As marketers, we spend a lot of time strategizing and writing about how business professionals can adapt to the constant state of change that characterizes the digital world.

The tricky thing when it comes to all of that change is that it can be challenging for marketing executives to learn the ins and outs of new technologies and run the business while still prioritizing growth and big-picture branding changes. And according to a recent survey from the CMO Council, there’s a significant disconnect between what CMOs know they should be focusing on and how they’re actually spending their time.

In fact, while 48% of CMOs surveyed knew they needed to spend time developing strategies for long-term growth, in reality, 45% of CMOs said they spent their time reviewing budgets, approving content and campaigns, and evaluating marketing plans.

Check out the infographic from the CMO Council below to learn more about how CMOs are spending their time, what they’re accomplishing and what they’re neglecting, and how marketers can shift priorities to help the entire team.

If you’re a freelancer, you probably have a lot on your plate.

Balancing multiple projects, building your personal brand, and keeping up with client requests is no easy feat, and the last thing you want to worry about is undercharging for your services.

Determining your ideal hourly rate can seem like a high-stakes guessing game. How much do you need to charge your clients to live the lifestyle you want? How do you factor in your overhead costs, vacation days, and other expenses? How can you be sure you aren’t undervaluing your work?

To help you quantify your ideal hourly rate without breaking a sweat, we created a free tool that does the heavy lifting for you: The Freelance Hourly Rate Calculator.

With just a few simple inputs, this tool will automatically crunch the numbers, calculating the ideal hourly rate you need to charge your clients to build a profitable freelancing business.

You can access our free calculator here. It will give you your ideal rate based on the following areas:

• How many days you want to take off per year
• How much you plan to spend on overhead expenses (office space, project management software, etc.)
• How much you would like to earn annually
• Retirement, benefits, and self-employment taxes

Ready to get started? Click here to start calculating your ideal hourly rate, and never worry about undercharging for your services again. 

Ah, late December — I remember it well. It was a time for reflection, sugar, and salt. For many, it was also a time to look ahead to the looming new year, and think about where we could improve. We resolved to do things like lose weight, find love, and save money.

But once the new year has come and gone, sadly, only 8% of us successfully accomplished what we set out to do.

It wasn’t always like that. There’s actually a very long, compelling history behind how we started making resolutions in the first place, and it looked a lot different at first. And as these resolutions evolved, our motivation to maintain them also shifted, eventually resulting in the aforementioned dismal success rate.

So, how did we get here? And why is it just so darn tricky to stick to our resolutions? Let’s step back in time and explore just how this tradition works.

A Brief History of New Year’s Resolutions

Where They Began

According to the History Channel, New Year’s resolutions date back roughly 4,000 years, to when the Babylonians — a population living in what was then Mesopotamia — commemorated the new year in March, when the season’s crops were planted. The celebration consisted of a 12-day festival called Akitu, when either a new king was crowned, or loyalty to the existing monarchy was renewed.

But it was also a time for the Babylonians to make certain promises — things like settling debts and returning anything that wasn’t theirs to its proper owner. Maintaining these resolutions, they believed, came with karmic retribution, in that kept promises would be rewarded with good fortune in the following year.

The Romans are said to be the first to create the concept of January 1 and designate it the first day of the year, beginning around 46 B.C. The name of the month is rooted in Janus, a god of particular importance to the Romans, due to his two-faced nature. It was believed that Janus could use his two faces to both look back on the outgoing year, and forward to the next one. Similar to the Babylonians, Romans made vows of good deeds to Janus before the new year arrived.

Where They Are Now

Each December, the Marist Institute for Public Opinion measures the most popular resolutions for the coming year. Starting with the top resolutions for 2017, we worked backwards to see how these resolutions have evolved — or not — over the past five years.

We’ve certainly seen a shift in resolutions since the Babylonian and ancient Roman era — going from good-doing to mostly self-improvement. However, 2017 is seeing a bit of a shift back in that direction, with more looking to “be a better person” this year.

It should be interesting to observe if that new trend influences the typical marketing response to New Year’s resolutions, and what — if any — shift we’ll see from campaigns aligning with “classic” resolutions to ones that attempt a deeper sense of self-improvement.

But there’s some intricate psychology between our resolutions and the way brands respond to them. In her book The Psychology of Overeating: Food and the Culture of Consumerism, psychologist Kima Cargill explores how, when it comes to goals like diet and exercise, there’s a human tendency to consume a larger number of things that we believe are a means to an end. Rather than trying to “locate purpose in [our] life,” Dr. Cargill writes, “shopping, spending, and eating are all part of the frenzy of consumption that has overtaken our culture.”

Cargill elaborates on one particular client as an example, citing that person’s thousand-dollar spending on a personal trainer, top-of-the-line juicer, high-end fitness attire, and specially branded health food in response to her resolution to lose weight. That client, by the way, ultimately fell into a pattern of abandoning her resolutions and starting them over again. Sound familiar? I know it does to me.

That behavior reflects what Cargill believes is an “underlying belief that consumption solves rather than creates problems,” and brands respond in kind. We see an uptick in campaigns from fitness and weight loss brands every January, leading to an uptick in new gym memberships — 67% of which go unused. And with so many people resolving to lose weight year after year, some brands have become extremely skilled at convincing us to use them to meet our goals. Check out this 2015 ad from Virgin Active, which combined two common resolutions — exercising more and finding love.

But this psychology paves the way to figuring out why 92% of New Year’s resolutions fail. And it seems to indicate two core reasons:

1. The goals are too big.
2. The stakes aren’t high enough.

Why Resolutions Fail: 2 Common Pitfalls

1) The Goals Are Too Big

Not too long ago, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania discovered the “fresh start effect” — the fact that something saliently new, like a year, age, home, or job comes with an inevitable opportunity to start over again. Unfortunately, as Julie Beck wrote for the Atlantic, “A fresh start is only fresh while you’re anticipating it. Once the New Year begins, it’s no longer special.”

As we anticipate these landmarks, they seem like big, remarkable occasions, so we pair them with equally sizable goals. But given that many of the most common resolutions are fairly general — get fit, find love, save money — it can be hard to determine where to start. And when you’re faced with a broad task and an unclear plan for tackling it, you’re — in most cases — setting yourself up for failure. 

Take the aforementioned example of Cargill’s client — it seems that none of those purchases came with a tangible plan for how each of them would be used to achieve the overarching goal of losing weight. Instead, the client spent a large sum of money on products that were intended to achieve several new behaviors at once.

Instead of imitating that behavior, we recommend setting micro goals — and not limiting them to January 1.

Ask yourself: “What’s one small change I can make that will help me lose weight?” Adding more veggies to every meal, doing ten sit-ups when you get out of bed, or skipping dessert 1-2 days per week are a few.

These minor modifications should be easy to do among the other tasks that come with a new year, like catching up at work after time off for the holidays.

Where to Start:

Luckily, there are plenty of resources out there to help you start with these small goals. The Google Calendar app (free on iOS and Android) has a “Goals” feature, which you can customize according to what you want to accomplish, and how frequently you can do it — you can start with something as small as once a month, or as often as six times each week. Plus, Google uses what’s already on your calendar to figure out the timeslots you have available for your goals.

Here’s how I used it to schedule weekly time for volunteer work:

2) The Stakes Aren’t High Enough

Something happens when you resolve to break a bad habit, Dr. Nicole Lipkin explains on ThinkGrowth.org — you “fight against your natural, human urge to gain over lose.” That’s especially true when your undesired behavior has become deeply ingrained in your day-to-day operation. “Smoking, laziness, boredom, compulsive eating, overspending,” Dr. Lipkin writes, “are all default behaviors based on habitual brain wiring to give you what will make you feel good.”

Take smoking, for example. By now, we all know the health risks it poses. But until we’re faced with the immediate repercussions of the bad habit — like in an extreme case, losing one’s trachea — it’s extremely difficult to fight against the urge to gain the pleasure you might receive from indulging in it.

But there’s an answer to that conundrum, and it lies in our naturally human aversion to loss — the psychology that explains why it hurts us when we lose money, for example, much more than winning money brings us pleasure. So what if, every time you resolved to quit and failed, you immediately lost money? The immediate risk increases the stakes, playing into our loss aversion psychology.

Where to Start:

Websites like stickK exist for a reason. It can be used to place financial wagers on your goals with a Commitment Contract — “a binding agreement you sign with yourself to ensure that you follow through with your intentions.” While you aren’t immediately charged, you are required to provide billing information as soon as you make a commitment. That way, if you don’t stick to it, you’re immediately charged the amount that you’ve wagered.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t really feel like coughing up $25 every time I back out of a volunteering project — and I’m sure that I’m not alone. Maybe that’s why folks with financial stakes are up to 3x as likely to successfully achieve their goals. As the numbers show, the reward of accomplishing what you’ve set out to do isn’t always enough motivation. Supplementing it with an immediate loss if you don’t stick to your resolutions mitigates the chances of bailing on your resolutions.

Ready to Make a Plan?

Maybe you’re part of the 38% of people who never make New Year’s resolutions. But with these resources, you might feel a renewed sense of motivation.

And maybe that’s because they’ll help you move past the “fresh start effect” that we mentioned, and see that goals can be planned for any time of year. With the right, manageable steps, as well as a healthy balance of risk and reward, the new year doesn’t have to be such a big deal — and it doesn’t have to pose insurmountable obstacles to achieving worthy resolutions.

How do you maintain your goals and resolutions? Let us know in the comments.

When it comes to business blogging, how much time do people put into creating posts? How long are their articles? What goes into them? How often do they publish new content? How do they promote their posts? Do they measure the results?

The answers to any and all of the questions deliver interesting insights on the state of digital marketing. And thanks to the work of Orbit Media Studios, this data has been collected, made available and fun to consume.

For three years running, Andy Crestodina — the web design and development company’s co-founder — and his team have surveyed 1000+ bloggers about how they create content and compiled their findings into blog posts, infographics, and SlideShares. Let’s take a look at some of the trends over the years …

Business Blogging: A Look at Trends From 2014, 2015 & 2016

2014 …

In their 2014 research they established some baselines and concluded:

• The majority of bloggers spend two hours or less on a typical post.
• The typical blogger published several posts per week. 5% published daily.
• 80% were creating content of 1,000 words or less.
• Social media was the most common promotion tactic, typically used by 94% of bloggers.

Andy told us, for bloggers, blogging isn’t a job; it’s a lifestyle. His research indicated bloggers were writing and producing posts everywhere, all the time.

2015 …

In 2015, Crestodina and I collaborated on an infographic to present the key findings, which reported:

• Average time writing blog posts increased to 2.5 hours.
• The number of bloggers publishing daily (or more) increased.
• Blog posts of 1,500 or more words increased by 72%.
• The use of images increased.

The research indicated more blogging was done during normal work hours. The findings at large inspired Andy to conclude, “Blogging is becoming a more serious, formal discipline.” He also said best practices were emerging.  

2016 …

The 2016 results came together in November, and you can find a detailed analysis of the findings here. Once again, we have created an infographic, making its debut below.

I’ll allow it to reveal the findings, which have evolved to include the tactics that business bloggers believe produce the strongest results.

When you hear “infomercial” you might picture a suburban mom on a fruitless quest through her cluttered kitchen cabinets to find a single matching container lid from her 10,000 piece Tupperware collection. Or a hapless man engaged in a heated but ultimately ill-fated wrestling match with his garden hose.

What was once an ad format no self-respecting agency would deign to touch after the 90s has suddenly found itself in vogue again, thanks to a growing consumer taste for all things nostalgic and kitsch.

The infomercial is no longer reserved for bacon bowls and Snuggies. Startups and big brands alike are embracing the format — with a few modern twists.

Fast-talking pitchmen like Billy Mays and Vince Shlomi (aka the ShamWow Guy) have been replaced by endearingly quirky character actors. Ad run times that once pushed the 30-minute mark on late night TV have been cut down to a more YouTube-friendly five minutes. And the all the unabashed cheesiness you’d expect from an infomercial is now intentionally engineered by teams of creatives. 

Leading this new wave of viral, tongue-in-cheek infomercials is Utah-based agency Harmon Brothers, whose fresh spin on the once-tired ad format generated over $100 million of revenue in 2016 for their clients. Not to mention hundreds of millions of views on social media.

You might have seen their outrageously successful debut ad for Squatty Potty, which boosted the company’s sales by 600% in 2015 and racked up 29 million YouTube views.

Other agencies and brands are feeling out the trend. And the results aren’t just funny — they’re also driving real brand awareness and sales. We’ve picked a few of the very best to inspire your next ad campaign. Check them out below and decide for yourself: Are infomercials here to stay?

7 Infomercials You’ll Actually Want to Watch

1) Purple

To highlight the benefits of this startup’s unique polymer mattress, the folks at Harmon Brothers created the raw egg test — “a super easy way to tell if your mattress is awful.”

In the infomercial, an actress dressed as Goldilocks adheres four raw eggs to the underside of a 330-pound sheet of tempered glass, and then drops it onto a Purple mattress to see if the eggs break. The eggs survive the drop onto the Purple mattress, but crack when dropped onto traditional box spring models.

The demo is reminiscent of classic hard-sell infomercial presentations, but stays funny and refreshing thanks to some well-timed quippy lines from Goldilocks. The YouTube comments speak for themselves:

This is the first ad that actually entertained me… what just happened.

This is the best ad Ive [sic] ever watched, I didnt [sic] skip it.

The ad gained rapid viral attention, garnering 100 million views, 158,000 shares, and overwhelming Purple’s manufacturing with the sudden flux of online orders.

2) Chatbooks

When Chatbooks, a photo printing startup, needed a way to introduce consumers to their company, they turned to Harmon Brothers. They needed a way to educate consumers about the specifics of their service without boring them. The viral video agency developed the perfect pitch-woman: a flustered “real mom” just trying to balance work, kids, and managing a house without losing her mind.

Actress Lisa Valentine Clark dodges arrows, garbage disposal mishaps, and kids jumping from windows in the brand’s first infomercial, which has amassed over 20 million views and 243,000 shares on social media since its release in October. We loved it so much we featured it in our October Ad Roundup.

The format was such a success for Chatbooks that they turned to Harmon Brothers again to create a holiday themed infomercial. It definitely captures all the charm of the original. 

3) NERD Skincare

Utah-based agency Chamber.Media helped NERD Skincare launch their line of acne-fighting products with an infomercial that combines a delightfully manic pitch-woman with a real-life product demo.

The ad — which was written by and stars comedian Laura Clery — took cues from the Harmon Brothers, delivering educational product info with a cartoonish flair that keeps viewers interested.

So far, the strategy seems to be paying off. The video has picked up 2.7 million views since its release in November, and led to eight-figure sales for NERD Skincare.

4) The Animal Foundation, Las Vegas

Is your alarm clock not enough to wake you up in the morning? You need Pet Cat: the hottest new product from The Animal Foundation. But hurry! They’re going fast.

R&R Partners created this fantastically overdone infomercial spoof to generate some buzz for a Las Vegas-based animal shelter. They even developed a dog version.

5) Palace

Awkward cuts, bad green screen backgrounds, and cringe-worthy acting made this faux-infomercial from Palace — a London-based skateboard shop — a viral hit.

Palace founder Lev Tanju recruited actor Jonah Hill to star in the two-minute spot, which has over 300,000 views on Vimeo alone. “We just wanted to make something really stupid,” Tanju told Dazed. The whole video was produced in-house by Tanju and his team.

The unconventional strategy ended up being a smart advertising approach. GQ called the ad “the funnest fashion related ad of the year” in 2016, and it was covered by major media outlets like Adweek, Forbes, and Fast Company.

6) GE Lighting

It’s not just startups and smaller companies trying out the infomercial trend — big names like GE are also giving them a spin.

Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim (aka Tim & Eric) created this goofy two-minute spot in collaboration with BBDO New York. Starring actor Jeff Goldblum as fake “famous person” Terry Quattro, the infomercial introduces GE’s line of long-lasting LED lightbulbs with all the deadpan weirdness you’d expect from a Tim & Eric production. 

7) Squatty Potty

Called the “The Greatest Viral Ad in Internet History,” this infomercial propelled a little-known toilet accessory startup to mainstream fame.

Produced by the Harmon Brothers, the ad features a handsome prince discussing the importance of colon health — using an ice-cream pooping unicorn as an example. The offbeat premise generated a ton of interest in Squatty Potty, and in the first four months alone, the ad was watched 66 million times and shared one million times on Facebook.

Would you ever consider using an infomercial style ad? Let us know in the comments.

By now, it’s clear that creating great visual content is critical for marketers — and that’s especially true on social media.

It was recently announced that Instagram has doubled its monthly active user base since 2014, which means a lot more people are viewing and sharing photos. Plus, visual content is 40X more likely to get shared on social media than other types. In other words, people like to be shown, not told — and in turn, they share.

For that reason, it’s important for marketers to know how to create compelling visuals for their business’ social networks and blogs. And while it can be worth putting the investment of time and money into photo editing software on your computer, many of us are exclusively using our phones to take pictures and could stand to edit them without uploading them to a desktop. That’s especially true when you’re posting in real time, like at an event.

Luckily, there are tons of great photo and video editing apps out there for mobile devices — some of them even cost a few bucks. But which are the best, free or paid? Check out our shortlist below.

13 of the Best Photo & Video Editing Apps for Mobile

Photo Editing Apps

1) Afterlight

$0.99 | iOS | Android | Windows

There was a time when I was a bit more old-school in my photo editing. I counted on Instagram tools alone, sometimes combining them with the “enhance” feature on my phone’s Photos app. Then, I learned about Afterlight — a somewhat rudimentary tool, but one that has all the features you need to do a basic photo edit.

From controlling the color tones, to adjusting exposure and brightness, to rotating and straightening a photo, it has everything you need for lighting or color fixes. It also contains 74 filters, including a Fusion feature that lets you mix tools, filters, and textures to create your own personal look. Into frames? Afterlight has a whopping 128 to choose from, boasting a perfect pairing with Instagram.

My favorite tools, though, have to be the ones for Brightness and Shadows. Some pictures do well with a decrease in shadows and increase in brightness for cleaner, fresher look. But flipping those around can also create a more mysterious, nighttime feel — That’s what I did with this photo of tree ornaments.

2) VSCO Cam

Free | iOS | Android

Over the past few years, VSCO Cam has become a highly popular photo editing app for mobile. While it does boast a wider set of editing tools than most other editing apps, its main claim to fame is its filters.

These filters have a softer, more authentic look that resembles real film, compared to the over-saturated looks of many Instagram filters. Plus, it’s great for when you need to edit a photo on the fly. Simply upload the photo to VSCO Cam, slap on one of the great filters — I used C1 below — and call it a day. (There are more filters available for purchase, too.)

3) Snapseed

Free | iOS | Android

Snapseed is another app that’s great for basic image enhancements. It’s got all the classic adjustment tools, such as tuning, cropping, and straightening. Plus, its sharpening tool is one of the best we’ve seen — it really does enhance a photo’s detail, without making it look grainy, like many other photo sharpening adjusters out there.

But what makes this tool particularly unique is its “Selective Adjust” tool. It allows you to pinpoint an area in a photo and adjust the brightness, contrast, and saturation of that single point. So if you want viewers to focus on a certain part of your photo — say, the buds in the center of a plant — then you can make the buds more vivid.

Want more help with Snapseed? Google, the maker of the app, created a dedicated support page with tips and instructions.

4) Camera+

$2.99 | iOS only

With the highest price tag on the list, you have to wonder what makes Camera+ so special. When it was first released, Lifehacker called it “The Best Camera App for iPhone,” with TIME writing, “If the iPhone’s standard camera is like a digital point-and-shoot, the Camera+ app is like a high-quality SLR lens.”

While the app has many of the classic photo editing tools like color tints, retro effects, and crops, there are a few gems that make it unique. First is its image stabilizer, which helps you capture the sharpest photos possible before you even take a picture. It also lets you zoom in up to 6X, which can really up the quality of your shot if you’re trying to hone in on something far away.

Finally, its Clarity filter is what The Wall Street Journal‘s Kevin Sintumuang calls its “secret sauce — it adds pro-camera crispness to almost any shot.” I’d have to agree — just check out how it enhanced this photo of my dog.

5) Mextures

$0.99 | iOS only

Mextures is one of the more advanced apps on this list — and its crown jewel is layer-based editing. That allows users to stack different adjustment layers on top of each other, moving and editing them individually, allowing for nearly limitless creativity. You can also apply multiple filters, textures, and blending models to the same photo to create a really unique look. If you find an editing formula you really like, you can save it to apply to other photos later, or even share it with your friends.

Here’s what happened when I took a simple photo of candlesticks on a white background only and applied three enhancements — Waterfront overlay, Bokeh Baby Overlay, and the Color Dodge blending mode.

6) SKRWT

$0.99 | iOS | Android

Ever taken a picture of something straight-on — a doorway, a building, your food — and found the perspective was just a little bit askew or tilted? The SKRWT app lets you adjust the perspective of your photos to make the lines look clean and square.

Have a look at what I was able to do with a simple window shot.

Before:

After:

At first, the “before” image doesn’t look that skewed, but seeing the “after” version really shows what a difference symmetry can make. If it bugs you to see a photo that’s slightly at an angle, then this app is well worth the dollar.

7) InstaCollage

Free | iOS

Photo collages can be great, whether it’s to show a comparison (like a before-and-after series), or to highlight multiple photos from the same event or theme. Our favorite photo collage app is InstaCollage, mostly because of its wide variety of layouts. It contains several layouts, both classic and fun ones with interesting, colorful backgrounds. Plus, you can add customized text in different fonts, colors, and sizes.

If you’re strapped for time, there are basic photo editing options within the app, too, making it a handy one-stop shop.

8) Foodie

Free | iOS | Android

If you’re anything like I am, your personal social media feeds are loaded with images of food. It’s no wonder that food-specific apps are coming out of the woodwork to make photos look even more delectable.

Called out by Bustle for taking “food pictures to some next level gorgeous,” Foodie uses over 26 filters and other editing features to turn what might otherwise be a humdrum snack into a visual feast.

When I applied the CR2 filter to a photo of chocolate candy, this was the result:

9) Visage

Free | iOS only

Disclaimer: There’s absolutely nothing wrong with under-eye circles. We all have them, and we sometimes wear them like medals. (We do, however, take issue with and don’t recommend a lack of sleep.)

That said, when it comes to sharing photos of ourselves on social media, vanity sometimes enters the picture. Sound familiar? There’s an app for that.

We like the Visage makeup editor, which instantly retouches photos and lets you add some special effects, like a “Pop Art Style” filter that can make your selfie look slightly Warhol-esque. The app comes equipped with some interesting backgrounds, as well as lighting and color features, with more available for purchase.

The only drawback? The free version is a bit ad-heavy, and unless you upgrade to pro, your finished product will be stuck with a branded hashtag at the bottom.

Video Editing Apps

10) Splice

Free | iOS only

It only seems fitting that the makers of GoPro would also release an app that allows you — as the name suggests — to splice together different video clips on your phone to create a moving collage.

We had a lot of fun playing with this one, especially since Splice even contains a library of musical tracks — among other features, like custom transition length — that can be used as a background for your finished product. You can also use the app to trim and edit the different pieces of video.

I experimented with Splice by compiling this 15-second video of my dog — using only an iPhone 6.

11) Hyperlapse

Free | iOS only

Hyperlapse is an app created by the folks at Instagram that condenses videos into brief, hyper-speed videos that you can upload to Instagram or Facebook. You can choose among a few different speeds, and the app will show you how long the hyperlapsed video will be for every speed in comparison to the length of the video in real time. (So a 40-second video in real time will become roughly a 7-second video in Hyperlapse at 6X speed.) It’s a really cool way to capture something that usually lasts a while — like a sunset or an event setup.

Here’s what happened when I used Hyperlapse to film daybreak at 12X:

12) PicPlayPost

Free | iOS | Android

We’ve already covered the coolness of photo collages. But what if you could make a video collage? PicPlayPost is a simple app that lets you do exactly that. Just remember that the sound from both videos will play at the same time, so be sure they won’t clash with one another.

There are many uses for a video collage app, but my colleague, Lindsay Kolowich, particularly likes the way fitness professional Melissa Made uses it on her Instagram account. She posts video collages with her performing a workout on one side, while she explains the workout out loud on the other.

 

WHOA! That’s a mouthful! . Grab a heavy dumbbell, bag of rice or book and complete this circuit several times to work ALL those muscles listed plus some added cardio! . 1⃣ Squat and bicep curl 2⃣ Bowler lunge and row right 3⃣ Calf raise, overhead press and tricep extension 4⃣ Bowler lunge and row left 5⃣ Deadlift and back row . The key is to make your range of motion BIG. But as always, keep your chest lifted, abs in tight and knees behind toes. . Put in a good song and do it half tempo a few times and then tempo a few. The variety will definitely benefit both strength and cardio!!!💪🏼🏃🏻

A video posted by 🌸Melissa McAllister🌸 (@melissamade) on Aug 25, 2015 at 6:27pm PDT

13) InShot

Free | iOS | Android

Then, there are the times when you just want to edit a video — no fancy collages and no splicing. For that, there’s InShot, a handy app that lets you trim, speed up, or add music and filters to video. It’s pretty fundamental, but with that comes a high ease of use. You can also add a background, if you like, though we think it’s pretty cool to have an overlap of images, like we did with the video below.

I took a simple video of a tranquil beach scene, but enhanced it with InShot’s “warm filter,” and added a fitting musical track to it — a song called “Pikake Stream,” by Kalani. (I recommend viewing the video in its entirety with headphones, especially if you’re having a stressful day.)

Now Comes the Fun Part

See how easy it is to create and share visual content? Of course, mastering these apps will require a bit of practice, but if you’re unsure where to start, just look around you — that’s what we did when we tried each of them.

Think about your marketing goals for this year. Then, ask yourself what kind of visual content — format and subject, for example — will help you accomplish them. From there, you can pick and choose the best apps from this list.

So start getting visual. We can’t wait to see what you create.

What are your favorite photo and video editing apps for mobile? Share with us in the comments.

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

There’s something about the word “poster” that seems very … retro. I remember having a Metallica poster hanging in my room as an angstry teenager. Who knew that they might someday pertain to my line of work?

As it turns out, posters aren’t as old-school as we might think. In fact, they’re still quite effective devices for promoting events. Making yours stand out, however, is the tricky part.

Like so many other things in marketing, it requires a combination of creativity and formula. But what are the success factors? And what makes a poster look its best?

You’re in luck. Our friends at Venngage, who know a thing or two about creating compelling visuals, put together this infographic to guide you along your poster-making journey. It’ll help you figure out what information is essential to include on your poster, and how to make it aesthetically appealing — without overwhelming the viewer.

If you’re reading this blog post, there’s a good chance you arrived here by clicking on a link in an email we sent to you.

Email marketing is a powerful tool to encourage your audience to engage with content and to nurture leads in your database along the buyer’s journey.

And despite what you may think, email marketing is still growing: Gmail alone has 1 billion users worldwide, and The Radicati Group predicts that there will be 3 billion email users worldwide by 2020 (that’s almost half of the world’s population).

Certainly email is not dead, but it is getting harder to do well. HubSpot Postmaster and Email Engineering Director Tom Monaghan distilled his wisdom into a set of guidelines for email marketing for growth in 2017 at INBOUND last year. Read on to learn what strategies you should start implementing, absolutely avoid, and keep up in 2017 and in years ahead.

How to Improve Your Email Marketing in 2017

1) Send emails to lists that want to hear from you.

If you have email lists with low rates of engagement activity, stop sending to them. Every time you send to a list with low open and engagement rates, it hurts your domain reputation and your chances of connecting with other potential customers.

Monaghan said it best in his talk: “You are what you eat, and so is your marketing.” When you receive tons of emails from brands you don’t engage with, constantly deleting them or marking them as “read” is most likely tiresome. Empathize with your subscribers and treat their inbox the way you would want your inbox treated.

2) Have a goal for each email before you press “send.”

If you don’t have a goal in mind for the emails you’re sending, the recipients won’t know what the goal is, either. Once you define a goal for your email sends, you can define success and build a list to make that happen.

Goals for your emails could include a contact filling out a longer form for a gated content offer to provide your team with more information about their organization, or redeeming a promo code for a purchase on your website.

Give recipients options in your messages, such as calls-to-action and links in text, so they have multiple avenues to achieve your goal. Everyone’s behavior is different, so make your emails flexible.

3) Personalize and test your emails.

Email personalization really works. For example, back in 2014, we found that emails with the recipients’ first names in the subject lines had higher clickthrough rates than emails that didn’t.

When it comes to personalizing your emails, stick with the basics. Personalize according to recipient names and company names, but to avoid being creepy, leave it at that, urges Monaghan.

Nothing is less personal than receiving a “Dear Customer” or “Dear First Name” email, so test every email to make sure you’re sending to recipient names.

4) Send emails from a personalized account.

Don’t send emails from a “noreply” email account. Personalization works on your end, too. Boost your engagement by personalizing the “from” email address to drive replies from subscribers to a real person instead of “noreply@company.com.”

5) Experiment with sending emails on different days of the week.

Stop sending emails on Tuesdays. Seriously, stop.

Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are the most popular days to send email, but they’re oversaturated with messages that might be overwhelming your subscribers. If you want your emails to be opened, try sending them on Mondays and Fridays. Emails with calls-to-action perform well on Saturdays, so don’t be afraid to send emails on the weekend, either.

In any case, try experimenting with your approach to lessen your subscribers’ email load Tuesday through Thursday, when most business emails are sent.

6) Engage with contacts who’ve submitted forms, not contacts whose information you’ve imported.

When someone fills out a form and provides their email address, their engagement rates are typically higher than cold contacts you’ve imported from a list. That’s because they want to hear from you and chose to engage with your content — they’ve told you this by filling out a form. This is evidence that the inbound marketing methodology is working for email marketers.

And by the way, don’t buy email lists — you’re only hurting your credibility and annoying people who haven’t asked to hear from you.

7) Suppress your unengaged subscribers to avoid sending graymail.

You may be sending spam without knowing it, and that’s because the definition of spam has changed. Graymail refers to bulk email messages that aren’t technically spam because the recipients gave you their information, but the fact of the matter is, they get your emails and don’t touch them. Engagement rates plummet if recipients don’t open your first email, so if they continue ignoring you, the probability of them ever opening your messages is going way, way down.

Stop sending graymail, and listen to what people are telling you by not opening your emails. Start suppressing your unengaged subscribers. That way, your open rates will increase, and inbox providers will see that you’re responding to subscriber behavior.

8) If people are unsubscribing, don’t worry too much (yet).

You can’t please everyone, and unsubscribes will happen. Luckily, your subscribers didn’t mark you as spam — they simply told you, in the nicest way possible, that they’re not interested in hearing from you anymore.

Don’t be too worried yet, but if more people keep unsubscribing, try to identify the potential cause. Consider suppressing or sending fewer emails to subscribers who aren’t engaging as much.

9) If people stop opening your emails, figure out what’s going wrong fast.

If your email open rate is falling, it means you’re missing the expectations of your recipients and that you should prepare for worse outcomes. It’s a leading indicator that spam complaints and unsubscribes are coming, and you should immediately suppress your unengaged subscribers to show email providers that you’re responding to feedback. Test different emails to see if you can improve your open rates.

10) If people mark you as spam, immediately stop sending email and identify the source of the complaints.

If you’re being marked as spam, your domain reputation is at risk, and you could become blacklisted by email providers. Whether the spam complaints are caused by a new source, bad forms, or you missing expectations of your list, slow or completely stop sending emails until you figure it out.

If you aren’t getting unsubscribe or spam complaints, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re in the clear — the messages could be going straight to recipients’ junk folders.

11) If you want to learn more about email marketing, take the free email marketing certification course.

Learn more about email marketing with Monaghan right now by taking HubSpot Academy’s Email Marketing Certification course. In only 3.5 hours, you’ll learn about lifecycle marketing, email list segmentation, design, deliverability, and more skills to help you cultivate a strong strategy for 2017 and beyond.

12) Be thoughtful about your subject line.

Don’t write clickbait email subject lines. When people click on your email and then immediately bounce away when they realize your subject line wasn’t genuine, your clickthrough rates will suffer.

For best results, customize and personalize email subject lines and experiment with emojis. Pro tip: Read subject lines out loud before sending. Would you open that email if you received it?

13) Remember: Email is getting harder, but it’s still working.

Every year, engagement rates start to slip, and it gets harder to reach people’s inboxes. This doesn’t mean that email marketing is losing its efficacy, it’s just getting more competitive. The divide is growing between email marketers who know what they’re doing and those who don’t, so make sure to put in effort to test different strategies and keep your subscribers engaged.

The theme of all of these email marketing guidelines? Testing. Every audience and contacts database is different, so make sure you’re testing the implementation of new strategies and tailoring them according to how your subscribers engage. And when you’re ready to hit “send,” here are some lead nurturing email examples to inspire your creativity.

Before you go, you can watch Monaghan’s INBOUND 2016 talk in full below:

How will you be changing your email marketing strategy in 2017? Share with us in the comments below.

It’s once again that time of year for taking a good look at the lessons we’ve learned from our marketing efforts and resolving what we will, or won’t, do again in 2017:

1) Less Bulk Email

Your prospects want to know you see them. Personalized emails provide 6x the transaction rates as generic email. Yet the bar for what qualifies as “personalized” is getting higher. Personalization no more precise than segmenting your list into prospects and parents of prospects doesn’t meet expectations. Your prospects want to feel that you see them as an individual. That means knowing what questions they have, whether they prefer Instagram to Twitter, or even Facebook, and send them videos, not reports. When you collect information through their digital behavior and optimized online forms, put that intel to use when customizing the content you email individuals.

2) Better communication with Enrollment/Admissions

This is a symbiotic relationship. The stronger the relationship between Marketing and Admissions, the more effective both departments are. Admissions folks are great sources of intel regarding what current prospects’ pressing questions are, or understanding why applicants do and don’t enroll. Their frontline knowledge on these issues can help you craft a topic list that will have traction. Work together to define what is an admissions qualified lead (AQL). If you don’t already have an service level agreement (SLA), 2017 is the year to put one together with your colleagues. It provides the framework for mutual support, open communication, and shared goals.

3) Stop posting just for the sake of posting

You have a blog to keep fresh and an extensive editorial calendar to execute! The drive to publish often leads to publishing whatever you can think of. But guess work is so 2013.

You need to publish new posts regularly. The more you publish blog posts, the more traffic and leads you drive to your website. Here’s the critical caveat: are you attracting traffic and leads that fit your personas? You don’t want just any old eyeballs. If you want to attract your ideal students and their parents, you must publish posts they actually want to read. You need to address their most pressing concerns, answer their burning questions, be a resource for the information they seek. Revisit your keyword research to reflect those burning questions, and what words they’re using to ask them. Analyze your internal data to see which blog post topics are attracting the types of prospects you want. Freshen those up and use them as a starting point to brainstorm new post topics.

For more info on how to create content for schools check out ->> How to Use Blogging to Attract Students to Your School

4) It’s not all about you

Not that your school isn’t fabulous. It is. But the hard truth is that most people aren’t terribly interested in your school. Their single focus is making sure they get the best education for themselves or their kids. In the early stages of their enrollment journey, when they’re researching, they only have a sketchy idea of what the “best education” means to them. Questions about their educational future are at a much higher level. Even when they’ve moved to their consideration and decision-making phases, their main interest is still: what about this school suits me, meets my needs, will get me where I want to be. If you want people to continue to visit your blog or follow your school’s social media profiles, the content there needs to provide pure value to prospects and their parents. It’s not about you. It’s about them.

5) Stop relying entirely on the written word

It’s easy to think of blog posts as written articles, but what if you posted a video interview with someone from your career office on your blog? Or an infographic showing the breakdown of the collegiate and professional paths of your alumni?

Don’t overlook video, podcasts, and other visual content. Infographics are liked and shared on social media 3x more than any other type of content. That’s just one jaw-dropping stat on the power images have in your content. People are also watching more digital video, especially video messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and Snapchat. Don’t just think verbally. Think visually. Start with some of your best-performing written content and repurpose it into a visual format. That will give you a reason to promote both formats, so both the readers and the visual folks can connect with it.

6) Do more on social

Social engagement can’t be an afterthought. It must be a strategic piece of your marketing plan. From deciding which social platforms to focus on (don’t waste resources using them all), to determining how your school will use the different channels. Social media is a distribution channel that drives traffic back to your blog and landing pages. It can also be the delivery channel for your content, like your YouTube channel or Instagram account. It can also be the most direct, personal means you have to talk directly to your prospects, like Twitter. Specify each platform’s role for your school so you’re incorporating them effectively in the planning for all your campaigns and community-building activities.

7) Keep learning

The principles of inbound marketing never change. Build trust and credibility with your target personas by publishing awesome, informative content they can’t ignore. The best strategies, tactics, and tools are another story. Options to try to new things, or using tools in new ways, is constantly growing. Keep reading your favorite marketing blogs (thank you very much!). You might even consider getting inbound certified!

Work these resolutions into your planning for next quarter and next year. They’ll become good habits soon enough. Then you can start working on your personal batch of resolutions. And our best wishes for a happy holiday season!

 

2016 saw a surge in the popularity of video as a content marketing format. From 360-degree videos to Facebook Live, marketers are responding to audiences’ shorter attention spans by making content more interactive and visual — and it’s paying off.

Video is growing to dominate your audience’s online activity: 78% of people watch videos online every week, and 55% watch videos online every day. If you don’t already have a video marketing strategy in place for your website and social media, you’re missing a tremendous opportunity to reach and engage with your audience.

HighQ created the following infographic that illustrates why 2017 will be the year of video marketing. Learn about just how many videos are watched on social media every day (hint: it’s a lot) and how other marketers are using video to achieve their goals.