Since 2010, Instagram has garnered more than 500 million users, 4.2 billion daily likes, and more than 95 million photos and videos posted per day. Brands who take advantage of this unique social media platform often find that the level of exposure that Instagram gives them is unprecedented.

But creating a successful, branded Instagram account requires more than just pretty images. To succeed, you’ll need to establish a distinct brand aesthetic, a well-curated feed, and an effective community management strategy — all stemming from your own unique brand identity.

With millions of active accounts, we managed to uncover five main tips and ten inspiring brands that’ll help you understand how to establish a more cohesive Instagram aesthetic.

How to Establish an Instagram Aesthetic: 10 Brands Doing It Right

1) Know exactly what your brand identity is.

A great part of your aesthetic will derive from your brand identity. What’s your brand personality and tone? What are its values? Is your brand playful? Adventurous? Bold and daring?

Having an Instagram feed that reflects the image and purpose of your brand is extremely important because it creates uniformity. Posting content that is random creates disconnect and confusion. When this happens, it’s hard to commit hitting that follow button. See how Taco Bell and fashion illustrator Megan Hess incorporate this into their Instagram feed.

Taco Bell (@tacobell): 935K Followers

When you think Taco Bell, you think tacos and “LiVE MÀS!” This means that social media accounts will reflect a lot of tacos, bold colors, and a lifestyle that includes living fast and “on the go” like their individual posts on Instagram.

Since Taco Bell’s main audience has been increasingly attributed to millennials, they have focused on inserting fun and authenticity into their aesthetic, which makes it easier for them to drum up engagement.

Megan Hess (@meganhess_official): 291K Followers

Megan Hess is an illustrator known for her very beautiful, feminine, and fashion-related artwork. She has built an empire on fashion illustrations that are coveted and aesthetically pleasing. Instagram has become her main outlet for her fans to follow her work and get a glimpse of what happens behind-the-scenes.

As an illustrator, she’s big on personal brand recognition, so she frequently uses one of her most important brand assets in her posts: her logo. Simple, black, and uniquely hers, the logo perfectly matches her aesthetic and illustrations which makes it easy for her to include it with any Instagram post.

Having a distinctive logo is critical to building your brand, so it’s important to create one that’s easily recognizable and matches your brand identity. If your own needs a spruce or you’re looking to create a file that’s easily adaptable for your social posts, try using Canva’s free logo maker.

2) Determine your target market and cater to them without compromising your brand identity.

Your Instagram feed is primarily meant to attract existing and future customers, so it’s important to create content that pulls them in and engages them. To do this, start by getting to know what’s important to your target market — what they love about your brand, products, and services. Then, reflect that back to them in your Instagram feed.

Need inspiration? Check out how brands like GoPro and Squarespace are doing it.

GoPro (@gopro): 10.2M Followers

GoPro’s Instagram photos perfectly represent what it means to capture a lifestyle full of adventure and action through the lens of their product.

Their feed focuses on showcasing a variety of unique moments designed to drive you to want to go out and document your own adventures.

Squarespace (@squarespace): 52.4K Followers

If we’re talking about well-curated content tailored for an audience, we have to talk about Squarespace’s Instagram. Promising the simplest way to create a beautiful website, the brand echoes its tagline through a beautifully-curated feed.

Squarespace intrigues followers by using impressive images reflecting the brand’s minimalist aesthetic. Best of all, it features images from clients, showcasing success stories and the wide range of possibilities on how the Squarespace service can be used, which helps to engage followers and inspire potential clients.

4) Create a story with each photo displayed on the post.

The more compelling your story, the less it would feel to your customers that you’re just selling them something. Narratives tied with your brand identity create the emotional connection your audience needs, giving meaning to your content and making it more relatable.

The story you tell plays a great part in creating brand loyalty from your customers. Instagram is a great avenue for telling this story just as Nike and Red Bull have been doing.

Nike (@nike): 62.6M Followers

With one of the largest followings on Instagram, Nike’s feed goes beyond just great athletic sportswear and footwear. They have created a distinctive “Just Do It” mentality and systematically developed a social media presence to reflect that inspirational brand image.

As seen in the post above, along with the rest of the recent videos uploaded on their Instagram feed, Nike has done an incredible job of featuring inspiring athletes to promote propel their vision. If you want to perform at the highest level like these athletes, you wear Nike.

Red Bull (@redbull): 5.6M Followers

When you think of Red Bull, you think high energy. That’s why Red Bull’s Instagram feed includes so many “epic” videos and pictures — each one more thrilling than the other.

Red Bull associates their brand with a lifestyle that is exhilarating and pushes boundaries when it comes to extreme sports and weekend getaways. Another way they create a narrative is through the cohesive feel of their posts. Notice below how majority of their posts are set in the outdoors. It helps create the image that when you drink Red Bull, you live on the edge.

5) Choose a color palette, “feel,” or filter and use it consistently.

Using a color palette, filter, or even texture in your Instagram posts can give you that much sought-after level of consistency in your feeds. The easiest way to do this is to use the same filter on all your posts or edit your pictures all the same way. Try desaturating your photos or stick to bright white backgrounds with pops of color. Or, create your own brand color palette by playing around with three to four color combinations to repeat in your posts.

Check out how Tough Mudder repeats orange and brown in their posts and how Pantone plays around with their featured colors.

Tough Mudder (@tough_mudder): 935K Followers

Tough Mudder has built an image on conquering a military-inspired obstacle that requires teamwork, tenacity, and a whole lot of feeling like a total “badass.” Tough Mudder’s Instagram feed is brimming with pictures that highlight muddy participants sporting the color orange, which helps to signify the brightness and sense of camaraderie that exists in a otherwise challenging situation.

The beauty of Tough Mudder’s Instagram feed is their ability to capture moments of participants’ emotions throughout the completion of the course. They have mastered the art of evoking feelings of strength and the desire to accomplish a difficult task that only a select group of people has achieved.

The pictures of training hard and being part of a program that pushes you to your limits is exciting as it is rewarding. Tough Mudder showcases a curated Instagram feed that addresses perseverance and toughness, just as its brand name indicates.

Pantone (@pantone): 637K Followers

Since Pantone is the leading “authority on color,” their Instagram feed reflects their importance and influence.

As shown in their Instagram feed, Pantone likes to have direction — and their purpose is to be a source of reference and inspiration. Uploaded by season, their feed chronicles how a color palette is derived and takes shape in the real world.

6) Post content that reflects your brand’s core value.

Don’t be afraid to use Instagram to show off your products or service at work — just get creative. Take detailed shots and create eye-catching flat lays that show off your products in new and interesting ways.

These shots can even encourage and inspire your followers to create their own posts featuring your products to share with their followers. Not only will you increase your brand’s interaction, but you’ll also have user-generated content that’s authentic and organic.

Check out how the Office Depot and Fabletics use products shots to engage their followers and creative a consistent, memorable aesthetic. 

Office Depot (@officedepot): 15K Followers

Through some well-thought planning, the Office Depot is able to showcase its sheer amount of products in fun and interesting combinations. Their “Gear Up for Great” campaign is a great example of featuring products inventively while staying true to its business.

Office Depot is also great at curating content that’s relevant. They do this by working with themes and seasons like “Gearing up for School”, as well as holidays like Teacher’s Day or Cinco de Mayo.

Fabletics (@fabletics): 341K Followers

Fabletics — one of the first companies to introduce the subscription model for athletic wear for women — knows a thing or two about performance, quality, and style.

In a generation where selfies and gym posts are very much a norm, Fabletics makes sure that it sticks to its image of ensuring its customers look good while working out.

Ready to refresh your Instagram?

With these 10 brands that are rocking Instagram as references, get started refreshing your brand’s Instagram feed and take it to the next level. Happy posting!

What tips do you have for creating a cohesive Instagram aesthetic? Share them below.

I’ve always been surprised by how many ad agency executives ignore their own network of contacts. Somehow, between servicing current clients and chasing after new prospects, these valuable contacts get taken for granted.

I’m guilty of it myself sometimes — in fact the inspiration for this post was my own realization that I was getting dangerously close to not practicing what I preach and neglecting the people who are most favorably predisposed to work with me.

Your personal network of professional contacts is one of the best sources of new business you have, but it needs care and feeding. One way you can do this is by conducting re-engagement campaign for your contact list.

You’ve heard it said that it’s cheaper to keep a current client happy than to find a new one. This is a variation of that sentiment: It’s more efficient to convert a contact who knows, likes and respects you into a prospect than it is to build a new relationship.

You should make a re-engagement campaign for your contact list part of your ongoing new business program Here’s my approach:

How Agencies Can Re-Engage Cold Prospects

First, for the purposes of this exercise, put aside the records of people you don’t have a personal connection to — like newsletter or podcast subscribers. These folks may love your content, but they’re still relatively anonymous to your agency. Do, however, conduct a more traditional re-engagement campaign on your agency’s contact list to make sure it’s clean and productive. 

Divide the remainder into four groups. The actual percentages will differ in each agency’s case — of course — but this is what my list tends to looks like:

Top 15%: The Buddies

These are close professional relationships that border on/bleed into the personal. They’re former colleagues or clients who will be excited to hear from you just because you’re you.

Unlike all the other groups, your agenda with “the buddies” has to stay loose. Yes, you’re on a business mission, but this objective takes a backseat to your primary intention, which is to nurture a relationship that’s already important to you both.

Any aggressive selling behavior only risks making you sound hollow and self-serving. Trust that business opportunities and leads will rise organically out of your conversation.

Because you like each other and want to see each other succeed, you might be able to take some liberties that you couldn’t with others in your network. Think about using this opportunity to ask for referrals — just be prepared to reciprocate the favor if you can.

You might also talk to them about a direction in which you want your business to grow and ask for their advice and feedback. Again, make sure they know you’d be happy to do the same for them.

Next 40%: The Dormant Fans

You’ve probably only interacted with these contacts on a strictly professional level, nevertheless they’re warm professional relationships. They’ve witnessed your agency in action and were impressed.

Besides former colleagues or clients, these are people you meet at conferences, agency partners you worked with well in the past, or prospects that you connected with, even if it didn’t result in winning the business.

Make it a win-win interaction by leading with something of value to them. It can be as simple as sharing the results of a research study that’s relevant to a business problem you know they’re trying to solve (ideally a study your agency conducted), or more complex, like offering a specially-priced package of services that might serve as an incentive to work with you.

If they’re a potential partner rather than a client, ask if they’d refer you to some of their clients who’d find your offer valuable.

Next 35%: The Disappearing Acts

You probably had a positive professional relationship with these folks at some point, but maybe it wasn’t strong enough to push it into the realm of fandom despite your best efforts. I wish I could tell you why some people stay responsive and others just disappear, but it’s not productive to dwell on that kind of stuff. Instead, make a last ditch effort to engage before either archiving them or demoting them to your general subscriber list.

Sometimes a small dose of guilt can go a long way. Be honest and a little vulnerable. In your own words that are appropriate to the situation, tell them that this relationship is meaningful to you, but you’ll leave them alone forever if that’s really what they’d prefer.

Some may be jolted into a response that keeps the relationship alive (in which case, I’d upgrade them to the “dormant fans” group and find a way to keep them engaged).

Bottom 10%, the Rejecters

We all have relationships that somehow got damaged beyond repair. Those aren’t the ones I’m talking about here, but sometimes they’re mistaken for them. However, this group does include clients associated with accounts that left and pitches you lost.

The mistake I see agencies make is forgetting about these relationships the moment that they — sad and dejected — turn to walk off the playing field. Unless you lost a client or a pitch because of an egregious mistake, these may actually be some of your best prospects – and they’re often ignored!

Why did you lose that pitch or piece of business? Was it because you lacked category expertise that you have now? Was it a political decision made by someone who is no longer at that company? Or, has your champion gone to a better job at a different company? A little bit of research could reveal some hidden “dormant fans” or even “buddies.”

Make Re-Engagement a Regular Practice 

Like you would with any good re-engagement campaign, plan multiple points of contact that are appropriately timed and contain messages that build upon each other.

And make re-engagement a regularly recurring activity — at least once a year — shifting more valuable contacts into more valuable categories and downgrading, or even eliminating, the contacts that won’t serve you in the future.

Want to learn more about how agencies can maximize their new business pipeline? Jody Sutter will be speaking on this topic at INBOUND 2016. Learn more about INBOUND.

What do cross-country road trips, wedding speeches, and social media marketing have in common?

You could wing all three, but it’s probably better to have a plan for what direction you’re heading — especially when it comes to your social media content strategy.

By now, most marketers recognize that social media plays an integral role in an effective inbound marketing strategy. And with so many social networks to manage and publish on, it’s important to stay organized and have a plan for when and what you’re going to share on these platforms.

In this post, we’ve rounded up some of the most helpful tools and templates for building out an effective social media content plan. Check them out below. 

The Benefits of Using a Social Media Content Calendar

Let’s face it: We’re all busy. And when we’re busy and don’t have a plan in place for the tasks we have to get done, things inevitably slip through the cracks.

Just like with blogging, a successful social media strategy requires regular publishing and engaging with followers to see positive results — whether that be in terms of SEO, brand recognition, lead generation, or all three. 

So if you’re not already using a social media content calendar, hear me out:

1. Calendars help you get organized to avoid the dreaded scramble when things come up. With a social media calendar, marketers can plan out posts for entire weeks or months in advance, which frees up working hours to strategize for the future — and to dash off any posts about breaking news in your industry. Otherwise, you’ll spend valuable time each day searching the internet for that day’s content to share, which is a known productivity killer.
2. A calendar helps you plan for each social network to customize posts instead of spamming all platforms with the same message. Social media marketers should take the time to craft custom messages for each network, and doing this in advance will save time throughout the week and ensure that you’re being thoughtful and intentional when you do post.
3. Calendars can help you track performance and plan for future posts. Without a calendar, social media marketers are publishing content into the void and are unable to track big-picture and past performance. With a calendar, marketers can look back and analyze which content performed best so they can adjust their strategy accordingly.
4. With the help of a calendar, marketers can plan for holidays and observance days, such as National Cat Day, when they can tailor their content and engage with a wider audience. 
5. Social media calendars improve efficiency. According to Content Marketing Institute, 60% of social media marketers with a documented strategy rated themselves as highly effective, versus 32% of marketers with only a verbal strategy.

Now that you understand the merits of having a social media content calendar in place, check out our list of top tools to stay organized and on top of your game.

4 Helpful Tools for Organizing Your Social Media Calendar

1) Trello

Trello is another organizational tool that’s highly effective for team collaboration. More specifically, social media managers can use Trello’s flexible assignment “cards” and customizable “boards” and “lists” to map out to-do lists, manage a content calendar, plan a campaign, and house ideas from a brainstorm.

Here’s an example of a Trello board a social media marketing team might use to plan posts for the upcoming week:

But you’re not limited to just one structure: Users can customize boards according to their needs. For example, a team could create a board to organize social media posts for a given week, on a specific platform, or post ideas around a topic, such as a campaign or awareness day.

Trello cards allow for a ton of customization as well. Here’s a fictitious social media editorial calendar card with Twitter copy options around a piece of blog content. Note that you can track progress toward completing a checklist, which could be useful for social media marketers looking to track campaign progress. 

Additionally, Trello cards can be assigned to different team members, marked with due dates, and commented on. Users can even customize the labels (as in the image below) with different publication statuses so the entire team can see the progress of their social media posts and when they’re due on the calendar. The labels could also indicate different social networks that content is being published on. 

Source: BlueGlass

Trello also offers a full calendar view (shown below) which makes it easy to visualize what content is going out, and when.

Source: BlueGlass

2) Microsoft Excel

Marketers might already use Excel for different types of reports and data analysis in their roles, but it’s a highly useful tool for social media content calendar organization, too. Excel can be customized according to whatever priorities or metrics a team is focused on, so it’s a great tool for planning ahead.

The good news? We’ve already done the heavy lifting for you by creating a free, downloadable social media content calendar template using Microsoft Excel. Marketers can use this template to easily plan out individual social media posts — monthly or annually — while keeping an eye on bigger picture events, holidays, publications, and partnerships. 

For more on how to use the templates, check out this in-depth guide from my colleague Lindsay Kolowich.

Use the Monthly Planning Calendar Tab above to get a bird’s-eye view of what’s coming down their content pipeline in a given month. 

In the Content Repository tab, users can record the content they’re publishing on this tab to keep track of which pieces have been promoted and to easily recall older content that can be re-promoted on social media.

On the Social Network Update tabs, users can draft and plan out social media posts in advance. These tabs are for organizational purposes, and the content of the posts themselves must be uploaded into a social media publisher.

This free resource can be used to draft social media posts, or it can be bulk-uploaded into a publishing app to maximize efficiency. (HubSpot customers: You can use this spreadsheet to organize content and upload it directly into Social Inbox. For instructions on how to do so, check out the template’s cover sheet here.)

3) Evernote

Evernote is a note-taking app that marketers can use to keep track of all the moving parts that comprise a social media campaign.

The tool also features yearly, monthly, weekly, and hourly logs, which make it easy to keep track of when you’re publishing content on social media, when you’re producing blog content, and other team-wide priorities. (Evernote offers customizable templates for each of these that can be downloaded into the app.)

Another useful feature? Evernote’s Web Clipper extension for Chrome. Marketers can use this tool to easily save links to their Evernote Notebook for sharing later on.  

The Evernote mobile app also boasts some interesting features to help marketers keep their social content ideas straight. For example, you can easily snap a photo and save it to your Evernote files for review later.

Source: Evernote

This feature is of particular valuable for social content creators looking to maintain a backlog of photos to publish on Instagram. 

4) Google Drive

Google Drive has several helpful features that make it easy for social media marketers to build out an effective content calendar. 

Here’s an example of how a team might use Google Calendar to track both their editorial and social media calendars to make sure they’re aligning posts with new blog content. These calendars can be easily shared with multiple teams to avoid scheduling conflicts and ensure that campaigns are aligned. 

Marketers can also use shared Google Sheets to schedule posts on social media, track the status of different pieces of content, and assign tasks to team members — all on the same platform as their calendar.

With the help of Google Docs, users can keep comments all in one place and can collaborate on different projects without emailing back-and-forth or having to schedule a meeting. This is a particularly useful feature when editing content for social media, which may need to be drafted and approved quickly.

(HubSpot customers: You can link your Google Drive account to your HubSpot portal to easily upload files from Drive into your HubSpot software.)

Ready to Plan?

Now that we’ve reviewed a few helpful tools to kick your social media strategy into high gear, experiment with them. Every social media team is different, and it could be a combination of these tools that helps you execute your strategy efficiently to drive ROI. For getting all of your ideas down and developing a big-picture plan for your social assets, we recommend starting with our template and going from there.

What tools do you use to build your social media content calendar? Share with us in the comments below.

When starting with new clients, one of the first questions we ask is ‘are you prepared to blog weekly?’ And the answer needs to be YES!

Now a lot of people completely freak out when we tell them this. But all is not lost! Here’s some keys to attracting more Credit Union members with a well-developed and realistic blogging strategy.

1) Pay Attention to Your Target CU Member’s Pain Points

The first task you need to conquer is to define your target personas. This is key to setting SMART goals, and creating a strategy and all content that you will curate and share. Then we blog about issues that will appeal to them.

It’s important that you don’t just blog about financial topics. Consider blogs about fun activities in your area, seasonal topics and leisure ideas that might be of interest to your target audience. And you should definitely blog about everyday problems your persona might be facing.

Research your targets by talking to other members in the same stage of life, talk to friends and family, and do research online. Create a persona by identifying demographics and personal characteristics, hopes and dreams, and worries and problems. Then use this list to inspire your content creation and curation.

2) Don’t Write All the Content Yourself

In fact, you don’t have to write ANY of it if you really don’t want to. There’s great ways to outsource content creation or subscribe to blog content feeds designed specifically for CUs. One of our favorites is Today’s Credit Unions, which offers lots of content for a very reasonable monthly fee.

But my guess is you can find the time to create great content, without a ton of extra stress or worry. First, create a spread sheet of keywords and possible titles that you would like to share in the future. Then when it’s time for a new blog, use this sheet and pick a title.

For us, we require that all full-time employees contribute 1-2 blog articles per month. We supplement these with guest blogs and outsource some writing. If you have your keywords set and have titles in place this really isn’t that difficult. I firmly believe that the hardest part about a blog is writing a good title and coming up with a quality keyword to focus on.

3) The Title is Half the Battle!

Now, I just mentioned keywords, and maybe I lost you, but stick with me. Keywords are short or long phrases that your target audience might use to search for information online. So, for example, if your Credit Union is targeting young families, in their prime borrowing years, perhaps you should think about keywords around parenting or having your first child.

When blogging for a Credit Union you can put a dollars and cents spin on most things. Do a little keyword research (great tools: keyword.io, Google, HubSpot’s keyword tool…) and you might come up with the keyword ‘having my first baby.’

Then using a title tool (we like the HubSpot Blog Topic or the IMPACT Blog Title tool) you might create the title: 10 Ways I Could Have Saved When Having My First Baby! 

Now, if you’ve never had a baby, maybe you should pass this title off to another writer, but if you have kids my guess is that with minimal research you can take a pretty good stab at this one!

4) Don’t Forget to Add a Call-to-Action (CTA)

Once the blog is done and posted there’s a few other important steps. First, you need to SHARE the blog as widely as you can. We send out emails every 2-3 weeks to subscribers with lists of recent articles and short summaries. You can do this for your CU as well.

You should also share blogs 2-3 times weekly on your CU social media, and make sure you include some ad support to increase the reach of these posts and drive more traffic to your Credit Union website.

Most importantly, you will want to capture leads from all this traffic, so with every blog you should include a call-to-action within your blogs and at the end of the article to encourage readers to take a desired action. This could be something simple like download our budget checklist, and then all you have to ask for is the lead’s name and email. You might also remind readers to subscribe for more great content.

5) Finally, Nurture Leads with Emails to Convert

This might be one step, but this part does take time to work. Remember that relationships are formed overnight so email your leads every week or so with great content, testimonials and other kinds of beneficial tips that they might find interesting. Keep in mind that the financial services buying journey can be weeks and months long, so don’t give up too easy.

But you will find that if you stick with this process you be able to impact bottom line revenue and member growth, and this is truly the ultimate marketing goal.

Unless you’re a celebrity or a household name brand, it’s really difficult to build a substantial following on Twitter. Maybe you’ve made it to a couple thousand followers but can’t seem to bump it up any more. 

Frustrating, isn’t it?

The good news is that HubSpot put together a helpful kit — How to Get More Twitter Followers — filled with everything you need to know about increasing your brand’s following and generating business from your Twitter account.

In the kit, we’ll share a couple big levers you can pull to gain quality followers for your brand’s Twitter account (not the ones you pay for). You’ll also find tips on the best practices around when and what to tweet, as well as a bonus Consumer Insights Report from the experts from Twitter. 

More specifically you’ll learn:

• How to optimize tweet copy for maximum return.
• How to use captivating visual content to engage followers.
• Best practices and inside tips for promoting your handle.
• How to run Twitter campaigns to increase your audience and prove ROI.
• When to use Ad Campaigns to move the needle on followers and leads.
• How followers become loyal customers and brand advocates.

Download your copy of How to Get More Twitter Followers here.

Did you ever play the telephone game as a kid?

A group of kids take turns whispering a single message to the person to their right, and by the time the message reaches the end of the line, it has usually has taken on a completely different meaning then when they began.

The telephone game is a perfect metaphor for how communication between agencies and clients can break down during a brand redesign project. Clients might have a clear picture of what they want out of a branding project in their heads, but when it comes to communicating each subtle nuance, many things get left up to interpretation.

A brand redesign project can feel like a high-stakes guessing game for agencies and designers. You present the client with endless drafts and revisions, but there’s always something that isn’t quite right. 

To help agencies navigate the unique challenges of brand redesign projects, we’ve compiled a list of questions clients should answer before your agency agrees to take on the project. These first set of questions will help you uncover what your client really wants out of the brand redesign project, and the second set will help you deftly navigate the logistics. 

16 Questions To Ask Before A Branding Project

Discovering Your Client’s Desired Identity for the Brand Redesign

1) What do you like about your current brand identity?

Before you start redesigning a brand, it’s important to know what specific qualities the client likes about their current brand. Just because they requested a brand redesign doesn’t mean they want to completely scrap what they’ve already built. It’s important to determine which areas of the current brand should be maintained or given just a light update, instead of getting rid of them entirely in the redesign.

2) What don’t you like about your current brand identity?

In the same vein, it’s also vital to recognize what the client doesn’t like about their current brand. Figuring out what your client is particularly unhappy with will set some initial boundaries for your team. It lets you know what areas of the brand should be given the most attention, and also gives you an early idea of your client’s tastes.

3) What’s the story behind your current brand?

Brands are driven by storytelling, so agencies need to make the effort to learn their client’s brand story early on. Think of yourself like a Hollywood director tasked with remaking a classic movie: You need to get familiar with the original before you can put your own spin on it — otherwise the remake is sure to fall flat.

4) Can you name a few examples of brands you admire?

There’s really no way around it: Branding is a fluffy, floaty topic, and it can be challenging for clients to clearly articulate exactly what they want. Asking your client for some examples of other brands they admire (either in their industry or outside it) can help your team start building a more informed vision, and also forces your client to seriously consider what kind of brand they want to be. Make sure you ask them to unpack what specific qualities they admire about the brands.

5) Are there any particular adjectives you people to associate with your brand?

Asking clients to find a few descriptive terms to characterize their desired brand presence can help them ground their thoughts and put words to abstract ideas. This deceptively simple question will help your agency define an aesthetic scope and understand which qualities to prioritize as you begin the project. 

6) Where do you see your brand in 10 years?

This question will help your team understand your client’s long-term aspirations, and get a feel for the direction they want to head towards with their branding. It also shows the client that you’re committed to helping them grow their brand, and not just treating this account as a one-off project.

Getting acquainted with your client’s target audience

7) Who exactly is your ideal client?

At the end of the day, the brand you create isn’t just for the client, it’s for their target audience. To make informed design and storytelling choices, your agency needs to make a concerted effort early on to understand the client’s ideal persona. If you find that your client doesn’t have an ideal persona, this can be a great chance to offer additional value by helping them figure out who to target in their marketing efforts. You can download our free buyer persona template here.

8) Who are your direct competitors?

Agencies need to understand the context in which their clients’ businesses operate. What does the industry look like? How are other companies in the space approaching their marketing and branding? Much of this information can be found through research, but it’s still beneficial to ask your client to define the competition in their own words.

9) What are you ideal customers’ biggest pain points?

While customer pain points can’t all be completely solved by branding alone, it’s important for agencies launching into a brand redesign to know what exactly their client’s customers struggle with. Having this information can give you agency an idea about how your client needs to position their business through their branding.

10) Why should your target audience choose your product or service above your competitors?

This question is important because it pushes your client to think about what specific factors makes their business unique. Developing a brand that stands out (especially in a competitive industry) is all about differentiation. And nobody knows what makes your client’s business unique better than their own team. 

11) Are there any audiences you aren’t currently reaching that you want to reach with your brand?

Even if your client already has a good grasp on who their business best serves, it’s relevant to see if there are any untapped sources of new business they’ve previously had difficulty reaching. Your agency can consider this desirable audience during the branding project to potentially extend your client’s reach.

Understanding the Logistics of the Brand Redesign Project

12) Who is the key decision-maker on your team?

From the outset, your agency should know who on your client’s team will have final approval of the branding project. It’s great to get buy-in from everyone on the client’s team, but if there’s a single person or group of people that have the final say, you’ll want to focus your efforts on keeping them in the loop as the project moves forward.

13) What does the approval process look like?

The end goal is to get the new brand approved by your client’s team, but how exactly does that work? Make sure you have a good understanding of how your client will review and approve the project so you can see where in the process particular elements are getting stuck or rejected.

14) What are the expected deliverables for this project?

Branding means a lot of different things to different people. Some clients won’t even have a full idea of what they need out of a branding project at the outset, so it’s important to discuss the tangible products early on and agree on what you’ll be providing. Otherwise, you could find yourself in a web of miscommunication and scope creep. If you want to learn how to avoid scope creep with clients, check out this free ebook.

15) What is the budget for this project?

Asking about the budget for a branding project up front is a great way to evaluate how important this project is to your client. If they offer an extremely low budget, they probably don’t fully understand the value of branding, and may not be a good fit for your agency.

16) What is the expected timeline for this project?

A branding project can be a massive undertaking, so it’s vital to set realistic timeline expectations with your clients from the beginning. If they have a tight timeline, you may need to reevaluate the scope of what your agency is able to offer. It’s better to know time limitations right away rather than upset the client later on when you can’t deliver in the window they expected.

Visuals have a huge impact in marketing. Not only do they make content more sharable — 40 times as much — but they help us retain information. When details are paired with an image, we remember 55% more of it.

That can be pulled off with infographics — the nifty images that visually break down complex statistics. They’re customizable, sharable, and they’re easier to create than you might think.

Sure, you could hire a professional to create the infographics for you. But if you’re restricted by budgets or time, there are some great DIY resources out there for making compelling visuals.

We scouted the web for some of them — check them out below. (And for more on how to create an infographic, check out these tips.)

8 Helpful Resources for Creating Beautiful Infographics

1) Canva

Cost: Free, with an upgrade available for $12.95/month or $119.40/year

Oh, how we love the ease and intuitiveness of Canva. From the very beginning, it asks you a series of simple, colorfully-illustrated questions about what’s brought you to their site. (Today, it’s infographics, but there’s a ton of other stuff you can create there, too.)

Once you’ve let Canva know what you want to do, the site generates several templates you can use as a foundation for your infographic. Plus, it’s got a library of roughly 1,000,000 images that you can add to your project.

From there, you can edit the text, background image, shapes and other aspects of the infographic to make it your own. And it’s so easy — here’s a goofy one that I put together on how my dog spends his day:

Source: Canva

2) Piktochart

Cost: Free, with paid packages available starting at $15/month

Similar to Canva, Piktochart can be used to design more than just infographics — it can also build reports, presentations, and posters.

But the templates available for infographics are numerous, and there’s an upgrade available. “Pro” memberships — which run between $15-$30, depending on the features you want — allow access to even more templates, as well as removed watermarks and hi-res downloads.

When it comes to creating the infographic itself, the features are fairly similar to Canva’s — the background, text, and images can all be changed, or users can upload their own files for greater personalization.

3) Venngage

Cost: Free, with paid packages available starting at $19/month

Like its predecessors above, Venngage has quite a few design features, including its great social media templates, which users can download to create their own personalized Instagram posts, blog headers, and more.

For infographics, there’s a decent range of templates, each categorized by type — statistical, process, and timeline, to name a few. Some of the templates are limited to premium members, reflecting Venngage’s four-tiered approach to pricing — free, premium, education, and non-profit. Plus, there are templates available for those latter two categories. Here’s one that helps non-profits visually communicate highlights from an annual report:

4) Easel.ly

Cost: Free, or PRO for $36/year

Upon visiting Easel.ly’s website, you’re immediately presented with a plethora of infographic templates, most of which can be immediately clicked and customized without having to create an account. If you want to save and share your work, though, you will have to join — for free.

Unlike its predecessors listed here, Easel.ly seems to be a no-frills platform that’s comprised of infographics. You can choose which category you’d like, but it’s not quite as organized as some other sites — the drop-down menu is a bit hidden to the left of the templates. Still, most of templates appear to be available for free (more become available with a Pro membership), and they’re fairly easy to edit.

5) Freepik

Cost: Free, with paid packages available starting at $7.50/month

As its name suggests, Freepik is a resource for, well, free pictures. Infographics are just one type, but after performing a search for them, there are plenty of options — most of which are complimentary.

The only drawback? Freepik doesn’t quite allow the same level of customization that some others in this list do. You can download the images for free, but you’ll need a vector graphics editor in order to customize them — Brittany Leaning and Megan Conley of HubSpot’s content marketing team both suggest using Adobe Illustrator.

6) Infogram

Cost: Very limited options available for free, with paid packages available starting at $19/month

Like many of its visual peers, Infogram is a resource that helps users create both picturesque charts and infographics. It’s definitely one of the more “grown-up” sites available for building these images, which might explain why very few of their tools a re free — including restricting your work from public consumption.

However, Infogram also has the option of enlisting professional help with infographic design. So if you’re short on time and have a bit of room in your budget, this route might be the best one for you.

7) Zanifesto

Cost: Free, with paid packages available starting at $14/month

At the very top of Zanifesto’s website, there’s bold red banner that reads, “Create something.” Love at first visual, if you ask us.

When you click on that banner, a list of pricing options appear, one of which is free and all of which are reasonable. The only drawback? It looks like you have to create an account to access any of the resources, even the free ones. Plus, the free option restricts you from being able to uploading any custom graphics.

But once you do create a free account, there are plenty of template options and, despite not being able to use your own graphics, Zanifesto’s library of icons provides a decent selection.

8) Google Charts

Cost: Free

Okay, maybe a chart isn’t exactly the same as an infographic. But, given the interesting selection templates made available by Google, we would be remiss to exclude it.

There are a few items of value in Google charts. First, we love the selection of charts available. From animated bubble graphs — like the one above — to clever word trees, the features allow users to bring information to life. (I mean, admit it — adding animation to data always makes it a little less boring.)

Plus, these charts can be created to be interactive. One of our favorites, GeoCharts, allows data to be assigned to different regions of a map that appear when hovered over. Check it out:

Source: Google GeoCharts

We’ll admit that some features of Google Charts might be a bit more advanced than the other resources we’ve listed. But, if you’re ready to step up your visuals game, give it a try.

Start Creating

There’s no shortage of resources when it comes to creating your own visuals — charts, reports, and infographics. And, depending on your budget and needs, there’s a veritable plethora of options available, all of which have their pros, with very few cons.

What are your go-to resources for creating beautiful infographics? Let us know in the comments.

Imagine someone arrives at your website, Facebook Page, or advertisement. Now, imagine that you could change your marketing dynamically, right there on the spot, in response to their emotional reactions.

It would be nothing short of a game changer for your business, right?

Yet this is not fantasy. Exploding with investment and technological advances, the world of emotion detection and recognition technology will change the face of marketing in the years to come.

Emotions are what drive your audience to purchase. In fact, studies by the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio found that people with damage to the part of the brain that triggers emotions — in other words, people that are unable to feel emotions — find it extremely difficult to make decisions.

The lesson? If your marketing is not evoking an emotional response from your target audience, you are making it extremely difficult for your prospective customers to purchase from you. That’s right, your own marketing is potentially causing prospects to turn away from you and your brand.

What’s a marketer to do? Let’s dive into some research. 

The Power of Emotions

Many of the most successful marketing campaigns and initiatives are focused on emotions. Take Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign, which was an attempt to change the conversation around women’s beauty. Or Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign, firing up the inner-athlete in everyone. Or MasterCard’s “Priceless” campaign, which has been powering brand success for a whopping 19+ years.

All of this marketing aims to move your heart, and then relies on the experience to build a lasting bond with the brand. What it doesn’t do is rely on feature sets, discounts, or new technology to move you to a sale. None of it speaks to the number of offices, employees, or years in business of the brand. Google Senior VP of Global Marketing, Lorraine Twohill, states, “If we don’t make you cry, we fail. It’s about emotion.”

Twohill is not alone with this sentiment. Multiple studies point to emotional marketing as more effective than other forms of marketing (e.g., product-focused marketing). Based on an analysis of 1,400 successful ad campaigns, the book Brand Immortality by Hamish Pringle and Peter Field reveals that advertising campaigns focused on emotional content performed approximately twice as well (31% vs. 16%) as those with only rational content.

The power of emotional content should not come as a surprise. After all, emotions drive us to action. As consumers, we first decide on a purchase based on emotion, and then try to justify it through the more rational parts of our brain. Longer-term, emotions are what cause people to prefer brand names, even if generic alternatives are available.

Findings from a 2015 Nielsen Consumer Neuroscience study of 100 ads across 25 brands in the consumer goods market revealed that ads with the best emotional response generated a 23% lift in sales, meaning that emotional marketing is not merely effective as an engagement vehicle but also as a true business driver.

And don’t think that emotion-based marketing is applicable to only B2C marketing and individual consumers. Business buyers are also creatures of emotion. In fact, successful B2B companies like GE, Cisco, IBM, AutoDesk, and Qualcomm all focus on emotions in their marketing. Similar to the Pringle and Field findings, the research report “From Promotion to Emotion: Connecting B2B Customers to Brands” by CES and Google explains that B2B brands achieve roughly twice the impact with a target audience when appealing to the personal value to the buyer including emotional benefits. 

A Mountain of Investment

In consideration of the power of emotional marketing, it should be no surprise that the emotion detection and recognition market is projected to be worth $22.65 Billion by 2020, according to the market research firm MarketsandMarkets. As a result, investment in the space is exploding.

Apple, one of the most valuable companies on the planet, has been keenly interested in emotion recognition for years. In 2014 the company filed a patent that described software for analyzing and identifying a person’s mood based on a variety of signals, including facial expression. Earlier this year, Apple acquired Emotient, an emotion-recognition technology company.

Emotient has a patent for a method of collecting and labeling up to 100,000 facial images a day, supporting a computer’s ability to recognize facial expressions. It’s reasonable to believe that Emotient’s emotion recognition technology will start appearing in iPhones and iPads before you know it, and then possibly used as a platform for more targeted and dynamic engagement when users are in their browsers.

Last year the consumer-research company Nielsen bought Innerscope, which uses biometrics such as brain scans and galvanic skin response (GSR) to measure subconscious emotional responses to media and marketing.

Affectiva, an emotion recognition technology developer, raised $14 million just a few months ago. Affectiva boasts the world’s largest emotion data repository, with 40 billion data points and close to 4 million faces analyzed using its technology.

Overall, those using emotion analysis to test audience reaction to their marketing include major marketers such as Unilever, P&G, Mars, Honda, Kellogg, and Coca Cola. For example, Kellogg’s used Affectiva’s software to determine its ads for Crunchy Nut cereal, with the goal of generating high engagement rates with the audience. Viewers were shown multiple versions of a commercial featuring animals. A version of the ad featuring a snake produced the most laughs, but low engagement rates when viewing the ad a second time.

The facial recognition software revealed that an alternative version of the ad featuring an alien produced the desired engagement levels. Kellogg’s therefore decided to rollout the alien-based ad instead, helping to drive the cereal’s sales.

Nothing Short of a Revolution

Being able to adjust one’s marketing dynamically, based on the real-time reactions of your audience, will empower marketers to provide the right message at the right time to the right person.

In the future, it’s likely that you’ll be able to calibrate your marketing mid-stream with just about any digital experience — no two prospects may experience a brand’s marketing in the same exact way.

Going beyond advertising, you can already see how Facebook is on a path to incorporating emotional reaction into a user’s News Feed by introducing “Reactions” this past February. Rather than simply “Liking” a post, users can now designate their reaction across six emotions: Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad, and Angry.

Facebook interprets the use of Reactions as an indication that a person’s network on the social platform wants to see more of those types of posts. That type of primitive application is sure to evolve moving forward. Sammi Krug, Product Manager at Facebook, explains, “Over time we hope to learn how the different Reactions should be weighted differently by News Feed to do a better job of showing everyone the stories they most want to see.”

As of the time of this writing, Facebook Ads treat Reactions the same as Likes. Ad reports do not include a breakdown of individual Reactions, although the breakdown can be found in Page Insights. For ad delivery, as well, Reactions are treated the same as Likes. Of course the next logical step will be for Facebook to treat different emotional reactions differently, rewarding Love more than Like, for example, and demoting an ad’s visibility if users express anger.

The Future

It’s safe to say that we should expect a great deal of change in the world of marketing moving forward. Gabi Zijderveld, CMO at Affectiva, provides a peek into the future by explaining the evolution of emotion recognition technology:

Initially, the technology was used to understand how consumers engage with their brand content and advertising, and how these emotions then influence brand awareness and purchase intent. Now the technology is also used to infuse consumer experiences, apps and interactive advertising with Emotion AI. This will help to transform the face of marketing and advertising by reading human emotions and then adapting consumer experiences to these emotions in real time. The technology gives marketers the power to truly delight and engage their customers with uniquely dynamic and personalized interactions.”

Web development is already on the path towards more personalization. As emotion recognition technology becomes more sophisticated and more deeply embedded in our array of devices, it will become expected that our computers and phones provide us with a continual progression of customized triggers and messaging. The technology will be found even in future car dashboards, refrigerator doors, and conference room walls — essentially any surface will become a possible means for detection of emotions.

Social media will constantly focus on each user’s emotions. For example, in the future expect Facebook’s algorithm to focus just as much on one’s emotional reactions as it does to one’s historical click behavior, providing a unique social environment that goes far beyond prediction of the types of posts, pages, and ads one would like. Expect Facebook Ads to provide advertisers with the ability to hyper target not only based on age, geography, and job titles, but also on the individual’s emotional state or progression of emotional states.

Online marketing will likely evolve into sequential experiences, with deeper engagement upon recognition of positive emotional reactions. You can also expect more deeply embedded forms of marketing similar to product placement. Ultimately, expect emotion recognition to be just another core component of marketing, similar to how “digital marketing” is now really just “marketing.”

Emotion recognition technology is clearly bringing about a revolution in marketing. Are you ready to start capitalizing on the opportunity?

We complain about spending countless hours in unproductive and mismanaged meetings.

But the greater crime is all the wasted time we spend scheduling the meeting.

The endless back and forth communication and steps — reviewing calendars, finding out the best place to meet, setting up a call-in number, adding the meeting to the calendar, and inviting all the necessary attendees. The process makes your meeting a hassle before it even starts.  

Whether you’re trying to find the perfect window of time to catch up with your busy team, or looking for the best way to coordinate with your clients, these meeting scheduler tools have you covered. 

Meeting Scheduler Tools To Improve Your Day

Rally

Finding a time for a group of people to meet can be a nightmare, especially if your team is large or includes remote employees. Rally lets you create a simple, straightforward poll where attendees can vote on a day for an event that works best for them. It also includes an open comment section on the meeting page, so attendees can plan the meeting agenda or discuss details before the event.

Doodle

With Doodle, you can pick date and time options, and poll a group to see what works best for them. You don’t have to sign up for a Doodle account to participate in a poll. You can also create a public Doodle URL, where individuals can request a meeting with you based on your listed availability. 

HubSpot Meetings

A lot of meeting scheduler tools connect to your inbox, but what if you need your meeting schedule available in your CRM as well? HubSpot’s Meetings tool integrates with both your calendar and your HubSpot CRM, so setting up meetings with customers, prospects, or leads is a painless process.

The Meetings tool provides users with a personalized booking link they can share via email to invite people to view their availability and book time. When someone schedules a meeting, it will automatically be added to your calendar, and pushed to the CRM.

Assistant.to

Assistant.to lets you work directly from Gmail and Google Calendar to select available meeting times and share those open slots with the person you’re trying to schedule a meeting with.

From within the message compose screen in Gmail, you can select the meeting duration and location. This information is included in an email, allowing the recipient to click on the time that works best for them. Once you’ve agreed on a time, the app adds the meeting with all the relevant details to your calendar. Currently, group scheduling is not an option.

Calendly

Calendly integrates directly with your Google or Office 365 calendar, and gives you a personalized URL where people can view your availability and schedule times to meet you. They offer a basic free plan, and a paid premium plan that allows for group scheduling and other additional features.

To help you stay organized, the app lets you set up custom meeting types and durations, e.g., “30 Minute Check-In” or “60 Minute Project Review.” You can add also add custom questions to the form people use to sign up to meet with you, include a link to a document or web page people should review prior to your meeting, or even make events private. 

Timebridge

Timebridge is a free service that offers two ways to schedule meetings. With the “outbound” method, hosts indicate their own availability, list the attendees, and Timebridge sends out an email to collect everyone’s preferred times. After it’s determined the ideal time for everyone to meet, the app will schedule the meeting for you. With the “inbound” method, Timebridge gives you a personal URL where users can check your availability and request times to meet with you.

NeedToMeet

NeedToMeet doesn’t require you to sign up for an account to use their service. You simply enter a brief description of your meeting’s purpose, block off your availability on a calendar, and send the link to attendees. The free version doesn’t sync with your calendar, but they do offer a premium subscription which integrates with Outlook.

This tool differs from services like Rally and Doodle because it allows attendees to indicate their preferred date and times, rather than only choosing from a list of dates and times set by the meeting host.

YouCanBook.me

If you find yourself struggling to make your availability known to clients, try out YouCanBook.me. This freemium service offers users a custom URL where users can view free spots on your Google Calendar or iCloud Calendar and book time with you. 

The service allows you to customize your booking page with different layouts, colors, and your company’s logo.

Pick

Pick automatically scans everyone’s Gmail calendars to find open slots, and then delivers a list of mutually available times. You can then send a calendar invite to all attendees directly from the app.

All members of your team need to be on Pick in order to share their availability. The app also provides users with an individual URL so you can share your availability with people requesting a meeting.

Clara

Meet Clara, a virtual assistant fueled by machine learning who can schedule all your meetings and get acquainted with your scheduling patterns. Once you sign up, you indicate your preferences as to which days and times you are available for meetings and your favorite locations for coffee, lunch, or drinks.

If someone requests a meeting, you can CC Clara’s email address (which can be customized to your company’s domain), and the virtual assistant will determine a time, date, duration, participants, and location for the meeting. She also understands human commands like, “I’m sick, can you reschedule my meetings on Tuesday?”

It currently only works with Gmail, and it does have a hefty price tag, but it could be worth the cost if scheduling is a major pain point for your company. Especially considering it’s still significantly cheaper than hiring a human personal assistant. 

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

When you think of the basics of marketing, you might be thinking: Okay, create an awesome website; design and send some cool emails; post strategically to social media; maybe supplement with some advertising.

But what about the principles behind your campaigns? When you’re planning and doing all of these marketing activities, what motivates your decisions?

Today, the most successful marketers aren’t just crossing items off their to-do lists; they’re taking a holistic, adaptive approach to their marketing. They’re elevating the customer experience, building personalized connections, adapting to the evolution of technology, attracting customers to them using inbound marketing, and more.

When marketers take this approach, they start creating a better brand experience and driving real business results. To learn more about the eight pillars of modern marketing, check out the infographic below from Olive & Company.