anything. And if you’re not sure where to get started with your social media plan, don’t worry — we’ve got you covered.

What are you including in your 2017 social media plan? Share with us in the comments below.

Have you ever sat in a meeting and been asked, “Well, how much is that [insert necessary marketing tool or program to grow business] going to cost?”

Those who run the budget at companies must ensure return on investment from every activity that they put dollars behind — otherwise you wouldn’t have resources to do your job. Trouble is, solidifying those resources and proving they’ll be worth the investment can definitely be a challenge.

Whether you’re tasked with managing advertising spend or budgeting for events, this handy list of free calculator tools will help you prove the return on investment (ROI) of the programs and budget you need to grow your business and scale over time.

9 Handy Business Calculators That’ll Make Your Life Easier

1) Attend.com’s Event ROI Calculator

Event marketers know how challenging it can be to attribute leads, pipeline, and revenue from events. Luckily, Attend.com created an event ROI calculator to help your events team determine the cost of the event, the benefits — both quantitative and qualitative — from the event, and how those factors translate into revenue generated. In short: This calculator will arm you with the numbers your executives will be looking for after running any event for your business.

2) HubSpot’s Advertising ROI Calculator

Paying for ads can be risky if budget is tight — who knows if it’ll pay off? But using the HubSpot Ad Spend ROI Calculator will help you break down your budget, set a price for how much you’re willing to spend per click, target your conversion rate, set a value for how much your customers are worth from ads, and turn around with a value for the return on your ad spend based on your starting budget.

3) Kissmetrics’ A/B Test Significance Calculator

Growth marketers know that conversion rate optimization is critical to an inbound marketing strategy — thus the need to prove all A/B tests pass with statistical significance. Kissmetrics created this A/B test significance calculator to help determine whether or not your conversion experiments are passing a significance test, ultimately to help you determine if changing that email subject line really did increase the open rate.

4) HubSpot’s Leads Goal (SLA) Calculator

Has anyone at your company ever asked, “How many leads per month does our sales team ACTUALLY need to hit their pipeline goals?” If not, this Leads Calculator (also known as a Service Level Agreement, or SLA calculator) will be your handy monthly tool to answer that question. This calculator will help you measure current sales close rates, assign dollar values to each of your major lead sources, track monthly lead generation by channel, and commit to a monthly lead goal.

5) Web Strategies’ Digital Marketing Budget Calculator

Web Strategies created a handy Excel template calculator to help marketers determine monthly or annual budgets based on revenue each year. This calculator will help your team and executives understand roughly how much budget to request for certain marketing initiatives such as PPC spend, SEO, email marketing, social media ads, and more.

6) Entreprenuer.com’s Email Marketing ROI Calculator

Entrepreneur.com created this online calculator tool to determine the return on investment from email marketing, specifically the cost, revenue, and profit from one email send to the criteria you set (audience size, response rate, campaign costs, etc.). This calculator will help your team understand the value of sending an email campaign and the opportunity to generate revenue on each person that clicks through to close a deal from that email.

7) HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing ROI Calculator

This calculator helps determine the rough estimate of ROI when onboarding to HubSpot. After inputting average monthly visits, leads, and sales price per customer, this calculator outputs an estimated dollar amount increase after using HubSpot for one year. This one will specifically come in handy when proving to execs that inbound marketing and HubSpot is worth the investment.

8) % Percent-Change Calculator

Calculating month over month, year over year, or any type of percentage change to report on requires zero math skills with this easy percent-change calculator. This free tool calculates percentage declines or increases based on the input of two values, so you can easily determine growth numbers in your next executive meeting.

9) RenegadeWork’s Customer Acquisition Cost Calculator

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is a well-known and critical metric to study in business. The cost to acquire a customer is essential to understanding the finances of scaling your business, but doesn’t always have to fall under finance’s wheelhouse every month. As marketers, use this calculator to determine how your budget paid off in reporting to execs. Did they give you that extra $10K for paid campaigns last month? Input how many extra customers you saw from that bump in the budget and allow your entire team to see what the cost of each customer is according to your marketing budget.

What are your favorite business calculators? Share them in the comments below.

Sometimes we ask our marketing teams to be superhuman. As hard as they work, there are practical limits to human capacity. They can only follow up with so many leads. It’s easier for them to achieve superhuman status when they get a little help – like marketing automation.

Using a marketing automation tool to set up workflows can give your membership conversion efforts an exponential lift. Automation lets your team set up winning workflows that work around the clock nurturing leads and retaining members, while your team gets to enjoy their weekends.

What Marketing Automation Really Is

The biggest myth about marketing automation is that you can set up a couple workflows and conversions come rolling in. It’s more complicated than that. There are some pre-conditions for success, including a healthy-sized database with a steady stream of leads coming in, and good processes in place that already convert leads into new members.

The challenge that marketing automation meets is optimizing your traffic and lead flow – following up and nurturing all those leads human hands can’t get to in an effective way so you achieve higher membership conversion rates from the same pool of leads.

Automated workflows let you customize nurturing on a more granular basis. Without it, your team members having to find relevant content for a specific lead, remember to send it out and follow up. Or, they have to send email blasts that don’t address the interests and concerns of individual leads. The workflows can send customized, relevant email for every lead or member that meets predefined criteria.

Some Sample Workflows

Let’s look at some sample workflows for three common scenarios.

New prospects: A visitor has just provided you their email address and is now in your database. They shared their email address to access your interactive annual report. You’ve set up workflows to trigger different email series based on which section of the report they spend most of their time reading. The general series in these workflows are the same, but the content and links are customized based on which section of the report was most interesting to each one. You want to further entrench their interest in your association. A potential workflow could be:

• Immediate thank-you email with link to a report or video that goes in-depth on one of the section’s issues.
• A week later – send an email with another link to a different piece of relevant content.
• If they’ve clicked through either of these links, send an email inviting them to sign up for your newsletter the following week.
• If they haven’t clicked through either of these links, you might send them an email 10 days after the second one with a short embedded video they can view right there, with a with a call-to-action (CTA) to follow you on social media or subscribe to your YouTube channel. 

Longtime prospect who hasn’t yet joined: Here may be your goldmine of new members. The first thing you can do with marketing automation is “score” these prospects based on all the digital information you’ve been able to collect about them and how they’ve interacted with your association online. This way, you can separate out the prospects who are the hot leads you don’t want to ignore any longer.

Assess what issues and content formats they’ve engaged with and which they tend to ignore. These are criteria you can use to segment your hot leads into workflow lists. Let’s say you identify a subset of hot leads who’ve attend live events (either a webinar or an in-person gathering) in the past three months. An automated workflow for them might be:

• An email with a brief survey asking for feedback on the event.
• People who respond will get an immediate thank-you email with a link to an upcoming event or calendar.
• People who don’t respond may get a second email asking for feedback a week later.
• A few days later (either after the thank you-email or the second survey request email), they’ll get an email sharing some news or content directly related to the topic of the event they attended.
• Those who responded to the survey and clicked on the content link will then get an email inviting them to join the association a week later.
• Those who don’t yet meet these criteria get redirected to a new lead nurturing workflow based on other indicators from their digital behavior.

Lapsed members: You want them back! Let them know. Let’s look at a potential workflow for those whose memberships in the past three months lapsed. You start with the assumption that it’s just slipped their mind.

• First email is a direct CTA to renew with some “hey, don’t miss out, you may have forgotten to renew” copy.
• For those who don’t renew off that email, a second email goes out a week later sharing some information about a program in which they participated or service they benefited from while a member with another renew CTA.
• A reminder email with new, relevant content, and another renew CTA can go out 10 days later.
• For people who still haven’t renewed, send a short survey email asking their reasons why. Include a renewal link and CTA in case “they just haven’t gotten to it yet.”
• For those who don’t renew, you may decide to follow up with a few directly based on what they said in the survey, as well as a couple who didn’t respond to the survey at all. The others can get redirected to other nurture workflows.

More Automation – More Metrics

One of the other great benefits of marketing automation (you know, besides the 24/7 marketing operation you’re now running) is your pool of data about what works and what doesn’t will pop out at you after awhile!

Before you start with automated workflow, identify benchmarks for how your emails perform, membership conversion numbers, and other metrics. With the volume of emails you’ll be sending out, you’ll have enough results that you should see a higher level of engagement and conversion metrics than the starting baseline.

There are also some new, automation-related metrics you should start tracking, such as which trigger criteria are more effective than others at eliciting conversions.

Did you include mobile content access in the criteria, but didn’t hit engagement goals? Perhaps mobile access was just the starting point. Review past behavior. See if mobile-only access versus a mix of device access have different conversion rates? Maybe conversion rates on this workflow are awesome only for people who access content on mobile. It’s the lack of engagement by the mixed device folks that lowered the overall conversion rate. Now you can tweak mobile access trigger criteria for mobile content.

OK, you can see how this can go on. As with all your inbound digital metric opportunities, clarify which metrics are most valuable to your association’s needs. They should keep you driving towards optimizing the database and improving the lead-to-membership conversion rate. 

Between photos of beautiful dinners created with the help of meal delivery services to videos featuring the “unboxing” of a new mobile phone, people love to share their experiences with brands on social media.

This type of content is known as user-generated content (UGC), which is produced by actual product users through their own publishing and social media platforms.

Many brands have started sharing UGC on their own social media channels to leverage user social proof and show their products being used in action. And while consumers might agree that UGC is more trustworthy than content created by brands themselves, there’s a generation gap when it comes to how consumers interact with UGC.

Olapic surveyed consumers of all ages to determine how they viewed and interacted with UGC on social media, and they found that 76% of those surveyed thought UGC was more trustworthy than branded content. However, they determined differences between which types of UGC millennials and baby boomers preferred, and what social networks they liked to use. Read the infographic below to learn more about how to inspire trust in consumers by using UGC on social media.

Emotional intelligence is more than just a buzzword.

The ability to emphasize with others, build lasting relationships, and manage emotions in a healthy way has been proven time and time again to be one of the biggest indicators of workplace and interpersonal success.

In client-facing roles, emotional intelligence can be the difference between a lasting agency-client relationship and a severed contract. Agencies hiring new employees need to pay close attention to a candidate’s level of emotional intelligence, since it will likely have a big impact on their early success (or failure) on the job.

Emotionally intelligent individuals can more easily adapt to new environments and relate to new colleagues and clients — crucial skills for anyone working at a marketing agency. People with low levels of emotional intelligence might have difficulty managing relationships and dealing with stress, which could lead to burnout or bigger conflicts down the line.

Among employees who fail to meet expectations during their first 18 months on the job, 23% fail due to low emotional intelligence. That’s the second most prevalent reason new hires fail, following only general lack of coachability.

We know gauging a candidate’s emotional intelligence is pivotal when it comes to hiring the best new talent — but can something so complex be sufficiently evaluated in a brief interview setting?

Some candidates have mastered the ability of seeming emotionally intelligent — responding instantaneously with practiced, too-good-to-be-true responses to classic interview questions, e.g.:

What’s your greatest weakness?
Well, I just care too darn much about my work.

To help you sift through the rehearsed responses and dig deeper into a candidate’s real level of emotional intelligence, we’ve put together the following list of interview questions. Learn what to ask below and how to identify an emotionally intelligent response.

5 Interview Questions to Assess Emotional Intelligence

1) Can you tell me about a time you tried to do something and failed?

Asking a candidate to explain a failed project is not only a great way to see how they cope when things don’t go as planned, it’s also an opportunity to see whether or not they’re comfortable taking full responsibility for their actions.

Look for a candidate who can straightforwardly describe a recent failure without shirking the bulk of the blame on other parties or unfortunate circumstances. Even if some external factors played a hand in the mishap, you want a candidate who is comfortable being held fully accountable, and can discuss even the nitty-gritty details of a failed project with fair-minded focus.

Does the candidate seem like they were able to fully bounce back from the issue without getting defensive? Emotionally intelligent individuals possess an inherent self-confidence that can buoy them through setbacks and lets them assess troubling situations objectively, without harsh self-judgment or resorting to outward frustration.

Be wary of candidates who fixate too much on who or what they blame for the failure. When a project doesn’t work out, the key takeaway shouldn’t be based on blame. Emotionally intelligent people know how to move on and examine a situation without bitterness or resentment clouding their judgment.

2) Tell me about a time you received negative feedback from your boss. How did that make you feel?

One of the most easily recognizable qualities of an emotionally intelligent person is their ability to deal with criticism. People with high emotional intelligence are well-equipped to handle negative feedback without losing stride. They can process even unexpected feedback without letting it damage their self-worth.

That’s not to say negative feedback has no emotional impact on emotionally intelligent employees. People with high emotional intelligence experience emotions like everyone else — they just know how to fully process those emotions with a level head and a clear focus on the facts.

Look for a candidate who can specifically describe the feelings they experienced upon receiving negative feedback, e.g.: “At first I was surprised and a little frustrated by my manager’s comments on the project, but when I looked deeper into the reasoning behind her comments, I realized that I could have definitely given more attention to several key areas. On my next project, I was able to use her feedback to develop a more well-rounded approach.”

A response that acknowledges the specific emotions they experienced and shows an empathic understanding of their manager’s point of view indicates a high level of emotional awareness.

Candidates who say they felt “bad” or can’t really express why the feedback affected them might be less emotionally intelligent. Similarly, if a candidate thinks the feedback was wholly undeserved and doesn’t attempt to understand their manager’s point of view, they might have difficulty stepping outside of their own perspective.

3) Can you tell me about a conflict at work that made you feel frustrated?

Everyone gets frustrated sometimes. It’s how you handle that frustration that really matters.

Hearing how a candidate explains a work conflict can offer some valuable clues into their level of emotional intelligence. Conflicts can stir up a lot of difficult emotions, and asking a candidate to describe a dispute and how they dealt with it can give you meaningful insight into how they manage their emotions and empathize with others.

According to psychologist and author Daniel Goleman, emotionally intelligent people have four distinguishing characteristics:

• They were good at understanding their own emotions (self-awareness)
• They were good at managing their emotions (self-management)
• They were empathetic to the emotional drives of other people (social awareness)
• They were good at handling other people’s emotions (social skills)

All four of these characteristics are put to the test in conflicts situations. Emotionally intelligent people will be able to explain a conflict situation clearly and objectively, giving a specific run down of how they felt at the time, how they managed those feelings, and how they used social cues from those around them to inform their decisions.

As they explain the conflict situation, consider the following four areas:

1) Can they clearly articulate the emotions they experienced during the conflict? (self-awareness)
2) Were they able to move past any negative emotions and work towards a resolution? (self-management)
3) Do they seem aware of the other person’s motivations and challenges? (social awareness)
4) Were they able to mend the relationship and move past the conflict? (social skills)

4) Tell me about a hobby you like to do outside of work. Can you teach me about it?

Ask the candidate to explain one of their hobbies to you as if you know nothing about it. It can be anything — golf, horseback riding, cookie jar collecting — anything they’re interested in and willing to share details about.

As they explain the hobby, prompt them with questions that force them to simplify, re-explain, and change their communication style to suit your clear lack of understanding. See how they react. Are they getting flustered or frustrated? Are they quick to adapt their communication style to meet your needs?

Emotionally intelligent people remain patient and calm when faced with a communication challenge. They can easily read social cues when their message isn’t clearly getting across, and will deftly pivot their approach to meet the needs of their audience.

5) Can you tell me about a time you needed to ask for help on a project?

Emotionally intelligent people are self-confident without being overconfident. They have a realistic understanding of their own strengths and limitations, and they aren’t afraid to admit what they don’t know. They know that asking for help and collaborating with others is a sign of strength, not weakness.

Be wary of candidates who seem hesitant or embarrassed to admit they need help sometimes. Look for someone who can confidently discuss a time when they sought the help of a colleague due to a gap in their knowledge of a subject.

Emotionally intelligent people will be transparent about their weak points, and will show a real drive to better themselves by collaborating and using all the resources available to them.

What interview questions do you ask candidates to measure emotional intelligence? Let us know in the comments.

You might already know that Instagram is a growing channel that lets individuals and businesses alike expand their brand. For businesses especially, it’s a way to humanize your brand, recruit future employees, showcase your product and company culture, delight customers, and generate new business.

But here’s the deal: Unless you’re famous, it’s really hard to amass a huge following on Instagram without some hard work.

For the average person or business, growing your following takes time and attention on a daily basis. And although you may be tempted to buy your first several followers to get the ball rolling, purchased followers are either fake or low-quality profiles — so they really serve no purpose except to artificially inflate your follower count. Don’t count on any meaningful engagement or business interactions from these folks.

Luckily, there are a few things you can do right away to collect at least 1,000 quality followers for your personal or professional Instagram account. It’s all about knowing where to invest your time and effort — which is exactly what we’ll show you in this post.

Download the complete guide to using Instagram for business and marketing here.

Let’s go through how to gain those first 1,000 followers, from creating a follow-worthy Instagram profile to using contests to staying true to your brand. (Looking for inspiration? Read this blog post to browse through 17 of the best brands on Instagram.)

How to Get More Followers on Instagram

1) Create and optimize your profile.

First things first: Customize your Instagram profile to make it look good, tell your potential followers who you are, and give them a reason to follow you.

How? Start by making sure your username is recognizable and easily searchable — like your business name. If your business name is already taken, try keeping your business name as the first part of your username so that people searching for your business are more likely to come across you. For example, the Australian activewear line Lorna Jane uses the username @lornajaneactive.

(Note: Make sure to add your full business name to the “Name” field in the “Options” section — the gear button on iOS, or three dots on Android). This will appear under your profile picture and under your username in search.

Next, make sure your profile is public. To make your profile public, open Instagram, open “Options,” and make sure “Private Account” is turned off.

Next, choose a profile picture that’s on-brand with your other social networks, like your company logo.

Then, fill your bio with delightful, actionable, and informative information about your brand. Information like this lets people know what you’re about and gives them a reason to follow you. Include who you are and what you do, and be sure to add a hint of personality. Here are a few examples for inspiration:

• @WeWork: “Make a life, not just a living.”
• @Oreo: “See the world through our OREO Wonderfilled lens.”
• @CalifiaFarms: “Crafting, concocting and cold-brewing up a delicious, plant-based future. Califia Farms Loves You Back”
• @Staples: “We make it easy to #MakeMoreHappen”

Next, add a link to your bio to make it easy for people to go straight from Instagram to your website if they want to. The space allotted for URLs is precious real estate because it’s the only place within Instagram where you can place a clickable link, so use it wisely. We recommend using a shortened, customized Bitly link to make it more clickable.

Finally, enable notifications so you can see when people share or comment on your photos. This’ll let you engage with them more quickly — just like a lot of companies do on Twitter. To enable notifications, go to “Options” and then “Push Notification Settings.” Select “From Everyone” for every category.

A word to the wise: We don’t recommend you link your Instagram account to Twitter and Facebook so your Instagram posts are automatically published on those other accounts. Post types are different.

2) Designate a content creator.

Just like there should be one (maybe two) people managing your other social media accounts, there should only be one or two people managing your Instagram account. If possible, choose someone who has experience using a personal Instagram account, and therefore “gets” the platform — and be sure they know all the handy features Instagram has to offer.

If you work for a large organization, you might find that a lot of people want to have a say in what’s posted. That’s when an organized request or guidelines document comes in hand. This document should inform people how to request a post on your Instagram account, when, the value of the post, and why.

3) Brush up on your photography and editing skills.

On Instagram, post quality matters. A lot. Your Twitter followers might forgive a few bad tweets, but a bad photo on Instagram is a big no-no. By no means do you have to take a photography course to be a good Instagram poster — nor do you have to practice for weeks before you start. But you should get familiar with basic photography tips and photo editing apps.

Photography Skills

Since Instagram is a mobile app, chances are, most of the photos you post to Instagram will be taken on your mobile device. That’s not just okay; it’s expected. While some brands use professional photography for their Instagram photos, most use smartphones — and that’s the vibe that Instagram is meant for, anyway.

Start by reading this blog post on tips for taking great pictures on your smartphone. Here are some highlights:

• Focus on one subject at a time.
• Embrace negative space.
• Find interesting perspectives.
• Look for symmetry.
• Capture small details.
• Make your followers laugh.

(Click here for all 18 tips on taking great pictures with your smartphone.)

Photo Editing Skills

Instagram has some basic editing capabilities, but oftentimes, they aren’t adequate to make a picture really, really great. Most of your photos should go through at least one or two other photo editing apps on your mobile phone before you open them in Instagram for the first time.

Read this blog post for a list of the best photo and video editing apps for mobile devices. These apps will let you do everything from sharpening specific parts of a photo to brightening certain hues to make your photo look fresher.

4) Start posting.

Once you’ve created and optimized your profile, have someone manning it, and know a thing or two about phone photography and photo editing, it’s time to start posting. It’s a good idea to have a solid number of great posts up — maybe 15 or so — before you start really engaging people and working down this list. That way, when people visit your profile, they’ll see a full screen of photos instead of just a handful, so they know you’ll be posting great content regularly.

To start posting on Instagram, first download this social media content calendar template and start planning out your Instagram posts. Over time, you’ll want to build up a backlog of photos for times of need, like the weekends or when you go on vacation.

Keep your target persona in mind when you first start planning out your posting schedule, as that can drastically change your posting timing and frequency — especially if you’re targeting an audience in a different time zone. (Download this free template for creating buyer personas if you don’t have a few already.)

While optimizing your schedule for your specific audience will take time and experimentation, we created this infographic using recent data on the best times to publish on every social media network to get you started. Our sources found that the very best times to post on Instagram were Mondays and Thursdays at any time except between 3:00–4:00 p.m. for the time zone of your target persona. (For a United States audience, your best bet is to combine Eastern and Central time zones, as they represent almost 80% of the U.S. population. For audiences located outside the U.S., use whichever time zones your target audience uses.)

However, because Instagram is primarily an app for use on mobile devices, users tend to use the network all the time, any time — although many users engage with content more during off-work hours than during the workday. Some businesses have also seen success with posting at 2:00 a.m., 5:00 p.m., and Wednesdays at 7:00 p.m. Experiment with these to see if they work with your audience.

5) Curate some of your content.

Although it’s best to have only one or two people manning your account, one or two people can’t be everywhere at once taking photos. What about that fun sushi night the engineers had last night? Or the event your head of sales spoke at earlier this week? There’s a whole breadth of content you’ll want to post to Instagram, and more often than not, one person won’t be able to keep track of it all.

One solution? Create a system where you can curate photos and content from members of your team. There are a few ways to do this. One is to create a specific email address for employees to send their photos, short videos, memes, hyperlapses, and so on. Just encourage people to put a subject line on these emails so you can more easily sort through the photos they’re sending. While this doesn’t seem like the smoothest way to curate photos, it’s actually the easiest for the people sending you photos — and the easier you can make it for them to send content, the more content you’ll get.

If your team shares a Box or Dropbox account, you could also create a shared folder where people can automatically drop their photos and videos. This just makes a few more steps for the people sending you the content, and not everyone might have that app downloaded on their phones. 

6) Write delightful, share-worthy captions.

Photos and videos might be the most important part of your Instagram posts, but captions should never be an afterthought. They’re an essential part of your post — icing on the cake, if you will. Consistently great captions can do wonders for humanizing your brand, winning over followers, and making your content more shareable — thereby giving you more exposure.

My colleague Ryan Bonnici once told me, for example, that he loves Frank Bod’s Instagram account for their captions: “Their witty captions will be your new obsession.” On a photo of a gold necklace, @frank_bod’s caption read: “I can’t give you jewellery, but I can give you the smoothest décolletage to wear it on, babe. #letsbefrank.”

The voice is filled with personality — note the cheeky hashtag #letsbefrank, which often follows captions like this one. Fans of the Frank Bod use that hashtag to post photos of themselves covered in the product like the brand’s own models, which is a great way for them to interact with and feel close to the brand.

Another way to increase the shareability of your caption and engage your followers is to ask questions or have some sort of call-to-action in the captions of your photos. For example, you might say, “double-tap if you find this funny” or “share your story in the comments.” In the example below, we asked followers to share photos of their desk with the @HubSpot Instagram account for the chance to be featured.

 

Send us your desk glamour shots and we’ll share our favorites. 📎🗂🖊 🌿 This leafy layout is from @piconsulting! #hubspotting #officelife

A photo posted by HubSpot (@hubspot) on Oct 25, 2016 at 8:24am PDT

7) Use relevant hashtags.

Let’s go back to hashtags for a second. On Instagram, a hashtag ties the conversations of different users who wouldn’t already be connected into a single stream. If you use relevant hashtags, your posts will get exposure to a wider audience than the people who already follow you or know about your brand. (Read this guide on how hashtags work on Instagram for more detailed tips.)

The key to using hashtags effectively is to use them smartly and sparingly. Try to limit the number of hashtags per caption to around three. Similarly, don’t use “like for like” hashtags, like #like4like or #like4likes. This is a dirty tactic that’ll leave you with a whole bunch of low-quality followers.

To find the hashtags your audience might be using, do a little research on relevant hashtags in your niche or industry. The easiest way to do this research is in the Instagram app itself, in the “explore” tab (i.e. the magnifying glass icon). When you search for one hashtag, it’ll show you a list of related hashtags at the top of your screen. For example, when I search for #inboundmarketing on Instagram, it shows me relevant hashtags like #marketingdigital, #marketingtips, and so on.

To help relate to your followers on a personal level, you might consider hopping on hashtag trends like #tbt (“Throwback Thursday”), #MotivationMonday, #TransformationTuesday, or hashtags that are trending at any given time. Here’s a post from @HubSpot’s account using the #MotivationMonday hashtag:

 

⬆️ #motivationmonday

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

Once you build up a bit of a following, you can try creating your own hashtags — like your company name or a slogan that applies to a lot of your photos. This is a great way to build up your brand on the platform and build a more cohesive presence.

8) Interact with other users, including your followers.

Instagram is very much a community, and one great way to get involved in that community is to find people who post pictures that interest you, and follow their accounts and interact with their content. It’s the most natural way to draw attention to your own Instagram account while getting your foot in the door in the community, and getting inspiration from others’ content.

That does two things for you: For one, when they get the notification that you’ve followed them, they might check out your account and decide whether or not to follow you. (This is why it’s important to have some great content on there before you start reaching out to others.) Secondly, it means you’ll be seeing their recent posts in your feed, so you can Like and interact with them if you choose to.

As you build a following, celebrate your followers and show you appreciate them by responding to their comments, and even following them and engaging with their posts.

9) Cross-promote with users who have audiences similar to your own.

Once you build a solid relationship with some of the folks behind these accounts that have a similar audience to your own, you might ask to do some co-promotion on each others’ accounts. The more natural and less spammy you can make the content of these cross-promotions — especially the captions — the better. It also helps to be picky about them, and don’t do them very often.

Below is an example of what that looks like from food blogger @sprinklesforbreakfast and photographer @graymalin, who cross-promoted each others’ accounts at about the same time:

 

The only thing better than a @graymalin print…a @graymalin print that comes with FREE FRAMING! Head over to his site and check it out! Sale ends today. Oh and this pcture is reposted from @graymalin – but the obsession with him is all me ❤️

A photo posted by Lindsay Nathanson (@sprinklesforbreakfast) on Nov 22, 2015 at 9:57am PST

 

In homage to our winter aerial series, @sprinklesforbreakfast brought one of our Ski images to life.. in a cake 🍰! http://ift.tt/1qBXuN5 🎿

A photo posted by Gray Malin (@graymalin) on Nov 24, 2015 at 10:46am PST

10) Run Instagram contests.

Another great way to expand your reach while increasing engagement on your photos is to publish a post promoting a contest, and then ask people to follow your account and Like or comment on the photo in order to enter.

You might add a UGC (User-Generated Content) element to the contest, too, where people post a photo of their own and use a specific hashtag along with following your account. Here’s an example of a post from Starbucks promoting a UGC contest on their Instagram account.

 

Ooo cozy. Just a few more days to share your Cozy up to Red Cups photo using #RedCupContest. Thanks @ktnewms for the beautiful photo. ❤️ For more cozy moments see our story.

A photo posted by Starbucks Coffee ☕ (@starbucks) on Nov 22, 2016 at 2:25pm PST

(Read this post for more tips on how to run a successful Instagram contest.)

11) Share Instagram Stories and live videos.

Instagram has always offered the opportunity to post beautiful, curated photos to represent your brand. However, with the introduction of ephemeral Instagram Stories, brands can also share on-the-fly, behind-the-scenes looks for 24 hours that may not be as polished as a published photo, but give your brand more personality on the platform. One look at Snapchat’s explosion in popularity demonstrates that social media users are clearly responding positively to ephemeral photo and video sharing. Instagram Stories let brands engage with users in different ways to cultivate brand loyalty and appeal.

Instagram Stories also lets users share live videos, another content format that’s proven to be hugely popular on other social networks. What’s unique about live videos on Instagram? They disappear when users stop filming. This authentic, bi-directional experience lets brands share unscripted, raw moments with their audience to incorporate human elements into a social media platform that’s highly edited and polished in its traditional use.

How Brands Can Use Instagram Stories

We can’t include Instagram Stories in this article (they disappear after 24 hours), but here are a few brands we recommend following to see what they’re sharing:

Rachel Brathen (@yoga_girl) is a yoga teacher and entrepreneur in Aruba who uses Instagram Stories to document the behind-the-scenes action of building a yoga studio. While her Instagram portfolio features beautiful, professional photos and videos of her in yoga poses, her Stories feature her dog sitting in on staff meetings, her team unwrapping amethyst crystals to decorate her studio, and artists painting the walls. She uses Stories to showcase the other side of her brand to her 2 million followers in an authentic and unpolished way, and to keep her followers apprised of what she does every day (besides yoga, of course).

Dana Shultz (@miniamlistbaker) publishes easy vegan and gluten-free recipes on her blog. Her Stories feature neat how-to videos of her making breakfast and testing out new recipes in her kitchen. The behind-the-scenes aspect of her Stories provide a lot of human context for her blog’s brand, and everybody loves a good how-to video.

Casper (@casper) publishes quirky Instagram content to advertise their mattresses — without overtly doing so. The main theme of their content? Staying in is better than going out (because you can stay in and lay on a comfy Casper mattress, naturally). They’ve even created a gallery for followers to use as backdrops for their Snapchat and Instagram stories to make it look like they’re out at a party, when they’re really laying in bed. One of their latest Instagram Stories featured someone watching “The Sopranos” in bed, with the caption: “Who needs plans when you have five more seasons?” This video supports Casper’s campaign to stay in bed with a very real look at what millions of people do when they’re hanging out at home.

Here are our tips for using Instagram Stories for your brand:

• Whether it’s funny, sad, or unique, be authentic. Your photo gallery is where content can be perfect and polished. Instagram Stories are for the raw, unscripted, and unretouched. Use Stories to share the other side of your brand that followers might not be able to glean elsewhere. Do you have a dog-friendly office? Is your team trying out the Mannequin Challenge? Start filming to showcase the more human side of your brand.
• Go behind-the-scenes. These are by far our favorite type of content for ephemeral video sharing. Show your followers what goes into the planning of an event or the launching of a product, and make it fun. Your followers want to feel included and in-the-know, and you could use Stories to cultivate a brand loyalty program that only rewards people who check out your content.
• Go live. Live video is a growing trend across a variety of social media platforms, so if something interesting is happening, start rolling. Whether it’s a team birthday party, a staff meeting, or a cute animal, your devoted followers want to see what you’re up to every day. Take Stories to the next level by sharing them as they happen (and promoting it on Twitter or Facebook to get followers to tune in). 

Experiment with sharing Stories and live, ephemeral content to attract new followers and to increase engagement with the ones you already have. Learn how to share Stories and go live in these blog posts.

12) Make your profile easy to find and follow.

Place a follow button on your homepage, your “About Us” page, and various other places on your website. You can generate a “badge” button that links to your account on Instagram’s website here. Just make sure you’re logged into the right account when you create it. Here’s what one of the badge options looks like:

If your brand has brick-and-mortar locations, put out a good ol’ print call-to-action letting people know you have an Instagram account and encouraging them to follow you.

Also, be sure to promote your Instagram account on your other social media accounts. Chances are, the folks who already follow you on Facebook and Twitter will also follow you on Instagram without much prodding. Let those followers know you’re on Instagram and encourage them to follow you there by including a link to your Instagram account in the bios and posts of those other social media accounts.

So give it a shot: Make a profile and start posting, testing, tweaking, and promoting your account. Garnering a following on Instagram won’t happen overnight, but the stronger of a foundation you create on your account in in your niche Instagram community, the higher quality your followers will be.

What other tips do you have for gaining followers on Instagram? Share with us in the comments.

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

Here at HubSpot, we spend a lot of time thinking about the future of content. We ask questions like, “Which will come out on top — augmented reality or virtual reality?” and “Will AI take over our blog?”

And, in a stroke of paranoia brought on by the 1960 film The Time Machine, I often ask myself, “Will people still read?”

Classic science fiction movies aside, there’s data to suggest that our willingness to read might be on the decline. Between our rapidly-dwindling attention spans — thanks in no small part to smartphone use — to the 59% of people who share articles online without even reading them, there’s no denying that marketers should be thinking strategically about how to recapture their audience’s interest with more engaging written content.

That’s where off-site content enters the picture. But why? And how does it work with your current online presence? We’ve broken down how it can get people to actually read your words, and make them count. 

What Is Off-Site Content?

Chances are, you already have a website, and perhaps a blog that “lives” on it. Off-site content is the material that isn’t on your website. You might own it, or it might have been earned — the latter being content that someone else created, but primarily concerns your business, such as a review or case study.

For the purposes of this blog, we want to address the off-site content that you own and can therefore create and control. That includes social media, blogs, and podcasts, for example. And while it’s important to diversify all of your content, today, we’re going to focus on the written kind.

For example, HubSpot has multiple blogging properties. In addition to this marketing blog, which lives on HubSpot’s website, we also have ThinkGrowth.org, which is published on the Medium platform. It’s content that we own and produce, but it doesn’t exist on HubSpot.com.

Starting to make sense? Once you understand the concept of off-site content, you can also begin to see its value in getting people to fully read what you publish.

How Off-Site Content Attracts Quality Readership

In its 2016 Content Marketing Staffing & Tactics Barometer study, Curata reported that 41.2% of respondents cited content creation as the most lacking skill set in their marketing teams. Within that, these teams fell shortest in writing and editing, with marketers craving “more quality copywriters who can post to various content channels.”

Jackpot. There are two key pieces to pull from that quote:

1. Various channels.
2. Quality writing.

Let’s break down each one.

Various Channels

When it comes to content marketing, different formats and channels accomplish different things. In fact, they might each even attract different audience segments. Take our aforementioned Medium publication, ThinkGrowth.org. While it’s still owned by HubSpot, you’ll notice that the content is a bit different from what’s on our marketing blog.

Having those various channels to share your expertise presents tremendous opportunity. We’ve covered the importance of blogging on behalf of your company, and we stand by it. But while a corporate blog often has to maintain a very specific, branded voice, off-site content affords marketers the opportunity to experiment with different voices, styles, and subject matter.

Off-site content is particularly crucial to those new to business blogging. As my colleague, Sam Mallikarjunan, writes in “Why Medium Works,” it can take up to six months of consistent publishing on your company’s blog before it gains significant traction. (And we’re not discouraging that — stick with it, and find ways to supplement those efforts.) But off-site content diversifies your audience by engaging readers who might not have otherwise found your website. Medium, for example, connects your content with the people most likely to read it. Plus, you’re creating a publication on a platform that comes with a built-in audience of at least 6.3 million users.

There’s also a nifty readability measure attached to every Medium post that indicates how long it will take to get through. As you write, you can see an estimate of how many minutes it would take to read the post on your list of drafts. Remember that dwindling attention span I mentioned earlier? You’re going to lose about half of your readers after fifteen seconds. Keeping your length in check helps to make sure they actually read what you put out there.

But as Mallikarjunan emphasizes, Medium is not a replacement for your company’s blog. It can’t be optimized for SEO as well, and it doesn’t come with the same lead generation tools. That’s the real point of having multiple channels — in the end, they all work in tandem.

Quality Writing

Not long after its 2016 study was released, Curata published an article titled, “Content Marketers Desperately Need More Journalists.” On the surface, that might seem like a pretty lofty claim, but there’s certainly some merit behind it — namely, marketers’ self-identified need for better writers, especially those who are “creative” and experienced in “long-form writing.”

Writing well in one voice is hard enough, and I dedicate my entire day to it. I can only imagine how difficult it becomes when it’s one item on a list of many tasks and you have to establish a different tone for each of your content properties. That’s where a dedicated writer can be an asset to your content team. But why journalists, specifically?

Content Marketers as Journalists

Journalists tend to be compelling story writers. Back in the day, they were responsible for writing unique, curiosity-provoking headlines, and leading each story with a hook that had to grab and hold the reader’s attention. Today’s journalists, especially those working in the online realm — many of whom are required to know at least a bit about SEO — can do the same thing for your brand’s content.

But quality content writing goes beyond good storytelling. Journalists are trained to ask difficult questions, which can help them identify content gaps in what you’re currently producing. Plus, they’re often tasked with collecting and synthesizing data from multiple sources — studies, interviews, and raw data — into something comprehensive that readers can easily follow.

In this context, “journalist” can carry a broad definition. Freelance writers can fall under the same umbrella, especially since they’re often used to writing for several publications at once. That experience is highly applicable to your various content channels.

Remember, all of these skills lead to a single end goal — to write high-quality content that’s engaging enough for people to read in entirety — and share it.

What’s Next?

We know — you’ve got enough to do. Asking you to maintain multiple content channels might seem like a lot. But that’s part of the value behind having someone on your team who’s dedicated to it.

Not only does this person ideally come equipped with the necessary strategic and editorial skills to produce great content, but also, there’s a reduced risk of distraction from other outstanding responsibilities. Turning content creation and management into a full-time role lends itself to consistency, which is crucial — after all, how likely are you to trust a brand that hasn’t produced anything new in the past 30 days?

Of course, there’s the possibility that there isn’t room in your budget for a full-time role like this one, but take heart — that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to achieve. Just take a look at these suggestions …

Create an Internship

In this case, be sure to evaluate each candidate’s background carefully. Not only should this person have strong writing skills, but also, he or she should be familiar with off-site content channels and have some interest in marketing.

Lean on Freelancers

Second, don’t dismiss the idea of enlisting a freelance writer to help. While not all of this person’s time can be dedicated to your content alone, we covered the value that someone with this background can bring to your team. You can also get creative in negotiating time and availability here — for example, if your budget it small, compensation can be supplemented with a free workspace for the writer to use. (And as a former freelance writer, trust me, free office space is a huge incentive.)

Reallocate Your Own Time

Finally, if all else fails, you can try to start with small steps and dedicate your own time to off-site content creation. Maybe it’s actually one of your strongest skills, and you enjoy that type of work. If that’s the case, it might be time to find someone else to whom you can pass the torch of the work you’re doing now — the things that prevent you from consistently producing quality content — and approach it the same way we advised filling a content role.

And as cliché as it sounds, please — have fun with this content creation. By now, it goes without saying that your content has to be strategic. But it also must have passion behind it. If it bores you, how can you expect it to engage someone else? Think of the questions you ask yourself each day at work, kind of like the questions I led with at the beginning of this post. Then, answer them. Tell a story with those answers. Personally, I can’t wait to read it.

How do you use off-site content to gain better readership? Let us know in the comments.

We demand a lot from logos.

They have to be simple, yet still convey the ethos of the brand in a way that resonates with consumers. They have to be timeless and distinct, but still modern and consistent with contemporary graphic design trends.

It’s a lot to ask of a single symbol. As any designer will surely tell you, designing a logo that meets these varied expectations is no easy task.

To help you prepare for the new year, Logaster created the infographic below detailing their predictions for the most influential logo design trends of 2017. Keep an eye out for these design approaches in the coming year:

What logo trends will you be looking out for in 2017? Let us know in the comments.

Excel and marketing go together like peanut butter and chocolate. There’s just one problem — for many of us, trying to organize and analyze Excel worksheets can feel like walking into a brick wall over and over again. You’re manually replicating columns and scribbling down long-form math on a scrap of paper, all while thinking to yourself, “There has to be a better way to do this.” Truth be told, there probably is — you just don’t know it yet.

Excel can be tricky that way. On one hand, it’s an exceptionally powerful tool for reporting and analyzing marketing data. On the other, without the proper training, it’s easy to feel like it’s working against you.

To help you use Excel more effectively (and save a ton of time), we’ve compiled a list of essential functions, keyboard shortcuts, and other small tricks you should know.

15 Excel Formulas, Keyboard Shortcuts & Tricks That’ll Save You Lots of Time

Excel Formulas

1) SUMIF

Let’s say you want to determine the profit you generated from a list of leads who are associated with specific area codes, or calculate the sum of certain employees’ salaries — but only if they fall above the a particular amount. Doing that manually sounds a bit time-consuming, to say the least.

With the SUMIF function, it doesn’t have to be — you can easily add up the sum of cells that meet a certain criteria, like in the salary example above.

• The formula: =SUMIF(sum_range, criteria_range1, criteria1, [criteria_range2, criteria2], …)
  • Sum_range: The range of cells you’re going to add up.
  • Criteria_range1: The range that is being tested using Criteria1.
  • Criteria1: The criteria that determine which cells in Criteria_range1 will be added together.

In the example below, we wanted to calculate the sum of the salaries that were greater than $70,000. The SUMIF function added up the dollar amounts that exceeded that number in the cells C3 through C12, with the formula =SUMIF(C3:C12,”>70,000″).

2) TRIM

Email and file sharing are wonderful tools in today’s workplace. That is, until one of your colleagues sends you a worksheet with some really funky spacing. Not only can those rogue spaces make it difficult to search for data, but they also affect the results when you try to add up columns of numbers.

Rather than painstakingly removing and adding spaces as needed, you can clean up any irregular spacing using the TRIM function, which is used to remove extra spaces from data (except for single spaces between words).

• The formula: =TRIM(“Text”)
  • Text: The text from which you want to remove spaces.

Here’s an example of how we used the TRIM function to remove extra spaces after a name on our list. To do so, we entered =TRIM(“Steve Peterson”) into the Formula Bar.

3) LEFT, MID, and RIGHT

Let’s say you have a line of text within a cell that you want to break down into a few different segments. Rather than manually retyping each piece of the code into its respective column, users can leverage a series of string functions to deconstruct the sequence as needed: LEFT, MID, or RIGHT.

LEFT:

• Purpose: Used to extract the first X numbers or characters in a cell.
• The formula: =LEFT(text, number_of_characters)
  
  • Text: The string that you wish to extract from.
  • Number_of_characters: The number of characters that you wish to extract starting from the left-most character.

In the example below, we entered =LEFT(A2,4) into cell B2, and copied it into B3:B6. That allowed us to extract the first 4 characters of the code.

MID:

• Purpose: Used to extract characters or numbers in the middle based on position.
• The formula: =MID(text, start_position, number_of_characters)
  
  • Text: The string that you wish to extract from.
  • Start_position: The position in the string that you want to begin extracting from. For example, the first position in the string is 1.
  • Number_of_characters: The number of characters that you wish to extract.

In this example, we entered =MID(A2,5,2) into cell B2, and copied it into B3:B6. That allowed us to extract the two numbers starting in the fifth position of the code.

RIGHT:

• Purpose: Used to extract the last X numbers or characters in a cell.
• The formula: =RIGHT(text, number_of_characters)
  
  • Text: The string that you wish to extract from.
  • Number_of_characters: The number of characters that you want to extract starting from the right-most character.

For the sake of this example, we entered =RIGHT(A2,2) into cell B2, and copied it into B3:B6. That allowed us to extract the last two numbers of the code.

4) VLOOKUP

This one is an oldie, but a goodie — and it’s a bit more in depth than some of the other formulas we’ve listed here. But it’s especially helpful for those times when you have two sets of data on two different spreadsheets, and want to combine them into a single spreadsheet.

My colleague, Rachel Sprung — whose “How to Use Excel” tutorial is a must-read for anyone who wants to learn — uses a list of names, email addresses, and companies as an example. If you have a list of people’s names next to their email addresses in one spreadsheet, and a list of those same people’s email addresses next to their company names in the other, but you want the names, email addresses, and company names of those people to appear in one place — that’s where VLOOKUP comes in.

Note: When using this formula, you must be certain that at least one column appears identically in both spreadsheets. Scour your data sets to make sure the column of data you’re using to combine your information is exactly the same, including no extra spaces.

• The formula: VLOOKUP(lookup value, table array, column number, [range lookup])
  • Lookup Value: The identical value you have in both spreadsheets. Choose the first value in your first spreadsheet. In Sprung’s example that follows, this means the first email address on the list, or cell 2 (C2).
  • Table Array: The range of columns on Sheet 2 you’re going to pull your data from, including the column of data identical to your lookup value (in our example, email addresses) in Sheet 1 as well as the column of data you’re trying to copy to Sheet 1. In our example, this is “Sheet2!A:B.” “A” means Column A in Sheet 2, which is the column in Sheet 2 where the data identical to our lookup value (email) in Sheet 1 is listed. The “B” means Column B, which contains the information that’s only available in Sheet 2 that you want to translate to Sheet 1.
  • Column Number: The table array tells Excel where (which column) the new data you want to copy to Sheet 1 is located. In our example, this would be the “House” column, the second one in our table array, making it column number 2.
  • Range Lookup: Use FALSE to ensure you pull in only exact value matches.
• The formula with variables from Sprung’s example below: =VLOOKUP(C2,Sheet2!A:B,2,FALSE)

In this example, Sheet 1 and Sheet 2 contain lists describing different information about the same people, and the common thread between the two is their email addresses. Let’s say we want to combine both datasets so that all the house information from Sheet 2 translates over to Sheet 1. Here’s how that would work:

5) IF

There are times when we want to know how many times a value appears in our spreadsheets. But there are also those times when we want to find the cells that contain those values, and input specific data next to it.

We’ll go back to Sprung’s example for this one. If we want to award 10 points to everyone who belongs in the Gryffindor house, instead of manually typing in 10’s next to each Gryffindor student’s name, we’ll use the IF-THEN formula to say: If the student is in Gryffindor, then he or she should get ten points.

• The formula: IF(logical_test, value_if_true, value of false)
  • Logical_Test: The logical test is the “IF” part of the statement. In this case, the logic is D2=”Gryffindor.” Make sure your Logical_Test value is in quotation marks.
  • Value_if_True: If the value is true — that is, if the student lives in Gryffindor — this value is the one that we want to be displayed. In this case, we want it to be the number 10, to indicate that the student was awarded the 10 points. Note: Only use quotation marks if you want the result to be text instead of a number.
  • Value_if_False: If the value is false — and the student does not live in Gryffindor — we want the cell to show “0,” for 0 points.
• Formula in below example: =IF(D2=”Gryffindor”,”10″,”0″)

6) RANDOMIZE

There’s a great article that likens Excel’s RANDOMIZE formula to shuffling a deck of cards. The entire deck is a column, and each card — 52 in a deck — is a row. “To shuffle the deck,” writes Steve McDonnell, “you can compute a new column of data, populate each cell in the column with a random number, and sort the workbook based on the random number field.”

In marketing, you might use this feature when you want to assign a random number to a list of contacts — like if you wanted to experiment with a new email campaign and had to use blind criteria to select who would receive it. By assigning numbers to said contacts, you could apply the rule, “Any contact with a figure of 6 or above will be added to the new campaign.”

• The formula: RAND()
  • Start with a single column of contacts. Then, in the column adjacent to it, type “RAND()” — without the quotation marks — starting with the top contact’s row.
• For the example below: RANDBETWEEN(bottom,top)
  • RANDBETWEEN allows you to dictate the range of numbers that you want to be assigned. In the case of this example, I wanted to use one through 10.
  • bottom: The lowest number in the range.
  • top: The highest number in the range,
• Formula in below example: =RANDBETWEEN(1,10)

Excel Keyboard Shortcuts

7) Quickly select rows, columns, or the whole spreadsheet.

Perhaps you’re crunched for time. I mean, who isn’t? No time, no problem. You can select your entire spreadsheet in just one click. All you have to do is simply click the tab in the top-left corner of your sheet to highlight everything all at once.

Just want to select everything in a particular column of row? That’s just as easy with these shortcuts:

Mac

• Select Column = Command + Shift + Down/Up
• Select Row = Command + Shift + Right/Left

PC

• Select Column = Control + Shift + Down/Up
• Select Row = Control + Shift + Right/Left

This shortcut is especially helpful when you’re working with larger data sets, but only need to select a specific piece of it.

8) Quickly open, close, or create a workbook.

Need to open, close, or create a workbook on the fly? The following keyboard shortcuts will enable you to complete any of the above actions in less than a minute’s time.

For Mac:

• Open = Command + O
• Close = Command + W
• Create New = Command + N

For PC:

• Open = Control + O
• Close = Control + F4
• Create New = Control + N

9) Format numbers into currency.

Have raw data that you want to turn into currency? Whether it be salary figures, marketing budgets, or ticket sales for an event, the solution is simple. Just highlight the cells you wish to reformat, and select Control + Shift + $.

The numbers will automatically translate into dollar amounts — complete with dollar signs, commas, and decimal points.

Note: This shortcut also works with percentages. If you want to label a column of numerical values as “percent” figures, replace “$” with “%”.

10) Insert current date and time into a cell.

Whether you’re logging social media posts, or keeping track of tasks you’re checking off your to-do list, you might want to add a date and time stamp to your worksheet. Start by selecting the cell to which you want to add this information.

Then, depending on what you want to insert, do one of the following:

• Insert current date = Control + ; (semi-colon)
• Insert current time = Control + Shift + ; (semi-colon)
• Insert current date and time = Control + ; (semi-colon), SPACE, and then Control + Shift + ; (semi-colon).

Other Excel Tricks

11) Automatically fill columns or rows with data.

Tired of manually entering data that follows a pattern across a bunch of cells? Excel’s Auto Fill feature is designed to minimize the work required on your end, by making it easy to repeat values you’ve already input.

To do so, click and hold the lower right corner of a cell, and then drag it down or across into adjacent cells. When you release, Excel will fill in the adjacent cells with the data from the cell you first selected.

12) Customize the color of your tabs.

If you’ve got a ton of different sheets in one workbook — which happens to the best of us — make it easier to identify where you need to go by color-coding the tabs. For example, you might label last month’s marketing reports with red, and this month’s with orange.

Simply right click a tab and select “Tab Color.” A popup will appear that allows you to choose a color from an existing theme, or customize one to meet your needs.

13) Add a comment to a cell.

When you want to make a note or add a comment to a specific cell within a worksheet, simply right-click the cell you want to comment on, then click Insert Comment. Type your comment into the text box, and click outside the comment box to save it.

Cells that contain comments display a small, red triangle in the corner. To view the comment, hover over it.

14) Copy and duplicate formatting.

If you’ve ever spent some time formatting a sheet to your liking, you probably agree that it’s not exactly the most enjoyable activity. In fact, it’s pretty tedious.

For that reason, it’s likely that you don’t want to repeat the process next time — nor do you have to. Thanks to Excel’s Format Painter, you can easily copy the formatting from one area of a worksheet to another.

Select what you’d like to replicate, then select the Format Painter option — the paintbrush icon — from the dashboard. The pointer will then display a paintbrush, prompting you to select the cell, text, or entire worksheet to which you want to apply that formatting, as shown below:

15) Identify duplicate values.

In many instances, duplicate values — like duplicate content when managing SEO — can be troublesome if gone uncorrected. In some cases, though, you simply need to be aware of it.

Whatever the situation may be, it’s easy to surface any existing duplicate values within your worksheet in just a few quick steps. To do so, click into the Conditional Formatting option, and select Highlight Cell Rules > Duplicate Values

Using the popup, create the desired formatting rule to specify which type of duplicate content you wish to bring forward.

In the example above, we were looking to identify any duplicate salaries within the selected range, and formatted the duplicate cells in yellow.

Ready to Get Started?

In marketing, the use of Excel is pretty inevitable — but with these tricks, it doesn’t have to be so daunting. As they say, practice makes perfect. The more you use these formulas, shortcuts, and tricks, the more they’ll become second nature.

Want to dig a little deeper? Check out a few of our favorite resources for learning Excel.

What are your favorite Excel tips and tricks for saving time? Let us know in the comments section below.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in October 2015 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

Content, SEO and email marketing are not going away but it’s important to stay ahead of the curve so you don’t fall behind. Here are some of 2017 education marketing trends that will help you to stay ahead of the curve.

Video Goes Big and Goes Live

The powerhouse engagement stats for video content keep growing. People watch more content online. Nearly half of Millennial digital video consumption happening on mobile. Incorporating video into your content plans is no longer optional. Eighty-six percent of colleges already have a presence on YouTube. Next year, it’s all about live video.

Facebook Live (Facebook’s live streaming app) is now available to all. It’s being heavily promoted on that old video channel – your television. YouTube continues to improve its own live stream functionality.

Fortunately, campuses are natural hives for creating compelling live video. Any school event can be live streamed (as long as your school policies permit this). “Student on the street” interviews about a hot topic of the day. Day in the life videos for different student personas. Clips from classes and lectures.

Your school has tons of live action worth streaming live. You can even continue to repurpose video recorded as part of a live stream into future content.

People Value Experiences – Make It Real

Nothing connects people together more than sharing a real-world experience. People want experiences that make them feel. That’s what they’ll post on Instagram and Snapchat. If your school only exists in their heads, it doesn’t feel real to your prospects.

Experiential marketing is about giving prospects an opportunity to engage with your school 1:1. They don’t have to be on the school’s grounds at the time. On-campus tours and interviews are great ways to pull in high value prospects. But experience marketing is something a bit different.

Think about how many school fairs or communities your school visits to drive recruitment. You can do more than just have a table. One Canadian university brought a photo booth to fairs. Prospective students created customized photos of themselves. Then they created new ones to show how they saw themselves in a new field.

Here are some more experiential marketing examples.

People can’t stop sharing first-hand experiences that move their hearts and souls. Use digital channels to drive people to the experience. They’ll help you amplify the campaign’s reach — making it far more effective than if it just sat on your website.

Prospects Expect Personalized, Relevant Content

For years, e-commerce and social media sites have been customizing our web experiences. It’s been normal, expected. Now we expect all our digital engagements to provide that sort of personalization. There’s too much content out there to consume for a school to catch anyone’s eye with generic content.

Personalizing content requires much more than inserting a prospect’s name into an email. Effective personalization is providing the most relevant content. You learn this when you analyze their online behavior. What content do they consume? On what visit — first, second, third? What content formats do they prefer? On which visit? All that helps you identify where they are in their enrollment journey.

To personalize, think bigger and go beyond email. You can personalize the headlines they see when they visit your website. Do the same with the blogs you suggest as links on the pages they’re already reading. The more data you collect, the more precise your personalization can become.

The costs for not personalizing your content aren’t limited to people ignoring your content. (Although that’s a good reason for concern.) Ignored content is merely ignored. On the other hand, bland or misdirected content undermines your brand. Whereas poor quality, irrelevant content gets remembered and shared — for all the wrong reasons.

Catch the Snapchat Wave

Snapchat is one of the fastest growing social media platforms, especially for young people. According to its stats, every day it reaches 41% of all 18-to-34 year-olds in the U.S. Wondering where your prospects went? They’re in Snapchat.

Snapchat lets you share images and short videos. You can curate them into longer “Stories.” You can even make an experience out of your campus tour. Use Snapchat to turn it into a scavenger hunt (your own version of Pokeman Go!). Student guides can post short videos of where they are. They don’t away the exact spot — they offer a clue instead. Visiting prospects now have to ask students on campus — or ask on Snapchat — to figure out the clue and find the guide.

You can also use Snapchat as a channel for student ambassadors and faculty to share personal perspectives on campus life. Like Instagram and Twitter, Snapchat works with hashtags. Research your personas to find the hashtags that will get your Snapchat content found by them.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a form of word of mouth marketing (WOMM), but with a boost. WOMM is so effective because it’s third party validation of your school. People trust what other people have to say and for good reason. They know that even when you’re providing valuable, relevant content, you’re still biased. This is why marketers always want content to go viral. All that sharing is third party, WOMM validation.

But you can’t plan viral. Nor do you want to throw content at the wall and hope people share it. Influencer marketing is about identifying the key folks who exert a powerful influence on your target persona.

Those key influencers have a large audience that mirrors your own target personas. Ideally, they also share content relevant to your pet topics. If your content targets military students, you might identify some influencers in the veterans’ community, even if they don’t focus on education specifically.

You can use influencers to share your content. They can also create content relevant to your school. Now you can reach out to the veteran with a podcast show that reaches the military community. Offer them an interview with one of your counselors on the challenges of military personnel adjusting to civilian and campus life.

You could reach out to an Instagram star popular with high school students. Ask them to share an image of students getting creative at your school or of your successful stadium “white out” (or whatever your school colors are).

More info on Influencer Marketing Here: Content Marketers Guide to Influencer Marketing

 

Keep in Mind

 

Blog posts and downloadable guides aren’t going anywhere. The 2017 trends are all about diving into the most current ways and formats for engaging with prospects. Use them to up your content marketing game and stay ahead of your competition.