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I remember sitting in my career class in college listening to my professor tell us how long it can take for job seekers to land a position.

“Sometimes you’re completely qualified for the opportunities you apply for, yet it can take several months to receive an offer,” he’d said.

He wasn’t kidding. I started applying for my first job six months prior to graduation, and it took me that entire time period to identify, interview for, and receive an offer I was truly excited about accepting.

The search for my second job took me close to nine months from the moment I decided it was time to start searching for a new role to my first day at HubSpot.

Long story short, searching for a new job isn’t always an easy process. It can be stressful, time-consuming, and difficult. But, no fear — that’s why we’ve created this guide. Follow along, and the process will feel significantly less intimidating no matter your industry, job experience, or career goals.

Depending on your specific situation, you may not need to walk through each of the following steps. This list is here to simply guide you through the beginning stages of your job hunt, so feel free to modify it as needed.

1. Consider your personality.

Your personality reveals a lot about yourself, such as what you enjoy doing, what makes you happy, and how you like to communicate — even the types of jobs you’d likely succeed in. There are a number of ways to incorporate your personality traits and characteristics in your job search.

Take one of the many online personality tests to learn more about your specific traits and discover types of work those traits would make you an ideal fit for. This is also helpful when thinking about the type of work environment you’d be most productive in.

Your personality helps you narrow your search in other ways, too — for example, if your results come back with details about you being shy, introspective, and reserved, research ideal jobs for introverts.

2. Think about your skill set.

Your skill set is a list of your abilities — such as problem-solving, decision-making, and the ability to work under pressure. In addition to using your skillset to help you determine the type of job you’d be good at, it’s often something listed on a resume — so, listing your skills is a useful exercise for that reason as well.

If you need more guidance, you can learn more about your specific skill set and how it plays a part in the type of career you’d be an ideal fit for by taking a career aptitude test.

3. Reflect on your background.

Your previous work experience and education — or your background — can also help you determine a career path you’d be suited for.

For example, I studied journalism in college and worked at a local news station after graduation. However, after a year, I decided I wanted to leave the industry. My background — which was writing and content-focused — made me an ideal candidate for a position on the HubSpot Blog.

If your background doesn’t align with your newfound career interests, that’s OK, too! However, this may require a little more research on your end about how you can transition to a new career. You may need to go back to school for a master’s degree, get a certification of some kind, or work in an entry-level position in your new field of interest.

4. Brainstorm your career goals.

Brainstorm your personal and career goals to help you determine the ideal next step for you. Think about things like work-life balance, salary, and your goals for the next 5-10 years. This will help you narrow down your search — different industries and positions have a range of standards when it comes to factors like flexibility, culture, and career growth.

5. Create a list of your dream companies.

Whether or not you’re sure about a specific opportunity, create a list of your dream companies you think you’d enjoy working for. This is a great way to keep track of opportunities at the companies you’re most interested in and remain goal-oriented.

You can then tailor your cover letter as well as career highlights and skillset on your resume to fit the requirements and expectations of specific opportunities at your top-choice companies.

6. Consider companies similar to your dream companies.

Consider companies comparable to those on your list of top picks, too. For example, if your goal is to work in the marketing at Nike, consider applying for a similar position at a newer, growing company in the same industry like NOBULL.

By being open-minded and realistic about how you’re going to reach your end-goal (such as working at Nike), you’ll avoid locking yourself into one, narrow career path option all while gaining valuable experience along the way.

7. Network professionally.

Whether you’re looking to stay in your current industry or pave a completely new path in another, professional networking is critical. These days, over 70% of offers job seekers receive are a result of networking.

Networking can help you get your foot in the door at a company of interest, gain a new and valuable reference in the industry, and determine whether or not you really want to move into a specific role.

8. Clean up your social media accounts.

Today, recruiters, hiring teams, and department leaders at virtually every company will take the time to research candidates online, including on social media platforms, prior to determining whether or not they want to request an interview.

This means you’ll want to ensure your social media accounts are private or remove pictures, videos, and/or comments that may lead a hiring manager to believe you aren’t a good fit for outreach. After all, the last thing you’d want is for the hiring manager at your dream company to disregard your experience due to something they find on your Instagram or Facebook profile.

9. Update your LinkedIn profile.

Did you know there are over 660 million LinkedIn users? Included in that impressive number are job seekers, businesses and recruiters looking to fill positions, as well as people who are content with their current roles. 

With all of this exposure, it’s important to make sure your LinkedIn profile is up-to-date and accurately represents your current and past experiences. Be sure to describe — in detail — information about your current and past roles, promotions, notable mentions, education, awards, and anything else you feel is worth sharing. Initiate and accept Connections to expand your network to receive endorsements for your skills, experiences, and traits.

No matter if you’re in need of a new role, members of your professional network as well as recruiters, hiring managers, and employers will be able to view your LinkedIn profile and reach out to you if they choose. Who knows — maybe you didn’t even realize you were missing out on applying to your dream job. 

Learn how to use LinkedIn for professional networking, business, and marketing.

10. Prepare your resume.

Prepare your resume at the beginning of your job search to ensure your latest and most relevant work experience is available to recruiters and hiring managers for review.

Without a strong and recently updated resume, the companies you apply to won’t have reason to take you seriously. Additionally, pay attention to the details when it comes to your resume including font and which skills of yours you choose to share with specific companies — this is how you’re going to make an impactful first impression that sticks with hiring managers as they review the resumes of other applicants.

Note: When in doubt, try updating your resume with a template to achieve a professional look and feel sure to blow hiring managers away.

How to Find a Job You Love

Now that we’ve reviewed which steps to take in the first stages of your job search, you might be wondering how to find a job you’re truly passionate about — one you love. That’s why we’ve compiled this collection of tips and tricks to help you do just that.

1. Use job search sites.

Today, job search sites, or job search engines, are one of the most common ways to find a new position. These sites provide you with valuable information about companies and positions including location, industry, salary, necessary qualifications, culture, and more.

Other benefits to using a job search site include the ability to upload your resume and cover letter for quick and easy application submission. They also provide you with the option to receive an alert when a new opportunity, that fits criteria you share, becomes available.

There are a number of popular job search sites, used by millions of people around the world, with these capabilities (and more). Here are six of the most common to get you started:

• Indeed provides you with access to new job listings, company reviews, and accurate salary information. The site also allows you to post your resume so recruiters and employers can easily reach out.
• CareerBuilder gives you the opportunity to search for a new job based on specific criteria including your experience, location, or skill set. Upload your resume so employers can recruit you. The site will also review your profile and recommend jobs to help you find the right match.
• Monster allows you to upload your resume for a free assessment to ensure everything looks perfect. The site has a variety of other resources such as opportunities to receive professional interview advice as well as to access to the latest — and most popular — job listings, salary information, and company reviews.
• LinkedIn isn’t just a professional networking site — it’s also a job search site. The platform will take you through a series of steps to help you begin and narrow your job hunt. You can view position openings while employers can read your resume, view your LinkedIn profile, and Connect. 
• Craigslist is a straightforward and simplistic job search site. Employers post their latest job listings and you can sift through them by location and/or one of the site’s 20+ industry types.
• Glassdoor gives you access to job listings, employee reviews, interview tips, salary information, and more. You can post your resume so hiring managers can contact you directly and the site includes a feature in which you can view interview questions specific companies tend to ask — which is a great interview prep technique. 

2. Check company websites for openings of interest.

Maybe you heard about an opening at your dream company or an opportunity at a specific business of interest that you want to learn more about. If this is the case, go directly to the website of the given company you’re interested in to review their career opportunities and job descriptions. If they provide a career newsletter that sends new job openings, subscribe to that, too.

Rather than looking for positions that meet more general criteria, this is a great option for those who know they want a specific company’s name on their resume or culture to be a part of.

3. Craft unique cover letters.

Your cover letter accompanies your resume to persuade employers into believing you’re worth their time and consideration so they bring you in for an interview. Your cover letters should describe why you’re be a great fit for the position you apply for. And when paired with your resume, a recruiter should understand why you’re qualified for the opportunity.

Save time and use templates to craft your perfect cover letter.

Now, you may be thinking: Not all companies require cover letters.

And that’s true — some companies openly say cover letters are your choice. If this is the case, it’s up to your discretion as to whether or not you want to send one in. (Personally, I always choose to take the time to tell potential employers about the reasons why I am taking their hiring process and a specific opportunity seriously, but that’s just my prerogative.) If you send in a cover letter, ensure it’s concise, well-written, and helps you stand out among other applicants.

4. Prepare for every interview.

Needless to say, nailing your interview is a critical component to receiving a job offer. Although interviews are often high-pressure experiences for job-seekers, thoroughly preparing for them is a great way to relieve some of the stress.

To help you prepare, review the following commonly-asked interview questions and consider your responses.

• Tell me about yourself.
• What are the reasons for leaving your last job?
• Where do you see yourself in five years?
• What motivates you?
• What makes you unique?
• What is your greatest weakness?

You can also use other resources for interview prep like the Search Interview Questions feature on Glassdoor or blogs about the job search process in a specific industry.

5. Determine the most important parts of a position to you and look for them in your search.

What’s important to you in a company and position?

Is it flexibility in terms of work hours?

Do you require the ability to work remotely full or part-time, or do you want to go into an office every day?

Do you care about the size of the team you’ll be on?

Think about these types of questions when determining which opportunities to apply for so you can ensure the company and position are right for you — and vice versa — before spending time on the application.

For example, if a top-rated workplace culture is important to your application process, review the websites of the companies you’re considering to learn about their culture-related initiatives. Take a look at HubSpot to understand what I mean — HubSpot’s unique Culture Code is explained on their career page as well as in many other locations throughout the company website and Blog. This allows applicants and to learn about the importance of workplace culture to the company and its employees as well as how it plays a part in the interview and hiring processes.

6. Think about how you’ll manage an offer.

The final part of your hunt for the perfect position is also the most exciting — accepting an offer!

Once you receive a job offer, be sure to get all of the details about the position, including salary, benefits, and expected start date (along with any other important details).

Remember, it’s normal — and often expected — to ask for some time to consider an offer upon receipt so you have the opportunity to think about and review it in detail before officially accepting it. If you ask, a hiring manager may give you a day, two days, or even a full work week to make a decision.

Don’t be afraid to decline an offer if the specific opportunity isn’t the right fit for you. Other offers will come around — be patient and wait for the one that makes you excited.

Also, you may choose to negotiate your starting salary upon receiving your offer. There are professional and realistic ways to negotiate your salary that you can follow to ensure the process goes smoothly.

Lastly, give your current employer two weeks’ notice — this will allow them to begin searching for your replacement if necessary or at least provide them with a cushion in terms of time to make any necessary adjustments.

How to Find a Remote Job

Today, remote work has become increasingly popular. With technology that allows you to collaborate with team members in real-time from anywhere in the world, instant message, and meet via video chat, remote work has become a more common perk offered by businesses across all industries.

Whether you’re looking for a position that’s part of full-time remote, there’s an option for you. So, let’s take a look at how you can find your dream remote position.

Note: When searching for a remote job, you can follow most of the same steps that you would if you were looking for a non-remote job — as we reviewed above. However, instead of using the job sites we mentioned earlier, you’ll want to use job sites specifically created for posting and identifying remote opportunities.

But before you review those sites, take some time to think about the pros and cons of a remote position.

Pros and Cons of Remote Work

Now, it’s important to remember that depending on your point of view, work style, career goals, and preferences, you may find some of the following points to be under the incorrect column in your eyes — that’s totally fine … it’s all a matter of perspective.

Remote Job Search Sites

Now, back to those job search sites specific for remote opportunities we mentioned— here are a few of the most popular options for you to pull from.

Note: If you’re looking for a part-time remote position, you might want to focus on applying for freelance opportunities.

• AngelList is a startup community. The site includes a job finder in which users can search specifically for remote work in the world of startups. There are also a number of articles published on AngelList’s Blog which provide insight into remote work, remote culture, and related opportunities for users to learn from and use for inspiration.
• FlexJobs lists a wide range of flexible (hence their name) opportunities on their site including part and full-time positions that are either partially or completely remote. As a job seeker, you have the support of the company’s trained researchers who work to identify and screen these positions to ensure they’re legitimate and worthwhile (no matter if you are entry level or an executive).
• WeWorkRemotely offers a wide range of categories and industries for job seekers to browse and learn about remote opportunities. They have a number of resources on their site for users to educate themselves with as well as determine which specific type of remote positions would be ideal for their career goals.

Begin Your Job Search

Starting the job search process can be overwhelming at times. So, remember to use job search sites to narrow your search and take advantage of the wide array of resources available to job seekers today to help identify the right opportunities for you. Then, prepare for your interviews and remember to be patient — that dream job of yours might just be around the corner.

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

I was playing with my nephew at the park recently, watching him run from the swings to the jungle gym to the slide.

He laughed as he tried to climb up the slide instead of going down, and he skipped the paved walkway in favor of the large field of grass leading back to my car.

It suddenly struck me that park designers are really smart people, because they manage to entertain children of all ages for hours at a time.

What if I, as a marketer at Atlassian, could delight my audience the same way? Could I hold a reader’s attention from channel to channel, or from tweet to article to video?

And, if this is possible, do the current frameworks and approaches to the buyer’s journey help … or impede me? Here, I’m going to explore why our current editorial strategy is limited, and how we can refine it for better results in 2020.

Evolution of the Funnel

We’re all familiar with the traditional linear funnel. At its most basic level, there are three phases — awareness, consideration, and decision.

Let’s say we know we need content for each phase, so we decide to make three pieces for awareness, two pieces for consideration, and one piece for decision. That’s a total of six pieces of content, so we divide that over six months and say we’re going to publish one piece of content per month.

Now, of course, we know the buyer’s journey is much more complicated than that. Over the last several years, we’ve moved from the linear funnel to the looping decision journey, which has four phases — awareness, consideration, purchase, and up-selling (or cross-selling).

Since we’ve added a phase, we whip out our calendars and throw another two pieces of content on the calendar, creating eight pieces of content over the next eight months.

But again, we know that our buyers won’t travel down a neat, linear path, even if we think we’ve cleverly turned that path into a circle.

Recently, I realized we need a new model — one that allows our audiences to move up, down, and sideways, like a jungle gym, rather than forcing them to follow a linear path.

However, the “jungle gym model” has some problems. For instance, there’s only two objectives when playing on a jungle gym: to scramble to the top as quickly as possible, or to travel horizontally across the rungs without touching the ground below.

So, once again, I’m forcing my audience down a specific, narrow journey that I want them to take. Even though I’m allowing them to enter however they choose, eventually, I’m making them fit into a journey that has one result: a purchase.

And I want to move them through that journey as fast as possible so I can secure their business.

There’s still something missing from a “jungle gym” approach. Instead, I have a different proposal. Let’s dive into that now.

A New Model to Fit the New Customers’ Journey

Ultimately, times have changed, and marketers are no longer in charge. Customers are.

They want to enter and exit and travel forwards and backwards and up and down however, and whenever, they choose.

They want to consume content whenever, wherever, and however they please.

The marketer’s job is no longer about rushing a prospect through the funnel to a purchase. Instead, it’s about educating and empowering the customer to choose and implement their own solutions.

We need to build a content playground for this new journey. Traditionally, the “ideal” customer journey was one that resulted in the fastest purchase with the fewest number of touch-points. But today, the ideal journey is the one that offers the right content, in the right place, at the right time, with the most seamless transition between assets and channels.

So, how do we go about building a content playground?

How to Build a Content Playground

First, we need to step away from calendar-driven goals, like publishing once per month, or filling up a campaign schedule. Instead, we need to think about the ideas and stories we want to address at three content depths.

Conceptual: These are the overarching themes, and should be limited to 3-5 core ideas. These are theoretical and philosophical in nature, with a much more abstract application. These ideas are the foundation on which to build strategic and tactical ideas. When creating content at this level, the author shouldn’t be too concerned about the “how”. Instead, focus on the “what” and the “why” of the idea. The conceptual level will focus on high-level and aspirational outcomes. If there’s measurement available, that’s great, but at this level, it’s unlikely.

Strategic: This level focuses more on the processes, tools, and key knowledge components that must be included to make the conceptual ideas a reality. This level should focus on tangible outcomes that can be measured in the long-run. Content should focus on equipping the audience to do their own research, give them frameworks and criteria for success, and help them envision the impact that conceptual ideas can have in their specific organization.

Tactical: This is the nitty-gritty “how” level, where the rubber meets the road. If you want to achieve the high-level outcomes described in the conceptual level, and you’ve put in the place the processes and tools at the strategic level, what are the daily tasks, habits, and conversations that need to happen? This content should be prescriptive in nature, and offer step-by-step instructions and links to specific exercises to help the audience implement the conceptual and strategic ideas.

A New Distribution Framework for 2020

Once you have your narratives laid out, it’s time to consider where and how you will share and host your content. Instead of jumping straight into the calendar to schedule social posts or go-live dates for landing pages, you need to think about the formats and channels that make sense for each narrative. In many cases, the same narrative can take many forms.

Here are some questions you’ll want to consider when choosing a distribution method:

Determine the asset type: Will this be written, audio, or visual content? Will it be short-form or long-form? Think beyond a blog post or landing page, and consider alternative options like a contributed 3rd-party byline, interview (written, pre-recorded or live video), live speaking engagement, webinar, podcast, ebook, case study, or testimonial (internal or customer, written or video).

Choose a distribution channel: Distributions channels are a mix of paid, owned, and earned channels. Some channels are a place to host content (content can live in multiple places), while others are a place to share content (content can be shared in multiple channels). These channels are quite fluid, and sometimes the place to host and share is the same, i.e. SlideShare, LinkedIn, or Facebook. All offer a place for the content to live in the long-run and allow the audience to engage, follow, and curate for their community.

Consider your metrics: Some types of content and channels are best-suited to solve the “awareness” or “reach” problem, while others are used to increase engagement. All assets and all channels do NOT need to accomplish all things at all times! You can create an ebook that you publish on SlideShare with the goal of reaching more people (i.e. get featured on the SlideShare homepage) and creating engagement by driving traffic to more content on your website.

The type of asset and channel mix will differ based on reach and engagement goals. This is especially true for social media assets. Most marketers treat social channels as a one-way broadcast and focus on the click-through rate to their website. However, your social followers don’t want to click through to gain value, and platforms want to keep viewers in the feed.

To create content specifically geared towards social platforms, our job is to provide a mix of content that creates value and engagement in-feed, with a success metric attached to social metrics like re-tweets or shares, likes, comments, answering poll questions, or clicking through to an image gallery.

These steps should allow you to fill out a table for each narrative and distribution channel, and I’ve included an example below:

How to Create Content: Bottom Up, Top Down, or Free-for-All?

The answer is — yes. While it’s great to organize topics underneath a larger narrative theme and attempt to assign an asset type and a distribution channel, sometimes content fits into multiple buckets.

And, sometimes, what you end up with isn’t what you set out to create. Additionally, some content has long legs, leading to a longer shelf life, which could enable you to do multiple spin-off assets and channels. Ultimately, these are meant to be frameworks, not rigid categories for every piece of content or idea that might result in content.

Again, the goal is to create a seamless, delightful journey for your audience. Focus on creating deep, high-quality content, building a long-lasting relationship with your audience, and influencing at every touch-point. The days of simply following an editorial calendar are over. It’s time to build a content playground.

The holidays can be a magical time of the year when you’re surrounded by family, friends, good food, great parties, and fun traditions.

If you’re a manager, you might be excited to get some much-needed rest and relaxation or family time. But, at the same time, you might be wondering how you’re going to wrap up all your end-of-year projects while you and your team’s minds start to wander off with holiday cheer.

At this point, you don’t want to lose your stride due to a few days off, but you might be worried that getting too aggressive about deadlines will crush your team’s festive spirit.

So, how do you end the year on a high note without looking like a total Grinch?

Source: GIPHY

To develop a good balance between structure and seasonal happiness, it can be helpful to learn how a handful of other managers have handled the same challenge during past holiday seasons.

At HubSpot, a company that makes work culture a priority, our people managers are known for creatively and strategically hitting seasonal goals while still building team morale — especially during the holiday season.

To help you prevent your team from running into the dreaded holiday slump, while still keeping the workplace bearable before the season, I talked to six seasoned HubSpot people managers from our marketing, sales, and support teams to get their advice.

Here are five ways HubSpot managers keep their teams on track while still embracing the holidays:

How to Avoid a Holiday Slump

1. Break down goals into achievable targets, phases, or quotas.

Rather than struggling to achieve giant goals in a short amount of time, split each goal up into phases or steps within a process. As your team accomplishes each step of the project, they’ll feel like they succeeded and grow energetic about conquering the next phase.

“We all have end-of-year deadlines or goals — and at times — they can look very daunting. We’ve found it helpful to break them down into smaller targets,” says Tara Ryan, a HubSpot CGS Sales Manager.

When it comes to her sales team, Ryan says she uses monthly and weekly quotas as a way to break down major goals:

“Quotas are easier to digest when we break them down into ‘25% attainment by the end of week one,’ ‘50% attainment by the end of week two,’ ‘75% by week three’, and then ‘100%+ by the end of the month.'”

“The process of breaking down goals allows us to measure our progress on a weekly basis and more chances for us to celebrate team wins,” Ryan adds.

When it comes to setting goals, it can also be helpful to get input from your team on what they’d like to accomplish by the end of the year. This will help you create realistic goals as a group and discuss any challenges that your team could run into along the way.”

“If I know we’re about to enter into a time where it’s easy to slow down, like the summer or holidays, I try to get my group together to brainstorm what we want to accomplish as a group and vote on one goal,” says Caroline Ostrander, a Customer Support Manager.

Like Ryan, Ostrander also embraces the idea of aiming for a limited number of reachable goals, rather than trying to achieve everything all at once.

“One goal helps the team focus and prioritize when we might feel unmotivated. [After the vote], I look for one or two volunteers to lead the charge on the goal and find fun and creative ways to keep it top of mind,” Ostrander explains.

2. Prepare for winter weather hurdles with work-from-home protocols.

At HubSpot’s Cambridge, MA headquarters, we’re very familiar with winter weather and understand how one big snowstorm can really knock us off of our schedule.

If you live in an area where winter weather can impact your workflow, it’s important to stay ahead of this possible hurdle. To prevent a snowstorm or other natural events from causing your team to rush projects before the holidays, come up with a winter protocol for your team.

Larry Rodman, a Customer Support Manager, suggests asking your team members to take their laptops and work devices home with them if there’s a possibility that your office might close during a storm.

“Always bring everything you need to work home [at the end of the work day], you never know what the weather will be on any given day,” Rodman says.

3. Encourage team members to take time off for the holidays.

As a manager, it’s important to remember that your employees have a life outside of work and that most people want to take time off during the holiday season.

Rather than making time off seem like a faux pas, you should recognize it as a seasonal norm and make employees feel comfortable with taking a few days off for themselves.

“Be transparent and empathetic with your team. Make sure they are comfortable taking time off at the holidays,” says Marketing Director Amanda Sibley.

Sibley encourages her team to share days they plan to take off on the team marketing calendar. However, to prevent her team from losing steam before the holidays, she clearly communicates her expectations to them.

“I ask for 100% effort until they are off,” Sibley says. “I often will say something like, ‘It’s really important to take time off, so I’m glad you all have chosen a week during the holidays! — Until then, in order for us all to relax and enjoy family time, we need to be at 100%, so please focus until that time!”

4. Give employees a day or even a few hours for holiday errands.

Even when employees know they have upcoming time off, their minds can still wander as they think about all the holiday errands and planning they need to do before the festivities begin. To prevent these personal distractions at work, consider allowing them a few additional hours off to prep for the holidays ahead of time.

“Give time for those who need it to handle the crazy stuff needed for the holidays,” suggests Sibley. “What about a half-day in the middle of the week or in early December to do all their holiday shopping when the crowds are less?”

While this will allow people to get ahead of their errands so they don’t worry about them during work, Sibley notes that this strategy will depend on the type of team you’re managing and their day-to-day work.

5. Celebrate the holidays — and your team’s accomplishments.

Lastly, but definitely not least, embrace the holiday season, celebrate, and end your year on a high note. After all, you and your team have worked hard to achieve your annual goals.

Holiday or end-of-year celebrations allow your team members to bond, review the year’s accomplishments, and show gratitude for one another. As a result, this can be a memorable event that really boosts morale.

When planning a celebration or end-of-year meeting, Ryan suggests asking each of your team members to note one individual or group accomplishment that they’re most proud of from the past year.

“This is a great chance to remind the team of all the wins you had together over the last 12 months,” says Ryan.

Rodman also says he emphasizes team accomplishments at end-of-year celebrations, explaining that rewarding accomplishments can help to motivate your team even after they return from the holidays.

“This year we’re having a team potluck while we watch Snoopy Thanksgiving,” Rodman shares.

Along with highlighting accomplishments, you should also use this time to bond with your team.

“Have team members share what their holiday plans and traditions are. During this time, let people enjoy the holidays in a work environment,” says Sibley.

With the strategy of having team members share traditions or plans, it allows the group to get to know each other better. This type of icebreaker also invites inclusivity as people who might not celebrate common U.S. holidays might have unique or interesting traditions that they’d like to share.

Aside from icebreakers, the most important goal of these events is to have fun and reward your teammates for a great year of hard work.

“Don’t pretend like the holidays aren’t happening. Celebrate with your team,” encourages Social Media Manager Kelly Hendrickson.

“Putting a special lunch or a gift swap on the calendar can help teams know they will have time to celebrate,” Hendrickson adds. “Knowing there is a specific time for fun, helps focus that holiday spirit.”

Get in the Holiday Spirit

It can be easy to forget about how fun the holidays are when you’re thinking about end-of-year deadlines. But, as we’ve seen from HubSpot managers above, getting in the holiday spirit will benefit your mood and your team. Don’t be afraid to embrace the pleasantries of this time of year.

Still feeling like your holiday spirit is three sizes too small? Boost your mood and get inspired by these brilliant holiday marketing campaigns.

As a social media consultant, I help entrepreneurs and businesses unlock the power of social media marketing.

With over eight years experience spanning across both B2B and B2C industries, I’m passionate about everything involving social media — especially Twitter.

Twitter is exceptionally exciting to me because it’s a fantastic tool for building a brand and brand influence. It’s easy to find and take part in conversations, stay on top of news (stories usually break on Twitter before anywhere else), find content, connect with people, and actually be social on social media.

Additionally, it’s a fast-paced network, which allows you to continuously drive traffic and share information without the content fatigue you find on other social media networks.

Here, let’s explore the nine strategies I’ve used to help myself, and my clients, build brand influence on the platform.

9 Effective Strategies to Build Brand Influence on Twitter

1. Optimize your profile.

The first thing you can do to start building brand influence on Twitter is to fill in your biography, choose a profile image, and create a header image for your profile.

Building influence begins with the basics of your profile because that’s what your potential followers will look at (aside from your content) to decide if they want to follow you. Your profile will also help you come up in searches, so it’s important to have it be optimized for your success.

Be sure to make your profile more searchable by using keywords in your biography and use the link in your bio to promote specific posts or landing pages.

Twitter gives you one link space and you can always sneak one more link into your bio, so use these to your advantage! When you have a new product, blog post, or landing page to promote, pop your link in your bio with a call-to-action. If you have folks clicking around your profile, this can be a great way to generate a little more traffic.

2. Tweet consistently.

Tweeting and showing up consistently is essential in building a following on Twitter. Ultimately, social media marketing is a commitment. Post consistently to stay in front of your audience’s eyes and keep growth going.

Try starting at three tweets per day and go up from there. There are so many subjects you can tweet about, including quotes or industry statistics, quick tips related to your industry, or new blog posts you’ve published.

Here are a few additional ideas to get you started:

• Ask questions
• Run Twitter Polls (with the built-in Twitter Polls tool)
• Tweet a series of blog posts as a list
• Use GIFS
• Try Live Videos
• Use Twitter Moments to recap an event or compile a few tweets around tips or tools
• Use Twitter Events in the analytics dashboard to know what events are coming up that may be relevant for your brand to tweet about

Remember that not all your tweets need to be original. Include shares from other sources and retweet others, as well. I love using the “Retweet with comment” feature to add my own ideas to a re-tweet.

Lastly, it’s important to note — there are so many ways to tweet with 280 characters. You can create multi-link posts like lists or mini round-ups, have fun with emojis, and much more.

Twitter really lets you get creative with how you tweet.

3. Engage with others.

The most effective way to build a following on Twitter (and on every social network) is to engage with others.

There are many opportunities for engagement on Twitter — for instance, you might consider joining a Twitter chat, looking up and following event hashtags, or keeping an eye out for trending topics related to your brand.

Interact with other’s tweets by liking, retweeting and responding to posts.

4. Pin posts to your profile.

Pinning posts to the top of your profile is an effective strategy for getting more eyes on your content.

You can create a newsletter sign-up, a tweet linking to your new blog post, or any piece of content that could be compelling to your Twitter followers. Pinned tweets remain at the top of your profile until you take them down. Try pinning tweets to your latest download, newsletter, or company website.

5. Participate in Twitter chats.

Participating in Twitter chats is an effective strategy that helps you engage with your target audience and build brand influence on Twitter.

There are Twitter chats for just about everything (and if there isn’t one in your niche, why not try starting one?). Get to know your audience, and figure out which chats they might be hanging out in, then go ahead and participate in the chat.

Don’t sell or push your links using the chat hashtag, however, since that can come across as insincere. Instead, actually take the time to be part of the conversation and focus on adding value.

6. Use Twitter lists.

Twitter lists are used for grouping Twitter users. They are a simple way to “curate your own timelines”, cutting through general timeline chatter. Twitter lists can help you organize the people you follow, and are a great tool to build your Twitter following and social media relationships, as well.

You can create private or public Twitter lists based on whatever topic you want, add people or brands (even ones that you don’t follow), and look at only the tweets from users you have added to your list. You also have the ability to subscribe to other users’ lists, and others can subscribe to yours.

Besides helping you keep you up-to-date with tweets from your favorite accounts, there are many benefits for growing your following, building relationships, and creating more value for your followers.

Here are a few Twitter list methods to build your following:

• Curate lists by topic: Create lists of employees, event attendees, etc. They will get a notification that they’ve been added to your list, which informs them of your brand while making them feel special. You can add someone to your list without actually following them, which is ideal if you’re concerned with your following-to-follower ratio.
• Never miss a tweet: Because Twitter lists only show you the tweets from the members you’ve added to it, it’s easier to find content in your feed that you care about, making it easier to share high-quality and relevant content with your network.
• Create resource lists: Have a favorite brand-related blog, or influencers you admire? Resource lists can help you provide your followers with more value, while also enabling you to capture the attention of influencers if you include them in your list.
• Thank you lists: Yet another way to engage with customers — if someone mentions you, checks into your restaurant or event, or shares your content, you can add them to a list and let them know you appreciate them.

Each Twitter list has a unique link — which gives you some versatility when it comes to sharing the list with others. Again, lists are all about adding value.

7. Use visuals.

Visual content is important on Twitter. Be sure your images are sized correctly and create a signature look and feel for your account. This is great for engagement and attracting eyes to your posts in a cluttered feed.

Additionally, decide how you want your account to come across visually. This means choosing the right colors, specific filters, and giving photos a consistent look.

8. Use relevant hashtags.

Hashtags are such a major part of Twitter — in fact, they were even invented on this network.

Hashtags are used for searching, which means an opportunity to get in front of new eyes. When you choose hashtags for your next post, think about how people are searching for your content topic.

You’ll also want to consider how saturated a hashtag might be — targeting is the name of the game. The Twitter rule of thumb is to use no more than two hashtags per tweet, so using them strategically for growth is essential.

9. Leverage videos and live videos.

Videos have such amazing reach on social media, and the same goes for Twitter. Link your YouTube videos and create shorter videos specifically for Twitter.

I also suggest sharing Twitter videos in the same way you’d share Instagram Stories — go behind the scenes, share different parts of your day, etc.

10. Analyze your account.

My last tip, and one I feel is incredibly critical to your success on Twitter, is staying on top of your Twitter analytics. Keep track of followers, engagement rates, retweets, and more with Twitter’s very own analytics dashboards.

Keeping up with your analytics will help you build your audience by repeating what’s working and getting rid of what isn’t.

Twitter offers deep analytics via analytics.twitter.com. The Twitter analytics home page gives you a nice overall snapshot of your account, including your top tweets, mentions, tweet impressions, and profile visits in one-month increments.

The dashboard also lets you know if activity is up or down for a 28 day period. You can click on “view tweet activity” to dive further into analytics for individual tweets.

Make it a habit to check your analytics on a regular basis to see what days you garnered the most impressions and what you tweeted, so you can repeat the magic.

Ultimately, there is really no “hack” to building influence and growing your followers on Twitter.

Using a combination of the things we covered in this post, you will see growth and increased engagement on your Twitter account. My goal for 2020 is to leverage Twitter Videos more often — so I’ll hopefully be seeing more of you by going live from my Twitter account, as well.

Are you thinking about the quality of your email list? Or do you want to make sure your subscribers are intending to read the email marketing you send out?

You may have found your answer in double opt-in, which is a process that ensures the best experience for your subscribers. Rather than single opt-in, double opt-in offers an extra step in the verification process.

To ensure the best results from your email marketing campaigns, keep reading to learn what double opt-in is, and how to set it up.

Double Opt-in vs. Single Opt-in

In one step, users can subscribe to emails that use single opt-in. This means that the only thing users have to do to subscribe is type their email address into the required field. Single opt-in is helpful for marketing teams that want the process of signing up for automated emails to be as quick as possible. 

A great benefit of single opt-in is the opportunity to grow your email list faster. The simplicity of automatically subscribing users is helpful if you want an expansive contact list.

On the other hand, double opt-in offers an extra confirmation step to verify each email address added to your contact database. When this setting is enabled, contacts who are created will receive a follow-up email with a link to confirm their email subscription.

This extra step could be useful for generating higher-quality leads for your email campaigns. Someone who has inputted their email in a text box might not realize they’ve subscribed to your email newsletter, and feel frustrated when they begin receiving emails. By using double opt-in, you’re ensuring each site visitor wants to subscribe to your newsletters. 

Another great asset to double opt-in emails? You can create them right in your HubSpot CRM, no matter which version you have. After creating them in HubSpot, you can send them to your contacts that are created in HubSpot.

If you’re a HubSpot customer, keep reading to learn how you can enact double opt-in for your emails today. 

HubSpot users can configure both single and double opt-in by creating an email campaign and setting it up within HubSpot’s CRM. This feature is available for free marketing tools, Marketing Hub Starter, Basic, Professional, and Enterprise.

It’s important to note that in HubSpot, double opt-in forms are specific to the email account that confirmed the subscription, so if contacts update their emails, they will have to re-subscribe.

Now, let’s walk through how to set up double opt-in.

How to Set Up Double Opt-In

For this walkthrough, all you’ll need is your HubSpot dashboard and copy for the double opt-in. The entire process should only take around 20 minutes.

1. Access email options

In the upper right-hand corner of the HubSpot toolbar, access your email options by clicking the “Settings” graphic. The picture below illustrates what you should see when you open Settings.

On the left side of the toolbar, you want to click “Marketing,” > “Email,” > “Subscriptions.” If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you will see double opt-in features and customization tools. From here, you will create and publish the email.

2. Create an opt-in email

Before enabling double opt-in, you will have to create an email that contains the subscription option. To do this, click “Publish opt-in email.” I provided an example of this below and noted three important factors that should be in the email.

First, clicking “Edit details” lets you customize the subject line and preview text. Second, ensure the “Confirm your subscription” option is in the body of your email. Third, click “Next” > “Update” to ensure that your email has been published and saved.

3. Customize the feature

Back in the “Subscriptions” tab, (I just clicked the “Back” button), enable the opt-in switch by toggling it to “On.” From there, you can customize the ways your email is seen by filling in a few fields, pictured below.

Under “Enable options,” you can choose how customers will see your email.

• Enable for some pages only: Choosing this will ensure certain HubSpot pages you have are enabled for double opt-in.
• Disable for some pages only: This will enable double opt-in on all HubSpot pages. New contacts created through an API or import will have to confirm their subscription type using their email link.

If you choose, you can also create a new page in the dropdown menu fields and publish a follow-up email that subscribers will receive once they confirm their subscription.

And from there, you have double opt-in fully set up to send to your contacts. On the contacts controls, you’ll see an option to send them the double opt-in email. Remember, in order for a subscriber to sign-up for your marketing emails, they’ll have to open your double opt-in to confirm their intent manually.

Double opt-in is an excellent way to get a feel of the contacts who are most interested in your content. This can make your metrics more accurate when reporting email marketing ROI. Further, you’d be able to tailor the emails based on the response rate, making them even more targeted towards your audience.

For more information on email marketing, check out our ultimate guide here.

As marketers, we’re making important decisions on behalf of our company and team every day. In addition to using our best judgment when it comes to making these decisions, it’s ideal to also utilize data and metrics when we can.

Now, 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 as critical as these metrics are, 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.

Let’s 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 Build 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.

Choosing a Purpose for Your Marketing Report

A marketing report should help you make a decision. Choosing the intent 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.

Choosing an 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. 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? 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

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

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

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

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

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

Marketing Reporting Helps You Grow Better

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.

Have you ever visited a website you frequent and found that the text interacts with you?

For instance, when I log onto Mailchimp, my dashboard says, “Welcome back, Kayla” — this is because my account with the site has my first name in its system and uses smart targeting to make my interaction with the website more delightful.

Smart targeting provides a more individual experience for webpage visitors.

For example, if I visit a web page that’s not in my first language, in some cases, I’ll receive an option to translate that web page into my first language based on my location. That’s smart targeting at work.

Targeted content is an opportunity to reach audiences with a custom experience that’s personalized to their interests. A common form of this is the targeted ad you saw on Facebook for PetCo after browsing Target for new dog food.

Alternatively, if you visit an e-commerce store you frequently shop at, you may notice an option to “Order it again.” This shopping experience, making re-ordering a quick and painless process, is another example of smart targeting.

For instance, this is an example of smart targeting on Amazon:

Because I’ve recently searched for pink office supplies, Amazon picked out suggestions for me based on my browsing history on the subject. The website changed based on my past behavior.

Businesses might incorporate smart targeting into their websites to make customers feel like their experience is tailored to their interests.

Here, we’re going to go over what smart targeting is, and how businesses are using it to connect and grow their audiences.

What is Smart Targeting?

Smart Targeting predicts the interests of internet browsers using artificial intelligence (AI). This technology then uses those predictions to provide relevant content offers. Using smart targeting gives your audience a more personalized experience and allows you to grow your reach.

Smart content displays different versions of content based on previous criteria you set for your contacts. In general, smart content is setting targeted content rules — for instance, you might create a smart form so your website visitors don’t have to answer the same question twice.

When you set smart content rules and assign them to contacts, they’ll qualify for the first rule you set. And, for each of the rules you set, you can preview your text before publishing.

For example, if you want a contact to view specific content you’ve set up based on their country, you can assign the “Country” smart rule to their contact display. Other smart rules you might find in a CRM include:

• Device Type: This smart rule lets you set the medium your content is viewed in — mobile, tablet, or desktop. You can always preview this medium after creating this smart rule.
• Referral source: Based on how visitors on your site found it. This will formulate your content based on whichever site they came from.
• Preferred language: With this rule, the user can view web page content based on the language set in their browser.
• Contact list membership: By setting this smart rule, a contact in your database will be shown content based on the list they’re in. For example, if you set a smart rule that only visitors who are in your “Marketing Qualified Lead” list can see, contacts in that list will be able to see it.
• Lifecycle stage: This will display relevant content based on the lifecycle stage of the contact.

Next, let’s explore some examples of smart targeting. 

Examples of Smart Targeting

1. Monarch Music Hall

I am an avid concert-goer. Oftentimes, when I purchase tickets from certain music venues, I begin to receive targeted emails for shows of the same genre of the artists I see.

For instance, check out this email I got from Monarch Music Hall:

I’ve seen the group X Ambassadors before, so because they’re making their way back to Chicago, I was notified of their show due to my previous purchase.

This is a great example of smart targeting analyzing my purchase history, spotting a trend, and using AI to make a more streamlined ticket-buying process for me.

2. Thrive Market

When the weather gets nippy, sometimes I order my groceries online instead of braving the cold. I use a website called Thrive Market because I love their smart targeting. Because I’m a person of routine, its so easy to visit the website and pick which items to purchase again, like here:

The targeting here is working by pulling up my past purchases and displaying them on the homepage. That way, I could easily add them to my cart if I wanted to. Not only does this improve customer experience, but it also gives me, the consumer, more time to browse other products on Thrive.

3. Vineyard Vines

Social media is a huge culprit of smart targeting. The ads some platforms show you look at your browsing history and use that data to suggest actionable websites for you to browse.

This ad from Instagram is a perfect example:

Making a recent purchase is a great indicator for smart targeting to choose ads from websites that will give you a more streamlined process of visitation or ordering products in the future. Here, Vineyard Vines is attracting its customers with a sale, and spending less money on the ad by ensuring it only reaches past visitors to its site.

Part of the customer experience is feeling separate from “Just another consumer.” Though on the surface, it seems hard to do in a more digital-facing world, things like smart targeting are making that transition an easy one.

Just like your favorite local coffee shop will greet you by name and ask if you want your regular, your Starbucks app can now do that, as well.

Smart targeting is also a great way to keep customers coming back to your website. For more ways to drive traffic to your website, check out our article here.

This article was written in the first person by Rafaella Aguiar, Director of Marketing at Kicksta, following an interview with Erin Marie.

Building a big following on Instagram, and doing it fast, takes hard work and dedication — but it’s also one hundred percent possible, and I have the proof.

My name is Erin Marie. I’m from Portland, Oregon and attended Emerson College in Boston to study journalism and marketing communications.

Now, I’m a 26-year-old who lives in Jersey City and works in NYC — and, in my spare time, I run a fashion/fitness-based Instagram account that has hundreds of thousands of followers.

Here, I’m going to tell you how I got started and how you can grow a following for your own brand.

But first … why Instagram?

Why I Focused on Instagram Over Other Social Media Platforms

When I was in the transition phase of being a college grad but still looking for full-time work (about three years ago), I decided to start focusing on building my Instagram following. During the first phase of my social media influencer journey, I tried other platforms in addition to Instagram, but I discovered that Instagram was really the easiest way to reach my target audience.

Lots of influencers have blogs, which is great — except driving traffic to a website is a lot more difficult than driving traffic to your Instagram page (which is, after all, why brands pay influencers to link to their websites).

Ultimately, Instagram posts are highly searchable. People can find you via hashtags, location, brand tags, and more. So there are a ton of different opportunities for users to discover your content.

Initial Setbacks to Instagram Growth

Growing my account was difficult at first. Like with any new project, the beginning is always the hardest.

Initially, I only had a couple of hundred followers. It was hard to get my significant other and my friends to understand why I was working so hard on something that, at the time, showed little to no return.

In business however, you have to spend money to make money. I spent money on a camera, editing software, and new clothes in addition to spending many precious hours shooting, editing, and reaching out to brands.

It was hard to overcome these challenges and boost my following. At first, I tried using giveaways to get Instagram followers — I would collaborate on giveaways with fellow fashion, fitness, and health bloggers to get my Instagram profile in front of my target audience.

I also tried automated commenting robots, but that was a complete bust. It’s always better to cultivate a long-term strategy than to settle for quick wins.

Like-for-like, comment-for-comment, follow-for-follow, you name it — I tried every strategy in the book. Eventually I found the methods that work for my page, and used a growth service to help me get Instagram followers.

Throughout the whole process, I learned that hard work pays off. Everyone on Instagram starts at zero. If becoming an influencer was easy, everyone would do it. I put in the time and effort, and now I’m seeing an ROI on my investment. Nobody questions why I invest so much time and money into my Instagram account anymore.

Let’s dive into some of the best practices that worked for me.

3 Instagram Best Practices For Attracting Followers

1. Find the right tools for you.

Thanks to all the hard work I put in upfront, I’ve now figured out how to keep my Instagram running like a well-oiled machine. I spent hours and hours researching tools other Instagrammers were using, and eventually honed in on the tools that work best for me (including Later, a tool I’ve used in the past to schedule my posts).

2. Stay organized.

Since I work 50 hours a week on top of Instagram, it’s all about planning, tracking, and strategizing to save myself time. Tracking collaborations and planning ahead helps me stay sane!

I use an extensive Excel chart that I update daily with upcoming posts, collaborations in the works, spending, payment details, and posting dates. This was especially important, I discovered, as I continued to grow. I shoot all of my products and outfits on Saturday and edit the photos and write captions on Sunday.

3. Create content tailored towards certain brands.

Another Instagram best practice I’ve learned through trial-and-error is to edit my content so it can catch the eye of big brands. I notice that I get a lot of free publicity (and subsequent growth) from brands reposting my content on their pages.

To increase my chances of being noticed, I’ll spend time studying brand pages and their content.

If I can nail down a certain brand’s look and feel, I’ll have a good chance of getting my picture reposted. That means more exposure and a larger reach — in other words, more followers.

Surprising Results

Along the way, I’ve seen some surprising results from my Instagram journey. When I first started out and was looking for the best growth method to get Instagram followers, I used automatic commenting bots that would leave comments on other peoples’ posts.

It was a funny surprise when I realized the bot was well, just a bot — and it was leaving awkward, insensitive comments on posts, such as “LOVE THIS!” on a post that wasn’t meant to be loved at all.

While it can be tempting to purchase these tools and services in the hopes of “quick wins”, it ultimately won’t foster the kind of community engagement you want. Instead, focus on long-term strategies that can help you meaningfully connect with your ideal audience. At the end of the day, those relationships are the only ones that will result in increased customers for your business.

Overcoming Instagram Growth Challenges

I’ve also built a stockpile of advice on overcoming Instagram growth challenges. My number-one piece of advice is to be flexible and willing to evolve. Instagram is always changing, so your methods need to constantly change and improve, too.

There’s no “right way” to grow your following and become an influencer. Just keep experimenting until you find something that works for you — and when that doesn’t work anymore, go back to the drawing board and find something else.

If you work hard and strategize, eventually you’ll begin to see growth. The biggest follower jump I’ve ever experienced in a month was 10,000. Now I have my eyes set on getting 100K followers total, and I think I’ll see a big jump in collaboration opportunities with brands once I reach that number.

If you’re feeling down about your Instagram chances, take a step back and make sure you aren’t comparing yourself to anyone else. I’ve heard friends say, “How can I compete with all these perfect Instagram influencers?” The truth is, it’s easier to stand out on Instagram if you remain authentic rather than trying to compete with what other brands or influencers are doing.

Instead, your best chance at becoming a successful influencer is to find what makes you unique and then embrace it.

If you feel like the app TikTok came out of nowhere, you’re not wrong.

Since launching in early 2018, TikTok’s been covered by seemingly every major news publication and racked up millions of downloads globally.

Despite TikTok’s major early success, the app still feels like a bit of a mystery, especially to marketers. In fact, until recently, its parent company, ByteDance, hasn’t disclosed many metrics at all.

In TikTok’s first year, all we really knew was that an odd-ball video app was going viral, topping global app store charts, and gaining a huge fanbase from Gen-Z.

But now, shortly after TikTok’s first birthday, we know a lot more about it as sites like Digiday, AdWeek, and our own Marketing Blog regularly cover it.

Even if you still aren’t quite sure what TikTok is, you’ve probably seen a video meme on social media that was created and published in the app first. Here’s one for example of a TikTok post which went viral on Twitter:

Now THIS is a tiktok I could watch all day pic.twitter.com/u1dBkH2OAa

— 🌸 Alexandra Daniels 🌸 (@alexdanielsxo)
July 11, 2019

When making decisions about your social strategy, you’re probably more interested in numbers than virality as proof of an app’s staying power.

As someone who’s gotten sucked into the app, blogged multiple times about it, hearted hundreds of posts, and even made a few embarrassingly mature videos of my own, I’m fairly certain that this platform will stick around for quite some time. But, luckily, with mounting data on TikTok, you don’t just have to take my word for it.

To help you make informed decisions about your strategy and whether TikTok is right for your brand, I’ve compiled a list of 26 interesting stats and facts to know before venturing on to the app.

26 TikTok Stats to Know in 2019

Userbase, Downloads, and Growth

Within TikTok’s first year, it reportedly reached 500 million monthly active users. Wondering if this was just a fluke or a viral trend that will simmer down? Think again. According to TikTok and its company heads, the audience might be larger and more promising than we think.

• According to a leaked advertising pitch deck from October 2019, TikTok reports having 800 million monthly active users worldwide. (AdAge)
• Musical.ly, a lip-syncing app which ByteDance purchased and merged with TikTok, reportedly had 100 million monthly active users when it was purchased by TikTok in 2018. (The Verge)
• Douyin, TikTok’s original standalone app in China, had 300 million users at the time Musical.ly merged with TikTok. (The Verge)
• As of early 2019, TikTok is the third-most downloaded app globally. (Business of Apps)
• By February 2019, TikTok hit 1 billion downloads, beating Instagram and Facebook in app stores. (Business Insider)
• As of late October 2019, TikTok was the Top Free App in the Entertainment section of the Apple App Store. (Apple App Store)

Demographics

While TikTok’s user base is dominated by Gen-Z in the United States, many millennials have adopted it around the world.

And, although it might feel like TikTok is huge in the U.S., the app’s biggest audience actually comes from China, where the platform is called Douyin.

Here’s a breakdown of TikTok’s major demographic stats.

• Roughly 50% of TikTok’s global audience is under the age of 34 with 26% between 18 and 24. (MarketingCharts)
• Just over one in eight adults have joined TikTok. (MarketingCharts)
• 56% of TikTok users are male. (AppApeLab)
• TikTok is now available in 155 countries. (Oberlo)
• Over 500 million of TikTok’s monthly active users are Chinese. (AdAge)
• The app has 26.5 million monthly active users in the U.S. (Digiday)
• 60% of TikTok’s U.S. audience is between the ages of 16 and 24. (Digiday)

User Behavior

TikTok is a fast-paced app. The second you log in, you see a video at the top of a feed that’s algorithmically curated around your interests. If you enjoy the video you’re watching, you can follow, comment, and like the content directly from the video post. If you’re not loving what you see, you can keep swiping in an upward motion to immediately see more odd videos.

From my own experience, I’ve found that TikTok can easily cause you to spend more time than expected watching an endless stream of often comedic videos. Since these videos are usually between 15 seconds and one minute, it makes the app ideal for people who need quick entertainment on their morning commute or when they’re bored at home.

Because of TikTok’s quick pace and entertainment factor, the stats below aren’t that surprising:

• The average user spends 52 minutes per day on TikTok. (BusinessOfApps)
• 90% of TIkTok users visit the app more than once per day. (GlobalWebIndex)
• Users open the app eight times per day on average. (Digiday)
• TikTok claims that the average session is nearly 5 minutes, which is longer than Snapchat or Instagram’s. (Digiday)

Viral Trends and Influencers on TikTok

Like YouTube, Vine, Instagram, as well as other past and present video apps, TikTok has opened doors for influencers, comedians, meme creators, and even some brands. While it’s still a bit too early to see how successful its influencers and trends will be in the long run, here are a few interesting tidbits:

• The most followed individual on TikTok is a comedic poster and influencer named Loren Gray. She has 34.4 million followers. (TikTok)
• One of the earliest branded hashtag challenges was Guess’ #InMyDenim challenge. According to TikTok, videos marked with this hashtag have received a grand total of 38.8 million views. (TikTok)
• Rapper Lil Nas X credits the success of his song “Old Town Road” to TikTok. The song was propelled to #1 on the Billboard Top 100 in 2019 after the artist uploaded it to TikTok. (BuzzFeed News)

Here’s a compilation of TikTok’s #CowboyChallenge where people wearing normal clothing cut to themselves in cowboy costumes to the song “Old Town Road.”

Business, Revenue, and Competition

The launch of TikTok not only put its parent company, ByteDance, on the map, but it also resulted in competition from apps like Facebook, which launched a very similar app called Lasso shortly after TikTok went viral. While TikTok and ByteDance are less transparent about revenue and other major details, here’s what we know:

• TikTok now offers five advertising tiers aimed at big brands. One of which, a branded hashtag challenge, reportedly costs $150,000 per day. (TikTok Pitch Deck Notes First Reported by Digiday)
• TikTok’s revenue more than tripled between 2017 and 2018. (Sensor Tower)
• In 2018, TikTok made $3.5 million on in-app purchases from users. (Sensor Tower)
• TikTok has a 4.7-star rating in the Apple App Store with over 2.1 million reviews. (Apple App Store)
• Lasso, a competing app launched by Facebook in November 2018, has been downloaded by over 70,000 users. (Sensor Tower)
• Bytedance, TikTok’s parent company is valued at $75 million, making it the world’s most valuable startup. (CBInsights)
• ByteDance’s collection of apps, including TikTok, has a total of 1 billion monthly active users. (CNN)

The Mysteries of TikTok

Although TikTok is a top social platform and is ramping up its options for advertisers, it’s still rather new. When a company or startup is new, it’s not uncommon for leadership to hide early numbers, even when a brand is successful. In fact, we’ve seen this with other major companies like Snapchat and Netflix.

There’s still a lot more to learn as TikTok’s global teams and ByteDance continue to remain hush-hush about major metrics. In the coming years, as TikTok tries to woo advertisers, it wouldn’t be surprising if we started to see more transparent information about the app and its user base.

In the meantime, If you want to learn more about TikTok, you can read up on its short history and early success in this post, or click here to find a how-to guide for using the app.

Want to see what other businesses are doing on TikTok? Check out this roundup of brands on TikTok.