Throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks is no way to form a content strategy. Schools – like any brand or business – need to know who they are, who they’re talking to, and what makes them so special.

Building your personas is part of this process (you can find free templates for that here). They’re the “who” you’re talking to.  Much of your message is the substance of what you’re saying. But your school also needs to pay attention to the “how” you’re talking to them. The “how” is a mixture of voice and tone.

Let’s define out terms. 

• Voice is the personality you show while communicating your school’s message.
• Tone is the attitude or mood shown in any specific instance.

It’s easy to confuse voice and tone, so let me stick with that a bit longer. When you think of someone’s personality, you think of it as fixed. Personality can be complicated and it has different facets, but people are who they are. 

Having a distinctive, identifiable voice sharing your content is critical to communicating your school’s message. Your school’s content won’t stand out in the sea of content that washes over your prospects every day without it. And if that’s true, your prospects certainly won’t remember or recognize your school’s voice from among all of the other schools vying for their attention. Maybe they like a post on your blog, but so what if they can’t remember it came from your school!

If you don’t know what your school’s voice is, you risk having content produced in a voice that contradicts the substance of your message. If your school’s key message is that you develop character in your students, not just college-ready grades – how easily is that message undermined by content that’s heavy on the slang?

Finding Your Voice

To find your school’s voice, you have to start with clear messages. What are your school’s fundamental values? How do you want others to describe your school? What makes your school different from others that may have similar values? 

Hold some focus groups with different stakeholders at your school to hear how they answer these questions. Students, staff, counselors. Why have they chosen to be part of this community? Get a variety of perspectives. If your school has already defined its key messages, the focus groups are the place to get feedback on whether those messages resonate with the right people, or whether they need to be refined.

Then get a sense of what sort of voice make sense for your school. Ask them to imagine the school as a real person with a distinct personality; how do they describe her personality? Have people share their backstory for using certain adjectives to describe your school. These can help reveal deeper associations the school holds for them. 

Review a good cross section of your content. Which have a voice and tone that engage and present an identifiable perspective? What views, words, phrases, attitudes reinforce the substance of the message your school wants to communicate? Which are too generic to show any personality? What are they lacking?

Be sure to take a close look at your school’s mission statement and pull out the values embedded there.

Look at how your prospects talk about your school, or their school selection process. This is different from looking at what they’re asking about, or what their concerns are. Look at how they talk about these things on social media, in their emails to your admissions office, and in focus groups, the questions they ask during campus tours, etc. What words and phrases do they use?

The deliverable you want from each of these steps is a list of words and phrases that describe your school’s values and personality. These are the building blocks of creating a consistent voice/tone brand for your school.

Want to see which keywords you (and your competitors) already rank for? Try out our Keyword Tool here >>

Select three to five of these words that really distill your school to its best self. After this process, you may have list like: opportunity, access, community, warm, supportive.

Creating a Voice/Tone Matrix

Now that you can describe your school’s values and personality, you can start building a vocabulary around them. How formal or informal are you? How does that vary based on context? If your school’s voice leans towards the more formal, your blog posts will still likely have a less formal tone than your program brochures.

Where do slang or technical jargon fit into your school’s voice? Should they always be avoided? Or how will they be used in some places to vary tone so content with the same voice doesn’t get repetitive? 

Is your school a “we” or an “it” when mentioned in your content? If your school personality is a warm, supportive community, you probably will decide to refer to your school as “we.” If it’s stern but fair mentor, then perhaps your academy gets the third-person instead of first-person pronoun.

Here’s a useful list of 12 elements that make up brand voice.

Document your school’s voice by creating a table with your defining words in one column. The next column should contain a short explanation of what that value is intended to communicate about your school. Use the final two columns to provide samples of words and phrases and that are good to use to express that value, and those which should be avoided. 

Share this voice/tone matrix with the people and departments who will be writing content for your school. Make sure to keep space within the school’s defined voice for different departments to put their own stamp on that voice. The alumni office may develop its own tone that fits its primary audience, which may be distinct from the tone preferred by the campus life office.

Aiming for Consistent Uniqueness

All of this creates a unique voice and set of messages that can help you define a keyword strategy and influence content decisions.  AND it helps your content be consistent across teams.

A consistent voice is an integral part of synchronizing your marketing efforts to achieve maximum impact of your message. When your school’s voice is recognizable across all the school’s content, it increases the authenticity and credibility of your content and by extension, your school.

These days, teams of all shapes and sizes — from NASA to Charity: Water — are using the real-time messaging app Slack as a tool for communication and collaboration.

Over the past few years, it’s become a robust platform thanks to all of the fun and useful integrations folks have built on top of it. Nowadays, there’s a whole lot of really cool stuff you can do in Slack, from polling your teammates, to tracking bugs, to adding GIFs to your conversations.

The Slack App Directory is the best place to find apps and integrations you can connect to Slack. But with so many available, finding the best of the best can seem like a bit of a crapshoot. That’s why we created the list below of 11 of the best apps and integrations on Slack. Check ’em out, and consider implementing the ones that make sense for your team. (P.S. We’d love for you to join HubSpot’s open Slack team, #inbounding. Request an invite here.) 

Before we get into the apps and integrations themselves, let’s quickly make sure we all know how to add an app or integration to our Slack teams.

How to Add an App or Integration to Slack

You can add an app or integration to Slack either through the Slack App Directory or by clicking on an individual app’s “Add to Slack” button.

To add via the App Directory: Either click here, or open Slack and click your team name at the top left-hand corner, and choose “Apps & integrations.”

To add apps via an “Add to Slack” button: Look for these “Add to Slack” buttons around the web to add your favorite apps in one click. They look like this:

If you’re having trouble adding apps and integrations to your team’s Slack, it may be because you don’t have the proper permissions. Team owners and administrators can limit who can add apps to a Slack team, so talk to one of them if you have questions.

Note: Want to see which apps and integrations your team is currently using? Check out the Slack App Directory and click “Configure” at the top right. You can filter this list by app name, who added it, or the permissions it uses.

11 of the Best Slack Apps & Integrations

1) Simple Poll 

Poll people easily right within Slack.

Simple Poll is a great polling app that’s super easy to use. It’s easy to create a poll, for your team members to respond, and to figure out which answer got the most votes.

Once you add the app, all it takes to poll your team is a simple slash command. Type /poll “Poll question?” “Option1” “Option2” “Option3” and a poll will be created for you and sent out by a bot, without any specific team member’s name linked to it.

For example, a poll written in Slack like this:

/poll “where should we have lunch?” “chipotle” “2nd street cafe” “that new hummus place”

… Will end up looking like this:

By default, it’ll add the “1,” “2,” and “3” icons to the bottom of the post so folks can easily respond by clicking on the number emoji that corresponds with their preference, instead of having to fish for it in the “Reactions” option.

2) Marker

Send annotated screenshots directly to Slack.

If your desktop is anything like mine used to be, it’s flooded with screenshots that you take — which are tedious to look through and move later. But the process of saving screenshots, annotating them, and sharing them with your team doesn’t have to be so manual.

Enter Marker, an incredibly useful Chrome extension for folks who regularly find themselves sharing screenshots with teammates on Slack. (It also integrates with Trello, GitHub, and other apps.) Once you install the extension and the app, you can capture your whole screen or a selection, annotate it, and send it to a person or channel on Slack.

On top of letting you annotate the screenshot with arrows, text, and emojis, the app automatically attaches the URL of the page where the screenshot was taken and sends it along with the picture.

Here’s a video showing how it works:

Although the main use case the folks at Marker talk about is bug-tracking, you can use it for a lot more than that: reporting small typos, capturing parts of interesting articles, sharing ideas for where to go to lunch, and so on.

3) Intro

Pool your team’s connections into a single network.

If you’re looking for ways to leverage your network and soft connections better, here’s one way to do it using Slack. This app lets you set up a private professional network for your Slack team. Mitali Pattnaik, the app’s co-founder, calls it “the professional network for the messaging/conversation era.”

When you install the app, it’ll give your Slack a full member directory of your team, and it creates a private network for each Slack team by combining team members’ social connections. The members of your team will get a notification to create and edit their profile. For folks who aren’t Intro members, the app will collect data from various public sources like LinkedIn and Twitter, according to Pattnaik.

Then, you can use your new Slack team network to source potential job candidates, find new prospects, and ask for introductions from you coworkers. So if you want to know whether anyone on your team knows someone in Google’s San Francisco office, or whether anyone on your team went to business school in Europe — then you can at least start your search right in Slack.

Image Credit: Intro

To search for people and companies in your team’s network, you can use the slash command /intro with a person’s Slack username, full name, email address, or you can search for people at a company using /intro (company name).

4) Giphy

Add fun, random GIFs to your conversations.

Ever wanted to share an emotion or a reaction that would be better described with images rather than words? Enter Giphy.

In Giphy’s Slack app, all you have to do is type in the slash command /giphy and any phrase — from “awesome” to “bagels for days” to “WHAT IS HAPPENING.” (Yes, they have GIFs for pretty much everything.) Then, the app will use that phrase to call in a random GIF from their gigantic library of GIFs, and it’ll post it along with the command.

Image Credit: Giphy

Use it to express yourself, to lighten things up, and to set a maturity rating for your team.

What’s fun — and sometimes weird — about the Giphy app is that you never quite know what you’re going to get. You could type in /giphy need pizza ten times and get ten different GIFs. So if you’re looking for accuracy, here’s a pro tip: Use the /giphy command a few times in direct messages to Slackbot, then save and share the GIF you like best.

5) Diggbot

Discover great web content curated by Digg.

If you’re looking for a way to discover new content like news and video right in Slack, Diggbot is the best app for it.

Every day, Digg aggregates 10 million RSS feeds from virtually all publishers, and collects 200 million tweets daily — 40 million of which include links. Their algorithms process all of these links in real time (about 7.5 million per day), and then human editors come in and cherry-pick the best stories and videos.

Diggbot sits on top of all this data and gives you the resulting stories and videos right within Slack. They’ve done it in a way that feels natural and conversational. You can use Diggbot to search for the latest news on any topic or from any publisher, get trending news alerts, and get the twice-daily Digg Edition right to your Slack channel.

Image Credit: Gary Liu

Here are a few of the top slash commands from Digg CEO Gary Liu:

• /digg: Gives you a cool, fresh link. Simple.
• /digg (keyword): Lets you search content by keyword.
• /digg (domain): Lets you see top trending stories for a domain (e.g. “/digg nytimes.com”).
• /digg trending: Gives you a list of stories that are trending on the internet.
• /digg fun: Gives you you something fun.

6) Kifi

Save every link you and your team share on Slack, and easily find them later.

If you and your team send a lot of links to one another on Slack and find yourself scrolling back through conversations to find these links later, you’ll want to check out this app. Kifi is one of the best bookmarking/curation tools in Slack’s App Directory. 

Here’s how it works: Every time you or someone on your team shares a link on Slack, that link is automatically saved, or “kept.” Kifi creates a full-text index of every webpage shared, which makes them much easier to find in Slack later. Anyone on your team can search all sent links using the slash command /kifi (search term). (Learn more about setting up Kifi integration with Slack here.)

Even cooler? Using the Kifi browser extension, you can also find these links in Google Search. Search for anything deep within a page, and Kifi will redirect you to where your team was talking about it on Slack.

Image Credit: Eishay Smith

7) Humblebot

Get daily messages with ideas for practicing humility.

Success, happiness, and effective collaboration rests upon things like humility, integrity, patience, modesty, and courage. Humblebot is a really simple Slack app that addresses the first of these character ethics.

Here’s how it works: When you install the app, you’ll receive a little message in Slack every morning with a tip or task for how to be a better person. Examples include “Send someone a thank you note today” and “Ask someone for their opinion today.” 

Image Credit: Humblebot

These little reminders will help you be more humble on a more regular basis. Being humble shows you have a clear perspective and you’re self-aware, which is a sign of emotional intelligence. And despite the app’s simplicity, it can make a big difference in your day — and your coworkers’.

8) Google Drive

Share Google Drive files in Slack, and find them easily later.

A lot of people use Google Drive to store files securely online, access them from anywhere, and collaborate with others. If you’re one of these people, the Google Drive app is a great way to make sharing files among teammates a lot easier.

First and foremost, the app lets you share Drive files right in Slack. All you have to do is paste the shareable link in a Slack conversation, and it’ll import the files in Slack. Here’s the message you’ll get the first time you share a Google Drive file in Slack:

If you haven’t already connected your Google Drive to Slack, then Slack will guide you through the quick process of letting it “read” the file. (It’ll only read and index files you decide to import.)

Once you have everything set up, you’ll be able to share the document right in Slack. The message will look like this:

The best part about this app is that the files you import are easily searchable. Note, though, that they won’t be actually stored in Slack — they’ll continue to be stored in Google Drive. (Read this blog post for more Google Drive tips.)

9) Statsbot

Get analytics updates for specific metrics on-demand.

If you use analytics tools like Google Analytics, New Relic, or Mixpanel, then Statsbot is a great app to add to Slack. Quite simply, Statsbot integrates with these tools and monitors your metrics. Then, whenever you want an analytics update, all you have to do is ask Statsbot for the number and you’ll get it instantaneously.

This saves you the time of opening up a new browser window, signing in to your analytics application, and searching for that number manually. Plus, you can ask for an unlimited number of data requests, reports, and alerts and the app stays free.

In the example below, you’ll see the user opened up a conversation (either with his or her team, or with Slackbot) and @-mentioned Statsbot. He typed in: @Statsbot: new users this week. Check out the conversation that follows to uncover some of the bot’s capabilities.

Image Credit: Statsbot

10) Tomatobot 

Set work and break timers to boost productivity.

Ever heard of the Pomodoro Technique? It’s a productivity technique where you work for 25 minutes, followed by a five-minute break. This is more effective than forcing yourself to commit to long periods of uninterrupted work, which can often have an adverse effect on your productivity.

When you add the Tomatobot app to Slack, you’ll be adding a few useful tools that’ll track your work using the Pomodoro Technique. For example, you can chat the Slackbot and tell it when you start working with the simple slash command /startwork, and you’ll receive a message when it’s time to take a break. Use the command /completed to indicate when you’re done with a task.

You can also record any reminders that might distract you so you can forget about them until your next break by typing in /distraction. (Learn more about the slash commands for this app here.)

Note: Without adding the Tomatobot app, you can set up manual reminders using the native /remind command, kind of like you would with Siri on your iPhone. For example, type in /remind me to take a break in 20 min and you’ll get a message from Slack that says:

Twenty minutes later, you’ll get another message that says:

11) Monkey Test It

Test your website for common bugs.

Here’s a great Slack app for smaller organizations. Monkey Test It offers what they call a “hands-off approach to automated testing,” which tests for common issues like broken links, missing images, and JavaScript issues. It sends out “monkeys” to click every element of your page and look for any common errors that pop up.

Normally, you’d go to their website, plug in the URL of your website, and click “Test now” — but if you use Slack anyway, why not trigger a test using the free integration?

With the Monkey Test It app installed, anyone in your organization can test your website for common bugs using the simple slash command /monkeytest (http://ift.tt/1ZIrtTJ). From there, the results will show up right in your chat window, no code required.

Image Credit: Product Hunt

What are your favorite Slack apps and integrations? Share with us in the comments.

Inbound is no longer something entirely foreign to marketing teams: Globally, three out of four marketers prioritize an inbound approach.

This means that brands are producing content at an accelerated rate, and in order to remain competitive, you need to consistently produce something that is compelling enough to generate a ton of shares. However, is this kind of guaranteed success even possible?

Fractl recently turned to Chip and Dan Heath’s SUCCESS model from Made to Stick: Why Some Content Ideas Survive and Others Die to determine if there’s a concrete formula behind what elevates something from good to great.

We began our analysis by selecting three of our most successful content marketing efforts to date. In total, the following three campaigns earned 2,300 press mentions and more than 140,000 social shares:

• “Hotel Hygiene Exposed“: We collected samples from nine different hotels and tested them through a third-party laboratory to answer one simple question: Which hotel rooms are the dirtiest?
• “Reverse Photoshopping Comic Covers“: Comic books depict vastly different figures (think men with massive biceps and women with incredibly tiny waists), so we used Photoshop to see what familiar superheros would look like if they reflected the average American body type.
• “Sexually Suggestive Emojis“: We scraped Twitter to discover how users are expressing themselves with flirtatious and sexually suggestive emojis across Europe and the United States.

Below I’ll walk you through the Heath brothers’ six principles — simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, and stories — and explain how they were used throughout these campaigns to help you generate similar, highly shareable content.

6 Principles of Successful Ideas

1) Simple

To gain your audience’s attention quickly, connect everything to one point so that a key concept is easily understood. For instance, in the case of emojis post, we condensed a month of tweets from the United States and more than 50 European countries into 14 easy-to-read charts and graphs. With help from these visuals, readers can easily identify global trends in how these emojis are used in less than 10 minutes.

2) Unexpected

Another easy way to earn someone’s attention? Offer data that disproves an easily held assumption. In the case of hotel hygiene post, lab testing allowed us to surprise readers with a shocking finding: The nicest hotels actually had the most germs.

3) Concrete

The Heath brothers say something is “concrete” in its ability to be described through sensory language. For the photoshopping post, we didn’t need to rely on a ton of additional content to visualize the campaign’s core message other than presenting the before and after images — the exaggerated body proportions next to each other served as powerful standalones.

4) Credible

Readers want to see data that is trustworthy, and teaming with outside agencies is a great way to boost authority. For the hotel hygiene post, we boosted credibility by using a third-party lab to test the four samples collected from the nine different hotels.

5) Emotional 

As much as you can boost credibility through numbers, remember that audiences have a desire to make a personal connection with content, as well. In the case of the photoshopping post, body image is already a highly emotional topic, so connecting the campaign to this much larger issue added an additional layer that helped boost shares.

6) Stories

During production, continually ask yourself one question: Would I share this campaign with my friends? Your content should tell a story — and some of the best content reveals more than one story.

Identifying staggering data points is an easy way to uncover multiple stories. In the emojis post, the fact that the gender division becomes especially striking when looking at which users are tweeting the more suggestive emoji combinations could lead to a much larger discussion.

The biggest takeaway from our research? Although there is no one-size-fits all formula, aligning content to fit these six principles can help you produce campaigns that will earn high-quality links and shares.

Check out the infographic below for additional insights from the study. It takes a closer look at key emotional drivers for each campaign, the different ways your content can earn credibility, what makes something visually appealing, and more. 

There’s no question that building great inbound links to your site is hard work. While many site owners resort to spamming blog comment sections to get their backlinks, that’s neither necessary, nor effective for your SEO efforts.

But it’s probably just a last ditch effort since, although there’s much talk about generating inbound links, the nitty-gritty ways to actually do that are rarely discussed.

But link building doesn’t need to be as tough as most people make it. Think of it like social media — if you’re a source of great content and you get it in front of the right people, they’re going to share it. With that in mind, we’ll get you started with 33 ideas to help you build legitimate inbound links.

What Are Backlinks / Inbound Links?

A backlink, or inbound link, is a link coming from another site to your own website.

The person receiving the link is one the who refers to a link as a backlink. For example, here’s a backlink to our co-founder Dharmesh Shah’s blog. Shah could say, “I received a backlink from HubSpot.”

Backlinks (i.e., inbound links) are different from outbound links (links from your website to another website) and internal links (links from one website to another page on that same website). You can learn more about the differences between all three link types here.

The right backlinks can do two great things for your website:

• They can drive traffic to your website. If someone posts a backlink to your website on their website or blog, their readers might click on it — and you’ll benefit from that referral traffic. For example, many of you who clicked the link to Shah’s blog up there may not have visited his blog otherwise.
• They can help you rank higher in search. Backlinks tell search engines that your website is an authority on a certain subject — so the more backlinks you have from high quality, high authority sites, the better your website will rank in search engine results pages (SERPs).

A good inbound link comes from an authoritative website, and uses natural anchor text. Anchor text is simply the text copy that’s hyperlinked, like this. (The anchor text there is “like this.”) Natural anchor text means you’re not just hyperlinking keywords left and right. Google understands the context of a link, so more generic “learn more” and “click here” anchor text can be just as valuable as keyword-optimized anchor text.

33 Ways to Get Free Backlinks to Boost Your Search Rankings

1) Maintain a steady blog with great content.

Consistently creating great blog content that people naturally want to link to is one of the most tried and true ways to organically generate inbound links.

2) Link to other blogs on your blog.

A blog is meant to be a social tool. The more you link to others — especially when you do it in a consistent, opportunity-driven way — the greater likelihood one of those bloggers will return the favor.

Plus, you can’t cover everything about everything on your blog. It makes sense to leverage the wealth of resources on the web to make your blog’s experience better and more rewarding for your readers.

3) Write guest blog posts.

Write a great blog post, and shop it around to blogs it’d be a good fit for. If one accepts, they should be willing to give you an inbound link in the post.

Don’t know whom to write for? Most media outlets allow people to submit original articles on topics relevant to their readership. Here are guest blogging instructions and guidelines for 11 top media outlets, including The New York Times, Business Insider, HBR.org, Mashable, and more.

4) Curate and publish helpful resource lists.

Resource lists are both great link bait and helpful content for your readers. If you create a comprehensive resource list, it’ll be easy for other bloggers to link to it in their own posts instead of rehashing and curating all that content themselves. To give you an idea of what one might look like, here’s an example of a list we curated for free content creation tools and resources.

5) Do expert roundups to build relationships.

Expert roundups can be a great tool for building relationships with influencers. While these roundups may not get you a lot of links or leads right away, building relationships with influencers will help you get solid backlinks from authoritative sources down the line.

After they contribute to your roundup, you can reach out to them later to ask about a guest post opportunity or something else — while thanking them again for contributing to the previous expert roundup.

Here’s an example of an expert roundup we did, where we reached out to successful marketers and asked them how they got started.

6) Write newsjack posts.

Newsjacking is when you capitalize on the popularity of a news story to amplify your own sales and marketing success. If you’re the first blogger to comment on a news event, you’ll rise to the top of the SERPs due to the “freshness” component of Google’s algorithm, and others will link to your content in their own accounts of the story. Read this blog post for four newsjack formulas to get you started.

7) Create case studies about your most impressive clients.

If you make your clients look good in case studies about their business, you can bet they’ll be linking to your site. But you’ve got to make them good. This means choosing companies that have seen the best results, are enthusiastic, and know your product or service well. It also means asking the right questions and laying out the case study in an attractive, comprehensive way. Here’s a free case study template to get you started.

8) Volunteer to be the subject of a case study.

Why not get on the other side of the case study link love? We’re always looking for customers who are willing to be the subject of a case study. Volunteer your time for one of your major vendors, and get a backlink from the case study once it’s published.

9) Administer surveys.

… And promise to share the data with others. If you do the data collection and crunching and give some high authority sites access to the findings afterwards, you can bet they’ll do some promotion and inbound linking for you to make sure you have a great sample size. Download this free guide for how to use online surveys in your marketing.

10) Write book reviews.

If you provide a comprehensive review about another author’s content, there’s a good chance they (and others) will link to it. Here’s an example of a book review from InsightSquared’s blog, which sums up The Challenger Sale in what they promise is an eight-minute read or less.

11) Conduct free webinars, and post archived copies online.

If it’s informative, your attendees will absolutely share it. One easy way to do this is to turn your PowerPoint presentation slides into a SlideShare presentation, and then embed that presentation into a blog post. You can also embed it into the webinar’s landing page so that anyone looking to sign up for a webinar that’s already over can check out the presentation.

For an even better shot at backlinks to these archived webinar pages, partner up with another company, brand, or influencer for the webinar in the first place. Not only do two well-aligned brands make for a powerful presentation, but it’ll widen the audience — even after the webinar is over. (Learn tips on creating a webinar in this blog post.)

12) Create free tools.

Remember when I talked about curating and publishing resource lists for your blog in #4? What do you think people include and link to on those resource lists? Free tools are a big one. You can get on the other side of those resource lists by creating free tools that are really helpful for your target customers.

Here at HubSpot, for example, we created Website Grader, a tool to which many agencies, partners, and others in our industry link. 

13) Create shareable templates.

Like free tools, templates are another thing people will find useful enough to link to. Before you create a template, think about what kind of templates would make people’s jobs easier. A designer, for example, might create a library of downloadable business card templates to which others could link over and over. Bookmarkable content is often the kind of content that gets tons of inbound links.

14) Create compelling infographics.

People absolutely love to share infographics. If you create an original infographic yourself, people will link back to you as the original source. To increase the likelihood of an inbound link, you might also share your design with the sources you cited, and make the embed code for your infographic easily accessible.

Not a designer? Anyone can create professional-looking, high-quality infographics — and quickly with templates like these 15 free infographic templates. If you want to learn how to create an infographic in under an hour using those templates, read this blog post.

15) Create other forms of visual content.

Remember that cartoons, content visualizations, charts and graphs, and the like are extremely popular as people become more and more visual. Plus, they take a little time and money to make, so if you’ve done the legwork, others will probably skip the fuss of creating their own visual content and link to yours instead. Here’s a list of 29 free online design tools so you can create your own graphics, regardless of how tech-savvy you are.

16) Create SlideShare presentations.

Slice one of your infographics into pieces, or repurpose one from your last speaking gig. You can put these up on your blog, in your website’s resource center, or even on a SlideShare account for more links.

Keep in mind that the most shareable presentations are the ones that are the most compelling. That means great content and great design. Read this blog post for a start-to-finish guide on nailing your next PowerPoint presentation.

17) Do something funny.

Funny things spread like wildfire. Think about the funny inside jokes in your industry, and capitalize on it with some humorous content that’s linkable. Even boring industries can find the humor in something — here are seven examples to prove it. (Just be careful that you understand your audience and how they’re likely to respond so that nothing is taken offensively.)

18) Write press releases about interesting company news.

By turning your PR strategy into an inbound one, you create opportunities that weren’t there before and carve out a place for your company, building meaningful mindshare in the process with your target audiences. Once you write a great press release, post it up on your website and then push out your releases to one of the big newswires to get more coverage.

19) Send out a joint press release when your news involves another company.

This can help reach thousands of other related sites that, in a press release about just your company, may not have linked to your site.

20) Do some outreach when you have big news or a great piece of content.

Gaining attention from the press and getting published in industry publications can help you build your brand, increase your visible expertise, improve your credibility, and, of course, get backlinks from authoritative sources.

First, create a dedicated page about the story on your website for them to link to as a resource. Then, reach out to a handful of journalists and/or publications that you can see really valuing your story. Be sure you give context to your request, you follow their rules, you write a compelling subject line to your pitch email, and that you’re helpful, not boastful. Read this blog post to learn more about pitching your story to journalists (which includes two email templates right in the post).

21) Set up press requests alerts and look for opportunities to send quotes.

Press request alerts are requests for sources of information from journalists. These journalists are constantly looking for quotes from specific people to feature in their article, and there are several mediums they use to send requests and find those quotes.

Here’s a list from HubSpot’s Global Head of Growth & SEO Matthew Barby of services you can sign up for and receive alerts from journalists to your inbox:

• HARO (one of the most popular free services)
• Muck Rack (paid service)
• Gorkana (paid service)
• Source Bottle (free service)
• NARO PR (free service)
• #JournoRequest (Twitter hashtag used by journalists)
• #PRrequest (Twitter hashtag used by journalists)

Because of the high volume of requests you’ll receive, he also recommends creating email filters or folders to keep yourself organized. (Learn how to create filters in Gmail here.)

22) Write and pitch op-ed articles.

If you have an interesting opinion to share and can express it clearly and persuasively in an op-ed article, you could have the opportunity to reach a lot of people, earn recognition for yourself and your organization, and get authoritative backlinks to your website. I find the most effective op-ed articles make a single point, embrace the author’s personal voice, and then offer specific recommendations.

Once you write the article, target online versions of big newspaper and magazine publications for an extremely valuable inbound link. Here are guest publication instructions and guidelines for 11 top media outlets.

23) Partner with companies in complementary industries.

It’s common practice for corporate channel partners to link to each other’s great content, because they have a vested interest in one another’s success.

You might consider assessing how much traffic a partner can drive to your website by taking a look at their overall web presence on Alexa and SimilarWeb. These sites can help get a rough idea of traffic, bounce rates, keywords, and sources people are using to find that site, as well as the next action they take after visiting. Read this blog post for more ways to seek out the best brand partnerships.

24) Do some co-marketing.

You can also go a step further and build co-marketing partnerships. This means partnering up with another company to promote a piece of content or product, and then sharing the results of that promotion. When you leverage the relationship and reach of a partner, you’ll get more links and more buzz with less work.

Effective co-marketing doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive, either. For example, the folks at a rescue animal shelter called Fur Baby Rescue wanted to leverage BuzzFeed’s hundreds of millions of readers. To do this, they partnered with the folks at BuzzFeed to set up and publish an article called, “We Gave Drunk Girls a Bunch of Puppies and There Were Lots of Tears,” which you can read here. The article is exactly what it sounds like: A few ladies had a few drinks, and then were surprised with adorable (and adoptable) puppies from Fur Baby Rescue. (Here are more examples of great partnerships to inspire you.)

25) Ask for reviews.

You can ask users of your product and industry experts or analysts to review new features you’re rolling out, for example. Not only will you receive an inbound link, but you’ll also get great feedback and strengthen your relationship with those you asked to write reviews.

Don’t know where to ask for reviews? Check out our list of the best product review websites for B2B and B2C companies.

26) Make friends with other webmasters in real life.

Strengthening your relationship with other webmasters will open the door for relevant inbound link requests when future opportunities arise, and make it more likely those requests don’t fall on deaf ears. 

Networking is an unparalleled skill to have. The wider and more open your network, the more opportunities could be unlocked that you didn’t even know existed. Here are 10 helpful tips on networking like a pro to get you started.

27) Search for and monitor mentions of your brand.

Contact webmasters about turning those mentions into inbound links, but only when it’s warranted — like when they’re citing data of yours, for example. This is a tactic called “link reclamation.”

Monitor brand mentions by setting up alerts using tools like Mention or BuzzSumo, and adding keywords related to your brand or products. Just make sure you exclude any mentions from your own website within the alert, which you can do in these tools’ settings.

Here’s an email template for reaching out to ask for a link from Barby:

Image Credit: Matthew Barby

28) Search for and monitor your competitors’ backlinks.

Then, find opportunities where you can get similar links. This is a great way to find high-value link opportunities fairly easily. Barby suggests running competitor research like this weekly or monthly to find new opportunities you can take advantage of while they’re still fresh. 

Use a link analysis tool like Ahrefs, Majestic, or Moz’s Open Site Explorer to get a list of the backlinks for one of your competitors. Then, check out what types of posts are getting backlinks.

For example, if one of your competitors is writing guest posts for certain publications, there’s a high likelihood those publications would be interested in guest posts from you on similar topics. (See #3.)

29) Incorporate “Tweet This” links into your content.

Part of getting inbound links is getting your content out to the masses. Including “Tweet This” or “Click to Tweet!” links for tweetable nuggets in your content will get people sharing your content socially more often.

The result? Greater visibility in search engines, news feeds, Twitter streams, etc. — and thus more opportunity for your data to be referenced in other people’s content.

Here’s what one of these links looks like, from this stats roundup post:

Researchers found that colored visuals increase people’s willingness to read a piece of content by 80%. [Tweet this stat!]

You can easily create tweetable links using the ClickToTweet service — without having to learn any custom code. Click here to learn how to generate ClickToTweet links.

30) Install social sharing widgets.

Just like “Tweet This” links get your content out there, so do social sharing buttons and widgets. Put them on your marketing content like case studies, whitepapers, ebooks, and blog posts.

31) Sponsor or speak at an event.

Events usually give their speakers and sponsors great website publicity. You can also negotiate inbound links into your terms to be sure your time and resources yield a beneficial inbound link.

If you’re speaking at an event, make a really awesome, shareable presentation that people will want to find, share, and even link to later. Read this blog post for a start-to-finish guide on nailing your next presentation.

32) Help another webmaster fix an error on their site.

Remember when I said you should get to know other webmasters? This is another time those connections will come in handy. When you find broken links on others’ sites, let them know (politely, of course), and provide them with a piece of your own content that would be a suitable replacement for that broken link. Be personal, friendly, and helpful, and this could be an opportunity to start building a relationship with that webmaster, too.

33) Give away free trials and sneak peeks of your product.

When people get to see your product beforehand, they will want the world to know they’re part of the VIP crowd, and might write a review with a link back to your site about it.

There are a few ways to give away free trials. You could create some call-to-action buttons for your website or blog. (Here are 50 free, customizable CTA templates to help you out.) You could also send a new product announcement email to folks who you think might be interested, like current customers. For an example of what a good product announcement email looks like, see #1 in this blog post about marketing emails.

What are some other white hat methods you’ve used to generate more inbound links? Share with us in the comments.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in April 2012 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

Before the days of neon lights and marquee signs, business owners had to get creative when it came to advertising their establishments. In fact, wine bars in ancient Rome used to hang bunches of vine leaves outside their door as a nod to the God of Wine, Bacchus. And when weather conditions left them with a short supply of vine leaves, barkeeps turned to bushes — inns called Bush, or Bull & Bush, still exist today.

But others didn’t even have that. They had to get artistic. And with a largely illiterate population, pictorial signs were the only logical advertising choice.

Visual storytelling — or passing on a lot of information through a relatively simple visual aid — has been a cornerstone of marketing for thousands of years. I’d like to say we’ve come a long way, but really? What worked then works now: We see what we want and we’re driven to buy it.

Perhaps, if anything has changed, it’s what we want from life. That’s where today’s visual storytellers have a chance to not only say “Hey, you can get this here!” but also lead the consumer into a whole new world of possibilities.

Below you’ll find 15 of the very best examples of visual storytelling from B2C, B2B, crowdfunding, and SaaS. These companies know how to tell a brand story that seeds desire, starts relationships, and inspires nothing short of love. Check ’em out.

15 Stunning Examples of Visual Storytelling

1) Modcloth

Something grabs hold of me every time I visit Modcloth … which I do with alarming regularity. Sure, part of the appeal is the clothes. But that’s not what has me back on an almost daily basis — just to check.

When I click onto Modcloth’s homepage, I find myself in a world of friendly sisterhood. I see stories of women, like me, who are having the times of their lives. The online retailer presents their visual storytelling as a slider on the homepage. Instead of each slide having its own image, each corresponding to a different sales page or theme, they devote the entire slide series to expanding on one core idea. This spring, that idea was a girls’ road trip.

This series showcases the clothes, but it also tells a deeper story about relationships, female bonding, and a distinctly feminine sense of adventure. These images make me feel part of a tribe of active, vibrant women. After just a few seconds, I’m ready to start planning my own road trip with my best friend — and when I do, I know exactly the clothes I want to pack (just have to order them first).

These aren’t just aspirational advertisements, like those you’d seen in a magazine. These are no catwalk models. Nothing here is impossibly chic, or so stylized that it’s out of reach. That is part of what makes the magic of Modcloth’s particular brand of storytelling. These are stories we could write for ourselves.

2) Patagonia

Patagonia has one of the strongest brands and most passionate followings. They’re just good people. Every piece of their marketing points to their commitment to quality and a deep integrity and care for the environment. I have no reason to buy Patagonia — you won’t even find a windbreaker in my closet — but I love them as a business. And if even your non-target audience sings your praises, you are clearly doing something right.

Their visual storytelling supports this core story of integrity and environmental stewardship. Each image shows real people (they don’t look like models — it looks like users sending in their photos) enjoying the outdoors, clinging to cliff sides, trudging through snow-covered mountains, or flinging themselves off the sides of yachts in the Caribbean.

These are images that speak to a very specific niche audience. After all, not all of us associate snow, cliffs, or open water with a good time (Jaws? Open Water?). But for their target audience, these are the images that stoke the fires, fill the sails, and send them off into planning their next adventures.

And then there was the Worn Wear campaign. The tagline “Better than new” immediately tells you that this is no ordinary marketing effort. In fact, the “Worn Wear wagon” (pictured above) drives around the country with Patagonia to repair old garments and gear, sell used clothing, and hold DIY workshops. Along the way, they’re also reinforcing the brand’s values and bolstering their community of loyal fans. They spread the word on Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter — all highly visual mediums — for brand followers to meet up and mend their garments.

3) Slack

Seems like everyone is on Slack these days … even NASA.

This single piece of visual storytelling on their homepage speaks volumes. And the story it tells isn’t about team meetings or group chats: it’s about ROBOTS ON MARS!

That’s got to be the most thrilling three words a nerd like me can hear. (Right next to “aliens on Mars,” which would be even more exciting. But robots? Still pretty cool.) And this image, with this perfect tagline, tells me that this product enables teams like mine to accomplish something spectacular.

When I see this image, it’s almost as if I’m putting a robot on Mars myself. I must have dropped my NASA badge around here, somewhere …

4) Internet Live Stats

Internet Live Stats is part of the Real Time Statistics Project and was created by an international team of developers, researchers, and analysts with the goal to make statistics available in a dynamic, time-relevant way to everyone. Their data-visualization team isn’t too shabby either — it’s one thing to read that there were 7,162 Tweets in a single second. It’s quite another to see it.

The visual of 7,162 birds is far more impactful than the header saying “7,162 Tweets sent in 1 second.” It’s a different kind of visual storytelling, but compelling nevertheless.

5) Offerman Woodshop

Nick Offerman, best known for his role as Ron Swanson in NBC’s “Parks and Recreation,” is not only an actor and comedian — he’s also an accomplished carpenter. And he’s got attitude. This guy has personality, and it emanates from everything he does. No nonsense. Back to basics. Rugged. Bacon. These are the phrases that resonate for Offerman fans, who won’t bat an eye at paying $145 for a “Build Your Own Damn Stool” kit.

Why? Because you’re buying so much more than a deconstructed stool. You’re filling out a membership card to an exclusive group of unapologetic carnivores, manly men, and people who figure that if an Abacus was good enough for their great-grandfathers, it’s good enough for them. It’s an ideology and a fantasy. And all of it comes through in every. Single. Image.

No smiles. Smiles are superfluous. Give that man bacon and you might get a twitch of the lip.

6) 1001 Knights (Kickstarter)

1001 Knights is a three-volume anthology project, essentially creating a beautifully illustrated set of books that feature a diverse cast of noble characters with feminist overtones. Now, if you’ve ever attempted crowdfunding on Kickstarter or any other site, you’ll know this: Successfully finding an audience and talking them into paying requires a truly stirring plea. And that plea had better include powerful visuals.

This is visual storytelling — literally.

And, it’s done so successfully, that they exceeded their original goal of $70,000 by $229,192.

The Kickstarter video’s voiceover is not what draws people in. It’s the images. The promise that these stories are like nothing you’ve ever read, or seen, before. Stories about knights — who are women. Who are complex characters of color. Who embrace the values of wisdom, courage, and fellowship.

You don’t have to read a word of their Kickstarter page to understand these concepts, or to be driven to make your own donation. The images speak for themselves.

7) Twoodie

Twoodie’s images are easy to recognize — everything is gray except for the toys. Each image tells a story of play. Thought. Beauty. Simplicity. These games aren’t just for fun, they are objects of art.

The brand itself is all about simplicity and beauty, which these product photos faithfully reflect. They’re stirring, vibrant, and fundamental.

8) The Wild Unknown

The Wild Unknown is my favorite Tarot deck, and I confess, I bought it entirely because of a picture on Instagram.

Their Instagram feed is a visual storytelling masterpiece. Artistry, magic, nature, elemental mystery – it’s all there. Social media is a huge resource for visual storytellers to share their work, and I love seeing businesses that take advantage of all it has to offer.

9) Toca Boca

Toca Boca makes really cute and educational apps and games for children. They call their products “digital toys,” and one of their selling points is that digital toys have a number of benefits that physical toys lack: the ability to build bigger, build on the go, share and collaborate, the ability to take risks, and preserve “ever-expanding” creations.

Fundamentally, Toca Boca combines high-tech with the ultra-simple. And their images, with simple shapes and color-blocked characters, are created completely in line with their brand.

10) Slow Factory

Slow Factory makes limited-edition silk scarves, but they also have a great background story:

We create silk garments using scientific open data and creating meaningful partnerships with NGOs working in preserving our Planet or defending Human Rights. For our latest collection, Petit Atlas, we partnered with the World Wildlife Fund and created a limited edition collection that contributes and supports the preservation work they are doing in keeping our oceans clean.”

You can find their most striking visual storytelling on their products page. The models shown sporting these scarves are cosmopolitan, chic, mysterious, worldly, and well-traveled. Their brand is as quirky and unusual as their advertising, which is exactly how it should be.

11) Heinz Ketchup

On the other end of the spectrum from “quirky and unusual” is Heinz Ketchup. But that doesn’t mean they don’t know how to tell a compelling story that makes people want to get off of their couches and rush to the nearest burger joint.

I really love how this Instagram image works with its caption: “Pork. Topped with Pork. Topped with Jalapeno Ketchup. #enoughsaid.”

Pork. Topped with Pork. Topped with Jalapeño Ketchup. #enoughsaid #recipe http://t.co/nKRn3W8oio http://pic.twitter.com/tg0pGiIg6N

— Heinz Ketchup (@HeinzKetchup_US)
October 5, 2015

The lesson: Not every story needs to be poetry.

12) The Large Hadron Collider Pop-Up Book (by CERN)

Visual storytelling’s power comes from the ability to convey a lot of information at a glance. I would argue that a tactile pop-up book is able to convey even more information. There’s a sense of scale and wonder you get with 3D representations that two dimensions can never quite cover. This pop-up book, for example, contains 16 pop-ups that tell the story of how the large Hadron Collider experiment works.

13) INKODYE

Inkodye allows you to print fabric with sunlight-activated “Inkodye” to create fantastically original designs. The storytelling comes in with their “Recent #inkodye projects on Instagram” feed, where all Inkodye users are invited to post their latest creations.

Not only are the images exceptionally artistic, but they also reveal a community of artists, designers, hipsters, parents, and kids, and bring them together through this creative process. When you look through their feed, you can’t help but think: “I want one of those!” 

Clearly, this is a community of people who dream outside of the box.

14) PISTON

PISTON is a San Diego-based marketing agency that combines striking, thoughtful creativity with the utmost professionalism. And the images they use to market themselves strike this balance perfectly. I love this particular image because it turns the typical stock photography “man in suit” image on its head by including that colorful candy ring.

That’s not a stock image. That’s an image that says “I am the consummate professional — but I can also be fun and intriguing at the same time.”

That ring doesn’t tell a story. It does something even more powerful. It hints that behind that suit and tie is a wild tale, just waiting to be told.

15) First Round Capital

First Round is a venture capital firm that provides seed-stage funding to technology companies. Essentially, startups are their business, and helping the best rise to the top is their mission. At the end of 2015, First Round decided to tell the story of some of these startups. Using data gathered through SurveyMonkey, they used Visage — a very cool visual storytelling tool — to turn those numbers into a design that offers a snapshot of the current startup ecosystem. The result of over 500 responses is 10 insights into what it’s like to run a startup today, illustrated with several types of graphs and charts.

Photographs, maps, and data-visualizations — these are the tools of visual storytelling. But to use them effectively, remember the most important part of any kind of storytelling: The audience.

Whereas ye olde customer was satisfied with a couple of fighting roosters and a pint, today’s customer wants much, much more. Relationships. Time. The promise of a better life. Insights that change their paradigms. And, they want all of these things at a glance.

Are you ready to give it to them?

What is your favorite example of visual storytelling? Share it with us below.

Recruiters receive an average of 118 resumes for every job listing they post.

As you can imagine, they don’t always have time to read through every one. In fact, they may not even have time to open every one.

That’s why it’s so important to make sure your resume — and the email or cover note you send along with it — is written in a way that pleases the recruiters reading it. That means it should be scannable, free of errors, and formatted in a way that makes it easy for them to uncover key metrics and accomplishments. 

To learn more about how recruiters read resumes and what they’re looking for, check out the infographic below from StandOutCV.

Back in 2011, Snapchat was synonymous with risqué teen behavior. News coverage repeatedly warned parents of the damaging effects the platform might have, and as a result, the success trajectory wasn’t looking good.

Since then, Snapchat has evolved into something so much more. And while it’s certainly not the cornerstone of every marketing strategy just yet, the channel has earned a reputation for fast growth and innovation.

Snapchat is now known as a platform for individuals and brands — one that allows users to create quick, lighthearted, and even educational video content without using valuable production resources. For brands, this means a new opportunity to show off their culture, share knowledge, and connect with their audience in a new and exciting way.

After reporting more than 100 million daily active users, and over 8 billion video views a day, we decided to give it a go: The official HubSpot Snapchat account launched in March 2016. And while we’re still getting our feet wet, we’ve already learned a lot about executing and iterating a successful Snapchat business strategy.

To help you get started, we’ve detailed everything we’ve learned (so far) below. We’ll start by going over the basics — how to set up an account, create a Snap, leverages effects, etc. — but you can click here to jump straight to the tips.

How to Setup Your Snapchat Account

The first thing you’ll need to do is download the app — available for iOS and Android — and create an account by entering your email, a username, and a password.

When creating a username, keep in mind that you’ve only got one shot: Snapchat does not allow you to change your username once you set it.

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Once your account is created, you’ll want to take care of a few housekeeping things:

• Set up a profile picture. Tap the at the top of the camera screen, then tap your Snapcode to open the camera. Point and shoot!
• Adjust your privacy settings. Tap the at the top of the camera screen, then tap the ‘Settings’ icon in the top right-hand corner. Under the ‘Who Can…’ section, adjust your preferences accordingly.
• Add Friends. Tap the at the top of the camera screen, then tap the ‘Add Friends’ option. From here you’ll have the option to add friends by username, address book, Snapcode, or location.

Snaps vs. Stories: What’s the Difference?

Snap

A direct message from one account to one (or several) other accounts. These messages disappear immediately after viewing, and can contain photos, videos, or images uploaded from your phone.

How to Create and Send Snaps

To send a photo Snap, open up the camera screen and tap or the anywhere on the screen to capture the photo. To send a video Snap, hold .

If you want to experiment with Snapchat Lenses — animations that can be overlaid on top of your selfie — simply press and hold your face until the Lens option appears below. You can then swipe left to browse through the options, like the one below.

Image Credit:Snapchat

(Note: Snapchat also offers Sponsored Lenses — like the Gatorade one featured in #4 on this list — but it’ll cost you. According to Financial Times, a Sponsored Lens could cost up to $750K in certain situations.)

Once you’ve got a photo or video, you have a few options before you hit send:

Image Credit: Snapchat

1) Discard your Snap.
2) Add emojis.

3) Add a caption.

4) Doodle!

5) Set a timeframe for your Snap.
6) Save your photo to your Camera Roll.
7) Add a Snap to your Story.
8) Select recipients and share your Snap.

Want to add filters, the time, the weather, or your current speed to a Snap? Swipe left or right on the preview screen to browse your options. You’ll also notice something called Geofilters appear as you swipe through. On-Demand Geofilters are available to businesses and individuals for purchase.

These special filters can be use for an event, business, or specific location — brand logos and trade-marks are permitted.

How to View a Snap

To view a Snap that has been sent to you, swipe right on your camera screen and tap once on the Snap. If you have several Snaps from the same friend, they’ll play like a flipbook.

You only have two opportunities to view a Snap:

Helpful tips:

• To skip a Snap, tap the screen once.
• To exit, swipe down.

Story

This is a photo or video that is viewable to all of your friends for 24 hours. You can create multiple photos/videos shown in succession to create a longer story. Most brands utilize this feature, as it allows you to reach a larger audience.

How to Create a Snapchat Story

To create a Story on Snapchat, follow the process for creating a Snap above. When you’re ready to send it, tap and select ‘My Story.’

How to View a Snapchat Story

To view a user’s story, swipe left on your camera screen and scroll down to ‘Recent Updates.’ Tap a user’s name once to open their story. (To view your own Story, tap ‘My Story.’)

Stories are available for 24 hours (unless it’s deleted). During that 24-hour period, you can watch the Story as many times as you want.

Helpful tips:

• To skip to the next Snap in a Story, tap the screen once.
• To skip to the next Story, swipe left.
• To exit, swipe down.
• To save a Story, follow the instructions here.

How to Use Snapchat for Business: 6 Tips From HubSpot’s Snapchat Playbook

1) First, create a personal Snapchat account.

Before you begin Snapchatting on behalf of your brand, you may want to create a personal account to mess around with. Follow accounts your audience might follow. Add your friends and family. Just start using it. While this isn’t a formal prerequisite, it can help you understand the intricacies and nuances of how real people use the platform — which will ultimately help you make better decisions and create better content.

At HubSpot, we’ve found the best performing content looks and feels like the native content being created by the average Snapchat user. So use your personal account to play around with the front facing camera, explore different filter options, and dress up your Snaps with doodles and emojis. The more Snaps you send and engage with, the better your understanding of how the platform works will be.

2) Create a plan for measurement.

Here’s the truth: Talk to any social media manager and they’ll tell you Snapchat analytics are a pain in the rear. At the end of the day, you’re limited to views (), screenshots ( ), and replies. That’s it.

You can’t even get a total follower count: Snapchat replaces what would be your follower count with a score that reflects the sum of the messages you send and receive.

All this aside, you can use context to put things into perspective. Here are a few tips we’ve picked up along the way to help us better understand our Snapchat performance:

• Looking at your retention rate (what percentage of people watch each frame of your story) will allow you to compare stories to each other. Which are performing better? We’ve learned there’s a sweet spot around 90 seconds — any longer than that, and people start to lose steam.
• Looking at the percentage of people that dropped off after the second Snap will help you gauge general interest. If 30% of our audience dropped off after the second Snap, we probably missed the mark.
• Reviewing qualitative feedback can help you better understand your success. If people are sending you chats telling you they love your latest post, you’re probably on the right track.

Another tricky part about Snapchat analytics? In order to accurately collect numbers, you need to log in and write them down or screenshot them exactly 24 hours after you took the first Snap. Otherwise, they disappear forever. (We learned this the hard way. A few times.) You can find your views & engagements on the “Stories” screen.

At HubSpot, we record the following information on each Story:

• Story Title: What are you calling this Story?
• Number of Snaps: How many individual Snaps are in your Story?
• Length of Story: How long is your Story from start to finish?
• Views on first Snap
• Views on last Snap
• Retention rate: What percentage of people who start your Story view through the end?
• Engagements: How many people screenshot a Snap and send a direct message in reply?

3) Source content and ideas from your team.

Finding the time to come up with creative, engaging content ideas for Snapchat can be a big challenge — especially if you’re the only person on the job.

To combat this, we turned to our collective team to gain perspective and source ideas. This is an especially interesting tip if you work at a company with global offices, as it can help you piece together interesting stories from all over the world.

Here’s how we approached this outreach:

• First, we sent out a company-wide email asking for anyone who wanted to be featured on Snapchat. This gave us a massive list of people who were interested in being on camera or creating Stories themselves.
• We then created an internal Slack channel for all those who were interested. We used this platform to ask for volunteers for specific shoots, and to source general ideas.

If you’re struggling to gain internal support, you might want to consider explaining how certain teams could benefit from getting involved with the company Snapchat account. For example, our social media team is working closely with the culture team to leverage Snapchat as a recruitment tool. By creating stories that showcase what life is like at HubSpot, they can get the word out about our culture, while also helping us lighten our daily content load.

4) Focus on variety.

If you want to maintain an engaged audience, it’s important that you commit to consistently posting great Snapchat content. What makes a Snap or Story great? For starters: Variety. Snapchat users like to consume stories and information in different formats, and the app provides a lot of room for creative application.

For example, here are a few ideas and formats we’re currently testing:

• Video vs. stills
• Graphics/drawing/emojis
• Selfie cam style video vs. point and shoot
• Sound vs. no sound

By testing different types of content, we can start setting up some best practices that we can share across the company. Here are some early findings:

• Short videos rule. Our highest performing videos are all under 60 seconds long.
• Pay attention to timing. Things like newsjacks or live coverage of major company events tends to perform well.
• Cast a wider net. We’ve incorporated content from our Sydney & Dublin offices, which helps us build out a global perspective. This initiative has been really well received by our Snapchat audience.

Looking for inspiration? Check out what 10 of the best brands on Snapchat are doing to engage their audience.

5) Look for creative ways to build your audience.

On most social networks, it’s easy to browse around and find stuff that might be interesting to you. For example, on Instagram you might search for a particular hashtag or look for photos tagged with a specific location. Snapchat, however, does not make “discoverability” easy. And as a result, building an audience requires you to get a little creative.

When we launched HubSpot’s Snapchat account, we leveraged other company channels — blog posts, social media, etc. — to attract followers. As a result, we got some momentum going. Trouble is, keeping that growth moving has proved to be a challenge.

To avoid stalling out once the initial excitement has faded, we recommend developing a long-term promotional plan to keep your audience up to date on what’s to come.

Some more tips for increasing your reach:

• Leverage partners or influencers. Invite others to be featured on your account, and ask them to spread the word to their network.
• Newsjack. We’ve done a few “HubSpot Hot Takes,” which is essentially our version of a quick reaction to industry news. This has gotten our account mentioned by people on other social platforms, which helps spread the word.
• Join the conversation. Find an opportunity to get involved in a relevant event and leverage that audience. We recently did a takeover from Social Media Marketing World, highlighting some speakers, sessions, and key learnings from the conference. We posted about the takeover using the #SMMW16 hashtag and saw a noticeable spike in followers that day.

6) Don’t get too caught up with perfection.

This one is hard for many content creators to stomach: We like to edit, adjust, tweak until the last second. But if you’re doing Snapchat right, it’s not gonna be perfect.

Stories should feel quick, off the cuff, and not overly produced. In fact, one of our highest performing stories was just a quick video of me sitting in a chair reacting to a Facebook platform announcement in real time. I saw the press release, ran to an empty room, and fired off a few quick snaps explaining the change. That’s it.

Keep in mind that the photos won’t be professional-grade … and they don’t have to be. Your focus should be on finding a way to create authentic, compelling moments and stories, so try not to overthink it.

Have you seen success on Snapchat? What does your strategy look like? Share your experiences below.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

Of all the interview questions out there, this might be the most difficult.

These days, career paths aren’t linear. The age-old corporate ladder model of putting in a few years as an individual contributor, becoming a manager of a small team, and climbing your way through senior management or director roles is not right for everyone.

To say the least, career development is complicated. And often, a lack of open conversations around the personalization of career planning makes it worse. Maybe you’re unsure how to bridge the leadership gap between your current role and becoming a manager. Perhaps you know you’re not suited for managing people, but you don’t know how to advance your career otherwise. Even as a director, it’s easy to feel stuck in the trajectory of upper management.

To help you plan confidently for your next five years, HubSpot has launched a brand new career assessment called The Next Five. Tell us your interests, strengths, and working style, and we’ll help you identify a next step that’s right for your long-term professional goals.

The Next Five, however, is not your average quiz. With your result, we’ll include a detailed plan that encourages you to rethink the idea of a career path. Each tip is paired with customized articles, ebooks, videos, and more that will help you score visibility for your work and bring value to your company.

No five year plan? No problem. With The Next Five career growth assessment, discovering your next step has never been easier.

For years now, businesses have been using inbound marketing as a way to attract,convert, close, and delight new customers online. But what if it’s not “customers” that you’re after? What if you’re targeting volunteers, donors, or members?

In other words, what if you’re a nonprofit? 

The good news is that inbound marketing still works for nonprofits. The better news, is that we have a new ebook explaining how.

 A Crash Course on Inbound Marketing For Nonprofits provides an overview of how the inbound methodology helps organizations attract, connect, engage, and inspire their constituents, and runs through 8 steps to marketing greatness:

1. What moves the needle in the digital age
2. The inbound methodology for nonprofits
3. Creating audience personas
4. Building a strategy around your personas and organization’s goals
5. SEO strategy to grow website traffic
6. How to educate and convert website traffic into known contacts
7. Nurturing constituents to drive action
8. How to double down on retention and re-engagement 

Click here to snag your free copy of the ebook now >> 

Want to spread the word to other nonprofit marketers? Click here to share the ebook on Twitter! 

Retention marketing is focused on creating value from customers you already have, rather than solely focusing on acquiring new customers. Retention marketing is most powerful when you customize your strategy based on your own store’s lifecycle. While not every tool will work for every business, here are the top retention tools available, and when you should use them. 

How to Select Retention Tactics

There is no single retention tactic that is the best for every store. The ideal strategy will depend on the stage your business is in. The later in your journey you are, the more you should be investing in retention marketing.

Retention marketing tactics are complementary; you will see the most success when you use a few of them in tandem to develop your own strategy. For example, a loyalty program becomes extremely effective when you pair it with retention emails reminding existing customers of point balances and opportunities to get rewarded. It all fits into a bigger customer retention strategy. 

5 Retention Marketing Tactics That Work

These aren’t the only retention marketing tactics out there, but these are the tactics that we’ve seen customers have the most success with, as part of their retention strategy.

1) Amazing Customer Service/Experience

Let’s start basic. Your customer service and customer experience are one of the most signficant contributors to customer retention. If a customer didn’t enjoy shopping with you, they will not be back. Or, if they had a post-purchase concern that was not addressed, they won’t want to shop with you again.

If you’re looking into more advanced customer retention tactics, the most important one is to ensure your service and experience are top notch. Looking for inspiration? Check out these tips to improve your customer service.

2) Support Systems

Support systems allow you to provide that top notch service your customers are craving. It also allows you to turn customers with problems into loyal, lifetime customers. Many questions occur after a purchase. By answering them appropriately, you can nurture these customers into a profitable, lifetime customer.

Tools like help desks and live chat systems allow you to add a human touch to the support of your online business. A human touch is exactly what customers need to come back again and again. 

Live chat software is one of the easiest ways to give your store a human feel. Customers like to deal with other people not automation, since it makes them feel valued. Depending on the level of support you need to provide, you can start small with limited live chat and move up into larger help desk software when you’re working across a larger team. 

3) Retention Emails

Many of you are likely already using email marketing to sell your products, but likely not doing it with a retention marketing mentality. Instead of using email to showcase your latest products and sales, strategically use it to encourage past customers to come back and shop again. 

For example, if you know your average time between purchases, you can segment your customers based on last purchase date. If customers have gone longer than the average time without purchasing, you can give them an extra nudge to come back and shop again.

The best part of this tactic is you can use your current email service provider to send these retention emails, you just need to target segments of your audience. 

4) Personalization

Every merchant should be using personlization in their marketing efforts. No one likes to be put through a generic process, or talked to like they are just an order number, especially if they have bought from you already! 

From adding a customer’s name to all communication, to personalized product recommendations and cross-sells like those you see on Amazon, there’s a ton of ground to cover with personalization. Regardless of the level of personalization you decide to implement, it is crucial to create a customer experience that fosters customer loyalty. After all, a happy engaged shopper is one that has a higher purchase frequency.

5) Loyalty and Reward Programs

A loyalty and rewards program is one of the most effective customer retention tactics at your disposal. It allows you to reward points to shoppers to encourage them to come back. This creates a switching barrier they will need to ignore if they want to choose a competitor in the future. 

A rewards program allows you to not only encourage repeat customers, but other profitable actions as well. You can reward points for actions like social shares, social follows, registrations, and referrals. A loyalty program essentially becomes a hub for all your customer retention activities. 

Loyalty programs have been popular in retail for a few decades now, for good reason, and they are even more effective when implemented online. Building an online loyalty program is faster than building it in-store, and there are some great tools out there to help you out.

Retention Tools Are Important

Just like you need to invest in acquisition channels, you need to invest in retention tactics for your retention marketing strategy. As you develop your retention strategy and incorporate these tactics, you’ll begin to see the returns on your investment with happier, more loyal, customers.