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Just like Sharpay Evans from “High School Musical” says, “It’s out with the old, and in with the new.”

Although Sharpay is talking about fabulous summer plans, that adage also applies to podcasting.

With 32% of the population listening to podcasts regularly, podcast shows should continue to evolve as the industry does.

Of course, in order to build a successful podcast, you need the right tools and services at your disposal.

Let’s review the top podcast tools and services to level up your podcasting game.

These tools can help make your show more efficient and professional. Below, we’ll break down the tools and services into four categories: podcast recording equipment, podcast recording software, podcast editing software, and podcast hosting sites.

Podcast Recording Equipment

To take your podcast show from good to great this year, you need to have the right equipment.

1. USB Audio Interface and Recording Bundle

The first thing you need to record your podcast is a microphone, headphones, and a USB audio interface or mixer. In order to bring your podcasting game to the next level, you can consider getting higher-quality equipment.

For instance, on Amazon, you can find bundles that sell all of this equipment at once. However, you can also buy the equipment separately. If you do that, make sure you buy a cable that will connect your microphone and USB audio interface.

2. Adjustable Microphone Arm Stand

Once you have a microphone, headphones, and audio interface, you’ll want to consider getting a microphone arm stand. A microphone stand will make it easier for you to record your podcast, so you aren’t chained to your desk or have to sit in an awkward position.

Most microphones will come with an adapter that’ll connect with any microphone arm stand. Before you buy a new stand, make sure you have that adapter.

Podcast Recording Software

Now that you have all the equipment to make your podcast the best it can be, you’ll need to make sure you’re using the right recording software.

3. Skype

Price: Free.

With Skype, you can record video and audio right in the program. When you’re on a call, you can click the three dots on the bottom right and then hit “Start Recording.”

Skype is a great option for podcasters because it’s free and easy to use. There are also other options, if you want better audio quality. For instance, you can download recording software on your computer or buy an external digital recorder.

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4. Zoom

Price: Free+

Zoom is another excellent free option. You can easily record right in the program, by clicking the “Record” button and choosing where you’d like to save your audio file.

Skype and Zoom are fairly similar options, however, the recording files differ. Skype will give you a mono file, which means both yours and your interviewee’s side of the conversation is on one audio track. However, Zoom splits both sides of the call, giving you two separate audio tracks. This is helpful when it comes to cutting and editing in post-production.

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5. Ringr

Price: $8/month+

Ringr is a long-distance podcasting and broadcast interview recording program. Although this option isn’t free, it has excellent sound quality. If you’re focused on bringing higher-quality sound to your interviews, Ringr is a good choice.

Additionally, they have three different plans you can choose from. With the basic plan, you’ll get a mono audio file, and unlimited calls and storage. If you decide to go with the premium or enterprise plan, you’ll get a split-track audio file, plus better sound quality and the option to use conference calling.

6. Squadcast

Price: $5/hour or $20/month+

Squadcast is an easy-to-use podcast recording software. Once you sign up, all you have to do is set up a meeting, click “Record,” and you’re set.

One unique element of this software is that you can pay by the hour, if you don’t think you need a monthly plan. Even with the hourly plan, you can host up to three guests and will receive a high-quality WAV or MP3 file.

Additionally, Squadcast plans to add video recording and transcription, which will help with your show notes and posting your podcast to YouTube.

One of the top reasons to use a podcast recording software like Squadcast, as opposed to Skype or Zoom, is that you’ll have a library of all your recordings in one place, online, where you can access them at any time, any place.

7. Pro Tools

Price: $30/year+

If you’re ready to move beyond the beginner recording software above, Pro Tools is an excellent option.

Pro Tools is an advanced recording and editing software. You can record, edit, and mix numerous audio tracks. However, this is for the more advanced audio recorders/editors. The user interface (UI) isn’t as intuitive for beginners and may seem overwhelming at first.

Although, because it’s advanced, it also offers much more robust features. For example, since Pro Tools is known in the music industry, it has virtual instrumentation available, which can be helpful in creating the music to put in your podcast. Additionally, it offers plugins, collaboration, and hands-on audio mixing.

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8. Reaper

Price: $60 one time payment+

Reaper is another advanced recording, editing, and mixing software. This type of program provides higher-quality recordings and more capabilities when it comes to editing and mixing.

The UI isn’t as intuitive as programs like Zoom or Squadcast, but it offers higher-quality sound. With your audio interface and microphone attached, you can record directly into the program, with as many audio tracks as you’d like.

The recording feature is more robust, offering simultaneous recording inputs, a dozen audio formats, and recording tracks.

Additionally, it also has strong editing capabilities as well.

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9. Logic Pro

Price: $200 one time payment+

Logic Pro is the advanced version of Garage Band for Mac users. It’s a higher-quality recording program offering an easy-to-use UI.

Recording is as simple as setting up your microphone and USB audio interface and pressing record.

Logic Pro offers up to 1,000 audio tracks, software instrument tracks, and hundreds of plugins to complete any project.

Additionally, it has advanced editing capabilities.

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10. Whereby

Price: $10/month+

Whereby is another option for recording remote interviews. It’s excellent for beginners and is easy to use.

Although there is a free plan, recording is only available in the Pro or Business plan. Recording is as easy as hitting the “Record” button, once you’re on a call. This will record both video and audio, so it’s easy to post to YouTube if you want.

While this is an easy option, it isn’t the highest quality recording.

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Podcast Editing Software

Once you record your podcast, it’s time to edit it. As you’ve read above, many software includes both recording and editing capabilities. Below are some software known for its editing, rather than recording.

11. Adobe Audition

Price: $20/month+

Adobe Audition is an excellent mid-level audio editing software. You can create, record, mix, edit, and restore audio content.

It offers high-quality sound, plus comprehensive tools to deliver polished sound. For example, Adobe Audition comes with a podcast template, which helps you set up a multitrack recording so you can mix and edit different audio tracks and voices. Plus, you can work in both waveform and multitrack editors, for more well-rounded editing.

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12. Audacity

Price: Free.

Audacity is an excellent free option for editing your podcast. It’s especially easy if you plan to use only one take, with few cuts. The UI is easy to use and beginner friendly. However, if you have to make a lot of cuts or move audio around, it’s a little more difficult because of the simplicity of the program.

This option is great for beginners because of the simple cut, copy, and paste functionality. It isn’t the highest quality sound, but it gets the job done.

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13. Garage Band

Price: Free.

Garage Band is a free editing software that is available on and comes with most Mac computers.

It’s mostly used as a beginner editing program, but is capable of mixing up to 255 audio tracks. It comes with basic editing features including volume levels, cut, copy, and paste. You can use plugins to finish off your track and use audio effects such as compression.

Additionally, it features a sound library with effects that you can include in your podcast.

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Podcast Hosting Sites/Services

Now that you’ve bought your equipment, recorded, and editing your podcast, you may be wondering what’s next? After you’ve produced your podcast, it’s time to find the right hosting site and service to publish it on.

14. BuzzSprout

Price: Free+

BuzzSprout is an excellent hosting option, because it gets your podcast listed in all the top podcast directories including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Stitcher.

Additionally, it offers advanced metrics, so you can track the progress of your podcast. You can see statistics about your listeners, total plays over time, and where people listen to your podcast. Plus, you can transcribe your podcast in BuzzSprout.

With paid plans, you’ll have unlimited storage and episodes hosted indefinitely.

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15. Libsyn

Price: $5/month+

Libsyn is a hosting service that will get your podcast published on your audience’s favorite apps and platforms.

A unique feature is its monetization options. For example, it offers premium content subscriptions and opt-in advertising. These options keep you in control and allow you to customize your monetization.

You’ll also have access to detailed audience statistics, so you can also see what’s working and what isn’t.

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How to Setup a Podcast Studio

Once you have your equipment, recording and editing software, and hosting services, it’s time to figure out where you’re going to record your podcast.

You’ll want to set up a podcast studio. This can be as basic as having the right equipment in any room or as advanced as creating a dedicated space for recording.

To setup a podcast studio, follow these steps:

Step 1: Buy the equipment — Before you can get your studio set up, you need the equipment. You’ll need a microphone, microphone arm, headphones, audio interface, desks, and chairs. You’ll also want to consider buying more than one of these items, in case you decide to bring people in for interviews.

Step 2: Set up room for sound conditioning — In order to achieve the best sound, consider buying soundproof foam wall panels to attach to the walls. This will stop the sound from bouncing off the walls. Additionally, you can buy pop filters for the microphones to reduce popping sounds.

Step 3: Set up lighting and cameras — Many podcasters choose to film their podcasts so they can post to YouTube or other social media. If you want to do this, you’ll need to set up lighting and cameras.

Anyone can start a podcast. That’s why you want your podcast to stand out among the rest. To take your podcast from good to great, make sure you purchase the right equipment, software, and studio setup.

All around us, we’re seeing implications of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on our daily routines. When was the last time you used Google Maps to get someplace? Or asked Siri a simple math question, or picked something to watch from your Netflix recommendations?

While it’s easy to think about a distant future where robots take your restaurant order and sell you a house, similar advancements may be closer than we think, and some of that may be due to this new revolution.

This change in technology means a change in how products are marketed to consumers, meaning marketers should take note. So what is the “4IR,” as some have abbreviated it?

As Schwab explains, the revolution builds directly upon the Third Industrial Revolution (3IR). The result of the 3IR was digital — it brought the invention of electronic systems, information technology systems, and the birth of the idea of automation. Due to the creation of these systems and technological advances, the 4IR is built upon this.

Why the Fourth Industrial Revolution Matters to Marketers

Some of the key technologies driving this revolution include artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, virtual reality (VR), and the Internet of Things (IoT). An example of this revolution at work is AI finding patterns in large amounts of data, quantum computing organizing that data at an incredible speed, and the Internet of Things displaying this data in the form of recommending a Netflix documentary to you.

What does this revolution mean for marketers? How will we be affected?

1. More data means more personalized marketing

The advancements of quantum computing and AI data collecting means there’s an influx of data available to marketers about their target audience. To illustrate, because of quantum computing, Facebook can pull your most recent Google searches and then suggest ads based on your search history, thanks to AI.

Information, such as demographic and psychographic data, is collected and used by software such as social media analytics tools.

This data can help marketers create a more personalized strategy –– one that target audiences can identify with. For instance, if your data sets are telling you that your target audience prefers to make purchases via eCommerce options, why not look into including Instagram Shopping into your social media strategy?

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In the above dashboard captured from Twitter analytics, you can see examples of the demographics Twitter can track and provide insights on. This data is available thanks to advancements in AI, and has become a critical component of building impactful marketing strategies.

2. More connected devices mean more chances to build your brand

With all of the elements that make up the Internet of Things (like voice assistants, smart appliances, and wearable tech), marketers have the chance to build brands that align with this new internet.

For instance, the IoT makes it possible for you to send personalized discounts to customers signed up to loyalty rewards program while they’re browsing in the store, based on their proximity to your products. Further, you can use IoT to track which and how many customers have been looking at products when they browse online and then send that customer a discount based on those numbers.

I for one, wholeheartedly wish my favorite local coffee shop would send me coupons while I am in the supermarket searching for new coffee grounds. Convenience at its finest.

3. Data systems assist with streamlined processing

The rise of AI means that you can make the data collection portion of your job easier. Tools powered by the Fourth Industrial Revolution can keep you from spending a significant portion of your time trying to find ROI in social media strategy.

Social media analytics tools tell you the rate at which your brand is engaging with customers. Digital advertising tools provide real-time data on the impact of the ads you put out. All this can be done by machines in a fraction of the time it would usually take to collect and interpret that data manually — time you can spend doing other things.

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Tools like Buffer Analyze can tell you how your marketing strategy is reaching audiences and what you can do to improve that reach. Buffer is an automated software that lets you schedule social media posts and watch their performance. In this screenshot, Buffer is analyzing the impact of Instagram Stories for a brand.

4. The fusion of technology leads to the need for specialized roles

All this new technology means marketers are defining job requirements differently. Not only does a marketer in the Fourth Industrial Revolution need to learn new skills like interpreting new types (and a much larger volume) of data, the functions of a marketer’s core role will need to shift.

Though it’s dependent on the industry, roles for marketers are becoming more specialized. For instance, a marketing team in 2020 might consist of a full-time SEO specialist, a blogger, a brand specialist, and a social media coordinator.

Previously, these roles might’ve been consolidated under one person (and still is one person in many SMBs), but larger companies are finding they need employees who specialize in certain functions. These important skillsets ensure brands are operating at their highest potential as new technology emerges.

We are in the midst of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and we are constantly finding new advancements in something. While much of the shift of process and function is happening online, many of these advancements benefit marketers. This is because marketing can be faster, data-driven, and personalized.

Here’s a little exercise for you: Check the timestamps on the emails you’ve gotten in the past day. What have you found? For me, I noticed that most of my emails, especially my subscription emails, were sent between 9-10 AM, or 5-6 PM.

This isn’t a coincidence, either.

While the answer to “What’s the perfect time to send an email to my customers?” isn’t an exact science, there are some key findings we’ve discovered through heavy research, and those times listed above are right in line with what we found. Keep reading to find out the best time to send an email, according to our findings.

Why Email Matters For Your Business

Automated email marketing provides a chance for you to improve sales conversions — maybe even by 14%. It’s a way to send customers unique offers — such as product sales or newsletters updates — with information your reader can’t get anywhere else.

Emails should be personalized with what your customers want to see, allowing you an instant way to communicate with them. Your emails should contain information your customers are interested in learning more about, such as discount offers, business updates, or product/service launches.

HubSpot‘s marketing email tool allows users to create and send automated emails for free. It also gives you the option to schedule your emails according to the preferences you’ve set. Then, your emails will then be sent to the list(s) of contacts you select.

When you reach this option in your automated email tool, you probably spend some time wondering when exactly your audience would like to receive your email, especially if it includes a limited-time offer. You want to make sure the highest number of customers possible are reading your emails. We’ll go over what we found next.

When is the Best Time to Send an Email?

When it comes to what time and day you should send an email and days, we found some researched-backed best practices.

These numbers are from GetResponse, an email marketing software that combed its data to compile a report of email marketing benchmarks. They analyzed 4 billion emails from 1,000 active senders.

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The highest line of the graph represents the open rate. The purple line (i.e., the one below it) represents the click-to-open rate. Below that, the dark blue line, represents the click-through rate. The almost transparent data counts the number of messages sent in percent value.

Keeping your audience in mind is a good tip for figuring out the time to send your emails. If your buyer persona is a professional with a nine-to-five job, sending emails during their ideal downtimes are the best. For instance, HubSpot sends emails between 8-9:30 AM ET to match our audience’s daily routines.

If you’re sending emails that include a sale or promotion, try sending them during the times your audience tends to take their lunch breaks.

Just keeping up on daily routines isn’t the only metric that factors into marketing emails. Others, such as click-through rate (CTR), click-to-open rate (CTOR), and open rate (OR) are also helpful to look at when creating emails.

Click-through rate

Click-through rate refers to the number of people who open a link or image in an email. This number will always be smaller than the open rate of emails opened due to the fact that it’s calculated using the total number of emails sent. CTR reflects conversions through email. So if you send 500 emails and 250 are opened, but only 75 links are clicked, your click-through rate is 75.

Click-to-open rate

When comparing the number of people that opened your email and the number that clicked on any links, that data is called click-to-open rate. This metric helps you identify which information in your emails is relevant to consumers. Finding CTOR is done by diving CTR by the open rate and multiplying it by 100%. For example, if your email receives 200 clicks and 120 opens, your click-to-open-rate is 60%.

Open rate

The open rate, then, is the percentage found from the number of subscribers who opened your email campaign. Emails that have great open rates have short, effective subject lines. Plus, they’re optimized for previews and preheader text.

This gets into the best day to send through an email. CampaignMonitor collected data from millions of emails used on their service. They put together the best day as it pertains to data collection.

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From this data, it looks like the best days for seeing a good blanket of success fall during the workweek. People are mostly opening and reading through emails in the middle of the week. It’s also good to keep in mind the lowest unsubscribe rate: during the beginning of the week.

CampaignMonitor also reported that Marketing and Advertising is one of the top industries that see success with email marketing, so making sure those emails are memorable is key to delighting customers.

Email marketing can be a tricky subject. There are so many industries taking advantage of it in their own way and making an impact. How do you measure up?

Your subscribers are already interested in your content. They appreciate what you are offering as a company, and as long as you’re sending them emails that relate to that, you have a good chance of obtaining great metrics.

When was the last time you ran a competitive analysis for your brand?

And most importantly, do you know how to do one efficiently?

If you’re not sure, or if the last “analysis” you ran was a quick perusal of a competitor’s website and social media presence, you’re likely missing out on important intelligence that could help your brand grow.

A competitive analysis helps you learn the ins and outs of how your competition works. It also helps you identify what they’re doing right and opportunities where you can easily one-up them by using a strategy they haven’t taken advantage of. 

Competitive Analysis in Marketing

Every brand can benefit from regular competitor analysis. By performing a competitor analysis, you’ll be able to:

• Identify gaps in the market
• Develop new products and services
• Uncover market trends
• Market and sell more effectively

As you can see, learning any of these four components will lead your brand down the path of achievement. But before you get too excited to start, we need to nail down a few important basics.

Once you identify your true competition, you’ll need to determine what metrics you’ll be comparing across the board. Below, we’ll give nine specific factors to compare and tips on how to identify this competition in the first place.

1. Determine who your competitors are.

First, you’ll need to figure out who you’re really competing with so you can compare the data accurately. What works in a business similar to yours may not work for your brand.

So how can you do this?

Divide your “competitors” into two categories: direct and indirect.

Direct competitors are businesses that offer a product or service that could pass as a similar substitute for yours, and that operate in your same geographic area.

On the flip side, an indirect competitor is one that provides products that are not the same but could satisfy the same customer need or solve the same problem.

It seems simple enough on paper, but these two terms are often misused.

When comparing your brand, you should only focus on your direct competitors. This is something many brands get wrong.

Let’s use an example: Stitch Fix and Fabletics are both subscription-based services that sell clothes on a monthly basis and serve a similar target audience.

But as we look deeper, we can see that the actual product (clothes in this case) are not really the same; one brand focuses on stylish everyday outfits while the other is workout-centric attire only.

Yes, these brands satisfy the same need for women (having trendy clothes delivered right to their doorstep each month), but they do so with completely different types of clothing, making them indirect competitors.

This means Kate Hudson’s team at Fabletics would not want to spend their time studying Stitch Fix too closely since their audiences probably vary quite a bit. Even if it’s only slightly, this tiny variation is enough to make a big difference.

Now, this doesn’t mean you should toss your indirect competitors out the window completely.

Keep these brands on your radar since they could shift positions at any time and cross over into the direct competitor zone. Using our example, Stitch Fix could start a workout line, which would certainly change things for Fabletics.

This is also one of the reasons why you’ll want to routinely run a competitor analysis. The market can and will shift at anytime, and if you’re not constantly scoping it out, you won’t be aware of these changes until it’s too late.

2. Determine what products your competitors offer.

At the heart of any business is its product or service, which is what makes this a good place to start.

You’ll want to analyze your competitor’s complete product line and the quality of the products or services they’re offering.

You should also take note of their pricing and any discounts they’re offering customers.

Some questions to consider include:

• Are they a low-cost or high-cost provider?
• Are they working mainly volume sales or one-o purchases?
• What is their market share?
• What are characteristics and needs of their ideal customers?
• Are they using different pricing strategies for online purchases versus brick and mortar?
• How does the company differentiate itself from its competitors?
• How do they distribute their products/services?

3. Research your competitors sales tactics and results.

Running a sales analysis of your competitors can be a bit tricky.

You’ll want to track down the answers to questions such as:

• What does the sales process look like?
• What channels are they selling through?
• Do they have multiple locations and how does this give them an advantage?
• Are they expanding? Scaling down?
• Do they have partner reselling programs?
• What are their customers reasons for not buying? For ending their relationship with the company?
• What are their revenues each year? What about total sales volume?
• Do they regularly discount their products or services?
• How involved is a salesperson in the process?

These helpful pieces of information will give you an idea of how competitive the sales process is, and what information you need to prepare your sales reps with to compete during the final buy stage.

For publicly held companies, you can find annual reports online, but you’ll have to do some sleuthing to find this info from privately owned businesses.

You could find some of this information by searching through your CRM and reaching out to those customers who mentioned they were considering your competitor. Find out what made them choose your product or service over others out there.

To do this, run a report that shows all prospective deals where there was an identified competitor.

If this data is not something you currently record, talk to marketing and sales to implement a system where prospects are questioned about the other companies they are considering.

Essentially, they’ll need to ask their leads (either through a form field or during a one- on-one sales conversation) to identify who their current service providers are, who they’ve used in the past, and who else they are considering during the buying process.

When a competitor is identified, have your sales team dive deeper by asking why they are considering switching to your product. If you’ve already lost the deal, be sure to follow up the with prospect to determine why you lost to your competitor. What services or features attracted the prospect? Was it about price? What’s the prospect’s impression of your sales process? If they’ve already made the switch, find out why they made this decision.

By asking open-ended questions, you’ll have honest feedback about what customers find appealing about your brand and what might be turning customers away.

Once you’ve answered these questions, you can start scoping out your competitor’s marketing efforts.

4. Analyze how your competitors market their products.

Analyzing your competitor’s website is the fastest way to gauge their marketing efforts. Take note of any of the following items and copy down the specific URL for future reference:

• Do they have a blog?
• Are they creating whitepapers or ebooks?
• Do they post videos or webinars?
• Do they have a podcast?
• Are they using static visual content such as infographics and cartoons?
• What about slide decks?
• Do they have a FAQs section?
• Are there featured articles?
• Do you see press releases?
• Do they have a media kit?
• What about case studies?
• Do they publish buying guides and data sheets?
• What online and offine advertising campaigns are they running?

5. Take note of your competition’s content strategy.

Then, take a look at the quantity of these items. Do they have several hundred blog posts or a small handful? Are there five white papers and just one ebook?

Next, determine the frequency of these content assets. Are they publishing something new each week or once a month? How often does a new ebook or case study come out?

Chances are, if you come across a robust archive of content, your competitor has been publishing regularly. Depending on the topics they’re discussing, this content may help you hone in on their lead generating strategies.

From there, you should move on to evaluating the quality of their content. After all, if the quality is lacking, it won’t matter how often they post since their target audience won’t find much value there.

Choose a small handful of samples to review instead of tackling every single piece to make the process more manageable.

Your sampler should include content pieces covering a variety of topics so you’ll have a fairly complete picture of what your competitor shares with their target audience.

When analyzing your competitor’s content, consider the following questions:

• How accurate is their content?
• Are spelling or grammar errors present?
• How in-depth does their content go? (Is it introductory level that just scratches the surface or more advanced topics with high-level ideas?)
• What tone do they use?
• Is the content structured for readability? (Are they using bullet points, bold headings, and numbered lists?)
• Is their content free and available to anyone or do their readers need to opt-in?
• Who is writing their content? (In-house team? One person? Multiple contributors?)
• Is there a visible byline or bio attached to their articles?

As you continue to scan the content, pay attention to the photos and imagery your competitors are using.

Do you quickly scroll past generic stock photos or are you impressed by custom illustrations and images? If they‘re using stock photos, do they at least have overlays of text quotes or calls-to- action that are specific to their business?

If their photos are custom, are they sourced from outside graphic professionals or do they appear to be done in-house?

When you have a solid understanding of your competitor’s content marketing strategy, it’s time to find out if it’s truly working for them.

6. Analyze the level of engagement on your competitor’s content.

To gauge how engaging your competitor’s content is to their readers, you’ll need to see how their target audience responds to what they’re posting.

Check the average number of comments, shares, and likes on your competitor’s content and find out if:

• Certain topics resonate better than others
• The comments are negative, positive, or a mix
• People are tweeting about specific topics more than others
• Readers respond better to Facebook updates about certain content
• Don’t forget to note if your competitor categorizes their content using tags, and if they have social media follow and share buttons attached to each piece of content. Both of these will a ect engagement activity.

7. Observe how they promote their marketing content.

From engagement, you’ll move right along to your competitor’s content promotion strategy.

• Keyword density in the copy itself
• Image ALT text tags
• Use of internal linking

The following questions can also help you prioritize and focus on what to pay attention to:

• Which keywords are your competitors focusing on that you still haven’t tapped into?
• What content of theirs is highly shared and linked to? How does your content compare?
• Which social media platforms is your target audience using and the most active on?
• What other sites are linking back to your competitor’s site, but not yours?
• Who else is sharing what your competitors are publishing?
• Who is referring traffic to your competitor’s site?
• For the keywords you want to focus on, what is the diffculty level? There are several free (and paid) tools that will give you a comprehensive evaluation of your competitor’s search engine optimization.

8. Look at their social media presence, strategies, and go-to platforms

The last area you’ll want to evaluate when it comes to marketing is your competitor’s social media presence and engagement rates.

How does your competition drive engagement with their brand through social media? Do you see social sharing buttons with each article? Does your competitor have links to their social media channels in the header, footer, or somewhere else? Are these clearly visible? Do they use calls-to-action with these buttons?

If your competitors are using a social network that you may not be on, it’s worth learning more about how that platform may be able to help your business, too. To determine if a new social media platform is worth your time, check your competitor’s engagement rates on those sites. First, visit the following sites to see if your competition has an account on these platforms:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• Snapchat
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• Pinterest

Then, take note of the following quantitative items from each platform:

• Number of fans/followers
• Posting frequency and consistency
• Content engagement (Are users leaving comments or sharing their posts?)
• Content virality (How many shares, repins, and retweets do their posts get?)

With the same critical eye you used to gauge your competition’s content marketing strategy, take a fine-toothed comb to analyze their social media strategy.

What kind of content are they posting? Are they more focused on driving people to landing pages, resulting in new leads? Or are they posting visual content to promote engagement and brand awareness?

How much of this content is original? Do they share curated content from other sources? Are these sources regular contributors? What is the overall tone of the content?

How does your competition interact with their followers? How frequently do their followers interact with their content?

After you collect this data, generate an overall grade for the quality of your competitor’s content. This will help you compare the rest of your competitors using a similar grading scale.

9. Perform a SWOT Analysis to learn their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats

As you evaluate each component in your competitor analysis (business, sales, and marketing), get into the habit of performing a simplified SWOT analysis at the same time.

This means you’ll take note of your competitor’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats any time you assess an overall grade.

Some questions to get you started include:

• What is your competitor doing really well with? (Products, content marketing, social
  media, etc.)
• Where does your competitor have the advantage over your brand?
• What is the weakest area for your competitor?
• Where does your brand have the advantage over your competitor?
• What could they do better with?
• In what areas would you consider this competitor as a threat?
• Are there opportunities in the market that your competitor has identified?

You’ll be able to compare their weaknesses against your strengths and vice versa. By doing this, you can better position your company, and you’ll start to uncover areas for improvement within your own brand.

How Does Your Business Currently Stack Up?

Before you accurately compare your competition, you need to establish a baseline. This also helps when it comes time to perform a SWOT analysis.

Take an objective look at your business, sales, and marketing e orts through the same metrics you use to evaluate your competition.

Record this information just like you would with a competitor and use this as your baseline to compare across the board.

Ready to get started with the full ebook and template? Click here to access the complete Competitive Analysis Kit. 

Editor’s Note; This post was originally published prior to July 2018 but was updated in November 2019 for comprehensiveness.

How did your grandparents, parents, and younger siblings grow up gossiping about the latest party? I bet they’d all have different answers.

Don’t believe me? Let’s take a trip back in time.

First, we sent letters. If you think handwriting a card took a long time, think about the time it took to receive a response by plane, train … or pony.

The 1800s brought many new technologies, including the telegraph. It may sound cool, but think about how long it took to translate details into morse code. I’ll give you a hint: .. – / – — — -.- / .- / .-.. — -. –. / – .. — ..-.-.

Years later, the fax machine allowed us to send messages and images over telephone lines. Unfortunately, the earliest machines cost tens of thousands of dollars, and you still had to create a hard copy of your message.

Then came “leave a message after the beep” … voicemail. We’ve all put off listening to that 3-minute long message. It’s easy to ignore or it can be the start of an endless game of phone “tag”.

After voicemail came “you’ve got mail.” While revolutionary, inboxes quickly became overwhelmed. Your thoughtful email lay forgotten under a pile of spam and promotional messages.

Then the people who brought us email rolled out AIM or instant messenger. As the name implies, this was the first instant messaging service. Except your friends weren’t always online. Sometimes their away message was set to Outkast lyrics. Shake it like a Polaroid picture, anyone?

Around the same time, SMS texts hit mobile phones everywhere. You can now text your friend all of the essential party details and 🎉🎉🎉emojis.

Finally, we arrived at live chat. Live chat allows for instantaneous responses. You write a quick message and see those three little dots signaling a reply. The days of waiting for weeks to hear from someone are over – conversations are always happening.

With HubSpot’s free live chat software, you can connect with your website visitors in real-time to convert new leads, close more deals, and provide better support to your customers.

With each new iteration of technology, our accepted response time has changed — friends make plans faster, families stay closer, and businesses provide answers instantly. In the age of live chat, customers expect conversations to happen how, when, and where they want.

Sounds intimidating, right? Don’t worry; it’s not as complicated as you think. While the technology we use to communicate has changed, the core elements of communication have stayed the same. People always have and always will expect conversations to be helpful, personal, and empathetic. The only difference now is we have the technology to have those conversations at scale. That’s the power of conversational marketing.

Let’s talk about conversational marketing and its benefits, how it will help your business grow, and what you need to build a successful conversational marketing strategy.

Check out our Introduction to Conversational Marketing course from HubSpot Academy.

For example, many startups have created user groups on Slack. These groups allow customers and prospects to ask questions and get advice on a channel they’re already using to communicate throughout the workday … but wait, weren’t we talking about conversational marketing? How did we get started talking about customer support?

See, here’s the thing with live chat, it’s an incredibly powerful communication channel that has a strange way of breaking down the walls between support, sales, and marketing.

Sure, conversational marketing is the topic of the day, but we believe it is just one small piece of the puzzle. Conversations should take place across your entire business. In the future, businesses will need to develop a comprehensive conversational growth strategy to deliver better customer experience throughout the entire customer journey.

Conversational sales will play a huge role in helping reps connect with prospects in a more helpful, organic way. And customer success teams have already seen significant benefits using chat as one of their many support tools. While you’re developing your conversational marketing strategy, consider how it can impact every part of your business.

The Key Elements of Conversational Marketing

OK, you may be thinking, “conversational marketing sounds a lot like my current marketing strategy. I’m on multiple channels. I’m having conversations with my audience.”

If you’re a customer-focused marketer, chances are you’re almost there. Here are the four key components of conversational marketing and how to best refine your strategy.

1. Conversations happen in customer-time.

Conversational marketing is an asynchronous relationship. Meaning conversations should occur whenever the customer prefers — whether that’s in real-time, after finishing their meeting, or later that night when they have a spare moment. While it’s important for businesses to be able to chat in real-time, it’s just as important for them to be able to finish a conversation at whatever pace the customer wants. Sometimes that means starting a conversation at 7 a.m. over their first cup of coffee and finishing at 9 p.m. after they’ve put their kids to bed.

HubSpot Co-Founder Dharmesh Shah says, “Customers should be able to pick up things right where they left off whenever it is convenient for them to continue. The key is to remember that conversational marketing should be designed around the needs of the customer — not the needs of the business.”

2. Conversations are scalable.

Because conversations happen on customer-time, all conversations need to be scalable. A customer doesn’t care if you’re talking with 50, 500, or 5,000 other people — they only care about the issue they need to be solved. Businesses, especially SMBs, shouldn’t get left behind due to a lack of resources or manpower. This is where chatbots come in. Bots make 24/7 support possible by providing answers to common questions based on data that already exists. Businesses shouldn’t sacrifice human interaction for scale. Rather, bots offer quick access to information or a human.

3. Conversations have context.

Conversations can’t exist in a vacuum; they need context and should get smarter as you collect more information. This is important for two reasons. First, it’s what customers expect. Think about it: If you called a company yesterday to report a defect in something you ordered, and then you chat them the next day about needing return instructions, you’d expect the person you’re talking with to have access to previous interactions and know which product you’re sending back.

Second, context is what makes messaging convenient. Without it, bots or a support rep would need to ask people the same qualifying questions every time they interacted with them — wasting their time and testing their patience. If you’ve ever called customer support, you know how frustrating it is to repeat your account number time after time as you’re passed around to different departments.

People want to get the answer to their question as quickly as possible and with the smallest amount of effort. This is why it’s so important to make a CRM part of your conversational marketing strategy. Context means gathering, storing, and making accessible customer data — from recent orders to visits to pricing pages to their job title. The more you know about the customer and the more you can demonstrate that in the conversation, the more helpful you’ll be.

4. Conversations meet customers where they are.

Inbound Marketing is about providing value to your audience and meeting them where they are. Conversational marketing is just a part of that now — thanks to the mass adoption of messaging and new tools and technology.

And that means conversations should happen on the channel that best suits your customer — that might be over the phone or on Facebook Messenger, with a human or a bot. People don’t want to be forced to call a 1-800 number if they could easily send a quick chat message and grab a link to a knowledge base article. HubSpot’s bot expert Brian Bagdasarian states:

“Businesses should strive to deliver the right message, at the right time, to the right person, with the right information, on the right channel, every single time.”

Conversational Marketing Is More Than Just Live Chat

Some people equate conversational marketing with live chat — something that’s been around for a while. But it’s much more than that. Conversational marketing isn’t about a single tool. While Facebook Messenger, Slack, SMS, email, and others allow conversations to happen, this is about the changing communication preferences of consumers that in turn, should change how you view one-to-one conversations.

For example, social media giant Facebook is drastically changing the way its users engage with businesses. There are over 65 million business pages on Facebook, and over 2 billion messages are exchanged with these businesses each month on Facebook Messenger. That’s a lot of conversations happening. Consumers are using Facebook Messenger and other popular messaging platforms to get content delivered, shop and buy, and access support.

With access to new technology, businesses can use these emerging platforms to easily meet consumers where they are already spending their time. Still not convinced? 85% of consumers spend their time in five popular apps, including WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. And according to Facebook’s February earnings, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger had 1.5 billion and 1.3 billion monthly active users, respectively.

But remember, businesses should not only be communicating on a variety of channels, but they should also be prepared to continue those conversations across all channels without missing a beat.

The Benefits of Conversational Marketing

Conversational marketing isn’t new — we have conversations every day, and as you saw from the timeline above, it’s been that way for a while. So why wouldn’t we use tools that optimize conversations for business? Let’s talk about a few of the key benefits.

1. Conversational marketing is a more delightful way for customers to get answers.

People are increasingly turning to mobile to shop and make purchases. As a result, more people are interacting with content that is more mobile friendly. Consumers that use their phone as their primary internet device have grown to prefer video content, social content, and messaging-based interactions.

Think about how many times you pick up your phone during the day. According to TechCrunch, consumers spend 5 hours per day on their phones. It makes sense. I’m guessing it’s your first line of defense when looking up an answer to a quick question. Conversational marketing channels like messaging apps and email are innately mobile friendly. It’s a lot easier to chat with a rep or even a bot to get an answer than spend time scrolling and clicking through a company’s website. Messaging apps allow customers to provide information specific to their problem so businesses can give quick, personalized support.

HubSpot recently experimented with delivering content offers via Facebook Messenger and saw some incredible results – the test saw a 2.5X increase in open rates and 6X the number of clicks when compared to email. This improved performance is due in part to the channel’s push notifications, but it also aligns with how people want to shop, buy, and engage with companies today.

And conversational marketing doesn’t just present an opportunity in the U.S. In fact, in many regions, messaging apps like WeChat and WhatsApp are the primary channel for both personal and professional communication.

Source

2. Conversational marketing is a great way to gain new, valuable insights about your customers.

Think about it, when else do your customers tell you in their own words what they want to do, learn, or change? You don’t get that candor with a website or an advertisement.

HubSpot’s Conversational Marketing Manager Connor Cirillo states,

“Your conversational marketing audience is much more insightful than your other channels. They’ll tell you in their own words how they want to interact with your business. There’s no inferring or guessing, like with web traffic.”

And with conversational marketing, you can gather that data at scale. This especially holds true for messaging channels. Chat interfaces can record data that can then be used to optimize for better customer interactions, product improvements, more helpful content, and more.

For example, CNN uses a bot to provide their audience with tailored content based on keywords. Users simply send the bot a message with a topic they’re interested in, and it will send back related news stories. Not only is it a quick, easy way for readers to get the news they care about most, CNN is collecting valuable consumer data with every chat.

Once businesses collect consumer data, they can use it to define trends and make more informed decisions. For example, imagine that your company redesigned its website or provided a discount on merchandise. If a prospect or customer has a difficult time navigating the new website or applying the coupon, they can live chat with a representative to receive instructions on how to best navigate the issue.

Not only does live chat help solve the immediate customer’s concerns and keep them on the site, the information from that chat can help you determine if you need to fix a part of your website’s UX or send out more detailed instructions on how to apply the discount. Being able to determine common customer pain points as they occur can save a business thousands of dollars.

And not only is conversational marketing data helpful for recognizing tech issues and common customer pain points, it also can identify opportunities for cross-sell and up-sell. If a customer is chatting with a rep about a product they are considering buying, the rep could take that opportunity to point out other items customers frequently bought based on previous interactions.

3. Conversational marketing is a great way to build relationships.

With messaging apps and social media, we’ve found a way to talk with more friends, more frequently. Conversational marketing can drive lead generation by reaching new audiences on different channels or by giving people a more convenient way to get in touch with support.

According to Harvard Business Review, messaging apps “provide a continuous thread between customers and brands”. This thread allows for continuous communication which makes conversations more natural and “opportunities to cross-sell, encourage sharing, solicit input, and flow seamlessly between commerce and support” more frequent.

According to TopBots’ Adelyn Zhou,

“Questions that are awkward or annoying coming from a brand are socially acceptable and even welcome in chatbot interactions.”

Bots allow companies to collect a lot of information in a natural way. Instead of coming face-to-face with a long form, customers can share a little information over the course of multiple conversations. HubSpot was able to attract 20% more qualified leads by merely adding live chat as a communication channel. What would a 20% increase in qualified leads look like for your business?

And not only is conversational marketing more convenient for customers, it’s also a great way to show off your brand’s personality. Through copywriting, images, emojis, and videos, you can give your messaging conversations a personality — one that reinforces your brand. Customers and prospects are likely to keep engaging with your brand if you make it enjoyable and easy to do so!

1. Domino’s Pizza

Domino’s recent Domino’s AnyWare initiative allows customers to order pizza from, well, literally anywhere. This includes conversational channels like Slack, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, and text message — by simply texting the pizza emoji.

Source

Customers must first enable text ordering and set up an “Easy Order” on their Domino’s profile, which is what they’ll order when texting 🍕. Beyond that, however, ordering a pizza doesn’t get much simpler.

2. HubSpot

HubSpot allowed people to register for its Four Days of Facebook Campaign through multiple channels, including Facebook Messenger. Users loved the conversational UI and were quick to encourage their friends and coworkers to sign up as well.

And success wasn’t just about getting people to register for the live event. Facebook Messenger was the highest converting source of new product users to HubSpot Marketing Free via the campaign.

3. London & Company

London & Company walks prospective mortgage customers through their Mortgage Finder form. But instead of a lengthy form with multiple fields, London & Company displays a chatbot/ messenger format with one question at a time.

Source

This conversational format is user-friendly and easy to navigate, which likely helps London & Company collect information from and convert potential new leads.

4. HelloFresh

HelloFresh, a subscription meal service, launched their Freddy Freshbot chatbot in 2017. Customers can chat with Freddy through Facebook Messenger.

Source

Freddy provides customer service, recipe ideas, answers to frequently asked questions, and meal reminders. With Freddy Freshbot, HelloFresh does a great job providing support well beyond the order and delivery process, ensuring its customers feel comfortable cooking its meals and eventually renewing their subscriptions.

5. Sephora

Sephora used Kik messenger to learn more about their target market by asking them if they wanted to participate in a quick, social-like quiz about their beauty habits. Once users accepted, they answered questions about their age, makeup preferences, and favorite products. From there, the app was able to deliver relevant content such as how-to videos and product reviews based on the individual’s answers.

A chatbot makes it easier for customers to find and purchase products they like and frees up human employees for other tasks.

Source

Conversational Marketing and Inbound Marketing

At this point, you’ve probably noticed the similarities between the core ideas behind conversational marketing and inbound marketing. That’s because conversational marketing is a piece of inbound marketing, just like email marketing or blogging. Inbound Marketing is all about creating value where your target customer is spending their time — that could mean writing a blog, interacting on social media, or sharing a video on YouTube. Now that technology has made conversational marketing a possibility, it’s a key part of inbound marketing.

HubSpot Co-Founder Dharmesh Shah states,

“Conversation marketing is not new. Not only have we long been having conversations with customers — even the term itself has been around for at least a decade. The reason for the renewed interest in conversational marketing is that because of advances in technology and shifts in consumer behavior, conversational marketing can now happen at scale. We can have direct, one-to-one conversations with individual customers on their timeline — not ours.”

Although conversations are nothing new, our ability to have 1:1 conversations at this scale and across multiple channels is. With inbound marketing, you can first attract potential customers to your brand. You can then use conversational marketing to allow people to initiate conversations when they want, where they want, and how they want – giving your audience the control.

How do conversations fit into the inbound methodology? Well, we see conversations taking place throughout the entire customer lifecycle, though there’s not a strong case to be made for it in the attract stage as the discovery of brands on messaging platforms is still immature.

Facebook Messenger’s Discover tab, which launched mid-2017, is one attempt at solving this. But conversations can be used in place of forms to attract and capture leads, by sales teams to convert those leads into customers, and by customer success teams to delight customers with quick and convenient support. For example, using live chat during the sales process could help convert more leads because it allows prospects to interact in a way they already prefer to buy.

How Conversational Marketing Will Grow Your Business

Okay, we know conversational marketing is all about improving 1:1 relationships, but how can businesses actually start to build out a strategy for success? Cirillo recommends starting with one goal and then working backward.

“Know what you want to get out of the conversation and what data you need to make that happen. Every conversation should add value to your business.”

Analyze your answers and work to create the best possible experience for your customers. While there are many things you can do to help optimize your conversations, here are a few essentials:

Your CRM and Conversational Marketing

When you have a conversation with a friend, you don’t expect to have to remind them of things like your name or where you live — the same holds true when customers have conversations with a business. That’s why using a CRM is so important. A CRM is like a digital memory that allows you to have conversations with customers like you know them.

A successful conversational marketing strategy is dependent on fast and reliable access to a shared knowledge base that includes data such as communication history and necessary customer information. Companies who want to do conversational marketing will need a way to store and organize that data in order to have more seamless interactions with customers. With the help of a CRM, you can organically promote events and products, distribute content, and provide support all through chat.

So, what data should marketers collect? You don’t need to know everything about them, but you should know the basics and details of past conversations. Cirillo encourages marketers to think first about why they’re using chat:

“Success with conversational marketing will look different depending on the use case. There’s not an overarching metric for this world. Track the ‘time to solution’ or conversion rate if you’re solving for utility. If your experience is less about a particular action, then retention might make more sense.”

Start with what you want your customers to be able to accomplish via chat and then build out processes for acquiring the necessary information.

In addition, you can’t implement a conversational marketing strategy without a process for tracking performance, moments of confusion or drop-off, and new questions. You should always be gathering data and optimizing the experience.

Adding Automation with Chatbots

Once your CRM is set up, it’s time to think to think about how you can scale your conversations. This is where chatbots can help.

Business isn’t just happening in one city, in one state, or in one timezone — it’s happening all around the world, every minute of every day. As I mentioned earlier, adding automation with chatbots is crucial in keeping up with a volume of conversations and to have a fighting chance at 24/7 support. Bots allow SMBs to compete with enterprise-sized businesses.

Customers expect to be able to connect with businesses whenever they need to. According to research from Aspect Software, 65% of consumers feel good about themselves and the company when they can handle an issue without talking to a live person, and 61% think that chatbots allow for faster answers.

Here are few ways chatbots can help:

• Answer FAQs or customer-specific questions where data is already available
• Qualify Leads
• Promote events, products, and content
• Schedule meetings
• Get feedback from customers and prospects

Keep in mind that while chatbots can do many things, they should never be used as a barrier between customers and a human. 86% of consumers want the option to transfer to a representative if their request is too complicated for a bot to handle. Bots can’t replace human talent, but they can help augment teams during off-hours or when conversation volume is too much for a small group to handle.

Learn how to build the fundamentals of your Conversational Marketing strategy.

An Inbound Approach to Conversations

Developing a conversational marketing strategy can take time – it’s not easy to think about process when you’re trying to keep up with the day-to-day demands of running a business. That’s why HubSpot’s Brian Bagdasarian created some tips for building a conversational marketing strategy. Conversational marketing isn’t something you can set and forget, you have to continuously optimize your strategy to see the best results, but there are five things you should keep in mind: Personalize, contextualize, standardize, empathize, and optimize

Personalize

When speaking with a customer or prospect, conversations should be personalized with relevant shared knowledge. Shared knowledge is the foundation of good conversations. Think about it: If you’ve already given a business you’re phone number, do you really want to waste time reciting it every time you have a simple question? Personalized details make the conversation feel more natural and help you to get to the root of the issue as quickly as possible.

Contextualize

Conversations that have context not only improve the end-user experience, they also help minimize misunderstandings and get straight to the heart of the issue. Because you don’t have to waste time collecting information you already have access to, you’re able to provide immediate value. Context is necessary to help answer the right question, at the right time, in the best way possible.

Conversations that aim to answer the most important question first will provide the best user experience. Even though it’s a conversation, this isn’t like a conversation with friends. When customers interact with your business, chances are they don’t want to spend time talking about cat videos or their weekend plans. They want to solve their most immediate need in the fastest and easiest way possible. Spend time analyzing your interactions to determine what data will help improve your customer relationships.

Standardize

However, it’s important not to get too caught up in personalizing your messages. While personalization and contextualization are important, standardizing elements of conversations helps bring a level of professionalism and consistency to your business. Conversations should be repeatable and predictable.

Figure out your customer’s most frequently asked questions and draft approved answers for bots and marketers to use. Repeating conversations will help automate, optimize, and improve future interactions. Predictable conversations help to users have a natural dialog with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Standardization is crucial to delivering clear, consistent answers, across conversations and users.

Empathize

When involved in a conversation, we often have to deliver the right answer before correcting the problem. For example: Let’s say you receive an email with a coupon code from one of your favorite stores. You spend a half hour scrolling through their products trying to decide what to buy, but when you finally enter the code to make your purchase, it doesn’t work.

You’re understandably annoyed that you wasted all that time when you weren’t even planning on buying something without that code. The business should emphasize with your issue and assure you that they understand the problem before the can move forward with providing a solution. Emphasizing helps customers feel valued and heard.

Optimize

Finally, it’s crucial to optimize. Learn from your past conversations so you can improve them in the future. Optimize for the strengths of the channel and for the answer – aim to provide answers that people would receive in a real, one-to-one conversation.

For example, live chat or phone might be better for providing support, while Facebook Messenger could be a better choice for content delivery. Listen to your customers and observe their behavior as you build out your strategy and make changes where needed. Conversational marketing is an iterative process — what you thought might work may not always provide the best experience. Take time to ask your customers for feedback. Their advice will help you delight your next customer. Remember, every conversation should be impactful and help add value to your business.

Moving Forward: Why Conversations Are the Future

Phew, you made it to the end. Good convo guys.

We’ve come a long way from letters and telegrams. For the first time, people are having meaningful conversations with businesses on a massive scale thanks to automation with bots, a CRM, and new channels. Conversational marketing is changing the way companies talk with their customers by making interactions seamless and faster than ever before. Your customers are having conversations. Why not join in?

The most important things to focus on are the channel, the conversation, and how the strategy fits in with your overall inbound marketing strategy. Channels should be simple for businesses and consumers to use, conversations should follow a clear process and serve a purpose, and your inbound marketing strategy should inform your conversational marketing strategy.

Remember, humans have been having conversations since the beginning of time. Technology is only making it easier and more productive for businesses and their customers to connect. While the days of communicating by the Pony Express may be over, thoughtful, friendly conversations (and gossip) will continue to stand the test of time and technology.

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

In the content marketing industry, setting objectives can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, constantly raising the bar can incentivize your team to sustain your growth rate over long periods of time. But on the other hand, it can also incentivize your team to prioritize your company’s needs over your customers’ needs.

You might be thinking that this is the nature of content marketing today — in order to grow, you need to stay laser-focused on hitting your numbers. And, sometimes, to hit your numbers, you need to do what’s best for the business, even if it’s not the best move for your customers.

But contrary to popular belief, solely focusing on the results doesn’t actually produce results. Focusing on serving your customers is what produces results. Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, is famous for sparking this customer-centric movement. In 2015, he spoke at Goldman Sach’s Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco, and a reporter asked him what were some of Apple’s biggest accomplishments from the past year. He responded, “We’re not focused on the numbers. We’re focused on the things that produce the numbers.”

In content marketing, one of the most influential things that produce the numbers is a passion for your craft. But, sometimes, we can get so obsessed with optimizing for results that we forget what actually generates the views and leads we desperately desire — compelling content.

In this blog post, we’ll show you how to set realistic marketing objectives that will help you craft audience-centric content, prioritize your customers’ needs, and hit your numbers, all at the same time. Read on to learn how to identify your marketing objectives’ purpose and process and why it’s just as important as the numbers you aim to hit.

In many ways, marketing is a game of trend watching. The marketer who’s best at spotting and using trends earns their business market share, brand recognition, and ultimately, revenue.

But how do you search for trends? And where do you start? Well, since they own about 92% of the global search engine market, the answer to both of these questions is, “Google.”

To thrive as a small business, you need press coverage. But, unfortunately, coverage doesn’t just come naturally — you need to work for it.

Enter: The press release.

Press releases are important for increasing your brand awareness and helping your public relations (PR). But if nobody sees your release, you won’t get very far. You need to distribute it effectively to get your story picked up by national newspapers, magazines, or blogs.

In this guide to press release distribution, we’ll cover the following to help you put together a plan of action that results in coverage:

• What is press release distribution?
• Why is press release distribution important?
• How to distribute your press release
• Distribution mistakes to avoid
• Should you use distribution services?

Keep reading to learn how you can properly create, pitch, and distribute a press release for optimal brand awareness.

What is press release distribution?

Before we dive any deeper, let’s iron-out exactly what press release distribution is.

Here’s a fancy definition: “Press release distribution is the process of circulating or seeding out your press release to journalists and members of the press.”

The purpose of distributing a press release is to land coverage in media publications such as newspapers, radio, TV news bulletins, podcasts, or blogs. That way, you’re positioning your brand in front of a wider audience.

Why bother distributing a press release?

People aren’t going to see your press release if you don’t distribute it.

And if it’s not seen, people won’t know about your business — which defeats the entire purpose behind creating your press release.

Gaining press coverage helps to get your business or brand name into the public forum. That’s helpful for building awareness of your brand — especially when 44% of journalists consider press releases to be the most trustworthy source of brand-related information.

Distributing a press release also has these benefits:

1. Press releases can boost your SEO.

Over three billion Google searches are made every day.

By implementing SEO tactics into your overall marketing strategy, you’re more likely to reach the top spots of users’ search queries, which will help potential customers and clients find you when they’re searching online for information related to your company, industry, product, or service.

Gaining links to your site from others is a huge ranking factor for SEO, as explained in a study by Backlinko:

Distributing press releases can help you land coverage on huge publications. Additionally, there’s a chance those websites will link to yours, which can help to boost your own search engine visibility.

But what happens if you land awesome coverage without a backlink?

Don’t panic. Both Google and Bing have suggested that positive brand mentions may play a role in how they rank your site, meaning positive PR coverage can aid your SEO efforts even without a link.

2. A press release can drive local foot traffic to your store.

If your business is a brick-and-mortar shop, press release distributions can help to get people through the door.

Whether you’re running an event or simply launching an eye-catching sale, measuring foot traffic into your store after distributing a press release is a simple way to gauge how successful your release has been.

3. A press release can generate more sales.

If you’re launching a new product or an exclusive line, a targeted press release can have a significant impact on your bottom line. Why? Because it help drum up interest and make revenue from your stock, especially if the offer sets you apart from competitors.

Busy shopping days can be a great way to get your products in front of potential customers.

For instance, if you’re offering discounts on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, why not reach out to retail journalists to highlight your offers?

PR Agency One landed 52 pieces of coverage for their client with Black Friday press releases — all of which helped put them in front of consumers who were ready to buy.

How do you distribute a press release?

You know how important PR is, and you’ve crafted a succinct, yet powerful, story. All that’s left to do is share it with the world.

But journalists have to write up to seven stories per day — so how do you ensure your press release is one of those stories? And just as importantly, how can you make your distribution email stand out in a crowded inbox?

Follow this five-step guide to learn how.

1. Find journalists who might be interested in your press release.

When you want to share some news, I’ll bet you’re tempted to tell as many people as possible. You want everyone to hear about it, right?

However, that’s not always the right thing to do — because not everyone is interested in your story.

(Brutal, but honest.)

Along with crafting a press release that journalists are interested in, you’ll need to be super-specific with the people to whom you send your pitches.

You can do that by searching for journalists who’ve already written about your topic or industry.

For instance, let’s say you run a car parts business. You’ve conducted some research around potholes, gathered some interesting data, and turned it into a killer press release. But mailing every journalist under the sun is probably going to be a waste of time.

Instead, it’s worth seeking out journalists who’ve covered similar topics before.

To do this, fire up Google, type in your topic (potholes), and navigate to the News tab:

As you can see, there are plenty of recent articles on this topic, meaning journalists are more than likely interested enough to cover it.

Next, read some of the articles on Google News and make a note of the journalists’ names.

A simple spreadsheet with the journalist’s name and the publication they write for is a good way to keep a log of your distribution plan:

If you have the budget, you can also use a media database such as Cision or Muckrack to find relevant journalists and reporters.

This method is much more likely to get you responses because you’re only pitching the release to journalists who’ve demonstrated an interest in your topic already.

2. Get the journalists’ contact details.

Next, it’s time to find some contact information for the targets on your press release distribution list.

This could be as simple as clicking on an author’s bio on their publication’s site.

… and making a note of their email address:

But, just like anything else in the world of PR, it’s not always that easy.

You’ll often have to do a little digging to find the contact details — starting with a simple Google search such as “[journalist’s name + email]”.

If that doesn’t do the trick, you could also use a media database like Muckrack:

Don’t have the budget for paid databases? Harness the power of social media.

LinkedIn is an excellent place to discover contact information for professional contacts (AKA, your journalists). Simply search for “journalist” and filter the results by selecting your target publication as “company”, then plug their name into Hunter to find their email address:

Twitter can also be a quick and easy way to get in touch with your target journalists, too — especially considering 46% of journalists are open to receiving pitches via Twitter.

3. Craft a killer pitch.

Email is the most effective way to send your press release quickly.

Don’t believe me? Cision’s 2017 State of the Media report found an overwhelming majority of journalists prefer to receive press releases via email:

However, there’s another obstacle you’ll need to overcome here — many journalists receive up to 200 pitches a day.

There are two factors you’ll want to consider when crafting a pitch. First — keep it brief.

Don’t waste the journalist’s time with a long-winded, self-absorbed introduction to yourself or your business. They probably don’t care.

Instead, get straight into the purpose of your email: The story, and why they should cover it in their publication.

Journalists are time-poor, so they’ll appreciate a nice, succinct message that sells your story in a few words—like this:

Image courtesy of Janet Murray.

As you can see in the example above, the entire story is sold in the first sentence, with a direct question asking if the journalist is interested — rather than just assuming so.

Follow this up with a couple more sentences to give the journalist some additional information about your story, before adding a line spacer and pasting your full press release.

Note: Avoid adding your press releases as attachments. Journalists don’t like opening attachments in fear of viruses or malware, so eliminate that problem by pasting the body of your press release below your pitch.

Second, it’s critical you personalize your pitch.

Did you know that personalized emails are 26% more likely to be opened?

Bear that in mind when you’re pitching news stories, and show some interest in the journalist’s previous work by indicating that you know they’re a good fit based on the topics they cover.

Try to build a relationship with the journalists first, rather than hitting them with a release and expecting instant coverage. Almost 15% of journalists consider this very important:

Image courtesy of Marketing Land.

Sometimes, it’s worth playing the long game by getting to know your target ahead of your pitch. Engage with them on LinkedIn, respond to their tweets, and generally work yourself into their notifications — and their radar.

3. Make your subject line irresistible.

According to research by Fractl, 85% of publishers decide whether to open a pitch email based on the subject line alone.

So, how can you make sure yours gets opened? Try these tips:

• Keep it short and sweet: 75% of publishers prefer subject lines with 10 or fewer words.
• Ensure it’s unique: A powerful subject line should be disruptive, innovative, or offer a human interest angle.
• Make it super-specific: Over half of journalists want descriptive subject lines that are tailored to their previously-covered topics.
• Provide exclusivity: If you’ve got some unique data or research, shout about it! Exclusivity can help to get a journalist’s eyes on your press release.

… And one thing to avoid? Clickbait. It’s really that simple.

4. Send your press release pitch (at the right time).

Press release? Check. Pitch email? Check. Contact details? Check.

… But that doesn’t mean you’re ready to distribute your press release.

You’ll need to think about the day (and time) you hit the “send” button because certain days and times have better success rates than others.

For instance, 61% of journalists prefer to receive press releases in the morning. That’s almost two thirds, so it’s probably worth getting your pitch out early to have the best chance of success.

However, remember that journalists have an average of 300 emails waiting for them in the morning. It might be best to wait an hour or so, and send your release mid-morning for a better chance of your pitch standing out in their inbox.

Additionally, it’s important to consider the day of the week. While modern-day businesses are often active seven days a week, there’s still a traditional lull in pick-up rates when it comes to press release distribution.

So, consider the day you send your release — it might land more coverage if you pitch it midweek, as opposed to sending first thing Monday morning.

According to an analysis of over 100,000 press releases by Ragan, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the best days to distribute your story. And a further study by Prowly recommends sending on a Thursday, with data suggesting over 26% of press release emails are opened by journalists on this day:

Image courtesy of Prowly.

Both studies indicate that Mondays and Fridays are not as effective, and you should definitely avoid sending your story over the weekend.

However, there’s no one-size-fits-all rule — which is why you should test a few different days and times and see what works best for your industry.

Are you pitching a time-sensitive press release?

You can still send it ahead of time. Just make sure you embargo the information in your release until it’s ready to become public knowledge. You can do this by adding “Embargoed; not to be released before DATE” to the top of your distribution email.

5. Follow-up on your release.

An age-old question: Should you follow up on your press release?

It depends on who you’re asking, but generally, the consensus seems evenly split. Some people believe following up to be a big no-no, while others indicate that it can be fruitful.

If you have a release you’re particularly proud of, it won’t hurt to follow up if you’re struggling to land coverage — provided you’re tactful.

Don’t just spam the journalist’s inbox with the same press release and the same pitch, however. That can get annoying, and ruin your chances of getting your story picked up.

Instead, try slightly tweaking the angle of your pitch. PR expert Carrie Morgan recommends treating a follow-up email as “a fresh pitch transitioning MY news into THEIR NEWS.”

You could also try giving the journalist — however, only 23% of journalists welcome being contacted by phone, so if your target is one of the other three quarters, you may find yourself hearing hundreds of answering machines.

Either way, it could be worth following up, particularly if you’re confident your press release is a newsworthy piece that deserves coverage.

What are some common press release distribution mistakes?

All set to send your next press release? Hang on a second.

Before you let fly and distribute your story, are you about to make any fatal errors? The last thing you want is to annoy the journalists on your target list. It might leave you with no coverage at all.

Here are some common mistakes people make, and how you can avoid them when you distribute your press release.

1. Your press release is too long.

Your story needs to be short and succinct — especially when journalists spend less than a minute reading a press release.

The easiest way to get your pitch read is to cut the fluff. Ditch anything that a journalist doesn’t need to read, or any sentences that won’t add value to a reader if your release is published in its current form.

Your story should be brief and to the point, but with enough detail to give the journalist the full story.

Consider taking it a step further and breakdown the “meat” of your press release into a handful of easy-to-digest bullet points. The same AdWeek survey says that 53% of journalists prefer to receive the facts in this format.

Remember — every sentence counts.

2. You’re targeting the wrong people or publications.

If you work for a small business looking to get some coverage, you’re more than likely going to get the most success from contacting local publications.

Don’t bother sending your press release to a national or international news outlet — it’s incredibly rare that a local story is important enough to make national news.

You should also double-check that your target journalists are a good fit. Many tend to specialize in one or two interests — emailing a sports reporter about a press release related to health isn’t likely to result in coverage.

Whatever your story, make sure the journalists and publications on your press release distribution list are relevant to your industry and audience.

3. Your story isn’t newsworthy enough.

Before hitting send and distributing your release, take a moment and ask yourself: “Is this story actually newsworthy?”

If your release is too self-promotional, you’ll probably find that journalists won’t want to turn it into a story. Their job isn’t to give you free publicity — they want to share stories that will entertain their audiences.

To avoid your release being sent straight to the trash, ensure it’s got a relevant angle, and includes solid information, statistics, and data.

Any accompanying quotes should bring the story to life, rather than over-selling your own company.

4. You didn’t include your contact info.

Imagine crafting that story, pitching it, and finding a reporter who’s interested and wants to contact you for a quote. But the journalist hits a dead end and is unable to contact you.

Unfortunately, if you don’t include your contact information on the press release, you risk losing out on the chance for increased exposure. The journalist shouldn’t have to go digging to find out how to contact you.

You need to make it easy for journalists to contact you by leaving a phone number and email address in your press release distribution email — ideally ones that are checked and answered frequently.

Should you use press release distribution services?

Distributing a press release sounds time-consuming, doesn’t it? If only there was a way to get yours seeded out quickly, at scale.

Fortunately, there is.

If time is tight (and if you’re a small business owner, it usually is), a press release distribution service is your friend. These services allow you to send out your release to relevant journalists, without having to do any of the manual work yourself.

Although the cost of press release distribution might seem off-putting, just remember that time is money. And by letting the experts distribute your news story, you can spend more of your own time doing the things that make a difference to your bottom line.

So, if you fancy taking distribution off your plate, check out these five services that will gladly take the job off your hands.

1. PR Fire

Starting at just £50 (approx. $65 USD), PR Fire syndicates your release to journalists and media personnel in your chosen categories — all within four hours after uploading your content.

Additionally, you’ll get a report a couple of weeks after your campaign to show you how successful it was.

PR Fire also offers the option to have your press release re-written by a professional journalist for an extra £50:

Image courtesy of PR Fire.

Plus, you can have your story promoted on the popular forum Reddit — a great way to get your brand (and your press release) in front of an engaged online community.

PR Fire has landed its customers press coverage in a range of top tier publications, including BuzzFeed, Metro, The Huffington Post, and The Times, so it’s definitely worth checking out.

2. PR Web

PR Web is a tool owned by Cision. Their press release distribution service allows you to upload your press release (along with rich media like images and videos), then distribute the story to journalists and publications in your selected categories.

PR Web also provides you with a comprehensive analytics dashboard, so you can monitor the impact of your campaign and calculate important metrics such as ROI.

The basic option, at a cost of $99, allows you to publish your release on PRWeb.com.

Additionally, there are advanced options that may be worth a try if you have the budget. These range in price from $189 to $389, and include further distribution to media outlets, targeted journalists, and industry influencers:

Image courtesy of PR Web.

3. Response Source Press Release Wire

A popular service for PR professionals, Response Source offers a range of public relations tools, including media databases. And you can also release your news via the Response Source Press Release Wire.

There are several pricing options. If you’re an ad hoc user, you can pay £85 (approx. $110 USD) each time. Or, if you distribute press releases often, consider one of their package options.

With over 20 years of experience, Response Source has built up a thriving network of journalists and publications, so you can benefit from having your news distributed by email to useful contacts.

You’ll also get your own “newsroom”, along with access to analytics such as the number of views your press release received, and to how many recipients it was emailed.

Image courtesy of Response Source.

4. Presswire

Presswire has a live global database, allowing you to send your press release directly to the journalists who are most likely to pick up your story.

Worldwide distribution starts at $400 (or $250 if you only want the story distributed to journalists in the USA), but there are several add-ons you can include to boost your reach.

Key to Presswire’s offering is its advanced analytics platform — a system which tracks each recipient of your release, providing insight on:

• Who opened your press release
• Whether your release was forwarded
• How many times it was read
• How long people spent reading it

These insights can be helpful in allowing you to refine your approach for future press releases.

5. 24-7 Press Release

Using a cloud-based platform, 24-7 Press Release distributes your news to traditional and digital outlets with a user-friendly interface.

The basic “Visibility Boost” package is an ideal starting point for small business owners. Costing just $49, your release will be sent to over 50 premium news sites and published on the service’s RSS feed.

You’ll also receive a report that tells you if your story was picked up.

One thing to note is that the basic option has a two-day turnaround, so if your news is time-sensitive, you’ll need to be prepared in advance. The more advanced packages come with next-day turnaround, which is helpful if you’re in a rush.

Remember to Keep the Relationship Alive

When you need to create a press release, follow the distribution steps in this guide to boost your chances of landing coverage.

But remember — not every press release will get picked up and turned into a news story, so don’t get too disheartened if it takes a while to gain some traction.

Keep tweaking and refining your approach until you see success. Your first piece of coverage could well be the domino that starts the run. A story picked up by one news outlet can soon snowball from publication to publication.

Plus, if your story does get picked up, don’t forget to thank the journalist. It can facilitate a relationship with the journalist which you can then nurture, and might lead to easier coverage down the line.

Ultimately, you can never have too much good press!

When it comes to content, sometimes old school can be a good thing (namely, when it comes to old-school rap or Throwback Thursday on Instagram). But when it comes to your company’s public relations strategy, being old school isn’t advantageous for your business or your brand.

Ten years ago, people still relied on morning papers for news. Today, the vast majority of your company’s customers and prospects scan headlines on Twitter or see what’s trending in their Facebook feed.

People now have control over where, when, and how they consume information. As a result, public relations is no longer about feeding into a traditional news cycle; it’s about providing relevant content when, where, and how your prospects, influencers, and customers will consume it.

Sounds pretty hopeless, right? Wrong. While relationship-building still helps you get into popular publications, we now have the opportunity to quit playing the waiting game and generate our own buzz. By turning your PR strategy into an inbound one, you create opportunities that weren’t there before and carve out a place for your company, building meaningful mindshare with your target audiences in the process.

One of the most crucial updates to make to your PR strategy is to think of press releases as an opportunity to connect to the audiences you care about — including, but not limited to, reporters.

What Is a Press Release / News Release?

A regular cadence of meaningful news can help a company stand out and build mindshare with journalists over time. That’s where the press release (or news announcement) comes in.

A press release is an official announcement (written or recorded) that an organization issues to the news media and beyond. Whether we call it a “press release,” a “press statement,” a “news release,” or a “media release,” we’re always talking about the same basic thing.

While the heading should contain action verbs, the first paragraph should answer the “who,” “what,” “why,” and “where.” The press release should also contain understandable language and a quote.

Most press releases are succinct at just a page long — two pages, tops. Ultimately, companies want to provide enough information so that news outlets have sufficient material for publishing their own stories about whatever the company is announcing in the release.

And while it may be tempting to craft a press release that embellishes your company’s accomplishments or twists the facts to make a story sound more intriguing to the media, remember: Press releases live in the public domain, which means your customers and prospective customers can see them. So instead of thinking of a press release solely as a ticket to earning news coverage, you should also think of it as a valuable piece of marketing content.

Sample Press Release Format

When formatting a press-release, you want to write it in a newsy, straightforward way so a journalist who might write about it can imagine it as an article on their news site.

As noted above, you’ll want your format to include traditional press-release items like your contact information, the words “For immediate release,” a note about your location, and a quick bio about your company. Having specific spots for those elements will prevent you from needing to mention it in your body copy so you can focus on discussing the news at hand.

You also might want to include “###” or another signifier to show the journalist that the release has ended. In the past, this prevented busy journalists from waiting or flipping the page for more information when there was no more news. However, this tradition is still adopted and highly-respected today.

When it comes to formatting the body copy and headline, click here or scroll down for writing tips.

In this example, Catbrella Inc., a fictitious ad agency which just gained its 10th Twitter follower after two years of paid social media efforts, announces its achievement in a press release.

*Disclaimer: HubSpot is entirely responsible for the silliness of this faux announcement.

The key to keeping your PR strategy new school is forgetting preconceived notions of what public relations is and instead focusing on creating highly remarkable content. Traditional press releases can still be really valuable when executed well, so instead of ditching releases as a tactic, give them a modern makeover to make them more useful for your marketing.

Think about how you’ve used inbound methods to transform your marketing strategies to be more personalized, approachable, and build relationships. Those same principles apply to your PR strategy: Create content to craft your own story and use tactful outreach to get reporters and analysts familiar with your brand.

Press Release Examples

Many people think press releases have to be chock full of buzzwords and branded terms. “Big data,” anyone? Five-syllable words you have to look up on Thesaurus.com? Quotes from every executive on the planet that go on for pages? We’ve seen it all. Unfortunately, so have reporters — and they are not fans.

Instead of stuffing your next release with industry jargon, take a page out of our book (okay fine, ebook), The Newsworthy Guide to Inbound Public Relations, and brainstorm some creative approaches for your next announcement. Can you include new data? A remarkable graphic or video? A shareable SlideShare? If so, a creative angle can help carry your content and increase the likelihood of social sharing.

Types of Press Releases

While there’s no cut-and-dried formula for what a press release should include, here are a few types of occasions to help you carve out a focus for your press release and determine what content would help you broadcast your news in the best way:

• New product launches
• Mergers and acquisitions
• Updates to existing products
• Hosting or attending an event
• Opening a new office
• Introducing a new partnership
• Rebranding
• Promoting/hiring a new executive
• Receiving an award

Now, to get you thinking on the right track, take a look at some creative press release examples below, the type of news each one is reporting on, and what makes the release unique:

ŠKODA at the World Rally Championship

Type of press release: Event

Škoda, a car manufacturer based in the Czech Republic, recently showed off its sponsored racing team in two big places: at the 2017 World Rally Championship, and in a sleek, image-based press release reporting on the event.

The news release, shown above, doesn’t have any trouble aligning the look and feel of the Škoda brand with the press release itself — which is a crucial aspect of any company’s press content. The release opens with a large feature image of one of its vehicles in the same vibrant green that covers the business’s website. The press release also begins with three helpful bullet points summarizing the news for readers, and ends the release with a couple of captioned actions shots to give reporters more context around the event.

ScribbleLive Acquires New Company

Type of press release: Acquisition

Yes, a video press release! This news item from ScribbleLive gave reporters nearly everything they’d need to republish this story, all in a thorough two-minute video about the company’s latest acquisition.

ScribbleLive opens the video press release above with the company’s logo and a clear header stating the news. This allowed the company’s CEO to jump right into his commentary on the acquisition, giving reporters plenty of quotable material on the state of the industry and why this merger was so important to them.

The press release also segments the video the same way a written press release would, breaking up the CEO’s commentary by the question he’s answering. This makes it easy for viewers to jump through the video and find the information they’re most interested in hearing about.

And, being on YouTube, a press release in this format allows reporters to embed the news content directly on their site, making ScribbleLive’s news that much easier to share.

Peapod’s New Headquarters

Type of press release: Opening a new office

When you open a new headquarters, it can be hard to figure out what to say. People just want to get a look at the new digs! In the above press release by Peapod, an online grocery service, the company puts photos of its new office right at the top, immediately showing readers what makes this news so significant for Peapod.

The release even singles out a quote by the Mayor of Chicago just below the headline, hinting to reporters who are writing about Peapod’s new HQ that this is the remark Peapod is most interested in sharing with readers.

Check out the boilerplate text at the bottom of the above press release. “About [company]” text can too easily blend in with the actual news text, making the piece seem longer than it really is. By isolating this copy in a dark gray box, Peapod provides a smoother reading experience and ensures the story itself doesn’t get lost in an intimidatingly long wall of text.

HubSpot’s New Product Announcements

Type of press release: New product launches

When you’re launching products or services, the information is often best expressed in written form. But when all you’re doing is writing about your new offering’s price and features, it can be difficult for others to refer to and report on it later. We at HubSpot know the challenge well.

The graphic above helped us to supplement our own product announcement — written by our fantastic Communications Manager, Ellie Botelho — with details that needed a visual aid. Using a combination of colors and shapes, this graphic allowed us to reveal important relationships between products, as well as their respective prices and when they’ll be available. (Interested one of our products? Take note! ^)

We’ve also crafted this comprehensive, easy-to-follow press release template complete with a promotional plan and considerations for your next announcement. We use these same guidelines when writing and formatting our releases here at HubSpot, and created a faux, sample release to illustrate what content goes where and why.

Tips for Publishing Press Releases

Writing a press release is really only half the battle. Once you’re finished with production, it’ll be time to focus on distribution.

Of course, we’re all familiar with the traditional distribution levers we can pull, which include publishing the press release on our website/blog, as well as sharing the press release with our followers/subscribers via social media and email. But for ensuring a press release gets the maximum amount of distribution possible, here are some tips you can follow.

1. Reach out to specific journalists.

Instead of blasting a press release out to every journalist you can find an email address for, focus on a few journalists who have experience covering your industry (and company, hopefully) and send them personalized messages. Connect the dots. Show why what you wrote connects to what they write.

2. Don’t be afraid to go offline.

Most journalists have mountains of emails (and press releases) to sort through. Try sending your release through snail mail or another offline channel to differentiate yourself.

3. Send the release to top journalists the day before.

Give journalists some time to craft a story around your press release by sending it to them — under embargo — the day before it officially goes live. (FYI “under embargo” just means they aren’t allowed to share the information in the press release until the time you specify.)

4. To avoid competition, don’t publish your release on the hour.

If you’re publishing your press release on a distribution service like PR Newswire or Business Wire, avoid publishing it on the hour (e.g., 1 p.m., or 3 p.m., or 5 p.m.). The reason? Most companies schedule their releases to go out on the hour, which means if your release goes out on the hour too, it’s more likely to get lost in the shuffle. Instead, try going with a more distinct time (e.g., 1:12 p.m., or 3:18 p.m., or 5:22 p.m.).

5. Share your media coverage.

If all goes according to plan, and your press release gets picked up by the media, your job still isn’t finished. To keep the buzz going, you can release a “second wave” of distribution by sharing the specific stories that news outlets write based on your press release.

With over 800 million active users, Instagram is undoubtedly one of the most far-reaching social media networks you can use for marketing purposes.

Instagram has proven a viable advertising option for businesses today, and shows no signs of slowing down — in fact, eMarketer estimates worldwide Instagram ad revenues will exceed $10 billion by 2019, an exponential increase from 1.86 billion in 2016.

If you’re not already using Instagram for your business, you’re missing out on a ton of opportunity to grow brand awareness and reach a wide audience. Fortunately, adopting an Instagram strategy can be relatively easy with enough time and effort.

However, if you’ve never used the app, you might be daunted by the first question likely to cross your mind — How can I post my first image?

If you’re ready to post an image to Instagram, we’ve got you covered. Here, we’ve cultivated a quick-and-easy guide to posting on Instagram, to ensure you can begin attracting some of those 800 million users today.

How to Post to Instagram

Posting to Instagram consistently can help businesses find resonance with their audience and grow better, but doing it right is just as important. Here’s how to post to your Instagram account step-by-step.

1. Tap the + icon at the bottom of your screen.

See that plus sign (“+”) in the center of the image above? That’s your starting point. See that post from our culture account? That’s your end point. Click that plus sign and you’ll be ready for the next step, below.

2. Choose a photo or video from your library — or shoot one in the app.

Instagram will show you the photos already saved to your phone. Choose one of those to post. Alternatively, you can click “Photo” or “Video” in the bottom to take a photo or video within the Instagram app itself, if you don’t already have an image you want to use.

Once you choose an image, click “Next” in the top right.

3. Crop the image.

You aren’t limited to just a square image on Instagram. You can actually share horizontal or vertical images as well. To get more of your image seen, pinch the screen of the photo you’ve selected on the Library screen.

However, while Instagram does allow vertical and horizontal options, the images still need to fit into some specific dimensions. So, you might still need to crop a tiny bit of your photo to get it to fit.

4. Try a carousel post.

Do you have multiple photos and want to highlight them all? Instagram allows you to do this with its carousel feature.

As you go to tap a photo or video, first tap the icon just above your photos to the right that looks like stacked squares. Once you tap this, you’ll see a number on the corner of every image or video you tap. This number notes where the content will show up in the carousel.

5. Pick a filter

Instagram offers 25 filters — scroll to the right to peruse your options, and click on one to preview how it will look on your photo. (Take a look at our Ultimate Guide to Instagram Filters to learn more). You can click “Edit” at the bottom right to adjust contrast, brightness, etc.

When you’re ready, click “Next” in the top right.

6. Type your caption.

Get creative and write a nice, interesting caption to go with your photo. Since text can help optimize your post in Instagram’s search, writing something can only benefit you.

7. Use hashtags for post optimization.

With Instagram’s search feature, users can search by hashtags. So, you should make sure to write relevant hashtags in your caption. If someone does a search of a hashtag you placed in your caption, they might find your post as well as others that included the same one.

8. Tag friends.

Want your friend or their followers to see a photo that you posted of the two of you? Tag them!

On the post page, you can click “Tag People” to tag other Instagram accounts in your post. Alternatively, you can include their handle (or their username beginning with an @ symbol) in your caption.

9. Add your location.

If you’re on a fun vacation or at a neat event and you don’t feel like including that information in your caption, you can mark where you are in another way. On the post page, tap “Add Location” to put a location on your image (which makes it easier for people to find your post).

When you post an image or video with a location, it will show up between your name and the block of content on the feed.

10. Play with emojis.

Emojis are fun and can make your caption more eye catching. If you know of a few relevant emojis that could fit with your post, stick them in the caption area.

For example, if you’re posting a vacation photo, you could include a beach umbrella or a plane to show you flew somewhere.

Be sure not to go overboard and post emojis just for the sake of posting them. If you post a bowling emoji along with a photo of a beach, that obviously won’t make sense to people. Similarly, if you post 20 emojis that loosely relate to a post, you might just annoy your followers or come off as desperate.

11. Share the post on other social media platforms

Finally, if you want to share your content on your other, connected social media sites (like Facebook or Twitter), simply slide the bar from the left to the right.

When you’re ready to post, click “Share” in the top right.

12. Edit the post.

Typos happen to everyone! If you just posted something and notice a glaring spelling error, don’t panic. Simply tap the three dots that appear on the right across from your name, then tap “Edit.”

To learn more about how to use Instagram, including how to create a new account, how to manage notifications, how to connect other social media accounts, and how to upload to your Instagram Stories, take a look at our How to Use Instagram: A Beginner’s Guide.

When most people think of links, they think of connecting two different webpages together. You use hyperlinks to connect two of your blog posts, or a blog post and a landing page, or a blog post and a product page, or a tweet to your website.

But that’s not all hyperlinks can do. With a little tweaking, you also can set up hyperlinks to link to content on the same page. So remember that really exhaustive glossary you put together on industry terms your audience should know? Now, when you refer to something you said elsewhere in that article, you can actually link to it — making it much easier for your audience to figure out what the heck you’re talking about.

Want to see what I mean? Just click here.

Pretty cool, huh? The best part about it all is that it’s super easy to do yourself, even if you don’t have extensive HTML knowledge. If the HTML-speak feels confusing, just follow along with the real-world examples below.

Note: If you are a HubSpot customer, follow these instructions.

(Hey there, curious folks from the introduction! Click here go back to where you left off.)

Influencer marketing has skyrocketed since it first made its mark.

That’s very much due to the way purchasing decisions have changed over the years. In 2018, a study found that only 4% of people trusted celebrity endorsements. This is probably because they prefer to seek product and service recommendations from those who are, above all, knowledgeable and credible.

And today, those qualities often come in the form of social media influencers.

When it comes to getting advice or recommendations on what to do — which product to buy, which movie to see, and where to travel on vacation — there are still areas where we trust our peers more than we do “experts.”

But that’s part of what makes an influencer so powerful: Despite perhaps being an expert in his or her field, by sharing content and insight in a certain way, consumers view that person more as a peer. We have things like constant access to video and other visual content to thank for that — the tools that help us “get to know” people online in ways that weren’t quite as accessible only a few years ago.

So, how can you tap into this area, and become an influencer in your own field?

Influencers are ordinary people who have earned a substantial loyal following because of their expertise and transparency. Unlike celebrities actively endorse products on their social media accounts, influencers achieved their fame because of the valuable information they share with their followers.

It’s for this reason why one of the influencer marketing trends experts anticipate in 2019 is the increase in demand for social media influencers, specifically micro-influencers (influencers with less than 100K followers). Not surprising, more and more people want to become social media influencers.

The question is: where do you start?

In this blog post, I’ll be laying out ten ways how to become a social media influencer. On their own, they will help you slowly make your mark and establish you as an influencer in your industry. But do all these together, and you have a powerful strategy that will help speed things up exponentially.

How to Become an Influencer

Influencer marketing can help you grow your brand, but doing it right is just as important. Here’s how to enter the world of influencers, step-by-step.

1. Find your niche.

If you want to become a social media influencer, the very first thing you need to do is to choose a specific niche where you want to be known.

Although most social media influencers start out posting content, they’re passionate about, what sets them apart is the fact that they tend to focus on a particular niche within the industry they’re passionate about.

To find your little corner of influence, you’ll need first to determine who is your target audience by developing a unique persona—a semi-fictional representation of your ideal reader. Tools like HubSpot’s Buyer Persona Generation Tool can help you identify the individual wants, needs, challenges, and goals of your ideal reader that you can help solve and address, pointing you to the right niche to establish yourself and grow as an influencer.

2. Use the First Principles Thinking approach.

In an interview with Kevin Rose, Elon Musk explained that there are two reasoning approaches people use. The first and most common is the analogy approach. People that use this reasoning method decide to do things based on what has happened in the past.

That’s why we often see many people in a particular industry doing nearly the same thing, talking about the same topics, and even using similar formats when it comes to publishing and promoting their content.

The second reasoning approach is what Musk refers to as the First Principles Thinking approach. Instead of basing decisions on past successes or failures, Musk and others that use this reasoning approach study objective fundamentals and make their decisions based solely on that.

What’s good about following Musk’s way of thinking and reasoning is that it opens you up to other possibilities and approaches by “forcing” you to disregard the status quo, and think differently. Doing that can help set yourself apart from other influencers in your niche, and allow you to bring something new and fresh to the table for your target audience.

3. Choose your social media channel.

It’s important to pick the right social platforms where audiences with interests that align with your brand could engage with you. Two of the most prominent social networks where influencers are thriving in 2019 are Instagram and LinkedIn.

Instagram is the channel where 93% of social media influencers focus their content — because it gives them the best results.

Source: Marketing Profs

However, just because those are the current statistics doesn’t mean that Instagram is a perfect choice all the time.

The reason is simple: Your ideal audience may not be spending most of their time here.

On Instagram, you might see influencers that focus on lifestyle-oriented industries. For example, you might see a travel blogger posting about hotel stays or videos of food bloggers making a recipe. Because Instagram is quickly becoming video friendly with its Stories feature, you might also see sponsored content and marketing videos such as influencer hosted makeup tutorials.

Although LinkedIn is gaining more traction with lifestyle content, influencers can succeed on this platform when they focus on career or academic tips, or job-related content. While LinkedIn does offer video posting options, influencers can also embrace text more heavily on this platform by publishing blog-styled posts or regular text-posts.

If you want to quickly grow your following and establish yourself as a social media influencer, you need to make sure that you choose the right social media channel based on your niche and ideal audience.

Here are three questions to ask to help guide you in choosing the right social media channel:

Who is your target audience?

Again, this is where creating a holistic persona of your ideal audience is crucial. Instagram and Pinterest are excellent choices if you’re aspiring to reach out to millennials. On the other hand, if your target audience consists mostly of business executives, LinkedIn may be your best bet.

Where are the other influencers in your niche?

Aside from sharing the same target audience, being active in social media channels where the big influencers in your niche open the door for you to reach out to them, and even collaborate with them in the future.

One tool I found extremely useful for this is BuzzSumo. When you do a search here using your targeted keyword, you’ll not only see what topics other influencers have tackled, but where they also share these pieces of content.

This is extremely valuable — it points you to the social media channel where the content is shared the most, making these ideal places to reach out and grow your following.

What type of content will you create?

Some social media channels like Facebook and LinkedIn allow you to post a diverse range of content formats while others like YouTube and Instagram only focus on providing users a specific content format.

That said, it’s vital that you select the social media channel that best suit the content strategy you’ll develop, which we will look into in the next section.

Regardless of which social media channel(s) you choose, remember not to go overboard with your selection. Stick to using two to three networks. Otherwise, you’ll be spreading yourself too thin, and will find it difficult to build your credibility and following.

4. Develop your content strategy.

Just like in inbound marketing, the format and quality of the content you publish will make or break your chances of successfully building yourself as a social media influencer.

Decide on the format you’ll use when creating your content. It should be one through which you’re able not only to deliver valuable information, but also, express your personality and voice — which help add uniqueness to the content you produce for your target audience.

Part of developing an effective content strategy is giving your audience the right balance of informative content and personal content. Remember, one reason why people trust influencers is due to their relatability.

One efficient way to do this is through the 5-3-2 principle: Out of every 10 posts you publish in your social media account, five of these should be valuable content written by someone else, three are educational and informative content you created yourself, and two should be posts about yourself.

Now, you may be thinking, “How will this help me become an influencer if half of the content I’ll be publishing is curated content?”

For starters, influencers are known for being able to provide valuable content to their audience. That includes sharing content written by others that they believe their followers will find useful.

More important, sharing content published by other influencers in your niche will help you slowly get their attention. As a result, it will be much easier to reach out to them and ask them to do the same for you later on.

If you need help discovering topic ideas for your content, try these resources.

Google Related Search Keywords

This is found at the bottom of the page after you search on Google. It lists down the most frequently used long-tail keywords used by your target audience when searching for content on the internet.

Answer the Public

Answer the Public is a website that gives you a comprehensive list of the different questions that are commonly asked around your chosen keywords, which you can then answer through your content.

Quora

Similar to Answer the Public, Quora gives you a list of different questions asked surrounding your selected keyword. The main difference between the two is that unlike Answer the Public, which offers you a list of questions based on search algorithms, the questions you find in Quora are those that were left explicitly by individuals currently facing a problem or challenge.

At the same time, Quora allows its members to leave answers to these posted questions. This gives aspiring social media influencers the chance to flex their muscles, and showcase knowledge on this topic — and, eventually, your niche.

5. Distribute your content.

No matter how great your content is, if you’re not getting people to see it and engage with it, it’s not exactly useful.

That said, it’s important that you carefully plan out when you’ll be publishing and distributing your content on social media.

The best time to post content on social media hugely depends on which social media channel you chose to use. This infographic provides a detailed breakdown of the best days and times when to distribute content for each of the most popular social media networks.

It’s just as critical to know how to post your content on social media. While each social media channel has its own rules and guidelines, here are some general best practices that are applicable regardless on which social media channel you use.

Stick to one theme per social media channel.

Focusing on one specific theme for each of your social media channels allows you to give your followers a more holistic picture of who you are, what you do, and what you stand for. That way, you’re able to publish more diverse content while still keeping your profiles very sleek and cohesive.

More important, it helps you categorize the different types of content you publish. That way, your followers know which social media channel they’ll find the content they need from you.

Customize your message.

Even if you’re posting the same piece of content on different social media channels, always take the time to make sure that you customize the message you include in it. Not only does it make each of your posts more personalized, but as Aaron Haynes, founder of Fenix Pro points out, it prevents your followers from feeling like their being spammed on their social media feeds.

“You need to make sure that you tailor every single content you post caters to the wants and needs of your followers, whether it’s a regular post or a paid post,” he explains. “The worst thing is that they can report your account as spammy, which could mean the end of your social media influencer dream.”

Optimize posts for mobile.

The average person spends over three hours on his or her mobile device.

Source: eMarketer

And within that time, 80% of it is spent on social media. That said, make sure that the posts you publish are just as appealing in mobile as they would be when viewed on desktops or laptops.

6. Post tutorials on Instagram, YouTube, or Facebook.

People who are looking to learn more about brands or products love to use video to do so. If your strategy or industry is highly visual, consider showing audiences how to use a product you’re trying to promote with a quick how-to.

Once audiences see a product in use, they might want to replicate the how-to project you’re doing or feel like the product is easy to use. These thoughts might lead them to an actual purchase and make your clients or sponsors very happy.

To help you brainstorm ideas, here’s a quick guide to how-to videos that really work.

7. Or, write LinkedIn or Medium thought leadership.

Thought leadership is content from an industry expert that offers advice or information on a certain topic. If you want to be an influencer in a business-related industry, or have people look to you as a leader or management-guru, a great place to start posting thought leadership is on LinkedIn.

As we mentioned above, you can use LinkedIn’s blog post feature to write a more long-form post, comment on other posts or discussions, or just publish standard posts. If you prefer video, the platform also has options for that as well.

If you want to write a lot of blog posts, another great place to publish your work could be Medium. Users on Medium see posts on their feed based on their interests and who they follow. So, if users share the same interests as you, they might be directed to your post.

8. Grow your network.

While you’re still in the process of establishing your credibility and expertise as a social media influencer, you’ll need to actively grow your follower base.

One of the most effective ways of doing this is through blogging. Even though more Internet users are turning to social media networks for information, the fact remains that you don’t entirely own your space here. One misstep can easily cause these social media networks to take down your account, causing you to lose all of your content and followers.

Blogging can help you kickstart your follower base by helping you get discovered. By including social media sharing buttons on each of your blog posts, your visitors can share your content with their respective social media networks.

If you have the budget, and you have a premium content offer on your blog, Justin Morgan — a.k.a., the Dental Marketing Guy — recommends promoting it as a sponsored post. That way, your content can find its way onto the feeds of those that match your ideal persona, introducing yourself and what you have to offer to them.

Blogging is also an efficient way to reach out and connect with is influencers in your niche as well as those related to yours. Blogging was how I connected with key influencers in my niche and exponentially grew my follower base.

Creating guest posts is another way of growing your followers. Getting featured on a reputable site within your niche helps you further establish your credibility and authority. At the same time, it will help you capture the attention of the more prominent influencers in your niche, and even open the door for collaboration with them.

9. Engage with your followers.

When your followers leave a question or comment on your posts, take the time to acknowledge and respond to them. That can make them feel like they’re valued and that you sincerely want to help them. It will also help you develop a relationship with them.

Of course, not all of the comments and questions will be positive. As an influencer, expect that you’ll have your fair share of negative comments and criticisms. Make it a point to keep your cool and address them professionally.

10. Evaluate your progress.

This step is crucial, especially if you’re looking to collaborate with brands for their influencer marketing campaigns, since this is one of the things that brands look for in an influencer to partner with.

Most social media channels give you insights and analytics to monitor your progress — things like demographics, reach, and engagement rate, that will show how quickly (or slowly) you’re building your audience. It will also shed light on which content formats get the highest engagement rates, so that you can create more of these.

11. Stay updated.

If you’ve been active on any social media channel, you know how often networks update their algorithms, as well as their posting terms and conditions. As an aspiring influencer, you need to keep yourself updated with these changes to avoid penalizations.

You’ll also need to familiarize yourself with FTC guidelines and policies, especially if you’re going to be collaborating with brands to promote their products and services on your social media accounts.

With influencer marketing proving itself as a highly effective marketing strategy, the FTC has become even more vigilant in monitoring brands and partner influencers that might be violating marketing guidelines.

12. Be consistent.

According to Adam Steele, founder of Loganix, if there’s one thing that surpasses quality content, it’s consistency.

That’s because your followers need to be able to count on you to deliver quality content on a consistent basis. If you don’t, they’ll eventually stop following you, or at least paying attention to you.

Scheduling your posts using a social automation tool like eClincher or HubSpot’s social publishing tools can help ensure that you stay consistent with your posts. Instead of manually publishing on each of your social media profiles, these tool allow you to create, upload, and schedule posts in batches.

Positioning yourself as a social media influencer will take some time, so you’ll need to be patient with the process, and stay consistent with it.

Most important, understand that becoming a social media influencer in your industry is not the end destination. Instead, it’s a stepping stone to more significant opportunities and responsibilities.

[Originally published January 25, 2018]

Instagram is no longer just about connecting with friends — in 2018, it has become an incredibly powerful platform for finding your voice and creating a business. In fact, Instagram’s estimated mobile advertising revenue is expected to reach 6.8 billion U.S. dollars in 2018, compared to 1.8 billion two years ago.

Nowadays, Instagram is capable of turning stay-at-home moms into successful hat designers, or a woman working in corporate wealth management into a world traveler. So it’s no surprise you want to become an Instagram influencer, and reach a large audience with your own personal brand.

Since I myself am not an Instagram influencer (I think an average 60 likes per post falls a little short of most brands’ minimum for sponsorship opportunities), I set out to interview some real Instagram influencers in the industry, so you can get the full scoop.

Throughout my conversations with these influencers, one thing became abundantly clear — the term “famous” makes most of them uncomfortable. Apparently, “famous” denotes something less substantial than what most of these people are chasing. As Emma Hoareau (@emmahoareau), a beauty and travel influencer who boasts nearly 40k followers, tells me, “Don’t set out to be Instagram famous! Create beautiful work and use the app as a source of inspiration … not a numbers competition.”

If you think about it, “fame” and “influence” are two drastically different measures of success. While fame is measured by a certain number, influence is measured by something a little less quantitative — a deep, authentic connection with your audience.

Here, we’ve compiled some critical tips from fourteen Instagram influencers, so you can get one step closer to sharing your brand with the world and influencing your own audience.

I think we can all agree, whether it’s influence or fame you’re after, worthwhile endeavors are never easy — but, hopefully, these influencer tips make your experience a little easier.

Blink. Blink. Blink. It’s the dreaded cursor-on-a-blank-screen experience that all writers — amateur or professional, aspiring or experienced — know and dread. And of all times for it to occur, it seems to plague us the most when trying to write an introduction.

I mean, you already have a blog post you want to write. Can’t you just dive in and write it? Why all the pomp and circumstance with this dag-blasted introduction?

Here’s the thing — intros don’t have to be long. In fact, we prefer them to be quite quick. They also don’t have to be so difficult, but they do have to exist. They prepare the reader and provide context for the content he or she is about to read.

Let’s break down exactly how to write an introduction that’s short, effective, and relatively painless. And if you’re ever having trouble churning out those intros, come back here and re-read this formula to lift yourself out of that writing rut.

What are some examples of great introductions in the wild? We thought you might ask — which is why we picked out some of our favorites.

5 Introduction Examples

1) “Confessions of a Google Spammer,” by Jeff Deutsch

There are a few reasons why we love this introduction. Immediately, it grabs our attention — how the heck did this guy make fifty grand every month? And just from 10 hours a week?

But unlike some spammy comments that might contain a similar sentiment, he almost immediately serves us something unexpected — he tells us not to do that.

Then, he states the true purpose of the blog — to explain why we should “never, never ever follow in [his] footsteps.” In just three sentences, this introduction has captivated us and validated the story’s existence with a looming life lesson. The takeaway? Keep it short, but powerful.

2) “Announcing the public preview of Azure Advisor,” by Shankar Sivadasan

Here’s a great example of an introduction that presents a problem and a solution to it. Sure, it’s easy to build apps on Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform — but maybe you had some issues with its setup. Well, wouldn’t you know? Azure Advisor is here to address those challenges, and you can preview it for free.

But wait — there’s more. The introduction not only immediately presents a problem and a solution, but it concisely summarizes just how this product provides a fix. And, it explains why the text will be helpful, with the sentence, “In this blog post, we will do a quick tour of Azure Advisor and discuss how it can help optimize your Azure resources.”

That’s a best practice for brands that have made a mistake — even a small one. Technology is great, but it can come with bugs. That’s where an intro like this one can be so helpful. It acknowledges the problem, states what the brand has done to address it, and alerts the reader to continue to learn how that solution will work.

3) “Taste the Season at Sushi Sora,” by Chris Dwyer

Strong introductions aren’t just important for blogs — they’re essential to quality editorial pieces, too. That’s why we love this introduction to an article from Destination MO, the Mandarin Oriental’s official online magazine.

Remember that thing we said about a captivating start? In addition to being empathetic or funny, visuals can be huge — not just an actual picture or video, but words that actually help the reader envision what you’re describing. This introduction does just that, with expressive phrases like, “the magical silhouette of Mount Fuji on the horizon.” Well, yeah. That does sound magical. But where can I go for such a view? None other than the “Mandarin Oriental, Tokyo,” the author tells me, especially “from the sushi counter at Sushi Sora.”

Here’s the thing about this intro — it gives the reader something to aspire to. We’ve briefly discussed aspirational marketing before, but this instance is one where it can be used in a brief introduction. After reading this first paragraph, I want to go to Tokyo. And when I’m there, I want to stay at the Mandarin Oriental. Then, I want to take in the views from its high-end sushi restaurant.

With just two sentences, I’ve gone from reading an article with my morning coffee, to fantasizing about a thousand-dollar vacation. So whenever possible, use your introduction to paint a picture, and to help your reader dream.

4) “The Secret Club of Admitting You Suck,” by Janessa Lantz

Let’s read through this introduction from ThinkGrowth.org together.

I should know: I once moved very far away to escape my own failure, too. But I couldn’t admit at the time that I sucked, either. Wow, Janessa Lantz really gets me.

See that? That, right there, is a resounding example of how empathy makes a profound introduction. But how did the story end? Did they buy the house? Did she admit that she sucked? Does she still suck? (Spoiler alert: I work with Janessa and can say, with great confidence, that she is far from sucking.)

The point is, I wanted to keep reading for two reasons — first, I related to the author. Second, it was just plain interesting, and it left me with a cliffhanger. It’s okay to tease your readers. Just make sure you ultimately give them what they’re seeking.

5) “Be a responsible tourist: a PSA from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,” by Out of the Blue

I’ll admit it — I’m a sucker for a good travel blog, which is why JetBlue’s official blog appeals to me. But at the same time, I also geek out for almost anything that promotes sustainability. In this piece, those worlds collide.

What makes this introduction work? Honestly, it’s scary. “Decline” and “extinction” are strong words, and absolutely present a problem. But research shows that we’re actually more inclined to keep reading bad news — in fact, a few years ago, our media consumption habits suggested that we prefer it.

But it’s not all bad — and JetBlue quickly turns around a potentially devastating situation with the language of this introduction. And, it includes the reader, by inviting travelers to be part of the solution, but joining the brand in its promotion of responsible tourism.

That’s another formula for presenting bad news to your audience, especially if you’re not the one causing it and you have a solution. Scary information + how you’re helping + how the reader can do his or her part = compelling intro.

Let’s Start

Feeling inspired? Good. Next time you find yourself face-to-face with the dreaded blinking cursor, use these resources and compelling examples to find motivation.

How do you write a good intro, and what are some of your favorite examples? Let us know in the comments.

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

Is your professional bio as good as it can be?

In this article, we have nine real bio examples you should definitely compare yours to — and a series of free bio templates you can use to perfect it.

Most people don’t think about their professional bio until they’re suddenly asked to “shoot one over via email,” and have approximately one afternoon to come up with it. That’s when we scramble, and our bio ends up reading like this:

Rodney Erickson is a content marketing professional at HubSpot, an inbound marketing and sales platform that helps companies attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers. Previously, Rodney worked as a marketing manager for a tech software startup. He graduated with honors from Columbia University with a dual degree in Business Administration and Creative Writing.”

Woof, that was dull. Are you still with me? I swear, not even adding a tidbit about his cats would liven that bio up.

To be fair, in certain contexts, your professional bio does need to be more formal, like Mr. Erickson’s up there. But in many cases, writing a bio that’s readable — even conversational — is actually a really good thing. That means dropping that traditional format of listing your accomplishments like a robot and cramming as much professional-sounding jargon in there as you can.

(P.S. Want to give your professional brand a boost? Take one of HubSpot Academy’s free certification courses. In just one weekend, you can add a line to your resume and bio that’s coveted by over 60,000 marketers.)

Why Good Bios Are Important for a Professional

Alright, I know what you may be thinking … So what? It’s just a bio. I mean, how many people actually read professional bios, anyway?

The answer: A lot of people. More importantly, though, there’s no way to tell exactly who is reading it — and you always want it to be ready for when the right people to come across it. And when they do, you want it to catch their eye. In a good way.

You see, while your resume is only useful for when you’re actively applying for specific positions, your professional bio is much more visible. It can live on your LinkedIn profile, your company’s website, your guest blog posts, your speaker profiles, your Twitter bio, and many other places.

And, most importantly, it’s the tool that you can leverage most when you’re networking.

Bottom line? People will read your professional bio. Whether they remember it, and whether it makes them actually care about you, is a matter of how well you present yourself to your intended audience.

So, what does a top-notch professional bio look like?

Below, we’ve curated some of the best real professional bio examples we’ve ever seen on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and the various websites where you might describe yourself.

Check ’em out, and use them as inspiration when crafting your own.

9 of the Best Professional Bio Examples We’ve Ever Seen

1. Ann Handley

Bio Platform: Personal Website

If you’re a marketer, you’ve likely heard of Ann Handley. Her list of credentials is lengthy, and if she really wanted to, she could go on and on and on about her accomplishments.

But when people list out all their accomplishments in their bios, they risk sounding a little egotistical. Sure, you might impress a handful of people with all those laurels, but many people who read your bio will end up feeling either intimidated or annoyed. Think about it: Is that how you want the majority of your readers to feel when they read your bio?

To minimize the egoism that comes with talking about yourself, think about how you can list out your accomplishments without sounding like you’re bragging. Ann does this really well, choosing a tone in her bio that’s more approachable.

It starts with the excerpt in the footer of her personal website. Give it a quick read, paying close attention to the opening and closing lines:

“This is Ann Handley’s website, and this is a bit of copy about her … That’s not giving you a lot of detail, is it? So read more here.” This is the kind of simple, friendly language that invites the reader in rather than shutting them out.

Follow the link and you’ll be led to a page dedicated to a fuller bio, which she’s divided into two parts: a “short version” (literally a bulleted list of key facts) and a “long version,” which includes traditional paragraphs. There’s something in there for everyone.

2. Rebecca Bollwitt

Bio platform: Instagram

Instagram is a notoriously difficult platform on which to write a good bio. Similar to Twitter, you simply don’t have room for a professional bio that includes everything about you. And because Instagram is primarily a mobile app, many viewers are reading about you passively on their mobile device.

Instagram’s limited bio space requires you to highlight just your most important qualities, and blogging icon Rebecca Bollwitt does so in her own Instagram bio in an excellent way.

Rebecca’s brand name is Miss604, and cleverly uses emojis in her Instagram bio to tell visitors exactly what makes her a valuable content creator. Take a look in the screenshot below.

Starting with a trophy emoji, Miss604 says she’s won more than 30 awards for her blogging services. I haven’t even looked at her pictures yet and the introduction of her bio has already sucked me in.

The rest of her bio follows suit, breaking up the text with an appropriate emoji and a perfect collection of nouns to tell me who she is as a person. She even links out to her husband’s Instagram account after the heart emoji (an adorable addition), and assures her followers that all of her pictures are authentically hers.

Take a lesson from Miss604, and show your personal side. Just because you’re branding yourself as a professional doesn’t mean you have to take your human being hat off. Often your most personal attributes make for the best professional bio content.

3. Mark Gallion

Bio Platform: Twitter

As a venture capitalist and an executive at several start-ups, Mark Gallion has different versions of his bio all over the internet. You can imagine some are more formal than others. But when it comes to his Twitter bio, he carefully phrased his information in a way that helps him connect with his audience — specifically, through the use of humor.

Why would he choose humor when he runs four start-ups and constantly seeks funding for them? Well, Mark’s tactic is totally intentional: it’s a lever he pulls to refresh his brand while maintaining his already impressive and established identity as an entrepreneur.

Mark leverages his Twitter bio because it’s place where he can be human. And it helps him relate to his followers and potential investors.

When crafting your own Twitter bio, consider your audience and the personal brand you’re trying to create for yourself. Use it as an opportunity to be relatable. (And check out this list of amusing Twitter bios for inspiration.)

4. DJ Nexus

Bio Platform: Facebook

This New England-based DJ has single-handedly captured the Likes of more than 2,000 people in and beyond Boston, MA. And even if you don’t listen to the type of music he produces, it’s hard not to listen to his compelling Facebook bio.

Stage-named DJ Nexus, Jamerson’s professional bio makes use of nearly every Page field inside the About tab. Right away, his audience knows which genres he plays in, where he’s from, and who else he’s worked with. The latter — under “Affiliation,” as shown in the screenshot below — is unique and seldom mentioned in professional bios today.

Our favorite part about DJ Nexus’s bio? His tagline, under “About” — “Quiet during the day. QUITE LOUD at night!” DJ Nexus tells you when he works in an awesome way. I got goosebumps just imagining a dance club he might play his music in.

DJ Nexus’s bio brilliance doesn’t stop there.

The great thing about Facebook Business Pages is that you can write as much as you want without overwhelming your Page visitors. For those who just want Jamerson’s basic info, they have the four categories shown above. For those who want to learn more about him, he tells an excellent story of his career. Here’s just a preview of his story, below:

In this story, DJ Nexus describes both when he “became known as DJ Nexus” and a company he founded shortly afterward — all before going to college. This is a terrific lesson for Facebook Businesses today: customers want to learn about you, and as Facebook increasingly becomes a place for meaningful interactions, there’s no better place to tell your story than on your Facebook Business Page.

5. Lena Axelsson

Bio Platform: Industry Website

When it all comes down to it, your professional bio is no different than any other piece of persuasive copy — no matter where it lives. One of the most common mistakes people make is thinking of it as its own beast, separate from other pieces of writing. If you think about it that way, you’re far more likely to write something painfully uninteresting.

When you sit down to write your professional bio and you’re watching that cursor blinking on the screen, think about how you would introduce a blog post. You don’t just dive right into the meat of the thing, now, do you? No. You start with an introduction.

The best bios are often concise (around 200–300 words), so you don’t have a lot of room to play around. But a single sentence that tees your reader up and provides context for the accomplishments that follow could make the rest of your bio that much more persuasive.

Take Lena Axelsson’s bio, for instance. She’s a marriage and family therapist — a job where empathy and compassion are a big part of the job description. That’s why she chooses to open her bio with a great introductory sentence: “When human beings experience trauma or severe life stressors, it is not uncommon for their lives to unravel.”

Then, she goes into why she’s passionate about her job, how she helps her clients, and how she caters her approach to each individual patient. The necessary educational information is left for the end, after the reader has been hooked.

Your bio doesn’t have to be super serious, nor does it have to start with a joke. This bio shows how you can capture your reader’s attention by being empathetic and showing how that empathy shapes a valuable professional.

6. Mark Levy

Bio Platform: Personal Website

Mark Levy is a small business owner who’s taken a more traditional approach to the professional bio on his website — but in a way that takes care to speak to his intended audience.

What we love about his bio is the way he’s set it up: On his business’ “About” page, he’s listed two biographies, which he’s labeled “Mark Levy’s Biography #1” and “Mark Levy’s Biography #2.”

Click here to see the full version.

Like Ann, Mark’s given his readers two different options. The first biography is a “short version,” which includes a combination of bullet points listing his credentials and a few short paragraphs.

The second is the “long version,” which is actually even more interesting than the first one. Why? Because it reads like a story — a compelling one, at that. In fact, it gets really funny at parts.

The second sentence of the bio reads: “He was frightened of public school, loved playing baseball and football, ran home to watch ape films on the 4:30 Movie, listened to The Jam and The Buzzcocks, and read magic trick books.”

Here’s another excerpt from the middle:

Of course, the fantastic copywriting isn’t a surprise, given that this guy wrote several books. But the conversational tone and entertaining copy let his quirky personality (and great writing skills) shine.

7. Corey Wainwright

Bio Platform: Blog Byline

Finally, we have Corey Wainwright, who’s the director of content here at HubSpot. She’s written content for HubSpot’s Marketing Blog for years, and her blog author bio has caught my eye since before I ever started working for HubSpot. (Back then, it started with, “Corey just took a cool vacation.”)

What I love most about Corey’s bio is that it’s a great example of how to deliver information about yourself without taking things too seriously. And in this context, that’s totally appropriate.

Despite having a number of impressive accomplishments under her belt, she simply doesn’t like displaying them publicly. So, she prefers making her author bio a little more “light.”

Her bio (pictured below) reads, “Corey is a Bruce Springsteen fan who does content marketing, in that order.”

It works in this particular context because, at HubSpot, our blog authors often prefer to make themselves as friendly and approachable as possible — while letting the content speak for itself.

It helps that authors’ social media accounts are located right below our names and above our pictures. For folks who really do want a list of Corey’s credentials, they can click the LinkedIn button to go to her LinkedIn page. (You can read this blog post to learn how to create social media buttons and add them to your website.)

8. Marie Mikhail

Bio Platform: LinkedIn

Marie Mikhail checks off nearly every box for what makes an excellent bio. A professional recruiter, she expresses her “passion for recruiting” upfront, in the first sentence, while using that sentence to hook her profile visitors into a brief story of her background.

But there are a lot of recruiters out there, and Marie knows that. So, to differentiate herself, she closes the first paragraph of her bio explaining that she likes “getting people excited about the things [she’s] excited about.” It’s a well-put value proposition that sets her apart from the rest of the HR industry.

Marie Mikhail finishes off her bio by including a smooth mixture of professional skills, such as her Spanish fluency; and personal interests, such as podcasting and Star Wars (she mentions the latter with just the right amount of humor).

9. Wonbo Woo

Bio Platform: Personal Website

Wonbo Woo is the executive producer of WIRED’s video content, and he has a number of impressive credits to his name. What does this mean for his professional bio? He has to prioritize. With this in mind, Wonbo opens his bio with the most eye-catching details first (if the image below is hard to read, click it to see the full copy).

Not only does Wonbo’s bio start strong, but he also takes readers on a suspenseful journey through some of his most harrowing assignments — where he was when news broke and how he responded. You can see this quality below.

The accomplished journalist concludes his gripping bio as strong as it began, measuring his experience by the number of states, countries, and continents to which he’s traveled in his career. See how this looks above. All in all, it’s a fantastically concise bio for as much detail as it holds.

Want more? Read How to Write a Cover Letter That Gets You the Job [Bookmarkable Template + Examples].

If you’re reading this article, I probably don’t need to tell you that video content accounts for over 74% of all online traffic, or that over five billion YouTube videos are watched every single day.

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