From Cubicles to Coworking Spaces: What’s Your Company’s Ideal Workspace? [Infographic]
Workplace design is a hot topic today. People argue passionately for and against open offices, cubicles, coworking spaces, and even remote arrangements. But what office setup is the best? The truth is, that depends on who’s working there.
Research shows that three out of four American workers are not in optimal workplace environments, and it impacts their performance. By taking into account the habits and personalities of the people on your team, you can create a working environment that maximizes their talents.
True, you can’t redesign your office every time you hire a new employee, but you can consider different employees’ needs in order to build a workplace that is as comfortable for the sales team as it is for the designers. To help you do that, the folks at Quill.com put together an infographic that links common professional personalities with their ideal workplaces. Take a look to find the setup that’s best for your team.
How We Grew Inbound Traffic by 300% in 6 Months
During the second half of 2015, we put together a plan to dramatically increase the amount of inbound traffic to our software as a service (SaaS) company’s website. In April we were averaging roughly 3,000 visits a day; all of this was coming via existing inbound marketing. We knew that if we could increase our traffic numbers, our daily customer signups would follow the same trajectory. But how could we do this?
Our initial goal was to double this number in just 6 months, so by the end of 2015 we would have roughly double the number of users hitting our site, and double the number of users signing up to use our product, Gleam. Our plan was to attempt to do this with entirely organic growth. No paid acquisition sources, just traffic that we could scale without needing to scale ongoing budgets.
But where do you start? What kind of activity do you focus on? How much content should you write? Most SaaS businesses have many different levers that they can pull to influence growth. In this post I’m going to share with you our favourite inbound tactics that helped us overachieve our rather optimistic goal by more than 50%.
Rethinking Our Approach To Blogging
When we first launched our blog we focused on the fairly narrow topic of sweepstakes marketing. Whilst meaningful to some, we ended up alienating much of the marketing world looking for actionable advice (and crossover into commonly used techniques). We made the decision to rebrand and focus on tactics anyone can use to grow your business. This instantly opened up to a much wider variety of possible content ideas, and really ignited a fire inside the team to build a blog that was both engaging and useful, and helped grow our business.
We didn’t write a large volume of articles, but set ourselves the task of writing at least two really epic ones per month. One way we thought about it was to create evergreen articles that would be as relevant yesterday as they are tomorrow — which means it will consistently bring value for years to come. Much of our new content was built around these 5 content pillars: Engaging, Inspiring, Emotional, Trusted and Simple. Our most successful articles got upwards of 100K views over several months!
So how do you get there? In addition to keeping the 5 content pillars in mind, here are some specific tactics you can use to determine a good topic:
- Use a tool like SEMRush to identify what users are searching for
- Write good long-form articles (at least 1500 words) addressing users’ search terms. Get tips on how to get the formula right here.
- Take the time to get your headline right — they say don’t judge a book by its cover but if your title doesn’t grab attention immediately you won’t get that click through. Use a tool such as CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer to help you here. Here’s one we optimised:
- Make your posts actionable — give users something to do
- Use imagery: visuals break up your content and provide additional color to your content
The result of implementing these tactics drove 40k visits per month to our blog (and it’s growing by around 10% each month).
Want ROI? Use Evergreen Content.
I mentioned evergreen content previously, I think it’s important to go into this type of content in more detail – if done right it can provide huge ROI. evergreen Content is content that will always be fresh, or can easily be updated to stay fresh based on market changes. Our product focuses on lost of different market segments. Growing your business on social networks, building your email list or just marketing your business. A quick search on Google Keyword Planner reveals that there’s just over 6k monthly searches for keywords relating to “How to Grow Your Business”.
Once you know the area you want to tackle you now need to think about the sort of content that will provide huge value for that search. For evergreen content this can usually come in the form of a list or a long-form article.
When writing your own evergreen content try to come up with the ten most important words you’d like to rank for in search engines. Then, start building your content around those topics. Your top evergreen content will drive steadily growing traffic to your blog each month — so invest in it. In fact, our evergreen content makes up over 80% of our total blog visits.
Nurture Your Email Subscribers
Now that we were seeing an increase in blog traffic, we needed a way to continually engage and market to those users. The absolute best way to do this is to pay attention to your email subscriber list. We have grown our own list from 2k to 10k subscribers in the last 6 months. How did we do this?
You need to provide value for the subscriber. What are they going to get from you that will help them?
We decided to see how well our product performed by implementing it on our own blog:
- We created a Growth Tips Newsletter, in which we send out the best tactics to grow your business each month
- We display how many other users are members of our list for social proof
- We make the list feel like an important members only club
- Creating in-post notifications with bonus content
- Creating educational pop-ups that show when users have engaged with a specific article
- Incentivizing users to leave a comment with prompts at the end of the post
Optimising this workflow allowed us to increase our opt-in rate by 1000%: before we were collecting around 10 emails per day via traditional opt-in forms, whereas now we consistently do over 100 (sometimes 500 when running a contest).
Leveraging Integration Partners
We are lucky to have the resource to focus heavily on Integrations. We currently integrate with over 50+ services – including social networks and email providers. But when you integrate with another business there’s a couple of ways you can approach it.
- You can silently announce the integration without their knowledge
- You can attempt to work with their marketing department to do a joint launch
One of these methods works much better than the other (guess which one), but also takes a lot more time and effort to execute. Launching an integration properly can allow you to:
- Get exposure on the partners’ site
- Get featured in newsletters to increase your reach
- Get the integration announced on social media
- Do joint webinars or case studies
Our current most popular integration has over 5000 joint customers using it.
In fact, you can see a HubSpot writeup their experience with our product. This wouldn’t have been possible if we didn’t already have a HubSpot integration. Integrations can also allow you to break into adjacent markets. These are new verticals with new types of customers that use your product in a slightly different way, or a complimentary way (when combined with another service). A good portion of our growth can be attributed to tapping into some of these markets in the last 6-12 months:
- Event Marketing (We added an Eventbrite integration)
- E-Sports (We added Steam + Twitch integrations)
- Subscription Boxes – We had the this happen organically via a few big Reddit Posts
Kick-ass Product Guides
An important part of growing your business is understanding the type of content that your core demographic is looking for. For us, many of our customers are looking for guides on how to run a contest. So we built out a whole section with really in-depth guides on what people are looking for.
These guides are read by more than 50k users every month. We also focused on writing guides that show people how to use our product. You’ll notice above that one of the guides has been read over 100k+ times in the last 6 months. We link to this guide in:
- Almost every email that we send
- On all social media channels
- In employee email signatures
- In nearly every support email
- Even in our Linked-in profiles
It is vitally important that you have guides that show users the potential of your product.
Write Compelling Case Studies
I don’t know about you, but I usually find most case studies really boring. We purposely wanted to make our case studies engaging, so we decided that we would add 5 Key Growth Takeaways to each. Quite often these takeaways are completely unrelated to our product, but they really add value to the case study and make it much more actionable and enjoyable to read. Here’s a quick example of just one of the takeaways in a case study:
This has really helped our case studies be….less like case studies.
Run Promotions Utilising Your Product With Partners
Where possible we always try to use our own product to an advantage. This means that if ever there’s a partnership opportunity we will try to do some joint marketing or giveaway our own products.
Why do this, I hear you ask? It’s possibly the cheapest form of marketing you’ll ever do, if you can get free exposure to another businesses entire customer-base and also provide huge value to them. Then it’s a huge win win situation. Gleam makes it super easy to do partnership marketing campaigns, just work with your partner to decide on the prize, how you want users to enter. Then get everyone involves to promote the campaign.
If you’re stuck for ideas we’ve created this huge guide on promoting these types of campaigns. Our most recent contest drove over 10k social actions in just 24 hours, with an actual monetary outlay of around $500. When we compared this to the ROI on what we spend on Google or Facebook Ads it outperformed them as a channel by 500%.
Maximise Your In-App Branding
Probably our biggest driver of growth involves users that are exposed to our campaigns that contain branding. This accounts for over 30% of referrals to our marketing site. Over a year ago we split tested our footer branding to see what could be better than Powered By Gleam.
Then we spent almost 6 months split testing which combinations of branding would get the most benefit out of this traffic. We knew as we added more customers we would see the incremental gains come in (and be able to forecast easier).
Things we tested included:
- Widget branding
- Links in emails
- When users interacted with our demos
- Notification emails post entry
- Examples in our guides or blog posts
One caveat here is that this entire marketing channel is much easier to optimise when you have a free user-base. But the downside is that you increase your support costs, your running costs and a number of various other factors to consider. For Gleam though, this method drives an additional 1M+ visitors through our inbound marketing channels every 6 months.
What Can You Do To Get Similar Results?
Obviously every business and website is completely different. My biggest suggestion is to continually test what you think might work, then scale all the things that do work as hard as you can. Here’s a quick list of ideas to try:
- Get better at collecting emails
- Get better at sending emails to customers/prospects
- Write more engaging content that is actionable
- Build great docs that really teach your customers how to use your product
- Work on your on-boarding to increase conversion rates
- Build dedicated landing pages for key terms that users search to find your products
- Write guest posts for other blogs in your industry
- Convert your popular posts to slideshare presentations
- Run regular webinars to educate potential customers
Now get to it, and have fun growing your own business! Here’s a more detailed look back at how we grew our business in 2015 💪
17 Inspiring Instagram Video Examples From Oreo, Spotify, BuzzFeed & More
Remember when Instagram first started allowing users to post videos back in 2013?
The first Instagram videos had to be recorded on your phone and could only be up to 15 seconds long. Those were the days that people compared Instagram video to its Twitter-owned counterpart, Vine.
Instagram’s come a long way since then, and it’s blown Vine out of the water. Like most of the other popular social networks, the folks at Instagram have made changes to its platform that make it easier for people to post and share videos.
In late March 2016, Instagram announced they’d start rolling out the ability for Instagram users to upload 60-second videos. For iOS users, they added that users will soon be able to make videos out of multiple clips from your camera roll.
Thanks to these changes, marketers can use the Instagram app to relate with their fans and customers, to communicate their business’ personalities and brand stories, and to express artistic creativity.
There are a lot of brands who are posting great photos on social media. But what about videos? While brands have been slower to adapt to Instagram’s video platform, many of the ones that are experimenting with it are doing it really well. Check out the examples below.
17 Inspiring Instagram Video Examples
Click anywhere on the videos to play them, and click again to pause them.
1) Oreo
Oreo is known for its simple, creative social media content — and its Instagram videos don’t disappoint. The video below is a great example of a fun, creative video that works perfectly for the platform.
While we love the sound quality in this video — how satisfying is the sound of pen on paper? — it doesn’t require sound to make sense. This is a really smart move because when you’re viewing any video on Instagram, you’ll hear sound only if your device’s volume is turned on. If your phone is set to silent or vibrate — which is the case for many people, especially when they’re perusing Instagram in public — then the video will play with the sound off.
Keep this in mind when you’re planning your next Instagram video: It should either be eye-catching enough to draw people to turn on the sound within the first few seconds, or it should be able to play without sound.
2) Burger King
Here’s another Instagram video that doesn’t require sound. In fact, it’s completely silent — and the reasoning is very clever. The Burger King (yes, that’s the name of their mascot) is famously silent.
But on the 199th anniversary of National American Sign Language (ASL) Day, he broke his silence both on Instagram with the video below, and on YouTube with a longer video — a great example of paring down a longer YouTube video to fit Instagram’s platform.
In the video, the Burger King calls on their deaf fans to ask what the official sign for their famous burger, the “Whopper,” should be. The video encourages fans to submit ideas via social media using the #WhopperSign hashtag.
When a winning hand sign was picked, here’s how they changed their logo to celebrate:
Image Credit: AdAge
3) Spotify
Here’s a video from Spotify that’s sure to make you chuckle. The content is delightful because it’s funny and unexpected. Not only is the idea clever, but we also love the tagline at the end: “Over 75,000 new fans every day. Not including the ones in private mode.”
It shows how much they know their customers: They know people tend to listen to songs they’re embarrassed about on “private” mode so it hides it from others. A customer might see this and laugh, and maybe even tag a friend who knows his or her “secret” music tastes.
4) Reebok
Inspiring content tends to do very well on social media, especially Instagram. This video is clearly the work of professionals, which not every brand has the resources for. But the message, which is part of a larger campaign shared across their website and other social networks, is both beautiful and shareable: You have 25,915 days: What will you do with them?
5) BuzzFeed Tasty
The videos BuzzFeed Tasty puts out on Instagram and Facebook are simply perfect for those two platforms: They’re visual, helpful, shareable, light-hearted … and, best of all, they’re simple. When I watch these videos, I want to save them somewhere so I can refer back to them when I want to make the recipe myself. (Plus, I love the music they use.)
“We want people to be able to watch the video and feel like they can pull it off at home,” Andrew Gauthier, creative director of BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, told CBS.
The folks at BuzzFeed have published more than 500 “Tasty” videos since last July, and they’ve been viewed 14 billion times, mostly on Facebook. But these videos are perfect for Instagram’s visual platform, too. Thanks to Instagram’s decision to extend video length to 60 seconds, BuzzFeed is able to post full recipe videos along with a caption explaining exactly how it’s done.
6) Livia Sala
Here’s another food- and recipe-related Instagram video that took a different approach than BuzzFeed Tasty. In this video, Milan-based food stylist Livia Sala captured the process of making ravioli on video, complete with cute “commentary” from some of the ingredients on the list.
Instead of using fluid video, Sala uses a series of still shots, one after another. This is called a “stop action video” from still photos, which you can create by taking still photos and uploading them to iMovie on your computer or phone. This is a great video because it’s delightful and fun — are you seeing the trend here? The post was a Shorty Award finalist for Best Instagram Video in 2013.
7) Allstate
Think insurance companies are limited to boring content? Allstate has always set themselves apart from the crowd with their entertaining commercials and social media presence.
But they don’t just put out the same videos on every one of their social outlets. Instead, they carefully cater their content to the platform they’re publishing on. (For example, this YouTube video of theirs looks like a normal commercial, but turns into a “choose your own adventure” type game.)
On Instagram, some of the videos they post are video memes — this is a meme format we haven’t seen many brands use. People love memes on Instagram because they’re funny and shareable, and folks tend to tag their friends in the comments, thereby expanding the post’s reach. That’s exactly what happens with Allstate’s video memes, like the one below.
8) Ikea
Here’s an example of a short, snackable video that showcases a product in a funny way. In this case, Ikea’s showing off its anti-slip mat with a scene of a dad chasing his son (who happens to be wearing a hilarious monster costume).
This video is great because it doesn’t just show what the product looks like. In fact, you barely see the product itself. Instead, it shows the product’s benefits — and in a way that lets viewers see the brand’s personality. Instagram users love seeing personality behind Instagram content, which is why it does so well for engagement. So the next time you want to showcase a new product, consider showing it off in a humorous way.
9) Camp Brand Goods
This Canadian outdoor adventure apparel company consistently posts great content on Instagram. Not only is their Instagram content always high quality, but they use it to showcase the lifestyle they build around their products, not just the products themselves.
“[On Instagram,] it’s less about the product than it is about sharing good times,” said Camp Brand Goods’ Leslie McNeilly. “We tend to post an even mix of scenery shots and product shots. We created our own hashtag [#keepitwild], and we award a T-shirt weekly to an Instagram user who is caught keeping it wild.”
While they haven’t done many videos, the one below is a great one. It has the same look and feel as their photos on Instagram, especially with that vintage, faded look, with perfectly matching music.
10) Ben & Jerry’s
Here’s an example of a great product announcement video on Instagram from Ben & Jerry’s. We love that the video shows a fictional way the product was made — as if it were as easy as putting cookie dough and Oreos in an empty pint and shaking it up. It’s another great way for a brand to show its personality using short videos.
The video’s playful tone is perfect for Instagram — and so is the length. Although Instagram is starting to allow longer videos, it’s important to remember that users are often scrolling through their feeds when they come upon a video, and many may not want to watch for more than ten or twenty seconds. This would’ve been a great video to share on Facebook, too, because of that playful tone and short length.
11) Wistia
How-to videos are a popular video format for many brands — but the key is making these videos interesting enough for the Instagram platform. The folks at Wistia did a great job of using cool angles along with text to capture viewers’ attention right away — without them needing to turn the sound on. (In fact, this video doesn’t have sound at all.)
Then, they used the caption to point viewers to the link in their bio for the full instructional video. (Note: When you ask people to follow a link in your Instagram bio, make sure you make that link trackable.)
12) CBRE
Nothing like a breathtaking time lapse to mesmerize your followers on Instagram. You might not think a commercial real estate and investment services firm like CBRE would have beautiful content to post, but it’s videos like this that have the ability to showcase the more visually pleasing sides of the industry.
Even if you work for a “boring” industry, you can come up with creative ideas that cater to what type of content your audience wants. One key thing to keep in mind — especially on Instagram’s platform — is to make your content relatable and approachable. In other words, make it human. No one who’s scrolling through their Instagram feed wants to see a cut-and-dry product update. They’ll scroll right past it and on to their friend’s video of his cat.
Instead, produce videos that help you form an emotional connection with your fans, as CBRE did with this stunning video, the beauty of which anyone can appreciate.
13) Califia Farms
Califia Farms is another brand that consistently creates awesome Instagram content. They tend to post a solid mix of photos and video content, including fun, playful videos and GIFs like the one below. Here, they’re announcing a new product with a sort of “slow reveal” — but one that’s visually compelling enough for users to stick around.
If you like the idea of posting animated videos to your own Instagram account, they aren’t actually all that difficult and expensive to create. Here’s a list of 10 easy-to-use tools for creating animated photos and videos to get you started.
14) Flixel Photos
Here’s a stunning image from Flixel Photos. … Or is it a video? It’s actually something called a “cinemagraph,” which is kind of a combination of the two.
A cinemagraph is a file format used to create short, infinitely-looping animations for the web that look like images with a moving component. The effect is really cool: It’s like experiencing a living moment.
Creating a cinemagraph isn’t as hard as it looks. Read this blog post to learn how to make one in seven steps.
15) Dunkin’ Donuts
A video doesn’t have to be long to be successful. In fact, the video below from Dunkin’ Donuts is literally three still images put together into a video. This is another example of a “stop action video” from still photos, which you can create by taking still photos and uploading them to iMovie on your computer or phone.
While this video is super simple, what makes it great is its timeliness (in celebration of Mother’s Day) and that it’s funny, unexpected, and therefore shareable. Donuts given like flowers? Yes, please.
16) WeWork
Another great use case for Instagram? Showcasing your company culture. Instagram’s a great platform for positioning your brand as a friendly face and building a voice and personality to build a relationship with followers. It doesn’t hurt for recruitment, either.
Here’s a wonderful and whimsical video that cuts together short clips from WeWork’s company party. Kids breakdancing, someone dressed up as a snowman, employees talking and laughing … they did a great job of showcasing the employees’ personalities and making the party look really fun.
17) Saturday Night Live
The American TV show Saturday Night Live produces great video content by its very nature — but that’s not the only reason why their Instagram videos are so good. They have their Instagram promotion down to a science.
“It’s found a successful formula for extending each show way past the broadcast date, and for re-purposing TV content for the online generation, with micro-video playing a huge part of that,” writes Carla Marshall for ReelSEO.com. “Take the 2nd April show, which featured Game of Thrones actor Peter Dinklage, and singer Gwen Stefani. Both appeared in a very odd little sketch called ‘Space Shorts/Pants’ which SNL then uploaded to Facebook, and YouTube, and to Instagram, where it generated over 70K views. By using its social media presence, the brand was able to extend the buzz around the sketch for days, even weeks, after.”
What are your favorite examples of Instagram videos? Share with us in the comments.
Medium for Publishers: What Media Companies Should Know
Take a look at Medium, and you’ll find a passionate community of smart people who love great content: you’ll see commenters, sharers, and writers who are seeking out a forum to share their thoughts. Founded by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams in 2012, Medium has created an entire social media ecosystem around thoughtful, engaging content. And now, the company is opening its doors to publishers who are seeking new opportunities to reach new audiences.
Enter Medium for Publishers, “a new corner of the Internet specifically designed for people and publishers who want to experience a deeper level of discourse and engagement.” The new platform gives media companies new tools to express their own identities on the platform.
So why should media companies take note of this new opportunity? For one, Medium is a new, untapped content distribution channel that creates a sustainable way for publishers to reach new audiences. Long story short, here’s what you need to know.
Publisher-Friendly Distribution & Monetization Features
As a recent article from Fortune points out, Medium’s goal is to give publishers a “one stop shop” to reach new audiences with great content. That being said, key features of the future include the ability to plug in sponsored content and manage reader memberships. In other words, media companies can start testing ideas for monetization without needing to build an entire sponsored content offering from scratch.
As Williams explained in a recent interview for AdAge, monetization features on Medium for Publishers are still in their planning stages. The company is currently researching how brands are using the platform for content marketing—data that publishers will find valuable when developing new marketing programs for advertisers, from the ground up.
“I think long-term we definitely see ourselves as a marketplace for brands and publishers to find each other in an efficient way and to do things together,” says Williams for AdAge.
While new revenue opportunities aren’t yet available, there are initiatives on the horizon. For instance, Medium has created a private beta for select publishers who are looking to take advantage of the platform, early. You can learn more and see if you’re eligible here.
The Opportunity to Build a Brand
Media companies can think of Medium for Publishers as a new door for audience growth that’s being cracked open: it won’t happen overnight, but the publishers who invest in the platform early will reap some of the strongest rewards long-term.
What Medium has brought to market now is a series of branding tools that publishers can leverage to build their identities. Now, when you establish a presence on Medium, you can differentiate your unique brand from the many voices who are on the platform. Here’s how Medium can help you build and optimize your relationships with your reader-base:
- Design your homepage with your unique colors and logo so that your media brand is instantly recognizable.
- Create your own custom domain so that your content is easy to find in one central hub.
- Send personalized email newsletters to your existing fans and followers by importing contacts from Facebook and Twitter.
Medium has also built in several moving pieces that often slip through the cracks for publishers: SEO and media rights. Instead of letting these topics rest in a gray area, the social network has built these topics into its new offering. You own the rights to your content, and you won’t need to take extra steps to make sure that it’s visible to search engines.
Missing Pieces
Medium is giving publishers a brand new platform to extend their reach and build a brand among smart audiences of avid-readers. You can even monetize your content directly on the platform. But ultimately, it’s important to treat Medium as one piece of your overall puzzle and continue to build a funnel back to your company. Some extra steps that you’ll want to take:
- Capture email addresses whenever possible, to continue to maintain a 1:1 relationship with your readers (so that you can collect their data to build your own database, too).
- In addition to bringing your branding to Medium, make sure to generate visibility around your products and services. If you’re hosting a conference or looking to promote your education products, Medium can be a powerful channel for generating awareness.
For a quick guide to mastering Medium, check out this podcast here. It features an interview with Sophie Moura, head of B2B partnerships at Medium, with detailed tips for how to build a content strategy. As you would imagine, you’ll want to do the following in your strategy:
- Invest in quality stories that generate comments and conversations.
- Treat Medium as a distribution channel, in addition to a hub.
- Focus on tactics to get noticed.
The Bottom Line
An investment in Medium is an investment in your media brand. Don’t just tinker: use the tools that Medium has created to your advantage. Take steps now to prepare for up-and-coming opportunities that will help your content get noticed. Pave the path for new monetization sources along the way.
7 of the Most Interesting Podcast Episodes About Productivity We’ve Ever Heard
For most of us, the struggle to be productive when we want to be and when we are expected to be can seem endless.
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to being productive, and there certainly isn’t a finish that guarantees we’ll get it right every time. Productivity is something we’ll have to continue working on for the rest of our lives.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t get better at it. We’re always curious how other people stay productive so they can live a more balanced life. What tips do productivity experts and successful people have for focusing on what matters and accomplishing their goals?
Whether you’re looking for advice or just like to listen to a great interview, we’ve curated a list of seven awesome podcast episodes about productivity for you to check out. Bookmark them for your next commute (or use the free app Stitcher to make a playlist to listen to later).
7 Fascinating Podcast Episodes About Productivity
1) The Productivity Show: “A Year of Productivity w/ Chris Bailey”
Click here to listen to this podcast episode.
You can’t be productive if you’re not also deliberate about what you want to accomplish. Because, of course, how can you invest in your productivity if you don’t know and you don’t decide what you’re being productive on?”
Ever wanted to conduct a productivity experiment on yourself? Before you do, save yourself some time by listening to this episode — Chris Bailey’s probably already done it for you.
After graduating from college in May 2013, Bailey declined two full-time job offers to dedicate a full year of his life to exploring his obsession: productivity. During that year, he conducted productivity experiments on himself, like living in total isolation for 10 days, using a smartphone for only an hour a day for three months, waking up at 5:30 a.m. every morning, and working 90 hours a week.
In this episode, he talks about that year of his life — and offers us his three ingredients for productivity: energy, attention, and time. (For further reading, you can check out Bailey’s website, http://ift.tt/1drLLvc, which houses the results of all his productivity experiments.)
Length: 53 min.
2) HBR’s Ideacast: “Take Control of Your Time”
Click here to listen to this podcast episode.
No matter how many times we went to hope that we have more than 24 hours in a day or seven days in a week, the truth is, time is the ultimate democracy. Rich or poor, young or old, male or female, we’ve got the same amount. The first step to managing that better and having realistic expectations is to embrace the truth and work within our capacity instead of trying to work against reality.”
Time is not a renewable resource — and yet, we all seem to think we can get more done than we actually can. How can we start to set expectations that are more realistic and achievable? What are the best steps we can take to start controlling the chaos?
In this interview with Elizabeth Grace Saunders, founder and CEO of Real Life E and author of The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment, you’ll learn how to embrace the reality of our time constraints, what signs to look out for that you’re over-allocating time to work, and how to change our mental patterns to prioritize what really matters.
Length: 17 min.
3) Stuff You Should Know: “Are We Obsessed With Goals?”
Click here to listen to this podcast episode.
A stretch goal is a virtually unattainable goal you give to your employees to shake them out of their ruts — which isn’t great. Aubrey Daniels argue that stretch goals aren’t good for your company because, when people in departments fail to reach their goals, research shows there’s a performance decline afterward.”
“Set goals and meet them, or be unsuccessful.” That’s what many of us were taught from a very young age. But in some contexts, goal-setting can actually be harmful and a hindrance to getting stuff done.
In this episode, co-hosts Chuck Bryant and Josh Clark explore the West’s goal-obsessed culture and its beginnings in organizational psychology. They talk about what goals are and how they differ from ambition and intention, why they work and how to achieve them, and why it’s sometimes best for your productivity and performance not to set them at all.
Length: 40 min.
4) The Tim Ferriss Show: “How to Avoid the Busy Trap (And Other Misuses of Your Time)”
Click here to listen to this podcast episode.
A good man will not waste himself upon mean and discreditable work or be busy merely for the sake of being busy. Neither will he, as you imagine, become so involved in ambitious schemes that he will have continually to endure their ebb and flow.”
Tim Ferriss — best-selling author of The Four-Hour Workweek, among other works — is known for being a big fan of Stoicism, the philosophy that one can endure pain and hardship without displaying feelings or complaining. In other words, you can’t always choose your experiences, but you can choose how you experience your experiences. Theoretically, nothing can stop you from being creative, productive, or successful. Ferriss calls it “a simple and immensely practical set of rules for better results with less effort.”
In this unique episode from his podcast, Ferriss doesn’t do his normal interviews or monologues. Instead, he reads an excerpt from one of his favorite Roman Stoic philosophers, Lucius Annaeus Seneca.
The letter is called “On the Futility of Half-way Measure,” and in it, Seneca talks about how we spend our time — one of the biggest stresses for all people, especially entrepreneurs. Then, he encourages listeners to think about ways to adapt Seneca’s wisdom to their own lives.
Length: 20 min.
5) Louder Than Words: “The Austin Kleon Episode”
Click here to listen to this podcast episode.
So much of accessing that creative mind is about not being serious. It’s about not being so uptight, and about loosening up and letting yourself go and diving into that kind of playful sub-conscious.”
Litmus’ John Bonini is the host of Louder Than Words, a podcast that gives listeners a glimpse into the lives and creative processes of some remarkable people. One such remarkable person is Austin Kleon, whom you might know as the author of Steal Like an Artist and Show Your Work!, or for his infamous “newspaper blackout poems” (see below).
Image Credit: Austin Kleon
In this episode, Bonini and Kleon talk about breaking creative ruts, the importance of being boring, how Kleon collects ideas, and how you should let nothing get in the way of your work.
The episode is funny, endearing, and above all, useful. Bonini, who credits Kleon for the reason he started the podcast to begin with, is in his element as a host — and Kelon is as direct and compelling as ever.
Length: 1 hr. 11 min.
6) Radiolab: “Me, Myself & My Muse”
Click here to listen to this podcast episode.
The source of her ideas was outside her. She could get some distance from it — maybe negotiate with it, even fight with it — instead of beating herself up all the time.”
This episode is about ending the anxiety that comes with the pressure to be creative, and being liberated by your own creativity. And it all starts with an insane story about overcoming writer’s block …
Neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks made a dangerous bargain with creativity: In 1968, when he was struggling to finish his first book, he told himself that if he didn’t finish his book in 10 days, he would kill himself. It was crazy, but it worked — in fact, he finished a day early.
That story got the hosts of Radiolab thinking: Is there a bargain you can make with your creative self that somehow avoids this terrible cost?
The rest of the episode features an interview with the always-fun, always-artistic Liz Gilbert, author of the best-selling book Eat Pray Love. She spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to, as she puts it, “live a lifetime of creativity without cutting your ear off.” Her big revelation came when she began to think of her inner source of ideas and inspirations as a being separate from herself — an entity she calls her “muse.” In the episode, she gives advice on how to battle with your muse, and tells us why she believes your muse wants you to fight back.
Length: 15 min.
7) The Growth Show: “Unconventional Habits of Highly Productive People”
Click here to listen to this podcast episode.
Productive people govern their own minds in a way most of us don’t. They see these choices that most of us don’t even know are there. They get more done with less stress and waste.”
How do some people and companies manage to be so much more productive than others? Charles Duhigg, Pulitzer-winning journalist for The New York Times, spent five years researching that very question before writing his latest book: Smarter Faster Better.
This episode of The Growth Show features an interview with Duhigg, where he reveals things that normal people like you and me can start doing today to work smarter, faster, and better. You’ll learn how to build mental models and envision your success, and how to choose better goals and make better choices and decisions.
Length: 34 min.
What are your favorite podcasts about productivity? Share with us in the comments.
6 Workplace Rules That Drive People Crazy [Infographic]
Depending on the size, management style, and overall culture of the company you work at, you may have to deal with some workplace rules that can leave you feeling a bit frazzled.
Of course, codifying rules is often necessary for helping to keep everyone focused on the same goals — especially as a company grows larger. That being said, rules don’t always have a positive effect on the workplace. From restricting access to certain websites, to forbidding employees from wearing attire that’s (arguably) outlandish, companies can sometimes go a bit overboard when writing their rule books.
The team at CashNetUSA recently created an infographic that highlights six of the most annoying workplace rules that employees have to deal with. What’s more, the infographic provides tips and best practices for coping with these rules so that they don’t interfere with your happiness or productivity.
What are your thoughts on the workplace rules shown in the infographic above? Leave a comment below.
How to Write a Blog Post: A Simple Formula + 5 Free Blog Post Templates
You’ve probably heard how paramount blogging is to the success of your marketing. Without it, your SEO will tank, you’ll have nothing to promote in social media, you’ll have no clout with your leads and customers, and you’ll have fewer pages to put those valuable calls-to-action that generate inbound leads. Need I say more?
So why, oh why, does almost every marketer I talk to have a laundry list of excuses for why they can’t consistently blog? Maybe because, unless you’re one of the few people who actually like writing, business blogging kind of stinks. You have to find words, string them together into sentences, and ughhh where do you even start?
Well my friend, the time for excuses is over.
After you read this post, there will be absolutely no reason you can’t blog every single day — and do it quickly. Not only am I about to provide you with a simple blogging formula to follow, but I’m also going to give you free templates for creating five different types of blog posts:
- The How-To Post
- The List-Based Post
- The Curated Collection Post
- The SlideShare Presentation Post
- The Newsjacking Post
With all this blogging how-to, literally anyone can blog as long as they truly know the subject matter they’re writing about. And since you’re an expert in your industry, there’s no longer any reason you can’t sit down every day and hammer out an excellent blog post.
How to Write a Blog Post: A Simple Formula to Follow
Step 1: Understand your audience.
Before you start to write, have a clear understanding of your target audience. What do they want to know about? What will resonate with them? This is where creating your buyer personas comes in handy. Consider what you know about your buyer personas and their interests while you’re coming up with a topic for your blog post.
For instance, if your readers are millennials looking to start their own business, you probably don’t need to provide them with information about getting started in social media — most of them already have that down. You might, however, want to give them information about how to adjust their approach to social media from a more casual, personal one to a more business-savvy, networking-focused approach. That kind of tweak is what separates you from blogging about generic stuff to the stuff your audience really wants (and needs) to hear.
Don’t have buyer personas in place for your business? Here are a few resources to help you get started:
- Create Buyer Personas for Your Business [Free Template]
- Blog Post: How to Create Detailed Buyer Personas for Your Business
- MakeMyPersona.com [Free Tool]
Step 2: Start with a topic and working title.
Before you even write anything, you need to pick a topic for your blog post. The topic can be pretty general to start with. For example, if you’re a plumber, you might start out thinking you want to write about leaky faucets. Then you might come up with a few different working titles — in other words, iterations or different ways of approaching that topic to help you focus your writing. For example, you might decide to narrow your topic to “Tools for Fixing Leaky Faucets” or “Common Causes of Leaky Faucets.” A working title is specific and will guide your post so you can start writing.
Let’s take a real post as an example: “How to Choose a Solid Topic for Your Next Blog Post.” Appropriate, right? The topic, in this case, was probably simply “blogging.” Then the working title may have been something like, “The Process for Selecting a Blog Post Topic.” And the final title ended up being “How to Choose a Solid Topic for Your Next Blog Post.”
See that evolution from topic, to working title, to final title? Even though the working title may not end up being the final title (more on that in a moment), it still provides enough information so you can focus your blog post on something more specific than a generic, overwhelming topic.
If you’re having trouble coming up with ideas, check out this blog post from my colleague Ginny Soskey. In this post, Soskey walks through a helpful process for turning one idea into many. Similar to the “leaky faucet” example above, she suggests that you “iterate off old topics to come up with unique and compelling new topics.” This can be done by:
- Changing the topic scope
- Adjusting the time frame
- Choosing a new audience
- Taking a positive/negative approach
- Introducing a new format
Step 3: Write an intro (and make it captivating).
We’ve written more specifically about writing captivating introductions in the post, “How to Write an Introduction [Quick Tip],” but let’s review, shall we?
First, grab the reader’s attention. If you lose the reader in the first few paragraphs — or even sentences — of the introduction, they will stop reading even before they’ve given your post a fair shake. You can do this in a number of ways: tell a story or a joke, be empathetic, or grip the reader with an interesting fact or statistic.
Then describe the purpose of the post and explain how it will address a problem the reader may be having. This will give the reader a reason to keep reading and give them a connection to how it will help them improve their work/lives. Here’s an example of a post that we think does a good job of attracting a reader’s attention right away:
Step 4: Organize your content.
Sometimes, blog posts can have an overwhelming amount of information — for the reader and the writer. The trick is to organize the info so readers are not intimidated by the length or amount of content. The organization can take multiple forms — sections, lists, tips, whatever’s most appropriate. But it must be organized!
Let’s take a look at the post, “How to Use Snapchat: A Detailed Look Into HubSpot’s Snapchat Strategy.” There is a lot of content in this post, so we broke it into a few different sections using the following headers: How to Setup Your Snapchat Account, Snaps vs. Stories: What’s the Difference?, and How to Use Snapchat for Business. These sections are then separated into sub-sections that to go into more detail and also make the content easier to read.
To complete this step, all you really need to do is outline your post. That way, before you start writing, you know which points you want to cover, and the best order in which to do it. To make things even easier, you can also download and use our free blog post templates, which are pre-organized for five of the most common blog post types. Just fill in the blanks!
Step 5: Write!
The next step — but not the last — is actually writing the content. We couldn’t forget about that, of course.
Now that you have your outline/template, you’re ready to fill in the blanks. Use your outline as a guide and be sure to expand on all of your points as needed. Write about what you already know, and if necessary, do additional research to gather more information, examples, and data to back up your points, providing proper attribution when incorporating external sources. Need help finding accurate and compelling data to use in your post? Check out this roundup of sources — from Pew Research to Google Trends.
If you find you’re having trouble stringing sentences together, you’re not alone. Finding your “flow” can be really challenging for a lot of folks. Luckily, there are a ton of tools you can lean on to help you improve your writing. Here are a few to get you started:
- Power Thesaurus: Stuck on a word? Power Thesaurus is a crowdsourced tool that provides users with a ton of alternative word choices from a community of writers.
- ZenPen: If you’re having trouble staying focused, check out this distraction-free writing tool. ZenPen creates a minimalist “writing zone” that’s designed to help you get words down without having to fuss with formatting right away.
- Cliché Finder: Feeling like your writing might be coming off a little cheesy? Identify instances where you can be more specific using this handy cliché tool.
For a complete list of tools for improving your writing skills, check out this post. And if you’re looking for more direction, the following resources are chock-full of valuable writing advice:
- The Marketer’s Pocket Guide to Writing Well [Free Ebook]
- How to Write Compelling Copy: 7 Tips for Writing Content That Converts
- How to Write With Clarity: 9 Tips for Simplifying Your Message
- Your Blog Posts Are Boring: 9 Tips for Making Your Writing More Interesting
- Your Blog Posts Are Boring: 9 Tips for Making Your Writing More Interesting
Step 6: Edit/proofread your post, and fix your formatting.
You’re not quite done yet, but you’re close! The editing process is an important part of blogging — don’t overlook it. Ask a grammar-conscious co-worker to copyedit and proofread your post, and consider enlisting the help of The Ultimate Editing Checklist. And if you’re looking to brush up on your own self-editing skills, turn to these helpful posts for some tips and tricks to get you started:
- Confessions of a HubSpot Editor: 11 Editing Tips From the Trenches
- How to Become a More Efficient Editor: 12 Ways to Speed Up the Editorial Process
- 10 Simple Edits That’ll Instantly Improve Any Piece of Writing
When you’re ready to check your formatting, keep the following advice in mind …
Featured Image
Make sure you choose a visually appealing and relevant image for your post. As social networks treat content with images more prominently, visuals are now more responsible than ever for the success of your blog content in social media. In fact, it’s been shown that content with relevant images receives 94% more views than content without relevant images.
For help selecting an image for your post, read “How to Select the Perfect Image for Your Next Blog Post” — and pay close attention to the section about copyright law.
Visual Appearance
No one likes an ugly blog post. And it’s not just pictures that make a post visually appealing — it’s the formatting and organization of the post, too.
In a properly formatted and visually appealing blog post, you’ll notice that header and sub-headers are used to break up large blocks of text — and those headers are styled consistently. Here’s an example of what that looks like:
Also, screenshots should always have a similar, defined border (see screenshot above for example) so they don’t appear as if they’re floating in space. And that style should stay consistent from post to post.
Maintaining this consistency makes your content (and your brand) look more professional, and makes it easier on the eyes.
Topics/Tags
Tags are specific, public-facing keywords that describe a post. They also allow readers to browse for more content in the same category on your blog. Refrain from adding a laundry list of tags to each post. Instead, put some thought into a tagging strategy. Think of tags as “topics” or “categories,” and choose 10-20 tags that represent all the main topics you want to cover on your blog. Then stick to those.
Step 7: Insert a call-to-action (CTA) at the end.
At the end of every blog post, you should have a CTA that indicates what you want the reader to do next — subscribe to your blog, download an ebook, register for a webinar or event, read a related article, etc. Typically, you think about the CTA being beneficial for the marketer. Your visitors read your blog post, they click on the CTA, and eventually you generate a lead. But the CTA is also a valuable resource for the person reading your content — use your CTAs to offer more content similar to the subject of the post they just finished reading.
In the blog post, “What to Post on Instagram: 18 Photo & Video Ideas to Spark Inspiration,” for instance, readers are given actionable ideas for creating valuable Instagram content. At the end of the post is a CTA referring readers to download a comprehensive guide on how to use Instagram for business:
See how that’s a win-win for everyone? Readers who want to learn more have the opportunity to do so, and the business receives a lead they can nurture … who may even become a customer! Learn more about how to choose the right CTA for every blog post in this article. And check out this collection of clever CTAs to inspire your own efforts.
Step 8: Optimize for on-page SEO.
After you finish writing, go back and optimize your post for search.
Don’t obsess over how many keywords to include. If there are opportunities to incorporate keywords you’re targeting, and it won’t impact reader experience, do it. If you can make your URL shorter and more keyword-friendly, go for it. But don’t cram keywords or shoot for some arbitrary keyword density — Google’s smarter than that!
Here’s a little reminder of what you can and should look for:
Meta Description
Meta descriptions are the descriptions below the post’s page title on Google’s search results pages. They provide searchers with a short summary of the post before clicking into it. They are ideally between 150-160 characters and start with a verb, such as “Learn,” “Read,” or “Discover.” While meta descriptions no longer factor into Google’s keyword ranking algorithm, they do give searchers a snapshot of what they will get by reading the post and can help improve your clickthrough rate from search.
Page Title and Headers
Most blogging software uses your post title as your page title, which is the most important on-page SEO element at your disposal. But if you’ve followed our formula so far, you should already have a working title that will naturally include keywords/phrases your target audience is interested in. Don’t over-complicate your title by trying to fit keywords where they don’t naturally belong. That said, if there are clear opportunities to add keywords you’re targeting to your post title and headers, feel free to take them. Also, try to keep your headlines short — ideally, under 65 characters — so they don’t get truncated in search engine results.
Anchor Text
Anchor text is the word or words that link to another page — either on your website or on another website. Carefully select which keywords you want to link to other pages on your site, because search engines take that into consideration when ranking your page for certain keywords.
It’s also important to consider which pages you link to. Consider linking to pages that you want to rank well for that keyword. You could end up getting it to rank on Google’s first page of results instead of its second page, and that ain’t small potatoes.
Mobile Optimization
With mobile devices now accounting for nearly 2 out of every 3 minutes spent online, having a website that is responsive or designed for mobile has become more and more critical. In addition to making sure your website’s visitors (including your blog’s visitors) have the best experience possible, optimizing for mobile will score your website some SEO points.
Back in 2015, Google made a change to its algorithm that now penalizes sites that aren’t mobile optimized. This month (May 2016), Google rolled out their second version of the mobile-friendly algorithm update — creating a sense of urgency for the folks that have yet to update their websites. To make sure your site is getting the maximum SEO benefit possible, check out this free guide: How to Make a Mobile-Friendly Website: SEO Tips for a Post-“Mobilegeddon” World.
Step 9: Pick a catchy title.
Last but not least, it’s time to spruce up that working title of yours. Luckily, we have a simple formula for writing catchy titles that will grab the attention of your reader. Here’s what to consider:
- Start with your working title.
- As you start to edit your title, keep in mind that it’s important to keep the title accurate and clear.
- Then, work on making your title sexy — whether it’s through strong language, alliteration, or another literary tactic.
- If you can, optimize for SEO by sneaking some keywords in there (only if it’s natural, though!).
- Finally, see if you can shorten it at all. No one likes a long, overwhelming title — and remember, Google prefers 65 characters or fewer before it truncates it on its search engine results pages.
If you’ve mastered the steps above, learn about some way to take your blog posts to the next level in this post. What other steps do you take to refine your blog posts? Don’t forget to download your five free blog post templates right here.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in October 2013 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.
4 Attention-Grabbing Examples of User-Generated Content in Ecommerce
User-generated content (UGC), like customer photos and reviews, increases engagement, encourages shoppers to convert into buyers and boosts word-of-mouth marketing. While there are many ways to display UGC throughout your site to create interest and provide shoppers with real information from real buyers, here are four of the most effective and attention-grabbing uses of UGC in ecommerce (and actionable tips on how to emulate their impact).
BOOM! Shows Real Products on Real People
BOOM! cosmetics company gives customers the option to submit original photos with their product reviews. When a shopper sees these user-generated photos of real people using the product they are considering, they can quickly tell whether it meets their expectations.
User-generated photos coupled with customer reviews effectively communicates a comprehensive customer experience that allows shoppers to connect on a personal level and imagine themselves using your product.
BOOM! also implements visual UGC throughout their site with a selfie contest and rotating customer photos on their homepage.
Pro Tip:
Encourage reviewers to get creative with their customer photos to showcase your product in engaging ways. If you are selling make-up, ask them to take a selfie before they go out. If you are selling arts and crafts materials, ask for pictures of a finished project.
MVMT Mixes UGC and Product Pictures
For jewellery and accessories, studio product pictures are great for highlighting design details, but they usually do not provide context. They leave shoppers wondering what the product will look like on them and how it will pair with other items in their closet.
MVMT addresses this concern by surrounding their studio product images with pictures from Instagram.
By mixing UGC in with product pictures and including an Instagram feed featuring relevant social on each product page, MVMT allows shoppers to better understand the proportions of the product and imagine how they would style it.
Pro Tip:
Use social pictures with relevant reference points such as a hand or additional accessories that help shoppers understand the actual size and color of the product.
Samuel Hubbard Features UGC in Home Page Design
Uncertainty is a big factor when seeing an online brand for the first time. Authentic customer reviews are a perfect way to reassure new shoppers about the quality of your products and the trustworthiness of your brand.
When displayed on the home page in a way that matches the overall site design and experience, they capture the attention of site visitors and nudge them to take the next step in the customer journey.
Samuel Hubbard features their customer reviews as a major part of their homepage design to showcase happy customers and encourage new site visitors to look further.
Pro Tip:
Feature detailed reviews that mention a specific use or benefit of the product such as gift giving or all-day use.
Campus Protein Measures Industry Pain Points
Each industry has its own unique customer pain points. Asking past buyers to rate specific metrics related to your industry as part of their product review provides shoppers with trustworthy and relevant information.
Campus Protein uses their review requests to get customers to weigh in on the flavor of their product. Flavor is a key component of purchase decisions when buying consumables online. By asking customers to rate the flavor of the product they bought, Campus Protein ensures that flavor is part of every customer review.
Industry-specific measurements enhance reviews and ensure that the most important information that can make or break a sale is communicated to new shoppers.
Pro Tip:
When deciding what quality you want reviewers to rate, consider your marketing needs as well as common customer pain points. What do you most want know from past buyers? What do you most want to communicate to new shoppers?
Takeaways
User-generated content grabs shoppers’ attention, engages existing customers and increases sales. These are just four of the many ways to display UGC throughout your online store. Using these examples as inspiration will allow you to extract more value from your customers and make the online shopping experience more genuine.
The A/B Testing Checklist You’ll Want to Bookmark
When marketers like us create landing pages, write email copy, or design call-to-action buttons, it can be tempting to use our intuition to predict what will make people click and convert.
But basing marketing decisions off of a “feeling” can be pretty detrimental to results. Rather than relying on guesses or assumptions to make these decisions, you’re much better off running conversion rate optimization (CRO) tests.
CRO testing can be valuable because different audiences behave, well, differently. Something that works for one company may not necessarily work for another. In fact, CRO experts hate the term “best practices” because it may not actually be the best practice for you.
But these tests can also be complex. If you’re not careful, you could make incorrect assumptions about what people like and what makes them click — decisions that could easily misinform other parts of your strategy.
One of the easier (and most common) types of CRO tests is called an A/B test. An A/B test simply tests one variable in a piece of marketing content against another, like a green call-to-action button versus a red one, to see which performs better.
So, what does it take to run an A/B test, exactly? Keep reading to learn what an A/B test is in a little more detail, followed by a full checklist for what marketers should do before, during, and after these tests. You’ll want to bookmark this for your next one.
How A/B Tests Work
To run an A/B test, you need to create two different versions of one piece of content with changes to a single variable. Then, you’ll show these two versions to two similarly sized audiences, and analyze which one performed better.
For example, let’s say you want to see if moving a certain call-to-action button to the top of your homepage instead of keeping it in the sidebar will improve its conversion rate.
To A/B test this change, you’d create another, alternative web page that reflected that CTA placement change. The existing design — or the “control” — is Version A. Version B is the “challenger.”
Image Credit: ConversionXL
Then, you’d test these two versions by showing each of them to a predetermined percentage of site visitors. (To learn more about A/B testing, download our free introductory guide here.)
Now, let’s walk through the checklist for setting up, running, and measuring an A/B test.
Checklist for Running an A/B Test
Before the A/B Test
1) Pick one variable to test.
As you optimize your web pages and emails, you might find there are a number of variables you want to test. But to evaluate how effective a change is, you’ll want to isolate one, single variable and measure its performance — otherwise, you can’t be sure which one was responsible for changes in performance. You can test more than one variable for a single web page or email — just be sure you’re testing them one at a time.
Look at the various elements in your marketing resources and their possible alternatives for design, wording, and layout. Other things you might test include email subject lines, sender names, and different ways to personalize your emails.
Keep in mind that even simple changes, like changing the image in your email or the words on your call-to-action button, can drive big improvements. In fact, these sorts of changes are usually easier to measure than the bigger ones.
Note: There are some times when it makes more sense to test multiple variables rather than a single variable. This is a process called multivariate testing. If you’re wondering whether you should run an A/B test versus a multivariate test, here’s a helpful article from Optimizely that compares the two.
2) Choose your goal.
Although you’ll measure a number of metrics for every one test, choose a primary metric to focus on — before you run the test. In fact, do it before you even set up the second variation. If you wait until afterward to think about which metrics are important to you, what your goals are, and how the changes you’re proposing might affect user behavior, then you might not set up the test in the most effective way.
3) Set up your “control” and your “challenger.”
Set up your unaltered version of whatever you’re testing as your “control.” If you’re testing a web page, this is the unaltered web page as it exists already. If you’re testing a landing page, this would be the landing page design and copy you would normally use.
From there, build a variation, or a “challenger” — the website, landing page, or email you’ll test against your control. For example, if you’re wondering whether including a testimonial on a landing page would make a difference, set up your control page with no testimonials. Then, create your variation with a testimonial.
4) Split your sample groups equally and randomly.
For tests where you have more control over the audience — like with emails — you need to test with two or more audiences that are equal in order to have conclusive results.
How you do this will vary depending on the A/B testing tool you use. If you’re a HubSpot Enterprise customer conducting an A/B test on an email, for example, HubSpot will automatically split traffic to your variations so that each variation gets a random sampling of visitors.
5) Determine your sample size (if applicable).
How you determine your sample size will also vary depending on your A/B testing tool, as well as the type of A/B test you’re running.
If you’re A/B testing an email, you’ll probably want to send an A/B test to a smaller portion of your list to get statistically significant results. Eventually, you’ll pick a winner and send the winning variation on to the rest of the list. (Read this blog post for a more detailed guide on calculating an email A/B test’s sample size.)
If you’re a HubSpot Enterprise customer, you’ll have some help determining the size of your sample group using a slider. It’ll let you do a 50/50 A/B test of any sample size — although all other sample splits require a list of at least 1,000 recipients.
If you’re testing something that doesn’t have a finite audience, like a web page, then how long you keep your test running will directly affect your sample size. You’ll need to let your test run long enough to obtain a substantial number of views, otherwise it’ll be hard to tell whether there was a statistically significant difference between the two variations.
6) Decide how significant your results need to be.
Once you’ve picked your goal metric, think about how significant your results need to be to justify choosing one variation over another. Statistical significance is a super important part of A/B testing process that’s often misunderstood. If you need a refresher on statistical significance from a marketing standpoint, I recommend reading this blog post.
The higher the percentage of your confidence level, the more sure you can be about your results. In most cases, you’ll want a confidence level of 95% minimum — preferably even 98% — especially if it was a time-intensive experiment to set up. However, sometimes it might make sense to use a lower confidence rate if you don’t need the test to be as stringent.
Matt Rheault, a senior software engineer at HubSpot, likes to think of statistical significance like placing a bet. What odds are you comfortable placing a bet on? Saying “I’m 80% sure this is the right design and I’m willing to bet everything on it” is similar to running an A/B test to 80% significance and then declaring a winner.
Rheault also says you’ll likely want a higher confidence threshold when testing for something that only slightly improves conversation rate. Why? Because random variance is more likely to play a bigger role.
“An example where we could feel safer lowering our confidence threshold is an experiment that will likely improve conversion rate by 10% or more, such as a redesigned hero section,” he explained. “The takeaway here is that the more radical the change, the less scientific we need to be process-wise. The more uber-specific the change (button color, micro copy, etc.), the more scientific we should be because the change is less likely to have a large and noticeable impact on conversion rate.”
7) Make sure you’re only running one test at a time on any campaign.
Testing more than one thing for a single campaign — even if it’s not on the same exact asset — can do a number on your results. For example, if you A/B test an email campaign that directs to a landing page at the same time that you’re A/B testing that landing page … how can you know which change caused the increase in leads?
During the A/B Test
8) Use an A/B testing tool.
To run an A/B test on your website or in an email, you’ll need to use an A/B testing tool. If you’re a HubSpot Enterprise customer, the HubSpot software has features that let you A/B test emails (learn how here), calls-to-action (learn how here), and landing pages (learn how here).
For non-HubSpot Enterprise customers, other options include Google Analytics’ Experiments, which lets you A/B test up to 10 full versions of a single web page and compare their performance using a random sample of users.
9) Test both variations simultaneously.
Timing plays a significant role in your marketing campaign’s results, whether it’s time of day, day of the week, or month of the year. If you were to run Version A during one month and Version B a month later, how would you know whether the performance change was caused by the different design or the different month?
When you run A/B tests, you’ll need to run the two variations at the same time, otherwise you may be left second-guessing your results.
The only exception here is if you’re testing timing itself, like finding the optimal times for sending out emails. This is a great thing to test because depending on what your business offers and who your subscribers are, the optimal time for subscriber engagement can vary significantly by industry and target market.
10) Run the test long enough to get substantial results.
Again, you’ll want to make sure that you let your test run long enough in order to obtain a substantial sample size. Otherwise, it’ll be hard to tell whether there was a statistically significant difference between the two variations.
How long is long enough? Depending on your company and how you execute the A/B test, getting statistically significant results could happen in hours … or days … or weeks. A big part of how long it takes to get statistically significant results is how much traffic you get — so if your business doesn’t get a lot of traffic to your website, then it’ll take much longer for you to run an A/B test. In theory, you shouldn’t restrict the time in which you’re gathering results. (Read this blog post to learn more about sample size and timing.)
11) Ask for feedback from real users.
A/B testing has a lot to do with quantitative data … but that won’t necessarily help you understand why people take certain actions over others. While you’re running your A/B test, why not collect qualitative feedback from real users?
One of the best ways to ask people for their opinions is through a survey or poll. You might add an exit survey on your site that asks visitors why they didn’t click on a certain CTA, or one on your thank-you pages that asks visitors why they clicked a button or filled out a form.
You might find, for example, that a lot of people clicked on a call-to-action leading them to an ebook, but once they saw the price, they didn’t convert. That kind of information will give you a lot of insight into why your users are behaving in certain ways.
After the A/B Test
12) Focus on your goal metric.
Again, although you’ll be measuring multiple metrics, keep your focus on that primary goal metric when you do your analysis.
For example, if you tested two variations of an email and chose leads as your primary metric, don’t get caught up on open rate or clickthrough rate. You might see a high clickthrough rate and poor conversion rates, in which case you might end up choosing the variation that had a lower clickthrough rate in the end.
13) Measure the significance of your results using our A/B testing calculator.
Now that you’ve determined which variation performs the best, it’s time to determine whether or not your results statistically significant. In other words, are they enough to justify a change?
To find out, you’ll need to conduct a test of statistical significance. You could do that manually … or you could just plug in the results from your experiment to our free A/B testing calculator. For each variation you tested, you’ll be prompted to input the total number of tries, like emails sent or impressions seen. Then, enter the number of goals it completed — generally you’ll look at clicks, but this could also be other types of conversions.
The calculator will spit out the confidence level your data produces for the winning variation. Then, measure that number against the value you chose to determine statistical significance
14) Take action based on your results.
If one variation is statistically better than the other, then you have a winner. Complete your test by disabling the losing variation in your A/B testing tool.
If neither variation is statistically better, then you’ve just learned that the variable you tested didn’t impact results, and you’ll have to mark the test as inconclusive. In this case, stick with the original variation — or run another test. You can use the failed data to help you figure out a new iteration on your new test.
While A/B tests help you impact results on a case-by-case basis, you can also apply the lessons you learn from each test and apply it to future efforts. For example, if you’ve conducted A/B tests in your email marketing and have repeatedly found that using numbers in email subject lines generates better clickthrough rates, then you might want to consider using that tactic in more of your emails.
15) Plan your next test.
The A/B test you just finished may have helped you discover a new way to make your marketing content more effective — but don’t stop there. There’s always room for more optimization.
You can even try conducting an A/B test on another feature of the same web page or email you just did a test on. For example, if you just tested a headline on a landing page, why not do a new test on body copy? Or color scheme? Or images? Always keep an eye out for opportunities to increase conversion rates and leads.
What else would you add to this checklist for running an A/B test? Share with us in the comments.
Skill Up, Start Up & Scale Up: 5 Online Talks on Career-Building for Marketing & Sales Professionals [Video Series]
“Always be learning.”
It’s a simple yet powerful statement for anyone in today’s workforce. Think about it: When you were 22, did you imagine that you’d be where you are today? What experiences have you had? What have you learned? And what do you still want to learn?
From the moment we enter the working world, we are faced with challenges — solving complex problems, growing a team, improving how our companies do business — that require us to continually grow our existing skill sets. And with business technologies continuing to evolve, what you knew yesterday might not be enough to get you through the challenges that arise tomorrow.
In the spirit of learning and growing, HubSpot Academy is running World Certification Week: A week of inspiring and educational talks broadcast on Google Hangouts, where you can tune into topics on:
- Career development in sales and marketing
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- Training and skilling up in a fast-moving world
- How to create and use educational content
- Understanding the full customer lifecycle
Join HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan and eight other global leaders over five days — from May 23rd – 27th — for a 30-minute Hangout a day.
Each hangout will only be available for 24 hours during the weeklong event, so don’t miss out on all the knowledge. Click here to sign up.
P.S. Don’t forget to get certified while you wait!