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Think about a website or app you love. What do you love about it? The ease of gathering relevant information? How you can buy something in one click (and have it delivered tomorrow)? Or how quickly it answers your questions?

Now think about the people who created that website. What was their goal?

They were trying to create a site that had the features you love about it — a site that is easy to use, effectively delivers the information you need, and allows you to make smart decisions tailored to your challenges or concerns.

UX, or user experience, focuses on the end user’s overall experience, including their perceptions, emotions, and responses to a company’s product, system, or service. UX is defined by criteria including: ease of use, accessibility, and convenience.

The concept of UX is most often talked about in terms of tech, such as smartphones, computers, software, and websites. This is why UX is not only a fairly new field, but also a variable one — it changes quickly due to technology advancements, new types of interactions, and user preferences.

It’s no secret that customers today want quick and simple ways to meet their needs and solve their pain points. That’s why UX matters so much.

Whether or not you’re in tech, the company you own or work for most likely has a website. Well, customers could write you off in a matter of seconds if they don’t find your website useful and easy to use. In fact, most website visitors determine whether or not they want to leave within a minute of opening a page.

Follow along to learn more about the importance of the emerging field of UX, what today’s designers are being hired to do, and why every type of business can benefit from thoughtful UX design.

UX design is about creating products “that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users,” according to the Interaction Design Foundation. Within UX design, there are a few different categories.

1. Interaction Design

A subset of UX design is interaction design (IxD). It is defined as … yup, you guessed it… the interaction between a user and a product — the goal of that interaction is for it to be pleasant for the user.

2. Visual Design

In visual design, creators use illustrations, photography, typography, space, layouts, and color to enhance user experience. To have successful visual design, artistic design principles including balance, space, and contrast are crucial. Color, shape, size, and other elements also impact visual design.

3. User Research 

User research is the last major element of UX design. User research is how companies determine what their customers and users want and need. At its core, your website should solve a problem, and so this is an important step in determining what exactly your users require. Without it, your designs are simply guesses.

4. Information Architecture

Designers use information architecture to structure and label content so that users can find information easily. Information architecture is used on websites, smartphones, apps, and even in the physical places we go to. Ease of use and discoverability are two important factors of information architecture, which is why it is so closely related to UX design.

Think about the New York City Subway map. This is a great example of information architecture that helps people understand how to get from one place to the next. According to the Information Architecture Institute, “If you’re making things for others, you’re practicing information architecture.”

Source: NYC Subway Guide

UX Design Principles

UX is an ever-changing field, but the fundamental UX design principles remain the same. Designers also have to determine what they want in terms of visual balance. Being clear and concise is crucial … less is more! You want your design to be intuitive, and most importantly, your design should meet the user’s needs.

While UX is subject to trends and new technology, there are a few core principles that stay the same. These help designers look at various problems through a methodology that’s consistent and focused.

• Be contextual: You want individuals to know exactly where they are in their user journey. They should never feel lost or overwhelmed. Your design is there to guide them along their journey.
• Be human: No user enjoys feeling like they are interacting with a machine. You’ll gain the trust of the end-user if you show them your brand’s personality and approachability.
• Be findable: Users don’t want to waste time. With a successful UX design, your work will be easy to find and navigate.
• Be easy: Being consistent and straightforward will go a long way with your users. You build relationships with your users by providing them with enjoyable and easy experiences.
• Be simple: No fluff, tangents, or unnecessary descriptions. Get to the point. Let’s be honest here … these days, everyone has a short attention span.

These principles will guide you at every stage of the UX design process. Let’s walk through what each of those stages entails below. 

UX Design Process

There are typically several stages of the UX design process to consider. UX design takes a human-centered design approach during all these stages. This is about considering the needs of the people you are designing for, coming up with a wide range of solutions to resolve the issue they are facing, designing prototypes for the users to test, and then finally putting the best solution in place for the user. If you look at the issue from the perspective of the user, and design with them in mind, you will create solutions they will want to adopt.

Let’s take a closer look at each stage of the design process below.

1. Understand your user’s pain points.

Since UX design is about improving the user experience, your first step is finding out what the challenges and expectations of users are. Once you understand what the problems are, you can solve for them.

In an article for Career Foundry, Rosie Allabarton stresses the role of empathy at this stage of the UX design process. She said, “You’ll be working with groups of users who come from a variety of backgrounds and are bringing different experiences with them. Your job is to try to understand why they are behaving the way they are, not to try to change that behavior or influence it, but accommodate it within the product.”

There are a few approaches you can take to gather this important user research.

Interviews

One of the best ways to understand your audience is to be in the same room as them. User interviews typically entail a group of users browsing through an existing site or product or even a competitor’s while members of your team observe. That way, your team can watch how people interact with a website or product and gather feedback in real time. This can help uncover areas of improvement that you and your team hadn’t noticed. Like maybe users are overlooking the CTA button on your homepage, or maybe they want a search box to navigate a website. You can then incorporate this feedback into your design process.

If in-person interviews isn’t an option, then you can always hold remote user testing sessions

Online Surveys

While interviews are ideal for getting rich insights from a small group of users, online surveys are a great way to gather feedback from a larger audience. Surveys consist of a series of targeted questions sent to a sample of your audience. These questions can take on a variety of forms, including yes/no, multiple choice, checkbox, dropdown, ranking, ranking scale, and textbox. Online surveys are typically distributed via forms, and then compiled in a database so you and other stakeholders can review them.

2. Create user personas.

Now that you have all this user research, you’ll want to summarize it. Creating user personas is a great way to do so. Also known as buyer personas, these personas are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customers based on data and research. Buyer personas help you better understand your existing and prospective customers, so you can tailor your products as well as your services, content, and messaging to meet their specific needs, behaviors, and concerns.

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These personas help ensure that everyone on your team understands, remembers, and centers the end user throughout the design process. 

To learn how to research and create personas, check out the post How to Create Detailed Buyer Personas for Your Business [Free Persona Template].

3. Map out user journeys.

While you can categories users into different types of personas, every user is unique. That means different users will interact with your site in different ways — even if they have the same goal. Say they’re looking to apply to a job at your company. Some might navigate to your homepage, click Careers from your navigation bar, and then browse your job openings. Others might search your company name plus “careers” in Google.

Your goal is to identify the primary goals of your users and ensure they can complete their goals. So an ecommerce site, for example, will need to identify all the different ways a customer might want to complete a purchase and make sure their site enables them at every step. Providing functionality to ensure a customer can complete a purchase on a desktop, tablet, and mobile device are just a few scenarios you’d have to plan for. You’ll likely need a lot of colorful post-it notes for this stage.

4. Create website wireframes.

Now that you’ve mapped out user journeys on paper, it’s time to map them out in your actual product with website wireframes and prototypes. You can think of a wireframe as a sketch of your product or website.

When creating a wireframe for your website or product, you can plot out how you want to display your main features, allocate space, and present images and content and how this layout helps (or hinders) the user from achieving their goals before introducing design elements like color schemes.

Evaluating your product’s functionality and intended user behavior at this stage can help you find potential problems or missing features that might get in the way of conversions or sales later on — before you’re too far along in the design process. That way, you can easily make changes, get approval from other stakeholders, and confidently move to the next stage of the design process.

Wireframes range in complexity. Some are hand drawn with a pencil, others are created with software tools like Sketch and Canva. Here’s an illustrated example.

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5. Start prototyping.

Think of a prototype as the final draft of your product or website before the coding begins. It’s not the final version, but it’s close enough that you can fully test the product before it launches and demonstrate it to management and other stakeholders.

Unlike a wireframe, a prototype will include font, images, icons, and colors. This phase is focused less on aesthetics and more on user flow, however. Prototypes will be interactive, allowing you, users, and other stakeholders to experience how the product works in real life.

You’ll run more user testing at this phase to uncover issues like whether your checkout process requires too many clicks or your homepage is difficult to navigate.You’ll likely experiment with navigation and other functionality at this stage, and produce lots of iterations.

To create a prototype and subsequent iterations, you’ll need to use a dedicated tool like Adobe XD, InVision, or the free Justinmind. Here’s an example of a prototype built with Justinmind.

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At this point, the coding can begin so you’ll pass your prototype to designers and developers who will build a user interface. More on what a UI is and how it differs from UX later.

UX Deliverables

UX deliverables are the various outputs of a UX design process. The designer and team will have to produce and present these deliverables to an internal team and external clients for review — either during the design process or once the project is complete. 

As tangible records of the work that has occurred, UX deliverables are a critical part of the design process. These deliverables help UX designers to effectively communicate their design ideas and findings, and make it clear to stakeholders why recommendations for changes and improvements are made. They also help designers get buy-in for their ideas.

1. User Research

User needs, tendencies, and motivations can be determined through different types of user research. This might include quantitative and qualitative data from user testing sessions and focus groups. It could detail feedback on sign up flows, the onboarding process, and customer service inquiries.

The goal is to have a detailed analysis of what’s both working on the site and what could be improved — and to have this all backed by information gathered from users. Researchers may create buyer personas based off of real user data to help them accurately determine who will be using their device, website, or app. Through user research, designers understand and empathize with the user.

2. Competitor Assessment

Assessing the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors is a way to enhance your own UX strategy. A great way to do this is by creating a competitive analysis report that details the interaction design of your competitors and provides an analysis of where you see pitfalls and missed opportunities — things your business can take advantage of.

3. Interaction Design

An interaction design deliverable could come in the form of a prototype so that people can review how interactions with the site would occur — showing how people would complete key tasks, get information, use a product, the flow of finding information, and how easy the product is to use. You want your prototype to be as similar to the final product as possible, so you can get sign off on the design before you begin building it.

4. Information Architecture

IA is the process of taking information and organizing it in a way that is easy to understand. For large websites, this is especially important, as you need to understand what content exists and how to organize it in a way that makes sense for your visitors. The result might be a content inventory, sitemap with suggested navigation, or sample user flows that reveal how visitors move through a site.

Source: Adobe Blog

Now that we understand the different deliverables a client or manager might ask from a UX designer, let’s take a closer look at arguably the most important: UX research. 

User Experience Research

Without research, all of this focus on what the user needs and wants would be impossible. UX research is the investigation of users and what they need, which informs the UX design process. Companies and designers use this research to come to specific conclusions about what is working for users and what needs to be changed. There are several ways companies and designers perform UX research.

Usability Testing

Usability testing evaluates how successful a product is by testing it on actual users. It gives companies real input on how individuals are using a product or system and how that product or system works for that user. There are two primary testing methods. 

Hallway usability testing is a quick and cheap way for companies and researchers to get information from users who may not know of your company or products. Random individuals use the products and give feedback on their experience.

Remote usability testing allows companies to research with users in their natural environment (such as in their home or office). These tests can be moderated in any way the company chooses.

Usability Testing Tools

Usability testing tools allow researchers and designers to compile accurate feedback from users and then analyze that feedback to make data-driven changes. If you’re looking for a tool that can help you test how easy-to-use your site or product is, check out these options:

• Crazy Egg: This tool allows companies to see exactly what users are clicking on while on their website. Crazy Egg also records exactly where site visitors are coming from, including geographic location, and if they were referred from another site.
• Hotjar: This tool combines analytics and feedback to give an overview on ways to improve user experience. They do this through the use of heatmaps, visitor rates, conversion funnels, and more.

For more usability testing tools to consider, check out this post.

How to Enhance User Experience

Through the research and testing mentioned above, user experiences can always be improved. Some of the most common ways to improve user experience include: Taking a consultative approach to improving the experience, determining calls to action, implementing responsive web design, considering Fitt’s Law (more on this next), avoiding overwhelming data entry, and more.

Using Fitt’s Law to Enhance UX

Fitt’s law is a predictive model that determines the amount of time it takes for a specific user to move their mouse or cursor to a target area on a website. There are multiple versions of Fitt’s law that exist but they all revolve around the general idea that, “The time required to move to a target depends on the distance to it, yet relates inversely to its size.” Fitt’s law is widely used in UX design to improve ergonomics in addition to usability for users.

Here’s an example of this at work: Have you seen the new Touch Bar on Apple’s MacBook Pro? This is a touchscreen above the keyboard that speeds up a user’s experience when using Google, bookmarking a page, changing screen brightness, volume, and more. Touch Bar options change depending on what page you are browsing while on your laptop, whether that be an app, a site you are visiting, or even just your personal settings.

With the Touch Bar, the user’s experience is simplified because many commonly used settings are in one compact location. Fitt’s law states the further away and smaller an object or button is for a user, the harder it is for that user to click on it. That’s why the Touch Bar is such a great example of taking Fitt’s Law and successfully applying it to your device to enhance user experience.

UX Design Tools

Whether you are researching, prototyping, wireframing, storyboarding, or creating graphics, there are multiple UX tools available to assist you during the design process. In fact, there are so many tools on the market, some free and some that require a subscription fee, that it may be overwhelming for designers who are unsure of exactly what they need. To get you started, here’s a list of some popular and valuable tools to use in your UX design work:

1. Adobe Fireworks

Adobe Fireworks CS6 gives web designers a way to create graphics for their web pages without getting into the code or design details. There are a few reasons why UX designers use Adobe Fireworks: The tool has impressive pixel accuracy, has image compression abilities (JPEG, GIF, etc.), allows users to create functional websites, and build vectors. This is a great option especially if you are already familiar with other programs in the Creative Cloud.

2. Adobe XD

With Adobe XD, you can design websites and mobile apps, as well as create prototypes, wireframes, and vector designs. Users can share interactive prototypes on multiple platforms, including Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android, so it’s perfect for team collaboration.

3. Axure

Axure RP Pro is another great UX design tool — that’s also free. Axure has several capabilities including wireframing, prototyping, and documenting. It can even help you create user flows and sitemaps. Axure is perfect for creating web and desktop applications, and it gives users the ability to easily export to PDF or HTML for review.

4. Adobe Illustrator and a Free Alternative

If you’re looking for an affordable alternative to Adobe software, such as Adobe Illustrator (which is primarily used to create vector graphics), we’ve got you. Inkscape is known for doing most of what Illustrator does, but for free. This software is open source and can be used to create impressive vector graphics. The only issue you could run into is lag, as some users have reported that the program is slow. If you’re partial to Illustrator, that’s OK too.

5. Sketch

Sketch is an end-to-end software with specific features including non-destructive editing (meaning Sketch won’t change the pixels in the photo you are working with), code export, pixel precision, prototyping, vector editing, and more. With Sketch, you can reuse and update your designs easily.

6. Storyboard Software

You might be wondering why you would need to storyboard in UX design. It’s a great way to visually predict and review the way a user would interact with and experience a product in a broader context. There are several storyboard tools available, with varying levels of features and complexity.

Storyboarder is a free storyboard software option, which has basic features made for designers of all levels. This software allows users to quickly create drawings and stick figures to lay out a plot or idea.

Another storyboard software option is Toon Boom Storyboard Pro. It combines drawing, animation, camera controls, and numerous other features, all for an annual or monthly fee. It has a wider range of features for more complex storytelling and detailed prep work. Both options are great for designers looking to visually tell the story of their persona or users.

Storyboards are also a great way to bring in all stakeholders, including researchers, developers, and UI designers. Before we discuss how to become a UX designer, let’s make sure we understand the difference between two similar roles: UX and UI designers.

What is User Interface design?

Remember when Apple unveiled its click wheel for the iPod? When it was introduced, the feature was intuitive and highly functional — not to mention cool-looking.

This is a great example of a successful user interface (UI). UI refers to how people interact with computers, machines, websites, apps, wearables, and other programs or devices. User interface design is the process of making these things as easy to use and efficient as possible.

Common UI Elements

Although UX and UI have similar definitions, it’s important to note the key differences that separate the two topics. Again, UI focuses on a product’s appearances and surfaces, while UX is more concerned with how people interact with a site. Here are some common UI terms you should know to better understand how the two differentiate:

• Informational Components: UI designers use informational components to enhance the reading experience or give more information. Examples of informational components are progress bars, notifications, and message boxes. Designers use these when they want to make it clear to the user that they have completed a task, or if they want to notify the user that action on their part is necessary.
• Breadcrumb Navigation: This is a design tool often used by UI designers to visually increase the usability of a website. It allows users to see their location on a site in a hierarchical structure. It doesn’t need to have special visual features or over-the-top design — it should just clearly state where a person is located on a site. You may have noticed these links along the top of a webpage while online shopping or on another site.
• Input Controls: Input Controls give individuals multiple options in response to a question you are asking. These are things like checkboxes, drop-down lists, and toggles. Keep the information you are asking in your input controls simple and to-the-point so it’s easy to find what the user needs.

Source: UX Planet

If you love designing, researching, working with other people in a fast-paced environment, and listening to others’ experiences, a career in UX design may be right for you. As a UX designer, you’d focus on the conceptual aspects of design and create better experiences for users.

Here are the steps to follow to become a UX designer.

1. Do your research.

This step may seem like a given, but pursuing a career path (or changing yours altogether) is a big move. Do plenty of research to ensure that you want to be a UX designer. Guides like this one will help give you an idea of what UX design entails. You can also lookup “day-in-the-life” articles, podcasts, and books to better understand how other UX designers spend their workdays.

2. Take a UX design course.

There are plenty of higher education courses available around the world, though they typically require a four-year undergraduate design curriculum as a prerequisite.

However, some programs allow for more flexibility, such as the online Quinnipiac University Graduate Program in User Experience Design. There are also UX certification programs for professionals. These vary in commitment length and level of expertise upon receipt of the certificate.

3. Apply for a UX design internship.

A UX design internship is valuable for a few reasons. First, UX design internships bridge the gap between education and real-life experience. Internships allow you to put what you’ve learned in the classroom (or online) to work while receiving helpful feedback from your peers and coworkers.

Secondly, UX design internships allow you to build a live portfolio of design work done on behalf of a real company. While demo work is valuable for demonstrating skill and process, you can report on the impact and results of the work you complete during your internship.

Lastly, UX design internships introduce valuable mentor relationships. Design mentors are critical to developing your skills, receiving constructive criticism, and expanding your network — three things that can help you land your dream UX design job.

To find a UX design internship, start with sites like LinkedIn, The Muse, Glassdoor, and AngelList, as well as simply searching on Google. You can also target the companies themselves: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Reddit, Adobe, Amazon, and Salesforce all offer UX design internship programs.

4. Build your UX design portfolio.

Once you’re ready to start applying for your dream UX job, you’ll need a stand-out resume and a flashy portfolio. Use a site like Dribble or Behance to showcase your work, or create your own website using a tool like SquareSpace.

When building your portfolio site, keep these tips in mind:

Make it visually stunning.

Presentation is everything. Your work should speak for itself … show don’t tell! Your choice in color, typography, and layout all play a factor here.

Include an “about” page.

Hiring managers and recruiters want to get to know you, how you think about design, what inspires you, and what makes you unique. Why should they hire you? What value can you add to your new potential company and team?

Have clear navigation and links throughout your portfolio site.

Can you imagine the hiring manager at your dream company having a hard time navigating the portfolio site of a UX designer? Awkward. In your navigation bar, include options such as: “portfolio,” “about,” “contact,” and “resume” to avoid any confusion.

Explain your personal UX process.

Your future employer wants to know how you think. Include information that lets the hiring manager in on your UX researching, brainstorming, wireframing, designing, and prototyping processes.

Create additional portfolios to expand your network.

Use other tools to make your work available on sites where designers and those looking to hire designers to spend their time. Behance and Dribble are great portfolio sites for people looking for inspiration, networking, and new career opportunities.

If you’re interested in this career path, we’ve gathered some ideas for UX projects that can help get you started and built out your portfolio. Let’s take a look.

UX Design Ideas

Are you interested in UX design but don’t know where to get started? We’ve compiled a list of ideas for people who need inspiration just like you. Completing these projects will not only provide you with valuable experience, it will also provide valuable additions to your portfolio. Let’s take a look at some of these ideas and the real-life examples that go with them.

Redesign the digital menu of your favorite local restaurant.

Redesigning a restaurant’s menu is a great exercise in anticipating user needs. To find the right balance of information and images, you’ll have to decide what readers need to know and see to make informed decisions, and what will simply overwhelm them. You might experiment with the categorization, descriptions, and ratings of the food items, and more.

Below is a drink menu by Panji Arafat on Dribble.

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Sketch a better interface for your toaster oven.

This will help you practice analyzing an existing product and identifying where you can add value in terms of functionality and design. The best part is you can complete this project without leaving your kitchen!

Below is an example by designer Sarah Kerbleski.

Redesign the homepage of your personal site.

You can redesign the homepage of any website, but using your own personal site or a site that you have access to analytics to is ideal. That way, you can practice accumulating and analyzing user research and using those insights to inform your design process.

When HubSpot redesigned its homepage back in 2016, UX Designer Austin Knight analyzed massive amounts of data and discovered three important trends: a significant number of users were moving from the homepage to the pricing page, FAQ page, and the search bar. All of these trends supported the conclusion that the homepage was lacking critical information that was affecting its conversions. You can read more about this redesign in the UXPin case study.

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Redesign a feature in an application that frustrates you.

This can help you practice redesigning some functionality in an existing app, rather than starting from scratch. Product designer Jo Zhouzheng did exactly this for Doordash. Frustrated by the restaurant and menu browsing experience in this popular food delivery app, Zhouzheng redesigned the interface. Here’s a before and after look of the interfaces.

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Design an app for checking in at your primary care doctor or specialist.

Designing any health app will be a great exercise in UX. Focusing on the check-in process specifically will help you practice identifying and solving for user pain points. You can focus on an in-person or virtual check-in, like Digital Product Designer Divan Raj did below.

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Create personas for an app you want to design (or redesign).

Creating personas is an important part of the UX design process. You can get some experience by creating personas for a hypothetical app, or an existing one. Maybe you like an app or website, but know the functionality or design could be better. In that case, you could define new personas for that product. Or you could create personas for a product that you’ve thought of.

Daorong Fang, for example, created a prototype of a mobile app for in-person social networking events. To illustrate her key audience and help potential stakeholders sympathize with her target issues (ie. how awkward and time-consuming networking can be), she built two personas. One of them — Techy Sarah — is shown below.

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Map out a voter’s journey in a local, state, or federal election office .  

This can help you understand how UX design can contribute to larger phenomena, like low voter turnout, and flex your analytic and critical thinking muscles. By plotting out the path from registration to the point where voters have a ballot in their hands, you’ll uncover regulations, time constraints, a lack of transparency, poor design choices, and other pain points.

Whitney Quesenbery and Dana Chisnell founded The Center for Civic Design with this exact goal in mind: they wanted to understand where people fall off the voter journey, and how to get them back on. Below is one of their Field Guides to Ensuring Voter Intent, which helps local officials create well designed ballots.

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These are just a few ideas. For more inspiration, check out websites like Dribble and Awwwards.

UX Design Helps You Grow Better

Whether you’re a graphic designer, blogger, developer, or someone in an entirely different field, UX design can help you and your company grow. A happy end-user is the key to success, and without well-crafted UX design, this would be impossible to achieve.

As technology becomes more ubiquitous in our lives, successful UX design will continue to create seamless transitions between individuals and their devices and apps. UX design has never been more important, making it an exciting time to join the field and consider the benefits for your own business.

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

Throughout the past two years, two of the most popular apps used by Gen Z and younger millennials were Instagram and TikTok.

While Instagram steadily pulled in more than 1 billion active users since its 2016 debut, TikTok made news when it surpassed 1 billion global downloads within 18 months of its launch.

Both networks have solid benefits and entertainment factors.. While Instagram’s visual layout allows users to see images, videos, Stories, and live streams from their favorite accounts, TikTok provides an endless feed of short, entertaining video clips.

But, late this summer, as countries including the U.S. considered banning TikTok due to privacy concerns, Instagram launched a handful of new audio and video editing features that are quite similar to what users would find on TikTok. This new set of mobile features, which can be accessed in the Stories section of the Instagram app, has been dubbed Instagram Reels.

Aside from allowing users to record videos with sound or audio overlays, the Reels camera and editor also includes the following features:

• More editing tools: These include augmented reality effects, transitions, and the ability to speed up or slow down videos.
• Audio attribution: If a user uploads native audio, other users can overlay the sound in their videos while the app credits the original user’s account for it.
• Stitchable takes: This enables users to share a video with just one long take or a combination of quicker takes.
• Shareability on the Instagram Feed, Explore, Stories, and your profile: Depending on the privacy settings of your profile, you can share Reels with just friends on your Stories or profile, or publicly in the Reels area of Explore.
• Mobile-only: Unlike Instagram profiles and Stories, you can’t view or upload Reels on a desktop.

Right now, it’s worth noting that ads are not yet supported in the Reels area of Instagram Explore. But since Reels show up in this public part of the app, and can be seen by people who don’t follow your brand, your business has the opportunity to reach new audiences across the globe.

At the time of this post, we also don’t know how the Instagram algorithm works for presenting Reels to audiences. But, based on our exploration of the Reels feed within Explore, it seems much like TikTok in that it prioritizes posts by location, people you follow, and content similar to what you’ve engaged with recently.

Why Instagram Launched Reels

According to Instagram — which started testing Reels in Brazil in November 2019 and launched the feature globally this August — the brand wanted to give users more content creation opportunities on its app.

“We’re excited to introduce Instagram Reels: a new way for anyone — people, creators, and businesses — to create and discover short, entertaining videos on Instagram,” notes an August announcement from Instagram.

While Instagram hasn’t acknowledged TikTok’s success or competition as a reason for launching Reels, several tech journalists have suggested that this was a strategic move.

“Instagram’s short-form video feature, Reels, launched Wednesday. Instagram is swooping in at a vulnerable time for its largest competitor, TikTok. Reels allows users to create 15-second clips, like TikTok, and share them publicly or with friends within the Instagram app,” wrote CNBC’s Jessica Bursztynsky.

While Reels is Instagram’s first attempt at launching similar features to TikTok, this certainly isn’t the first time a Facebook-owned company has launched similar video editing offerings.

In 2018, amid TikTok’s early success, Facebook quietly launched a competing app called Lasso.

Lasso, which offered similar portrait-style feed and video editing tools to TikTok, had fewer than 80,000 app downloads by June 2020. In July, one month before the launch of Reels, Lasso was discontinued.

“We place multiple bets across our family of apps to test and learn how people want to express themselves. One of these tests was Lasso, our stand-alone short-form video app, which we have decided to shut down. We thank everyone who shared their creativity and feedback with us, which we’ll look to incorporate in our other video experiences,” a Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch.

At this point, knowing the history mentioned above, some marketers might wonder, “Will Instagram Reels be a great TikTok alternative for my brand, or will it fail like other TikTok competitors?”

The question above is fair. After all, as a marketer, you’ll only want to invest time and money into platforms with a solid track record, loyal audience, and great brand awareness opportunities, rather than those that could be discontinued a short time later.

While Reels might have been flocked to by Gen Z if TikTok were banned, TikTok’s partnership deal with Oracle and Walmart has ensured that this app will remain active in many countries — at least for now. This means that even if Reels is successful, some audiences might still spend all of their time surfing TikTok.

On the other hand, Instagram is a widely-used platform that has successfully launched competitive social media features before. Remember when the brand launched Stories and eventually surpassed the user count of Snapchat, which launched this feature first?

At the moment, it’s not clear whether Reels will be as successful as TikTok. But, since the feature only requires you to expand your Instagram strategy, rather than building out TikTok tactics from scratch, it could still be a great place for brands to test out highly experimental short-form content.

If you’re intrigued by Instagram Reels and ready to try it out, below I’ll walk through how brands are already using the feature, steps for creating Reels content, and a few takeaways marketers should keep in mind as they build it into their Instagram marketing.

How Brands Already Use Reels

Emmy Mae Bridal

Fashion and beauty are perfect for Reels, as is evident by this Reel from Emmy Mae Bridal in Queensland, Australia.

In Emmy Rae’s Reels, the brand presents videos and imagery of their wedding attire to the sounds classy music. Although we can’t embed Reels, here’s a screenshot of recent content the company posted

Earth Official

The travel industry is also finding Reels to be an excellent way to reach people. In this piece of Reels content, Earth Official, an account that highlights travel content, deals, and influencers, shows beautiful footage of Thailand’s lantern festival with native audio.

Critical Care Now

If your business isn’t exactly consumer-facing, Reels might still fit into your Instagram strategy, depending on how well you’ve cultivated your audience and how creative your content team is.

In the Reels post below from CriticalCareNow, an informative Instagram account run by resuscitation expert Haney Mallemat, Mallemat educates viewers about central and peripheral arterial lines used in the emergency response field.

Think the topic of the Reel above was too informative or formal for Instagram’s audience? Think again. At the time this blog post was written, this Reel had more than 30,200 views. Pretty amazing for content that isn’t the latest dance move.

Haney’s Reel might be so engaging because he’s done a great job of building a large, niche audience of over 24,000 Instagram followers and learned what types of content they value. While more followers could certainly get you more views, creating Reels around what your audience and similar users want to watch can also take your engagement a long way.

1. Enter Reels mode within Instagram Stories.

To get started with Reels, open the Instagram Stories camera and tap Reels.

2. Explore the editing tools.

Before and after you record footage on your Reels camera, you’ll see four editing icons on the left side of your camera screen.

The tools you’ll see include:

• Sound: Which enables you to add a pre-recorded sound from other users or Reels’ featured song list to your content.

• Playback Speed: This allows you to speed up or slow down content.

• Effects: Tapping this icon, which looks like an emoji outline, allows you to add stickers and filter effects to your video. The filters for Reels are similar to Instagram Stories and many of these effects crossover between both video formats

• Timer: If you can’t hold down the Record button for the full clip, but want to make a video that lasts for a certain amount of time, you can tap this icon to set recording time for your clip. When you press record, a countdown of three seconds will appear on your screen before Reels starts to record. Then Reels will automatically film for the amount of time you designated.

3. Hold Record to begin filming, or upload a pre-recorded video.

Once you press and hold the record button, you’ll start filming a clip. If you let go of the record button, but still have time left in your Reel video, you can hold the record button again to start a second clip that will begin immediately after the first ends.

As you record one or multiple clips for your Reel, the progress bar at the top of the screen shows you how much recording time you have left.

Alternatively, if you’ve already recorded a great video or TikTok that you think will be engaging on Reels, you can tap the camera icon to upload clips from your camera roll.

4. Add last-minute effects.

If you didn’t add effects before the video started recording, but want to after seeing how it came out, you can add stickers, drawings, and text to your Reel before publishing.

When you are finished, tap the arrow at the bottom when you’re ready to publish. Again, these effects are nearly the same as those you’ll see on Instagram Stories.

5. Prepare to publish your Reel.

When you press the arrow after reviewing the video and adding any last-minute effects, you’ll be taken to the post screen, where you can choose a cover image, write a caption, add hashtags, and publish your video to Reels.

6. View your Reels.

Once you’ve published one or more Reels, this content will appear on the Explore page, as well as a tab on your profile.

7. Share your Reels.

Along with posting Reels for Explore audiences, you can also post them to your feed which will also cause them to appear on your main profile grid. Reels can also be sent as direct messages or even posted to your Instagram Stories. Unless you share a Reel so it appears on your main grid, the content will behave like a Story and disappear within 24 hours.

8. Monitor your performance.

Currently, to view any insights for a Reel, you need to view the post itself. At this time, there isn’t a way to view the analytics of your Reels within Instagram Insights. Instead, look at the likes and comments to get a sense of engagement.

9. Watch Reels from other accounts.

To access Reels, simply go to search and you’ll see a featured Reel. Tap that and then you can easily scroll through the clips. From there, you can follow users and like, share, and comment on reels directly. You can find Reels on specific topics by searching for hashtags.

What to Keep in Mind with Instagram Reels

As you consider Reels, TikTok, and other emerging social media platforms in your marketing strategy, it’s important to weigh the pros, cons, and key marketing takeaways when determining if a channel or feature is right for your team.

Here are just a few things to remember as you consider Reels:

Reels competes against a unique, viral sensation:

Although Instagram has a huge audience that is loyal to its platform, many Gen Z users are used to going to TikTok for viral videos and general entertainment. Because the app has pulled in astounding fan loyalty in its short lifespan, you might find that Reels don’t have the same viral opportunities that TikTok videos might have. 

What works on TikTok might not work on Reels

TikTok is a highly experimental platform with a younger, but huge, global audience. Because of these factors, there aren’t many rules about what you should and shouldn’t post on there. Meanwhile, Instagram has been around for years, has a slightly older audience, and has some content norms or audience expectations set in place

If you’ve already posted a handful of TikTok videos and want to test them on Reels, you can consider uploading a few, watching how they perform, and learning more about what works well on both platforms.

However, as you learn the differences between TikTok and Instagram audiences, you might find that high-performing TikToks aren’t as engaging to your Reels audience. If this is the case, you might want to consider creating specialized content for Reels.

There aren’t ad opportunities just yet.

Although you’ll want to keep the points above in mind as you consider testing out Reels, you’ll also want to remember the opportunities it offers. For example, Reels might be a great option for you if you’ve mastered Instagram, know what content your audiences want, and are eager to test out TikTok-styled content without using time and resources to build a full TikTok app strategy.

If you do begin to test out Reels, it can’t hurt to brush up on your Instagram marketing skills and Instagram platform knowledge to ensure that your profile, other content, and — ultimately — your Reels will be on point for your brand and optimized for brand awareness.

Be sure to check out our Ultimate Guide for Instagram Marketing, or sign up for the free HubSpot Academy course below.

When you were in school, did you ever work on a group project?

If so, you probably remember that some went well, and others weren’t as synergistic.

The same thing is true with brand partnerships.

Sometimes co-marketing works because each brand pulls in a new audience and the two are able to learn from one another.

However, this isn’t the case with all partnerships.

Below, let’s review some brand partnerships that have failed and discuss co-marketing mistakes to avoid.

5 Brand Partnership Fails

1. Kendall Jenner and Pepsi

A few years ago, a major brand partnership that failed was between Kendall Jenner and Pepsi. Pepsi featured Jenner in a commercial where she offers a soda to a policeman at a protest.

Here’s the commercial:

The reason this partnership failed was because audiences thought the two brands were making light of serious social and civil rights issues.

Essentially, this commercial was perceived as being done in poor taste and didn’t showcase social consciousness.

2. Target and Neiman Marcus

In 2013, Target and Neiman Marcus partnered on a new clothing line.

However, Target’s customers search for cost-efficient, mass trend clothing options, while Neiman Marcus is a luxury brand that offers expensive, edgy clothes.

Unfortunately, this collection didn’t take Target’s target audience into account. The clothing line ended up being too expensive and edgy for Target’s audience.

Usually, if a high-end brand is partnering with Target, the prices would be lower, so customers can get trend-setting designs at an affordable price.

This partnership failed because the brands couldn’t make both target audiences’ happy with their collection.

3. Kraft and Starbucks

A partnership that had lasted for years ended in a major court battle.

When this partnership was successful, Kraft was able to help Starbucks grow by offering distribution services and helping the coffee brand build a presence in grocery stores.

According to William Neuman of “The New York Times,” “Kraft claims that Starbucks unilaterally decided to end their agreement, and Starbucks says that Kraft failed to aggressively promote its brands, which include Seattle’s Best Coffee, in stores.”

Ultimately, this brand partnership failed because of poor communication, and possibly poor execution as well.

4. Forever 21 and Atkins

Last year, Forever 21 decided to partner with Atkins by sending out Atkins snack bars to customers who had ordered online.

However, Forever 21’s target market didn’t appreciate the brand sending them weight loss bars. In fact, customers complained that the brand was body-shaming them.

Additionally, since the partnership wasn’t explained to customers, some people assumed the bars were being sent to plus-size customers who ordered online.

This partnership failed because it didn’t make sense for the audiences and the brands’ missions didn’t align.

5. Shell and LEGO

Another example of brands that had worked together for years (about 50 years to be exact), Shell and LEGO had a falling out.

At first, it made sense that LEGO would partner with an oil company because they could use the credibility of Shell with their race cars and gas station sets.

However, LEGO eventually became a global children’s entertainment brand, and the partnership didn’t make sense anymore because of the oil company’s reputation of poor environmental practices and oil drilling.

Eventually, this partnership failed because of the public outcry from LEGO’s audience and the impact on the brand’s reputation.

Now that we’ve reviewed some brand partnerships that have failed, let’s discuss why they didn’t do well and look at some common co-marketing mistakes to avoid.

1. Poor communication.

When you’re working with another brand, it’s important to communicate effectively and efficiently with each other.

You need to be honest about what you’re both going to give and get from the partnership since it has to make sense for your brands.

Margot Mazur, a senior marketing manager in charge of co-marketing for HubSpot, says, “Co-marketing is all about negotiation — you give some, and you get some from your partner. Make sure to come into the negotiation from a place of positivity, and instead of focusing on what you’re going to get — whether it’s promotional materials, ad spend, or placement — focus on what you can give the partner to make sure that they’re finding value from the relationship.”

She added, “On the other side of that email, there’s a human being trying to do their best work, just like you. Focus on strengthening that relationship, being honest and clear about expectations and needs, and your co-marketing offer is sure to succeed.”

2. The brand stories don’t align.

Before you partner with another brand, think about your brand messaging and your story. Personify your brand and think of it as a person — who is your brand?

Now, when you choose a partner, your brands should have the same values and similar brand messaging.

For example, if you’re an eco-friendly brand working with an oil company, those stories don’t make sense together.

Your brand stories need to align, otherwise your customers will notice and call you out.

3. The partnership doesn’t consider the customers.

As we saw with some of our examples, it’s important that a brand partnership makes sense for both target audiences.

In fact, three out of the five examples failed because the brand partnership didn’t make sense for the audience.

Before you begin a co-marketing relationship with another brand, consider your audience. Will this partnership make sense to them? What would they think of your partnership?

It’s important to answer these questions before moving forward with a co-marketing campaign.

4. Badly written agreements.

Unfortunately, for a couple of our examples above, there were issues over contracts and agreements.

If you don’t have a detailed, well-written agreement, then you could end up in court for not upholding your end of the deal.

Each partner should agree to every part of the partnership so no one is left disappointed.

5. Executed poorly.

Another reason that a partnership might fail is because it’s executed poorly. If the implementation is misguided, then you could do serious damage to your reputations.

If you’re going to partner with another brand, make sure that both parties are committed to it and will execute the agreement with 100% effort.

So, now that we’ve discussed why brand partnerships might fail, how can you avoid these mistakes?

Avoiding Co-Marketing Mistakes

Co-marketing can be greatly beneficial for both brands if it makes sense and provides value for your audience.

To avoid these mistakes, make sure that you communicate with your partner and consider your customers.

To learn more about co-marketing, check out our ultimate guide.

Today, consumers have a lot of power — they can research your product or service and make purchase decisions entirely on their own. And rather than talking to one of your sales reps, they’re more likely to ask for referrals from members of their networks or read online reviews. 

With this in mind, have you adapted your marketing strategy to complement the way today’s consumers research, shop, and buy?

In order to do just that — and to meet your potential buyers were they are — you must have a deep understanding of who your buyers are, your specific market, and what influences the purchase decisions and behavior of your target audience members.  Enter: Market Research. 

Whether you’re new to market research, this guide will provide you with a blueprint for conducting a thorough study of your market, target audience, competition, and more.

What is market research?

Market research is the process of gathering information about your business’s buyers personas, target audience, and customers to determine how viable and successful your product or service would be, and/or is, among these people.

What does market research tell you? 

Market research provides insight into a wide variety of things that impact your bottom line including (but not limited to):

• Where your target audience and current customers conduct their product/ service research
• Which of your competitors your target audience looks to for information, more options, or to make a purchase
• What’s trending in your industry
• Who makes up your market and what their challenges are
• What influences purchases and conversions among your target audience 

As you begin honing in on your market research, you’ll likely hear about primary and secondary market research. The easiest way to think about primary and secondary research is to envision to umbrellas sitting beneath market research: one for primary market research and one for secondary market research.

Beneath these two umbrellas sits a number of different types of market research, which we’ll highlight below. Defining which of the two umbrellas your market research fits beneath isn’t necessarily crucial, although some marketers prefer to make the distinction.

So, in case you encounter a marketer who wants to define your types of market research as primary or secondary — or if you’re one of them — let’s cover the definitions of the two categories next. Then, we’ll look at the different types of market research in the following section. 

Primary vs. Secondary Research

There are two main types of market research that your business can conduct to collect actionable information on your products including primary research and secondary research.

Primary Research

Primary research is the pursuit of first-hand information about your market and the customers within your market. It’s useful when segmenting your market and establishing your buyer personas. Primary market research tends to fall into one of two buckets: exploratory and specific research.

Exploratory Primary Research

This kind of primary market research is less concerned with measurable customer trends and more about potential problems that would be worth tackling as a team. It normally takes place as a first step — before any specific research has been performed — and may involve open-ended interviews or surveys with small numbers of people.

Specific Primary Research

Specific primary market research often follows exploratory research and is used to dive into issues or opportunities the business has already identified as important. In specific research, the business can take a smaller or more precise segment of their audience and ask questions aimed at solving a suspected problem.

Secondary Research

Secondary research is all the data and public records you have at your disposal to draw conclusions from(e.g. trend reports, market statistics, industry content, and sales data you already have on your business). Secondary research is particularly useful for analyzing your competitors. The main buckets your secondary market research will fall into include:

Public Sources

These sources are your first and most-accessible layer of material when conducting secondary market research. They’re often free to find and review — lots of bang for your buck here.

Government statistics are one of the most common types of public sources according to Entrepreneur. Two U.S. examples of public market data are the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor & Statistics, both of which offer helpful information on the state of various industries nationwide.

Commercial Sources

These sources often come in the form of market reports, consisting of industry insight compiled by a research agency like Pew, Gartner, or Forrester. Because this info is so portable and distributable, it typically costs money to download and obtain.

Internal Sources

Internal sources deserve more credit for supporting market research than they generally get. Why? This is the market data your organization already has!

Average revenue per sale, customer retention rates, and other historical data on the health of old and new accounts can all help you draw conclusions on what your buyers might want right now.

Now that we’ve covered these overarching market research categories, let’s get more specific and look at the various types of market research you might choose to conduct. 

1. Interviews

Interviews allow for face-to-face discussions (in-person and virtual) so you can allow for a natural flow or conversation and watch your interviewee’s body language while doing so. 

2. Focus Groups

Focus groups provide you with a handful of carefully-selected people that you can have test out your product, watch a demo, provide feedback, and/or answer specific questions.

3. Product/ Service Use Research

Product or service use research offers insight into how and why your audience uses your product or service, and specific features of that item. This type of market research also gives you an idea of the product or service’s usability for your target audience. 

4. Observation-Based Research

Observation-based research allows you to sit back and watch the ways in which your target audience members go about using your product or service, what works well in terms of UX, what roadblocks they hit, and which aspects of it could be easier for them to use and apply. 

5. Buyer Persona Research

Buyer persona research gives you a realistic look at who makes up your target audience, what their challenges are, why they want your product or service, what they need from your business and brand, and more. 

6. Market Segmentation Research

Market segmentation research allows you to categorize your target audience into different groups (or segments) based on specific and defining characteristics — this way, you can determine effective ways to meet their needs, understand their pain points and expectations, learn about their goals, and more. 

7. Pricing Research

Pricing research gives you an idea of what similar products or services in your market sell for, what your target audience expects to pay — and is willing to pay — for whatever it is you sell, and what’s a fair price for you to list your product or service at. All of this information will help you define your pricing strategy. 

8. Competitive Analysis

Competitive analyses are valuable because they give you a deep understanding of the competition in your market and industry. You can learn about what’s doing well in your industry, what your target audience is already going for in terms of products like yours, which of your competitors should you work to keep up with and surpass, and how you can clearly separate yourself from the competition. 

9. Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Research

Customer satisfaction and loyalty research give you a look into how you can get current customers to return for more business and what will motivate them to do so (e.g. loyalty programs, rewards, remarkable customer service). This research will help you discover the most-effective ways to promote delight among your customers.

10. Brand Awareness Research

Brand awareness research tells you about what your target audience knows about and recognizes from your brand. It tells you about the associations your audience members make when they think about your business and what they believe you’re all about.  

11. Campaign Research

Campaign research entails looking into your past campaigns and analyzing their success among your target audience and current customers. It requires experimentation and then a deep dive into what reached and resonated with your audience so you can keep those elements in mind for your future campaigns and hone in on the aspects of what you do that matters most to those people. 

Now that you know about the categories and types of market research, let’s review how you can conduct your market research.

Here’s how to do market research step-by-step.

Conduct Market Research to Grow Better

Conducting market research can be a very eye-opening experience. Even if you think you know your buyers pretty well, completing the study will likely uncover new channels and messaging tips to help improve your interactions.

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

It’s no secret that data can be very powerful — when you can actually understand what it’s telling you, that is.

It’s not easy to get clear takeaways by looking at a slew of numbers and stats. You need to have the data presented in a logical, easy-to-understand way so you can apply your learnings in an effective way.

The human brain processes visual information better than it processes text — so using charts, graphs, and design elements, data visualization can help you explain trends and stats much more easily. But, not all data visualization is created equal. (Just check out “Why Most People’s Charts and Graphs Look Like Crap” to see what I mean.)

In this article, we’ll offer you applicable ways to ensure your data visualization is effective, and provide examples for inspiration along the way.

What is data visualization?

Data visualization allows you to organize data in a way that’s both compelling and easy to digest.

It’s about representing data in a visual context, such as a chart or a map, to help anyone viewing it better understand the significance of that data.

How does data visualization work?

Whereas data shared via text can be confusing (not to mention bland), data represented in a visual format can help people extract meaning from that information more quickly and easily. Data visualization allows you to expose patterns, trends, and correlations that may otherwise go undetected, too.

Static vs. Interactive Data Visualization

Data visualization can be static or interactive. For centuries, people have been using static data visualization like charts and maps. Interactive data visualization is a little bit newer: It lets people drill down into the dirty details of these charts and graphs using their computers and mobile devices, and then interactively change which data they see and how it’s processed.

Time Series Visualization

In addition to static and interactive data visualization, you may also hear the term time series visualization. Time series visualization is what it sounds like — visuals that track data, or performance, over a period of time. This is important because a major reason in which people want to focus on data visualization is to show changes in variables over time.

Time Series Data Visualization Examples

There are many ways to use time series data visualization — you’ll learn more about these below, but here’s a quick list to give you a better understanding of which visuals are considered time series visuals.

• Line chart
• Bar chart
• Area chart
• Bullet graph

Download a free introduction to data visualization to help you design compelling charts & graphs here.

Data Visualization Best Practices

While determining how you’ll visualize your data, one of the first things you’ll want to do is keep the following best practices in mind.

1. Choose the best visual for your data and it’s purpose.
2. Ensure your data is easily understandable and viewable.
3. Offer necessary context for your audience in and around your visual.
4. Keep your visual as simple and straightforward as possible.
5. Educate your audience with your visual.

With these best practices in mind, you may now be wondering how to actually show your data in an effective way. Well, there are a number of options when it comes to data visualization including:

• Charts
• Tables
• Graphs
• Maps
• Infographics
• Dashboards

Within each of these categories are more specific approaches to data visualization. Although the following list of 10 approaches doesn’t cover all options, these should help you get started.

1. Line Chart

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Use a line chart to display your data over the course of time to view trends and intervals. You can do this with a single, or multiple, data point(s).

2. Bar Chart

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Use a bar chart to compare groups or categories while also displaying clear values.

3. Scatter Chart

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Use a scatter chart to show the values of two different variables as points on a chart.

4. Area Chart

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Use an area chart in a similar way to how you’d use a line chart. The difference is that the area below the line is filled with color and/ or texture with an area chart. Both area and line charts display the evolution of a value.

5. Map

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Use a map to display data that’s geographically located and to show the distribution and proportion of data in specific areas.

6. Indicator

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Use an indicator if you want to display your data with visual like a gauge or ticker which will clearly show which direction things are moving over time.

7. Pivot Table

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Use a pivot table to summarize a large amount of information while specifically highlighting the most critical data for audience members.

8. Bullet Graph

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Use a bullet graph or chart in a similar way to how you’d use a bar chart. The main difference is that a bullet graph allows you to include more detailed information and data in a way that doesn’t look or feel cluttered.

9. Box Plot

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Use a box plot to view the distribution of your data — you’ll have one box plot for each attribute you’re displaying.

10. Matrix

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Use a matrix to display the relationships between hundreds or thousands of data points, variables, and more to understand their interactions all in one location.

Ready to feel inspired? Let’s take a look at some great examples of interactive and static data visualization.

Examples of Data Visualization

Below are 16 examples of data visualization, split into two major sections: interactive and static data visualization.

Examples of Interactive Data Visualization

1. Why Buses Bunch

Here’s an example of a complex data set boiled down in a way that looks and feels like a game. In this visualization, Setosa is showing how “bus bunching” happens, i.e. when a bus gets delayed and later causes multiple buses to arrive at a single stop at the same time.

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Telling this story in numbers alone would be pretty difficult — instead, they turn it into an interactive game that makes the data easier to understand. While the buses rotate along a route, you can click and hold a button to delay a bus. Then, all you have to do is watch to see how even a short delay causes the buses to bunch together.

2. Languages in the World

This interactive by DensityDesign introduces the non-linguist to the many world languages. All 2,678 of them.

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This piece allows you to explore common language families, see which languages are most frequently spoken, and view where languages are spoken around the world. This is visual storytelling: taking an in-depth subject and breaking it down in an easy-to-understand way.

3. Percent of U.S. Population by Age Group

This is an example of how to present a single data set in a compelling way. Pew Research created an animated GIF composite to show shifts in population demographics over time. It’s an effective way to tell a larger story in a neat package.

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Plus, this type of micro-content is easy to share on social or embed in blogs, extending the content’s reach. (If you want to make a GIF of your own using Photoshop, here’s a step-by-step tutorial.)

4. The Complete History of the NFL

In this interactive visualization below, an “Elo rating” — a simple measure of strength based on game-by-game results — has been calculated for every game in the history of the National Football League (NFL).

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That’s over 30,000 ratings in total. Viewers can compare each team’s Elo to see how each team performed across decades of play.

5. U.S. Thanksgiving on Google Flights

This visual is powered by Google Trends. It tracked flights as they flew to, from, and across the United States on the day before Thanksgiving.

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The visualization starts at the very beginning of the day and plays like a movie as time goes on, showing flights moving around the country.

Without showing any numbers beside the time, viewers can see which times were most popular for international flights, domestic flights, and flights to/ from different hubs around the country.

6. What’s Really Warming the World?

Ever heard a version of the advice, “Don’t simply show the data tell a story with it”? That’s exactly what this visualization from Bloomberg Business does — and it’s the interactive part that makes the story move along from beginning to end. The visual disproves theories that claim that global warming can be explained by natural causes.

The first thing you’ll see is the observed temperature as it’s risen from 1880 to present day.

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As you scroll down, the visualization takes you through exactly how much different factors contribute to global warming in comparison to what’s been observed, adding a richer layer of storytelling. The conclusion the authors want viewers to draw is made very clear.

7. A Guide to Who is Fighting Whom in Syria

Relationships among many different groups can be difficult to understand — especially when there are 11 of them, many of which are on the same side as groups they’re normally at odds with, and vice versa.

But using a table format and familiar visuals and colors, Slate simplified this data into a simple, digestible, and interactive format.

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Viewers can click on any of the faces for a succinct description of the relationship.

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8. Most Valuable Sports Franchises

Here’s an example of telling a deeper story by adding data.

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The interactive visual lets users see the number of years each team has competed, as well as number of championships won. This offers a more comprehensive view of each team’s history and success as a franchise.

9. U.S. Wind Map

Here’s a visual similar that shows the wind speeds and directions in the U.S. in real-time back in 2015.

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It’s a great example of intuitive design: Speed is represented by lines moving slowly or quickly, and direction is represented by which way the lines are moving. It’s immediately clear what the general trends are without any need for numbers unless you click into the map itself. Plus, capping the number of variables at two makes it even easier to follow.

Examples of Static Data Visualization

10) Where News Audiences Fit on the Political Spectrum

This visual shows data organized on a distribution plot — this is an effective visual choice because it allows viewers to see where each media outlet lies on a spectrum.

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On a spectrum, the distance between each media outlet is significant. If these outlets were just listed one after the other in a table, viewers wouldn’t be able to see where each one stood in context.

11. The Daily Routines of Famous Creative People

Using information from the book Daily Rituals by Mason Currey, the site showcases the daily schedules of famous creatives broken down by time and activity.

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Not only is this an example of engaging data (you can explore the schedules by individual activity), it’s also an effective editorial piece for a brand.

12. The Year in News

Echelon Insights created this visual to depict the most talked-about news stories of 2014 on Twitter.

What do 184.5 million tweets look like? Rad spin art.

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13. The Depth of the Problem

When you want to illustrate scale, static data visualization can be a great way to make your point. The infographic below from The Washington Post is incredibly long … and that’s on purpose.

In this case, they’re showing how crazy far a deep-sea signal from an airplane can be detected by comparing that depth to tall buildings, the maximum depth of known mammals, the depth of the Titanic wreck, and so on.

Source

It’s a great use of simple visuals and color gradients. Finally, adding data to a news story (in this case, the missing Malaysian airliner) provides necessary context.

14. Funding the Final Frontier

While the infographic above is pretty simple, there are ways to create well-designed infographics that deliver a large amount of data. The secret? A simple and clean format that makes it easy for readers to understand the data.

Source

This infographic, created by GOOD Magazine and Column Five, breaks down NASA’s five-year budget to show how and where the money will be spent. Plus, it has an on-theme design — an all-around win.

15. Caritas Kontaktladen Annual Report

Not all data visualizations need to be animated. When real-world data is visualized with real-life examples, the results can be stunning. The designer of this visual took a unique approach to the data contained in the annual report.

Source

The organization provides support to drug addicts in Austria, so Luttenberger focused on communicating the mission through real-life visuals. For example, this shopping cart visualization represents how much of life’s necessities a welfare recipient can afford each day.

16. Austria Solar Annual Report

While there are many ways to visualize data, using the information subject to actually create the data visualization can be pretty profound.

This annual report from Austria Solar uses actual solar power to bring the company’s data to life through solar-activated inks on the page.

The good examples of data visualization above are great to reference while you develop your approach. However, it’s also important we consider the less effective ways to go about data visualization so you know what to avoid — so, let’s cover some bad examples next.

Bad Data Visualization Examples

There are many ways in which data visualization can go wrong.

For instance, look at this data visualization example of MLS salaries in 2013. The sheer amount of information on this chart makes it difficult to read.

Source

Additionally, the scale of the variables requires audience members to zoom in significantly to read the data. Some of the boxes that are being used to depict data appear to be vertical while most are horizontal — this also makes the information confusing to read.

When you include a number of completely different variables within a single visual, it also becomes complicated for audience members to understand — the following chart is an example of this.

Source

Something else you’ll want to do is make sure you’re not making your visual more complicated than it needs to be. For example, this chart has a number of variables that are depicted by 3D bars. This graph doesn’t need to be 3D — in fact, it simply makes the information more difficult to understand and view.

Source

Lastly, let’s review some data visualization tools to help make this process simpler.

Data Visualization Tools

There are a number of data visualization resources available today but the following list is here to help get you started. Don’t be afraid to test out a few options to determine which option suits your needs (and data) best.

1. HubSpot

HubSpot offers several options for data visualization, specifically within Reports. You can create graphs and charts in many ways depending on your preference.

There’s also a Dashboard and Reporting add-on that can ease the process of data visualization. Lastly, HubSpot allows you to manage your data and dashboards, as well as customize them, in a way that suits your specific needs.

2. Tableau Desktop

Tableau Desktop’s data visualization software offers live analytics with interactive dashboards so you’re able to easily spot trends, patterns, and insights.

There are easy-to-make maps, indicators, and many more visuals, as well as straightforward analytics which allow you to derive actionable information from calculations, reference lines, and forecasts as a result of your visuals.

3. Chartio

Chartio’s data visualization tools offer users 15 types of charts to choose from with multiple variations, and even more options if you know how to use data programming languages.

With Chartio, you can bring all your data together from locations like Amazon Redshift, browse your data with the Visual SQL solution, create and manage customized charts and visuals, and easily share them (via web page, Slack, PDF reports for email, etc.).

4. Databox

Databox provides a number of ways to upload your data and efficiently create visuals to derive conclusions.

There are over 70 integrations that can help you quickly and easily create visuals with pre-built dashboards and reports. You can also create custom metrics. Databox then allows you to connect to Google Sheets or an SQL database, or you can push it via API to view and share your data.

5. Google Chart Tools

Google Chart Tools allow you to visualize live data on your website (and mobile) with the help of a number of interactive, customizable charts and data tools. The most common way to use Google Charts is with simple JavaScript that you embed in your web page. And by using the DataTable class, you can easily switch between chart types.

Grow Better With Data Visualization

With data visualization, you’ll be able to identify, discuss, and act on insights in an easier and more effective way. So, look to the examples above for inspiration (and as a reference for what to avoid, too!) and experiment with the many tools available to determine what works best for your needs and goals.

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

With more than 1 billion monthly active users, Instagram has established itself as an obvious platform for brands looking to expand their reach and engage with their audience.

Figuring out how to launch a successful Instagram contest, however, is much less obvious. Sure, it sounds like an effective strategy for stirring up conversation — it capitalizes on user generated content (UGC) and typically requires very little commitment for participants. But where do you start? And how can you be sure that you’re covering all the bases?

How to Run an Instagram Contest: A 10-Step Guide

To help give you some direction, we put together a detailed list of steps to run through when planning an engaging Instagram contest. From setting goals to monitoring submissions, we’ve covered all of the basics below — and we’ve included some inspirational examples along the way. Check it out …

Disclaimer: This blog post includes some information on legal issues surrounding internet marketing, but legal information is not the same as legal advice — applying the law to a specific circumstance. We’ve conducted research to better ensure that our information is accurate and useful, but we insist that you talk to a lawyer if you want professional assurance that our information, and your interpretation of it, is accurate. In a nutshell, you may not rely on this information as legal advice, nor as a recommendation or endorsement of any particular legal understanding, and you should instead see this post’s info as for entertainment purposes only.

1. Plan objectives and goals.

Before you dive into an Instagram marketing contest, it’s important to plan it out first. The key to running a successful contest is to have a purpose — one that aligns with the interests and behaviors of your target audience.

Whether you’re looking to grow your brand presence on Instagram or build out your list of followers, it’s important that you set a specific goal so that you’re not left wondering whether or not you were successful in the end.

To help narrow your focus, think about the audience you’re trying to reach: What kinds of posts do they like seeing on your account? What kinds of posts do they enjoy posting on their own feeds? How do they behave on the platform? If you’re looking to drum up a lot of engagement, you should aim to center your goals and purpose around content that your audience actually wants to post and engage with.

Don’t forget to establish a time frame and budget for your contest, as determining these logistical details upfront will help you design a more effective contest.

2. Create an entry method.

Although the most effective and engaging Instagram contests are those that actually prompt your audience to post their own photos, there are number of different ways brands can create contests on Instagram. Because of this, it’s important to establish and emphasize what it takes for your audience to actually enter the contest.

Here are some ideas for how your audience might enter your contest:

• Have your audience post a photo or a video to Instagram with a specific hashtag and a specific theme.
• Have your audience solely follow you or do so in addition to creating a post.
• Have your audience tag your brand in their post.
• Have your audience Like or comment on one of your posts.

(For more ideas, click here.)

Make sure you establish what the guidelines are for entering the contest, and make that clear on your promotional materials. Maybe your contest is centered around a hashtag that doesn’t include your brand name. If you still want your brand to be tagged to gain recognition, you have to make that clear in your rules.

3. Find the perfect hashtag.

A good hashtag is a key to any engaging Instagram contest. Without it, there’s no link between the contest and the content being generated. In other words, hashtags help create brand and/or contest recognition by serving as a mechanism for sharing and driving participation.

Trouble is, creating the perfect hashtag can be tricky. If your contest is going to have a time frame (and it should), you want to create a hashtag that you’re not going to want to use over and over again. Not to mention, there are tons of hashtags being created each day, making it difficult to land on something unique and catchy.

To help you come up with the best fit, consider these contest hashtag guidelines:

• Short: Create a hashtag that sticks in people’s minds. The more readable and identifiable your hashtag is, the better it is for your contest.
• Relevant: Make sure you’re creating a hashtag that is very clearly related back to your brand name, product, or services. If you settle on a generic, crowded hashtag such as #ThrowbackThursday, it’s likely that you’ll have a hard time figuring out who your participants actually are.
• Memorable: Users are likely to see promotions for your contest prior to actually posting the content. This means your hashtag needs to be memorable enough for users to think about it once and remember to act sometime later. Try to make your hashtag catchy, easy to search, and easy to write. Avoid weird spellings and confusing word choices.
• Universal: Think about your audience. Does everyone speak the same language or use similar words? If you have an international audience, make sure you’re careful about using slang words or region-specific terms that might confuse people.
• Rare: Do a search before you choose a hashtag. Are there lots of users using your ideal hashtag for some other purposes? If so, you may want to head back to the drawing board.

An example of an effective, engaging hashtag:

Mint.com, an online personal budgeting and financial management company, hosted their #MyMintMoment contest.

The contest was well-designed for a number of reasons, one of which is its hashtag. The hashtag — #MyMintMoment — is simple, short, memorable, and easy to understand. It stayed on-brand and had a clear theme.

The goal of the contest was to get users to post about the things they were saving for. Participants posted pictures of tattoos, vacations, weddings, children, cars — you name it.

This is a great example of an effective hashtag, but it’s also a great example of how UGC can be used to drive marketing decisions. Think about it: Mint asked participants to share posts about things they were saving for. Sounds like an easy way to gain insight surrounding the unique motives and interests that fuel the usage of their service, doesn’t it?

4. Clearly define a theme.

Because most Instagram contests are UGC-based, it’s important to pick a theme so your users know what kinds of pictures and videos to post.

Ideally, you want to a pick a theme that aligns with your market, product, or services. But you can also take advantage of holidays, seasons, and events that align with your product or brand.

An example of an effective theme:

Last summer, D Magazine, a city and lifestyle magazine based in Dallas, used the Texas summer heat to create an effective #StayCoolDallas contest. The contest encouraged participants to submit photos of ways to stay cool in the Dallas heat. Submissions included everything from cold drinks at favorite bars and restaurants to fun summer activities.

This contest and hashtag worked particularly well because of the double meaning of the word “cool” — which ultimately left room for participants to get creative with their interpretations. This is a great example of how to make engagement super easy.

While the hashtag wasn’t totally brand-specific, the theme was very much in line with their brand and passion for all things Dallas. And as a result of the contest, they were left with a ton of new material to get ideas for their next issue.

5. Decide how winners will be chosen.

Part of a well-designed contest is informing your participants of how the winner will be chosen. Most contests are determined based on one of two ways: a vote or a jury. Let’s explore how each option works …

Voting:

A great way to boost the virality of your contest is to have participants compete for the most Likes. If the prize is valuable enough, your participants will likely share their posts with their friends across channels in order to get as many Likes as possible.

This strategy helps maximize your audience’s reach. At the same time, it can be detrimental to your contest, as you run into issues with folks using “Like bots” to gain artificial Likes. To avoid any complications here, you’ll want to put forth very specific rules that address the use of these types of workarounds.

Jury:

For the sake of quality and overall fairness, the jury method is the clear winner. With the jury method, you select a group of experts to decide upon a winner, rather than relying on a voting system.

There are pros and cons to votes or juries, but no matter the way you choose, make sure to clearly state your method so your users know what they’re vying for. Many brands choose to have a mixed-method approach and use a combination of voting and jury to determine the winner.

6. Choose an appropriate award.

When determining what the award for you contest should be, you need to consider your target audience, your budgetary constraints, and how aggressive your goals are.

Remember that by asking your audience to participate in the contest, you’re asking them to take action on something. As with any effort like this, you’ll need the value of the prize to outweigh the cost and energy required to enter the contest. While people might gloss over an opportunity to win a free t-shirt, it’s likely that they’d be willing to jump through a few hoops for something like a free trip.

While your prize should match the entry action, it should also align with the interests of your target audience. Ask yourself: What might my target audience like to have? Your list of answers for this — budget not considered — might be huge. Sure, everyone wants that free trip we mentioned earlier, but that’s not the point. The goal is to find a prize that’s both valuable and relevant to your brand.

Gift cards, free services, coupons, giveaways, and product goodie bags are all common prizes that brands use for contests, but we’re always in favor of getting creative, too.

Example of a creative contest prize:

One of our favorite examples of contest prizes was Sperry’s Photo Real Design Contest. Sperry encouraged users to post “epic photos” that represented an “odyssey.”

Participants then submitted photos of all kinds of things — nature shots, colorful art, real people, etc. — to be judged based on creativity and the number of Likes it received.

The winner that was chosen received a unique pair of Sperry shoes featuring their photo. Talk about a creative prize, right? Not to mention, it served as a great example of how brands can use contests to inspire real product ideas.

7. Create terms & conditions.

Don’t forget that when you create a competition with a prize, you must follow legal guidelines. The laws that will apply to you depend on where you’re based and who you allow to enter your contest, so you should consult your lawyer for help drafting your terms and conditions. Creating a terms & conditions page is a must.

Here are some common terms people include:

• The name and contact details of the promoting brand
• The dates of the contest
• The rules of who can enter (such as age and employee restrictions)
• The guidelines for how people enter
• The guidelines for how a winner is chosen
• The date and way winners will be announced
• The date and way the winner will be informed
• The time period the winner has to respond and claim their prize
• The specific of the prize (including number of prizes, description of prizes, and any caveats)
• The details of how the prize will be delivered
• Acknowledge that the promotion isn’t sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with Instagram or any other social media used throughout the contest.

Note: Check out Instagram’s Promotion guidelines and make sure to comply with their rules.

8. Promote like crazy.

Now that you’ve got a solid plan in place, it’s time to promote the heck out of your contest.

Where’s the best place to start spreading the word? The possibilities are seemingly endless, but here are a few ideas to inspire your promotion efforts:

• Your blog. Write a post on your site detailing the contest, and use it as a launch point for your contest’s landing page.

• Social media. What better place to launch a social media contest than on social media? Direct your existing followers to the contest by including a shortened link in your bio and referencing that link in your promotional posts.

• Email. Extend the invitation to participate to your email subscribers by sending over a quick and friendly email to announce the offer.

9. Monitor submissions.

Monitoring both your promotional efforts and the level of participation during your contest is essential for meeting your goals and creating a plan to follow up on your contest.

Make sure to determine what metrics you’d like to use and how you’ll keep track of them. Here are some metrics to consider using:

• Number of submissions – Total number of posts submitted in compliance with your terms and conditions.
• Likes per submission – Helps you keep track of potential winners if your contest is decided by vote.
• Number of participants – If users can submit more than one submission, how many unique participants contributed to your contest?
• Top participants – Who shared the most content during your campaign? Keeping track of this helps you better engage with your biggest fans.
• Total Likes – Measures the total number of Likes on all submissions in your contest.
• Total reach – Captures the number of followers of your participants at the time of submission. Meant to show you the potential reach of your campaign.
• Follower growth during contest – Measure how much your following increased during the contest’s time period.

If your current audience is relatively small, and you don’t expect more than 30 submissions to your contest, you may decide to monitor your contest manually. To do this, assign someone the task of keeping track of submissions each day. At the end of the contest, someone will have to go through each submission and measure and write down the results from each submission.

If you’re monitoring your contest manually, try using a tool like Tagboard or Google Alerts to keep track of when your hashtag is being mentioned online, making it easier to track submissions. (HubSpot customers: You can set up a custom Stream in your Social Monitoring tool to keep tabs on a specific hashtag. Learn more here.)

If you’re expecting well over 30 submissions, however, you can imagine how difficult monitoring your submissions might be. If that’s the case, you may want to explore an Instagram-specific tool such as Iconosquare.

10. Follow up accordingly.

Once the contest is over, you can’t forget to follow up on the rules you set in the first place. Keep your terms and conditions in mind when reviewing the submissions to ensure that you’re being 100% fair in your evaluation.

Again, this is why establishing your terms and conditions early on is so important, as it will provide you with an documented plan for selecting, contacting, and awarding the winner.

Once you’ve selected and notified the winner, don’t forget to make the announcement publicly. Here’s an example of how to do so from D Magazine‘s #StayCoolDallas contest:

Instagram Contest Ideas

Now that you know how to run a contest, you’ll need to dream up ways to make your contest interesting, compelling, and appropriate for your brands. Here are some of the top contest ideas for Instagram:

1. Caption Contest

The perfect caption can make or break an Instagram post, so why not source the creativity of your audience and get some laughs along the way?

The caption contest is a great choice for Instagram because it allows your audience to stop and think about the contest (and, in effect, your brand) while providing a low-friction way for them to participate.

2. User-Generated Content

User-generated content — or any content produced by unpaid contributors — is a win/win for a brand. They get to participate and possibly win prizes; you get to enjoy extended reach by tapping into your audience’s audiences (say that 10 times fast). Not to mention that your brand benefits from the social proof of de facto testimonials from their participation.

Plus, to get even more mileage from the contest, you can ask participants’ permission to feature their content on your channels, giving you more content to promote.

3. Trivia Contest

With a trivia contest, you’re challenging your audience to demonstrate what they know. This encourages engagement on your posts and generates awareness for your brand and/or the topic that you’re shining the spotlight on. All you have to do is ask a question and reward those who get the answer correct. That reward may come in the form of a prize or as entry to win a prize.

4. Engage to Win

These types of contests are perhaps one of the more popular on Instagram because they solicit direct engagement as a way to enter. This may come in the form of likes, follows, shares, or tagging people. By doing this, you receive a ton of engagement as a result of the incentive, and this can increase your brand reach.

5. 1 Like 1 Vote

This contest usually relies on user-generated content but takes it a step further. The content gets promoted, and the audience is asked to vote (with a like) on the best entry, whether it’s a song, drawing, selfie, or other showcase of talent/personality. For this reason, your “contestants” are further incentivized to promote your contest to their audiences.

6. Raffle or Game

A raffle is just as possible online as it is in person. You can direct your audience to participate in whatever way you see fit to choose a random number or receive a raffle ticket. At the end, use a random number generator to select the winner. You can also do games such as “guess how many marbles are in the jar” or “how many differences can you find in these two pictures” as a way for participants to win/enter.

7. Offline Challenge

Just because you’re spreading the word of your contest through Instagram doesn’t mean it has to be based or held on Instagram. You can incentivize your audience to do something outdoors, participate in a fitness challenge, or perform some other activity.

Ready to Run a Contest on Instagram?

Now that you know everything it takes to run a successful, engaging Instagram contest, go put your knowledge to work for your brand.

Not only will you end up engaging and expanding your audience, but you’ll also end up with great new content you can use to inspire future content and contests.

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

Social media is an extremely valuable tool for promoting your marketing content.

Additionally, embedding your social profiles on your website or blog posts can help increase traffic to your social networks, and ultimately create brand consistency across platforms. 

But with so many social networks providing their own individual sharing and follow buttons, it’s often difficult to know which social media button to use for what purpose.

To address this, we’ve put together a comprehensive guide to help you understand the differences between the share and follow buttons for six of the biggest social networks — Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest — as well as how to implement them on your website, blog, and other content.

Jump to instructions for: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | YouTube | Pinterest | Instagram

The Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Creating Social Media Sharing Buttons

Differentiating between social media sharing buttons and social media follow buttons lets you identify which type of button you should be using for what purpose.

It’s the first step in understanding the nuances of all the various social media buttons available to you. Let’s clear that up right now.

Social Media Follow Buttons

These buttons serve to promote your business’ presence on various social networks and help you generate fans/followers for those particular accounts. By placing these buttons on your business’ website, you can help to create visibility for your social media accounts and easily extend your reach there.

You can put these buttons anywhere on your website, but we recommend at least placing these buttons on your website’s ‘About Us’ page and your blog’s homepage/sidebar. The Twitter Follow Button, Facebook Follow Button, LinkedIn Company Follow Plugin, and YouTube Subscribe Button (and more) that we’ll cover in this article all serve as social media follow buttons.

Social Media Share Links/Buttons

These links and buttons enable your website visitors and content viewers to easily share your content with their social media connections and networks. Adding these buttons to your content allows you to expand the reach of your content to new audiences and generate new visitors back to your website.

You should add social media sharing links/buttons to every piece of content you create, including landing pages, web pages, individual blog articles, email content, etc. The Tweet/Share Button, Facebook Like and Share Buttons, and LinkedIn Share Button (and more) that we’ll cover in this article all serve as social media sharing buttons.

Now, let’s dive into the most important social media buttons available for each of the top six social networks. (HubSpot customers: Many of these buttons come out of the box with HubSpot’s Social Media Apps.)

Social Media Buttons for Twitter

1. Twitter Follow Button

What It’s For:

The Twitter Follow Button is great for generating new followers for your Twitter account. Users can start following you on Twitter with just one click — without ever having to leave your site.

How to Add a Twitter Follow Button:

Visit https://publish.twitter.com/# and select “Twitter Buttons” to customize your button’s featured account (i.e. the account you want people to follow). 

Then, select “Follow Button”:

Finally, copy and paste the HTML code it generates where you want the button to appear on your website.

Alternatively, click “set customization options” above the embed link if you’d like to further customize aspects like language, or size of button. 

See it in action. Follow HubSpot on Twitter:

 

2. Twitter Share Button

What It’s For:

Use this button to enable site visitors to easily share content (e.g. blog posts, landing pages, other web pages, etc.) with their networks on Twitter, extending the reach of your content to their connections.

How to Add a Share Button:

Visit https://publish.twitter.com/# and select “Twitter Buttons”. Then, Choose “Share Button”:

We recommend adding your company’s Twitter username to increase your account’s reach and generate new followers.

Once customized, grab the HTML code for your new button and place it on your site where you want the button to appear. 

See it in action. Tweet this blog post:

3. Twitter Hashtag Button

What It’s For:

This button is great for encouraging visitors to tweet about certain hashtags you’re promoting, like for events or specific marketing campaigns. Add these buttons to pages for these campaigns or events to spread and promote the event and its hashtag. (For more information about hashtag use, check out this blog post.)

For instance, if you’re promoting an event with a hashtag, you can grab the HTML code and place it your event’s website or registration page.

How to Add a Twitter Hashtag Button:

Visit https://publish.twitter.com/# and click “Twitter Buttons” to customize your hashtag button. Then select “Hashtag Button”. Next, you can either customize or copy-and-paste the code as-is into your website. 

See it in action. Tweet about HubSpot’s annual marketing and sales event, INBOUND:

4. Twitter Mention Button

What It’s For:

Use this button to encourage website visitors to communicate with you via Twitter. Add this button to pages on your site like your ‘Contact Us,’ ‘About Us,’ or ‘Help’ pages. It’s great for customer support.

How to Add a Twitter Mention Button:

Visit https://publish.twitter.com/# and click “Twitter Buttons” and then “Mention Button” to customize your button. Then grab the HTML code and paste it into your website’s HTML where you want the button to appear.

5. Twitter Message Button

What It’s For:

Use this button to helps users connect with you via a private direct Twitter message. This is another great Twitter button to add to your site’s ‘Contact Us’ or ‘Customer Service’ pages so customers can easily connect with you for problem-solving.

How to Add a Twitter Message Button:

Visit https://publish.twitter.com/#, and click “Twitter Buttons” and “Message Button” to customize your button. Then grab the HTML code and paste it into your website’s HTML where you want the button to appear.

See it in action. Send a direct message to HubSpot:

Message @HubSpot

6. Pre-populated ‘Tweet This’ Anchor Text Links

What They’re For:

Have you ever wanted to create an anchor text link that pre-populates a specific Twitter message for your visitors to share? We call these links ‘Tweet This’ links, and at HubSpot, we use them in blog articles a lot to make sharing content easier.

Usually, these tweet links are used on landing pages to promote offers using specific messaging, and within content itself such as in blog posts. Similar to the official Tweet Button, ‘Tweet This’ links enable marketers to have more control over the message a visitor shares about their content on Twitter.

How to Add a ‘Tweet This’ Anchor Text CTA:

Luckily, there’s a great, free tool to help you easily create ‘Tweet This’ links for your content. Simply visit http://clicktotweet.com, enter the message you want to populate the tweet and click “Generate New Link”, and then copy/paste the generated URL into your anchor text (e.g., “Tweet This!”):

As a best practice, include a URL in the tweet message to direct people back to the original piece of content you’re trying to promote, and be sure to shorten the URL to save room for the tweet copy. It’s also a great idea to include your business’ @username in the tweet to help increase reach.

See it in action:

(Remember, you can customize the anchor text however you like.)

Tweet This Blog Article!

7. Twitter Timeline Widget

What They’re For:

Twitter’s Timeline widget allows you to embed your entire business’ Twitter profile onto your website, so users can see all recent Tweets right from within your website. 

How to Add a Twitter Timeline Widget:

Visit https://publish.twitter.com/#, click “Embedded Timeline”, and paste your business’ Twitter profile URL, lists, or favorites. Then grab the HTML code and place it on your website where you want the widget to display.

See one in action:

Social Media Buttons for Facebook

1. Facebook Page Plugin

What It’s For:

The Facebook Page Plugin enables you to promote your business’ Facebook Page on your website/blog, highlight other users who have already Liked your page, display your follower count, and feature recent posts on your page.

The box also allows visitors to like your Facebook Business Page with just one click — without leaving your site — enabling you to promote your Facebook presence and easily increase your page’s Likes.

How to Add a Facebook Page Plugin:

To generate a Facebook Like Box for your website, visit https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/page-plugin. Include the vanity URL for your Facebook Page as well as your customization preferences. Then generate the code (available in HTML5, XFBML, IFRAME, or a URL), and place it on your website where you want it to appear.

See It in Action:

2. Facebook Like Button

What It’s For:

Facebook’s Like Button is a button that enables users to easily give your content a virtual thumbs up. By clicking the Like Button, a story also appears on the user’s Facebook Timeline and in their friends’ News Feeds with a link back to your content, whether it’s a blog post or a specific landing page.

Use this button to make it easy for visitors to endorse your content and share it with their Facebook connections, but keep in mind this button doesn’t allow them to add personalized messages to links before sharing them. To allow users to add a personalized message, use the Facebook Share Button (see below).

How to Add a Facebook Like Button:

Visit https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/like-button to customize your Like Button and grab the code (available in HTML5, XFBML, IFRAME, or a URL) to place on your website.

See it in action:

 

3. Facebook Share Button

What It’s For:

Facebook’s Share Button acts similarly to the Like Button (sharing your content on their Timeline and in friends’ News Feeds), but it also gives users the option of adding a comment or message to the link when sharing it. This button also allows them to share the content in other ways — in Facebook Groups and in Facebook Messages to specific users.

How to Add a Facebook Share Button:

To generate a Facebook Share Button, visit https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/share-button and specify the URL you want people to share as well as the width. Then generate the code, and paste it into your site where you want the button to appear. (Note: The share button is only available in HTML5 or XFBML, and it requires the JavaScript SDK.)

See it in action:

 

4. Facebook Anchor Text Share Links

What They’re For:

There may be times when you prefer to use an anchor text share link over a button. These links are easy to create and can be added to web pages, blog articles, landing pages, or within content like ebooks and whitepapers.

How to Add Facebook Anchor Text Share Links:

To create your own Facebook share links, replace the orange section of the URL, below, with the URL of the content you want to promote. Then link the full URL to the anchor text you want to appear in your content.

https://ift.tt/1jWgNiU?u=hubspot.com

See One in Action:

Share This Post on Facebook!

More Facebook Buttons: We’ve covered the most commonly used social media buttons for your business here, but to find all of Facebook’s official social media plugins in one place, visit https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/.

Social Media Buttons for LinkedIn

1. LinkedIn Follow Company Plugin

What It’s For:

The LinkedIn Follow Company Plugin, similar to Twitter and Facebook’s follow buttons, makes it easy for visitors to follow your Company Page on LinkedIn. This enables you to increase your business’ reach on LinkedIn.

How to Add a LinkedIn Follow Company Plugin:

Visit https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/linkedin/consumer/integrations/self-serve/plugins/follow-company-plugin to configure your button. There are a few different styles to choose from, with options to show your follower count above, to the right, or not at all. 

Next, copy the HTML script, replacing the “data-id=1337” part with your own company’s ID number. You can find this under the admin section of your company page.

How They Look

2. LinkedIn Share Button

What It’s For:

Adding LinkedIn’s Share Button enables visitors to easily share your content with their connections on LinkedIn, whether it be a blog post, a landing page, or another web page. Like Facebook’s Like and Share Buttons and Twitter’s Tweet Button, incorporating this button can help extend the reach of your content to the LinkedIn audience and drive traffic back to your site.

How to Add a LinkedIn Share Button:

To create and install this button, visit https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/linkedin/consumer/integrations/self-serve/plugins/share-plugin, and copy the HTML code. Then, swap out the data-url=”https://ift.tt/iMnaLP” with whichever URL you’d like visitors to share, i.e. the blog post visitors are reading or the web page they’ve landed on.

More LinkedIn Buttons: Although we’ve covered the most commonly used buttons above, you can find all of LinkedIn’s official social media buttons and plugins in one place at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/linkedin/consumer/integrations/self-serve/plugins?context=linkedin/consumer/context.

Social Media Buttons for YouTube

1. YouTube Subscribe Button

What It’s For:

This button is an easy way for an organization to promote their YouTube video channels. You can embed this button on your homepage or ‘Contact Us’ page to increase the reach of the content you promote on your channel and to increase your subscriber base.

How to Add a YouTube Subscribe Button:

To create a YouTube Subscribe Button, visit https://developers.google.com/youtube/youtube_subscribe_button, enter the name of your company’s YouTube channel, select a button size and color theme, decide whether you want to display your logo, and decide whether you want to display your follower count shown or hidden. Then, copy and paste the code onto your website where you’d like the button to appear.

See it in action. Subscribe to HubSpot’s YouTube channel:

Social Media Buttons for Pinterest

1. Pinterest Follow Button

What It’s For:

Just like the other popular social networks, Pinterest also offers a Follow Button to enable you to promote your Pinterest presence and generate new followers for your account.

How to Add a Pinterest Follow Button:

Visit https://developers.pinterest.com/tools/widget-builder/?type=follow, and configure your button by typing in your Pinterest account’s URL and account name. Once you input that information it will automatically generate the code, which you can paste into your website.

See it in action. Follow HubSpot on Pinterest:

2. Pin It Button

What It’s For:

This is Pinterest’s share button, enabling users to share your content on Pinterest and expand its reach. The Pin It button is great for visual content. Place these buttons next to images, infographics, and other visual content on your site.

How to Add a Pin It Button:

Visit https://developers.pinterest.com/tools/widget-builder/?type=pin to create your Pin It Button. Paste in the pin’s URL and pin size. Then, copy the generated embed code to use on your website.

See it in action. Pin this blog post:

More Pinterest Buttons: Other Pinterest widgets include a Profile Widget for showing a preview of your pins, a Board Widget for showing off specific pinboards, and a Pin Widget for showing off specific pins. Build them at https://business.pinterest.com/en/widget-builder.

Social Media Buttons for Instagram

1. Adding Instagram Profile to Your Website

What It’s For:

Instagram offers a “View on Instagram” badge for organizations to promote their accounts on their blogs and websites. The badge also helps organizations promote their social media accounts without web visitors having to navigate using their mobile devices. The badges keep visitors looking at your content and engaging with you on the same web browser.

How to Add an Instagram Icon:

Most popular website builders, including HubSpot, WordPress, and Wix, come with social media icons, including Instagram, to easily embed into your site. From there, you’ll simply want to link the icon out to your business’ Instagram account (http://www.instagram.com/yourusername).

Alternatively, there are third-party plugins that enable you to embed your entire Instagram feed. Some options include Powr and Juicer. It’s important to note, you might not want to embed your feed into your website since it might dissuade users from checking you out on Instagram. In that case, simply having an Instagram icon linking to your profile is the best option.

How They Look:

(This is how the button looks on HubSpot.com, but you can design your own to match your website’s aesthetic.)

Note to Sharers: Social Media Terms of Service

Before modifying social media buttons on your website, take a look at the Terms of Service for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, and Instagram. Modifying logos and branding could result in your website being penalized, so when in doubt, use the exact logos populated by the widgets we’ve listed above. Happy sharing!

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in December 2011 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t describe myself as a “technical” person.

In fact, the technical aspects of marketing are usually the hardest ones for me to conquer.

For example, when it comes to technical SEO, it can be difficult to understand how the process works.

But it’s important to gain as much knowledge as we can to do our jobs more effectively.

To that end, let’s learn what web crawlers are and how they work.

You might be wondering, “Who runs these web crawlers?”

Well, usually web crawlers are operated by search engines with their own algorithms. The algorithm will tell the web crawler how to find relevant information in response to a search query.

A web crawler will search and categorize all web pages on the Internet that it can find and is told to index.

This means that you can tell a web crawler not to crawl your web page if you don’t want it to be found on search engines.

To do this, you’d upload a robots.txt file. Essentially, a robots.txt file will tell a search engine how to crawl and index the pages on your site.

So, how does a web crawler do its job? Below, let’s review how web crawlers work.

This means that a search engine’s web crawler most likely won’t crawl the entire Internet. Rather, it will decide the importance of each web page based on factors including how many other pages link to that page, page views, and even brand authority.

So a web crawler will determine which pages to crawl, what order to crawl them in, and how often they should crawl for updates.

For example, if you have a new web page, or changes were made on an existing page, then the web crawler will take note and update the index.

Interestingly, if you have a new web page, you can ask search engines to crawl your site.

When the web crawler is on your page, it looks at the copy and meta tags, stores that information, and indexes it for Google to sort through for keywords.

Before this entire process is started on your site, specifically, the web crawler will look to your robots.txt file to see which pages to crawl, which is why it’s so important for technical SEO.

Ultimately, when a web crawler crawls your page, it decides whether your page will show up in the search results page for a query. This means that if you want to increase your organic traffic, it’s important to understand this process.

It’s interesting to note that all web crawlers might behave differently. For example, perhaps they’ll use different factors when deciding which web pages are most important to crawl.

If the technical aspect of this is confusing, I understand. That’s why HubSpot has a Website Optimization Course that puts technical topics into simple language and instructs you on how to implement your own solutions or discuss with your web expert.

Simply put, web crawlers are responsible for searching and indexing content online for search engines. They work by sorting and filtering through web pages so search engines understand what every web page is about.

As marketers, we’re making important decisions on behalf of our company every day.

We use our best judgment when making these decisions, and we also weave in data and metrics when we can.

You’re likely already tracking marketing metrics such as traffic, leads, and customers — these are all critical parts of the bigger picture of your marketing funnel and flywheel. But they’re not enough to inform broader marketing decisions that impact your entire organization.

This is where marketing reporting comes into play. This guide will help you further explore the marketing reports you can run to properly analyze your data and make truly informed decisions.

Marketing reports vary depending on what data you’re reviewing and the purpose of each report. They can assess where your traffic and leads are coming from, what content they interacted with, if and when they converted, and how long it took for them to become a customer.

Take our free, 20-minute HubSpot Academy course on marketing reporting to measure success and optimize your efforts.

To reiterate: Marketing reports inform decisions.

You wouldn’t run a marketing report to review data performance or check on an ongoing goal — for these purposes, you’d glance at your marketing dashboards.

Look at it this way. Compiling a marketing report for knowledge’s sake is synonymous with scheduling a meeting to simply review a project. Who likes to attend a 30-minute meeting to simply review what could’ve been shared via email? Not me.

The same goes for marketing reporting. Reports should help you make a decision or come to an important conclusion — similar to how a meeting would help your team deliberate about a project or decide between project resources.

In short, marketing reporting is a highly valuable process if used and crafted properly. In the next section, we’ll dive into how to build a marketing report.

How to Create a Marketing Report

As we said above, there are plenty of different marketing reports you can run; we’ll be reviewing some examples in the next section. For this reason, this section won’t focus on what specific data to put into your marketing report — that will depend on what type you decide to run.

(Remember, if you’re building a marketing dashboard, that process is a bit different.)

We’re going to discuss how to build marketing reports that inform your decisions and benefit your audience, whether that’s your team, CEO, or customers.

Most of your marketing reports will contain a few of the same elements:

• Title: What is your marketing report analyzing? Whether you’re running a report on campaign performance, quarterly blog performance, or monthly leads, be sure to title your report so the intent is clear. This is especially important if you’re sharing your report with people outside of marketing.
• Reporting period: Your marketing report should reflect a certain time period. This period can be a few days, months, or even years. Analyzing your data within a time period allows you to compare performance to past periods.
• Summary: Your report summary should reflect the key points of your report, including your wins, losses, and goals for the next reporting period. It’s basically the TL;DR of your report.

Next, let’s dive into the report specifics. Valuable, insightful marketing reports recognize two distinct components: purpose and audience.

What’s the purpose of your marketing report?

A marketing report should help you make a decision. Choosing the content of your marketing report (i.e. the data you’re analyzing) is simple; however, it’s how you’re going to use this data to make a decision or draw a conclusion that’s more difficult.

This is true for two reasons:

1. Marketing reporting is more often than not performed to simply review data, which is a waste of time.
2. Data points can be used to draw multiple conclusions or make multiple decisions, so you should know precisely how you’re going to use the data before you draw it.

You should determine the goal of your marketing report before you pull any data. Once you make this impending decision, list all the data that might be relevant. From there, you’ll have a much better idea of what reports to run and how to use said data.

Who’s the audience for your marketing report?

Marketing reports are highly valuable because they can inform so many different decisions — decisions made by a wide variety of people across your organization. Whether you’re delivering a marketing report to your team lead, department manager, or CEO, your marketing report must be tailored to whoever may be reading and using it.

Here are a few ways to do this:

• Ask your audience what they need. If you know the decisions your audience needs to make, you’ll know what data you need to pull and analyze. Knowing this will also help you avoid running reports your audience doesn’t care about.
• Speak in their language. Marketing involves a lot of acronyms and jargon. While your team members understand what you’re saying, your executive team and co-workers outside Marketing may not be so fluent. Consider your audience when writing your marketing report and be sure to choose words and descriptions that they’ll understand.

• Don’t mix audiences. If you’re creating a marketing report for a mixed audience, it’s best to create separate reports for separate audiences. For example, you wouldn’t create the same report to give your CEO and Marketing co-workers; you’d likely break this into two reports with different data and verbiage. This will allow your audience to be able to focus on the data and analysis that’s most relevant to them.

Marketing reporting can take up a lot of your time (and waste some, too). Here are some best practices to help you work smarter, not harder.

1. Schedule your marketing reports.

Whether you create a recurring reminder on your calendar or set your reports to automatically run, schedule your marketing reports ahead of time. This will take the guesswork out of when to run your reports and when to send them to the relevant audiences.

Schedule daily, weekly, or monthly reports and send them directly to your team’s inboxes with the HubSpot Marketing Hub Reporting add-on.

2. Collect feedback from your audience.

As you send out your marketing reports, ask for feedback from your audience. Whether you ask an open-ended question like, “How did this report help you?” or provide a short Google Form, gathering feedback from those using your reports can help you improve them in the future.

3. Create marketing report templates.

If your marketing report will be designed the same way each and every time you send it out, consider turning it into a template. This will save you time and energy building each template and provide a reliable, predictable report design for your audience to read.

Make your monthly reporting faster and easier with these free monthly marketing reporting templates.

4. Put your most valuable data first.

Long marketing reports are fine as long as all the data you include is valuable and helpful for whatever decision you or your team need to make. However, you should place the most impactful data first so that your audience can stop reading once they’ve made up their minds. Nobody wants to read an entire report to only utilize the final page.

5. Visualize your data as much as possible.

Did you know that humans process visual data 60,000x faster than written data? Illustrated data (e.g. graphs and charts) are also more believable, according to this study by Cornell University.

When possible, include visual data in your marketing reports. Not only does this help your reports pack a greater punch with your coworkers and executives, but it trims down the time and effort needed to digest your data. To do this, include charts from Excel or screenshots from your reporting tools (like HubSpot Marketing Hub). You can also use heat maps if you’re reporting on website performance.

Marketing Reporting Examples

There are hundreds of reports that you can run to dig into your marketing efforts. At this point, however, you’re likely asking, “Where should I start?” and “What are those basic marketing reports I can run to get more comfortable with all the data I’ve been tracking?”.

Well, we’ve pulled together these five marketing reporting examples for you to use to get started.

Note that you will need some type of marketing software (like HubSpot Marketing Hub) to do this. You should also make sure your software allows you to export the data from your software and manipulate it in Excel using pivot tables and other functions.

Learn how to create an Excel graph, make pivot tables, and use VLOOKUPS and IF functions with this free guide and video.

Since we use HubSpot for our reporting needs, I’ll show you how to compile these reports using the Marketing Hub tool. (The data below is sample data only and does not represent actual HubSpot marketing data.)

1. Multi-Touch Revenue Marketing Report

As a marketer, you’re a big part of your company’s growth. But unless you can directly tie your impact to revenue, you’ll be forever underappreciated and under-resourced. With multi-touch revenue attribution, you tie closed revenue to every marketing interaction — from the first-page view to the final nurturing email.

That way, marketers get the credit they deserve and marketing execs make smarter investments rooted in business value instead of vanity metrics. As a bonus, multi-touch revenue attribution can help you stay aligned with your sales team.

HubSpot customers can create multi-touch attribution reports quickly; HubSpot’s attribution tool is built for real people, not data scientists. (It also connects every customer interaction to revenue, automatically.) Navigate to your dashboard, and click Add Report > Attribution Report. Select from the set of pre-baked best-practice templates, or create a custom report of your own.

Note: Enterprise HubSpot customers can do this in their software if they have their Salesforce integration set up with Account Sync turned on.

How to Analyze Revenue Reporting

To analyze revenue reporting, figure out what’s working and double down on it. Look at the revenue results from different channels and see where you had the most success. Use this information to decide what marketing efforts to invest in moving forward. For example, if you notice that your Facebook campaigns drove a ton of revenue, run more Facebook campaigns!

Multi-touch attribution reports should be run monthly to understand the broader business impact of your marketing channels. While revenue is important, you should also dig into some of your other metrics for a more complete picture.

2. Channel-Specific Traffic Marketing Report

Understanding where your traffic is coming from will help you make strategic decisions as you invest in different marketing channels. If you see strong performance from one particular source, you may want to invest more resources in it.

On the other hand, you may actually want to invest in some of the weaker channels to get them on pace with some of your other channels. Whatever you decide, source data will help you figure that out.

HubSpot customers can use the Traffic Analytics report (under Reports > Analytics tools in your navigation) to break down traffic by source.

Want to get an even deeper understanding of your traffic patterns? Break down your traffic by geography. (Example: Which sources bring in your most traffic, in Brazil?) You can also examine subsets of your website (like your blog vs. your product pages).

How to Analyze Channel-Specific Traffic

Take a look at what channels are performing well. Based on your goals, that could mean looking at the visitor data or focusing on the visit-to-lead and lead-to-customer conversion rates. Here are a couple of different ways to think about your data:

• If you get a lot of traffic from a certain channel, but the channel is not necessarily helping your visitors move down the funnel, it may mean that you should invest more in other channels or optimize that underperforming channel for conversion.
• Think about how you can invest resources in your strongest channels. Did you run a campaign that helped the channel perform well? Was there a piece of content you created that set it off? Consider how you can replicate your past success.
• If you haven’t worked on a particular channel, it could be a good time to test it out. Think about how you can incorporate multiple channels into the same campaign.

Pulling this data weekly will allow you to stay up-to-date on how the channels are performing. If a channel took a turn for the worse, you’ll have enough time to remedy the situation before it gets out of control or you waste resources.

Pulling the report daily may be a bit overboard since some channels take multiple days to be effective and pulling it monthly would prevent you from responding with agility — so, weekly data is ideal.

3. Blog Posts by Conversion Marketing Report

Blogs have become a marketer’s best friend. There’s a direct correlation between how often a company blogs and the number of leads they generate (not just the amount of traffic they drive). So, it’s critical you monitor how well your blog is helping you grow that critical metric.

Reporting on your blog leads is a quick way to see how many leads you’re generating on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis — and by what channel. This report is a great way to understand what channels are strongest for your blog, where you should spend more promotion time, and how well your content is performing over time.

If you’re using HubSpot, creating a blog leads report is easy. Navigate to Add Report from any of your dashboards, and choose Top blog posts by contact conversion. This report shows the posts that were most often seen by contacts immediately before filling out a form on your website.

How to Analyze Blog Posts by Conversion

Look at how many leads you’re generating from your blog over time. If you see spikes in leads, you know to dig into your content to see if certain topics are more successful at generating leads than others. The more you can run these reports to figure out what works and what doesn’t work, the better off your marketing and blogging will be.

This type of data should be pulled on a monthly basis to ensure you’re writing the most relevant content over time.

4. New Contacts by Persona Marketing Report

Every marketer needs to be well-versed in their buyer personas — but you need to do more than just understand them. It’s important to track how many new contacts you’re actually adding to your database based on each persona.

This will help you determine how accurate your buyer personas are and how successful your marketing is in targeting and reaching them.

To report on this in HubSpot, plot your contacts by Create date, which will show the date on which you added a new contact to your database. Then, break down your report by persona.

How to Analyze New Contacts by Persona

Did you run a marketing campaign around a particular topic? Did you focus on promoting your content through specific channels? What did you do that led to an increase or decrease in persona acquisition? Digging into this report can help you allocate resources more wisely to grow different segments of your business.

Pulling this report on a monthly basis can give you insight into how your campaigns affect new contacts by persona — and might even shed light on an imbalance in resources dedicated to certain personas.

5. Lifecycle Stage Funnel Marketing Report

Another way to segment your contact database is to look at how they appear by lifecycle stage. This will give you a sense of how many leads, subscribers, customers, and opportunities you have in your database in a certain time period.

This data will help you understand if you need to generate more leads or if you should be more focused on closing your current leads. It will also give you a general understanding of the quality of your contact database.

As a HubSpot customer, create a funnel report by clicking Add Report from any dashboard, then choosing the Funnels category. Pick which stages you’d like to include, select your visualization, and you’re off and running.

How to Analyze a Lifecycle Stage funnel

This report will give you an overview of how your leads are progressing through the buying process. Use this report to see what areas of your funnel you need to address for greater efficiency.

For example, if your report shows that you’re doing a great job of generating leads, but not converting any to MQLs, update and optimize your nurturing program. Pulling monthly funnel reports can help you stay on top of the efficiency of your marketing process

Create Your Marketing Report Today

Marketing reporting is a vital part of your marketing efforts and the growth of your business. By understanding how efficient and effective your marketing is, you can better allocate time, resources, and money — and make well-informed decisions, to boot.

Start with these marketing reporting examples and expand your reporting as you begin to utilize more data.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2014 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

This post is a part of Made @ HubSpot, an internal thought leadership series through which we extract lessons from experiments conducted by our very own HubSpotters.

How do customers discover new products nowadays? Despite there being many ways of becoming aware of a product, there is a simple route to considering it for purchase.

If you’re like me, you do it every time you’re looking to buy or try something new:

You turn to your friends (and in many cases, Google) and ask, “What are the best X products?”

If you’re using Google, your query looks something like this:

• “Best form builder”
• “Best fitness tracker”
• “Best business scanner app”
• “Best restaurants in Dublin”
• “Best bars in Boston”

Although sometimes, you drop the qualifier (the “best” of) and simply search for a broad transactional category:

• “Marketing automation software”
• “Hotels in Tallinn”
• “Language learning apps”

Sometimes, these exploratory keywords exist in relation to an existing solution:

• “Canva alternatives”
• “Mailchimp competitors”
• “Ahrefs vs SEMRush”

Image Source

As marketers, we know search queries like these are important for two main reasons.

1. The customer journey — the one we write about at HubSpot quite a bit — includes a Consideration stage, where customers attempt to educate themselves about the available solutions on the market, and perhaps the pros and cons of each.
2. We have some good ol’ quantitative data about how much search volume these keywords get and what the estimated CPC is for bottom funnel search terms.

Take, for example, a term like “form builder.”

It has a high volume and high CPC. This means it’s both a high traffic and high intent keyword. That’s relatively rare but certainly a sweet spot.

Same goes for a term like “best red wine.” I Googled it and took the top ranking URL and put it into Ahrefs. Here’s the data:

One can assume this blog post has a pretty solid ROI.

Without even looking at any data, you know how you can tell these keywords are high value? Just look at any website that monetizes via affiliate partnerships.

Examples like adamenfroy.com, ryrob.com and GrowthMarketingPro come to mind, where the majority of their content follows this format.

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Now, I’m not breaking any news to marketers with more than a few years experience — of course it’s important to find business critical keywords like this. It’s important to build out product pages for decision-level keywords, architect a pillar and cluster content strategy, build some links, and try to rank for these terms.

What I am saying is that just ranking your page isn’t enough. Rather, you want to appear everywhere a customer is searching when they seek out products like yours. You want your brand to turn on surround sound.

How People Discover (and Buy) New Stuff

Imagine you’re at a proverbial cocktail party, and you want to know what your fellow companions have been reading lately. You ask the group, “What have you been reading? What should I read next?”

A few years ago, at least one person in the group would pipe up and say, “Sapiens. You have to read Sapiens.”

Now, if only one friend out of your whole group recommends that you read Sapiens, it’s probably not going to stand out above the noise (depending on how much you like your friend, I suppose). The book is now on your radar, but it’s no more or no less prominent than any other book you’ve heard about.

Now, imagine everybody else in the group suddenly chimes in and agrees, “Yes! You need to read Sapiens. Best book I’ve ever read.” It’d be like a chorus effect (one might even say a “surround sound” effect).

In this case, if you’re not at least a little bit curious about reading Sapiens, then you’re insane. It’s highly probable, if you respect your friends, trust their suggestions, and have the money to buy it, you’ll buy Sapiens and check it out.

Our proverbial cocktail party represents a myriad of different influences in the real world. These include podcasts, newspaper articles, book bibliographies, and, yes, friend suggestions as well.

With this in mind, we can say that “Surround Sound” strategy means:

“The more frequently someone hears about your product from multiple sources, the more likely they are to buy your product.”

Note: I’m borrowing this idea from Tim Ferriss when he talks about product launches: “Especially on the first few days of your launch, you want people to see your project everywhere – on blogs, Facebook, Twitter…everywhere.”

This is not a new idea in marketing — get lots of people to talk about you favorably, preferably around the same time. In the next section, I’ll cover more of the theory from advertising as well as search on why this works (and how it can work for many different channels and companies).

I eventually bought Sapiens, by the way, because this CRO guru and fellow Austinite raved about it on Facebook and at happy hours enough times:

Think about the last book you read, TV series you watched, or new piece of consumer tech you purchased. I bet it followed a similar trajectory (recent examples that come to mind are Sapiens, Tiger King, Game of Thrones, and the Oura Ring — at least in the circles I run in.)

People Comparison Shop (and Frequency Matters)

We’ve walked through my anecdotal journey to purchasing and enjoying Sapiens. Now, here’s the data that backs this up on a broader spectrum.

First off, in advertising, it’s common wisdom that repetition is a variable by which you can predict the success of a campaign. Media buyers traditionally look at two things:

• Reach (who you are targeting)
• Frequency (how often they see/hear your ad)

As it turns out, frequency of messaging leads to higher levels of awareness and purchase intent. The more you hear or see an ad, the more likely it is to be effective.

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Clearly there are nuances here; it’s not always the case that the effectiveness of a campaign increases linearly with each additional exposure (it’s almost never that case, actually). But it’s a good rule of thumb and a simple heuristic when thinking about capturing your target audience’s attention.

The other fact I want to point out is about comparison shopping. Anecdotally, you know you visit multiple websites before making a purchase. It’s absolutely unsurprising, then, that there’s data to back this up.

Research says that, on average, consumers visit three websites before making a purchase. The same study tells us that the more websites a consumer visits, the more money they are likely to spend.

Google is also putting out some cool research on the customer journey nowadays, and again, it’s unsurprising in its winding and comparative shape:

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So, we’ve got three pieces of data:

1. Product or service-related keywords with high traffic and high intent exist (at least for most categories)
2. People view many different sites before they purchase or try a product
3. The more frequently someone hears about a product from multiple sources, the more likely they are to buy it.

Put all of these together, and the thesis is quite clear: appear on all of the search results for one of these keywords.

The Surround Sound Strategy for Search Engine Optimization

If you’re selling a consumer product, like a book, maybe your potential customers read a few magazines and a few podcasts. You can easily find this data using Google Surveys (or analyzing your own personas’ preferences like I outlined here) and finding predictive clusters of different publications people consume.

When you find which publications people consume, you craft a plan of attack, and near your launch, you find a way to appear in all of them. This creates a surround sound effect.

The search keywords that correspond to HubSpot products tend to have pretty good search volume, and content marketing is a pretty big channel for us.

So the surround sound, for us, means that when someone searches a product-related keyword (e.g. “best help desk software” or “best live chat software”), they see this:

There are two reasons for this:

1. We can capture more click-through rate and conversions for the same amount of search traffic.
2. Being on multiple lists has second order conversion rate effects because comparison shoppers trust that we are a top solution. (This is the surround sound effect!)

For the first one, it’s a matter of what percentage of searchers click on the first, second, or third (or more) URLs on a given search engine results page (SERP). If we can appear on more of the results, we can get more traffic back to our product page, and we can convert more searchers into product users.

I’m not the only person to have noticed this cumulative effect of owning multiple search results. Nick Eubanks wrote about the “SERP Monopoly” strategy and explains that the more spots you can occupy on page #1 of a given SERP, the more clicks you get, the more traffic you get, and the more revenue you get:

Smage Source

This means that, with each additional mention, we get a linear average increase in click-through rate to our site (which translates directly to portal signups, and thus, revenue). Keep in mind these numbers are averages, and if you have good brand recognition, titles, or meta description, you can increase your click-through rate from the SERP.

If the goal of appearing on all of the results doesn’t seem feasible or appealing, imagine the inverse: What if you appear on none of the results? You’re not in the conversation.

Appearing on one result is like one friend piping up and saying you should read Sapiens when you ask a group of people what to read next. Appearing on all results is like everyone in the group telling you to read Sapiens because it’s the best book ever.

Qualitatively, SERP domination seems like a worthy goal.

How to Build Your Own Surround Sound Strategy

Follow this approach to create your own Surround Sound Strategy:

1. Research your buyer’s journey.
2. Map influential touchpoints.
3. Find a way to appear on all of them.

When I write it out in steps like that, it can seem a bit banal and perhaps vague. Research the buyer’s journey? How do you do that?

First, get to know your target customers and how they make purchasing decisions. Then, tactically figure out how to appear in those places (could be ads, could be SEO, PR, guest blogging, affiliate, influencer marketing, etc. — it all depends on the specific situation).

To illustrate this in action, in our case, we want to appear on all the URLs that rank for high intent product keywords (again, things like “form builder”). Virtually all of these SERPs have some combination of three page types:

• Product pages
• Listicles
• Review sites/forums

So, the playbook is to rank the product page (not easy to do, obviously), get mentioned on all the listicles that rank, and get featured (prominently) on all review sites.

It’s important to track this over time, as well. We always keep an eye on our SERP real estate (doing so through a cool tool we built in R and host via Shiny). We can pull any keyword and see how much of the SERP we occupy, and then we can see a table for which URLs rank and if we appear on that page:

As you can see, the strategy is simple; the execution is where you break a sweat.

Note: Stay tuned for the follow-up blog post where we outline our execution and results.

Conclusion

The Surround Sound Strategy is a predictable and obvious play, given our parameters:

• We understand our customer and where they seek advice or influence on product purchase decisions
• We map out this customer journey and find the most influential and high impact touchpoints
• We seek to appear favorably in all of these places.

Where some of your marketing activities will fall into a more experimental bucket, the Surround Sound approach can be likened to the low volatility assets in a financial portfolio. Execute strongly, and the ROI will be stable and predictable throughout time.

This article walked through the theory of this strategy. Stay tuned for Parts 2 and 3 that will dive into our results as well as the technical details on how we built internal tools to help us accomplish these feats.

As a marketer, we typically ask ourselves the following question at least a dozen times a day: “Would our prospects and customers like this?”

Ideally, you’ll use a mix of qualitative and quantitative data to arrive at the answer to that question.

But one great place to know what your customers like (and love … and hate … ) is directly from the customers themselves.

At HubSpot’s department-wide marketing team meetings, for instance, we often host customer panels. There’s good reason for this.

As Senior Product Marketing Manager, Katriona Heaslip, notes, “A good marketing strategy should always incorporate the voice of the customer — you could have the best product in the world but you won’t see any growth unless you’re positioning it in a way that appeals to the customer.”

Additionally, Amanda Whyte, HubSpot’s Director of Voice of the Customer, says, “Customer panels are such an important way for feedback to be heard, especially for teams that are non-customer facing in their day-to-day job responsibilities.”

Whyte adds, “Hearing from a customer what their experience has been, in their own words, creates empathy among decision-makers in a way they couldn’t get from looking at data alone. It drives more customer-centric content and communications.”

A customer panel is an exceptional opportunity to learn more about your customers’ points of friction and success stories. And, along with using that material to inform your future marketing strategy, it can also inspire your marketers to work harder by reminding them why what they’re doing matters.

Here, we’ll dive into best practices when hosting a customer panel — including what makes a “good” customer for a panel, how to ask effective questions during a customer panel, and why a customer panel is critical for creating alignment across your marketing team.

Let’s dive in.

How to Choose Participants for Your Customer Panel

When you begin curating a list of potential customers to host in a customer panel, there are a few factors you’ll want to consider.

First, as Lauren McKenzie, HubSpot’s Director of Product Design, points out, “A ‘good’ panel has a wide range of experiences and feedback to offer. For instance, the panel should represent your customer base. If 50% of your customer base is based in Latin America, you’ll want 50% of your panelists to be based in Latin America. A thoughtfully curated panel allows you and the team to hear from a diverse set of customers, offering a breadth of experiences and opinions.”

Plus, McKenzie adds, “Gabby Thomas, our Program Manager for DI&B, always asks whose voice are we not hearing. This is important to consider when creating a panel, as well.”

“It’s our job to give all of our customers a platform to have their voices heard, and often that means seeking out the customers we don’t hear from as much. You don’t just want your fans or ambassadors — instead, you want customers that are going to push you to think differently and improve.”

Ultimately, when you’re curating a list of customers to host, you’ll want to consider whether your panelists deliver a wide range of perspectives to get the most out of your panel.

Laurie Aquilante, HubSpot’s Director of Customer Marketing, echoes this perspective, adding that diversity in your panel is critical. She says, “Make sure you have a panel with diverse perspectives. Do you have a mix of industries, use cases, and backgrounds represented? What about titles? Company size? Racial and gender diversity? High NPS and low NPS?”

Additionally, consider curating a group depending on the questions you want to ask during your discussion. If you’re releasing a product meant to help enterprise customers, make sure your panelists are enterprise-level. Within that group, you might include a marketer, developer, and IT person to offer a range of perspectives on the enterprise product. 

It’s also important to consider which panelists will offer the most constructive feedback to truly enable your company to grow.

Shauna Carroll, HubSpot’s Program Manager of Voice of the Customer, says, “When selecting your customers for the panel it is important to understand the customer’s ability and willingness to provide candid feedback. When recruiting for HubSpot’s Customer Advisory Board this is one of the most important factors for us — we want members who are invested in our success, but not afraid to share their honest opinion.”

Of course, it can be difficult to pre-determine which customers will offer helpful, constructive feedback.

For this reason, Carroll advises, “You can determine this by having quick screening call with each of the participants. This screening call is also a great way for the facilitator to understand the various personalities joining the panel and he/she can start to build a plan for how to get the most from the panelists.”

As if this doesn’t seem specific-enough, there’s one more thing you’ll want to consider when choosing a panel: how well they speak on-camera. 

Kinzie Trompak, HubSpot’s Manager of Customer Stories, says, “You’ll want to find speakers that are comfortable on camera. Do your speakers have a sample talk they can share?”

“Are they comfortable speaking on Zoom where they can’t necessarily see faces or pick up on non-verbal cues? This piece is part of doing research and effectively preparing your speakers.”

Once you’ve found customers that can offer a wide range of perspectives and opinions, it’s time to host the panel.

But when it comes to hosting the panel … what questions should you even ask?

Effective Questions to Ask During a Customer Panel

I spoke to Katriona Heaslip, a Senior Product Marketing Manager at HubSpot, to learn what types of questions you should ask a customer during a panel. She told me, “Customers have the answers to the questions we as marketers spend a lot of time agonizing over: who is our persona, what’s the perfect price point, what category should we be in, what’s the best tagline to use.”

“Your customers have the answers, you just have to unlock them by listening.”

So — how do you unlock them?

Heaslip says, “Always have a goal or objective in mind: this will help you develop questions and add more focus to your time with customers, giving you better insights.”

For instance, at HubSpot we often host panels a couple weeks or months before a new product launch. This enables the marketing team to uncover concerns revolving around that type of product, and how our marketing materials might mitigate those concerns.

You might consider doing the same thing at your own company. If you’ve just added some new features to your product, perhaps you host some existing customers and ask them how those features might help them — as well as any apprehensions they might have.

McKenzie also suggests creating open-ended and specific questions, to ensure your customers can stay on-track, while still broad enough to give them an opportunity to provide any anecdotal information they’d like. She says, “Focus more on asking questions that start with What and How rather than Why. Ideally, questions should focus on their actual experience, rather than asking them to project into the future or imagine what they would do in a hypothetical scenario.”

To get you started, here are a few potential questions I’d recommend asking:

• What was the decision process like when buying [our product]? Did you look at or use other tools?

• How long have you been using [our product]?

• What were the earliest successes you saw? What sort of long-term impact have you seen?

• Which features or tools do you like the most? How do you learn from them?

• Which resources do you use most? (Blogs, ebooks, whitepapers, video, etc.)

• Did you have to convince stakeholders to buy? What was that process like?
• If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about our product or overall buying process, what would it be?

In terms of distribution, Aquilante told me, “Consider having a set of questions you’ve sent the customers in advance, so they can prepare best for the discussion. Then, during the panel, have attendees at your company write down questions that come to mind and save them for the end of the meeting.”

Additionally, you’ll want to ensure your questionnaire is consistent across the board. Heaslip advises, “Make sure you ask each customer the same questions (where relevant) in order to compare answers and ascertain trends and patterns in feedback.”

4 Best Practices Before, During, and After a Customer Panel

Before the Customer Panel

1. Decide whether or not you’ll take live questions, and how long your panel will be.

Once you’ve got your customers chosen and questions planned, you’ll need to plan logistics. For instance, will you accept questions in-the-moment from the audience, or provide some time after the prepared panel for audience questions?

If you do leave time for audience questions, consider requesting that your employees send their questions to a pre-determined Slack channel, so the moderator can sift through and choose the ones best-suited for the panel. This provides an additional level of control over the questions asked.

As Trompak suggests, “I’d collect questions ahead of the panel. There is nothing more awkward than asking for audience participation, followed by silence. By collecting questions ahead of time, you’re setting your speakers up for success as they have time to prepare and think through their answers.”

Another logistical factor you’ll want to figure out pre-panel: How long do you want your panel to last?

As Aquilante puts it, “You’ll want to prepare ahead of time and make sure the customers and the people at your company are aware of how things are going to go. Ensure they understand how long the panel will go, and whether or not you’ll take live questions. If you choose to take live questions, figure out whether or not you’ll take them during or after. For us, we’ve found about 45 minutes to be a good length of time for a panel of 3-4 customers.”

During The Customer Panel

1. Invest in recording software to turn the customer panel into a case study.

If you’re conducting a customer panel via video conferencing, consider how you might record and transcribe the call after-the-fact. Alternatively, even if your customer panel is in-person, consider whether you can access video equipment to record the chat and transcribe it later.

Katriona Heaslip told me, “It’s useful to record the customer call using a tool like Gong, which also provides a transcript, so you can engage fully with the customer in-the-moment without typing furiously trying to keep up. This way you can reference the call afterwards and pick up things you may have missed, or even share it with some other stakeholders internally if there’s some particularly useful feedback.”

Additionally, Heaslip advises using the content from the customer panel and turning it into a case study. This way, you can leverage the customer panel as a lead generation opportunity and demonstrate to prospects how your existing customers’ have found success with your product.

2. Have a good moderator to facilitate various points-of-view.

Ultimately, a customer panel is only as good as your moderator. It’s your moderator’s job to keep the conversation flowing, encourage alternate perspectives, and simply facilitate which customers answer in which order to ensure everyone is heard equally.

As McKenzie told me, “A good moderator asks open-ended questions, involves all panelists in the discussion, and moves the discussion along rather than offering up their own opinions.”

Additionally, she adds, “A potential pitfall of a customer panel is when one loud voice dominates the conversation or causes other panelists to second guess themselves.”

“A good moderator can counteract this by not only encouraging differing opinions, but actively seeking out different points of view throughout the discussion.”

3. Follow a few Zoom best practices to create an ideal audience experience. 

Whyte recommends a few tips she follows whenever her customer panels are entirely remote. 

“If the panels are over Zoom and we have a larger audience, we recommend the following tips to ensure the best experience for everyone:

• Hide Non-Video Participants (Go to Preferences > Video > Check the box for ‘Hide non-video participants’).
• Everyone who is not a panelist or moderator can Turn Off Video & Mute.
• To see the panelists at the same time as slide content, use Side-by-side Mode (Go to View Options & turn on “Side-by-side Mode” to see slides + gallery view of customers).
• During any Q&A portion, turn your video back on and unmute yourself so the panelists can see who is asking the question.”

Of course, if you’re using an alternative video conferencing tools, you’ll want to explore the options you have to mute or hide non-video participants.

Ultimately, you’ll want to decide what works best for your marketing team and panelists, but it’s a good idea to iron out the details before going live with your customers. 

After the Customer Panel

1. Thank your customers for their time with a note or gift.

Once your customer panel has ended, you’ll want to follow-up with participants to thank them for their time.

Laurie Aquilante suggests sending along a thank-you note or gift to show customers you appreciate their time: “How are you going to thank customers for their time? Consider delivering a hand-written thank you note from your team or a small gift. Alternatively, perhaps participating in a customer panel is part of a greater advocacy and rewards program.”

2. Provide panelists with networking opportunities.

After the panel, consider how you might encourage further interaction between your customers to facilitate long-term professional connections.

For instance, Carroll suggests, “After the customer panel, it can be a nice gesture to provide the panel with the opportunity to network further with each other and with employees from your company. Many customers will be grateful for this opportunity, and offering to facilitate/host this is a nice way to thank them for their time.”

Ultimately, there are a variety of other channels you might leverage to learn more about your customers, so it’s up to you to decide whether or not a customer panel is the best-fit for your team.

As HubSpot’s Director of Customer Marketing, Laurie Aquilante, puts it, “Getting your customer’s perspective is incredibly important for any business. There are lots of ways to do that — you can look at reviews, NPS, various feedback channels, a user/customer research function, focus groups, and customer panels. Ultimately, you’ll want to consider which method you need for which program.”

A customer panel is a fantastic option to demonstrate how much your company cares about your customers’ perspectives — and enables you to align your team under one shared vision: the customer.

Additionally, Trompak told me, “The majority of marketers rarely speak directly to customers. Panels are a great way to infuse the voice of the customer into your work without bombarding your customers with asks from multiple teams.”

She adds, “As an example, At HubSpot, we ran two panels in January to inform marketers’ work for 2020. The Super Admin panel helped my teammate Lucy Alexander design the offerings for HubSpot’s Power User Community.”

Hopefully, with these best practices in-hand, your team can leave your next marketing team meeting feeling inspired, aligned, and ready to tackle their marketing challenges with a fresh sense of who your customers are. To explore other options, take a look at Customer Feedback Strategy: The Only Guide You’ll Ever Need.

When I worked at a marketing agency, one of my duties was to create Instagram accounts for our clients who had never used social media before.

More often than not, those clients soon realized how helpful Instagram could be for their business.

With 140 million estimated monthly active businesses across Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp and over 200 million Instagram users visiting at least one business profile daily, it makes sense.

In fact, 60% of people say they discover new products on Instagram and one-third of the most viewed stories are from businesses.

Ultimately, it’s impossible to ignore the success your business could have on Instagram.

In this post, we’ll review how to make an Instagram business account, how to switch to and from a business to a personal account, and the benefits of having a business account.

1. Download the Instagram app.

To get started, you’ll need to download the Instagram app on your phone or go to the Instagram site.

2. Sign up.

Next, you’ll fill out the form with your email address (make sure you choose a business email address), company name, username, and password.

You could also sign up with Facebook. If you have a business Facebook account, this could be a good option.

It’s important to note that your username should most likely be your company name and your password should follow all recommended guidelines (include a number, special characters, etc.).

3. Switch to a business account.

Now that you’re set up with a profile, it’s time to switch it to a business account.

To do so, go to your profile and click the three lines in the top right corner. Then, scroll down, click “Account” and then choose “Switch to Business Account.”

When you get to this point, you’ll see another option to switch to a “Creator” account. Creator accounts are meant to be used by influencers, public figures, or content creators.

If you’re a business that sells a product or service, then a business account is the right option.

4. Complete your profile.

At this point, you’re all set up with a business account, but you’re not done yet. Before you can start promoting your social media, you’ll need to complete your profile.

To do this, choose a profile photo. Your profile image will typically be some variation of your logo so your audience can easily recognize it.

Next, you’ll need to write your bio and fill out your company info. This will include your website, store hours, and contact information.

5. Post some content.

Before you can promote your account, it’s important to post a few images first. Perhaps you can write an introduction or hello post.

When you start interacting with people and following people, they’ll likely visit your account. You want there to be something to see that explains who you are as a company.

6. Link your business Facebook page.

If you didn’t choose to sign up with your business Facebook account, then it’s time to link your account here.

This is an important step because you need to have a Facebook business page to use some of Instagram’s business tools.

To link your account, click the three lines in the top right corner. Then, click “Settings” and “Business.” Now, you can click “Connect a Facebook Page.” You’ll need to be logged in to Facebook to do this.

7. Start following people.

Your profile is essentially ready to go. To get started on Instagram, invite your Facebook followers to follow you on Instagram.

You should also start following people to get the ball rolling. However, make sure that you’re strategic. The people you follow should make sense for your brand.

8. Develop a strategy.

Starting your Instagram business account is just the beginning. Once you’re all set with your page, it’s time to learn how to use Instagram for marketing.

You’ll want to think about the hashtags you’ll use, the accounts you’ll target, and who you’ll engage with.

To get started, you can learn how to use Instagram for marketing with HubSpot Academy’s Instagram Marketing Course.

Now, what if you have a creator account and you want to switch to a business account? Or what if you have a business account that you want to switch to personal? Or perhaps you have a personal account you want to switch to business?

To do this, follow the steps below.

1. Go to your profile.

The first step to switch your account is to go to your profile.

2. Tap the Settings cog.

Next, click the three lines in the top right corner and click “Settings.”

3. Click Account & Switch to Business Profile.

Now, click “Account” and then “Switch to business profile.” If you’re a business page and want to switch to a personal account, this button will become “Switch to personal account.”

No matter what account you have or what you want to switch it to, this is the process to go through.

Interestingly, you can also do this by just clicking on your profile, and clicking “Edit Profile.”

At this point, you might be wondering, “Why do I need a business account?” Below, let’s review some of the top benefits of having a business account on Instagram.

1. Action buttons.

With an Instagram business account you can add action buttons to your profile, such as “Book an Appointment,” “Make a Reservation,” or “Get Tickets” depending on your needs.

In fact, plenty of scheduling software integrates with Instagram, so you can attach your Instagram business account to your scheduling software.

Additionally, you can add CTAs on your profile, including “Call” or “Email” so it’s easier for your audience to get in touch with you.

2. Auto-scheduling posts.

A major perk of having a business account is the ability to schedule posts in advance. This is helpful because you can implement and execute your strategy without needing to spend every day on the app.

3. Access to analytics.

With a business profile, you’ll gain access to insights about your followers. You can see a demographic breakdown and how your audience interacts with your posts.

4. Ability to manage ads.

This is one of the best features of Instagram business accounts.

You’ll be able to promote posts and can easily select your audience, set a budget, and get rolling with advertising.

You can even work with influencers by directly promoting their branded content (if you’re tagged as a business partner).

To get more in depth, your Facebook account will need to be linked so you can use the Facebook ad’s manager.

5. Swipe up feature.

Another great feature of a business account is the ability to include swipe up links if you have more than 10,000 followers.

Since Instagram is one of the only platforms where you can’t include any clickable links in your posts, this is an excellent way to get your content out there.

Getting started with Instagram marketing can be hugely beneficial for your company. And it’s even an easy process. If you aren’t sure where to get started, we suggest taking free courses on Instagram Marketing (like HubSpot’s).