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The summer before my sophomore year in college, I was scrolling through Facebook when I saw my friend dump a bucket of ice water on herself.

When I read the status update, I realized she was doing the Ice Bucket Challenge in an effort to promote awareness for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) disease.

This was in 2014 when the Ice Bucket Challenge went viral and raised $220 million worldwide.

That’s what a successful social media campaign looks like.

As a marketer, paying attention to these social media campaigns is important, especially since 45% of the world population is active on social media.

Although every social media campaign can’t reach the same viral attention as the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, there are several things you can try to improve the results of your social media efforts.

Below, let’s review the top social media campaign ideas to try this year.

1. Build social proof.

One of the main benefits of social media marketing is that you can build social proof online. Your online reputation is one of the most important aspects of your brand. On social media, you can personify your brand and speak directly to your customers.

To build social proof, you might start a hashtag for users to submit testimonials. For example, P90X is an at-home training program that uses the hashtag #p90xresults to gather customer results.

This helps build social proof that their product works without seeming promotional. Additionally, you can share posts and interact with customers who mention your brand to spread awareness of the positive results your customers’ get from using your product or service.

2. Post offers and discounts online.

To complement your marketing campaign, you can promote discounts and offers on social media. In fact, there’s even a special section for offers on Facebook.

Discounts can help spread awareness and bring in new customers who might not have tried your product or service.

For example, a video game store, Play N Trade, uses the Facebook offer section to promote a free year membership:

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3. Showcase happy customers.

The best people to promote your brand are your current customers. Using social media, you can showcase happy customers and their stories by liking or sharing posts of them using your product or service.

You can encourage customers to share photos of themselves with your product and create a hashtag to promote it.

For example, Coca-Cola started a marketing campaign called Share a Coke. The hashtag #shareacoke became a place where people would take pictures of the new product. This promoted their campaign and drove more customers to purchase their product so they could find a Coke with their name on it.

4. Host contests.

People love winning free stuff and getting discounts — which is why a content is such an effective social media campaign idea.

Hosting a contest on social media is an excellent way to drive engagement, traffic, and create brand awareness.

You can run several different types of contests including asking followers to tag a friend in the comments, answer a question in the comments, or send a photo of themselves with your product or service.

Additionally, if you’re creating an ad campaign, you can host a casting contest and feature your customers in your ads.

5. Create calls-to-action on your posts.

Just like in the real world, being mysterious doesn’t get you far. If you want your customers to do something, ask them to do it.

A call-to-action (CTA) does just that. By including a CTA on all your social media posts, people are more likely to interact and engage.

CTAs can be simple — like asking people to sign up, subscribe, learn more, or comment below. A CTA can increase your click-through-rate (CTR), engagement, and success of your social media campaigns.

6. Encourage engagement with polls.

Who doesn’t love a good poll when you’re scrolling through your social media feed? Personally, I vote in every poll I see. I’m even tempted to vote in the ones that don’t apply to me — although I try not to because I don’t want to ruin the numbers.

With polls, you’ll learn more about your audience and increase engagement.

For example, TurboTax used the polls feature on Twitter to see if people considered rideshare drivers self-employed:

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If you’re running a social media campaign, or any campaign for that matter, you should consider adding a poll to your social accounts.

7. Put together an influencer giveaway.

Influencer marketing isn’t a passing fad.

In fact, the influencer marketing industry is set to reach $10 billion by 2020. Additionally, 80% of marketers say influencer marketing is effective for their businesses.

That’s why you should consider putting together an influencer giveaway social media campaign. Working on your relationships with influencers in your industry will help increase brand awareness and build social proof.

After researching the influencers in your industry, contact them and suggest a giveaway.

8. Go live.

When you’re putting together a social media campaign, don’t underestimate live videos.

In a recent survey of 1,000 respondents, 80% said they would rather watch a live video from a brand than read a blog, and 82% prefer live video to social media posts.

You can use this to your advantage.

Try hosting a live stream, talking to your customers in real-time, or asking and answering questions. This will help you connect with your audience in a way that personifies your brand. By personifying your brand, people are more likely to feel connected to your company in the same way they feel connected to a friend.

9. Have a takeover.

Takeovers is an opportunity to keep things interesting in your Stories section of your social profiles. You can have employees, partners, or guests host a “takeover” for the day. This entails having someone else — apart from your social media team — regularly post content on your social media page(s) for a day.

For example, every day The Skimm has an employee take over their Instagram Stories. Typically, they show followers what they do in a day, discuss what their job is, what their responsibilities are, and give career advice. This helps with branding and also promotes their workplace culture.

If you’re running a social media campaign, adding a takeover to your promotion can help increase engagement — additionally, having a guest or partner takeover your account can help your brand reach their audience, as well.

10. Publish behind-the-scenes content.

Behind-the-scenes content is one of the best ways to connect with your audience.

By showcasing a behind-the-scenes look, you can keep current and prospective customers up-to-date, brag about your team, and create an emotional connection that makes you relatable.

With any social media campaign, behind-the-scenes content can show off your personality and broaden your content.

11. Livestream events.

A social media campaign is one of the best ways to promote your events. But the promotion shouldn’t end on the day of the event.

Instead, consider live streaming certain parts of the event on social media. This will create more buzz about the event, encourage interaction with attendees, and is helpful for people who couldn’t attend the event.

12. Design a viral campaign.

Creating a viral marketing campaign is an easy sentence to write, but a hard concept to execute.

When you’re brainstorming your next social media campaign, answer these questions:

• Does it appeal to your target audience?
• Does it have strong visuals?
• Does it have an emotional appeal?
• Is it creative?
• Is it easy to digest, and share?
• Does the timing make sense?

Like the ALS challenge, creating some sort of online challenge that influencers can easily participate in will help spread the word.

13. Write event hashtags.

If you’re hosting an event, don’t forget to create a hashtag. With a hashtag, you can reply to attendees and keep track of questions.

For example, at INBOUND, the event hashtag is typically #INBOUND19 (or whatever year it is). This hashtag helps HubSpot curates content related to INBOUND, including attendees’ pictures of themselves at the event, and attendees’ testimonials/opinions on the event.

If you can get an event hashtag trending, then you’ll be able to create more brand awareness and interact with your customers.

14. Interact with your customers.

Speaking of interacting with your customers, you can design a social media campaign specifically around talking to your customers.

For example, in 2014 Taylor Swift did something called “Swiftmas.” This is when she went on social media, looked for highly engaged fans, chose her top fans, and then sent them presents. She even coined a term for this process, called “Taylurking.” If she commented a Christmas tree on one of your posts, you’re getting a present.

This is a great example of interacting with your audience in a way that doesn’t feel promotional, yet still creates brand awareness.

15. Use the holidays as inspiration.

Similar to the Taylor Swift example above, you can use the holidays as an inspiration for a social media campaign.

You can use your social accounts to promote a holiday sale, a Halloween contest, or sell holiday products like ornaments.

When it isn’t the holiday season, you can still use current events to inspire your social media campaigns. Remember, your social media posts don’t happen in a silo. They’re happening in the real world, and they should be timely.

16. Provide educational content.

It’s easy to get in the habit of just posting your products or services on social media. But that would be a mistake.

Your content should be educational and create value. When you’re creating a social media campaign, ask yourself what value it’ll bring to your audience. That’s how you’ll brainstorm content ideas that could go viral.

17. Repurpose high-performing content.

Every time you run a social media campaign, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. You can use old content that has performed well in the past.

Do you have a podcast that has really high downloads? Or a blog that has the most views? You can repurpose that content for social media. Create a video for Stories or IGTV and summarize it in a caption.

Old content is a great way to boost your social media campaigns.

18. Curate content.

Your social media doesn’t have to include content that’s only from you. In fact, sharing other people’s content is a great way to humanize your brand and create value for your audience.

If your social media campaign needs some more post ideas, consider curating content from other people that complement your promotion.

Again, you don’t want your social media profile to feel too promotional. Your posts should have variety.

19. Participate in popular trends.

It’s always important to remember that the world is still spinning while you’re in your marketing meeting, brainstorming social media campaign ideas.

Consider trends, like popular hashtags, and participate in them. For example, #throwbackthursday still hasn’t gone out of style. If your posts need a little inspiration, look for popular hashtags and trends and jump on board.

Customers like to see that the brands they follow are staying current.

20. Adopt new social media platforms.

If a new social media platform comes out, be an early adopter and run social media campaigns on it.

These campaigns are more likely to be seen by your audience because the sites haven’t developed complicated algorithms yet.

Plus, you should always look for new places to engage with your audience and learn more about them.

21. Plan “caption this” contests.

A fun and unique contest, the “caption this” contest is especially helpful for those times where you have a very intriguing photo but are having a hard time writing a caption.

These contests encourage creativity and are a fun way to interact with your audience.

When you’re planning a social media campaign, consider a “caption this” contest to encourage engagement.

22. Design geofilters on Snapchat.

Geofilters on Snapchat are an excellent way to increase brand awareness and create memories with your audience.

If your customers take a photo at an event, they’ll appreciate the geofilter. By posting photos of themselves with this filter, your customers are a free, walking advertisement.

Again, the best way to promote your brand is through your current customers. Geofilters will help you do just that.

23. Generate hype for your launches.

When you’re about to launch a product, service, or event, you should create a social media campaign to generate hype.

Previews of your product or contests to figure out what the product is will create excitement among your customers.

For example, in anticipation of the summer launch of Kylie Jenner’s eye shadow palette, she posted swatches, videos, photos of her in the makeup, and tutorials on her Instagram.

This creates enthusiasm among her customers — as a result, she sold out almost immediately.

24. Come up with human interest campaigns.

At the end of the day, your audience relates to people, not companies. You should always try to humanize your brand in your social media campaigns.

To do this, include a human interest element in all your campaigns.

For example, when Kim Kardashian West launched her shapewear Skims, her social media campaign included videos of the models in her shapewear talking about how it made them feel more comfortable and confident in their skin. The human element in this campaign allowed followers to see the value in Kim’s new product.

25. Develop entertaining segments.

You know how James Corden has fun segments on his show the Late Late Show, like Carpool Karaoke? Those fun, bite-sized segments are crucial elements to making his show as fun to watch as it is.

When you’re creating a social media campaign, follow in his footsteps and create fun, entertaining segments just like you might for a TV show. After all, most social media has long-form video content like Facebook Watch or IGTV.

This type of content can increase traffic and engagement for your social media campaigns.

Brainstorming social media campaigns isn’t always easy. However, you can use this list to get started.

The other night I was searching “Best Pasta Dish Recipes” on Google.

I clicked the first link and was stopped by the dreaded error code.

I’m willing to bet something similar has happened to you, at one point or another.

When that happens, it’s not just my brain experiencing technical difficulties.

These error codes are HTTP status codes. If you receive an error code, something went wrong when your browser requested the information from a web server. An HTTP status code is sent every time you go to a new web page. However, you’ll only see them if something isn’t right.

For marketers, it’s important to discover and fix these issues so your website visitors don’t have a negative experience.

Below, let’s review what an HTTP 304 not modified status code is, and what’s causing it.

When you click on a web page or URL, your browser requests access to it from a web server. If it has not been modified since the last time you accessed it, the web server will send back a 304 not modified status code, which lets your browser know to use a cached version of the web page.

Usually, you’ll only see this error code if you’re on a search engine because search engines index and cache websites.

If your browser receives this code, it’ll try to show you a saved version of the page. But sometimes it might prevent you from accessing the URL because it’s outdated.

As a marketer, you could lose out on traffic and leads if visitors are prevented from seeing your site.

So, what causes a 304 not modified code?

Causes of an HTTP 304 Not Modified Status Code

If a user sees a 304 not modified status code on your site, there isn’t much you can do. This is because the problem is most likely on their side of the screen.

Users could receive a 304 not modified status code for a variety of reasons:

1. You have a virus.

If you have a virus or malware on your computer, it most likely has corrupted your browser. This could impact your browser’s ability to communicate with web servers and cache web pages.

2. You’ve recently installed or uninstalled software.

Sometimes when you install or uninstall software on your computer, the registry could become corrupt. Again, this impacts your browser.

3. An application has corrupted files.

If there are corrupted files related to your internet browser, it will impact its ability to save web pages and update information.

How to Fix a 304 Not Modified Status Code

Although marketers can’t do much if a user sees a 304 not modified status code, users can try a few things to get the web page to show up on their browser.

1. Clear browsing data.

Clearing your browsing data will make sure your cache is cleared so it can try to access the URL you’re requesting.

To clear your browsing data, go to your History and then click “Clear browsing data.” In Chrome, it looks like this:

Once you click that, make sure you check off all three options. Then, you’ll want to change the time frame to “All Time.” It should look like this:

2. Run cleaners to get rid of viruses and malware.

A 304 not modified code could be happening because your browser is corrupted with a virus or malware. Run a check to make sure that isn’t the issue and clean up your computer.

3. Disable extensions.

There could be something wrong with your extensions. For example, they could be corrupt, which impacts your browser’s ability to receive information. Disable your extensions to see if this is the issue.

If these things don’t work, fixing a 304 not modified can be a more technical process. You might consider asking a web developer or someone in IT to take a look.

If you receive an HTTP 304 not modified error code, it’s because the URL you requested has outdated information. To fix it, you’ll want to double-check that the error isn’t on your side — the client’s — but instead on the server-side.

In 2011, Patagonia released an ad on Black Friday advising consumers not to buy their jackets.

In 2015, Dove released a campaign that celebrated women, rather than showcasing their deodorant or body wash.

The tactic used in these campaigns is called “reverse positioning.” It’s a unique marketing strategy that emulates this quote coined by marketing cartoonist Tom Fishburne:

“The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing.”

So, what goes into reverse marketing, and why does it work?

Also called breakaway positioning, this marketing strategy uses techniques such as informing consumers about the different features of products, how they were made or function, or even their appearance. This builds consumer trust and awareness.

In breakaway positioning, a call to purchase may not be included. The focus of the campaign might be the company values or beliefs of the consumers.

Patagonia reverse positioning example

Patagonia ran a successful reverse positioning campaign in 2011. The idea was to educate consumers about sustainability and promote environmental awareness. The outdoor brand reminded consumers that producing jackets doesn’t help the environment.

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“Each piece of Patagonia clothing…emits several times its weight in greenhouse gases, generates at least another half garment’s worth of scrap, and draws down copious amounts of freshwater now growing scarce everywhere on the planet,” the ad read.

Rather than advertising to consumers to “buy-buy-buy” on Black Friday — a holiday specifically centered around that purpose — Patagonia did the reverse. The company successfully educated consumers on how Patagonia products add to the destruction of the environment, solidifying their stance on sustainability as important to its brand and its audience.

The effect of this campaign was to attract consumers who want to cut down on their carbon footprint.

Dove reverse positioning example

Dove approached reverse positioning in a similar way. By running a campaign celebrating women, rather than promoting hygiene products, consumers felt connected to the company and identified with the brand.

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The effect of this campaign was that consumers purchased Dove products because the company showed its goal wasn’t only to make sales. In the example billboard above, Dove didn’t even list pricing information. Instead, they promoted body positivity and empowered consumers to love themselves.

Let’s put reverse positioning on an SMB scale. Let’s say you’re in charge of marketing for a website that helps job seekers identify roles to apply for — like LinkedIn or Indeed — and you want to try your hand at reverse positioning. How would you accomplish that? This is what we’ll cover in the next section.

Reverse Positioning Strategy

First, identify what’s important to your target audience: professionals searching for jobs online. This can be done by surveying consumers and asking value-based questions. For instance, find out what is important to them about the job search or how they look for companies that are appealing to them.

Dove surveyed their consumers and found that only 4% of them felt that they were beautiful. Because of this statistic, Dove realized they could emphasize the beauty of women in their campaign.

Next, identify what’s important to your company. Maybe your business values creating meaningful, streamlined connections between customers and recruiters. Maybe it’s deconstructing stigmas around the “perfect” employee, such as location, age, or degree.

Check out this page on Patagonia’s website, which is dedicated to educating customers about their stance on sustainability.

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After aligning your beliefs with those of your target audience, create a campaign that educates customers on those values. You could create an Instagram post emphasizing how your company doesn’t focus on finding a perfect person, but a real person.

You could also create an infographic containing survey results, as Dove did, and create a catchy tagline that highlights your company values. A good option for recruiting company could be “The perfect candidate doesn’t exist,” because it shows company values and audience beliefs.

The important thing to remember about reverse positioning is that the focus is not on earning an immediate purchase, but educating consumers about the functions of your product or business that normally wouldn’t be highlighted. Try to stay away from prices in this marketing strategy. That’s not as important.

Feel free to refer to this graphic when building a reverse positioning strategy. The campaigns don’t have to be flashy or expensive, just honest. The goals of this marketing tactic are to educate consumers, build brand loyalty, and show your customers that you value what they do and who they are.

Even though reverse positioning isn’t a widely used marketing strategy, it’s an incredibly effective one. It gives your consumers knowledge about where your company lands on beliefs that are important to them.

Remember, “The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing.”

As the old saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Given that 65% of the population are visual learners, using images as part of your marketing can be the key to ensuring your message gets delivered.

As a marketer, you are probably already aware that images are important. They’re easier to digest than a bunch of words on a page and can help support your other content by telling a story in ways that words cannot. Whether in social media posts or in blog posts, images help your audience to better understand what you are talking about, plain and simple.

Cinemagraphs can take things a step further.

What is a cinemagraph, you ask? The artists over at Cinemagraph.com – where the cinemagraph was essentially born – describe them as “an image that contains within itself a living moment that allows a glimpse of time to be experienced and preserved endlessly.”

In plain English, a cinemagraph is really just a fancy GIF – a file format often used to create short, infinitely-looping animations for the web. Check out the example below.

The finalized cinemagraph

GIFs and cinemagraphs can add to blogs and emails in a way that goes beyond a regular photo. And they really aren’t difficult to make, especially if you are already familiar with programs like Photoshop.

What Tools Do You Need?

First, you are going to need to make sure you have what you need to create the cinemagraph:

• A way to record video (I used the camera on my iPhone 6)
• A tripod, or some other way to keep your camera stable and completely still
• Adobe Photoshop (I am currently using Adobe Photoshop CC 2014 on my iMac)

Have you played around with cinemagraphs?

To understand what rel=nofollow is, we’ll start with an example.

Let’s say I’m a Wikipedia editor, and I’ve recently written a page about zebras. My page is getting hundreds of views, and is ranking on page one of Google for the search term, “Zebra”.

Following the success of my Wikipedia page, I get an email in my inbox. Someone is reaching out to ask if I’ll link to their fake news website. If I link to their page, they tell me they’ll pay me $500.

From my end, it seems like a pretty sweet deal, so I accept. I cash my money, link to their site, and add a rel=nofollow tag to their link, so Google can’t follow the source and I’m not giving them any backlink power.

In this example, it doesn’t seem like too big of a deal. So what if a fake news site is listed on a Wikipedia page for zebras?

The issue, of course, arises when that fake news site is listed on a bunch of other high domain sites. If rel=nofollow is added to all those links, Google can’t figure out why suddenly, that fake news article is trending globally and being accepted as truth by thousands of Google users.

Simply put, with rel=nofollow, the risk of misinformation and link schemes is high, since Google can’t keep track of certain shady parts of the web. Which is why Google put an end to it with their recent announcement, proclaiming rel=nofollows are now officially “strong hints”, not directives.

Follow me so far? Here, I sat down with Victor Pan, HubSpot’s SEO strategist, to learn what Google’s rel=nofollow announcement means for SEO strategists and users.

But first — what is rel=nofollow?

What Rel=nofollow Is, and Why It Was Created

In 2005, Google had a problem.

On websites, some commenters were tricking Google’s algorithm by including their own links in the comment sections of high ranking web pages. Since Google uses backlinks as a vote of endorsement, or a way of saying, “Google, this is an authoritative website”, Google was incorrectly ranking some of these spammy websites higher on search.

Additionally, some people were paying companies for links to their site. This benefitted the companies who received the money and the people who received the backlink, but it didn’t benefit users, who’d often end up clicking on spam on an otherwise trustworthy source.

To combat these issues, Google released rel=nofollow. Simply put, rel=nofollow tells search engines not to follow the source of the link. With rel=nofollow, these shady websites weren’t able to receive backlink power, which made it difficult for them to rank highly. Essentially, rel=nofollow is a website’s way of saying “We don’t endorse this website”.

Without those endorsements, spammy websites had a tougher time ranking on Google, even if they were copying-and-pasting their URL all over the place.

Up until recently, rel=nofollow was a directive — meaning, if Google saw rel=nofollow, they listened to it.

However, two months ago, in September 2019, Google announced a change to their rel=nofollow rules. Here’s what they said in their official announcement: “Nearly 15 years ago, the nofollow attribute was introduced as a means to help fight comment spam. It also quickly became one of Google’s recommended methods for flagging advertising-related or sponsored links.”

As published on Google’s official announcement, “The web has evolved since nofollow was introduced in 2005 and it’s time for nofollow to evolve as well.”

Here’s how it changed — and why it matters for SEO.

Google’s New Rel=nofollow Rules

When I sat down with Victor Pan, SEO Strategist at HubSpot, I started by asking him why rel=nofollow matters.

He told me, “Well, for one, this trend of news websites needing to be profitable led to the allowance of guest contributors, and what a lot of guest contributors did at some point was say, ‘Hey, I’m going to sell the opportunity for companies to get backlinked on posts I’m writing for these major news publications.'”

“At some point,” Pan adds, “on shadier parts of the internet, there was even a price list that some link agency had, and major news publications could be listed at $5,000 for one backlink. With rel=nofollow, you completely kill the incentive for people do that.”

All of which makes a ton of sense to me — take away the opportunity to get backlink power, take away the shadiness of people asking big publications to link to their irrelevant or spammy websites in exchange for money.

Which leads me to my next question — why would Google change rel=nofollow, then?

To answer that question, Pan uses the following example — “If hundreds of sites are linking to a fake news article with rel=nofollow, and use Facebook to amplify their message, you have a problem. Suddenly, you have a bunch of sites that have content that link to things that are politically sensitive in search, and then these sites amplify that message outside of Google’s pervue, like on Facebook.”

“In order for Google to really understand the network of misformation, and why something might suddenly rank high on search even when it’s incorrect, they need to be able to follow rel=nofollow links.”

“It’s tricky,” Pan adds, “Because real, legitimate websites often end up linking to these fake news articles as well, believing them to be real because of their ranking in search.”

As of 2019, you can now specify whether your link is rel=”sponsored” (links created as part of advertisements), rel=”ugc” (links created from user-generated content, like comments and forum posts), or rel=”nofollow” (whenever you want to link to a page but don’t want to imply any endorsement).

But there’s a bigger change to rel=nofollow, and this is the one SEO strategists are most upset about — now, rel=nofollow isn’t a directive. It’s just a suggestion.

Why SEO Strategists are Upset About Google’s Rel=nofollow Announcement

Pan told me — “The big thing that’s making SEO strategists upset is the fact that rel=nofollow went from a directive to a strong hint. The way to think about it is, it’s like a colleague asks you to conduct research for them, and then you conduct the research, and then they say, You know what? Nevermind, I decided to create my own list. It’s like, then why did you even ask us?”

For clarification, a “directive” means search engines will follow an attribution like rel=nofollow and respect it, end of story. A “strong hint”, on the other hand, means Google knows best, and while it might respect your opinion, it will ultimately override your decision if it disagrees with it.

Another example of a strong hint is a canonical link tag you put in the header of a page.

A strong hint is infuriating because it means, if you’re a marketer who needs to optimize blog posts or web pages for SEO, you have to do all the work, but Google might ignore it, anyhow.

Additionally, Pan notes — “Then they’re also asking us to get even more specific, like whether it’s UGC or sponsored content, but we’re like — Why would we do this when it might not even matter? From Google’s perspective, however, it’s helpful for them because it helps them get better at understanding which links they shouldn’t be following.”

The real underlying frustration, of course, is lack of control.

As Pan explains it, “Google is saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to take back control, and these remedies are available for you, but they’re not absolute.’ The power has shifted back to Google, and you’re still doing the work, but you understand that your work could be meaningless. Nothing is more frustrating than setting canonicals and then having Google disrespect that canonical.”

In response to this, I asked Pan whether we can just avoid using rel=nofollow links at all, if it’s such a headache for SEO strategists. He replied, “You can do that, but you run the risk of running into issues.”

There’s another potential problem, too. Remember back in 2005, when Google implemented rel=nofollow as punishment for those who used bribes for links? Now, since rel=nofollow is a strong hint and not a directive, those people aren’t necessarily going to be punished anymore.

Pan told me — “Consider it this way. Wikipedia has rel=nofollow because people were bribing Wikipedia editors to add links to sites that shouldn’t have been included on that page. But now you’re saying, ‘Hey, rel=nofollow links might be ignored — what do you think is going to happen next? Now, some of those editors might get some bribes … you see where this is going?” (Hint: it looks a lot like 2005.)

Pan added, “There’s now more room for interpretation. The people who are doing shady things on the web — like link schemes, and bribing for links, aren’t necessarily being punished anymore.”

To summarize, here are the three biggest problems with Google’s new rel=nofollow announcement:

• It’s now a strong hint, not a directive, making it difficult for SEO strategists to see the incentive in implementing these all over their web pages
• It’s more difficult for SEO strategists to implement rel=nofollow than it was before, since you need to specify which type of rel=nofollow you want to use
• Some shady links will still receive backlink power, since rel-nofollow might be ignored by Google, which opens up incentive for people to bribe for links, once again

Of course, the changes Google made to rel=nofollow, while frustrating to SEO strategists, are ultimately good for users. Even if all shady activity isn’t being punished, Google is now able to see all shady activity happening in the first place.

Pan told me that now, Google can see what the shady part of the web is like. “And users benefit from that,” He told me, “because now, Google is less prone to surfacing misinformation.”

When implementing your social media strategy, it’s easy to realize that manually posting on multiple different websites, multiple times a day, isn’t optimal for your busy schedule. But it’s not easy to tell from a baseline or pricing page which tools are not only the best for efficiency but best for your business.

Instead of spending hours of extra research combing through all of your options and sitting through countless demos and free trials, we’ve compiled a list of the best social media dashboards that fit your budget and brand.

These social media dashboards are optimized for every type of SMB; whether you’re a social media team or a party of one, these apps will help you accomplish your goals in a streamlined, efficient way.

1. Later

Price: $9, $19, $29, $49 per month, and enterprise pricing
Why it’s great: Instagram scheduling

While you can connect Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest profiles, Later is best for Instagram scheduling. This is because of its image-based content calendar scheduling, so you can see a bird’s eye view of your brand in a monthly, visual format.

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Later is also an Instagram partner, which means it integrates with Instagram’s API. This partnership means your account information will stay completely safe, which is important for Instagram Business accounts that have Shopping set up.

2. Sendible

Price: $29, $99, $199, $299 per month
Why it’s great: Agency-based management

Are you a social media or marketing agency? Sendible may be the answer to unkempt management: it’s a tool fit for an agency with clients. It helps you streamline how you manage brands and offers a couple unique features that help you succeed.

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Sendible has a royalty-free image search tool and a Canva integration. Sendible also has social listening tools, a Reports function, scheduling, and post previews. To put it simply: this is a full dashboard and suite of tools to put your client accounts all in one place.

3. Tailwind

Price: $9.99, $799.99 per month, and enterprise pricing
Why it’s great: Pinterest and Instagram management

Tailwind is a very unique program, providing services for two apps normally not paired with each other: Pinterest and Instagram. It makes sense, however, considering both apps focus on visual multimedia. Offering a full media dashboard with scheduling, social listening, and analytics tools, Tailwind also has a few interesting program-specific services.

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First, it gives suggestions about how to improve Instagram and Pinterest performance. It also comes with a way to promote Pinterest content and manage Instagram user-generated content. If your brand is heavily focused on visuals, Tailwind may be right for you.

4. Sprout Social

Price: $99, $149, and $249 per user per month
Why it’s great: Team-based management

Sprout Social is a dashboard platform that’s focused entirely on social media teams. What you get for your money is a full suite of tools, including options that allow you to create and schedule posts, social listening tools, and most of all: analytic data.

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The analytic tools are the shining star of Sprout Social. Expansive, in-depth reporting is available. If that’s a focus for your brand, consider Sprout. They make the reports so professional and easy to read, there’s no editing required.

5. MeetEdgar

Price: $49/month
Why it’s great: 100% automated scheduling

MeetEdgar is an app with a different approach to social media management, is. All users do is upload categorically-based content into their account and create time slots for when they want their account to post said content.

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Then, according to the time slots and categories, the app will schedule and upload content. If you want your Twitter account to post a meme at 11 AM on a Thursday, MeetEdgar would search through the “Meme” category of content you’ve already uploaded, schedule, and post it.

Managers might like this option, if they don’t have enough time to constantly schedule and upload content. They can plug in their entire content calendar at the start of the month and remove the heavy lifting for the next few weeks.

Post-enhancing dashboards such as these three can take care of your social strategy without losing any of quality.

1. TweetDeck

Price: Free
Why it’s great: Twitter dash management

TweetDeck is amazing if you’re tired of flipping back and forth through the different tabs on Twitter. It’s a free extension of twitter (no download required) that automatically gives you your account’s Home, Notifications, Trending, and Messages in a dashboard view.

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This app is especially handy for posting quickly. You can engage with your Twitter in-app, and it feels like a much faster method of running your account than the in-browser functionality . Plus, TweetDeck automatically updates with any new notifications.

2. HubSpot

Price: Free plan, or $50, $800, $3200/month
Why it’s great: All-in-one social media software

With HubSpot’s social media management tool, you get an all-inclusive package. Connect up to 300 accounts and schedule up to 10,000 posts a month. Plus, for super in-depth planners, you can schedule posts up to 3 years in advance.

HubSpot’s social media management features include monitoring mentions and engagement, and provides full analytic reports. You’re able to schedule posts all in one place, without leaving the system.

3. TweetStats

Price: Free
Why it’s great: Free basic Twitter analytics

This little website is super handy if you don’t have the budget to pay for analytic tools. TweetStats can give you the analytics of any Twitter account in about two minutes. The website displays graphs of when you’ve tweeted, the volume of tweets, time you usually tweet, and your most used words and hashtags.

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Using TweetStats is especially helpful if you want to view the ecosystem of your Twitter. Are you staying on-brand? Are you meeting your tweet goals? What hashtags can you elevate the use of?

4. TubeBuddy

Price: Free plan, or $9, $19, $49 per month
Why it’s great: YouTube management

If you have a large YouTube presence, consider TubeBuddy. TubeBuddy offers a hefty suite of perks to present a full dashboard. Categories include video dashboard, video SEO, bulk processing, promotion, data & research, and productivity.

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The screenshot above features one of TubeBuddy’s card template features. Card templates streamline the process of uploading and finalizing YouTube videos, making it easier to sort videos into a playlist on your channel.

You can install the program for free on Chrome, working sort of like an extension. The free plan gives you access to analytics, productivity, and SEO tools to get started. TubeBuddy is also a YouTube Partner and integrates with Alexa.

5. MavSocial

Price: Free plan, or $19, $78, $199, $499 per month
Why it’s great: Visual-based streamlined management

This is a great post-enhancing tool. MavSocial has a focus on visual-based management, and as such, offers unique perks, like editing multimedia content and a stock photo digital library. With the editing tools, you can add filters to your photos, crop, and search for royalty-free images.

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On top of all of this, MavSocial has a full dashboard suite, meaning you can schedule content and engage with followers. MavSocial supports YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The app is also an Instagram Partner.

6. Hootsuite

Price: Free plan, $29, $129, $599 per month
Why it’s great: All-in-one social media management

Hootsuite is a popular social media tool and boasts over 15 million users. The free plan lets you add three social accounts from different platforms on one screen and has a limit on how many posts are available to make.

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While user-friendly, Hootsuite is an expansive app. You can create ads, running an ROI report on those ads, and also has options to schedule and create posts. Note that you can only post on your Instagram using the scheduler, if you have an Instagram Business account.

Every business is unique, and so is every social media dashboard. Because of that, finding the best fit can be daunting. Covering all your bases can be simplified with a social media dashboard, as well as building a community and social presence.

If you want to take a crack at building your own content calendar that’ll help you plan your social media posts, check out our article here.

“Curation” is one of those words that’s always conveyed coolness to me.

Take, for example, the job of curating art for a gallery, or curating music for a soundtrack. Cool, right? Content curation is just as much fun — and just as important.

But where do you get started on content curation? In this blog post, you’ll find a brief explanation of what it is, why it’s important, and a few tools you can use.

What is content curation?

For the uninitiated, content curation consists of finding material relevant to your audience from a variety of sources, and sharing it strategically through your communication channels.

For example, writing a roundup blog post of great marketing examples would require you to curate strong samples of content relevant to what you’re writing about. And while very cool, it can be tricky. There are many, many social networks, news feeds, emails, and infographics full of such content that can demand your time and attention.

That’s why the responsibility of content curation is important. Think of it as being a successful wedding DJ: Your selections can’t all be ad hoc and safe. After all, people can only hear Kool & The Gang’s “Celebration” so many times before the floor clears, and that sort of playlist isn’t personalized for your audience. But if you know your audience, you can accurately gauge the temperature of the room and have the confidence to give the people what they want.

The same goes for content curation. Instead of just rounding up the most generally popular things on the web, pick the ones that are going to be the most relevant and interesting to your audience, and provide the context around them that makes your site a destination. Of course, we never said that was easy. Where do you find this content, anyway, especially given the information overload we opened with? Good news: We’re here to help you prioritize the resources by outlining some of our favorites below.

What makes a successful content curator?

1. Content curation should be personal.

The beauty of news roundup NextDraft is the personal touch and context that its chief curator, Dave Pell, gives to each story. I don’t just want a bunch of browsable links — I want to know why I should read this stuff, and how it pertains to me. That personalized context creates a type of bond between curator and reader that something like simple link aggregators don’t humanize quite as much.

2. Content curation should build value.

Here’s a little secret: No matter which industry your customers are in, all of them want to stay informed, but also save time. Just like you, they have demands and can’t possibly keep up with all the latest news in their industry — but they want to. Helping to solve this problem through personalized content curation presents a huge opportunity for brands to build a relationship with their audience.

If you can deliver a curated experience that saves your customers time in getting the information they need, you’ve taken a major step on the path of building trust and loyalty.

3. Content curation should offset promotional content.

Customers can grow tired of brands ceaselessly promoting their own wares, which is why progressive brands think beyond products or features. The relationship customers have with brands today transcends the product itself — after all, that’s part of the foundation of inbound marketing. So while a product may initially attract you to a specific brand, it’s what the brand holistically offers after the purchase — like great content or remarkable service — that keeps you around.

For example, I own only one jacket from the brand Arc’teryx, and yet, I follow it on YouTube and Twitter, and receive its emails. Why? Because the company is doing more than pushing products on me. Rather, it’s also pushing content and an experience that brightens my day. Check out this film series, A Skier’s Journey, that the brand played a role in producing:

4. Content Curation Shouldn’t Take All Day

At last: We’ve arrived at our favorite tools for content curation. Thanks to a slew of websites and technologies, it’s never been easier to find the external information that will serve as a resource for your customers. But they need to be prioritized — so here’s our list, to help streamline your content curation efforts.

For Beginners

If you’re thinking, “Yeah, I occasionally share a relevant post with my customers when I find one,” congratulations — you’re curating content. Unfortunately, you’re not doing so on a sustainable scale that makes you a trusted source.

But don’t worry — there are better ways to curate content for beginners that are completely free. Here are three simple sources of information to help you start getting in the habit of curating content, without being overwhelmed by complex tools, subscription fees or convoluted dashboards.

1. Flipboard

Flipboard is a mobile and desktop app that allows you to create mini-magazines with links to your favorite news stories, blog posts, or websites. After you create these magazines, you can set them to public so other users can follow your content or even share them on other social media networks. 

If you’re interested in showing that you’re in-the-know of news and hot trends related to your industry, you can create a Flipboard account and start creating magazines that your fans might like with news links from other publications they also might enjoy. You can also place your own blog posts or links into a Flipboard magazine so users reading the stories there can also learn about your business. 

Flipboard is free and easy to use. All you need to do is download the app, create an account, and tap “Create Magazine” to create your first piece of curated content. You can also look through the magazines of other users and share their stories in your own mini “publication with a quick tap. 

Here’s a quick demo that walks you through how to use the app:

For more on Flipboard marketing strategies, check out this blog post.

3. Pocket

Pocket is a great place to get into the habit of accruing content to save and share later. Instead of a laundry list of bookmarks or countless emails you’ve sent to yourself with links, it keeps all your interesting images, articles, and videos in one place for reference. You can group articles with tags, and the site’s built-in search functionality makes finding those articles easy. Plus, it integrates with over 500 other apps, like Evernote, for seamless integration.

And as a bonus, Pocket tweets out their @PocketHits for the most-saved articles on their platform — a must-follow if you’re active on Twitter. For other “read-it-later” apps like Pocket, check out Instapaper.

4. Twitter Lists

Twitter can be a streaming mess if you don’t organize the accounts you follow. That’s where Twitter lists come in handy — curated groups of Twitter users that you can categorize and follow separately from the rest of your feed. Here’s one that I created, which I continually manage and update. Even better, if you create a Pocket account, you can easily save articles from Twitter directly into your account.

Click here to learn how to start your first Twitter list.

5. Newsletters

Newsletters serve as a fantastic daily reminder to get your content curation done. For example, I follow HubSpot on Twitter, but don’t always get a chance to see its tweets when I’m busy. Fortunately, HubSpot also offers an email subscription. That way, if I don’t catch something notable on social media, I’m likely to catch it on email.

Whatever industry you’re in, stay on the lookout for newsletter subscriptions. And if a good one doesn’t exist in your industry, that’s the perfect opportunity to create one. But before you start your own newsletter, learn from what other outlets are doing. Here are a few that are doing a great job in original content curation:

• Redef: Jason Hirschhorn, one of the pioneers in social media and formerly the co-president of MySpace, has launched a site curating the best in media, sports, fashion, music and technology. Subscribe to one of Reder’s newsletters for a taste of one of the best in content curation.

• Quartz Daily Brief: Quartz has figured out how to make a text-heavy newsletter a stalwart in the news business with its Daily Brief. The beauty of the newsletter, because it’s text-based, is the cross-platform functionality. Without heavy images, the Daily Brief loads quickly on phones, tablets, and desktops, making it easy to read on any device.
• Internet Brunch: Digital agency Big Spaceship created Internet Brunch to help folks “find the best news, GIFs, and trends from across the Internet.” From holidays, to current events, to celebrity birthdays, this roundup is sure to cover the important stuff that helps readers stay in the loop.

For Intermediate Content Curators

Here are some great sources for when you’ve got the basics covered — resources like newsletters, social media, and read-it-later apps. But you’re looking for something a little more comprehensive, and if you’re willing to pay for a subscription, these are the comprehensive, algorithmically generated digests of news, feeds, and content to check out.

6. Scoop.it

Pricing: Free – $67/month

I like to think of Scoop.it as a nexus of content curation and social media, with a Pinterest-like user interface. Start with a topic of interest, and Scoop.it will not only generate the most relevant articles to view and share, but also, will suggest complementary topics and other Scoop.it users to follow. The site sends a daily update of the topics you follow, too, to help you keep pace with the most relevant articles to share.

The free version allows you to monitor one topic for posting, on two social media accounts. For a more robust platform that follows multiple topics for sharing across all your social channels, you might want to look into the paid options.

7. Feedly

Pricing: Free – $18 per user, per month

Feedly is a supercharged RSS Feed. Here, content curation takes two routes: There’s web browsing 1.0 which is essentially visiting one site at a time, copying a URL, and pasting it accordingly. Then, there’s the news aggregation route that’s powered by Feedly. By simply adding a few of your favorite sources to Feedly, you can aggregate and browse these feeds in one place from your desktop and mobile devices. You can find a visual tutorial here.

8. Sniply

Pricing: $29 – $299/month

Sniply is a conversion platform — by way of content curation. In a nutshell, it allows users to add a call-to-action to everything they share. “For example,” the site reads, “you can attach a button to the page that links to your own website, so that people can discover you while they read.”

It’s also a custom link shortener, so you can create branded links that are short enough to share on Twitter and the like. Here’s a quick video to show how it works:

7. Quuu

Quuu is a free software that integrates with most major social media scheduling tools, including HubSpot. The tool analyzes your social posts, platforms, and channels and recommends only content for you to share either in your integrated scheduler’s dashboard or on your account on its website. 

You can also set Quuu to auto-pilot and have it automatically schedule out Tweets or social posts with recommended content. 

Here’s a quick video that shows you how to integrate Quuu with your social scheduling tools:

9. UpContent

Pricing information not available | Demo available by request

With UpContent, which also integrates with HubSpot’s marketing tools, you can set up an account and create a dashboard where you’ll regularly see recommendations of content you can share from trusted resources. With the dashboard, you can select and interesting piece of content and then click on a dropdown list to mark whether you want to share it on a blog, social site, or other platform. 

For Advanced Content Curators

Now we’re getting into some serious, enterprise-level curation software. These solutions work best for companies looking for a proven platform that’s capable of working with a team of users, editors, and content curators.

Enterprise-level curation provides users with advanced algorithms to find quantitatively relevant content for their audiences, a centralized publishing platform, and the ability to customize content, teams, and publishing channels.

10. Curata

Pricing information not available | Demo available by request

The power of Curata lies in its ability to recommend and help users discover content relevant to their respective audiences, without a ton of human labor. Users can fine-tune, customize, and categorize content sources for review, and then distribute them, all from one central platform. The publishing and promotion allows you to repurpose curated content across your blog, social, newsletter, and automated marketing platforms.

11. PublishThis

Pricing information not available | Demo available by request

Like Curata, PublishThis promotes the reliability of its algorithm to source relevant content for your audience–saving the time and headache that go with daily curation. It’s largely powered by what it calls Big Content, which is illustrated in this image below:  

In addition to customizing curated content to specific audiences, PublishThis also helps users manage and distribute original content, as well as adding conversions. As noted above, pricing information isn’t made publicly available, but a demo can be requested here.

12. Scribble Live

Pricing information not available | Demo available by request

Scribbe Live, formerly known as Trapit, may have once been designed purely for content creation, but now, its capabilities have expanded into employee advocacy — tools that help employees “follow best practices” on social media, as well as helping internal leaders become established thought leaders — and social selling.

Of course, the content element still remains. Some of the major pillars of Scribble’s platform include the ability to discover, organize, personalize, and distribute content. That’s where the social selling comes in — it helps users prospect, network, and build relationships by sharing the information that’s going to be most relevant to their targeted audiences.

Which Tool Is Right For You?

Before you select the best tools for your business, it’s important to understand the role content curation will play in your marketing operations and the size of your team. If you’re a one-person marketing department, for example, the beginner and intermediate options should suffice for your needs. As your business and team grow, content curation may play a larger role and require more powerful software.

At that point, some of the advanced tools will help save time curating and getting everyone on the same page. Regardless of your team or business size, content curation should become a part of your content marketing strategy. Great curators build trust with their audiences and become an indispensable resource as they help to sift through online information to distribute what’s worth reading.

What curation tools have you found most helpful? Let us know in the comments.

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

As Jerry Maguire once said — “Show me the money.”

That phrase is probably something you’ve thought of as a marketer who has invested in paid advertising.

With paid advertising, you want to enhance your marketing campaign by showing up in the right place, at the right time, with the right content.

But sometimes, running paid ads — like pay-per-click (PPC) on Google — feels like you’re spending a lot of money without seeing any results.

Whether it’s because your ads are disruptive or need a redesign, most consumers ignore ads online. In fact, 64% of respondents in a HubSpot study said ads are annoying and intrusive.

Plus, 45% of people report, “I don’t notice online ads anymore, even if I don’t block them.”

Contextual targeting is the solution to that problem.

Below, let’s review what contextual targeting is and the difference between contextual and behavioral targeting. We’ll also explore contextual keyword targeting and how to get started with contextual ads.

For example, if you’re running a local marketing campaign for your coffee shop, you might create a PPC ad. Then, if someone who lives nearby is reading a blog about the best types of coffee, your ad might show up.

This is a good example of contextual targeting because Google used the person’s location, so your ad is only showing up to people who are in the vicinity of your shop.

Additionally, in this example, this person is interested in coffee and wanted to read about different types of coffee, so an ad for a coffee shop isn’t disruptive to the user experience. This makes it more likely that they will respond positively to your ad.

So, what’s the difference between contextual targeting and behavioral targeting?

Contextual Targeting vs. Behavioral Targeting

While contextual targeting is done through matching keywords and topics, behavioral targeting is when ads appear to users based on their online behaviors.

Behavioral targeting could include browsing history, links clicked, time spent on the page or site, how recently they’ve searched for something, and how they engaged with a site overall.

Visitors with similar patterns are grouped together, so advertisers can specifically target a group of people with a certain browsing history. This is typically called retargeting.

For instance, let’s say I was in the market for new shoes. (And, let’s be honest — I’m always in the market for new shoes.) I begin searching for new shoes by typing in “running shoes” or “hiking boots.” I’m just beginning my research, so I don’t make a purchase. Later that night, I go on Facebook, and all I see are ads for hiking boots and running shoes. That is behavioral targeting in action.

Let’s say I’m in that same situation — researching new shoes. During my research, I start reading a blog on the best type of running shoes. On the right-hand side, I see a few ads for new running shoes, as well as a nearby running store in my area. That is contextual targeting.

But how does contextual targeting really work? One word — keywords.

Contextual Keyword Targeting

Contextual targeting is done through keywords and topics — or central themes of a website.

When you get started with your PPC ads in Google, you can select highly targeted keywords and topics so your ad only shows up on sites related to those themes.

These keywords will define where you want your ads to appear.

For example, if you’re running an ad for dumbbells, you might select keywords like “dumbbells,” “strength equipment,” or “workout equipment.” Then, your ad would only show up on sites with those keywords.

You can also input negative keywords. In this case, you might include “barbells” as a negative keyword term, so your dumbbell ad doesn’t show up when someone isn’t even searching for dumbbells.

If you choose to run an ad solely based on topics, instead of keywords, you might run that same dumbbell ad and choose a theme of “health and fitness.” Going this route means that your ad will be less targeted, and could have less impact and fewer results.

According to Google, each ad group should contain anywhere from five to 50 keywords. You can use the Google Keyword Tool to help build your keyword list.

To build your keyword list, don’t use long-tail keywords like you might for organic campaigns. With paid advertising, you’ll want to use shorter, sometimes broader keywords.

So, what do contextual ads look like in action? Let’s review a few examples.

1. Coffeemaker Example

Roasty is a free blog that focuses on finding and brewing delicious coffee. While I was reading an article, “A Complete List of Every Type of Coffee That Exists”, I came across an ad for a Cuisinart Coffeemaker.

This ad wasn’t disruptive to my reading process because it fit in well with the content I was reading.

See image below for what the ad looked like:

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2. Pizza Cutter Example

Kitchn is an online daily food magazine. While reading, “How To Make Awesome Pizza at Home,” I came across an ad for a pizza cutter.

This is a great example of contextual ads in practice:

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3. Delta Example

Recently I was perusing a Forbes article, “How These 6 Millennials Travel The World For A Living,” when I came across an ad for Delta.

This is a contextual ad because I was reading an article about travel, and then I saw an ad for an airline — it’s likely Delta chose “travel” as a keyword to target for their ads. Plus, the ad was even more targeted because it included locations close to me in Orange County, California:

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When you’re running a paid advertising campaign, it’s important to be as specific as you can with your targeting options. Ultimately, your targeting can make or break the success of your ad.

According to a report from Podcast Insights, there are more than 750,000 active podcasts and counting.

Sounds like a huge pool right?

If you’re an advertiser interested in spreading awareness to podcast listeners, the huge pool of podcasts might seem promising — but also overwhelming.

On a promising note, the growing number of podcasts has resulted in even more advertiser interest. Statista recently reported that podcast ad spend is projected to hit $534 million in the U.S. alone by 2020.

As a marketer for a small to mid-sized business, you might be interested in podcast sponsorship, but not know where to start. Mainly because there are so many podcasts to choose from. How do you know which podcasts your target audience is listening to?

Since podcasting is relatively new compared to more traditional advertising practices like print or radio ads, you also might be wondering, “Is podcast sponsorship worth it, or just a passing trend?”

To help you determine what ad strategy is right for you and where to put your first podcast dollars, I spoke with Sam Balter, HubSpot’s Podcast Manager, and did some additional research to comprise a list of helpful strategies for finding, vetting, and advertising in a podcast that aligns with your brand.

1. Consider podcast demographics.

While different types of TV shows might attract different audiences or demographics, the podcast demographics don’t change drastically from show to show, according to Balter. Balter explained that the podcast audience demographic, which is generally made up of “affluent educated millennials” is a “good audience for brands pretty much regardless of what show you’re on.”

Why is podcast audience so good? Because of their age, income, and education level, this particular group of people is old enough to make purchasing decisions and has enough income to make those purchases. Because many of them have jobs or are in higher education, these listeners might be interested in learning about a wide range of products or services that make daily life or work easier for them.

Another great thing about podcast listeners is that they’ll tune into podcast episodes for a longer amount of time than they will to other content, like video. The podcast audience also enjoys long-form podcasts that are 30 minutes or longer. Since there’s much less of drop off on a podcast compared to other forms of content, like video, this means that ads could be placed towards the beginning or end of an episode and still have a good chance of being heard.

2. Understand standard podcast ad pricing.

The next question you might be asking is, “How much will advertising on a podcast cost?”

If you’re new to the podcast advertising world, you might not know how ads are usually prices. You might be worried that all podcast ads might have vastly different prices — or that podcasters will charge a lot for a poor ad slot.

Podcast ad pricing might be more transparent than you think. According to Balter, podcasters and podcast networks commonly use the same formula to determine how much an ad in their podcasts will cost.

If you want to get a ballpark idea of what ad slots for a specific show might cost before reaching out to a podcast team or network, plug the metrics you can find for that show’s previous episodes into the formula shown below.

In the above formula, CPM stands for “cost per mille,” or cost per 1,000 impressions.

Balter says that the cost of a standard ad in a podcast usually costs between $10 and $50 with more popular podcasts also charging a premium.

However, if you want to do a more intensive promotion — such as a full sponsored podcast episode — this cost may vary based on what the content will entail from the podcasters. For example, Gimlet, a prominent podcast network that produces shows like Mastercard’s “Fortune Favors the Bold”, offers two tiers of advertising: audio ads and branded podcasts.

3. Look for podcasts that relate to your brand or industry.

Because the pool of podcasts is so large, there are plenty of opportunities to connect with niche audiences that relate to your specific industry.

When an ad relates to the topic of a podcast series or episode, it might feel more natural to the listener. It’s also strategically smart because listeners who are interested in this industry might identify with pain points that your service aims to solve.

For example, if you place an ad about your B2B recruiting service on a podcast that discusses human resources, listeners who own or manage a B2B company, or human resources employees, might want to use your service to make their jobs easier.

Here’s an example outside of the B2B world. On an episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience“, a general podcast that zones in on topics like technology, science, and entertainment, Joe Rogan reads a script that talks about how he uses ExpressVPN and Cash App in his daily life. Before going into detail about how he uses these products, he also notes that these companies sponsored the episode.

In the ad, Rogan explains that he uses ExpressVPN to protect his internet data and personal information, while he uses Cash App to pay friends or make transactions on-the-go from his phone. If you can’t listen to the podcast, here’s a quick excerpt from the ad:

“With all the recent news about online security breaches, it’s very hard not to worry about where your data goes. Making an online purchase or simply accessing your email could put your private information at risk … That’s why I decided to take back my privacy using ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN has easy to use apps and runs seamlessly in the background of my computer phone tablet.”

Although Rogan notes that he’s reading sponsored material before beginning the segment, the services he discusses relate to technology, handy apps, and internet security, which are topics that he has covered on “The Joe Rogan Experience”. Additionally, these topics might be interesting to the millennial podcast audience which is highly tuned into smartphone and computer technology.

Lastly, because Rogan describes his own experiences with ExpressVPN, the segment feels less like an ad and more like a friendly recommendation. In fact, listeners who are fans of Rogan might trust that he has used the advertised product and that he had a good experience with it. If they think he’s a credible recommendation source, they might choose or consider ExpressVPN when looking for a data security provider.

After an example, you need a brief section that sums up what readers should get from the example. In this case, something like, “One of the main selling points of advertising on a podcast is that listeners are already comfortable with the host. When the host reads your ad copy, there’s already a level of trust between the host and audience that wouldn’t be there with alternative mediums like video or display ads. It’s almost like a lightweight celebrity endorsement.”

4. Use your competitors for inspiration.

As with any new marketing or advertising technique, a competitive analysis can help you identify what similar companies are doing, as well as opportunities where you can get ahead of them.

If you have a direct competitor who has advertised on various podcasts, see if those shows might fit your ad strategy as well. Similarly, if there are brands in your industry that provide non-competing services and use podcast advertising, try to identify shows that they advertise on.

From there, you could either look into contacting these podcast producers or their networks or look for podcasts that have a similar level of success and discuss similar topics. While you shouldn’t directly copy what your competitor is doing, a competitive analysis could still inspire you to develop an ad strategy or promotional content that improves upon that of similar brands.

5. Purchase multiple ads for small shows rather than one for big podcasts.

As you start researching podcasts, you might find a long list of shows that will align very well with your product or service. When that happens, do you invest in one expensive ad for the biggest show with the most promising numbers? Or, do you use that money for multiple ads on different podcast episodes?

Balter says, “It’s better to play an ad multiple times on a smaller show then try to a single ad on a big show.”

If major podcasts have a huge listenership and ad premiums, you’ll have to pay much more for one or two ads that may or may not be memorable. While you might get great visibility, this could be a huge gamble. If the ads don’t provide ROI, you’ll lose ad dollars.

That’s why the safest strategy is to follow Balter’s advice and choose frequency over sheer audience reach.

Look at a number of smaller podcasts that still have engaging content and really relate to your product or business. Then invest a bit of your spend in each. If one or two don’t pan out well but the others do, consider swapping the low performing podcasts out with other shows or purchasing more ads on episodes of podcasts that are giving you revenue or brand awareness.

6. Advertise on multiple podcasts within the same network.

If you plan to invest in multiple podcasts — or multiple ads within a podcast episode — and find a network that produces multiple shows that align with your product, consider building a relationship with that network and putting your ad dollars there.

In the podcast world, Balter explains that advertising on shows within the same network is called a “pulsing” strategy, adding that it’s better than airing multiple ads on one podcast episode but still can have similar reach.

“Because people who listen to Gimlet shows are likely to listen to other Gimlet shows, you can get a solid number of impressions off of a few shows over a relatively short amount of time without inundating listeners with the same ad over and over again.”

Here’s an example of a Hendrick’s Gin ad that Gimlet has circulated on a number of its podcasts and displayed on its advertising page.

The native ad begins by telling listeners that the episode they’re listening to is sponsored by Hendrick’s Gin. Then the ad’s narrator goes on to discuss the flavors associated with the beverage and how people who drink it are looking to escape from their mundane life.

This Hendrick’s ad feels unique but it speaks to a wide variety of people that could be bored with their lives and doesn’t note specific industries. The ad also doesn’t specify the podcast it’s on which makes it easy to place in many different ones.

7. Be vigilant of dishonest podcasters.

As you research various podcasts — especially those that are smaller, you might realize that it’s easy to find numbers and success metrics for some, while others are less transparent. Because of this, you’ll want to do some extra digging and properly vet the podcasts at the top of your list to make sure they’re legitimate.

Balter warns, “Downloads are not algorithmically verified, therefore people sometimes make up how many downloads their show gets. So, if you’re sponsoring a less reputable podcast, make sure to get download numbers for a single episode.”

If you want to verify that the podcast is giving accurate numbers before reaching out to them, here are a few steps you can take.

• Look at all the sites they post their podcasts on: If they post on a major site like SoundCloud or Spotify, you should be able to see general platform-provided view numbers to get an idea of how successful their podcast was.
• Look for them on social media: While podcasters might not be airing episodes on social media, they might have a following or a few social accounts to spread awareness of the show. If they do, look at the follower count, likes, and visual signs of engagement on these pages. If you can find signs of social engagement and a following, this might be a sign that they have a legitimate audience.
• Work with a credible network: Many credible networks might be transparent about podcast numbers to potential and current advertisers. Additionally, you can look at the success of the network’s other shows as evidence that they’re associated with engaging content.

When you do finally talk to the podcast producers, get as much specific data as possible about views and impressions. If they have or have had advertisers in the past, you might want to ask them if their advertisers have seen an ROI. If they can show proof that advertisers make more money than they spend on ad slots, this shows that ads on this podcast can be successful.

8. Consider purchasing back catalog space.

A back catalog is a collection of a podcast’s previously recorded episodes. Back catalog podcast episodes might still be listened to, shared quite regularly by listeners, and up for grabs when it comes to ad space.

Because back catalog episodes have already aired and don’t seem like an obvious ad opportunity, Balter says this tactic is “interesting and something a lot of people don’t consider.”

If you do decide to advertise in back catalog podcasts, zone specifically into evergreen episodes that will continue to remain relevant for a longer period of time.

For example, if you’re a marketer for an e-commerce home-shopping site, you could advertise in back catalog podcasts about DIY ideas or home decorating. This type of podcast won’t age drastically over time and might be relevant to anyone listening to podcasts about those topics.

While these podcasts might’ve already been promoted during their first launch, podcasters are often encouraged to re-promote evergreen back catalog content. Your brand could also share the podcast on your company’s social channels for some added promotion.

9. Determine what type of promotion you’d like to run.

While some companies like to create standard native ads that exist as pre-roll or mid-roll within a podcast episode, other brands might pay the podcast producers to create sponsored content.

Similarly, advertisers might want to script the ad and have the host read it, or have the host casually work product discussion into the podcast conversation, so it feels more natural. Some podcasts may only offer certain types of sponsorship options, but if you still want to consider the different types, here are a few with an example for each:

Native Ad:

A native ad is created by the brand for the podcast. With this common strategy, you’ll create a short audio clip that discusses your product, service, or another promotion related to your brand. These usually run for 30 seconds or less and sound a lot like audio ads you’d hear on traditional radio stations. These ads usually air as pre-roll or mid-roll ads after a podcast host says something like, “And now, a word from our sponsors.”

Below is an example of an ad for the Toyota RAV4. In the 30-second ad, a narrator describes all the unique features that make the car safe, reliable, and fast. Like the Hendrick’s Gin ad noted above, the ad doesn’t acknowledge a specific podcast so it can be shared on multiple different shows.

If you’re looking for inspiration for a quirkier native ad, check out GEICO’s list of ads, which have been aired on both radio and podcasts.

Sponsored Content:

With sponsored content or branded podcasts, you pay the podcast production team to create interesting content about a topic related to your industry of the company.

While the content might not discuss your product outright, the podcast hosts will note that your brand sponsored the podcast — and most likely include some information about your product or service.

If the podcast is valuable and interesting to the listener, they might remember your brand and affiliate informative content with your company.

One recent example was a mini-series called “The Sauce” in 2018. The podcast, sponsored by McDonald’s — and created by Gizmodo and Onion Labs — investigated why people rioted over the removal of Szechuan Sauce from the McDonald’s menu. While the podcast has since been removed from Apple podcasts, you can find a short preview for it on Gizmodo’s Facebook page.

Paid Interview:

This is a type of sponsored content where an expert from or affiliated with an advertising brand is interviewed in exchange for the sponsorship dollars. While this gives your company’s experts an opportunity to spread brand awareness and show their expertise, it also allows the podcast to create interesting interview content about a topic related to its own mission.

In the example below, Daymond John interviews a rep from ZipRecruiter, on the podcast, “Rise and Grind.” Because the podcast series regularly discussed business, entrepreneurship, and management, this ZipRecruiter-sponsored interview about hiring talent, still feels like a natural piece of content.

This paid interview tactic could also work for businesses in other industries as well. For example, if you’re a marketer for a cookbook publisher, you could pay for a chef who created some of a new book’s recipes to get interviewed on a podcast related to cooking, home-making, or DIY.

In another example, if your company sells medical devices, you could pay for your CEO or an executive to be interviewed on a podcast that touches on medical news or technological advances.

In either example, audiences who listen to those podcasts because they want to learn more about topics or products within their industry might hear the interviews, gain insight from the experts, and trust your brand more.

Product Placement:

This is a form of sponsored content where podcasters are paid to mention your product casually in the podcast’s discussion.

In a classic example, the “My Brother, My Brother, and Me” podcast aired an episode about Totinos which was sponsored by Totinos.

While the hosts played games and had random discussions about life, as they’ve done in most of their episodes, they were chewing Totino’s pizza rolls most of the time and made each game or featured piece of content center around the food product.

Direct Response Ads

This is a native ad that feels like a product placement where the host reads a short script written by the advertiser. The ad ends with the host telling listeners to do something, such as click a link or use a coupon code. Unlike the more traditional pre-roll or mid-roll native ad, the listener is still immersed in the experience of listening to the host.

Although the host notes that their discussion is sponsored, it still might make the listener feel like they are getting a solid recommendation from the host.

On Dax Shepard’s podcast, “The Armchair Expert,” he includes at least one direct response ad in the middle of each episode. At the 65:00 mark of this episode, Shepard reads a script that explains the benefits of using the meal-delivery service DoorDash. Then, he tells listeners to download DoorDash and use the code “DAX” to get $5 off of their first order:

10. Purchase ad spots online.

If you’re just looking to purchase a standard ad slot and already have an audio clip, some tools allow you to purchase space and target ads to appear on multiple podcasts.

For example, if you’re just planning to target one or two simple native ads to millennials on Spotify, you might want to use Spotify Ad Studio to create and launch basic native ads on the music platform. If you want to launch to multiple host-read ads in a number of different podcasts, you could consider using a service like Midroll, where you can submit ad information and purchase ad slots in a variety of different podcasts.

11. Or, reach out personally to podcasts you’d like to work with.

If you want to do something that requires more planning, like sponsored content, a paid interview, or preparing scripted product placements, you should make an in-person connection with podcasters.

Once you’ve done your research and found a few podcasts you’re interested in, reach out to begin discussing your advertising options. Send an email with a little bit about your brand and why you think you could work well with them as an advertiser. Be sure to also ask about their growth and key success metrics to confirm that they are as promising as you think.

12. Monitor your progress.

Regardless of what type of promotion you purchase, you should be tracking your money spent compared to the money the advertisement earned. This will help you determine the ROI of your campaigns.

If you’re publishing promotions on multiple podcasts, this will be an important way to tell which might warrant more advertisements and which might require less to no ad spend.

With this post on marketing ROI, you can learn how to use a simple formula to calculate and find a few examples of how it can be used when strategizing in the real world.

Navigating Podcast Sponsorship

The podcast landscape is a pool of growing opportunities for marketers. And, if you’re ready to start testing the sponsorship waters, be sure to keep these key tips in mind.

• Find podcasts that align with your brand: People are listening to an episode to get informed about a specific topic. If your ad aligns well with it, they might be interested in learning more about your product.
• Choose frequency over audience reach: It’s less risky and more efficient to invest in multiple ads on smaller podcasts rather than just one or two ads on a major podcast.
• Consider working with a network: Networks may provide more legitimate view numbers and have a variety of podcasts with similar audiences that you can air your ads on.

Want to learn more about general podcasting? Here’s a post that Balter wrote about what he learned from launching three HubSpot podcasts.

We get it: Social media metrics are important. Getting data and ROI is really important. However, if you spend too much time trying to figure out which metrics are important for your business, you won’t have any time to analyze and act upon them.

That’s why we’ve made a list of the social media metrics that are essential to track, so you don’t miss out on important numbers that can help you later. These metrics will give you insight into customers, how to track ROI, improve your brand presence online, and walk away with happier customers.

Social Media Metrics are imperative to social strategy. They give you an inside look at how your channels are performing and how you are perceived by your target audience. They can also give provide you with ways to improve upon your strategy.

1. Audience growth rate

To measure your audience growth rate, begin by selecting a reporting period. Then, calculate your new followers over that specific period. After that, you’d need to divide your new followers by your total followers.;

So let’s say your brand’s Twitter account has 6,000 followers in September, at the end of Q3. For Q4, you want to measure your audience growth rate from October 1st to December 31st. If by December 31st, you have 8,657 followers, then your audience growth rate for Q4 is 69%.;

2. Social share of voice

How many people are talking about your brand on social channels? Let’s find out.;

Your social share of voice measures this data and shows how visible your brand is on social media. Finding these numbers could tell you whether you need to update your social strategy or not.;

To calculate your social share of voice, measure your mentions across your social networks. Hint: Your social media analytics tools can be helpful when calculating this number. Next, add your mentions in tandem with the mentions of competitors, which can be tracked using an online social media tool like Sprout Social. This gives you the total industry number of mentions. Here is an example of what metrics of engagement would look like:

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After you divide your brand mentions by the total industry number, multiply this number by 100 to get the social share of voice percentage.;

Let’s put this in perspective. Over a week, your brand has been mentioned directly and indirectly 100 times. Three competitors have 500 mentions, plus yours equals 600. Taking 100 divided by 600 and multiplying that number by 100 means your Social Share of Voice is 16.67%.;

3. Keywords

Tracking keywords can grow your social share of voice and audience growth rate. Keywords are certain words that search engines identify and target based on what audiences are searching for. A marketer in the tech industry might see the keywords, “Media Marketing,” and “Tech Channels.”;

By tracking keywords, you can optimize your content to rank higher on search engines and grow your audience. You can track keywords by using social media analytics software, like Google Analytics or SEMrush.;

4. Customer response rate

Customers love to engage with brands via social media.;

In fact, in a survey done by The Manifest, 96% of respondents engage with brands they follow on social media. Whether they’re asking your customer service team questions or leaving your business reviews, make sure you’re answering as many mentions as possible on social media. To track how you’re doing here, check your customer response rate.;

To calculate your customer response rate, divide the number of responses you give to your followers/customers by the number of people who engaged with your brand and multiply this by 100.;

For example, if you measured a week of engagement, and the number of customers who engaged with your brand was 50, and you responded to half of them, your customer response rate would be 50%.;

5. ROI data

This is the big metric, the one you want to see from day one. Depending on your company and industry, ROIs can differ greatly. For social media, you probably want to know if the time and money you’ve spent on social media is turning into customers, sales, or brand awareness.;

Since ROI looks different from one business to the next and calculations are based on your business goals, not every formula will look the same. But, use this formula to figure out a basic ROI.; Let’s say you made $1500 in revenue from social media ads or eCommerce and your investment was $500. Your ROI is revenue subtracted from investment (1500 minus 500), which makes your profit $1,000 and your ROI 100%.;

6. Channel reports

Keeping track of social media data is important so that you know where and how to focus your strategy. For instance, if one of your accounts just isn’t hitting their numbers, a report would let you know and allow you to proactively step in and troubleshoot.;

If you need an update about say, channel performance and follower counts, consider conducting a social media audit or using a social media analytics tool that conducts an audit for you.

7. Conversion rate

Your conversion rate is made up of the number of visitors to your website that take your desired action. This might mean that they downloaded your eBook, signed up for your newsletter, or clicked “Play” on your podcast. Conversion rates show how relevant your content is to your audience.;

If you want to calculate the conversion rate, start by making sure your call-to-action link is trackable. You can do this by using a free, online URL shortener like Bitly. Next, analyze your campaign to identify the number of clicks and conversions your page has gained.

After that, divide your conversions by total clicks and multiply it by conversion rate. If your webpage has about 750 clicks and 200 conversions, then your conversion rate is 26.6%. Keep in mind that conversion rate numbers are not mutually exclusive,and can be low even if traffic is high.;

8. Cost-per-click (CPC)

This is an important metric if you’re investing in social media. Cost-per-click (CPC) is what you pay per click on a sponsored social media post, like a banner ad. CPC is helpful when determining if your investment is worth continuing.;

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Here is the CPC Formula from The Online Advertising Guide. To view this as an example, say you want to calculate the CPC of your latest round of ads. Divide the total money spent on your ads by the total number of times the ad was clicked on.

9. Net promoter score (NPS)

Net Promoter Score (NPS®) measures customers that are loyal to your brand. It’s the answer you’re looking for, when asking customers how likely they are to recommend your business to a friend. Tracking NPS is easier than it seems.

There are three categories that go into tracking NPS. When you ask customers to rate your business 1-10, scorers that answer 9-10 are “Promoters.” “Passives” score 7-8, and “Detractors” are 0-6.;

Identifying your NPS is as simple as subtracting “Detractors” from “Promoters” and dividing that by the number of total respondents. Then, multiply that number by 100. So, if you have 50 “Promoters” and 10 “Detractors” from a survey with 70 respondents, your NPS would be 57%.

Tracking metrics can sometimes be easy. Sometimes, businesses realize that it’s worth the investment to invest in social media tracking tools to help them run more smoothly.

In 2018, 40% of people used social media channels for aspects of product research.

With younger generations getting more and more connected to social media platforms, the amount of product research done on these platforms is likely to grow. In fact, 16 to 24-year-olds already conduct product research more on social than search engines.

Throughout the past few years, social media channels have embraced their new role as product research platforms, devoting certain areas or features of their platforms to brands and products.

For example, Facebook Ads is considered an alternative to Google Ads, YouTube is a go-to site for learning about new products, Instagram offers Shoppable posts, and Reddit users regularly participate in discussion threads about products. Meanwhile, Pinterest continues to position itself as a tool for advertisers by improving its ad software.

With all the social media platforms and product marketing opportunities out there, it might be hard to drill down on which platforms are key to your product marketing strategy.

By now, you might be on all the major social media platforms. But, as they expand and evolve, you might still wonder which you should focus your time and efforts on if you’re selling a physical product. To determine this, it can be helpful to find out which social channels your specific audience is using to look for products, and then create social strategies that meet them where they are on their preferred platforms.

To learn more about the social networks people prefer to surf for product research, I conducted a poll of 304 people using Lucid Software.

Source: Lucid Software

When asked which channel they turned to most often for product research, 51% of respondents said Facebook.

This result isn’t shocking. Facebook is the second-most used social platform globally, followed by YouTube. Since Facebook is one of the first and most successful social media platforms, you probably should be marketing your brand or products on it if you aren’t already. But, you definitely shouldn’t count out other platforms — like Instagram or Pinterest — just yet.

Below, I’ll give you a rundown of the opportunities each social network listed in the poll above offer when it comes to marketing physical products. I’ll also highlight the key differences that you’ll want to consider when weighing which social product marketing strategies are right for you.

Which Social Media Platform Should You Market Products On?

Facebook

Facebook has a whopping 1.59 billion daily active users and has been around since the early 2000s. Its audience includes multiple age groups and spans the globe, making it a solid place for most brands to market themselves.

When it comes to marketing your product, you have many different options on Facebook. Here are a few examples.

Free Promotion

By now, you probably know that any company can create a Facebook Business Page for free. Once you create a business page, you can begin to share posts about your products and offerings. If you have happy customers, you can even ask them to review your business on Facebook so prospects researching you can see how you’ve pleased your customers in the past.

Aside from creating a page to highlight your brand, you can also post your products in Facebook’s Marketplace. Marketplace listings can include product shots, pricing, product specifications, and purchasing information. Although individual users often use the Marketplace to sell items they no longer want to other people, Facebook Business pages are also eligible to use this feature.

You can also consider talking about your products or offerings on Facebook Stories. This might take a little extra effort because it will require you to film or create content in the Story format, but research says it can be beneficial. In fact, a 2018 survey revealed that 62% of people were more interested in a product after learning about it in a Facebook Story.

Paid Promotion

Because Facebook’s feed algorithmically favors posts from individual accounts over businesses, you might decide that you want to put money into Facebook Ads.

Facebook Ads has a solid track record. It’s estimated that 2 million businesses were advertising on the platform in 2018.

With Facebook Ads, you can create advertisements with a certain goal in mind, such as conversions or in-store foot traffic. The detailed ads software also allows you to target specific audience demographics.

As a Facebook advertiser, you can either promote a post you’ve already created to ensure that it shows up on feeds of users in your demographic, or you can create native ads that might show up in feeds or on Facebook’s sidebars. While promoted posts look like an average post with a simple tag stating they’re promoted, the native ads look more like traditional ads to make it clear to users that the content they’re seeing is paid for.

If you want to launch video-based ads, Facebook also allows you to promote video content or buy in-stream ad placements that appear in Facebook Live videos or longer videos that other users have uploaded.

YouTube:

If how-tos or video tutorials are part of your content marketing strategy. YouTube will be a natural fit for your brand. This is because YouTube users are three times more likely to prefer watching a YouTube tutorial video compared to reading the product’s instructions.

More and more companies are taking notice of YouTube’s product marketing opportunities. In 2018, 45% of marketers said they planned to add YouTube to their 2019 strategy.

With a branded YouTube channel, you can publish video content such as demos, tutorials, or customer testimonial videos that give solid details about why your product is valuable.

By filming your own videos, you can insure that you’re highlighting all the great aspects of your product that make it stand out from its competitors.

Alternatively, if you don’t have time to create your own videos, sponsoring an influencer’s content, tutorial, or review related to your product allows you to tap into that content creator’s audience as they tell their followers more about your offerings.

Aside from creating your own account or hiring an influencer to give a review or tutorial, you could also consider paid advertisements. YouTube offers a few ad styles including TrueView, Preroll, and Bumpers.

These ads allow you to submit a short video ad to YouTube which is then placed at the beginning or in the middle of videos with metrics and demographics that match your brand’s target. To learn the ins and outs of setting up an ad and determining which style is right for you, check out this guide.

Instagram

Although Instagram ranked in third place in the poll above, you shouldn’t disregard Instagram — especially if you’re targeting Gen-Z or millennials who make up the platform’s primary audience.

For years, Instagram’s visual layout has made it a hot spot for influencer marketing. Influencers regularly post sponsored photos and videos about their experiences with products. Like YouTube, these influencers also regularly publish video posts or Stories that present tutorials, reviews, and unboxings related to a product.

Aside from influencer marketing, many brands also promote their products on Instagram Stories, Instagram Live, and through standard video or photo posts on Instagram Feed.

Here’s an example where Kylie Jenner, the CEO and Founder of Kylie Cosmetics, films a Story-based product tutorial for her company’s Instagram account:

Along with free strategies, Instagram now offers Shoppable posts. With Shoppable posts, you can promote a product in an Instagram post that links to your Facebook Catalog. Here’s an example of what a Shoppable Post looks like:

To be eligible for Shoppable posts, you must have an Instagram Business page that’s linked to a Facebook Catalog. This feature is also only for businesses selling physical goods.

Here’s a blog post that goes into detail about how to use and optimize Shoppable posts.

Pinterest

Pinterest encourages people to pin image-based posts that inspire them to digital boards, mimicking the process of creating a physical inspiration board.

Because people come to this platform to be inspired to do something, such as travel or home decorating, they might find themselves pinning all sorts of product-oriented images to a themed board. For example, someone who wants to redecorate their office might create an “Office Inspiration” board and pin photos of furniture or decorative items that they’d like to buy

Here’s an example of what these boards look like:

To make it easier for people to find your products, you could consider starting a Pinterest account and making a few boards to highlight your products. For example, if you’re marketing a travel company, you could make a board for each country that you offer packages to. On each board, you could place images of trip activities that link to your website.

Then, if someone is trying to plan a trip to a country you sell a package for, they might come across one of your posts and pin it to their own “Travel Inspiration” board.

To give you a real-world example of how brands use Pinterest, below is a Wedding Registry board created by Target which features images of products that a bride and groom might want to add to their gift registry.

Each of Target’s pinned images links to the company website so users can share the pin on their own Pinterest board, or click straight through the post to buy or register the product.

If you have an advertising budget, you can also consider launching pay-per-click ads on Pinterest. Pinterest Ads enables your posts to be seen by people in a specific demographic that matches your own. The platform also allows you to A/B test different photos and target ads to Pinterest users on your contact lists.

Want to learn more about Pinterest Ads and effective experiments to run? Check out this blog post from a PPC and Pinterest expert.

Reddit

Reddit encourages users to create discussion threads in themed online communities, called subreddits. As the platform has evolved, many users have created both threads and subreddits devoted to talking about products, like fast-food restaurants or video games.

Below is an example of a subreddit, or online community, that Reddit users created to talk about all things related to Xbox One.

However, because comments with promotional language in them often get downvoted or buried in feeds by more engaging Reddit threads, you’ll need to be creative if you want to engage with audiences on this platform.

While you might want to keep an eye on Reddit or experiment with it, don’t put all of your time and resources into it — at least right now. As it evolves, the platform may become an easier platform to market your brand on, but at the moment, Reddit marketing strategies still require more brainstorming and time than tactics on other social platforms.

Although this platform has been called one of the “trickiest” for marketers to crack, some bigger brands have figured out how to reach the platform’s discussion-oriented users.

For example, some brands will create subreddits related to their product, while others will interact by commenting on threads related to their industry.

Aside from creating content for free on Reddit, you can alternatively pay into sponsored posts or ads, similarly to Facebook or Twitter. These ads will appear in a user’s feed or as a promoted comment in a thread or subreddit.

To learn more about the ins and outs of Reddit marketing, click here for tips and examples of how other brands have cultivated the platform.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn’s platform, which emphasizes networking and career-related chatter, might be well-suited for product marketing in B2B, academic, or professional industries. People who do product research on this platform might be looking for a service, tool, or software that can either help to escalate their careers or make their workdays easier.

If you’re marketing products like software, online courses, business-related publications, or anything that can help a professional or student do their job better, LinkedIn will be a great fit for you. However, if you sell more general consumer-facing products like makeup or home decorations, you might want to put more product-marketing efforts into other platforms on this list — like Facebook or Instagram.

While the professional nature of LinkedIn and its audience might not be suited for all brands, the platform still offers a variety of opportunities to brands that align well with it. For example, research shows that 80% of B2B leads come straight from LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is very similar to Facebook in that you can post about your product or service for free, or purchase ads or post promotion to get information about your business front and center on feeds. To see a few great ad examples, check out this post.

Twitter

Twitter has 126 million daily users from a variety of backgrounds, geographic locations, and industries. Its broad demographic might provide solid marketing opportunities to many different types of businesses. Because of its broad user base, you might want to create an account on Twitter and post regularly for brand awareness purposes.

If you’re interested in video marketing, you can also experiment with Twitter’s live video feature and use it to film a tutorial or Q&A related to your product.

Aside from posting about your product for free, you can also pay into targeted ads or promoted tweets. Twitter claims that its advertising ROI is 40% higher than some other social channels.

While the ROI of Twitter advertising and its user base sounds promising, you might be wondering why it ranked so low on the poll shown above.

Ultimately, what might make Twitter rank last in the product research poll is its platform’s trend-oriented nature. The platform encourages people to connect with each other and post tweets or comments about current events, trending hashtags, or their thoughts on other specific topics.

Yes, brands and product discussion are both prevalent on the platform, but users might go to Twitter to learn more about what’s going on in the world, rather than new products. When people are asked to pick which platform they do the most product research on, it’s not surprising that Facebook or YouTube might seem like a more obvious choice than Twitter.

While you should be on Twitter due to its sheer user base and advertising ROI, you’ll want to keep its audience’s need to stay trendy and informed in mind as you’re creating posts and advertisements for the platform. This might help you make social content that both engages these audiences while still weaving in information about how valuable your product is.

Identifying the Right Platforms for Product Marketing

While running ads and product promotions on all of these platforms could be helpful and lead to conversion, you’ll want to primarily focus on the platforms with audiences that already align well with your brand.

For example, broader audiences are actively looking for products or researching brands on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest while Reddit and Twitter users just want to follow trends. Similarly, if you’re marketing a B2B company, you might see a better ROI from ads on a professional network like LinkedIn than ads on a more consumer-friendly platform like Instagram.

To learn more about all the major social channels and what drives their audiences, check out this detailed blog post that highlights the five types of social media platforms.

Oprah.

Dave Ramsey.

Seth Godin.

Besides being highly successful in business, these people are known as thought-leaders — or experts — in their industry.

Similarly, as a marketer, being an expert in your field is crucial. To do that, you have to drive traffic to your site, nurture and convert leads, and build brand authority and reputation.

That’s where thought leadership comes in.

According to research by Edelman and LinkedIn, out of 1,200 respondents, 58% read one or more hours of thought leadership per week. Additionally, 55% of respondents said they use thought leadership to vet organizations they may hire.

Consuming thought leadership content also affects purchasing decisions. In fact, 60% of decision-makers said thought leadership convinced them to buy a product or service they weren’t previously considering.

Below, let’s review what thought leadership is and how to use it in your marketing strategy. We’ll also explore the best examples and types of content you can consider creating.

A person or company might use thought leadership as a content marketing strategy because providing value to your audience demonstrates your brand helpfulness. Then, down the road when someone is seeking a product or service like the ones you provide, they’ll consider you an expert and turn to you first.

If you’re good at it, you’ll increase awareness among your target audience, generate more leads, improve social proof, and boost engagement online.

For instance, Brian Dean is a thought leader in the SEO space. By regularly posting content related to his expertise, he’s proven his value as a content marketer worth following.

So, how do you incorporate thought leadership into your marketing strategy? Here, we’ll analyze the top thought leadership marketing tips.

Thought Leadership Marketing

Now that we’ve covered what thought leadership is, let’s review some best practices before you get started.

1. Know your audience and continue learning about them.

Knowing your audience is the key to succeeding with any marketing strategy, and thought leadership is no different. Begin with your buyer persona. What motivates, inspires, or causes your audience pain? What questions are they asking? To figure this out, look on social media or conduct customer interviews. Once you know these things, you can begin answering their questions with thought leadership content.

Additionally, it’s important to continuously check-in and reevaluate your buyer personas. Are your customer’s questions changing over time? Do their pain points look the same today as they did when you first began as a company? People evolve, and so will your audience.

2. Be active on social media.

Social media is an effective opportunity to build your brand and expertise. First, social media keeps you active and engaged with your community. Second, you can use it to comment on industry news and ensure your brand voice is heard in conversations regarding relevant industry trends.

Plus, you can use social media to promote thought leadership content in an organic way without seeming too promotional.

3. Publish content in a variety of places.

Creating thought leadership content doesn’t just mean posting on your blog. It also means being active on social media, guest posting on other sites, and speaking at events or on podcasts.

It’s important to mix it up with owned media versus other media sources. Additionally, consider having a combination of written content vs. video content vs. audio content, like podcasts.

Ultimately, thought leadership content should show up wherever your audience is.

4. Analyze what competitors are doing.

If your competitors are creating thought leadership content, analyze what they’re doing. How often are they posting? Where are they posting? Don’t be afraid to get inspiration from your competitors.

Plus, you can also look and see what your competitors are missing. Perhaps you can fill in gaps in the content they’re putting out.

5. Create valuable content.

In order to truly succeed at thought leadership, you need to create valuable content. Show that you’re an expert in the industry by speaking intelligently on specific issues in the industry. It’s important to dig deep and show off your expertise in one subject area at a time.

For instance, it can be tricky to prove yourself an expert in marketing as a whole (at least in the beginning), but you can have the director of SEO at your company create content for your blog or LinkedIn to demonstrate your brand’s specific expertise in SEO.

6. Be genuine.

We can’t say it enough, but being too promotional doesn’t connect with your audience. In fact, it’ll probably annoy them. You should produce content that is genuine and authentic to your brand. Additionally, you want to make sure your content makes sense to everyone, offers perspective, and is supported with market-backed research that’ll help inform your audience’s opinions or decisions. Using examples, facts, and quotes will go a long way.

Once you’ve thought about adding thought leadership to your marketing strategy, it’s time to dive into the type of content you’ll want to create.

So, how do you come up with content ideas to talk or write about?

To start, you could do some keyword research to see what people are asking. This goes back to understanding your audience so you can create content that answers their questions.

You’ll also want to keep in mind industry news. Is there anything pressing going on? Are there any issues being discussed in your field? If so, address those and forecast the future of your industry.

Additionally, you can’t go wrong with articles using formats like tips, how-tos, or best practices. You’ll just want to ensure you’re producing long-form, educational content that your audience wants to read.

After you’ve considered the format and type of content you want to produce, it’s time to dive deep into the strategy.

Thought Leadership Strategy

Before you jump into thought leadership, you’ll want to have a strategy and a game plan for how you’re going to move forward.

Here’s a simple step-by-step process you can use as a starting point:

Step 1: Set a SMART goal. SMART goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely goals. Before you begin working on thought leadership, have a goal for what you want to get out of it, whether it’s increased traffic to your site or lead generation.

Step 2: Brainstorm content ideas. Think about your personas. Is your content focused and strategic to what they want to read or watch? What are they searching for and asking on social media? Answer these questions during your brainstorming session.

Step 3: Analyze competitors. To kickstart more brainstorming ideas, answer questions like, “Who is my audience currently going to for answers?” Again, you’ll want to fill in the gaps in their content and talk about what they aren’t.

Step 4: Create and distribute content. Once you’ve decided what content to create, make sure you have a point of view and personality. Your content should be easy to consume and easy to share.

Step 5: Measure results. Track your results in order to see if your thought leadership content has been effective. Use your SMART goals to determine what metrics you’re tracking.

1. Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey, former talk show host and media mogul, spoke at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism commencement ceremony in 2018.

She took some of her time to speak on the role of journalists today. She said, “You will become the new editorial gatekeepers, an ambitious army of truth-seekers who will arm yourselves with the intelligence, with the insight and with the facts necessary to strike down deceit. You’re in a position to keep all of those who now disparage real news — you all are the ones who are going to keep those people in check.”

Throughout the years, Oprah has earned her title as a media expert. Her advice and opinions on the industry are considered thought leadership because of her expertise, which she spent her career cultivating.

2. Dave Ramsey

Dave Ramsey is an expert in finances. He has a degree in Finance and Real Estate, and is known for counseling people on paying off their debts. Ramsey became a thought leader when he continued to produce content in the industry, including hosting a radio show, writing books, and podcasting.

One of the best examples of his thought leadership content is his podcast. He posts shows almost every day on topics such as, “Own the ‘Personal’ Part of Personal Finance” and “Don’t Play the Student Loan Forgiveness Lottery!”

3. Seth Godin

Seth Godin is an entrepreneur turned business mogul. He’s written books addressing marketing, advertising, and leadership. He’s also in the Marketing Hall of Fame, launched by the American Marketing Association of New York. He became a thought leader because of the successful content he delivers, including speaking engagements, books, and his blog.

A great example of thought leadership content he’s produced is his blog. Here, he regularly writes about his areas of expertise, including marketing and business. For instance, in this blog post, he writes about great storytelling. He says, “A great story is true. Not necessarily because it’s factual, but because it’s consistent and authentic. Consumers are too good at sniffing out inconsistencies for a marketer to get away with a story that’s just slapped on.”

4. Marie Forleo

Marie Forleo is a life coach, speaker, author, and host of her own YouTube channel show, MarieTV. She is known for creating and selling online courses, especially in regards to copywriting. She became a thought leader because of her expertise in business coaching.

One example of thought leadership content she’s produced is this video on her YouTube channel:

Here, she speaks on her expertise in content by discussing how to find fresh content ideas every week. She delivers three strategies her viewers can use to generate content ideas for their blog, podcast, or videos.

5. Brain Dean

Brian Dean is an SEO expert. After he created a successful online business, he decided to create a blog — Backlinko — that chronicled the lessons he learned along the way. Essentially, he created a thought leadership site meant to boost his credibility.

An excellent example of his thought leadership content is this blog post. He uses long-form content that is educational and valuable to his audience, writing “21 Ways to Promote Your Blog (In 2019).”

6. Sallie L. Krawcheck

Sallie L. Krawcheck, CEO and co-founder of Ellevest, a digital advisor for women, is an expert in finance. Before she started her company, she was the president of Global Wealth and Investment Management at Bank of America.

Throughout her career she’s become a thought leader because she is widely published both on social media and traditional media such as television shows.

One example of thought leadership content she’s created is on LinkedIn. Here, Krawcheck proves her expertise in finance by publishing articles and organic posts about finance. This boosts her company’s value and brand awareness.

Thought leadership is a great strategy that every content marketer should be thinking about, particularly since it allows you to prove expertise in your industry while simultaneously expanding your reach and helping your readers and customers grow.

Employee feedback is an undoubtedly critical component of long-term career growth.

In fact, 82% of employees want to receive feedback — regardless of if it’s positive or negative.

Additionally, while it can be scary to receive feedback, particularly from your manager, it’s ultimately intended to help you become a better employee.

However, that doesn’t mean it’s easy to receive. Despite what I know about the importance of feedback for growth, when I hear my manager say “You’ve been doing great, but … ” I still tense up.

A stress response to negative feedback is completely natural, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessary. To help you receive negative feedback more open-mindedly, CashNetUSA put together the following infographic.

Take a look to learn how to feel at-ease the next time your manager delivers constructive feedback.