As marketers, we’ve gotten quite good at evolving our playbooks when it comes to SEO. But the changes we’ve seen to this point are nothing compared to what’s coming next. 

We are in the early stages of a new era of search — an era tied closely to more sophisticated patterns such as mobile, social, and voice search, among other things. And for the first time this isn’t just a matter of adding a new chapter to our SEO strategy, it’s a matter of creating entire new playbooks. 

To this point, SEO has predominantly revolved around browser-based search engines. More precisely, it’s been linked directly to Google. That’s where all the search activity has been. That’s where content consumption has historically started. Not anymore. 

New universes of search are taking shape outside of the browser window.  In many of them the rules for optimization have yet to be defined.

3 Emerging Search Patterns That Are Changing the Face of SEO

1) Mobile Search

Here’s a fascinating little tidbit that changes everything. We all know the lion’s share of web usage has moved from desktop to mobile devices. At last count, 60 percent of internet use took place on mobile. It’s a figure, somehow equally astounding and obvious, that leads experts like Benedict Evans to nudge: “We should stop talking about ‘mobile’ internet and ‘desktop’ internet. It’s like talking about ‘colour’ TV, as opposed to black and white TV.”

“Mobile is the internet.” He declares.

Now, that would be change enough, but the fascinating little tidbit I’m talking about? That’s still to come. According to Forrester, it turns out that 85% of the time we spend on phones is spent in apps — really it’s spent in just a handful of apps. So, if internet activity is growing on mobile, and mobile activity is predominantly spent in apps, what does that mean for search engines?

It doesn’t look as though desktop browser use is declining as of yet, but it has flat-lined; and content consumption within apps and devices has opened up in a big way. Unfortunately, content in apps isn’t easily traversed via traditional browser-based search engines nor optimized via traditional search engine optimization. App stores, by both Google and Apple, are still the primary mechanism for finding new apps and content.

Here Evans frames the situation well again, “Today, app stores look a lot like the Yahoo of 20 years ago, and they don’t work for the same reasons – you can browse 20,000 apps but not a million. Hierarchical directories don’t scale.”  

Which means, better app search is coming. Better app search is inevitable. In the meantime, Spotlight search on the iPhone is worth taking seriously. Often thought of as a quick search tool for the contents of your iPhone, Spotlight can actually search within apps and even bypass Google to bring you some web results. Spotlight doesn’t play by the same rules as Google, Bing or DuckDuckGo. It is its own search mechanism and, as such, will need its own optimization rules. 

So, we’re in early days here. “Yahoo in the late 90s” kind of early days. Search engine optimization for apps and the content within them has not yet caught up to user behavior, and when it does it could look very different from the browser-based playbook we use today. 

2) Social Search

Something has been happening on our favorite social channels. Over the last year Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat have each released a collection of new features, which on their own would be mildly remarkable, but collectively signify a massive shift in the priorities of social channels.  

Did you know Facebook can now search for content as easily as people? Turns out, it handles 1.5 billion daily searches, gaining on Google’s 3.5 billion. More and more these searches are targeting content not just people. This is interesting for a couple of reasons, the greatest of which might be how big of a role connections and influencers play in search results. After all, this is a social channel. As such, optimizing for Facebook and other social channels may be an entirely different game than optimizing for Google.  

Think this is a small change? Blake Ross, cofounder of Mozilla, advises otherwise: “Judge a company’s priorities by its pixels. This is an announcement that sits at the very top of a feature that sits at the very top of Facebook. It follows a year of intense, smart, and creative experimentation in this area. This isn’t a lark. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve been noticing more and more public content/search/trend features popping up all over Facebook this year.” 

The second search-related change on social has to do with how these channels are beginning to treat content. We call them social “channels” because these sites have historically been a pass-through for businesses and publications — a way to promote content and get viewers back to your websites.

However, in the last year, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat have all released features designed to keep viewers on their sites and in their apps, with no pass-through. Facebook introduced instant articles, which contain the full article within the Facebook app rather than requiring a clickthrough. Sources say that Twitter, which already has the walled garden of “Moments,” is exploring a project to enable longer form content on the channel. 

Will Oremus, senior technology editor at Slate explains, “What’s really changing here, then, is not the length of the tweet. It’s where that link at the bottom takes you when you click on it—or, rather, where it doesn’t take you. Instead of funneling traffic to blogs, news sites, and other sites around the Web, the “read more” button will keep you playing in Twitter’s own garden.”

Social media has long been considered a powerful channel through which visitors find content on your website. These subtle changes however are pointing to a future that looks quite different. And if content becomes more decentralized away from the website, optimization of that content will likely change, too.  

3) Voice Search & Personal Assistants

In the last few years, we’ve been introduced to Siri, Google Now, Cortana, and Alexa — voice-activated personal assistants created by Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, respectively. The emergence of voice-activated personal assistants has run alongside the rapid development of connected devices beyond the desktop computer or smart phone. Everything from watches to scales, home speakers to lights are now connected to the internet and its never-ending sea of information. As our access to the internet has diversified, so has our search behavior. How so? Let’s take a look.

• Natural language: Each morning I get up, stagger to the coffee pot and utter the phrase: “Alexa, what’s new?” Amazon’s Alexa — which is based in a speaker on my countertop — dutifully answers: “Here’s Meghan’s Flash Briefing.” She then plays news and weather relevant to me and my location. I don’t structure the search query. I don’t use keywords. Alexa is smart enough to associate natural language with a request.
• Expanded search windows: Because of the prevalence of connected devices we’re no longer only searching when seated at our desks or in a convenient place for typing on our phones. Search can happen anywhere at any time. Something that influences both the volume of the searches we’re conducting and their composition. 
• Context and history: Unlike browser search engines which still rely heavily on the expressed search terms, personal assistant searches pull upon the searcher’s history and context. If I’ve ordered dog food before, Alexa pulls in the exact brand from past orders and asks me if I’d like to re-order. If I’m leaving the office at 6 p.m., Google now will tell me exactly how long it will take me to get home. These searches remove a step, or several, from the research and get me to the point of action more quickly.

Image Credit: Amazon Echo 

When the internet is suddenly all around you, it becomes more and more common to discard your keyboard and directly ask the universe for what you want. This changes the structure of these queries. What you want may be less specific and structured than traditional search queries. Imagine optimizing for queries like, “What should I do tonight?” as opposed to structured searches like “Best Sydney Area Restaurants.”

Preparing for a New Era

Changes in behavior always precede changes in strategy. The point in drawing attention to these new search patterns is not to raise alarms; it’s to raise eyebrows. While the future is uncertain, one thing is clear: the world of search is not ending, it’s expanding. And expanding worlds call out for exploration.

Have you notice any other emerging search trends? What are your thoughts on where search is headed? Share your thoughts and ideas below.

No matter how many free tools crop up for ecommerce companies, a paid ad is sometimes the best bet for driving new traffic to your website. The problem is that other ecommerce and even brick-and-mortar competitors are using the same search terms and keywords you will. Not only do you need to know how to build a campaign through Google’s AdWords product, you also need to know how to stand out from the crowd.

We’ll start with the basics and then throw in some pro tips for good measure. By the time we’re done, you’ll be an expert! Here’s how it’s done.

Get an AdWords Account

Before you can do anything, you’ll need to visit the AdWords site and sign up for an AdWords account. This involves some financial information so that Google can get paid for each click, so be ready with all your banking credentials.

Once you have an account and you’re ready to go, click the Create Your First Campaign button.

Choose Campaign Type

Most would suggest starting with the “Search Network only” option, but you can change this as you learn and grow. Next, you’ll want to give your campaign a name so you can track your results. It’s a good idea to start with a naming system that you’ll keep using so you don’t get confused somewhere down the line.

Designate Geographic Area

Being an online shop does mean you’re less concerned about geographic constraints. It’s still not a bad idea to consider where, exactly, the majority of your audience lives. If you don’t know, then you may want to back up a step and consider your buyer personas first. Why spend money advertising to people in the Midwest if the bulk of your customers live in the Northeast?

You can also reach other countries, if your ecommerce company serves international buyers. Just be sure you’re prepared for any of the buyers who come your way as a result of your ads. You might pay a lot of money for visitors who can’t make a purchase if you’re not careful.

Set Your Budget

This is a pretty important step. You want to include enough money to make a difference, but you really don’t want to break the bank. You can manually set the bids for clicks, which gives you more control. This also means your ads will stop showing once your budget is spent. That means you won’t end up with a shocker of a bill later.

Once you have the hang of everything, you can go back and change your settings to automatic or maybe even apply for a Google credit line. These are best left to experienced users, because it doesn’t take much to completely empty a bank account just for paid clicks.

Write Your Ad

This is the most important aspect of your AdWords education. The copy you use is what will convince potential buyers to click. You want to attract plenty of people, yes, but you also want those people to buy. If they don’t buy, you pay anyway. So start with a great headline that uses search terms that will reach your niche. You only get 25 characters, so make every last one of them count. You might even need to use abbreviations, or you can search for shorter synonyms.

Then you get 35 characters for the second and third lines. Use this space to point on benefits. How will the product solve your buyers’ pain? Then on the third line you can capitalize on a feature. Be ready to change these if you notice your ad isn’t gaining a lot of traction.

Add Your Display URL

It’s important to notice the difference between the URLs you’ll use in your ad. The display URL is the one you want people to remember. It’s the home page to your website, the address people will type in if they visit without finding you through an ad first. This is what you want to display.

Add Your Destination URL

Now, it’s never a good idea to have a PPC ad that leads straight to the home page. You want a landing page that focuses on the products featured in the AdWords ad. If you send people straight to the home page, they’ll have to do another search for the products they want, and they’re not likely to stick around for that. This is why it’s so important to understand the difference between the display URL and the destination URL.

Add Your Keywords

Remember that you’ll be competing against many other companies for the same audience. Take some time to think of the keywords that will reach people who are ready to buy. For instance, instead of using “luxury shoes” in your PPC ad, you can use keywords such as “red leather heels.” Maybe you’ll miss out on people who are looking for shoes of all types, but you’ll snag those who have a particular shoe in mind. They’ll be more likely to make a purchase if your ad leads to a landing page with red leather heels, and that will more than pay for their click.

You can also use negative keywords and save a lot of money on your clicks. These tell AdWords what you don’t want your ad to show up for. In other words, you can use keywords such as red leather heels not stilettos. 

Bid On Your Clicks

Finally, you’ll need to tell Google how much you want to spend on your clicks. Remember that you’re bidding on visibility here. Those willing to pay more for clicks will show up more often in the searches. You really do have to spend money to make money, especially in the pay-per-click game. As long as you’re manually controlling your budget, you can go all out for clicks until your cash runs out and just replenish your budget when you’re ready to go again.

Double Check Your Double Check

It’s always a good idea to check over everything one more time before you set your ad in motion. Is everything spelled correctly? You’ll miss out on keyword searches if you typo one of them. Did you make sure to manually control the budget? You could end up broke tomorrow if you didn’t. When you’re sure you did everything correctly, then take a deep breath and launch.

Beyond setting everything up correctly, you’ll also want to A/B test your results often. Change headlines, introduce new features, focus on different benefits—and then take note of the number of conversions. There is always a way to make your ad perform better.

CRM. If you work in sales or marketing, you’ve probably heard this three-letter acronym tossed around before. Maybe you’ve even been told you need one. No matter what, you’re curious about one thing: What does it actually mean? And how do you know if you need it?

What Is CRM?

CRM, or customer relationship management, refers to software that lets companies track every interaction with current and future customers. CRM doesn’t refer to a specific set of features or a brand. It’s a catchall term for any system that allows this kind of tracking, so the software itself is usually just referred to by the acronym ‘CRM.’

Click here to get HubSpot’s free CRM software.

A CRM’s capabilities vary from system to system. Almost all CRMs can store prospect and customer contact information. Some can log calls and emails sent to prospects, pull in prospects’ social media profiles, and include space for users to enter additional information.

More sophisticated CRMs can enrich prospect information, allow reps to schedule meetings within the app, visually display a sales team’s pipeline, and provide sales forecasts.

Regardless of the features in place, the goal of implementing a CRM is to create a system that your company (most often the sales and marketing teams) can use to more efficiently and effectively interact with prospects or customers.

Marketing will often use a CRM to ensure that they’re rotating the right leads to sales — a key aspect of developing a strong relationship with the sales team. On the sales side, having the entire prospect history in one place saves a ton of time and improves productivity. For instance, reps won’t have to hunt through a bunch of different programs to figure out who they should be calling next.

Today, most CRMs are in the cloud, making it easy for your company to install and maintain your system. Instead of installing and hosting the software on your company’s servers, you typically pay a monthly subscription fee to get access to your CRM in your web browser.

The next question people ask after they learn about CRMs: Do I need one, too?

Do You Need a CRM System?

The short answer is yes. Every company is in the business of growth, and CRM software enables companies to do just that.

Here’s the long answer: If you ever plan to scale your business, you need tools that grow with you. You could manually track everything a CRM records, but as your sales team and customer base grow, manual data entry will become a huge drain on your employees’ valuable time. Different salespeople’s records aren’t guaranteed to be complete, much less include the same information or follow the same format.

It’ll be extremely difficult to gauge company-wide performance or analyze past activities to inform your current playbook. Your ability to grow depends on enabling your whole team to contact prospects at the right time with relevant information, and you simply can’t do this efficiently without a CRM.

How Do You Decide Which CRM Software to Get?

There are many CRM options out there that could work for your business. It all depends on which features your business needs most. Here are a few questions to ask yourself to help you figure out which CRM you should get:

• Does your sales team have a clear process for whom to call and when? If not, you might want a CRM that gives them insight into which prospects are most engaged.
• Does your company work on large B2B deals that require you to interact with many people inside one organization? You might want a CRM that can easily pull and organize someone’s data based on the company they work for.
• How do you primarily interact with leads: by phone, email, social media, or a combination? You should find out how different CRMs could make prospect interaction easy for reps.

The best way to figure out what you need right now is to talk with people both high up in your sales organization and those on the ground floor. That way, you’ll find out what features your team will need as a whole and in the day-to-day. (Pro Tip: Use this list as a jumping-off point for discussions about CRM features you’d like to have.)

What’s the one feature pretty much every company will need? A sound integration between your CRM and marketing software. For you to properly communicate and track your company’s prospects, leads, and customers at every stage of the buying journey, your technology needs to play nice together. (HubSpot customers: The HubSpot Marketing and Sales Platforms are closely integrated, so it’s easy for you to capture, score, and hand off leads to Sales. Click here if you’d like to try the free HubSpot CRM.)

The moral of the story here is this: If you’re running a business and intend to keep growing, you should get a CRM. Your success depends on being able to delight your customers. Knowing as much about them as possible, delivering rapid responses to their inquiries, solving problems quickly, and delivering a personalized experience in which a customer feels special will help you delight your customers — and ultimately, help you grow.

For a handy visual representation of the power of CRM software, check out the infographic below. And if you’re ready to pull the trigger on a CRM, check out HubSpot’s free CRM software today.

Share this Image On Your Site

<p><strong>Please include attribution to blog.hubspot.com with this graphic.</strong><br /><br /><a href=’http://ift.tt/H5s54a’><img src=’http://ift.tt/1Pa9LWX’ alt=’What Is CRM’ width=’669px’ border=’0′ /></a></p>

To learn more about CRM, check out our dedicated “What is CRM?” page.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in August 2013 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

When people think about becoming managers, many assume it’s going to be all sunshine and roses.

They’ll have more responsibility! They’ll get to help people grow! They’ll get to shape the future of their company! They might even get a raise!

But when they actually become managers, reality can be shocking. They might find themselves suddenly confronted with managing difficult people and situations — and lost for how to address them. 

While a manager’s recourse greatly depends on the problems and people they’re dealing with, there are a few tips they can follow to better address them. In the infographic below, the folks at Wrike have put together helpful advice for managing difficult team members. Even if you’re not encountering any of these issues today or you’re not currently managing someone, the tips are good to keep in mind.

When it comes to marketing, the most successful companies view it as an investment, not an expense. Why? Because when marketing is implemented efficiently (with a plan, driven by goals and with quantifiable metrics established), profound ROI isn’t just possible, it’s almost a given.

If you’re a business owner or marketing professional, you know that achieving a positive return on investment is a must. These 3 not-so-little letters may haunt your dreams if you’re not doing a great job creating it, or, may be the reason your company is enjoying tremendous growth and the perks associated with it. But it takes money to make money and the thought of spending without a guaranteed outcome can make even the most confident people skeptical.

Successful companies are able see the forest through the trees and devote a budget to marketing and advertising. It’s that simple. Have there been successful companies who forged the path to success totally grassroots guerilla style? Perhaps yes, however the majority of companies you likely admire (B2B, B2C, local, national or global) have actual, dedicated and growing marketing budgets.

So for marketing success in 2016, you first must commit to making an actual marketing investment. That means money, but if you’re not working with a marketing agency, it also means time. Once you’ve made the commitment, and the subsequent investment, it’s even more critical to not waste a penny of that budget or a moment of your time. A marketing plan prevents both.

Here are 10 marketing plan must-haves and must-dos to maximize your opportunity for marketing ROI:

1) Analyze your audience

Yes it’s Marketing 101…but are you doing it? Many businesses overlook that an authentic focus on who is actual buying from you is the key to success. Do you have buyer personas? How well do you know your target market’s pain points and habits? Knowing your audience is critical to establishing a mutually beneficial relationship between you and them, and relationships are what get your prospects to become happy, returning customers.

You should have detailed profiles for your key customer types, and know things like their challenges, pains, favorite information resources, and needs. And remember – personas shouldn’t be based on a few guesses, but instead historical interactions and research. Three words: Don’t just guess.

2) Revise your SEO keywords and phrases

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has changed over the years, and has become an increasingly complex tactic that requires research and constant testing. While SEO may not be as keyword-focused as it once was, keywords are still a tremendously important component of a successful SEO strategy.

Your keyword strategy should incorporate short-tail (generalized) terminology backed by an extensive list of long-tail (targeted) phrases. Keep in mind, the keywords and phrases your prospects are using may not be the keywords your business is using internally; if you’re not optimizing your content for the customers’ language or incorporating their common questions, concerns, and challenges (in their own words), your SEO will fail.

3) Create an editorial calendar for your blogs

People like consistency, and an inconsistent blog can be mind boggling, not to mention annoying. After all, if you can’t consistently write and post blogs, what does that say about your ability to consistently deliver as a business?

Your editorial calendar should include blog topics that address your prospects’ and customers’ pain points, and revolve around your SEO keywords and phrases (see step 2 above). And just a heads up – your editorial calendar may not be annual. Consider quarterly updates to ensure your blogs have plenty of time to be developed, but are still relevant.

4) Align your sales and marketing strategies

Are you producing content that is actually in line with the needs of your sales team? Your sales team has a pulse on what prospects and customers are actually saying and they’re often the best channel for identifying and translating the needs and desires of your audience.

They can provide you with the exact questions and pain points that need to be addressed – aka content gold. If you’re going to be blogging (see step 3) and creating content (which has to be a component of any successful modern marketing plan), doesn’t it just make sense to develop content that helps your sales team close more business?

5) Perform a monthly review of your metrics and KPIs

Do you know what your metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are? If not, you’ll want to define these ASAP. If you can’t measure the success of your marketing initiatives, your plan won’t be very successful (or maybe it will be the best plan ever, but you’ll have no way of knowing for sure). At the minimum, you’ll want to know how your website is behaving and performing: traffic by source, conversion rates by offer, and bounce rates.

Your KPIs, on the other hand, are the metrics directly related to your business goals. Have an ecommerce site, and want to sell more? Your KPIs may include average order size (or value) and customer retention rate. If you really want to get sophisticated, you can begin measuring your customer lifetime value, and start predicting future success.

6) Update your website

Website revisions shouldn’t occur only during a full site redesign or when your address changes. Your site should be constantly reviewed and updated to ensure it’s relevant and optimized. Focus areas should include SEO, images, layout, conversion points, forms, videos, interactivity, UX features and of course, your actual content.

7) Incorporate Call-to-Actions

Every page on your website should include a call-to-action (CTA), and every CTA should be monitored and optimized to improve the conversion rate. This process should be done regularly – as in every day – so start scheduling time to review your CTAs. Don’t forget – conversion points that resonate for visitors in any stage of the buyer’s journey are necessary on your website so this step goes beyond options to Contact Us, Schedule a Consultation or Request Pricing.

8) Complete a comprehensive SEO evaluation of your website

We realize SEO was already discussed but with a topic this critical for marketing success, we’ve given it ample focus. If your SEO strategy is based on the SEO rules of 10, 5, or even 1 year ago, this step is especially important.

The best SEO advice we can give you is to follow best practices. Make sure your content and metadata relate, keywords are implemented, site structure is highly usable by a human as well as easily crawlable and indexable by a search engine, and that you’re producing quality content to name a very few. SEO can be a beast to tackle, and requires the expertise to improve rankings without violating best practices (which may result in a severe drop in search rankings).

9) Document your sales process

Is the current process repeatable and scalable (you do plan on growing right?)? Is the process uniform across every member of the sales team? If not, why? As discussed in Step 4, marketing and sales alignment should be a marketing plan priority and a disorganized, undocumented sales process works against not towards that goal.

10) Complete your marketing calendar for the year

You didn’t think we’d only recommend a calendar for your blogs, did you? Build out your holistic marketing calendar for the year. This calendar will help you prepare and stay focused on activities like trade shows you’ll be attending, webinars you’ll be conducting, digital campaigns you’ll be launching, and print ads that need distributing – and (as detailed more in our full 2016 planning checklist) how you’ll quantify them.

Whether you’re implementing a digital marketing strategy, a more traditionally-based one or, our recommended approach of a fully integrated marketing strategy, ROI is best produced when multiple channels are leveraged. Trying to plan and keep track of all these channels and the activities for each one without a calendar is like trying to win the Super Bowl without a playbook, team practice and post-game footage reviews. Bad, bad, bad idea.

Tying it all together

You can walk away from this blog right now with a 10-point action plan for marketing success and ROI this year. Get excited!  But don’t forget to also download our complete 2016 Marketing Plan Checklist for 10 additional priorities your full marketing plan should consider. If you do just these 10 things you’re headed down the right path, but actioning all 20 tips is the stuff ROI dreams are made of. So go ahead…we double dog dare you!

Take a minute to think about the best mentor you’ve ever had.

This doesn’t have to be someone at work, although it certainly could be. But mentors come in all shapes and sizes: It can be your manager, a colleague, a parent, a friend, a coach, a college professor … anyone who’s been a particularly excellent advisor at some point in your life.

Now, think of what made them stand out to you. Was it the example they set? That you felt like they really understood your communication style, your working style, or your goals? That they seemed to always point you to the right resources or give you the right advice when you needed it?

At some point in your life (and, if you’re lucky, many times), you’re going to find yourself playing the role of a mentor to someone, somewhere. It can be both exciting, and a little confusing. What exactly does it mean to be someone’s mentor, and how can you really stand out in the role?

Let’s touch on what a mentor is, including the three main types of mentors: peer mentors, career mentors, and life mentors. Then, we’ll go through 12 tips for being an amazing mentor.

What Does It Mean to Be a Mentor?

At its core, being a mentor is being a trusted advisor. It can mean a lot of different things, but it all boils down to making yourself available to support and advise someone when they need it, delivering that support in a way that makes sense to them, and always, always keeping that person’s best interests in mind.

A mentor/mentee relationship can last for years, or it can last one coffee date. When you mentor someone long-term, you really get to know and understand their personality, learning style, and goals, which can set you up to offer richer, more relevant advice over time. 

But mentorship doesn’t have to be long-term. It can also be a one-off or short-term relationship, like when someone needs help working through a specific problem — such as a career transition or a problem with a coworker or manager. 

In an article for Harvard Business Review, Venture Capitalist Anthony T. Khan wrote about three types of mentors. Let’s explore each one below.

Peer Mentors

This one is more of an apprenticeship than a mentorship. Whether someone is onboarding in a new job or simply at the early stages of their career, they may benefit from having a peer mentor working at their same company to help them settle in to their new job and climb the learning curve faster. A peer mentor focuses on helping with specific skills, working toward specific goals, and basic organization practices for how to get things done.

Career Mentors

When most people think of mentorship, they’re thinking about career mentorship. Career mentors are senior to their mentees at the same company or a former company. Their purpose is to serve as a career advisor and advocate, and to help reinforce how a mentee’s job contributions fit into their long-term career goals, and perhaps even how they fit into the bigger picture of the company’s goals.

Some companies have career mentorship programs built right into their people development strategy. This seems to work best when it’s not a bureaucratic system, but instead more of a volunteer system where existing employees volunteer to mentor newer employees. “It should be something people know is embraced as part of the ethos of a firm,” writes Khan.

Life Mentors

A life mentor is usually someone outside of their mentee’s workplace. This person can serve as an objective sounding board when that person finds themselves faced with a difficult career challenge or is considering changing jobs. Khan writes that life mentors shouldn’t replace a peer or career mentor, but “they are there to impart career wisdom.”

Chances are, you’ll be more than one of these types of mentors for multiple people, and you may have a few mentees at a time. There are a few pieces of advice that hold true regardless of the type of mentorship you find yourself in. Here are 12 tips on how to be an amazing mentor.

12 Ways to Be an Amazing Mentor

1) Approach each mentorship differently.

While you can do your best to categorize a mentor/mentee relationship, every one is unique. When you first start out, it’s important to take the time to assess your own style and readiness, and think about what kind of commitment you can and want to make.

Rebecca Corliss, who leads team development and culture for HubSpot’s marketing team, recommends asking yourself and reflecting on the questions on this list that are relevant to you:

• What kind of manager style do you naturally have/want?
• What expectations will you set in regards to your style and how best to work with you? 
• How will you know when your mentee is successful?
• How will you communicate what success looks like to him/her?
• What do you hope your mentee’s development looks like over the course of your mentorship?
• How can you segment out his/her experience into phases to get to that point?
• How will you use one-on-one time?
• How will you explain your expectations for one-on-one meetings (if applicable) so you’re on the same page?

2) Set expectations together in the very beginning.

Once you’ve reflected on the questions from #1, both you and your mentee will find it helpful to sit down and go over expectations — especially if you’re just getting to know each other.

For example, let’s say an alum from your alma mater sends you a cold email asking what it’s like to work at your company. You might be wondering if they asked you that because they want to work for your company, or whether they’re just curious about what a company in your industry is like. Understanding exactly where they’re coming from is going to help drive your discussion in the direction that’s helpful for both of you. If your company isn’t hiring or you aren’t comfortable helping them get a job, for instance, then you’ll want to set those expectations early.

3) Take a genuine interest in your mentee as a person.

A mentor/mentee relationship is a very personal one. You can give mediocre advice without really knowing a person, but to stand out as an amazing mentor, you’re really going to have to get to know your mentee on a personal level.

You probably have some of the more career-oriented questions down: what their working style is, their dream job, goals for their current job, and so on and so forth. But what about the stuff that makes them … them? Getting to know your mentee on a deeper level will help you build a strong relationship, and it’ll also help you understand who they are as a person, their likes and dislikes, how they interact with others, and so on.

So if your mentee tells you they had a great weekend, don’t just move on with the program. Ask them what they did, whom they did it with, or what their relationship is like with those people.

One great way to get to know someone? Become an active listener. This is easier said than done: It means making a conscious effort to really, truly pay attention to what your mentee is saying, instead of thinking about what you’re going to say next. You might worry that you need to come up with something helpful right away, when in fact, the best thing you can do for your mentee is to listen closely to what they’re saying, ask open questions to dig deeper, and act as a sounding board.

Which brings me to my next tip …

4) Know when to wait before giving advice.

When you’re mentoring someone, you might feel pressured to give them advice straight away. But not all feedback is helpful feedback, and giving unhelpful — or unwelcome — feedback can be detrimental to your relationship. An amazing mentor knows how to determine whether or not a situation lends itself to off-the-cuff feedback or really thoughtful feedback.

Corliss calls this “hitting the pause button.”

“A good mentor knows when to hit ‘pause’ during a conversation,” she told me. “Once in a while, a conversation might catch us off guard. For example, maybe someone raises an HR issue or a serious problem with an employee. Maybe someone says something that makes you mad or upset. If you don’t have the right information, experience or emotional state to react to a scenario properly, hit ‘pause.’ That will give you a chance to get more information, talk to your resources, and come back with a clear and valuable response.”

What might that look like in a real conversation? “Thanks for sharing this with me. I’m going to take some time and give this some serious thought before we continue. It’s important to me that I’m giving you the best possible solution. Why don’t we continue talking about it [tomorrow/next week/next time we meet]? I’ll book some time.”

5) Improve your emotional intelligence.

Being emotionally intelligent is a big part of being an amazing mentor. Any time you become a mentor for someone, you’ll find yourself getting to know their unique personality, their wants and needs, the experiences that have shaped them, and how they deal with different situations.

The best mentors know how to unlock this information by asking the right questions, reading their mentee’s body language, being open-minded, and even acknowledging and controlling their own emotions. (Read this blog post for tips on becoming more emotionally intelligent.)

6) Don’t assume anything about your mentee — ask.

It’s easy to fall into stereotypes or not see a situation from another person’s perspective. But great mentors recognize that it’s their responsibility to break through common assumptions by asking questions and digging deeper. This is especially true if you’re mentoring someone who’s in the early stages of their career, or if the two of you are just getting to know each other and they aren’t sure how transparent to be.

For example, let’s say you’re mentoring someone who’s having trouble getting through to their manager. Instead of launching into a story about a time you had communication issues with a manager of yours, spend time asking questions that draw out the important details of their problem. Ask your mentee detailed questions about their relationship with their manager. Don’t assume you understand their working style simply based off of the conversations you’ve had with them, as they probably work and communicate differently with their manager than they do with you.

Only once you’ve gotten an honest background on a problem can you share helpful, relevant feedback — without making decisions for your mentee. That’s up to them.

7) Be really forthcoming about mistakes you’ve made.

Being open to sharing your own mistakes and failures is one of the best gifts a mentor can give. Not only is it helpful information for problem-solving purposes, but it also helps build trust, gives them permission to share their own mistakes, and strengthens the relationship overall.

“Junior people don’t always feel comfortable owning up to a mistake or admitting that they’re struggling in a certain area,” says Emma Brudner, who manages HubSpot’s Sales Blog. “If you cop to your failures and struggles, you make it okay for them to chime in and help them share with you.”

Leslie Ye, who writes for HubSpot’s Sales Blog, agrees. She suggests reflecting on the problems you faced and what has tripped you up at the same point in your career that your mentee is in. “Hearing how someone else approached a challenge is always helpful for someone going through it for the first time,” she says. “Even if you don’t solve problems the same way as your mentee, it’s always useful to hear multiple perspectives.”

8) Celebrate their achievements.

Because people often look for or call upon a mentor to help them with tough situations, many mentorship conversations revolve around the negative stuff. When you take the time to highlight and even celebrate your mentee’s successes and achievements, you’re not just balancing out the mood of those conversations — you’re also building your mentee’s confidence, reinforcing good behavior, and keeping them focused and motivated. Depending on the relationship, mentees might also be seeking approval from their mentors — and acknowledging their success is a way to satisfy that psychological need for recognition.

How you go about celebrating their achievements is entirely up to you. For example, if you’re a peer mentor helping onboard a new employee, you may choose to publicly acknowledge them either by sharing their success with their team or even just with their manager. 

9) Give more than you ask for.

I believe in the principle of “what goes around, comes around.” I like to think about my mentors who’ve gone out of their way to meet me for coffee, give me feedback on job choices, point me to resources, and so on. The best mentors I’ve had have selflessly offered their time and wisdom to me — and I’m sure the best mentors you’ve had have done the same. Think about the impact they’ve had on your career, and offer the same to your mentees.

“Give more than you ask for,” is how Ye puts it. “Most mentees inherently have less to offer because they’re typically younger and less experienced. It can be hard to ask for help if you feel like you’re a burden on someone else. Giving advice or help freely — and making it clear you’re happy to do so — is a huge help to easing those anxieties.”

10) Seek out classes or projects related to skills your mentee wants to develop.

Great mentors look for situations — and some even create situations — where their mentees can get involved to learn some of the skills they’ve been hoping to learn. It doesn’t matter how much or how little experience you have in your mentee’s current or desired job or industry — you can still give them helpful resources to succeed.

It can be anything from connecting them with someone with experience in their dream job or industry, or sending them a website to a conference or class they might want to sign up for. Take note of the areas in which your mentee wants to grow, and always be looking for opportunities to point them in the right direction.

If you work at the same company as your mentee and have some involvement in their experience, Corliss suggests introducing new projects to them over time as a way to build a strong foundation.

“First, start with something that gives context,” she says. “This could be something that requires research and is genuinely valuable. Then, hand off something small that you normally do for your intern or mentee to own, like a weekly email, or a blog post. This will help your mentee learn how to develop ownership over something, including how to execute and reach a goal on his or her own. Then, build upon that foundation.”

11) Solve for the long-term.

Work with your mentee as if you’ll be their mentor forever. That mindset will make it easier for you to give them long-term guidance, which will help them make decisions that outlive their time with you.

This is particularly important if you work at the same company as your mentee because it’ll help them make a larger impact at your company. “Giving [them] a lot of ownership may leave a gap when they leave, but why limit the impact your intern can have in order to solver for an easier transition out?” says Corliss. “It’s better to have loved and lost, than to have never have loved at all. “

12) Lead by example.

Last, but certainly not least, be a positive role model. Your mentee can learn a whole lot from you by simply observing how you behave. They’ll pick up information about your “ethics, values, and standards; style, beliefs, and attitudes; methods and procedures,” writes E. Wayne Hart for Forbes. “They are likely to follow your lead, adapt your approach to their own style, and build confidence through their affiliation with you. As a mentor, you need to be keenly aware of your own behavior.”

At the end of the day, being a great mentor takes practice and patience. The more you work with a given mentee, the more you’ll learn a lot about them: their communication style, how they process feedback, how they go about pursuing their goals. At the same time, you’ll learn a lot about yourself: how effectively you can explain ideas in a way others can understand, how well you’re able to control your emotions, whether you’re able to provide a vision that motivates others, and so on.

In the end, being a mentor will likely be as rewarding an experience for you as it will be for your mentees. 

What tips do you have for being a great mentor? Share them with us in the comments.

As education marketers, you’re more than a collateral factory for the Admissions department. But do they know that?

Sometimes it seems a great divide separates Marketing and Admissions. Many schools experience this interdepartmental tension, which slows down the recruitment process. Admissions complains about lead quality. While Admissions’ inconsistent follow-up on leads frustrates Marketing. This makes handing off leads a chore instead of a routine process.

Yet when Marketing and Admissions work as partners, they share greater visibility.  They see how all their combined activities interrelate and support their institution’s enrollment goals. When that happens, both student enrollment and mutual professional respect increase. 

Imagine what it would be like if both departments worked together as a team. Together you’re stronger — navigating the delicate and complicated journey from recruitment to enrollment. To help you create that partnership with Admissions, here are our three best tips:

1) Create a Service Level Agreement (SLA) to Establish an Enrollment Partnership

A smooth hand-off process starts long before getting any leads. Start by creating an SLA with Admissions. SLAs, common in service organizations, ensures your school meets its obligations to its prospective students. At HubSpot, we encourage our clients to create SLAs between Marketing and Sales. It spells out each department’s roles and obligations in their lead generation and conversion process. The same idea applies to finding prospective students and converting them into enrolled students.

An effective SLA also defines goals and success metrics that Marketing and Admissions must meet. Crafting the SLA together takes

Agreement on critical terms, especially what makes up an “Admissions Qualified Lead (AQL).” These are the criteria that define when a lead is ready to hand-off. When you agree, complaints of bad leads go away. Consider some of these criteria to include:

• What demographic, expressed interests, and behavior triggers qualify a lead?
• Does it take a volume of actions, say downloading many pieces of content?
• Are there any “rocket to the top” actions that trigger an AQL, say scheduling a campus tour?
• Clarifying any criteria that will send an AQL back to Marketing. For instance, a lead met the formal AQL triggering criteria. But Admissions can see this lead isn’t quite ready to speak with them. It takes patience and observation to help Admissions define what they see. Only then can you translate those criteria into an SLA. 
• Defining what actions and results are expected of each person in the process.
• Drawing a direct connection between Marketing’s lead generation goals and Admissions’ enrollment goals.
• Enjoying the teamwork inspired by having shared goals

The first metric, often set by a group of stakeholders, is your enrollment goal. The rest of your goals fall into place from there. For example, you have an idea of how many students you need to accept to reach your enrollment number. Based on that, calculate how many leads you need in your contact database. Finally, how many prospects at open houses and visiting your website will you need to get enough leads?  When you both agree on these numbers, you’re working as partners, instead of adversaries.

Working together also means clear and regular communications on both sides. Check-in meetings help make that easy (more in tip #3). 

The SLA may include a Marketing goal of attracting a specified number of people to open houses. Of those prospects, a certain number should become leads, and admissions then commits to touching each AQL a certain number of times. For example:  Admissions sends X emails and makes Y phone calls over a certain period of time.

Below you’ll find in-depth guidance on what metrics to include in your SLA and how to calculate them. The template uses sales terminology. You’ll want to change it to fit the metrics and terms your school uses.

Speaking of templates….

2) Use a Consistent Strategy and Templates to Streamline the Lead Hand-off Process

Don’t fumble here. The goals and action steps on each side of the house are clear in the SLA. The hand-off process must run smoothly so it doesn’t become the weak link.

Outline this process with Admissions, step-by-step:

• What triggering criteria turn a lead an AQL? This is part of your SLA.
• How does Marketing notify Admissions of new AQLs? Ditto for Admissions sending leads back to Marketing? Is it a spreadsheet report? An email? Is the information automatically synced between databases, or manually sent?
• What information is included in the report about the AQL? Besides contact information, what about content consumed, program web pages they’ve visited. Have they looked at financial aid information, or not? Should the “Return to Marketing” report include the reason why, how many times admissions made contact, etc.?
• How often is a hand-off report sent? Is it a weekly or daily spreadsheet listing all AQLs? Or are emails about a specific prospect sent immediately once a prospect becomes an AQL?
• Who gets these reports? Who allocates responsibility for specific AQLs to the person in Admissions accountable for follow-up?

Besides documenting the hand-off process, create templates to track and communicate necessary information. If you both agree to hand-off individual AQLs via email – develop a formal email template. Same for emails that Admissions should use when they return a lead to you. Using marketing automation simplifies this with workflows. A workflow’s rules can automatically:

1. Extract the correct information
2. Place it in the appropriate email
3. Send it to the right person
4. At whatever frequency you define  

3) Have an Ongoing and Open Feedback Loop to Foster Communication and Success

An SLA only works when there’s mutual monitoring and accountability. Hold regular SLA meetings to review where everyone’s metrics stand against the goals.

At the meeting, discuss why you’re ahead, or behind, on your numbers. It’s also a good time to clear up any blips before they become full-blown issues. If Admissions thinks too many prospects on the last report weren’t qualified — resolve the problem. Are the workflow rules parsing the data correctly? Do the AQL criteria need tweaking?

• Use it to address higher-level issues, such as:
• Why has there been poor attendance at open houses?
• Website traffic to the admissions page has dropped, what’s going on?
• Has traffic to Admissions’ page gone down?
• Have downloads of the “Admission Checklist and Deadlines” content jumped?
• Dissect the reasons and build on the strengths you identify for future successes.

Decide how often to meet. A monthly meeting could focus on higher-level, more strategic topics. Use weekly meetings for tactical issues. Whatever the schedule is, make sure both departments treat it as a priority.

Conclusion

You’re both responsible for meeting your school’s enrollment goals. Work together to set underlying goals, clarify mutual responsibilities and tasks, and establish a clear hand-off process.This will help you connect the work of both departments, improving both efficiency and effectiveness. It leverages your combined resources in the smartest way possible, while also showcasing the value Marketing brings to the process. Most important, it ensures you’re seen as an indispensable, valued partner in the enrollment process.

If you’ve ever spoken in front of an audience — big or small — it’s likely that you’re familiar with “Q&A paranoia.”

It’s not that you don’t want to answer people’s questions — heck, you’re the expert — but not knowing what to expect can be a little stressful. 

What if they challenge your stance? Try to discredit you? Or ask you something you haven’t the slightest clue about?

While it’s smart to anticipate certain objections, others may arise that you simply can’t plan for. For tough times like those, check out the helpful tips in the SlideShare from 24Slides below.

How to you handle tough presentation questions? Share you tips in the comments section below.

When was the last time you avoided giving valuable feedback because you didn’t want to come across as mean?

We’ve all done it. We think we’re being kind and merciful.

But, we aren’t.

Turns out, this behavior can have drastic consequences at the office — especially when you’re managing a team.

In this episode of The Growth Show, Kim Scott, an author who’s previously worked with companies like Twitter, Apple, Google, and Dropbox, dives into her framework for radical candor, and explains why it can build better companies. She also gives tips for making a change in your own management style to have a happier, more successful team.

To listen to this episode in your browser, click the play button below, or click here to listen in your iTunes app.

Check out the latest recaps of The Growth Show episodes by clicking here.

When it comes to writing posts and updating profiles for your blog and social media, one of the most common questions folks have is: What’s the character limit on X, Y, or Z? Another common one: What’s the ideal character count for X, Y, or Z?

For example, you probably know the character limit for a tweet is 140. But did you know that a link takes up 24 of those characters, leaving you with 116 characters to play with? Or that the ideal length of a tweet that includes a link is about 120 characters, not the full 140? 

While we’ve written before about what perfect posts look like on your blog and various social media networks, we thought it would be helpful to gather the numbers for character limits and ideal character counts all in one place.

Below, you’ll find the short version, followed by a more detailed guide to character limits and ideal character counts for posts on your blog, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. The more detailed version includes links to research studies, our own findings at HubSpot, and advice for how to optimize your posts and profiles.

Length & Character Counts: The Short Version

Click a category title to jump to the detailed version.

1) Blog Posts

• Ideal Headline Length: 8–12 words & under 70 characters.
• Ideal Blog Post Length: 1,600 words or 7 minutes to read.
• Ideal Title Tag Length: 70 characters or fewer.
• Ideal Meta Description Length: 155 characters or fewer.

2) Facebook

• Maximum length of a status update: 63,206 characters.
• Ideal length of a status update: 40 characters.
• Ideal length of a video: 30–45 seconds long.

3) Twitter

• Tweet: 140 characters max.
• Comment with a Retweet: 116 characters max.
• Link in a Tweet: Takes up 24 characters (leaving 116).
• Image/GIF/Video in a Tweet: Takes up 25 characters (leaving 115).
• Link + Image/GIF/Video in a tweet: Takes up 47 characters (leaving 93).
• Ideal Tweet Length: 100 characters without a link; 120 characters with a link.
• Ideal Hashtag Length: Under 11 characters; shorter if you can. Use 1–2 hashtags per tweet.
• Video Duration in a Tweet: Up to 30 seconds long.

4) LinkedIn

• Professional Headline: 120 characters max.
• Summary: 2,000 characters max.
• Position Title: 100 characters max.
• Status Update: 600 characters.

5) Instagram

• Profile Bio: 150 characters max.
• Image Caption: 2,200 characters max, but it cuts off in users’ feeds after 3 lines of text.

A More Detailed Guide to Character Counts

1) Blog Posts

• Ideal Headline Length: 8–12 words & under 70 characters.
• Ideal Blog Post Length: 1,600 words or 7 minutes to read.
• Ideal Title Tag Length: 70 characters or fewer.
• Ideal Meta Description Length: 155 characters or fewer.

Ideal Length of a Headline: 8–12 words and under 70 characters.

The length of your headline depends on what your goals are and where it will appear.

• Do you want this post to rank really well in search? Then keep the title under 70 characters so it doesn’t get cut off in search engine results, and put keywords near the front to make it more attractive in search results.
• Are you trying to optimize your title for social sharing? For it to be tweetable, you won’t want to exceed 116 characters. (That’s the 140-character limit on Twitter, minus the 23 characters a URL takes up in a tweet, minus one for the space between the title and the link.)

In our own analysis at HubSpot, we found that headlines between 8–12 words in length got the most Twitter shares on average, while headlines with either 12 or 14 words got the most Facebook Likes.

The folks at Outbrain found that headlines with eight words had a 21% higher clickthrough rate than the average title. We recommend testing out headline length to see what works best for your particular audience.

Ideal length of a Blog Post: 1,600 words or 7 minutes to read.

This may not be what you want to hear, but the best answer to the question of how long a blog post should be is: as long as it needs to be. Blog posts vary too greatly in topic, depth, and so on for there to be a single benchmark. It should be as long as it needs to be to serve its purpose, whether that’s thought leadership, driving leads, explaining a new concept, or something else.

That being said, if you want cold, hard numbers, there are a few ways to measure ideal blog post length.

Time to Read: The folks over at Medium measure article length based on how long it takes for a person to read the article. According to their analysis, the post length that captures the most attention on average were posts that took seven minutes to read, which works out to be about 1,600 words.

Image Credit: Medium

Word Count: Here at HubSpot, we recently analyzed the effect of blog post word count from our own blog on organic traffic and found that the sweet spot was 2,250–2,500 words.

We also found articles over 2,500 words got the most social shares and earned the most inbound links.

You might be thinking: There’s a pretty big difference between 1,600 words and 2,250+ words. That’s because of the incredible variation in ideal length for a blog post. We recommend testing out blog post length to see what works best for your particular audience.

Ideal Length of a Title Tag: About 70 characters or fewer.

A title tag is the HTML title element that’s used to describe the topic of a webpage. You’ll find them in the title of a search engine result page (SERP), and in the top bar of an internet browser.

A title tag should be about 70 characters or fewer in length so it doesn’t get cut off in a Google SERP (Search Engine Results Page). This number can vary because Google seems to measure in pixels, not characters. In other words, it appears that they cut off a title tag after a certain width: about 512 pixels. Google will also bold certain keywords used in a search query, which can affect pixel width significantly. So at the end of the day, 70 characters is just a benchmark.

You can double-check the length of your meta description and title tags with this handy tool from SEOmofo.

Ideal Length of a Meta Description: About 155 characters or fewer.

A meta description refers to the HTML attribute that explains the contents of a given webpage. It’s the short description you see on a SERP to “preview” what the page is about.

Like with title tags, Google seems to cut off meta descriptions in SERPs based on pixel width, not character count. Specifically, it seems to cut off a given meta description after about 923 pixels, which ends up being about 155 characters. Again, you can double-check the length of your meta description and title tags with this handy tool from SEOmofo. (Read this blog post to learn more about writing effective meta descriptions.)

2) Facebook

• Maximum length of a status update: 63,206 characters.
• Ideal length of a status update: 40 characters.
• Ideal length of a video: Between 30–45 seconds.

Maximum Length of a Status Update: 63,206 characters.

Most people refer to Facebook’s character limit on status updates as 60,000 characters, but the actual maximum is 63,206. Why? Facebook’s Bob Baldwin, the man who set the limit, wrote in a Facebook comment: “I set the exact limit to something nerdy. Facebook … Face Boo K … hex(FACE) – K … 64206 – 1000 = 63206″. There you have it.

Image Credit: Journalists on Facebook

Ideal Length of a Status Update: About 40 characters.

“The social gurus will throw around the number 40 characters,” says Chelsea Hunersen, HubSpot’s social media and community growth manager. “That data seems to be backed up by BuzzSumo’s ranking of HubSpot’s own Facebook Page, but ideally, you’ll want to use the copy in a status update to provide context for whatever you’re linking to.”

That being said, Hunersen says that from her experience, the copy of the status update itself isn’t as important as the copy in the meta title or meta description that gets pulled in when you insert a link into your post. “Often, people look at the image of the article and then directly down at the meta title and meta description for context clues,” she told me. “A lot of people don’t realize you can change those.”

(Meta titles should be 70 characters or fewer and meta descriptions should be 155 characters or fewer. You can read about these character counts in more detail in the previous section of this post.)

Ideal Length of a Video: Between 30–45 seconds.

While there aren’t too many studies out there on the ideal length of videos on Facebook, best practices for sharing videos on social are to keep it short: Just enough time to deliver a punch, but without forcing users to leave their environment.

According to AdWeek, Facebook’s auto-playback feature makes 30–45-second videos optimal. Here at HubSpot, we’ve found that our best-performing organic videos have come in at about 30 seconds long.

That being said, optimal length can vary depending on the topic. “If you produce something as catchy as BuzzFeed and Refinery29 are putting out there, it can be up to five minutes long,” says Hunersen.

Regardless of the length of your video, Hunersen reminds us that all Facebook videos start without sound, meaning users have to make a concious decision to stop scrolling through their feeds and unmute the video. Facebook videos should be visually compelling from the get-to, make sense without sound, and be engaging enough to encourage the user to stop and watch.

3) Twitter

• Tweet: 140 characters max.
• Comment with a Retweet: 116 characters max.
• Link in a Tweet: Takes up 24 characters (leaving 116).
• Image/GIF/Video in a Tweet: Takes up 25 characters (leaving 115).
• Link + Image/GIF/Video in a tweet: Takes up 47 characters (leaving 93).
• Ideal Tweet Length: 100 characters without a link; 120 characters with a link.
• Ideal Hashtag Length: Under 11 characters; shorter if you can. Use 1–2 hashtags per tweet.
• Video Duration in a Tweet: Up to 30 seconds long.

Max Length of a Tweet: 140 characters.

Max Length of a Comment with a Retweet: 116 characters.

When you use Twitter’s “Retweet with Comment” feature, it means you’ve pressed the rotating arrow icon to retweet a post, and then added a comment in the text box provided. The retweet takes up 24 characters, leaving you with 116 characters for the comment.

“Charisma is not so much getting people to like you as getting people to like themselves when you’re around.” https://t.co/5T0GlvxU6v

— Kirstin Lynde (@KirstinLynde)
January 18, 2016

Link in a Tweet: Takes up 23 characters (leaving 117).

Links account for 92% of all user interaction with tweets, so you’ll definitely want to include them in most (if not all) of the tweets you publish. They’re your strongest chance of gaining views and shares for your content.

Also, remember to include a space between your tweet copy and your link. Not including a space before the link is one of the most common forms of link errors.

Image/GIF/Video in a Tweet: Takes up 24 characters (leaving 116).

Using media in your tweet is a great way to engage your followers. In fact, research shows using images in tweets leads to higher clickthrough rates — as much as 18%.

Images, GIFs, and videos take up the same number of characters in a tweet for Twitter.com and most publishing tools.

(Note: Different publishing tools may have different character counts for links and images. For example, Twitter.com counts an image as 24 characters, but Tweetdeck counts it as 25.)

Loving @HubSpot‘s twitter cover Image right now! ❅ http://pic.twitter.com/IdXzPI1XZi

— Lindsay Kolowich (@lkolo25)
January 19, 2016

Want to add more text to your tweets? One simple hack is to put text in an image, like in the tweet below. Here are some free templates to get you started. (The best ones for Twitter are in the Social Media > Rectangular folder.)

Everlane’s @MPreysman on the simple rationale behind why they moved to Facebook messenger https://t.co/XC3M4IQwlv http://pic.twitter.com/0FlikGQXHY

— Meghan Keaney (@meghkeaney)
January 8, 2016

Link + Image in a Tweet: Takes up 47 characters total (leaving 93).

A link often takes up 23 characters and an image often takes up 24. That’s 47 characters total, leaving you with 93 characters to work with for the rest of the tweet — including that space between the tweet copy and the link.

(Again, note that different publishing tools may have slightly different character counts for links and images.)

To make your mornings easier, start by changing the end of your day. We’ll explain. https://t.co/PVz7UdVPSS http://pic.twitter.com/lZ1FYhseoS

— HubSpot (@HubSpot)
January 19, 2016

Ideal Length of a Tweet: 100–110 characters without a link; 120–130 characters with a link.

The 120-130-character range is the sweet spot for high clickthrough rate, according to an analysis of 200,000 tweets with links. This leaves enough space for people to include a short comment if they choose to manually retweet you.

Ideal Length of a Hashtag: Under 11 characters; shorter if you can.

While Twitter hashtags can technically be any length up to 140 characters, remember that people will want to accompany the hashtag with other copy. Short hashtags are always better. Ideally, your hashtags should be under 11 characters — shorter if you can.

Also, in a single tweet, stick to one or two hashtags, and definitely don’t go over three. Buddy Media found that tweets with hashtags get double the engagement metrics that tweets with no hashtags get — but tweets with one or two hashtags have a 21% higher engagement than tweets with three or more

Video Length in a Tweet: Up to 30 seconds long.

You can post a video on Twitter by importing a video or recording it using the Twitter app. Either way, the maximum length is 30 seconds.

Smartphones & tablets are on th

e rise, while Americans’ ownership of other devices falters. https://t.co/blt5EmYFMy http://pic.twitter.com/eDxr6Uq7WD

— PewResearch Internet (@pewinternet)
December 19, 2015

4) LinkedIn

• Professional Headline: 120 characters max.
• Summary: 2,000 characters max.
• Position Title: 100 characters max.
• Status Update: 600 characters.

Maximum Length of a Professional Headline: 120 characters.

Your professional headline is the brief description about what you do that appears right below your name on LinkedIn.

Maximum Length of a LinkedIn Summary: 2,000 characters.

Maximum Length of a LinkedIn Position Title: 100 characters.

LinkedIn Position Description: Between 200–2,000 characters.

Maximum Length of a LinkedIn Status Update: 600 characters.

Keep in mind that if you update your Twitter status through LinkedIn, you’ll want to keep the character count to 140 characters or fewer.

5) Instagram

• Profile Bio: 150 characters max.
• Image Caption: 2,200 characters max, but it cuts off in users’ feeds after 3 lines of text.

Maximum Length of a Profile Bio: 150 characters.

Max Length of an Instagram Caption: 2,200 characters.

With a maximum of 2,200 characters, Instagram provides an enormous amount of space in their Instagram captions. But it’s worth noting that they recently started capping captions at three lines without users having to click “more” to see the whole thing, if they’re viewing the post in their general feed.

That being said, we don’t recommend keeping your captions super short so users can see 100% of it without having to click “more.” Instead, frontload your captions with the important content or text calls-to-action, and leave any hashtags, @mentions, or extraneous information for the end.