Marketing is a unique animal. With a combination of creativity, analytical thinking, taking data into consideration, and project management, a modern-day marketer must possess a great number of skills and have quite a few tools at their disposal.

Sure, you can delegate some of the work, but it also means you’re responsible for getting multiple people on the same page…some of which work in different states.

Rather than allowing your frustration to build, you can utilize tools that will make your job easier. More specifically, marketing frameworks. In this piece, we’ll discuss what a marketing strategy framework is, the benefits of utilizing one, the best marketing models out there, and how to decide which is best for you.

You can think of it like this: you wouldn’t dream of approaching your marketing with a “throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks” attitude because it would be a disaster for your organization.

Instead, you’ll likely spend days, weeks, and maybe even months identifying your target audience, where they spend time and determining the perfect way to reach them and communicate the benefits of your product or service in a marketing plan.

Your marketing strategy framework takes this all a step further and, as mentioned above, ensures your marketing plan is successful because you’ll share content with your audiences at the right time in the most relevant channels that are more likely to drive results.

The Benefits of a Marketing Framework

A Marketing Framework does more than just keep you focused on the task at hand. As your company grows and your team grows along with it, you must find a way to communicate with every member of the marketing department, no matter where they work or what tasks they are responsible for.

Creating a marketing framework is the best way to ensure that everyone knows what they need to do and how they need to do it. Additional benefits of utilizing a marketing framework include:

• Creating a home for templates, guides, tools, and assets that all marketers in your organization will need to access.
• Establishing and communicating approved verbiage for the organization.
• Improving marketing which then improves the growth and bottom line of the company.
• Allows the team to compare different strategies and determine the best route.
• Clearly communicate who is responsible for what and make it easier to transfer people from one role to another.
• Save time by limiting “redos” – areas that are often susceptible to errors and therefore must be reworked.

In addition, your framework will help you predict your customer’s behavior and the revenue you can expect to see. As a result, it will help your team function more efficiently and produce more effectively.

The Best Marketing Frameworks

Marketing has probably been around since prehistoric days when entrepreneurial cavemen designed state-of-the-art spears and tried to sell them to their less “handy” counterparts.

Okay, that might not be true, but marketing has been a necessary aspect of business for a long time, and, over that time, savvy marketers have designed models and frameworks to make their (and your) job easier. Let’s take a look at some traditional models as well as some newer frameworks.

Traditional Marketing Models

1. 7Ps Marketing Mix

This widely used model considers the stages of business strategy, beginning at conception and taking it to evaluation. The Ps stand for:

• Product: What’s being sold?
• Prince: How much does it cost?
• Place: Where will the product be sold?
• Promotion: How will you communicate with your audience?
• People: Who is involved in the production, promotion, and distribution?
• Process: How will you deliver it to the customer?
• Physical Evidence: How will you prove to customers that your business exists?

When you utilize the 7P model, you’ll have the opportunity to analyze and optimize every aspect of your company and your strategy to improve your business.

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2. STP Marketing Model

The SPT model is a top-down approach that focuses on how a company addresses customers and helps deliver personalized (and relevant) messages to audiences.

STP stands for segmentation (dividing your audience into different sections), targeting (who will be the most receptive to your product), and positioning (how do you make your product the most appealing to that audience), and has helped many companies shift to utilizing social media to deliver content.

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3. Porter’s Five Forces

While most marketing frameworks focus on the product itself and the audience, Porter’s Five Forces looks at the outside influences that can affect profitability. These include:

• Supplier Power, how many other suppliers exist, what makes them different, and how much their product costs.
• Buyer Power, which is the customer’s ability to influence decisions made by the company.
• Threat of Substitution, which is how your product compares to others on the market.
• Threat of New Entry, which is any barriers you might experience when entering the market.
• Competitive Rivalry, which is any other outside forces that affect how your product compares to the competition.

This model will help determine just how competitive your business environment is.

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Now, let’s look at some of the newer models to hit the marketing scene. While they may not have been around as long as the more traditional models, they take into account the current marketing climate and often focus on start-ups.

Modern Marketing Models

4. Pirate Metrics or “AARRR!”

No, you don’t have to don an eye patch or adopt a parrot to use this framework. Developed by serial Startup Founder Dave McClure, Pirate Metrics allows you to see how a customer may travel on their buying journey and what areas you need to improve. AARRR stands for:

• Acquisition: Where are prospects finding you? Facebook ads, blog content, a paid search, etc.
• Activation: What step did a prospect take once they arrived at your website? Depending on the business, this could include signing up for an account, downloading a free giveaway in exchange for their email, filling out a profile, etc.
• Retention: Once they’ve left your site, do prospects or customers come back? How often?
• Revenue: How do you earn money from your customers? Consider reviewing metrics such as conversion rates, shopping cart size, and the LTV or customer lifetime value.
• Referral: When customers are happy, they tell other people, and you end up with more customers. This lowers your CAC or customer acquisition cost because your loyal customers will attract new prospects for you.

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5. Lean Analytics Stages

Developed by Alistair Croll and Ben Yoskovitz, the Lean Analytics Stage framework combines aspects of many different models and is ideal for improving startup growth. There are five pillars to this model:

1. Empathy

During the product development stage, you’ll spend most of your time listening to customers, empathizing with their challenges, and taking in as much feedback as they are willing to provide. Once you have identified a problem you can solve to create your minimum viable product (MVP), you can then move on to the next stage.

2. Stickiness

Focus on engagement and retention as you work to create something that yields return customers. When you’ve got an engaged base and a low attrition rate, you can continue to stage three.

3. Virality

Before you try to attract customers through heavy advertising spending, focus on your existing customers. As your organic growth rates improve, you can move to stage four.

4. Revenue

Without money, you’ll be out of business quickly. Pay attention to your customer acquisition cost metrics to make sure your customers spend more money than they cost to acquire. Once you’ve reached your revenue goals, you can move to the final stage.

5. Scale

You’ve got explicit knowledge of your product and your market. Now, it’s time to increase the revenue from your current market and potentially enter into new markets.

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6. The Hook Model

No, it has nothing to do with the Pirate Metrics we discussed earlier, but it does compliment the stickiness and virality we discussed during Lean Analytics.

The Hook Model was developed by Nir Eyal, author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. He believes that our most purchased and utilized products achieve that status because they become a part of habitual behaviors. As marketers, we can tap into that by understanding the cycle:

• Trigger: The beginning of the cycle is often an external trigger like a push notification. However, as the cycle continues, negative internal emotions become triggers as we attempt to lessen these negative emotions with an action.
• Action: The easier you make things to do, the more likely a person will do it. Habit-forming products make taking action painless and straightforward.
• Variable Reward: The anticipation of reward is a strong motivator. Variability increases anticipation, making prospects and customers more likely to take an action that warrants a reward.
• Investment: Creating an investment or “buy-in” for your customers makes it more difficult for them to step away from your product or service.

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7. The ICE Score

Sean Ellis, the Father of Growth Marketing, teaches the ICE score, a simple and quick way to evaluate potential channels for growth.

Rather than implementing a complex system, Ellis suggests asking three questions:

1. What will the impact of this move be if it works?

2. How confident am I that this plan will work?

3. How much time, money, and effort will be necessary to put this into action?

Asking yourself and your team these questions is one of the fastest ways to evaluate an idea and determine if you should move forward.

8. STEPPS

Developed by Jonah Burger, the author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On, STEPPS is a formula to create contagious content that has people talking and sharing.

• Social Currency: Invite your customers to feel more like insiders. Humans are programmed to care what others think of them. This taps into that need to be seen positively by others and encourages conversation around your product.
• Triggers: Frequently remind people of your product utilizing triggers and they’ll talk about it more.
• Emotion: Highly emotional content is more likely to go viral. Taking that one step further, high arousal emotions like anger will be shared more often than low arousal emotions like sadness.
• Public: When you make something public, you encourage people to talk about it and share it.
• Practical Value: Provide value in the form of useful content, and people will be more likely to share it.
• Stories: We are biologically wired to see the world through narrative. Creative stories that are easy to relate to and easy to remember, and they’ll also be easy to share.

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Selecting the Best Marketing Framework for Your Business

While there are a variety of models available to you, they are not all created equal. There are a number of factors that will influence which framework is best for you and your organization.

In order to determine which framework to choose, you’ll want to examine the following aspects of your business:

• What are the top priorities of the business?
• What is the role of marketing within the organization?
• How is success defined and measured within the marketing?
• What is the marketing department capable of, and what improvements would you like to make?
• Where would you like to see the most impact due to marketing efforts and what’s the easiest way to ensure that impact?

Over To You

Marketing is a difficult role no matter your product or service. You are in essence responsible for telling the world that your company has the cure to what ails them. Without you, the most amazing product or service ever created will never reach the hands of the people who need it.

As challenging as it is, there are tools you can utilize to take some of the difficulty out of your responsibilities. A marketing framework will help you stay the course, keep your team in the know and on the right path, and will ultimately help you better achieve your desired goals. Create a marketing framework today and make tomorrow easier.

Google Sheets templates help you create better spreadsheets while saving you valuable time.

A template knows what you need and offers it without any manual input, giving you the ability to focus on more important things — such as making sense of the data itself.

In this post, we’ll cover every template you’ll ever need to easily and efficiently use Google Sheets for business, including templates for project management, reporting, people management, and customer tracking.

You’ll learn:

1. Why you should use Google Sheets templates for business;

2. Step-by-step instruction on how to find the built-in Google Sheets templates;

3. A roundup of additional Google Sheets templates for any marketing role, including:

• Templates for Finances
• Templates for Reporting and Analytics
• Templates for Customers
• Templates for Project Management
• Templates to Help Lead a Team

Let’s get started.

Why use Google Sheets templates for business?

Google Sheets templates are a fantastic business tool that can be used by teams of any size. Whether you’re a business just starting out or an established enterprise firm, you’ll enjoy countless benefits when using Google Sheets templates.

Even if you don’t use them as your primary business tool, they can supplement other tools. For instance, you might use a free CRM to track customer information, then use a Google Sheets invoice template to quickly create invoices for each customer.

Let’s go over the top benefits of using Google Sheets templates for business.

Free

Google Sheets templates are completely free to use, and they cover a wide variety of needs. So you won’t have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars getting an Excel subscription (or a subscription for another tool). Simply have everyone sign up for a Google Workspace account and get immediate working access to the templates.

Ability to Collaborate

Google Sheets templates allow your team to collaborate with little gatekeeping. The only thing you have to do is click the “Share” button at the top right-hand corner of a document, and your team members will have access to the file.

You can also limit the collaboration aspect to commenting or viewing only. This is a great option for sensitive documents that only a few people should edit.

Intuitive to Use

To use a Google Sheets template, you need very little experience with spreadsheets. You don’t need to know advanced formulas and functions to make them work for you. The templates already come with all of the fields and calculations built-in. All you have to do is plug in the numbers and populate the fields, and the document will generate a report or calculate a total.

Customizable

That you’re using a template doesn’t mean that you’re stuck with its look and feel. You can easily change the fields, the colors, and the fonts using Google Sheets’ built-in tools. Once you do, you’ll feel like the template is your business’ only.

No Data Loss

Another great benefit of using Google Sheets templates? Unless a freak accident happens with Google’s servers, it’s near impossible to lose data. All changes are stored in the cloud, and Google Sheets includes a version history of the document, where you can revert to a previous version if something happens.

If your laptop crashes or you lose internet connection, Google Sheets simply freezes the copy until you’re online again. You’ll still want to take a few precautions, such as enabling offline editing and downloading a copy of the document to your local drive.

Ready to find a few templates that you can start using right now for your business?

How to Find Templates In Google Sheets

There are two common ways you can find and use free Google Sheets templates.

1. Google’s In-Built Template Gallery

On your browser, go to Google Sheets. Click “Template Gallery” at the top right. Explore the templates to find the right one for you.

You’ll find different templates for your personal, work, and project management needs. Here’s an example of what the Personal template library looks like:

2. Add-Ons

Another way to find free templates in Google Sheets is to download and install the Vertex42 add-on. Here’s how:

Open an existing Google sheet, or type “
sheets.new” to create a new one. Then, find and click the “Add-ons” button on the top left menu.

Type “Vertex42” into the search bar, and click enter. Install the add-on.

To access the templates, click on “Add-ons,” then “Template Gallery for Sheets,” then “Browse Templates.”

Here you would find templates that can help with almost everything you need — whether you need to create an invoice, income/expense tracker, or a dashboard to manage your projects.

Let’s now look at some of the free Google Sheets templates you would find useful as you run your business.

Google Sheets Templates

Whether your position requires you to send invoices to clients, track website analytics, or create budget and expense reports, you’ve undoubtedly found yourself working with spreadsheets in some form. And if you’re anything like me, those spreadsheets can feel frustratingly tedious when you’re under a time crunch.

Fortunately, Google Sheets offers a wide variety of pre-built templates, allowing you to create reports and analyze data in spreadsheets faster and more effectively.

The following Google Sheets templates cater to specific categories and allow you to cut hours, if not days, of work in one fell swoop. Let’s go over the best google Sheets templates you can start using now.

Google Sheets Templates for Finances

Spreadsheets are popular tool for bookkeeping and invoicing. Below, you’ll find a curated selection of ready-to-go templates that will allow you to invoice clients, maintain an annual business budget, generate financial statements, create expense reports, and generate purchase reports.

The result is a ton of saved time — there’s no need to create or choose any formulas that will help you calculate this data.

1. Invoices

If you’re a freelancer or work for a small business, you probably use invoices to bill clients for services. This invoice template makes the process simple — it provides space for all the necessary information and looks more professional than a plain spreadsheet. Plus, the template is customizable, so you can create a theme that aligns well with your brand image.

Click here to use this template.

2. Annual Business Budget

This template is more in-depth than it initially appears. There are tabs at the bottom — setup, income, expenses, summary — and each one includes several subcategories. “Expenses,” for instance, covers everything from taxes and insurance to travel and customer acquisition.

The final tab, “summary,” takes your income, subtracts your expenses, and automatically updates to display your ending balance each month. This template is a good option if your budget requires a lot of customization and many moving parts.

Click here to use this template.

3. Financial Statements

The financial statements template truly is an all-in-one resource to keep track of business transactions, profits, and losses. The “profit & loss” tab automatically summarizes revenue, costs, and expenses for the year and can display your growth rate percentage.

If you work for a small business and need to manage much of your finances, this template offers resources and guidance to make the process easier and less prone to human error.

Click here to use this template.

4. Expense Report

Knowing how much you spend is an essential part of running a successful business. But it’s often easy to forget to record these expenses with the amount of work you have to do every day. This simple expense report template makes it easy to record all of your expenses and those of your employees.

Click here to use this template.

5. Purchase Order

You’ll find this template to be a life-saver if tracking the orders or supplies your office/department makes is part of your job. With this sheet, you can save time and avoid the headaches that come with monitoring orders or shipments.

Click here to use this template.

Google Sheet Templates for Reporting and Analytics

Reporting dashboards are typically built into a wide variety of software products, such as Marketing Hub, but if you don’t have the budget, you can easily create one using a Google Sheets template.

The below templates automatically gather data from Google Analytics, putting the data in a highly digestible visual format that you can share with higher-ups and other people in your team.

6. Website Traffic Dashboard

Suppose your role requires you to analyze website traffic using Google Analytics. In that case, this template is a fantastic supplemental tool to pull that data into an organized report, saving you tons of time. Better still, you can use the dashboard template with Supermetrics Google Sheets add-on to monitor and analyze data from PPC, SEO, social media, and website analytics.

Click here to use this template.

7. Website Paid Traffic Report

This template makes the process of analyzing and reporting on paid traffic relatively seamless. The spreadsheet is split into Overview, 12-month Trends, and Medium Breakdown categories. It automatically collects data on your paid sources from Google Analytics and provides a clean chart with important information, including PPC’s percentage of goal conversions, total traffic, and bounce rate.

You can also adjust it to compare different periods or different channels or segments. If you’re looking for a way to demonstrate paid’s influence on your business, this is the tool to do it.

Click here to use this template.

Google Sheet Templates for Customers

If you don’t have access to a CRM yet or your business is still growing, you can use spreadsheets to track customer information and see the growth of your business. The below Google Sheets templates allow you to have a CRM and a sales dashboard without paying the cost typically needed for such software.

Remember, however, that as your business starts to grow and you earn more and more customers, you’ll want to switch over to a dedicated CRM.

8. CRM

To organize your contacts and automate an effective sales and marketing process, you must have a CRM — but if you’re a small company just starting, you might not feel ready to implement a fully established CRM with all the features.

This CRM template is a great place to get your feet wet. It saves automatically, so you never lose data. The share feature allows you to work with coworkers within the CRM, which helps encourage collaboration between your sales and marketing departments.

Click here to use this template.

9. Sales Dashboard

This template helps salespeople manage their leads, sales, and revenue all in one place. At the bottom of the template are different tabs where you can easily input your data that eventually shows up on the main dashboard. There’s also an “instructions” tab to get you up to speed with using the sheet.

Click here to use this template.

Google Sheet Templates for Project Management

Using a Google Sheets project management template is a much more cost-effective alternative to buying a team-wide subscription for a project management software.

The below templates are the absolute best for keeping track of a project’s timeline, creating Gantt charts, creating product roadmaps, and generating action lists. They allow you to color-code and categorize action items and individual tasks.

Hot tip: If you’re managing multiple projects, simply duplicate the initial tab and keep all projects in a single spreadsheet.

10. Project Timeline

Whether this is your first significant project or you’ve been managing projects for years, the project timeline template is a valuable tool for organizing and implementing each project step. The template helps you visually break up a daunting project into smaller pieces, ideally making it easier and less stressful to manage and delegate tasks.

Click here to use this template.

11. Project Tracking

If you’re juggling many projects simultaneously, this project tracking template could become your new best friend. This template takes project management to the next level by enabling you to organize your tasks into categories by date, deliverables, status, cost, and hours — best of all, it lets you prioritize your projects. Hopefully, simply visualizing what needs to get done first will alleviate time-management stress.

Click here to use this template.

12. Event Marketing Timeline

The event marketing template offers organization and structure if you’re implementing an upcoming business event or campaign. It provides categories you might’ve forgotten to consider, including local and national marketing, PR, and web, with subcategories ranging from an email newsletter to impact studies.

The template is already organized with all necessary categories for planning an event, reducing the time you spend on tedious manual input.

Click here to use this template.

13. Gantt Chart Template

The Gantt chart template helps you alleviate any concern you might have over timing — and, when you’ve got a complex project with overlapping components, I’m willing to bet timing is one of your primary concerns.

Using the Gantt chart template helps you visualize all steps and delegate essential tasks more efficiently — labeling the task with an owner on one chart is undoubtedly easier than individually following up via email. And by sharing the template with coworkers, everyone is on the same page.

Click here to use this template.

14. Product Roadmap

Without a product roadmap, it’s easy for your team to misunderstand the direction you want a project to take. With this template, you can solve that problem. The template provides a calendar summary of a project and the milestones and deliverables as you go through the product development process.

Click here to use this template.

15. Product Launch Plan

This template has everything you need to organize the best product launch you’ve ever had. It has fields to help you outline your market and competitive analysis, project strategy, key messaging, and who your target audience is.

If you’re in charge of managing a product launch and want to organize the best launch ever, then this is the project management template for you.

Click here to use this template.

16. Action List With Ranking

Managing a project requires that you track daily actions to ensure you don’t lose focus. But sometimes, you’ll have some tasks on your list that are more important than others. You can easily arrange these tasks based on their importance with this action list template. You can also share this sheet with others if you’re working as a team.

Click here to use this template.

17. Project Budget

Away from the general business budget, most managers create budgets for each of their projects. This project budget template is for you if you’re looking for a simple yet effective template that lets you quickly estimate how much revenue a project would generate and how much it would cost.

Click here to use this template.

Google Sheet Templates for Leading a Team

Managing a team is easy and simple with the following Google Sheets templates. No need to send emails back and forth, and no need to check in individually with each team member over Slack or another team communication app.

With the following templates, you can set employee shifts and track how many hours employees have spent on a certain project. And remember, these templates are collaborative — meaning that you only need to give access to your employees for them to fill it out on their own time. The changes will immediately be live in the shared copy.

18. Employee Shift Schedule

Keeping track of who works what hours, and how much each employee gets paid, can feel confusing, especially if you lead a team of part-time contractors or seasonal interns. This template includes slots for employee’s names, hours worked, and monthly wages, making your paycheck process straightforward and organized.

Click here to use this template.

19. Weekly Timesheet

Like the employee shift schedule, the weekly timesheet helps you track time and know how much to pay employees or subcontractors. However, the weekly timesheet template works better if you want to quickly find out how much time each employee spends on a project.

Click here to use this template.

20. Contact List

This template comes in handy if you want to create a contact list database. You can easily use the template to store your contact information (say, phone number and email address), your employees’ contact, and those of emergency services like the ambulance or fire department.

Click here to use this template.

Start Using These Free Google Sheets Templates

No matter what your job is, using a suitable spreadsheet would make it easier and more enjoyable.

So what are you waiting for? Get started with using these free Google Sheets templates to save time and effort, and download ten additional ones to exponentially improve your productivity.

When it comes to building a memorable brand, it’s all about consistency. Like when you’re shopping for your favorite cereal or coffee at the grocery store, you want to be able to spot it from a mile away.

The best brands stick in our brains because their presence is defined by the repetition of the same logo, fonts, colors, and images. Once we see them enough, they become instantly recognizable, bringing us a clear sense of reliability and security.

Developing a consistent brand starts with creating a brand style guide. These branding rule books help graphic designers, marketers, web developers, community managers, and even product packaging departments all stay on the same page, and present a unified vision of the brand to the public.

In this article, we’ll go over what brand guidelines are, elements of a style guide, and some amazing examples of them in action to use as inspiration for your next branding project or website redesign.

What are brand guidelines?

Brand guidelines, also known as a brand style guide, govern the composition, design, and general look-and-feel of a company’s branding. Brand guidelines can dictate the content of a logo, blog, website, advertisement, and similar marketing collateral.

Picture the most recognizable brands you can think of. Chances are, you’ve learned to recognize them because of the consistency across the messaging — written or visual — these brands broadcast. The same brand colors are reflected across them. The language sounds familiar. It’s all very organized and, while not rigid, it’s cohesive.

Here are a few types of guidelines you’d find in a brand style guide and which parts of a brand they can influence.

Download our free resource on how to create your own style guide with brand guidelines templates to follow. Creating a consistent style guide isn’t easy, but with these tools you can build an unforgettable one with ease.

The Elements of a Brand Style Guide

A brand style guide encompasses much more than just a logo. It visually encompasses everything your brand is about — down to your business’ purpose. Here are some key elements that make or break a brand style guide.

• Mission Statement: Your mission statement is the compass of your brand style guide. It ensures that all your content is working toward the same goal. This statement can guide your blog and paid content, ad copy, visual media and slogan.
• Buyer Persona: A buyer persona is the fictional representation of your ideal customer. It includes details on your customer’s job title, age, gender and professional challenges — therefore stipulating for whom your brand publishes content. Your buyer persona guides you blog content, ad copy, and visual media.

• Color Palette: Your color palette is a group of colors your company uses to design its brand, guiding every piece of visual content created. These color combinations often follow HEX or RGB color codes, and govern your logo, web design, printed ads and event collateral.

• Editorial Style Guide: The job of an editorial style guide is to commit an editorial stylebook on how to phrase certain products, list topics the brand can and cannot write about, and other companies it can mention. Your editorial style guide can guide your blog content, video scripts, website and landing page copy, PR talking points and knowledge base articles.

• Typography: Typography is a visual element of your brand style guide that goes beyond the font you use in your company logo. It supports your blog design down to the links and copy on your website — even your tagline.

As you can see, the purpose of the brand style guide is to form and maintain all of the various elements of a company that, when combined, spell out the entire brand as it’s recognized.

Intrigued? Check out 21 of the best ones we could find.

1. Medium

Medium emphasizes both typography and color in its brand style guide. Its guide also includes details related to the company’s “Purpose” and “Product Principles.”

See the full brand guide here.

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2. Wolf Circus Jewelry

Wolf Circus Jewelry’s product is all about appearance. Naturally, the company’s style guide is too. The brand’s style guide includes the company’s mission statement, product details, typeface, logo variations, a color palette, and a separate set of guidelines just for advertisements.

See the full brand guide here.

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3. Ollo

Ollo is so into color and typography, it turned its style guide into a game. Click the link below to see how much you can manipulate the brand. It’s the perfect way to show content creators how creative they can get but also still adhere to Ollo’s specific typeface and color codes.

See the full brand guide here.

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4. Skype

Everyone’s favorite video chat platform also has a squeaky-clean style guide for its brand. Skype, now owned by Microsoft, focuses primarily on its product phrasing and logo placement.

See the full brand guide here.

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5. Barre & Soul

Barre & Soul’s brand style guide includes variations of its logo, logo spacing, secondary logos, supporting imagery, and a five-color color palette.

See the full brand guide here.

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6. Spotify

Spotify’s style guide might appear simple and green, but there’s more to the brand than just a lime green circle. Spotify’s color palette includes three color codes, while the rest of the company’s branding guidelines focus heavily on logo variation and album artwork. The style guide even allows you to download an icon version of its logo, making it easier to represent the company without manually recreating it.

See the full brand guide here.

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7. Jamie Oliver

Jamie Oliver has an extremely thorough brand style guide, covering logo placement across all of its kitchenware products. The company also includes a large color palette with each color sorted by the product it should be shown on.

See the full brand guide here.

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8. Herban Kitchen

Herban Kitchen has both a color and texture palette in its style guide. These guidelines help to show not just how the brand’s logo will appear, but how the company’s various storefronts will look from the outside to potential customers.

See the full brand guide here.

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9. Urban Outfitters

Photography, color, and even tone of voice appear in Urban Outfitters’ California-inspired brand guidelines. However, the company isn’t shy to include information about its ideal consumer and what the brand believes in, as well.

See the full brand guide here.

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10. Love to Ride

Love to Ride, a cycling company, is all about color variety in its visually pleasing style guide. The company’s brand guidelines include nine color codes and tons of detail about its secondary logos and imagery.

See the full brand guide here.

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11. Barbican

Barbican, an art and learning center in the United Kingdom, sports a loud yet simple style guide focusing heavily on its logo and supporting typefaces.

See the full brand guide here.

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12. I Love New York

Despite its famously simple t-shirts, I Love New York has a brand style guide. The company begins its guidelines with a thorough explanation of its mission, vision, story, target audience, and tone of voice. Only then does the style guide delve into its logo positioning on various merchandise.

See the full brand guide here.

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13. Cisco

Cisco’s style guide isn’t just a guide — it’s an interactive brand book. The company takes website visitors page by page through its brand’s vision, mission, strategy, and even its promise before showing users their logo and allowing them to actually type using their proprietary typeface, “CiscoSans.” Where’s Cisco’s color palette, you ask? The business has a separate webpage for just that.

See the full brand guide here.

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14. University of the Arts Helsinki

The style guide of the University of the Arts Helsinki is more of a creative branding album than a traditional marketing guide. It shows you dozens of contexts in which you’d see this school’s provocative logo, including animations.

See the full brand guide here.

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15. NJORD

NJORD’s minimalist style guide gives you everything you’d need to know to design using the brand’s logo and color palette for both web and print.

See the full brand guide here.

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16. Espacio Cultural

This cultural center in Argentina has a color palette that’s as elaborate as the artistic workshops it hosts. Nonetheless, the brand does a fantastic job of breaking down every last color code and logo placement you can find — from the building itself to the advertisements promoting it.

See the full brand guide here.

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17. Alienware

Video gamers know Alienware from its game-friendly computers, but the rest of the world knows it by the brand’s sleek aesthetic. The company organizes its brand style guide into four basic parts: voice, design, photography, and partner. The latter describes (and shows) how the brand interacts with partner brands, such as Star Wars.

See the full brand guide here.

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18. Netflix

As far as its public brand assets are concerned, Netflix is focused primarily on the treatment of its logo. The company offers a simple set of rules governing the size, spacing, and placement of its famous capitalized typeface, as well as a single color code for its classic red logo.

See the full brand guide here.

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19. Scrimshaw Coffee

Featuring a five-code color palette, this “laid back,” “friendly,” and “modern” brand has a number of secondary logos it embraces in various situations.

See the full brand guide here.

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20. NASA

NASA’s “Graphics Standards Manual” is as official and complex as you think it is. At 220 pages, the guide describes countless logo placements, color uses, and supporting designs. And yes, NASA’s space shuttles have their own branding rules.

See the full brand guide here.

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21. New York City Transit Authority

Like NASA, the NYCTA has its own Graphics Standards Manual, and it includes some fascinating typography rules for the numbers, arrows, and public transit symbols the average commuter takes for granted every day.

See the full brand guide here.

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Build a Memorable Style Guide of Your Own

Once you build your unique brand style guide, customers will recognize your brand and associate it with all the visual cues you want them to. We hope you were inspired by our list of amazing brand style guides and wish you luck in creating a timeless style of your own.

Every day, thousands of publishers benefit from a recurring cash inflow by partnering up with other companies via affiliate programs.

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to monetize your blog, especially when you don’t sell products or services. Joining an affiliate program can get you exclusive access to new content and special deals for your audience — all while earning you more money.

There are many types of affiliate programs, ranging from online courses to website builders to marketing and business affiliates. Here, we’re going to explore the best affiliate programs with the highest earning potential to ensure you can make money off the content you provide.

But first — what exactly is an affiliate program?

To further understand affiliate programs, let’s consider an example. Wirecutter.com, a New York Times company, is a website that lists product recommendations for shoppers. Wirecutter largely earns commission based on affiliate relationships with retailers.

The publication’s affiliate monetization model might make you doubt the legitimacy of its recommendations — but, in fact, it’s quite the opposite.

Wirecutter only makes commission when a reader purchases a product from an affiliate retailer and doesn’t return the product. Wirecutter, then, has no incentive to promote inferior products. If they did, they’d make less money and turn away readers.

How do affiliates make money?

The affiliate gets a unique link (an “affiliate link”) from which clicks can be tracked — typically using cookies. The cookie then tracks the user to see if they make a purchase. If they do within an allotted amount of time, then the affiliate will earn commission.

Each cookie has a “length” or “cookie life”, which simply define how long the cookie will be tracking the user’s online activity.

For example, if a cookie has a 30-day life, your referral needs to make a purchase within 30-days of clicking your affiliate link in order for you to get paid — otherwise the lead will no longer be trackable.

If you’re interested in starting an affiliate program, there are different types of affiliate programs, and you’ll want to pick the one best-suited for your business. Let’s dive into the types of affiliate programs, next.

Types of Affiliate Programs

If you’re looking to promote your products or services, there are a few affiliate programs you can consider. When choosing an affiliate program, you’ll want to keep in mind the avenues or platforms where your audience spends the majority of their time. For instance, does your buyer persona typically read blog posts, scroll Facebook, or use search engines when researching new products?

Alternatively, is your buyer persona someone who’s always looking for a good deal, and would appreciate a link on a coupon site? Or are they more interested in doing tons of research before purchasing, making your promotion efforts more worthwhile on a review site?

While those are questions you’ll have to consider for yourself, let’s take a look at some general types of affiliate programs so you can begin brainstorming potential avenues for your own marketing efforts:

Search Affiliates

With this program, you’ll have freelancers or entrepreneurs pay their own money to promote your offer on search results or other online advertising platforms like Facebook Advertising. While you’ll want to ensure your partner is following search and advertising guidelines, this could work in your favor if your partner has an SEO background and wants to A/B test to see which ads result in the most referrals for you — and most ROI for them.

Bloggers and Influencers

If there are impressive bloggers or social media influencers in your industry who engage with your ideal buyer persona on a regular basis, you might consider partnering with them. For instance, if you sell kitchen appliances, it might be good to reach out to bloggers or YouTube influencers who post recipes, and ask if they’d feature your product as a “recommended tool” in their next recipe post. Ideally, this would result in your target audience taking a look at your website, and if they like the products you offer, could provide additional revenue for the influencer.

Review Sites

If you offer a product or service that is more expensive or niche, it’s likely that most of your buyers need to conduct research on that topic before purchasing. If that’s the case, it might be a good idea to research the top review sites related to your product or service. Reach out to the business or writer who published the piece, asking whether they’d be interested in providing an affiliate link to your product or service in the text.

Coupon Sites

If you’re offering a new product or service that isn’t popular in the marketplace, you might try creating an affiliate partnership with a coupon site for a limited time. While you don’t want to lose money by giving your product away at a discount, it could be effective at getting some first-time buyers to check out your website and become brand advocates.

Email Marketing

This is best in small doses. You don’t want any partners sending out bulk emails to customers who aren’t interested in your products or services, but with proper consideration for who’s receiving the email, this could be an effective method. For instance, if you sell design tools, you might partner with marketing agencies and ask them to include a link to your site within emails they send to design clients. This could help their clients leverage your tools to create higher-quality content, while giving agencies an added source of income.

Are you a blogger or small business who would like to join an affiliate program to generate income? Below, we’ll explore the top affiliate programs that you can join in your industry.

If you’re planning to launch an affiliate program, you can use the following examples as inspiration. Plus, you’ll get guidance on how much you should pay your partners and affiliates.

Don’t have time to look through all of the programs? We’ve divided this list into several subsections:

• Best Marketing and Business Affiliate Programs
• Best Online Course Affiliate Programs
• Best Website Builder Affiliate Programs
• Best Web Hosting Affiliate Programs
• Best Retail Affiliate Programs
• Best Beauty and Cosmetic Affiliate Programs
• Best Travel Affiliate Programs
• Best Personal Finance and Investment Affiliate Programs

Let’s get started.

Best Marketing and Business Affiliate Programs

1. HubSpot

Commission:15% recurring or 100% of the first month’s revenue

Cookie life: 90 days

Commission: 15% recurring or 100% of the first month’s revenue

Cookie life: 90 days

HubSpot’s mission is to help millions of organizations grow better. HubSpot’s award-winning CRM platform — which is comprised of Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, CMS Hub, and Operations Hub, and a powerful free CRM — gives thousands of companies the tools they need to manage the customer experience — all the way from awareness to advocacy.

As a HubSpot affiliate, you have the choice between a 15% recurring rate for up to one year or a flat rate corresponding to 100% of the first month’s revenue.

HubSpot’s plans range from $50 all the way up to $3,000+ per month. And it is not uncommon for customers to purchase more than one product at a time. So these payouts could quickly add up.

When you join HubSpot’s affiliate program, you gain access to a large creative inventory, including demo videos, banners, and copy examples, all designed to help you earn the most commission possible. Plus, you can cultivate a one-on-one relationship with the HubSpot affiliate team, whose members are all dedicated to helping you succeed.

If you have a large business audience or want to monetize your content, then our affiliate program is likely well-suited for you. (You can learn more about HubSpot by reading HubSpot reviews.)

2. AWeber

Commission: 30% recurring

Cookie life: One year

AWeber has been the autoresponder of choice for over one million businesses and entrepreneurs since 1998. It’s a great tool for newsletter and email drip campaigns.

Affiliates of AWeber can earn substantial income through two different channels:

• Their in-house program offers a lifetime 30% commission. Plans typically range from around $20 to $150 per month, so the payout can add up.
• Alternatively, you can earn up to $300 per account through CJ Affiliate. However, the cookie life with this option is only 45 days, rather than one year.

3. Sendinblue

Commission: €5 when a referred user creates a free account + €100 if that user buys a subscription

Cookie life: 90 days

Sendinblue is an all-in-one digital marketing platform that helps businesses connect with customers via email marketing, SMS, chat, marketing automation, CRM, and more. This user-friendly tool is rapidly growing in popularity with over 175,000 users worldwide.

The affiliate program has two different streams: one for agencies and one for bloggers.

Sendinblue’s free and affordable pricing plans make it a very attractive revenue opportunity for bloggers and publishers in the email marketing space. You’ll get €100 every time you refer a paying customer and join a network of top affiliates like WPBeginner, Capterra, CodeinWP, emailvendorselection, emailtooltester, and many more.

Note: Even though the payout is in euros, the program is open to the United States and your commission will be converted based on currency rates at the time of the payment.

4. ConvertKit

Commission: 30% recurring

Cookie window: 30 days

A new up-and-comer in the email marketing field, ConvertKit helps its customers grow their customer-base via landing pages, forms, and email drip campaigns. (You can learn more about ConvertKit by reading reviews.)

ConvertKit’s affiliate program is primarily addressed to existing ConvertKit users who feel their audience could benefit from email marketing products. The program offers a lifelong 30% commission for every referred paying customer or webinar subscriber.

With plans ranging anywhere from $29 per month all the way to $2,000+, the income potential is a very attractive offer, and it costs you absolutely nothing to join the program. The program does not, however, offer any special deals or discounts for any product the affiliate might promote.

5. GetResponse

Commission: $100 for every sale referred, or 33% of recurring subscriptions

Cookie length: 120 days

Along with email marketing, GetResponse offers landing pages, opt-in forms, webinar hosting, a CRM tool, and plenty of other marketing automation tools. (You can learn more about GetResponse by reading reviews.)

Just like AWeber, GetResponse has two affiliate programs you can choose from (or, you can join both!):

• Their self-hosted program offers a 33% recurring commission. With plans ranging anywhere from $15 to $1,200/month, the payout can be pretty substantial.
• You can also earn $135 for every sale referred through CJ Affiliate. However, the cookie life is only 30 days, rather than 120 offered in the in-house program.

6. Fiverr

Commission: $15-50 for Fiverr CPA, $10 CPA + 10% RevShare for Fiverr Hybrid, or 30% of every Fiverr Learn course order

Cookie life: 30 days

Fiverr has a few products you might promote on your own website or blog — including Fiverr (the freelance marketplace with digital services for everything from marketing to tech), Fiverr Pro (access to hand-vetted talent trusted by major brands), and Fiverr Learn (courses for freelancers and businesses looking to expand their skills).

If you work with clients who might need to hire a freelancer for marketing, design, or tech skills, or you write a blog for entrepreneurs and want to promote Fiverr Learn, you might want to consider partnering with Fiverr. The popular site, with over 5.5 million users, offers affiliates a dashboard to manage and monitor campaigns, and creative assets to help you promote their services. Of course, commission varies depending on the service you want to promote. Take a look at their full offerings here.

7. Pabbly

Commission: 30% recurring

Cookie life: 30 days

Pabbly is an online platform that offers multiple marketing and business management tools for email marketing, form building, subscription-billing, email verification, workflow automation, and app integration. The most popular package is Pabbly Plus — a cost-effective bundle of all the Pabbly applications.

Unique features of their affiliate program include:

• You can promote all or any of their products to get a 30% commission within 40 days of the sale.
• They track sales of all their products using a single cookie. So whatever product you promote, it will get you a commission on the sale of all the products purchased through your affiliate link. Also, this will save you from referring each product separately to your audience.
• A single sale of Pabbly products can provide you the minimum commission of $183.

Additionally, they provide a single dashboard for monitoring sales, allowing you to view all your commission-related details — such as sales, referrals, and payouts — in a single place.

8. Unbounce

Commission: 20% of recurring revenue for every customer you refer

Cookie life: 90 days

This popular landing page platform — used by brands such as Campaign Monitor and Zola — helps users design high-converting landing pages for SaaS businesses, ecommerce sites, and agencies. Unbounce’s affiliate program is impressive, giving you the opportunity to earn 20% of the recurring revenue for every customer you refer.

Plus, your site visitors or social media followers get 20% off their first three months using Unbounce, making the exchange valuable for them, as well. Unbounce provides you with plenty of tools to succeed using their affiliate program, including a Partner coach, custom dashboard to track progress, and training and promotional materials to ensure you’re promoting their business as effectively as possible. If you’re a marketer hoping to help clients increase conversions on their landing pages, this partnership could be a win-win for you both.

9. Constant Contact

Commission: $5 for each referral that signs up for a free trial, and $105 when your referrals pay for a new account

Cookie life: 120 days

Constant Contact offers powerful email marketing tools for small businesses, bloggers, and entrepreneurs. Among other things, users of Constant Contact can create Instagram and Facebook Ads, automate their email marketing campaigns, target new ecommerce customers, and send follow-up emails to increase revenue to their online stores.

The company’s affiliate program enables you to earn $5 for all qualified leads, and $105 when the referral becomes a customer of Constant Contact.

Additionally, you’ll receive promotional materials, a tracking dashboard, and personalized support to help you succeed with the affiliate program. Constant Contact is used by major brands including Facebook, WordPress, and Shopify. If you believe your clients or prospects could benefit from email marketing tools, this is a good partnership to consider.

10. Typeform

Commission: 20% recurring

Cookie life: Unknown

Typeform, which offers conversational forms and surveys including Contact Forms, Employee Satisfaction Surveys, and Event Lead Capture Forms, offers a 20% recurring commission on referrals. That means you’ll earn up to 20% of a referred customers’ subscription to Typeform, as long as the subscription remains active.

This adds up quickly, and the service is relatively cheap, making it easy for your referrals to make a purchase. If you refer 100 customers who sign up for a monthly basic plan, you would bring in $580 every month.

Best Online Course Affiliate Programs

11. Thinkific

Commission: 30% recurring

Cookie life: 90 days

Thinkific’s powerful all-in-one platform makes it easy to share your knowledge, grow your audience, and scale the business you already love. The platform enables users to create, market, and sell online courses and membership sites under their own brand.

You’re an ideal candidate for Thinkific’s affiliate program if your audience is made up of any of the following:

• Content creators with skills and knowledge to share;
• Business leaders who want to create courses for customers; or
• Entrepreneurs who want to add new revenue streams

As an affiliate partner, your perks include a 30% lifetime recurring commission, a competitive 90-day cookie window, and access to ready-to-post creative and promotional content. Thinkific affiliate partners earn up to $1,700 per referral every year.

12. Kajabi

Commission: 30% recurring

Cookie life: 30 days

Kajabi is an all-in-one platform that lets users create online courses, launch marketing campaigns, build landing pages, and design the perfect website.

The Kajabi Partner Program is currently only open to Kajabi users. As an affiliate, you’ll receive a 30% lifetime commission for any new member you bring to Kajabi that stays active past their trial period. What’s more, you will be treated to special rewards as you progress. Each level unlocks exciting bonuses only available to Kajabi Partners.

13. Teachable

Commission: 30% recurring, with the ability to earn up to 50% commission through monthly bonuses

Cookie life: 90 days

Teachable helps you create and sell beautiful online courses. With over 18 million students and 186 thousand active courses, Teachable is one of the most reputable e-learning platforms. Plus, it’s heavily endorsed by Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income.

Ranging from Facebook ads to cake decorating tips, Teachable is suited for a variety of niche subjects. Teachable’s affiliate program pays a recurring 30% commission on the referral’s monthly subscription fee. Plans can go anywhere from $29 to $499 per month, meaning you’ll be able to earn up to $150 a month per sale.

14. iSpring

Commission: 10% per sale

Cookie life: 90 days

iSpring is an international software development company that produces tools for eLearning content authoring and online training. Their flagship product is iSpring Suite, an award-winning authoring tool that allows the creation of interactive online courses, quizzes, video tutorials, role-plays, and ebooks.

iSpring Suite has an intuitive interface that is familiar to everyone (the tool works as a PowerPoint add-in) and offers solutions for any learning need. And that’s why it has become popular among people from different fields: from university professors to corporate instructional designers.

The affiliate program includes iSpring Suite and iSpring Suite Max, which cost $770 and $970, respectively. Thus, you can earn from $77 to $97 from a single purchase and around $1000/month if you provide 10+ customers monthly. You will receive verified commissions quarterly.

Best Website Builder Affiliate Programs

15. Shopify

Commission: 200% commission after a referral has been an active subscriber for 2 months

Cookie life: 30 days

With nearly 2 million merchants worldwide, Shopify has truly proven itself as a market leader in the drop-shipping industry. Shopify has everything you need to start your online store, including website builders, shopping carts, web hosting and store management tools, analytics features, payment processing, and much more.

If your audience is all about e-commerce and needs help setting up an online store, Shopify’s affiliate program might be for you. Affiliates earn a whooping 200% commission on the cost of a monthly subscription (that’s up to $2,400!). Additionally, when a referral signs up for a Shopify Plus account, you get paid a flat $2,000 bounty payment.

On top of the money, as a Shopify affiliate, you get priority support for your own Shopify store, as well as free Shopify content to promote to your audience.

Joining the program is absolutely free. The main drawbacks may be that the target for this program is quite niche, since you’ll need an audience that sells products online and doesn’t already have a solid e-commerce platform.

16. Leadpages

Commission: Up to 50% commission

Cookie life: 30 days

Leadpages is an online tool that lets you create easy-to-customize landing pages to collect contact information and boost your conversion rates. (You can learn more about LeadPages by reading reviews.)

Their affiliate program is only open to Leadpages customers. Each paying customer referred brings in a lifetime commission of 30%. Membership prices range from $25 to $200 per month.

Leadpages will sometimes run special offers, such as a $5,000 bonus for affiliates who drive 10+ sales by a given date. All affiliates get access to banners, sidebar images, and social media-friendly links. You also have the option to share a unique link to a free content page (like a blog post or video) rather than a product page.

17. Wix

Commission: $100 per Premium sale

Cookie life: 30 days

If you’re interested in unlimited payouts with minimal effort, Wix could be for you. The web development company is one of the most popular web hosting platforms, and offers $100 per Premium referral with no limit on the amount of people you can refer (which means, if you refer 10 people, you’ve already made $1,000). Additionally, Wix provides links and creatives, including banners and landing pages in all languages, to make it easy for you to include their link on your site.

However, it’s important to note that there is a minimum sales target you need to reach to get paid — $300 per month (if you make less than that, your earnings will stay in your account until you reach that benchmark). If you feel your website, blog, or social channel is visited on a regular basis by prospects who might be interested in creating their own website on a hosting platform, this could be a good program for you, but if you’re unsure if you can meet the minimum sales target for a while, you might want to reconsider.

Best Web Hosting Affiliate Programs

18. WP Engine

Commission: $200+ per signup

Cookie window: 180 days

There are millions of websites on the internet, and more than 40% are built on WordPress. WP Engine provides super-fast web hosting for thousands of WordPress websites around the world.

WP Engine’s affiliate program runs on the ShareASale network. By promoting WP Engine plans, you can earn $200 per signup or 100% of the customer’s first monthly payment — whichever one is higher. You gain access to exclusive affiliate discounts you can offer to your audience.

You can also promote StudioPress themes and earn 35% of the sales generated. These purchases get 60 days of cookie tracking.

It’s important to note — WP Engine’s affiliate program is two-tiered, which means that you’ll get paid not only for referring customers, but also for referring affiliates. You get $50 for each of their referrals.

While it may not be easy to find an audience looking to build a new WordPress website, when you do find those users, the profits can be huge.

19. Kinsta

Commission: Up to $500 per referral + 10% recurring

Cookie life: 60 days

Kinsta was founded in 2013 by veteran WordPress developers “with a desire to create the best WordPress hosting platform in the world.” They strive to offer WordPress hosting that is fast, secure, and reliable.

Kinsta’s affiliate program pays an initial commission, followed by a recurring 10% monthly payment. Affiliates can earn up to $500 initially, depending on the type of plan the referral has purchased:

• Starter: $30
• Pro: $100
• Business: $150
• Enterprise: $500

While 10% may not seem like much, your referrals are likely to have a high lifetime value, thanks to Kinsta’s high customer retention rate of 95%.

20. Bluehost

Commission: $65 per sale

Cookie life: 45 days

Bluehost, a web hosting platform that supports more than 2 million websites, offers a phenomenal affiliate program for any business or entrepreneur looking to monetize their blog or website. If you promote Bluehost’s products or services on your own blog or website (either through custom banners or links), you can earn anywhere from $65 to $130 per sale generated from your website — an incredibly high fee.

Best of all, it’s free to join their affiliate program, and Bluehost offers reliable tracking to ensure you get credit for each lead you provide them. Plus, Bluehost offers affiliate managers who can offer support or personalized advice.

21. Hostgator

Commission: $65 to $125 per signup

Cookie life: 60 days

Hostgator offers both web hosting and building tools, and is incredibly low-cost for startups or ecommerce businesses with limited budgets — for instance, a starter plan costs only $3.84/month.

It’s free to become a Hostgator affiliate, and their tiered payouts are substantial — you can make $65 per signup if you provide Hostgator with 1-5 signups per month, and up to $125 per signup if you provide Hostgator with over 21 signups. You can either embed tracking links on your site or create a custom coupon code. Since Hostgator provides a 45-day money-back guarantee, it’s low-risk for your website visitors to try it out.

22. GreenGeeks

Commission: $50 for one sale; up to $100 for six sales

Cookie life: 30 days

GreenGeeks, an eco-friendly, secure web hosting platform, allows you to earn up to $100 per sale. They have a tiered program that pays generously — including $50 for just one sale, and $100 for six or more. Additionally, the company provides a selection of creative assets, content, and banners to ensure you’re proud of the link or banner you include on your website or blog.

If you believe your blog readers or website visitors are interested in exploring web hosting platforms (for instance, if you write content for freelancers), this could be a good option to explore. Best of all, the company promotes eco-friendly alternatives, so you can feel good knowing you’re spreading a positive, “green message” to your site visitor

Best Retail Affiliate Programs

Disclaimer: Commissions for retail stores are much smaller because the purchase price is much smaller. But this also means that it’s easier to get your audience to buy those items (low price = low commitment), which could translate into high conversion rates and higher returns.

23. Amazon Associates

Commission: 1-10% (depending on the product category)

Cookie life: 24 hours

Amazon is one of the most popular online shopping platforms, so if you’re looking to buy something, chances are you’ll find it on Amazon.

Amazon Associates get commissions between 1% and 10%, depending on the category the product purchased falls under. The most valuable items to promote are clothes and luxury beauty products, both of which can earn you a 10% cut on the price.

One of the main advantages of doing affiliate marketing with Amazon is that people already know the company and love to shop there, so it’s not a hard sell. The company has very high conversion rates, especially around the holidays. And because the product selection is so vast, it fits most kinds of businesses.

If you write about animals, for instance, you can promote cat treats or dog toys. If your audience is interested in cars, you can recommend jumper cables — you get the idea.

Additionally, if someone ends up on Amazon through your link and buys something other than what your content links to, you still get commission on the user’s entire cart.

Ultimately, the only downside is some categories have particularly low commissions, such as video games and electronics.

For businesses with large audiences, Amazon recently launched their new Amazon Influencer Program as an extension to the Associates program for social media influencers. You get similar benefits to the online Associates program, as well as your own page on Amazon with a unique URL to showcase the products you recommend to your followers.

Currently, you must have a YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook account to qualify. Amazon looks at the number of followers and other engagement metrics of your social media accounts to determine whether you’re eligible for the program.

24. Target

Commission: 1-8% (depending on the product category and sales volume)

Cookie life: 7 days

While it doesn’t offer as wide a selection as Amazon or eBay, Target remains a highly recognizable brand with a variety of different products.

Target’s affiliate program operates on a volume-based commission structure, meaning that your commission increases as the number of items purchased increases. Sadly, a product category that does not benefit from this model is the Health and Beauty products — the commission on this category caps at 1%, regardless of volume.

It’s also critical to note — most people tend to prefer buying Target products in-person, rather than online, so this could have an impact on your returns.

25. Hammacher Schlemmer

Commission: 8% on any sale

Cookie life: 30 days

Hammacher Schlemmer is America’s longest-running catalog with a lifetime of over 150 years, and continues to successfully sell items ranging from electronics to outdoor living gear. Additionally, the company offers an impressive affiliate program with the potential to earn incredibly high commissions.

They offer 8% commission on any product you’re able to sell through your own website or blog. While 8% might not sound like a lot, consider some of the higher-priced items they sell, including a Muhammad Ali Autographed Photo Collage for $5,000, or the Full Immersion Professional Racer’s Simulator for $65,000.

Ultimately, if you’re able to find products or services on Hammacher Schlemmer’s website that align well with your own core offerings or might interest your buyer persona, you might consider partnering with the brand.

Additionally, this affiliate program could be a good idea for an ecommerce business interested in expanding their offerings. Hammacher Schlemmer provides tools (including password-protected online reports) and content to help your online store succeed.

26. Spocket

Commission: 20% per Bronze subscriber; 25% per Silver subscriber; 30% per Gold subscriber (up to 445.50 per subscriber)

Cookie life: 90 days

Spocket, a dropshipping supplier, wholesaler, and distributor of high-quality American and European products, enables entrepreneurs to sell products from thousands of dropshipping suppliers around the world. They also offer an incredibly impressive affiliate program — you can make up to $450 for each customer you refer to Spocket, and you’ll continue to collect commission off your referral’s Spocket account as long as they remain a customer.

Their program will also provide you with the tools and resources you need to successfully promote their business. If your website visitors are entrepreneurs or ecommerce businesses, this is a good affiliate program to explore.

27. eBay Partner Network

Commission: 1-4%, depending on category

Cookie life: 24 hours

With over one billion listings from a wide range of product categories, eBay’s affiliate program shares a lot of the same advantages as Amazon’s — well-known brand, high conversion rates, and a diverse selection of products.

The eBay Partner Network pays a commission of 1% to 4%. You earn a percentage of the revenue eBay earns from that purchase, based on the product category.

High-ticket items you can promote fall under Parts & Accessories, or Fashion. You can have a look at the complete rate card here. The one downside of this program is that it offers a cap for each category — with most falling well under $1,000. Your earning potential is thus limited.

Best Beauty and Cosmetic Affiliate Programs

28. Ulta

Commission: 1-5%

Cookie life: 30 days

Ulta is a go-to brand for beauty enthusiasts who want both affordable and prestige skincare, makeup, and personal care products. Ulta is popular for its diverse offerings, which can cater to the tastes of a large readership.

Ulta’s affiliate program pays 1-5% in commissions. While this number may seem low, the company is ranked #2 in the beauty and cosmetics online space, meaning that your readers have likely heard of it and could even be current customers. You are provided with dynamic banners and text links to promote Ulta’s products. The company has ongoing promotions, including free shipping and free products, to help you drive more sales.

29. Sephora

Commission: 5%

Cookie life: 24 hours

If you serve a more affluent readership, Sephora is the affiliate program for you. The retailer offers a wide selection of prestige beauty products, including skincare, body care, makeup, and fragrances. Additionally, they offer a superior customer experience — for instance, they offer a free gift with any purchase and have a strong rewards program.

Sephora’s affiliate program offers a 5% commission rate on all sales, which is higher than Ulta’s and most online retailers’ commission rates. Like most programs, Sephora gives affiliates access to promotional banners and other creative assets, which you can use on your site and social media accounts.

The only downside to this program is that the cookie length is uncommonly short: The cookie will expire just 24 hours after the user clicks on the affiliate link.

30. FragranceNet.com

Commission: 1-5%

Cookie life: Unknown

A leader in the online perfume space, FragranceNet.com gives you access to hundreds and thousands of top designer fragrances and aromatherapy products. It sells other products, too, such as skincare and makeup. However, due to its specialization in fragrances, we recommend it for bloggers who primarily write about fragrances.

Affiliates earn 1-5% for every purchase generated through their link. The brand gives you access to links and banners, fresh blog content, seasonal ads, and coupon codes to drive your referral to a conversion. The program is run through the Rakuten platform.

31. BH Cosmetics

Commission: 8%

Cookie life: 60 days

Born and raised in LA, BH Cosmetics is one of the leading companies in the beauty industry. They are passionate about creating new and innovative beauty trends and dedicated to bringing customers the best in cruelty-free cosmetics. They also run promotions and sales regularly to help convert those leads.

BH Cosmetics affiliates receive an 8% commission on purchases made within 60 days of the user’s visit. The site has an average order value of $38 and an on-site conversion rate of 6.46%.

As an affiliate, you’ll get exclusive access to coupons and banners you can use on your website, blog, or emails. You’ll also receive monthly affiliate newsletters. Plus, their dedicated in-house affiliate team runs monthly incentives and affiliate contests to encourage you to promote your affiliate link.

Best Travel Affiliate Programs

32. Boatbookings

Commission: 20% + 10% for returning customers

Cookie life: 30 days

If you think your website visitors might be interested in chartering yachts, you might want to join Boatbookings’ affiliate program. Boatbookings specializes in luxury yacht chartering, boat rentals, and sailing and motor yacht vacations.

On the charter value of a boat, Boatbookings receives commission on the net charter value (not including APA or any additional items ordered). On this commission, affiliates will earn 20% as a base rate, with a possibility for escalating rates if referring multiple clients. When customers return to Boatbookings, affiliates receive an additional 10% commission on that second purchase.

33. Cheapflights

Commission: Flat rate — up to $0.45 per click-out

Cookie life: Session

Cheapflights is a travel comparison site that helps users find the cheapest plane tickets.

Cheapflights is another company that rewards its affiliates not for bringing paying customers, but for sending traffic to their partners.

Affiliates are paid a flat fee when a user clicks through — $0.45 per click-out for desktop and tablet, and $0.25 for mobile.

As an affiliate, you get access to various creative assets, ranging from banners to search boxes and travel widgets, that allow your visitors to conduct a search on your site and display flights results on Cheapflights’ page. This is their most popular travel affiliate tool and generates the highest revenue per visit.

34. Momondo

Commission: Flat rate — up to $0.65 per click-out

Cookie life: Session

Momondo is a global travel search site that compares cheap flights, hotels, and car rental deals.

Each time someone clicks on a flight on Momondo’s website from your site’s link, you will earn $0.65 for desktop and tablet users, and $0.45 for mobile users.

35. Sandals Resorts

Commission: 4%

Cookie life: 60 days

Sandals is one of the most well-recognized names in Caribbean resort travel. All Sandals Resorts offer luxurious vacations for couples and families traveling to Jamaica, The Bahamas, Barbados, and more.

The Sandals affiliate program pays you a commission for referring users to book either a stay in one of the Sandals Resorts, or booking an activity. While 4% might seem like a small percentage, these luxury resorts have daily rates that range from $150 to over $2,000 per person — which means, if a couple were to book a romantic week in a Sandals Resort at $500 per person per night, you would earn a commission of $280!

This program is only worthwhile, however, if your site and audience has a true interest in luxury travel to the Caribbean.

Best Personal Finance and Investment Affiliate Programs

36. Acorns

Commission: $10 per qualified lead

Cookie life: 30 days

Acorn is a “micro-investing” mobile app that helps people between the ages of 25 and 35 invest their money wisely. If you own a financial advice blog that serves this demographic — especially if they haven’t yet accrued capital or assets — this is the affiliate program for you.

Affiliates receive $10 for every referred customer. You’ll receive a wide variety of creative assets to help you promote the app and a dedicated account manager to help you boost your marketing efforts.

37. Sage Financials

Commission: 7% per sale and $5 per free trial

Cookie life: 30 days

Sage Financials — a cloud accounting solution built on Salesforce that provides accounting, analytics, and reporting tools for small and mid-sized businesses — has an impressive affiliate program that includes a dedicated support team, commission paid directly into your bank account (and currency of choice), and detailed reporting on your performance and earnings.

Best of all, you’re able to receive commission even from free sign-ups Sage receives from your website or blog. If you feel your website visitors or blog readers are interested in accounting tools, this could be a good partnership to explore.

When you’re looking for affiliate programs, you might want to consider affiliate networks like LinkShare or CJ Affiliate that offer many different programs to choose from. There are no limits to the number of affiliate programs you can join.

Now that we’ve gone over some of the best affiliate programs overall, let’s go over the programs that pay the highest commission.

1. Elementor: 50% Per Sale

Commission: 50% per sale

Cookie life: 45 days

Elementor is a dynamic drag-and-drop website builder used to create 6% of all the world’s websites. With hundreds of widgets, integrations, website templates, and design tools, Elementor users can customize and scale their WordPress website-building process without writing a single line of code.

Yet, Elementor is more than simple software — it has 100k members in its online community where web creators share advice, host meetups, and push each other to professional growth.

Elementor affiliates earn 50% per sale. The software has five pricing packages, ranging from $49 to $999 per year. This broad array of pricing tiers makes it easier for affiliates to strategically market various plans to specific audiences.

With notable affiliates earning north of $10,000 a month, Elementor is an attractive option to consider.

2. Semrush: $200 per Subscription

Commission: $200 per subscription, $10 per free trial, and $0.01 per new sign up

Cookie life: 10 years

Semrush is a SaaS company that specializes in SEO and competitive analysis tools for digital marketers. Its affiliate program offers $200 per subscription, so if you refer 10 people only, you’ll be bringing in $2,000 per month. Plus, they offer a very generous 10-year cookie life.

Since Semrush’s affiliate program functions under a first cookie attribution model, if a referral were to cancel their subscription and sign up again in the future (within 10 years), you still get commission on that second subscription.

Exclusive Semrush promotional material is available in five different languages, and applicants are automatically pre-approved, so the sign-up process is only a few minutes, enabling you to get started right away.

3. Coursera: Up to 45% Per Sale

Commission: 10-45%

Cookie life: 30 days

Coursera offers over 1,000 courses and specializations ranging anywhere from Digital Marketing to Applied Data Science and Personal Development. Each course consists of pre-recorded videos, puzzles, and assignments.

Coursera’s affiliate program runs on the Linkshare network and offers a commission ranging from 10% to 45% with bonuses for strong performance. Courses and Specializations are generally priced between $29 and $99. As a Coursera affiliate, you get access to professionally-designed banners and a monthly affiliate newsletter with curated content recommendations.

4. BigCommerce: 200% per Sale

Commission: 200% or $1,500 per enterprise customer

Cookie life: 90 days

Founded in 2009, BigCommerce is an online store builder that powers thousands of e-commerce stores in over 150 countries. It serves a wide variety of industries, including

fashion, automotive, manufacturing, food, and health.

When you refer visitors to BigCommerce, you earn 200% of the customer’s first monthly payment (that’s up to $500 per referral!), or $1,500 per enterprise customer.

5. 3dcart: $100 per Signup

Commission: $100 per signup, including free trials

Cookie life: 45 days

3dcart is an e-commerce platform with a high focus on SEO. It provides you with all the tools you need to build, promote, and grow your online store. Users can use 3dcart to start an online business, add a shopping cart to an existing site, or replace their current shopping cart platform.

Affiliates earn a $100 commission on each referred customer. Their affiliate program runs on both the Commission Junction and ShareASale networks, and both offer the same commission and cookie life, so it’s up to you to decide which platform you like best.

6. Flywheel: 300% per Signup

Commission: 300%, up to $500 per referral

Cookie life: 90 days

As another dedicated WordPress hosting solution, Flywheel aims to take away all the hassle that comes with web hosting so users can focus on doing what they do best — creating and designing websites.

Flywheel affiliates can earn up to $500 per referral. You get access to tons of creative assets, from banners to co-branded landing pages to stylish social images. The Flywheel team will even work with you to create custom images that can take your commissions to the next level.

It’s worth noting that there is no minimum threshold limit to receive a payment.

7. TripAdvisor: Minimum 50% per Booking

Commission: Minimum 50% per booking

Cookie life: 14 days

Crowned the “world’s largest travel site”, TripAdvisor provides travelers with the wisdom of the crowds to help them decide where to stay, how to fly, what to do, and where to eat. The site helps you compare prices from 200+ hotel booking sites so you can find the lowest price on the hotel that’s right for you.

Powered by Commission Junction, TripAdvisor’s affiliate program pays a 50% commission off the revenue generated from a user clicking on links and/or ads that send them to a TripAdvisor partner site. Which means, unlike most other affiliate programs in this list, you don’t have to wait for your referral to make a purchase to earn your commission. As soon as someone comes from your website and clicks on one of the ads or links on the TripAdvisor website, you get paid.

On average, affiliates will earn between $0.15-$0.75 per click-out. While it may not seem like a lot, since your revenue is only dependent on clicks (and not purchase), this can add up quite nicely.

8. Volusion: 200% per Signup

Commission: 200% per Signup

Cookie life: 45 days

Volusion is an e-commerce solution that enables small businesses to create, manage, and expand their online stores. They provide customers with exports to help them every step of the way, including help with domain purchase, web design, cart integration, SEO, and security.

Affiliates get paid a 200% commission on the referred customer’s first monthly payment, which can range anywhere from $29 to $299 (or even higher with their Prime custom tier). As an affiliate, you get access to marketing material to assist in your promotional efforts.

9. Invoice Ninja: 50% per Signup

Commission: 50% on all referrals for four years

Cookie life: N/A; instead of cookie, Invoice Ninja tracks by account creation from referral URL (for four years)

Invoice Ninja, a free open-source invoicing app for freelancers and businesses, offers a Ninja Pro Plan for just $10 a month — and, as an affiliate partner, you can make 50% on all referrals for four years. That means, if you refer 100 Pro users, you’ll receive $5,000 every year for the next four years.

Additionally, any user can start free and upgrade when they decide it’s worthwhile, so it’s easy for your site visitors to give the tool a try. You can provide their affiliate link in your email signature, on a blog post, or in an email newsletter, and Invoice Ninja provides both logos and ads to make it easy to promote their tool. If your social media followers or website visitors are typically online entrepreneurs or freelancers, this could be a good partnership to consider.

10. Capitalist Exploits: 50% per Sale

Commission: 50%

Cookie life: 365 days

Capitalist Exploits provides trade recommendations for investors and anyone looking to outperform the market by sharing only the best low-risk/high-reward opportunities to subscribers.

If your target audience consists of investors, high net-worth individuals, people interested in investment, financial advisors, or wealth managers, then this program might be for you.

Capitalist Exploits pays a 50% commission on any referred sale with absolutely no limits. Their products range from $1,575 to $3,499. This means each referral brings you a minimum of $787.50. Affiliates also receive exclusive access to paid membership trials for your audience.

Ultimately, when deciding which program to choose, there are many key elements to keep in mind, including how established your online following is, and how much you want to earn.

And, most importantly — who is your audience, and what are they interested in?

Think about what your website visitors or your social media followers need and could benefit from, and choose an affiliate marketing program that will let you promote products in support of that. Once you do that, you’ll be well on your way to exponentially multiplying your affiliate income.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

When it comes to social media, marketers’ top goals are advertising their products/services and increasing their brand awareness, according to 2021 HubSpot Blog Research.

However, many brands struggle with creating engaging content and reaching their target audience. With social media playing such an important role at the top of the funnel, let’s dive into all things social media marketing – what it is, its benefits, and how to actually build a social media marketing strategy that’ll work for your specific business.

Social media marketing is all about meeting your target audience and customers where they are and as they socially interact with each other and your brand.

While social media marketing as a whole is incredibly valuable and beneficial to your business growth (as you’ll see in the following section), your strategy will differ based on which social networks your audience spends their time on.

Before we dig deeper into social media marketing, let’s segment the strategy by platform.

Social Media Marketing Platforms

Facebook

• Users: 1.9 billion daily active users worldwide
• Audience: An even spread of Generation X and Millennials
• Industry impact: B2C
• Best for: Brand awareness; advertising

Facebook is the largest social media platform and the most established. Since its launch in 2004, it has become an invaluable tool for B2C businesses, offering advanced advertising tools as well as organic opportunities.

TikTok

• Users: 1 billion active monthly global users
• Audience: Primarily Gen Z followed by Millennials
• Industry impact: B2B and B2C
• Best for: Short-form, creative video content; user-generated content; brand awareness

When you think of short-form video, you probably think of TikTok. The platform rose in popularity in 2020 and shows no signs of slowing down. It’s one of the best platforms for community building, with marketers ranking it in second place behind YouTube.

Instagram

• Users: 1 billion monthly active users
• Audience: Primarily Millennials
• Industry impact: B2C
• Best for: High-quality images and videos; user-generated content; advertising

Although Instagram launched only 12 years ago, the platform has taken the world by storm. When it comes to sharing visually compelling content, Instagram is where brands go. Another thing that sets the platform apart is its advanced ecommerce tools.

Today, users can discover brands, browse their products and/or service, and complete a purchase without ever leaving the app – making Instagram a hard platform to beat.

Twitter

• Users: 211 million daily active users worldwide
• Audience: Primarily Millennials
• Industry impact: B2B and B2C
• Best for: Public relations; customer service; community building

While Instagram focuses on visuals, Twitter focuses on words. Since the early days of 140-character Tweets, the platform has now expanded to include an audio tool called Twitter Spaces, a community-building tool called Twitter Communities, and Twitter Moments to share interesting content with your followers.

LinkedIn

• Users: 774 million active users worldwide
• Audience: Baby boomers, Generation X, and Millennials
• Industry impact: B2B
• Best for: B2B relationships, business development, and social selling

LinkedIn is Facebook’s professional cousin. It’s perhaps the only platform where its audience is clearly defined: Working professionals looking to network and seek out new opportunities.

That makes it the ideal platform for B2B companies looking to identify key decision-makers and build an industry-specific community.

YouTube

• Users: Over 315 million daily active users worldwide
• Audience: Primarily Millennials but has a strong audience across gender and age demographics
• Industry impact: B2C and B2B
• Best for: Brand awareness; long-form entertainment, and how-to videos

According to HootSuite, YouTube is the second most visited website in the world. In addition, marketers name it the best platform to build community.

In addition to being an incredibly popular platform, its users also tend to stay longer on it because it features mostly long-form content – making it an ideal platform to share educational content.

Snapchat

• Users: 306 million daily active users worldwide
• Audience: Primarily Generation Z
• Industry impact: B2C
• Best for: Brand awareness; advertising

When Snapchat came out in 2011, leading the charge in ephemeral content. It introduced content that you could share with your friends and that would expire after 24 hours.

The platform peaked in 2015 and has held strong since then. Many thought the brand would disappear once Instagram introduced Stories, the same feature with a different name. However, Snapchat continues to be popular among young adults.

Pinterest

• Users: 444 million monthly active users worldwide
• Audience: Primarily Millennials with a solid audience in Gen Z, Gen X and Baby Boomers
• Industry impact: B2C
• Best for: Visual advertising; inspiration

Think of Pinterest like a visual storyboard that allows users to get inspiration for everything from fashion to home decor.

85% of Pinners say Pinterest is where they go to start a new project. In addition, 80%

of weekly Pinners say they’ve discovered a new brand or product on the platform. So, not only is it a great discovery tool but it’s also a way for brands to build their narrative through visual stories.

Clubhouse

• Users: 10 million weekly active users worldwide
• Audience: Primarily Millennials
• Industry impact: B2B and B2C
• Best for: Visual advertising; inspiration

Clubhouse made a strong impression as soon as it entered the social media world in 2020. The audio-only platform allows people to start interesting conversations with followers as well as strangers and build community.

The platform also gained some buzz for its invitation-only set up when it was in beta testing. Today, the platform is open to everyone globally and on both IOS and Android devices. Another big selling point to this platform is that it works well for both B2B and B2C businesses and leverages audio, which has made a huge comeback in recent years.

Now that we’ve detailed the fundamentals of each social media network, let’s discuss why social media marketing is beneficial for your business.

Benefits of Social Media Marketing

There are a variety of reasons why your company should use social media marketing. We’ve created a list of the four most beneficial reasons to consider.

Let’s dive in.

1. Increase your brand awareness.

Due to the sheer amount of people on social media, you’re missing out on the potential to reach thousands, and even millions, if you don’t have a presence.

In fact, social media has been proven to boost brand awareness by driving up engagement. Social engagement includes things like comments, likes, shares, and reposts, and saves.

It also helps you increase brand awareness by directing traffic straight to your site. You can do this by including direct links to your website in your profile, bio, and posts.

Featured Resource

• How to Build a Brand for Your Company

2. Generate leads and boost conversions.

Promoting and sharing your products on social media is a simple way to improve lead generation, boost conversions, and increase sales because you’re advertising to people who have opted to engage with you by following your account.

Here are some examples of ways you can use social media to generate more leads.

• Create contests for your visitors and followers to participate in on your social media profiles.
• Include links to your website and offers in the bio sections of your profiles.
• Host live videos to make announcements about products and provide updates or details about exciting news at your company.
• Implement a social media marketing campaign on one of your channels.
• Sell your products through your social profiles. For example, you can enable Facebook’s Shop Section or Instagram’s Shopping feature on your profiles. These features allow your visitors and followers to click on products you’ve shared in posts to view information such as price, material, and size. Then, visitors can easily proceed to checkout through the platform and buy the product directly from you.

3. Foster relationships with your customers.

By connecting and engaging with your social media followers, you’ll be able to build lasting relationships between them and your business. You can do this by interacting with them on your posts, responding to their questions and comments, and providing them with any help they may need.

You can also ask your followers questions about your products, their pain points, or create giveaways to help you build trust and show them how much you value their input and support.

4. Learn from your competitors.

Social media is a great way to keep tabs on your competitors — whether that’s in reference to their social media tactics, the products they’re promoting, the campaigns they’re implementing, or their level of interaction with followers.

Social media allows you to get a look at what is and isn’t working for your competition, and therefore helps you decide what should or shouldn’t change in terms of your company’s approach.

Lastly, reviewing the social accounts of your competitors can help you make sure your marketing stands out and is unique to your brand.

Learn how to conduct a competitive analysis to discover how you can beat the competition.

Now, let’s talk strategy — there are five steps to ensure your social media marketing plan is sustainable and positively impacts your business.

Although social media is constantly evolving, most of the foundational steps you need to succeed stay the same. Essentially, you’re following the same steps you would take to create a marketing strategy and narrow it to a specific channel.

Let’s cover these steps in more detail so you can begin applying them to your business.

Step 1: Research your buyer personas and audience.

The first step to creating a social media marketing strategy is to determine who your buyer personas and audience are so you can target their needs and interests appropriately.

To do this, think about the people you’re trying to reach and why, and how you would classify them as a group. For example, if your company sells trendy leggings and joggers, you might classify your target audience as millennials who like to wear stylish athletic apparel regularly — a style known as athleisure.

By considering your buyer personas and audience, you’ll then be able to determine what content will attract the type of followers and customers you hope to gain. Plus, learn how to create engaging content to keep your followers interested.

Recommended Tools

• Buyer Persona Templates
• Make My Persona Tool

Step 2: Determine which social platforms you’ll market on.

As a social media marketer, it’s crucial you determine which platforms you’re going to share your content on.

There’s not necessarily a right or wrong answer when it comes to which social channels your business should use — it’s more about the needs of your target audience and where they tend to spend their time.

“It’s important to be where your audience of potential customers is today, and where they might be tomorrow,” said Andrew Delaney, former social media marketing manager at HubSpot. “It’s better to be ahead of the curve than behind.”

For example, if you are going for that target audience of athleisure-loving millennials, you may want to focus the majority of your social media efforts on Instagram — this is because millennials cover the largest portion of users on the platform.

Stephanie Morgan, founder and CEO of social media agency Social Lock, echoes this sentiment.

“Think about their behaviors and where they hang out online. If that’s Pinterest, use that platform for your brand. If that’s TikTok, use that platform for your brand,” Morgan adds. “Don’t waste time on a platform that your ideal client avatar is not very active on.”

Recommended Tools and Resources

• A Marketer’s Guide to Snapchat for Business
• 50 Facebook Ad Examples We Actually Clicked
• YouTube for Business: A 30-Day Roadmap for Growth
• How to Use Twitter for Business (+ Follower Tracking Template)
• 12 Pinterest Templates for Business

Step 3: Create unique and engaging content.

With the billions of social media users around the globe, there’s no question that at least some of your followers — or the people browsing your profile — have also seen your competitor’s content or that of other businesses in your industry.

That’s why you must have engaging social media content that stands out and provides viewers with a reason to click that “Follow” button and interact with your brand.

Not sure what’s considered engaging? Morgan has a recommendation.

“My number one tip to brands for creating engaging content on social media is to do market research first because what will be engaging depends on the audience,” Morgan said. “When you know what your audience likes and needs to know, you can create content that engages those interests.”

To help you get creative, consider the content your competitors are sharing and how you can uniquely promote your products. Also, take advantage of the features offered by the platform you’re using.

For example, you can create live videos on Facebook to share the latest details about a product launch or conduct a giveaway.

You can also use your current customers and promoters to help you generate content. You can do this by re-posting their content or encouraging them to use a hashtag to share their own experiences and pictures with your products.

Lastly, leverage trends. Social media trends are always coming up, especially on short-form video platforms like TikTok. Don’t be afraid to join in but you still have to be intentional about how you do it.

“If the trend started happening three weeks ago, you’ve probably missed the boat,” Morgan said. “Catching the trends early is the best way to capitalize on it without coming across as inauthentic or like you’re trying too hard, or worse [as] ‘chuegy’ – see Gen Z for that one.”

Recommended Tools and Resources

• The Social Media Trends Report

Step 4: Organize a schedule for your posts.

One of the easiest ways to ensure your content is shared as planned is to use a social media management solution. These tools allow you to write captions, prepare pictures and videos, and schedule posts in advance.

They also automatically share your content on schedule and monitor all post interactions and engagement for you. Social media management solutions save you time and allow you to focus on your other tasks.

There are a number of solution options available — here are a few examples.

Recommended Tools and Resources

• Social Media Content Calendar Template
• Social Media Content Calendar Template for Startups

You can also leverage social media software to meet your goals.

HubSpot offers a social media tool — as part of the marketing software — to help you publish and monitor your content and create real connections with your followers.

You can schedule and publish your content in advance and compare in-depth reports on your posts’ engagement to understand the performance of various platforms, types of content, and posting times.

Sprout Social is another social media marketing and management solution designed to help your team organize and plan content creation, manage campaigns, understand engagement, and review content reports and analysis.

With Hootsuite, you can schedule posts in advance on all of your channels at once and measure your ROI with comprehensive content analysis.

How often should you post on social media?

Now, you might be wondering how often you should post content on your social media channels.

As a rule of thumb, you should only post on social when you have quality content to share. Meaning, there’s a reason you’re posting the content. This is how you’ll strike the right balance when it comes to your posting frequency.

Morgan says the top mistake she sees brands make in regards to social media marketing is focusing on quantity of content instead of the quality of content.

“They think they need to post every day, so they force themselves to create posts to fill up the calendar,” she said. “Odds are, every single one of those posts isn’t going to be very valuable to the ideal customer, I’ve coined this ‘clutter content.'”

Instead, she recommends downsizing in quantity and upping the quality.

“It’s better to post two or three times a week with super valuable content, versus posting seven times a week with only one or two valuable posts,” said Morgan.

There are plenty of studies and resources available explaining social media post frequency standards by industry and platform for you to follow. Every business is different, so find what works for your audience.

Then, you can begin experimenting with more or fewer posts – as well as other factors such as the time of day you’re posting on social – to determine what provides the highest level of engagement.

How to Analyze Your Social Media Marketing Impact and Results

One of the most important aspects of social media marketing is ensuring your efforts are successful in helping you meet your goals. To determine this, you’ll need to keep track of all of your posts, on every channel. You can do this by reviewing and managing your social media metrics.

Social Media Metrics

Social media metrics are data related to the success of your posts and your impact on your audience and customers on various platforms. These metrics may include data about your level of engagement, likes, follows, shares, and all other interactions on each platform.

Here are 10 of the most important metrics for you to track:

1. Engagement: This includes clicks, comments, likes, and replies on your social media posts. There are also platform-specific types of engagement such as “Saved” posts on Instagram and “Pinned” posts on Pinterest.
2. Reach: The number of people who have seen any content associated with your page or profile is your reach.
3. Followers: This is the number of people you have on your profile who have clicked your “Follow” button and see your content in their feeds regularly.
4. Impressions: This is the number of times a post from your profile or page is seen, whether or not your audience members click on it. This is often what happens when someone is scrolling through their newsfeed, but not clicking on anything.
5. Video views: On Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, or any other social channel with video capabilities, this is the number of views each gets.
6. Profile visits: The number of people who have opened your social media page is your number of profile visits.
7. Mentions: This is the number of times your profile has been mentioned by audience members in their posts.
8. Tags: This is when your audience adds the name of your company’s profile or your hashtag to another post.
9. Reposts: This is when a member of your audience posts a piece of your content on their profile.
10. Shares: These are the posts your followers and audience take from your profile and share with their network.

You can influence all of these metrics, increase your social following, and improve overall engagement on your profile by using the same tactics you would to generate leads and boost conversions.

Morgan adds that the metrics you focus on will depend on which season you’re in. Here’s her formula:

• If you’re new, focus on building an audience and awareness. Key metrics: reach, impressions, audience growth.
• If you’re growing, focus on building trust. Key metrics: Likes, saves, comments, DMs.
• If you’re established, focus on retaining and nurturing. Key metrics: Likes, saves, comments, DMs.
• If you’re launching something, focus on selling. Key metrics: DMs and clickthrough rate

How to Measure Social Media Metrics

You can review social media metrics in a variety of ways, For example, you can use the analytics tools built into the various platforms you use. Here are a few examples:

• Twitter Analytics
• Facebook Analytics
• Instagram Insights

You might also choose to use an analytics and tracking tool such as Google Analytics. This is a great option if you want to track your social media and website metrics. Lastly, many social media scheduling solutions — as we reviewed earlier — have monitoring and tracking features automatically built-in.

All of these metrics tracking tools will give you a better understanding of what your followers and audience respond well to and what you should consider modifying to improve engagement.

Now that we’ve reviewed the benefits of social media marketing and how to build your strategy, let’s talk about the various resources available to help you along the way.

Social Media Marketing Resources

There are a plethora of social media marketing resources you can use to build a social strategy for your company. You’re bound to feel more confident about working on your company’s social media marketing initiative with the help of the following courses, training, and books.

Social Media Marketing Courses and Training

Here are three ways to earn an education in the field of social media marketing if you feel it’s necessary for your specific business situation.

1. Earn a certificate administered by a company.

A certificate is a quick and simple way to gain a deep understanding of social media marketing courses.

HubSpot offers a free social media certification course, which teaches you how to engage with your customers and improve conversions. You’ll also get a better understanding of how to develop your strategy, extend your reach, and measure your social media ROI.

LinkedIn Learning is another platform where you can earn a certification and share it on your profile.

2. Leverage YouTube university.

YouTube is a goldmine when it comes to educational content.

With a quick search, you’ll find hundreds of long-form videos that offer in-depth courses on social media marketing. Granted, you can’t connect with a live educator. However, it’s free and can be a great starting point before you dive into a paid course.

Social Media Marketing Books

Reading relevant content about social media marketing is another great way to learn more about the field. Here are a few examples of some highly-regarded books on the topic.

1. Likable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook by Dave Kerpen

This New York Times Bestseller covers the reasons why being likable and engaging with followers on social media is one of the most powerful ways to grow your base of customers and promoters.

The book teaches you how to make impactful content for your followers to interact with and share with their networks. Author Dave Kerpen also describes why you need to ensure you’re consistently delighting your followers to avoid losing them at any point in time.

2. Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World by Gary Vaynerchuk

According to author Gary Vaynerchuk, the key to social media marketing success isn’t about pushing out a lot of content — it’s about pushing out specific content tailored towards your target audience and using the right platform to do so.

In his book, Vaynerchuk covers how to do this as well as connect with your followers and customers on a deeper level through social media. You’ll learn how to create memorable and unique content that stands out in comparison to the competition’s content.

3. The B2B Social Media Book: Become a Marketing Superstar by Generating Leads with Blogging, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Email, and More by Kipp Bodnar

HubSpot’s CMO, Kipp Bodnar, writes about the ways B2B businesses can generate more leads and conversions through social media marketing.

There are actionable methods you can take to increase your base of followers and drive leads as well as understand the ROI of various B2B social media marketing strategies.

Emerging Social Media Platforms

Recent HubSpot Blog Research found that marketers are constantly on the lookout for new or emerging platforms, as often as even week.

Though it takes a while for platforms to take off, once they do, you want to have a plan in place for how you’re going to tackle it.

For instance, brands like Chipotle were one of the first to try short-form video content on TikTok. As a result, they have a strong presence on the platform while many others are still struggling to find their place.

Emerging platforms can offer a new avenue to reach your target audience in a way that may be more effective than what you’re doing now. Clubhouse and Discord are among some of the most popular emerging platforms.

However, others like Flyy and SpaceHey are looking to make their mark.

Want to learn more about what’s out there? Check out this article on new social media platforms you should keep your eye on in 2022.

Start Marketing on Social Media

Considering there are billions of people on social media today, it’s easy to see why so many businesses and marketers use the channel to promote their products and engage with customers.

Although determining your company’s social media course of action may seem daunting, you can avoid feeling overwhelmed by understanding social media marketing trends and using some of the many resources available about the topic. So, start working on your business’ social media marketing strategy today to increase your number of followers, improve engagement, and boost conversions.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in March 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

While many landing pages look different and use a variety of exciting strategies to pull in audiences, they all serve one major purpose — to convert to the next stage in the buyer’s journey.

Rather than serving as a basic advertisement that shows a customer a product, a landing page aims to engage and delight a customer by offering them something that relates to the product or the company’s industry. When they fill out the form and receive a reward of interesting content, they might be even more likely to trust your brand and become a customer.

Quick tip: Want an easy way to add a form to your landing page? HubSpot’s free form builder tool can help you fill your CRM with leads from your website.

Let’s talk through an example of when a landing page can be especially effective. If a business wants to sell an AI product that helps salespeople, they might create a landing page that offers audiences a free video on how to use AI in the sales industry. Interested audiences might offer their contact information in exchange for the valuable information. If they enjoy the video they’ve received, they might be more likely to respond to or purchase a product from a company rep who calls them.

In another scenario, a publishing company that targets an audience of chief executives might create a landing page that invites audiences to sign up for a webinar hosted by an executive at a major company.

After giving their email address on the signup form presented on the landing page, the leads get an email with the webinar dates and log in information, as well as instructions on how to sign up for the publication’s newsletter or subscription. If the user is pleased by the webinar, they might sign up for the newsletter or a subscription to keep up with similar publication content.

Although their purpose is simple enough in theory, actually designing a successful landing page requires some detailed planning and creative testing.

Even after launching your landing page, you’ll want to pay attention to conversion rates to see how well it’s doing.

To determine your conversion rate, simply divide the number of conversions a web page generates by the number of people who visited that page.

If your conversion rate isn’t close to the average just yet, don’t worry. Nailing those percentages can be a bit challenging at first, especially if you have a lot of regular page visitors. Luckily, there are a number of simple conversion rate optimization strategies that can help you boost your current rate quickly.

Regardless of what your business is selling or the conversion action you hope to instigate, it’s helpful to get inspired by seeing what other great landing pages look like.

And because there’s no one “right” way of designing a landing page, you’ll want to check out examples from lots of different industries for different stages of the buying process.

Want to get inspired? Check out the great landing page examples below.

We don’t have access to the analytics for each of these landing pages, so I can’t tell you specifically how well they convert visitors, contacts, leads, and customers. But many of them do follow best practices while also implementing a few new experiments that could give you ideas for your own landing pages.

19 Great Examples of Landing Page Design

1. AirBnB

This AirBnB landing page is a one-stop shop for visitors curious about hosting. It features testimonials from current hosts, articles offering advice, and even a calculator to estimate your weekly average earnings based on your location.

If all this info convinces you to start hosting, the vibrant pink CTA in the header makes it easy to convert on the spot.

2. Wix

Wix has turned its landing page into a creative playground with a stunning and captivating digital illustration that follows you down the page. It’s not overwhelming or distracting — it’s carefully balanced with white space and clear text.

We love the use of design to emphasize certain touchpoints on the page. For instance, the mountain’s peak in the illustration points to the main CTA encouraging visitors to get started.

3. ExpressVPN

What do we love most about this landing page? It’s not what it has, but what it doesn’t — a navigation bar! By removing the navigation bar, ExpressVPN shines a spotlight on the primary CTA.

Why do we take an anti-navigation stance for landing pages? They tend to distract visitors and lead them away from the intended action. Not only is this a landing page design best practice, but we’ve also conducted A/B tests that show removing navigation links from landing pages increases conversion rates.

4. Row House

Besides its sleek design, this landing page gets bonus points for the autoplay video in the background, which adds a degree of movement to an otherwise static page. Speaking of movement, the video shows people working out at Row House, which offers a great introduction to the brand.

If it suits your brand, try enticing visitors with a video component. It could be the difference between passive and active engagement.

5. Codeacademy

I like this page because it’s simple in both copy and design. The form on the page is simple and only requires an email address and password. Or, you can use your LinkedIn, Facebook, GitHub, or Google Plus login, shortening the conversion path even further.

The landing page also offers real-life success stories, testimonials, and other forms of social proof for visitors who need more information before creating an account. This helps make the potentially intimidating world of coding more approachable for beginners.

6. Sunbasket

Sunbasket takes a competitive approach to its landing page, directly comparing its meal delivery service to its main competitor, Blue Apron. As you scroll down the page, a table highlights where Sunbasket’s features exceed those of Blue Apron.

By comparing your products or services to another, you can highlight why yours is the clear winner. It’s a smart way to provide “evidence” to potential customers as to why they should choose you.

7. Curology

I’d argue that the top fold is the most important element of a landing page, alongside the CTA. Curology’s top fold is clean, visually appealing, and to-the-point — and the copy is less than 50 characters long. Users immediately understand the offer and how it can benefit them.

Even if the brand is new to you, its message is loud and clear — regardless of your skin issues, Curology has a custom solution for you.

8. Breather

Here’s another example of clever, delightful design on a landing page. As soon as you visit Breather.com, there’s an instant call to action: indicate where you want to find a space. Plus, it uses location services to figure out where you are, providing instant options nearby.

We love how Breather used simple, to-the-point copy to let the visitor know what the company does, followed immediately by the CTA to select a city. The negative space and soothing color scheme also align with the product –– essentially, room to breathe.

9. Mailchimp

For starters, check out that sunny yellow background color — it’s impossible to ignore. It’s a bold departure from its more subdued home page, yet still on brand.

Besides the color, this landing page gets a shoutout for its CTA placement. It displays a consistent CTA (“Sign Up”) not once or twice, but three times on the page. No matter how far down you scroll, you will see the same button.

This is a solid strategy since the CTA operates as a gateway for converting clients. It should be available to visitors as they move down the page — not just once on the top fold.

10. Paramount Plus

This landing page design has it all. It’s visually appealing, interactive, and offers scannable yet descriptive headers – such as Peak Streaming, Peak Originals, and Peak Family Team. Plus, the background makes each fold look slightly different, creating a captivating scrolling experience.

The landing page also features a repeatable CTA (“Try It Free”) and several strategically-placed content offers, culminating in multiple touchpoints for visitors to convert.

11. CarMax

CarMax is ready to empower visitors to do their own research right on the landing page. It features a search bar that leads to a large database of cars and a calculator that allows visitors to estimate their ideal monthly budget.

For those looking to sell their car, it also includes a form that users can fill out to receive a quote.

It’s clear CarMax wants the buying or selling experience to be as painless as possible. By translating the company’s customer-centric approach on its landing page, CarMax effectively turns a universally dreaded event — purchasing a new car — into a straightforward process without gimmicks or barriers.

12. Edupath

Who is your landing page’s target audience? While most of Edupath’s website content is directed toward students, there are sections dedicated to advising parents on helping their teenagers through college applications and SAT preparation. The landing page below is in one of these sections.

When parents fill out their teenager’s name, email address, and mobile number, a link to download the Edupath app is sent directly to them. The folks at Edupath know students are likely to do something if their parents ask them to — especially if it means they don’t have to surrender their phones.

Plus, it’s an easy, one-click process. This whole conversion path is a clever and helpful way to get the apps on more students’ phones by way of their parents.

13. Startup Institute

Visitors to your website won’t hand over their personal information without knowing what they’re going to get in return. On its landing page, Startup Institute makes abundantly clear what will happen after you apply by listing a Q&A right beside the form. It might prompt some people to say, “They read my mind!”

To avoid hesitancy to fill out a form, use your landing page to set expectations upfront. That clears the air, and can also weed out the people who don’t take your content, product or service seriously.

Simple Landing Pages

14. Uber

People are flooded with information online. This is why creating a skim-able landing page is essential — like this one from Uber.

It features a black and white color scheme, short and easily-digestible sentences, and a simple form. The combination of these elements results in a professional and approachable page.

15. Spotify

This landing page takes a dramatic detour from Spotify’s classic green and black colors — and perhaps that’s the point. It could be a way to signal to visitors that the page serves a different purpose from its other content.

Even though the landing page is relatively simple, the stark color contrast emphasizes the text and CTAs. To entice visitors even more, it lists the most played artist, song, album, and podcast of the year —all of which are available on Spotify. It’s a creative way to promote its content library while attracting visitors to sign up.

16. Canva

Sometimes you need to admire a landing page for its attractive and straightforward design. Similar to the example above, this one features an abundance of white space that accentuates the text and balances the bright colors throughout.

To seal it off, the page ends with a FAQ section. If you suspect visitors will have additional questions about your products or services, you may want to include a similar section too. It lets potential customers better understand what you’re trying to sell them, and sends a message that you’re open to questions.

Product Landing Pages

17. Mooala

Playful isn’t usually the first word that comes to mind when you think of dairy-free milk, but Mooala’s bright and colorful landing page is exactly that.

This example illustrates how you can embrace simplicity while using relatively bold striking colors — like neon green — to highlight important headers and CTAs. To pull this off, stick with colors that correspond with your brand while also capturing the attention of visitors.

18. Nauto

When writing website copy for a product or service, a helpful rule of thumb is to expand on the benefits rather than the features. Such advice also applies to writing landing pages.

For example, instead of bombarding visitors with technical information, Nauto, a fleet safety platform, chooses to highlight its benefits with clear and engaging copy (“Your roadmap for fleet safety”). In doing so, Nauto makes its content offer more appealing.

19. Rover

Putting your pets in the care of another person can be nerve-wracking. Which is why Rover, an on-demand pet care service, leans on social proof to build trust with visitors. The landing page includes testimonials from real clients and copy about its “Rover Guarantee” and 24/7 support. Of course, the cute pictures of animals help too.

Ready to build your landing page?

Whether you’re using a landing page template or building one from scratch, it’s essential to keep these best practices top of mind. And remember to test your landing pages to improve their effectiveness.

You need an email account — whether it’s for networking, job recruitment, downloading resources, transferring files, setting reminders, meeting with colleagues, or something else.

Even with the rise of office chat platforms, you still depend on email for a surprising number of things. But unfortunately, not every email service is completely free. And even the free ones might not be the easiest to use or have all the features you need.

It can be a challenge to find an email service provider at no cost that balances the right features with usability. To help make your search easier, we put together a list of the different types of email accounts you can set up, followed by the best email service providers you can host your account on right now for free.

Types of Email Accounts

There are two main types of email service providers to choose from: Email clients and Webmail.

Let’s briefly go over these different types of providers.

Email clients you’ve likely heard of include Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, and iCloud Mail.

Examples of webmail providers include Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, and Hotmail.

Now, take a look at seven of the best free email service providers (and five of the best email accounts for privacy) you can get your hands on today — both webmail and email clients included. For each email service provider, we’ve highlighted a unique feature to help you find the best fit.

1. Gmail: Best for Offline Accessibility

Unique Feature: Native File Collaboration

Sign up here.

Type of email: Webmail

Who should use it: Anyone who already uses and loves the rest of Google’s products.

It might seem like an obvious top pick, but Gmail is just too versatile not to get our first slot. According to Litmus Labs, Gmail has the second-highest email provider market share (behind Apple iPhone’s native email app).

Ironically, one of the reasons Gmail has become so popular is because of all the communication options in your inbox that don’t involve email.

Gmail is a regular email inbox tool you can access once you have a Google account. Since it’s built into Google Suite, you can also access a group of free apps that allow you to chat, video conference, and share files with the people in your contact list.

Google Hangouts, available from your inbox’s left sidebar (or the right — you can customize how your inbox is displayed), lets you text and video chat with other Gmail users for the things that might not warrant an email message.

Like most other email accounts today, Gmail also has an intuitive calendar where you can set meetings and reminders.

Pro Tip: You can also use a free product like HubSpot Meetings to easily schedule meetings without back-and-forth emails.

Unlike other email accounts, you can use your Gmail address to log into and manage your YouTube account, as well as collaborate on shared documents and spreadsheets right from a cloud-based Google Drive.

Offering a generous 15 GB of free email storage, Gmail does everything it can to make your inbox less chaotic, including advanced filters that automatically push emails into separate folders as they arrive. And none of these functions costs a dime.

Notable Features:

• Allows you to un-send emails
• 15GB free email storage
• Accessible from any internet-connected device
• 99.9% protection from suspicious/spam emails
• Texts suggestions that help you write emails faster

2. AOL: Best for Interface Organization

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Unique Feature: Unlimited Storage

Sign up here.

Type of email: Webmail

Who should use it: Anyone who uses email for most of their communication.

America Online (I feel nostalgic just typing those words) has quietly kept up with today’s standards for a good user experience and is now once again one of the best free email accounts available to you.

Purchased by Verizon in 2015, AOL delivers your email from its classic news-driven homepage and comes with the contemporary spam filters and virus protection you’d expect from your email provider. You can also send text and instant messages from specific windows in your email inbox.

AOL does have something over Gmail, though: unlimited storage. Additionally, you can import email contacts from a CSV, TXT, or LDIF file, so you’re not creating your “buddy list” (get it?) from scratch.

Notable Features:

• Unlimited storage
• Highly customizable
• Offers a spellchecker to reduce errors

3. Outlook: Best for Multiple App Integrations

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Unique Feature: Multiple App Integrations

Sign up here.

Type of email: Email client

Who should use it: Anyone who uses many different platforms to connect with others.

If you ever cringed at the sight of a “Hotmail.com” email address, you can thank Outlook for this outdated domain name.

But there’s good news: Microsoft has reinvented its longstanding email service, and your free Outlook.com email address has many advanced features waiting for you.

While it touts a calendar and message filter similar to Gmail, Outlook also integrates with several other popular communication apps.

For example, you can connect Skype, Facebook, PowerPoint, PayPal, and even task-management software such as Trello — making it very easy to reach and work with non-Outlook users without leaving your inbox.

Outlook offers 15 GB of free storage for each user, along with a super-clean interface.

Notable Features:

• Like with Excel or Word, you can use Add-ins with Outlook
• Easy access to other Microsoft apps like Skype
• Provides aliases that add anonymity to your email
• Excellent email organization
• Great search feature

4. Yahoo! Mail: Best for Lots of Storage

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Unique Feature: Media and attachment history

Sign up here.

Type of email: Webmail

Who should use it: Creatives and anyone who sends and receives attachments frequently via email.

Yahoo! Mail, another well-known platform, sits just behind AOL in storage space with a whopping 1 TB (that’s a terabyte) for free, along with a few key social media integrations.

You can have custom background themes and search for key information from your inbox with Yahoo! Mail.

Yahoo! Mail makes it easy to find every photo, video, and document you’ve ever attached or received via email in their tabs on your inbox’s sidebar. This makes the platform especially appealing to those who share documents regularly or simply want an album made of every photo they’ve ever had shared.

Notable Features:

• Connects seamlessly with Yahoo Calendar
• Outstanding email organization
• Customizable themes
• Instant notifications for new emails
• Decent security to keep your account safe and secure

5. iCloud Mail: Best for Data Encryption

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Unique Feature: Label senders as VIPs

Sign up here.

Type of email: Webmail

Who should use it: people who use Mac and want everything on one system.

If you’re a Mac user, you may want to consider using iCloud Mail as your email provider. Their free email account comes with 5GB of storage that you can use to sync your photos, files, or email.

However, it’s important to note that storage is shared between all of your apps and devices — so if you take a lot of photos on your iPhone, you may eat into your email storage allowance for the month. Upgraded plans start at $0.99/month and go up to $9.99/month.

One of the most significant advantages of using iCloud over other email providers on this list is the ease of integration. Apple builds its desktop and iPhone mail apps with all email clients in mind, but it pays special attention to making the experience delightful for iCloud users.

Notable Features:

• Search functionality
• Ability to label senders as VIP to automatically filter important messages and save time
• One-click “Unsubscribe” feature
• 5GB free email storage

6. Mozilla Thunderbird: Best for Managing Multiple Accounts

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Unique Feature: Customization features and the ability to open multiple emails in tabs

Sign up here.

Type of email: Email clients

Who should use it: Anyone looking for a simple but customizable email inbox.

Thunderbird, a free email application from Mozilla, known for Firefox, offers a quick email inbox setup and a simple, easy-to-use user interface.

The app offers customizable features, such as theme settings and app extensions to improve your email experience. The email app also allows you to open multiple emails in tabs, similar to how you would open various web pages in Firefox browsers.

Notable Features:

• It has a large extension library
• Integrates with Google Calendar to make task and meeting scheduling easier
• Smart email organization to reduce cluster

7. Yandex Mail: Best for Translating Emails

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Unique Feature: 10 GB of free cloud storage

Sign up here.

Type of email: Webmail

Who should use it: anyone seeking a free email with additional storage capabilities.

Yandex is a Russian web company that offers a global email tool. You can sign up for a free account with the tool, link it to your Facebook, Twitter, or Gmail accounts, and personalize your email inbox.

Like many of the other providers on this list, Yandex’s email inbox can be set to filter or prioritize emails so you see messages from real people. It can also recognize keywords in messages and subject lines and organize emails into categorized inboxes. Additionally, users who sign up for Yandex mail get 10 GB of free cloud storage.

Notable Features:

• Auto-reminder for unreplied mails
• In-built translator
• Read receipts on sent emails
• 10 GB free cloud storage

8. Zoho

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Unique Feature: 25 Business Addresses

Sign up here.

Type of email: Webmail

Who should use it: startups and small businesses.

This is the first of the free email accounts for privacy to make our list, but it holds a ton of potential for businesses.

The first thing you’ll notice about Zoho is its user-friendliness. From integrating with Google Drive, Box, and other cloud-based file managers, to its built-in task manager, this email service offers a simple way to accomplish all of your daily tasks.

The real difference-maker, though, is the ability to customize the domain name for up to 25 connected email addresses. Want to replace “@zoho.com” with the name of your business’s website? You can do so under Zoho Lite, which gives you 5 GB for free — all under username@yourdomainname.com.

Notable Features:

• Doesn’t scan your inbox for advertisement purposes
• Emails are in an encrypted format
• Notifies you if your messages don’t deliver
• Integrates easily with the Zoho CRM

9. ProtonMail

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Unique Feature: Encrypted email

Sign up here.

Type of email: Webmail

Who should use it: Anyone who sends and receives sensitive information.

ProtonMail offers just 500 MB of free space, but for the worthy trade of encrypted email, allowing you to send messages that nobody else can see and disappear after a month.

What’s the catch? Is the service hard to use? ProtonMail is easy to use on any device without any software needed to encrypt your emails, as with most webmail platforms. Its inbox interface is as easy to understand at a glance as the other email services on this list.

And the tool offers quick color-coded labels to help you further organize which emails deserve the most care and protection.

Notable Features:

• No personal information is required to open an account
• Compatible with other email providers
• Optimized inbox to boost productivity
• End-to-end data encryption

10. GMX Mail

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Unique Feature: Alias email addresses

Sign up here.

Type of email: Webmail

Who should use it: Anyone who needs multiple emails with one central inbox.

While you may not have heard of GMX Mail, it’s been around for quite a while (since 1997) — and it has a bunch of features that make it worth considering.

First off, GMX offers 65 GB of storage. That’s a lot of storage for a free email service. In fact, they claim that it allows you to keep nearly half a million messages in your Inbox!

Another feature worth noting is the ability to send large attachments. While many services have low caps for your email attachments, GMX Mail allows you to send files up to 50MB. That’s great if you share a ton of photos, presentations, or other large files from your account.

But the feature of GMX Mail that really sets it apart is the ability to set up to 10 alias email addresses all from within one account. This can be useful in many situations — both personally and professionally.

On a personal note, you could use one alias for all of your online purchases and logins — to keep marketing emails separate from your private messages. From a business perspective, multiple email addresses can help manage role-based emails such as support@yourdomain.com or sales@yourdomain.com.

Notable Features:

• Spam filter to protect your inbox from suspicious messages
• Easy-to-use inbox management templates
• Mail collector for keeping all your emails (even from other service providers) in a single place

11. Trustifi

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Unique Feature: Data loss prevention

Sign up here.

Type of email: Webmail

Who should use it: Anyone who doesn’t want to choose between having a secure and functional inbox.

Trustifi combines the best of a productive and secure email provider in one place.

With available whitelisting and blacklisting options, you can easily choose who you allow to send you messages. Trustifi is also compliant with HIPAA/HITECH, PII, GDPR, FSA, FINRA, LGPD, CCPA, and more, so you don’t have to worry about losing your account overnight.

You can even use the Trustifi add-on to add an extra security layer to your Gmail or Outlook inbox.

Notable Features:

• Ransomware and fraud detection
• Ability to set expiry dates on sent emails
• Seamless integrations with other email systems or service providers
• End-to-end email encryption

12. Mailfence

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Unique Feature: Legal protection

Sign up here.

Type of email: Webmail

Who should use it: Anyone looking for a secure email account that integrates with other tools.

Mailfence is a secure browser-based email service provider based in Belgium. Given the laws in Belgium, all your data is locked away from any third-party access.

Their free plan gives you 500 MB of email space. But to truly enjoy the best of Mailfence, you’ll have to hop on a paid plan that starts at €2.50/month.

You’d be able to create up to 10 aliases on the paid plan and have 5GB of email space, among many other features.

With Mailfence, it’s easy to organize your day and business because you’d be able to easily integrate your email account with your contacts, calendar, and documents.

Notable Features:

• Quick integration with a suite of tools
• True OpenPGP end-to-end encryption

How to Make an Email

No matter which provider you choose, creating an email is a simple process. But, it’s still important to know best practices so you can have one that fits your needs the best. The purpose of an email is to provide a space for you to have easy, secure communications. Follow the steps below to create an email:

1. Choose An Email Provider

Select an email provider based on your needs as a user. Think about which features, such as top-tier security, email scheduling capabilities, or integrations, are the most important to you. Also, consider how much storage you will need and what type of provider works best.

2. Choose a Username

Select a username based on the purpose of the account. If it is a professional account, then your name with a significant number will do. The name of your business will do if it’s a business account. You might also consider your name@businessname.com for professional accounts.

3. Create a Password

Email providers generally have minimum requirements for how secure your password must be. These often include a number or a special character. Follow these guidelines and choose a password that is very unique and has a variety of letters, numbers, and characters to make it very secure.

4. Secure Your Account

Many email providers include ways to add extra security to your account. Take advantage of these features to keep your account and data safe. Setting up two-factor authentication is a great place to start.

5. Write a Signature

Set up an email signature for your account. This saves a lot of time as you are writing emails and helps keep your closing consistent. Include information like your name, your title, and your contact information.

Making the Most of Your Email

And with that, you have some of the best options for free email accounts this year. But who knows? Your next email address could be entirely different while giving you just what you need to succeed.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in March 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

No matter the industry your organization operates in and the products and services you provide, your business needs to be constantly improving to keep up with a competitive marketplace and evolving consumer needs.

This process of change isn’t optional. It’s required if you want to succeed. The hard truth is that businesses that do not improve and evolve will eventually find themselves extinct.  

When change is required at your organization, how do you go about implementing it? Willy nilly action without planning can do more harm than good. Rather than approaching change blindly, you may want to borrow a concept from lean manufacturing philosophy — the Plan-Do-Check-Act Cycle. Read on to learn more.

What is PDCA?

PDCA, which stands for Plan-Do-Check-Act, is an iterative cycle for continuous improvement of people, products, services, and business processes.

The foundation for this concept was developed by American statistician and physicist Walter Shewhart who was passionate about using statistical analysis to create quality improvement. The model itself was developed years later by William Deming who took this concept and turned it into a learning and improvement cycle.

The PDCA model follows a four stage process, which we’ll discuss in more detail below.

The Four Stages of the PDCA Model

As mentioned earlier, approaching change without a plan can spell disaster for your business. Along those same lines, acting on a plan without evaluating your progress can be just as dangerous.

The PDCA cycle aims to eliminate those issues with a four step process, where each step is imperative because it sets you up for success in the next stage. Let’s take a closer look at these steps and what they represent.

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1. Plan

To devise a plan that will successfully implement the desired change in your organization, you will need to ask the following questions:

• What’s the problem you are experiencing?
• What resources will you need to fix this issue?
• What resources do you already have available to us at this time?
• How can you best solve this issue with your available resources?
• What does success look like?

Depending on the magnitude of the problem, this step may be quick and easy, or it may take weeks or even months of discussion to arrive at a plan. Theoretically, the more time you spend here, the easier the rest of the steps will be.

2. Do

With your plan in place, it’s time to put your ideas into practice. The most important thing to keep in mind during this stage is that issues will arise no matter how solid your plan is. Take these problems in stride and be willing (and able) to make adjustments as you go. This is often done in a smaller, controlled environment so you can learn from mistakes and correct them.

Proper communication amongst your team members will help to limit the number of problems as everyone will have a clear idea of their responsibilities and expectations.

3. Check

The most important (and overlooked) stage of change implementation is the “Check.” How did your plan work in the controlled environment? Were your goals achieved or did your intentions fall flat during execution? Now’s your time to identify the flaws in the process and correct them. Perhaps it wasn’t a complete flop, but you have recognized some opportunities for improved effectiveness. Either way, this step is essential.

4. Act

Now that you’ve planned out your change, applied it, and then checked to make sure it was working, it’s time to act on it. If you determined during the Check phase that you met your goals, you can apply your initial plan. This then becomes the “standard” process and best practices for this aspect of your organization. It also becomes the jumping-off point for your next change implementation.

The PDCA Cycle doesn’t stop once you’ve achieved your initial goal, as it is a continuous system that you should consistently review. The great news is that the more you work with it, the easier it becomes. It will be your go-to plan for every member of your team and will help you reach new heights with your business.

PDCA Template

Now that you understand how the PDCA process can help you implement change in your business, you’re probably wondering how to get started.

Like any new program, process, or tool, it’s helpful to have a physical document to work in to compile all of your information, share it with team members, and make updates as time goes on.

You can create your own in Excel or your project management tool or use one of the ready-made templates available to you. The key to a successful PDCA template is clarity. You should write out every step in detail, along with who is responsible for getting it done and by when. The more detailed your plan, the better your execution will be.

Image Source

PDCA Best Practices

Along with utilizing a PDCA template, a few other tips will help you implement changes successfully.

1. Ensure that upper management is on-board with these changes. Without their approval, you will not be able to enforce the new policy or procedure you create.

2. Never stop improving. Remember that PDCA isn’t a one-and-done type of procedure. Repeat this cycle constantly, making improvements with each revolution and looking for the next opportunity to create positive change.

3. Once you’ve implemented a policy change, do so across your entire organization. Every department that deals with whatever shift you are creating should adopt this as a new way of operating.

Over To You

Implementing change across your organization won’t be difficult when you learn to plan, do, check, and act.

It is, however, necessary if you want your business to continue growing and thriving. The organizations that reinvent themselves to better meet market needs, their customers, and their employees are the organizations that we will see far into the future.

Adopt the PDCA cycle today and create the best business you can make.

Instagram Insights shows you engagement analytics that empower you to improve your Instagram for Business strategy.

You no longer have to guess about what works for your audience; Instagram Insights will tell you. You’ll therefore be able to get more likes, earn more followers, and grow your profile exponentially.

In this post, we’ll go over everything you need to know about Instagram Insights and how to leverage it to improve your Instagram profile.

Why use Instagram Insights?

Instagram Insights allows you to get access to important user engagement data for your business profile. It’s not just enough to know the raw numbers, such as the amount of likes you get for one post. It’s important to understand your audience, too.

That’s where Insights comes in. It tells you how they do things, what they prefer, and who they are. You can certainly make business decisions based on gut feeling, but you’re much more likely to hit the mark when you can validate assumptions with cold, hard facts.

Data and analytics help you measure the impact of your marketing efforts across different channels to see if there’s something you need to do differently — like target a different audience, post at a certain time of day, or experiment with a new content format.

Social media isn’t any different from other aspects of your marketing in the sense that it can be measured and improved upon. That’s why you’ll be able to create a more effective Instagram strategy using Instagram Insights.

To use Instagram Insights, you must first have a business profile. The good news? If you’re already using a personal account, you can switch to a business profile right from your phone. Here’s how to convert your account in a few simple steps.

1. Open up your profile on the Instagram app.

You can convert your Instagram profile to a Business account directly from your Instagram mobile app. First up, open up the app and click on your profile picture on the bottom right-hand corner of your feed.

2. Access the Settings page.

Next, it’s time to head to Settings. On your profile, click the hamburger icon on the top-right corner.

On the pop-up, click “Settings.”

3. Tap “Account.”

A list menu will come up. Tap “Account.”

4. Click “Switch to Professional Account”.

By switching to a Professional account, you can get access to Insights immediately — even if you’re not a business.

5. Choose your category and click “Done.”

Choose the best category that describes you. Once you’re finished, click “Done.”

After, go back to your profile. Here’s what it will look like:

As you can see, you can immediately access Insights with a Professional account. If you’re a freelancer or content creator, you can stay as is, or you can take the extra step of switching to a Business account.

6. Optional: Switch to a Business account.

If you’re a business, organization, or brand, you’ll want to take the additional step of turning your Professional account into a Business account. A Professional account gives you full access to Insights, but is designed for independent digital creators. A Business account is more apt for companies.

Note that turning your account into a Professional account always comes before switching to a Business account.

To turn your account into a Business account, click the hamburger menu in the top right corner of your profile. Click “Settings,” then “Account.” At the bottom, click “Switch Account Type.”

Then click “Switch to Business Account.”

Done! You’re now a Business account with access to Insights.

7. Optional: Connect your Facebook page.

Lastly, if you have a Facebook Business page, it’s important to connect it to your Instagram Business or Professional account. To do so, go to your profile and click the “Edit Profile” button.

Under “Profile Information,” click “Connect Facebook page.” Follow the prompts to connect your Page or create a new one.

Be sure to already have a Facebook account prior to connecting your page. Click here for instructions for setting up your Facebook Page if you don’t already have one.

Once you’ve set up your Professional or Business Account, you can begin to use Instagram Insights.

Before we get into specific instructions for using it, however, here are the analytics on this channel that marketers need to know and understand — and how to use them.

Instagram Insights Explained

Let’s look at Instagram Insights from a bird’s eye view and zoom in piece-by-piece.

Insights Overview

Insights Overview is the “home page” of Instagram Insights. Here, you’ll see how you’ve fared overall.

You get several pieces of information on this page:

• Date Range: This represents the days and weeks of data on the screen. You can change the amount of time by clicking “Last 7 days” on the top left-hand corner.

• Information: If you’re ever lost or don’t know what something means, you can click on the “i” button on the top right-hand corner and get definitions for the terms on the screen.

• Accounts Reached: Accounts Reached refers to the number of unique users who have seen your content — posts, stories, reels, videos, Live videos, and promoted ads — at least once.

• Accounts Engaged: Accounts Engaged refers to the amount of users whom 1) you’ve reached and 2) interacted with your content in some way. Interactions can include likes, saves, comments, shares, and replies.

• Total Followers: Total Followers refers to the number of people who follow you.

• Content You Shared: This section gives you the overall number of posts, Stories, reels, videos, Live videos, and promotions that you’ve shared.

Now, let’s go into “Accounts Reached,” “Accounts Engaged,” and “Total Followers” in more detail.

Accounts Reached

In Accounts Reached, you’ll see more specific information about the users who have seen your content and interacted with your profile in some way or form.

Lets’ break down the different pieces of information you’ll find in this page.

• Reached Audience: The reached audience section shows you how many unique users have come across your content. Your reached audience will be broken down by follower status, gender, age, countries, and cities. You can also see the amount of people you’ve reached via ads and promotions.
• Content Reach: The content reach section allows you to see which types of posts have reached the greater amount of people. You’ll first see a graph with the number of people who’ve seen your posts, stories, reels, IGTV videos, and Live videos. Underneath, you’ll see your individual top-performing posts based on reach.

• Impressions: Impressions refers to the number of times all of your posts have been viewed — including repeat views by the same users.
• Profile Activity: Profile activity breaks down the actions users take after visiting your profile. You can see the number of website taps, business address taps, call button taps, email button taps, and text button taps. For these metrics to show up, however, you have to have set up those buttons.

Accounts Engaged

Accounts engaged refers to the number of users who interacted with your content beyond just watching it or scrolling past it. Let’s break down the sections on this page.

• Engaged Audience: The engaged audience section shows you how many unique users have liked, commented, saved, shared, or replied to your content. Your engaged audience will be broken down by follower status, gender, age, countries, and cities.
• Content Interactions: The content interactions section shows you the total number of times people have liked, commented, saved, shared, or replied to your content. It then breaks down this number on a per-post basis. You’ll also see your top-performing posts per category.

Total Followers

The total followers page of Instagram Insights allows you to see the total number of users who follow you. You can also see follows, unfollows, top locations, age ranges, and genders.

Under total followers and its demographic breakdown, you’ll then see one more section: most active times.

• Most Active Times: The most active times section shows you the hours and days that your followers are most often on Instagram. This allows you to determine the best times to post so you can engage the greatest amount of followers.

Next, let’s go over how you can see insights for individual posts on Instagram.

How to See Insights for an Individual Post

• Navigate to your profile.
• Navigate to the individual post you’d like to see insights for.
• At the bottom of the post, there will be a banner. Tap View Insights.
• You can now see how many likes, comments, shares, and saves your post received.

How to See Insights for a Reel

• Navigate to your profile.
• Navigate to the individual reel you’d like to see insights for.
• At the bottom of the reel, there will be a banner. Tap View Insights.
• You can now see how many plays, likes, comments, shares, and saves your reel received.

How to See Insights for a Story

If your Story is currently live on your profile:

• Navigate to your profile.
• Click on your profile picture.
• Scroll up on the story.
• You’ll immediately access insights for that Story, including replies, exits, link clicks, forwards, and more.

If your Story has already expired or more than 24 hours have passed:

• Navigate to your profile.
• Tap the Insights action button at the top of your post grid.
• Under Content You Shared, tap the row of Stories you’ve shared in the past.
• Swipe up on the individual story you’d like to see insights for.

How to See Insights for a Live Video

If you’ve just finished your Live video:

• Tap View Insights immediately after finishing your video.
• You’ll now be able to see the number of viewers, likes, drop-offs, comments, and other interactions.

If you broadcasted your Live video in the past:

• Navigate to your profile.
• Tap the Insights action button at the top of your post grid.
• Under Content You Shared, tap the row of Live videos you’ve shared in the past.
• Click on the old Live video you’d like to see insights for.

How to See Insights for a Video

• Navigate to your profile.
• Click the Play triangle button (▶) right above your post grid.
• Tap the video you’d like to see insights for.
• Tap the horizontal (⋯) or vertical (⋮) three dots on the corner of the video.
• Tap View Insights in the pop-up menu.

Next, we’ll get into how to use Instagram Insights in your day-to-day. 

How to Use Instagram Insights

Instagram Insights is a fantastic tool, but it can be hard to know what to do once you gain access. Here are some of the most useful ways you can use Insights as you grow your Instagram profile. 

1. Measure reach.

Click the Accounts Reached section. As mentioned, reach reflects the number of unique users that have seen any of your Instagram posts.

Within this category, you’ll see insights for:

• Top Posts: The posts that generated the most reach.
• Top Stories: The Instagram Stories posts that generated the most reach.
• Top IGTV Videos: The IGTV videos that generated the most reach.
• Impressions: How many times your posts were seen.
• Profile Activity: Profile visits, website taps, and other activity.

Some of these insights can be expanded for more insights.

2. Track profile visits and followers.

On the Accounts Reached page under Account Activity, you’ll be able to see Profile Visits.

Profile Visits reflects the number of times your profile has been viewed.

Find out how many of your profile visitors are turning into followers by dividing your number followers by the number of visitors. Track this number over time to find out whether your “conversion rate” is increasing or decreasing.

3. Determine website clicks.

Website Taps can also be found under Accounts Reached > Profile Activity. This insight reflects the number of times any links you’ve included in your business profile have been clicked.

5. Track content interactions.

Navigate back to Insights Overview and tap Accounts Engaged. This will bring up a page that shows how your content is performing in terms of engagement, breaking down the metrics by content type.

Likes speaks for itself, reflecting the number of users who liked your post. As with likes, Comments reflects the number of comments left on your post. Saves highlights the number of unique users or accounts who saved your post. If any of these numbers are low, it’s important to reevaluate your Instagram strategy.

6. Track your followers.

Navigate back to Insights Overview and click Total Followers. You’ll then reach the Follower Breakdown page.

This page reflects how many followers you’ve gained or lost over the past week, as well as the average times of day when your followers are using Instagram — data that can be highly beneficial when planning posts.

7. Learn which actions were taken on your post.

To view insights for a specific Instagram post, start by visiting your profile. Tap on the post you’d like to look into, then click View Insights below the image

Under the “Profile Activity” section, you’ll find out the number of actions that users took on your profile as a result of seeing your post — things like visiting your profile, then taking an action like clicking on your website link or following you.

8. Use “Reach” to see where your post showed up in feeds.

Previously named “Discovery,” Reach indicates where your post was seen — or discovered — the most, including how many accounts weren’t already following you when they first saw the post.

This section includes metrics on Impressions, which reflect the number of times your post was discovered from a particular place within Instagram, like the user’s home feed, a search, your profile, a location tag, or a hashtag.

Reach insights also include data on a post’s reach — which reflects the number of unique accounts that saw your post.

9. View Story insights.

Instagram users with a business profile are able to view insights into their ephemeral Stories.

To view your Story insights, navigate back to Insights and scroll down to Content You Shared section on the Insights Overview page.

Scroll down to the Stories section, and you’ll be able to see insights for older stories, as well as any that have not yet expired.

Next, we’ll get into the more specific insights you can explore.

Impressions

This insight represents how many times your Story was seen.

When viewing these insights, keep in mind that you’re able to add multiple images or videos to your Story. When you do this, every piece of visual content in your Story is counted as a single photo or video in your post.

Let’s say you add six photos to your Story. Whether someone only views one or views all six, Instagram only counts your entire Story having received one impression.

The same goes for Story content that has been viewed by a single user more than once. Instagram still only counts that interaction as the entire Story having received one impression.

Reach

This insight reflects the number of unique users that have seen your Story.

Taps Forward

This insight reflects the number of times a user taps your Story photo or video to skip to the next piece of media.

Taps Back

This insight reflects the number of times a user taps your Story photo or video to go back to the previous piece of media.

Replies

This insight reflects the number of times users send messages through the Send Message text box on your Story.

Swipe Aways

This insight reflects the number of times users swipe to skip to the next account’s Story — not to be mistaken for “tap forward,” which reflects users skipping ahead to your next piece of Story media.

Exits

This insight reflects the number of times a user leaves the Stories section entirely to return to the home feed.

Measuring Your Effectiveness With Instagram Insights

Now that you know how to access data to inform your strategy with Instagram Insights, you can analyze that data and determine what’s working for your audience (and what’s not). From there, creating content that gets a ton of engagement will be a lot easier as you consider those benchmarks.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in January 2018 but has been updated for comprehensiveness.

When I first started practicing my editorial skills on the HubSpot Marketing Blog, I didn’t quite realize how much time each one would take.

Depending on the length, topic, and other variables, it can take anywhere from 20 minutes to an entire afternoon to edit a single blog post.

This post isn’t about cutting corners; it’s about editing efficiently. That sometimes means giving more thoughtful feedback upfront so your job is easier when the final draft
does
come in. Other times, it means keeping a few key websites handy so you can refer to them quickly – whether you’re checking the author’s math or adding a Pinterest “Pin It” button to an image.

Want some ways to edit more efficiently while maintaining integrity? Here are 12 ways to save time when you sit down and whip out that proverbial red pen.

11 Ways to Save Time While Editing a Piece of Writing

1. Find a quiet space to do your editing.

Don’t try to get your editing done in a meeting, or when you’re around chatty coworkers.

Research shows that multitasking like that can make us far less effective at our work and increase mistakes and stress. And when you’re editing, you’re trying to catch those mistakes so you want to be extra diligent.

Instead, find a place where you can plug in and concentrate fully on the piece in front of you. When you get there, turn off those pesky email and social media notifications, and put your phone on airplane mode (or, better yet, leave it in your bag).

In fact, for every notification you get, it can take 23 minutes to get back on track, according to a study from the University of California.

If you’re working through a piece of writing that’ll require more than a few hours of careful editing, consider blocking out chunks of uninterrupted time with small breaks in between – the Pomodoro method.

2. Be sure the topic aligns with your content strategy.

You might be tempted to dig into the meat of the piece and begin meticulously editing it straight away. But, as an editor, it’s important to put the content into context before diving into the details.

First, take a quick skim of the working title and the main ideas covered in the piece. Think to yourself:

• Does this topic align with our content strategy?
• Will our readers and buyer personas care about it?
• Does each section flow naturally into the next?

If you’re concerned the piece isn’t about a topic your readers will be interested in, think about how to tweak the angle.

You’ll also want to reflect on how the piece fits in with what you’ve written in the past — especially if the piece is a blog post.

Search engines like Google might see the second post as duplicate content and penalize you in search. Even if Google doesn’t consider it duplicate content, competing for keyword ranking against another post from your own blog will hurt your SEO strategy.

The questions to ask here are:

• Have we covered this topic comprehensively in the past?
• Does this offer a fresh angle and perspective?

If both answers are yes, you might consider updating and republishing the original draft.

3. Read for content and ideas first, grammar second.

Never start diving into detailed edits before you read the whole piece through. It’s important to reflect on it holistically so you can pinpoint places where the content and ideas can be improved.

This may seem like we’re adding time here, but trust me, this will save you a lot of time and pain in the long run. If you’ve ever started editing a piece line-by-line only to realize it needs to be completely restructured, you know what I mean.

The key takeaway here is to recognize when the piece needs more work from the author.

“Sometimes, an author sends a piece in before it’s ready to be edited,” said Corey Wainwright, HubSpot’s Website CRO strategist & copywriter at HubSpot. “Learning to recognize those instances can save you a ton of time because otherwise you start just rewriting the piece, which isn’t helpful to either of you.”

Ginny Soskey, former Marketing Blog manager at HubSpot, agrees.

“Your job, as an editor, is to preserve the voice of your writer while making sure they are meeting your quality bar.”

You may notice the piece doesn’t flow well, or the introduction needs to be tightened up, or there aren’t enough points in the article for it to meet your standards for quality. In that case, send that feedback to the author via email as that may be more productive than switching everything around yourself.

If the piece needs an overwhelming amount of editing help, then the author’s writing may not be a fit for your publication – and you’ll save a lot of time by telling the contributor outright.

4. Check for places where the author can fill in the blanks.

Aside from providing larger, more broad feedback, you should also read through the piece to identify smaller improvements that you might want (or need) the author’s help on.

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• Are there any structural inconsistencies in the piece? For instance, if they included an example in every section of the piece except for one or two, you might ask them to find one for each of those sections.
• Are there any points that need any, more, or better evidence? Statistics and data can elevate the quality of your content and make it more interesting for readers.
• Are any sources missing citations? This is a big one.

As you read, take notes on these points in an email draft to the author. Once you’re done, make sure you clean up the notes so they’re comprehensible.

5. Bookmark helpful websites for quick referencing.

Once the content, ideas, and structure of the piece are all ready to go, you can get down to the nitty-gritty.

This is where I like to keep a few websites bookmarked for reference. Here are the ones I prefer.

• Capitalize My Title –To double-check capitalization based on your style guide.
• Percent Change Calculator – To make sure the math is math-ing.
• Your favorite keyword tools – To identify top keywords for the content so you can use them in the title, headers, and relevant anchor text.
• Pinterest ‘Pin It’ Widget Builder – To create ‘Pin It’ buttons for graphics or infographics.
• Grammarly or Hemmingway – As a backup in case you miss something while editing.

6. Keep useful code snippets close at hand.

Along with bookmarking helpful websites, it’s also a good idea to have all those useful snippets of HTML or other code that you tend to use easily accessible.

For example, you might use specific code to include a “Featured Snippet” module in your CMS.

To make this process easy, I save code snippets in my Evernote. When it comes time to add them to the source code of my blog post, I simply pull up the note and plug in the snippets as needed.

Here’s an in-depth intro to HTML so you can learn helpful coding hacks.

7. Read the piece out loud.

The importance of this step cannot be overstated.

Reading out loud isn’t just good for memory retention, it’s also great for spotting errors. You’re more likely to find clumsy sentences and other things spell check won’t catch if you read out loud.

Best-selling author David Sedaris uses this verbal approach to fine-tune his writing.

According to Fast Company, Sedaris tests his works-in-progress by reading them aloud to live audiences because it helps him notice imperfections in the text. As he reads, he’ll circle everything from confusing or misleading phrasing to closely repeated words.

“I used to hate it when a book came out or a story was published and I would be like Ddamn, how did I not catch that?'” Sedaris said. “But you pretty much always catch it when you’re reading out loud.”

Reading out loud will help you catch these errors in the first go-round, which will save you time later.

8. Use “Find and Replace” to quickly fix common errors.

We all have words that trip us up, no matter how long we’ve been writing or editing.

Think about it: What are the mistakes you tend to make when writing or editing? What things do you tend to miss?

Start keeping track of this and adding it to a personal blog. Then, as you’re editing, do a “Find and Replace” before publishing to catch any mistakes that slipped through the cracks. It’s a far quicker way to polish a piece than looking for these instances manually.

To do a “Find and Replace,” hit Control + F on a PC (or Command + F on a Mac), type in your problem word or phrase, and click “Find.”

9. Do a final check on Microsoft Word.

It doesn’t matter how meticulously you eyeballed a piece of writing: More often than not, you will find additional errors using spell check that you would otherwise miss.

If your writing software has spell check, use it. We also recommend pasting the content into Microsoft Word (length-permitting) for a final check.

Just remember to give the document a few extra seconds to process your piece once you’ve pasted it in there, as Word takes a little longer to “read” your piece and uncover any mistakes.

Then, you can go through it and assess any red or green squiggly lines you see.

10. Know when the content is good enough.

I know as well as any other editor that letting go of perfectionism is hard. But it turns out that perfectionism, while helpful in certain contexts, can become a major roadblock for productivity.

There will always be something you can do to improve a piece of writing. You might think of “done” as spending every possible minute improving, polishing, and refining a piece until it’s whittled to perfection.

But what are you sacrificing by making more, minor improvements? And are those sacrifices realistic? Are they worth your time? At some point, you need to ask yourself: “When is ‘good enough’ good enough?”

Of course, knowing what the threshold for “good enough” is easier said than done. Here’s a helpful formula to give you some direction:

1. The piece successfully solves the problem, addresses the need, or conveys the message intended.
2. It is clearly and distinctly on brand.
3. The quality of work is consistent with or above the level of previous work.
4. It has been thoroughly yet objectively scrutinized by other qualified individuals.
5. The final decision of preference had been left in the hands of the creator.

Make sure that you complete the most important editing and proofreading tasks. Then, once you’ve refined a piece enough to move on … just move on.

11. Keep this pre-publish checklist handy.

Before you hit “publish,” it’s time to do a final once-over to make sure you’ve checked all the boxes.

While this seems like another extra step, remember that this is an investment of time that’ll save you from having to return to the piece later to make edits and adjustments.

As such, use this online editing and proofreading checklist when doing your final check. Feel free to also add to the list, as you may have additional steps in your process.

Ultimately, being an efficient editor requires concentration, attention to detail, and the ability to know when to stop. With this list at your disposal, you’ll be better in no time.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in April 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.