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Although some of the younger demographics are passing up Facebook in favor of tools like Instagram and Snapchat, Facebook still dominates the market.

With 1.09 billion people logging in daily (a 16% increase year-over-year), it’s still the most popular social network around. Not to mention, Facebook owns 77% of all social logins.

If you want your business’ content to reach consumers, having a presence on Facebook is a given. But to make the most of your Facebook Page — to attract and engage visitors, drive them to your website, and convert them into leads (and, eventually, customers) — you need to optimize your Facebook presence.

We know that learning all the nuances of various social networks can be a tricky and time-consuming feat, especially considering how frequently they add, remove, and modify features.

To help you stay ahead of the curve, we’ve put together a handy cheat sheet that businesses can use to make the most of Facebook marketing. The list is divided into three main categories depending on your goals for using Facebook:

1. Tips for Your Facebook Business Page
2. Tips for News Feed Visibility
3. Tips for Advertising on Facebook

25 Tips and Tricks for Marketing on Facebook

Learn Facebook Marketing in HubSpot Academy

Tips for Your Facebook Business Page

1. Create a business Page, not a personal profile.

First thing’s first: You need to create a business Page — not a personal profile — to represent your brand. Pages look similar to personal profiles, but they include unique tools for businesses, brands, and organizations. Your fans can Like your Page to see updates from you in their News Feeds, which is something they can’t do for personal profiles.

Not only will this maximize Facebook’s business potential for you, but it’s actually against Facebook’s Terms of Service to use a personal account to represent something other than that person, like a business. If you’ve already created a profile for your business, you’ll want to convert it into a business Page, which you can learn how to do easily here.

Setting up a page is simple. Just visit this page and follow the step-by-step setup instructions.

2. Claim your Page’s vanity URL.

Once you’ve created your business Page, it’ll get a randomly assigned number and URL, like facebook.com/pages/yourbusiness/123456789. To make your Page more shareable and easier to find, you’ll want to create a recognizable vanity URL (e.g., http://www.facebook.com/hubspot).

To create a vanity URL, visit this page, then follow the instructions.

3. Add a great cover photo.

Facebook’s page design lets you feature a 851 x 315 pixel cover photo at the top of your business Page. You’ll want to optimize that cover photo to capture the attention of new visitors, encourage them to explore and learn more, and provide an effective mobile experience — all the while ensuring you’re following Facebook’s Page Guidelines.

Learn all about do’s and don’ts for your Facebook cover photo in this blog post.

Here are some more awesome examples of business Page cover photos to get your creative juices flowing.

4. Add a recognizable profile picture.

Pick a profile picture that will be easy for visitors to recognize — like your company logo, or a headshot of yourself if you’re a solopreneur or consultant. Being recognizable is important for getting found and Liked, especially in Facebook Search. Your profile image is pictured at the top of your Facebook Page and is also the thumbnail image that gets displayed next to all your Facebook Page updates, so choose wisely.

When choosing a photo, keep in mind that Facebook requires your profile picture dimensions to be 180 pixels by 180 pixels (even though the image will display as 160 pixels by 160 pixels on desktop computers).

5. Optimize your “About” section — especially the preview.

Your “About” section is one of the first places people will look when they arrive on your Page. A preview of it is located on the left-hand side of your page beneath your profile picture, and people can also navigate to the full section by clicking on the “About” tab at the top of your page.

Be sure to optimize the preview section on the left side of your page with brief yet descriptive copy to give visitors a sense of what your Page and your business is about before they decide to Like you. This copy will get pulled from the “Short Description” you provide within your full “About” tab.

Here’s an example video marketing software company Wistia:

And another from a restaurant called Tahaza Hummus Kitchen:

To edit your own “About” tab, click on it, hover over the section you’d like to edit, and click the pencil icon.

6. Earn the “Very responsive to messages” badge.

If you respond quickly to most users who send you messages on Facebook, then you can earn what Facebook calls a “Very responsive to messages” badge. You’ll earn a “Very responsive to messages” badge below your Page’s cover photo if you have a response rate of 90% and a response time of 15 minutes over the last seven days.

If you’re responsive to messages but haven’t quite earned the badge, Facebook will still show off how responsive you are to visitors. Here’s an example from Zappos’ Page:

If you’re not very responsive to messages, nothing will appear. So, while it’s not the end of the world if you don’t respond, having that badge lets users know your business is listening and cares about their needs.

By the way, there’s a lot you can do with Facebook’s “Messages” tool for businesses. We recommend you explore and make the most out of Facebook as a communication and support tool.

Image Credit: Facebook

7. Add milestones.

The “Milestones” feature lets you highlight some of your business’ biggest accomplishments, like award wins, product releases, major events, or other accolades. Recent milestones will be posted to your Timeline, and users will be able to find them later under your “About” tab.

To add milestones, click on the “Timeline” section of your Page, and click the “Offer, Event +” option in the page update composer near the top of your page.

9. Choose a call-to-action button.

Facebook added a very handy feature in December 2014: the option to place a simple call-to-action button at the top of your Facebook Page. You can learn how to add a CTA button to your business’ Facebook Page here.

You can choose from seven pre-made button options (“Sign Up,” “Shop Now,” “Contact Us,” “Book Now,” “Use App,” Watch Video,” and “Play Game”) and link it to any website that aligns with your business’ goals. It could link to your homepage, a landing page, a contact sheet, a video, or somewhere else.

10. Create custom page tabs.

By default, your page tabs are set as Timeline, About, Photos, Likes and More. But Facebook lets you create and leverage custom tabs — which are basically like landing pages within your Facebook Page, or calls-to-action where you can feature anything from case studies to marketing offers to other promotions you’re running.

They’re right at the top of your page and let you give visitors specific path to do what you want them to do on your Page. For example, if you’re hiring a lot of people, you might create a custom tab for “Jobs” that links to your jobs site, like Zendesk does on their Page:

You can create custom tabs by signing in, visiting your Page, clicking the “More” tab and choosing “Manage Tabs” from the dropdown menu. (Read this blog post for further instructions.)

Tips for News Feed Visibility

11. Prioritize quality over quantity.

Here are two questions we hear a lot: How often should I post to Facebook? Will posting more frequently will help me reach more people?

In short, the answer is no. At the end of the day, how visible your posts are in people’s News Feeds all comes down to the quality of your posts. These algorithms are meant to filter out the irrelevant and the poor quality posts so that the highest-quality stuff is what gets through and gets shown to users.

So don’t overwhelm your customers with content on Facebook, and be selective about what you’re publishing. Spend more time crafting better Facebook posts, and less time crafting a lot of Facebook posts. Remember: It’s a marketer’s job to post content to social that’s interesting, entertaining, helpful, and/or relevant to the audience. This means picking relevant topics, writing delightful copy, and posting compelling images and videos.

12. Post at the best times for your audience.

Another common question: When’s the best time to post to Facebook? Unfortunately, there’s no perfect answer — different businesses may find different days and times work best for them. Timing often depends on what your target audience uses Facebook for, the region(s) you’re targeting, the content of your post (e.g. funny or serious), and your goals (e.g. clicks versus shares), and so on.

That being said, there is data out there on optimal times to post on Facebook:

• The best time to post on Facebook is 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday. Other optimal times include 12:00–1:00 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays and 1:00–4:00 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays.
• Engagement rates are 18% higher on Thursdays and Fridays, and weekdays from 1:00–4:00 p.m. tend to see the highest clickthrough rates. On Fridays, Facebook use spikes by 10%. Since people tend to be happier on Fridays, Neil Patel suggests posting funny or upbeat content to match your audience’s mood.
• The worst times to post on Facebook are weekends before 8:00 a.m. and after 8:00 p.m., according to SurePayroll’s research.

Think of this data as a general guideline, and use it to help you find the optimal posting times for your business.

13. Post your best blog content.

For businesses, social media continues to be driven by content. It’s a marketer’s job to post content to social that’s interesting, entertaining, helpful, and/or relevant to our audience. Start populating your Page’s timeline with content by handpicking your best, most helpful blog posts.

If you’re strapped for resources but maintain a business blog, you can try connecting your blog to auto-post links to new blog content you publish. Many blogging platforms (like HubSpot) automatically offer this feature within the software — you’ll just need to turn it on and sync it with your Page. You don’t want to put too much emphasis on automation, though. It’s OK to auto-publish some content, but make sure a real human is posting and engaging with your fans, too.

14. Make sure your blog posts’ meta descriptions are complete.

Have you noticed that when you post a link to Facebook, it pulls in a brief description as well as an image?

The description gets pulled from the page’s meta description, which refers to the HTML attribute that explains the contents of a given web page. It’s the short description you see on a search engine results page to “preview” what the page is about, and it’s also the copy Facebook will automatically pull in the populate the description of a post.

Without a meta description, Facebook may pull in the first text they can find, which doesn’t make for a very good user experience. Plus, meta descriptions are your chance to sell your visitors on what you have to offer: informative, valuable content.

Your meta description should be compelling enough to get people to click, and it should be 155 characters or fewer in length. Read this blog post to learn more about writing effective meta descriptions.

15. Remove links from your post copy.

Keep your copy succinct by removing the horrendously long URL you’re sharing from the text in your post.

Your post real estate is precious, and you want to ensure any characters employed are purely for the sake of sparking a reader’s attention. Plus, any user can click on the generated thumbnail or title for that URL to navigate to the blog post, web page, or any URL you’re linking to — so no need to include it in the copy of your post as well.

16. Post your most compelling visual content.

Facebook’s new timeline page design places more of an emphasis on visual content like images and videos. After all, Facebook posts with images see 2.3X more engagement than posts without images. One study found that Facebook posts with photos saw the most engagement over any other type of post, accounting for a whopping 87% of total interactions.

That’s why posting compelling visual content is one of the most important things you can do to improve your Facebook strategy. Use this to your advantage posting your best visual content to your Facebook Page, or making more of an effort to make the content you already create more visual. (Click here to download 100+ social media image templates for free.)

A successful social strategy will often include photos, videos, and screenshots of infographics or other graphs. In addition to being fun to look at, it’s important that your visual content be compelling and relevant to your audience.

Another reason to post lots of visual content? It’ll help auto-populate the “Photos” and “Videos” tabs, which are automatically added to every Facebook Page. You want those to be rife with visual content when people click on them.

17. Make sure your images are properly formatted.

Don’t just post images for the sake of posting images. To give your users the best experience possible, you need to optimize your images for Facebook so that they’re the right sizes and dimensions. (Click here to download pre-sized cover photo templates for Facebook and other social networks for free.)

Below are a few of the most common Facebook image sizes, but you can find a more detailed guide here.

• Cover photo: 851 px wide by 315 px tall
• Profile image: 180 px wide by 180 px tall
• Highlighted image: 1200 px wide by 717 px tall
• Shared image: 1200 px wide by 630 px tall
• Shared link thumbnail image: 1200 px wide by 627 px tall

18. Post videos, especially live videos.

The folks at Facebook know that people like watching videos on Facebook. The number of people watching video content is rapidly increasing: Between April 2015 and November 2015, the amount of average daily video views on Facebook doubled from four billion video views per day to eight billion.

Facebook is continuing to tweak how the algorithm measures people’s interest in video content on Facebook, but the main takeaway is to make your videos as visually engaging as possible — especially in the first few seconds.

Why? Because although all videos on Facebook autoplay in people’s News Feeds, they’re on mute until the viewer manually turns the volume on. The more visually engaging your video, the more you can entice people to stick around. Getting people to spend more time watching your video will help your video rank higher in the News Feed because to Facebook, signs of user engagement with a video include spending time watching the video, turning on the audio, switching to full-screen mode, or enabling high definition.

In their continued effort to promote video content in the News Feed, Facebook recently launched Facebook Live, a live video streaming service that lets anyone broadcast live videos from their mobile device straight to their Facebook News Feed. Use Facebook Live to your advantage, as Facebook ranks Live videos higher than other videos and other types of posts.

19. Use Facebook Insights.

Facebook Insights is Facebook’s internal analytics tool right that helps you measure and analyze your Facebook presence. The tool provides Facebook page administrators with analytics data about Page visits and engagement, which can help you understand which content is and isn’t engaging to your fans.

Access your page’s Insights here, or by clicking into the ‘Admin Panel’ on your Page. We’ve also published an informative blog post and video that walk you through how to analyze Facebook Insights to improve your content strategy.

20. Schedule posts in advance.

Scrambling for Facebook content is not a new phenomenon. We have meetings. We run late. Things come up. That’s why you’ll want to use a third-party Facebook application like HubSpot’s social media publishing tool to schedule your Facebook posts (and other social media posts) in advance.

First, download our free social media content calendar template to help plan your posts in advance. You can fill it in at the same day and time every single week to prep for the following week’s social media content. Then, use that third-party Facebook application to actually schedule out your posts.

However, just as we advised against too much Facebook automation with blog auto-posting, the same holds true for scheduling. Don’t get caught in the trap of turning your page into a robot, and make sure you’re actively engaging with your fans, too.

21. Add Facebook social media buttons to your blog and website.

Adding Facebook social media buttons will help encourage visitors who are on your website to also connect and interact with you on Facebook, as well as spread your content and expand its reach.

The Facebook Follow Button lets you expand your Facebook reach by making it easy for your site visitors to Like your business’ Facebook Page with just one click. It displays your page’s number of Likes, as well as faces of people who already like your page, using social proof to amplify its effectiveness.

To customize your button, visit this page and follow the instructions.

The Facebook Like Box lets you promote your business’ Facebook Page on your website and blog, highlight other users who have already Liked your page, display your follower count, and feature recent posts on your page. With just one click, people can Like your business Page — without leaving your site.

To generate a Facebook Like Box for your website, visit this page and follow the instructions.

The Facebook Like Button lets people easily Like your content. When a user Likes a piece of content, it may show up in your friends’ News Feeds because the algorithm takes it as a signal your friends will find it relevant.

(Note: This button doesn’t allow them to add personalized messages to links before sharing them. To allow users to add a personalized message, use the Facebook Share Button, explained below.)

To customize your Facebook Like Button, visit this page and follow the instructions.

Facebook Share Buttons act similarly to the Like Button by sharing your content on their Timeline and in friends’ News Feeds, except they also let people add a comment or message to the link when sharing it.

To generate a Facebook Share Button, visit this page and follow the instructions.

22. Subscribe to Facebook’s Official Blog for future announcements from Facebook.

Give yourself a competitive edge by staying on top of the latest announcements from Facebook such as new features and tools by subscribing to the official Facebook Blog.

Tips For Advertising on Facebook

23. Choose the right advertising tool. (Probably the Ads Manager.)

Facebook offers users two different tools for creating a paid ad: the Ads Manager and the Power Editor. The Power Editor is usually best for larger advertisers looking for more precise control over many campaigns. If that doesn’t sound like you, the Ads Manager works great for most companies. Figure out which is best for your business based on your company size and the number of ads you plan to run at once.

24. Use Audience Insights to learn about your audience.

The best Facebook ads are high-quality, relevant ads that fit seamlessly into the user’s environment on Facebook. Learn more about your customers and prospects using Audience Insights, which you can find inside the Facebook Ad Manager in the left-hand navigation.

The tool will help you target your ads more effectively and learn about your audience — even if you are not advertising to them. How? The data can help you build stronger buyer personas, create more compelling content, and uncover some gems for your competitive research. (Read this step-by-step guide to Audience Insights for more detailed instructions and tips.)

25. Test multiple versions of a single ad.

Running a single campaign won’t give you much to work with in terms of finding your audience, optimizing your ads, and determining if Facebook advertising works for your business. You need to be able and willing to run multiple campaigns to test and experiment with different parts of a single campaign.

Test your targeting first, using a simple advertisement and basic image, suggest the Brian Carter for Convince & Convert. “There are usually at least five to ten ways you could target your prospects,” he says. “Find the one or two audiences that convert best at the lowest cost per lead.”

In order to reach and test on a wider audience, you’re going to have to invest a reasonable amount of money on your campaign. The folks at BuzzSumo suggest that number be in the thousands. The reason for this? Facebook ads reward you for testing more ads and targets. Whereas cost-per-click doesn’t change much when you’re advertising on Google or LinkedIn, Facebook ads cost a lot less if you’re diligently testing them.

Then, you can test the creative side of the ad, including images, headlines, and body text. Try testing 20–25 variations on your proven targets: “You aren’t really doing Facebook ads well until you’ve created 15–20 ads,” says Carter.

Read this blog post to learn more about creating, optimizing, and analyzing your Facebook ads.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is incredibly important for marketers. When you optimize your web pages — including your blog posts — you’re making your website more visible to people who are entering keywords associated with your product or service via search engines like Google.

But does your blog content really help your business organically rank on search engines?

Although it’s clear blog content does contribute to your SEO, Google’s copious algorithm updates can make this tricky. And today’s SEO best practices are all about relevancy and intent.

So, when it comes to your blog, how do you know what matters and what doesn’t? What are today’s blog ranking tactics, and what’s considered “old-school”? How can you keep it all straight?

Keep reading — I’ll explain.

Simplifying SEO

Confusion is a common issue facing digital content marketers — and we want to help. In this post, we’ll cover how to optimize your blog posts for the keywords you care about, along with a few other optimization tactics you should keep in mind.

And since SEO can be confusing, listen to HubSpot’s Matt Barby and Victor Pan simplify a few things in this podcast episode:

Additionally, there are some other ways you can simplify SEO in terms of your business’s blog. Along with the blog SEO tips we’re going to review momentarily, consider the following.

If you’re a HubSpot customer, look at specific SEO optimization tips for your individual blog posts. You can do this by clicking the bar graph icon on the far left side of your blog editor when you’re working on the post to access the SEO Optimization screen. If you’re not a HubSpot customer, use these tips as a checklist as you blog:

Sign up here to take our free Content Marketing Certification course and learn about content creation, strategy, and promotion.

1. Focus on 1–2 long-tail keywords that match the intent of your target reader.

Optimizing your blog posts for keywords is not about incorporating as many keywords into your posts as possible. Nowadays, this actually hurts your SEO because search engines consider this keyword stuffing (i.e., including keywords as much as possible with the sole purpose of ranking highly in organic search).

It also doesn’t make for a good reader experience — a ranking factor that search engines now prioritize to ensure you’re answering the intent of your visitors. Therefore, you should use keywords in your content in a way that doesn’t feel unnatural or forced.

A good rule of thumb is to focus on one or two long-tail keywords per blog post. While you can use more than one keyword in a single post, keep the focus of the post narrow enough to allow you to spend time optimizing for just one or two keywords.

You may be wondering: Why long-tail keywords?

These longer, often question-based keywords keep your post focused on the specific goals of your audience. For example, the long-tail keyword “how to write a blog post” is much more impactful in terms of SEO than the short keyword “blog post”.

Website visitors searching long-tail keywords are more likely to read the whole post and then seek more information from you. In other words, they’ll help you generate right type of traffic — visitors who convert.

2. Include these 1–2 keywords in specific parts of your post.

Now that you’ve got your one or two keywords, it’s time to incorporate them in your blog post. Where are the best parts of your posts to include these terms so you rank high in search results?

There are four essential places where you should try to include your keywords: title tag, headers & body, URL, and meta description.

Title Tag

The title (i.e., headline) of your blog post will be a search engine’s and reader’s first step in determining the relevancy of your content. So, including a keyword here is vital. Google calls this the “title tag” in a search result.

Be sure to include your keyword within the first 60 characters of your title, which is just about where Google cuts titles off on the SERP. Technically, Google measures by pixel width, not character count, and it recently increased the pixel width for organic search results from approximately 500 pixels to 600 pixels, which translates to around 60 characters.

Long title tag? When you have a lengthy headline, it’s a good idea to get your keyword in the beginning since it might get cut off in SERPs toward the end, which can take a toll on your post’s perceived relevancy.

In the example below, we had a long title that went over 65 characters, so we front-loaded it with the keyword for which we were trying to rank: “on-page SEO.”

Headers & Body

Mention your keyword at a normal cadence throughout the body of your post and in the headers. That means including your keywords in your copy, but only in a natural, reader-friendly way. Don’t go overboard at the risk of being penalized for keyword stuffing.

Before you start writing a new blog post, you’ll probably think about how to incorporate your keywords into your post. That’s a smart idea, but it shouldn’t be your only focus, nor even your primary focus.

Whenever you create content, your primary focus should be on what matters to your audience, not how many times you can include a keyword or keyword phrase in that content. Focus on being helpful and answering whatever question your customer might’ve asked to arrive on your post. Do that, and you’ll usually find you naturally optimize for important keywords, anyway.

URL

Search engines also look to your URL to figure out what your post is about, and it’s one of the first things it’ll crawl on a page. You have a huge opportunity to optimize your URLs on every post you publish, as every post lives on its unique URL — so make sure you include your one to two keywords in it.

In the example below, we created the URL using the long-tail keyword for which we were trying to rank: “email marketing examples.”

Meta Description

Your meta description is meant to give search engines and readers information about your blog post’s content. Meaning, you must use your long-tail term so Google and your audience are clear on your post’s content.

At the same time, keep in mind the copy matters a great deal for click-through rates because it satisfies certain readers’ intent — the more engaging, the better.

3. Make sure your blog is mobile-friendly (or has a responsive design).

Did you know more people use a search engine from their mobile phones than from a computer?

And for all those valuable search queries being done on mobile, Google displays the mobile-friendly results first. This is yet another example of Google heavily favoring mobile-friendly websites — which has been true ever since the company updated its Penguin algorithm in April 2015.

(HubSpot customers: Breathe easy. All content created on HubSpot’s platform is automatically responsive to mobile devices.)

So, how do you make your blog mobile-friendly? By using responsive design. Websites that are responsive to mobile allow blog pages to have just one URL instead of two — one for desktop and one for mobile, respectively. This helps your post’s SEO because any inbound links that come back to your site won’t be divided between the separate URLs.

As a result, you’ll centralize the SEO power you gain from these links, helping Google more easily recognize your post’s value and rank it accordingly.

Pro tip: What search engines value is constantly changing. Be sure you’re keeping on top of these changes by subscribing to Google’s official blog.

4. Optimize the meta description and use all the space.

To review, a meta description is the additional text that appears in SERPs that lets readers know what the link is about. The meta description gives searchers information they need to determine whether or not your content is what they’re looking for and ultimately helps them decide if they’ll click or not.

The maximum length of this meta description is greater than it once was — now around 300 characters — suggesting it wants to give readers more insight into what each result will give them.

So, in addition to being reader-friendly (compelling and relevant), your meta description should include the long-tail keyword for which you are trying to rank.

In the following example, I searched for “email newsletter examples.”

The term is bolded in the meta description, helping readers make the connection between the intent of their search term and this result. You’ll also see the term “E-Newsletter” bolded, indicating that Google knows there’s a semantic connection between “email newsletter” and “E-Newsletter.”

Note: Nowadays, it’s not guaranteed that your meta description is always pulled into SERPs as it once was. As you can see in the above image, Google pulls in other parts of your blog post that includes the keywords searched, presumably to give searchers optimal context around how the result matches their specific query.

Let me show you another example. Below is an example of two different search queries delivering two different snippets of text on Google SERPs. The first is a result of the query “no index no follow,” and pulls in the original meta description:

The second is a result of the query “noindex nofollow,” and pulls in the first instance of these specific keywords coming up in the body of the blog post:

While there’s not much you can do to influence what text gets pulled in, you should continue to optimize this metadata, as well as your post, so search engines display the best content from the article. By creating reader-friendly content with natural keyword inclusion, you’ll make it easier for Google to prove your post’s relevancy in SERPs for you.

5. Optimize your images with image alt text.

Blog posts shouldn’t only contain text — they should also include images that help explain and support your content. However, search engines don’t simply look for images. Rather, they look for images with image alt text. Meaning, to ensure your images benefit your blog’s SEO, you’ll need to ensure you include image alt text.

You may be wondering why this is. Since search engines can’t “see” images the same way humans can, an image’s alt text tells the search engine what an image is about. This ultimately helps those images rank in the search engine’s images results page.

Image alt text also makes for better user experience (UX) — it displays inside the image container when an image can’t be found or displayed and can improve accessibility for people with poor vision who are using screen readers. Technically, alt text is an attribute that can be added to an image tag in HTML.

Here’s what a complete image tag might look like (bolding added for emphasis):

<img class=”wt-blog__normal-image” src=”image.jpg” alt=”image-description” title=”image tooltip”>

When you incorporate image alt text, an image’s name in your blog may go from something like, “IMG23940” to something accurate and descriptive such as “puppies playing in a basket.”

Image alt text should be descriptive in a helpful way — meaning, it should provide the search engine with context to index the image if it’s in a blog article related to a similar topic.

To provide more context, here’s a list of things to be sure you keep in mind when creating alt text for your blog’s images:

• Describe the image
• Leave out “image of… “— begin the image description, instead
• Be specific in your description
• Keep it under 125 characters
• Use your keywords (but avoid keyword stuffing)

HubSpot customers: The SEO Panel will recognize whether or not you have optimized your images. Though these elements are not as important as some other optimizations, they’re still necessary (not to mention, easy to add).

6. Don’t use too many similar topic tags.

Topic tags can help organize your blog content, but if you overuse them, they can actually be harmful. If you have too many similar tags, you may get penalized by search engines for having duplicate content.

Think of it this way, when you create a topic tag (which is simple if you’re a HubSpot user, as seen here), you also create a new site page where the content from those topic tags will appear. If you use too many similar tags for the same content, it appears to search engines as if you’re showing the content multiple times throughout your website. For example, topic tags like “blogging,” “blog,” and “blog posts” are too similar to one another to be used on the same post.

If you’re worried that your current blog posts have too many similar tags, take some time to clean them up. Choose about 15–25 topic tags that you think are important to your blog and that aren’t too similar to one another. Then only tag your posts with those keywords. That way, you won’t have to worry about duplicate content.

7. Use URL structures that help your visitors.

The URL structure of your web pages (which are different from the specific URLs of your posts) should make it easy for your visitors to understand the structure of your website and the content they’re about to see. Search engines favor web page URLs that make it easier for them and website visitors to understand the content on the page.

This differentiation is baked into the HubSpot blogs’ respective URL structures. If I decided to go to the Marketing section from this main page, I would be taken to the URL http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing.

If we want to read the Sales section, all we have to do is change where it says “marketing” in the URL to “sales”: http://blog.hubspot.com/sales. This URL structure helps me understand that “/marketing” and “/sales” are smaller sections — called subdirectories — within the larger blog.

What if there’s a specific article we want to read, such as “How to Do Keyword Research: A Beginner’s Guide”? Its URL structure — http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-do-keyword-research-ht — denotes that it’s an article from the Marketing section of the blog.

In this way, URL structure acts as a categorization system for readers, letting them know where they are on the website and how to access new site pages. Search engines appreciate this, as it makes it easier for them to identify exactly what information searchers will access on different parts of your blog or website.

8. Link internally when possible.

Inbound links to your content help show search engines the validity or relevancy of your content. The same goes for linking internally to other pages on your website. If you’ve written about a topic that’s mentioned in your blog post on another blog post, ebook, or web page, it’s a best practice to link to that page.

(You might’ve noticed that I’ve been doing that from time to time throughout this blog post when I think it’s helpful for our readers.) Not only will internal linking help keep visitors on your website, but it also surfaces your other relevant and authoritative pages to search engines.

HubSpot customers: The SEO Panel automatically suggests linking to other internal resources on your website.

You can think of this as solving for your SEO while also helping your visitors get more information from your content.

9. Use Google’s Search Console.

Google’s free Search Console contains a section called the Search Analytics Report. This report helps you analyze clicks from Google Search — it’s useful to determine which keywords people are using to find your blog content. You can also learn how to use Google Search Console by reading this blog post written by my colleague Matthew Barby, and by checking out Google’s official support page.

If you’re interested in optimizing your best-performing older blog posts for traffic and leads like we’ve been doing since 2015, this tool can help identify low-hanging fruit.

Remember, many content marketers struggle with optimizing their blog posts for search. The truth is, your blog posts won’t start ranking immediately. It takes time to build up search authority.

But, when you publish blog posts frequently and consistently optimize them for search while maintaining an intent-based reader experience, you’ll reap the rewards in the form of traffic and leads long-term.

10. Use topic clusters.

The way most blogs are currently structured (including our own blogs, until very recently), bloggers and SEOs have worked to create individual blog posts that rank for specific keywords.

This makes things unorganized and difficult for blog visitors to find the exact information they need. It also results in your URLs competing against one another in search engine rankings when you produce multiple blog posts about similar topics.

Here’s what our blog architecture used to look like using this old playbook:

Now, in order to rank in search and best answer the new types of queries searchers are submitting, the solution is the topic cluster model.

For this model to work, choose the broad topics for which you want to rank. Then, create content based on specific keywords related to that topic that all link to each other to establish broader search engine authority.

This is what our blog infrastructure looks like now, with the topic cluster model. Specific topics are surrounded by blog posts related to the greater topic, connected to other URLs in the cluster via hyperlinks:

This model uses a more deliberate site architecture to organize and link URLs together to help more pages on your site rank in Google — and to help searchers find information on your site more easily. This architecture consists of three components — pillar content, cluster content, and hyperlinks:

We know this is a fairly new concept, so for more details, check out our research on the topic, take our SEO training or the video below.

11. Continually create and publish evergreen content.

When planning and writing your blog articles, ensure it’s evergreen content. Meaning, the content is about topics that are sure to remain relevant and valuable over a long period of time (with only minor changes or updates). Let’s look at a few reasons why evergreen content is so important:

• It’ll help you rank over time, not just the near future.
• It contributes to steady amounts of traffic coming to your blog (and website) long after it’s date of publication.
• It’ll help you generate leads over time as a result of the traffic it continually generates.

All blog content — whether it’s a long-form article, how-to guide, FAQ, tutorial, and so on — should be evergreen. Even the images you use in these posts should be evergreen. Check out this blog post for some examples of and ideas for evergreen content on your blog.

12. Repurpose or update your current content and remove outdated content.

To improve your SEO, you may assume you need to create new blog content. Although that’s partially true, you should also focus a great deal of your time and energy on your existing blog content. Specifically, repurposing and updating your current content, as well as removing your outdated content.

This is because it takes a lot longer for a completely new piece of content to settle on the search engine results page (SERP) and gain authority, whereas you could update a piece of content and reap the benefits fairly immediately in comparison.

Not only will your updated content rank on the SERP faster, improving your number of visitors and leads, it also takes a lot less time and fewer resources to update an existing piece of content rather than create a brand new article.

Additionally, updating and repurposing some of your most successful pieces of content extends it’s lifespan so you can achieve the best results over a longer period of time (especially if it’s evergreen content).

The final part to this entails removing your outdated content that’s no longer relevant to your audience. Although your goal is to ensure your content is evergreen, some of it is bound to become outdated over time. This includes statistics, product information (if you have any listed in your blogs — as your products and business evolve), or information that changes across your industry over time.

Your rule of thumb should be if it no longer fits, and updating it doesn’t make sense or work for the situation, simply remove it.

Optimize Your Blog Content

We don’t expect you to incorporate each of these SEO best practices into your content strategy right away. But, as your website grows, so should your goals on search engines. Then you’ll be able to do some link building to get other websites to link back to your blog.

Once you identify the goals and intent of your ideal readers, you’ll be on track to deliver content organically that is always relevant to them.

In 2019, Instagram is an undeniably powerful marketing tool — in fact, it now has over one billion active users, making it one of the top social media platforms.

For many marketers, Instagram is a critical component of their marketing strategy. There are 25 million business profiles on Instagram, and 60% of Instagram users say they’ve learned of a product or service through the platform.

However, the popularity of the platform makes it difficult for brands to stand out and attract a large audience. Fortunately, there is an opportunity for you to reach a new audience quickly — Instagram’s Explore Page.

Here, we’ll dive into what exactly the Explore Page is, as well as six tricks you can use to get your posts and Stories featured on the page for maximum exposure.

What is the Instagram Explore Page?

In a 2019 press release, Instagram’s Explore Page is described like this –“People turn to Explore when they want to branch out from the accounts they already follow on Instagram.”

In other words, the Explore Page is just how it sounds: a page that helps users explore new accounts based on their previous likes and follows.

You’ll find the Explore page in the search section of Instagram (by clicking the magnifying glass logo):

 

Instagram continues to make updates and changes to its Explore page. Now you can find both IGTV and Shopping shortcuts within the Explore Page, topic channels that make it easier to browse posts, and Stories — all on one page.

As previously mentioned, this page is tailored to a user’s estimated preferences, based on previous activity on Instagram — my Explore Page, for instance, has a suspicious amount of cute cat-related posts.

Additionally — and most importantly for brands — the posts I see in the Explore Page aren’t from accounts I already follow. They’re all from new ones.

Ultimately, the format of the Explore Page makes it a lot easier for your brand to get noticed in organic ways.

Next, let’s take a closer look at the specific algorithm Instagram uses when choosing which posts to feature on the Explore Page.

Instagram Explore Page Algorithm

The Explore Page uses a special algorithm to select which posts get featured. It takes into consideration a variety of factors that allow your content to get selected by monitoring engagement with your posts and the niche categories that your posts fall under.

From what we can observe about the algorithm, here are some of the top conclusions we can draw about it:

1. The top input for the algorithm is based on the content the viewer already follows and engages with in their personal feed. The app takes note of these interests and tries to provide similar content that would match or expand on these interests. This means that if someone likes a post from a brand with similar content to yours, you might also begin to show up in their Explore section.

For instance, I recently took a look at HelloFresh on Instagram. When I perused my Explore Page a few days later, I saw posts from competitive accounts like Blue Apron and Home Chef.

2. Instagram is moving in a more video-oriented direction, so it appears that videos tend to rank higher in the Explore algorithm. The auto-play feature on the videos also means they draw more attention than still pictures, increasing the likelihood of interaction and bumping them up in the input.

For example, when I open my Explore Page, I see a video of Jojo and Jordan from the Bachelorette at the very top — a video which captures my attention, since it immediately starts playing:

3. Other key factors in boosting a post’s likelihood of showing up in the algorithm include stories that focus on visuals over text, and content that is most closely related to the main focus of your account.

4. Reposts don’t do as well as they are usually not picked up by the algorithm.

Once you understand these key aspects of the algorithm, you can use them to help generate the highest quality content possible to best ensure that you’ll end up on Explore Pages everywhere.

One of the easiest means of getting onto the Explore Page is to be conscious of not only the content you’re posting, but the type of content.

With Instagram’s other features, like Instagram Live and IGTV, it’s clear that the app’s focus has moved into video content. Videos or pictures with movement are more likely to capture a user’s interest for a longer period of time. Taking advantage of that is key to finding success on Instagram and getting your posts onto the Explore Page.

Instagram’s Explore Page algorithm also seems to grab content that has more engagement, especially if said engagement happens in the first few hours of posting. In Instagram’s case, quality is better than quantity, and getting interaction from influential users (i.e. having a higher follower count) is one of the best ways to do it.

Here are some additional quick tips to help you get started:

1. Use hashtags. You can have up to 30 hashtags on your posts. Hashtags categorize your posts and help users find your content — for instance, if I’m looking for dinner recipes, a quick “#dinnerrecipe” search will show me some of the most popular posts in that category. They can’t see it if you don’t tag it.

2. Tag people or brands. Tagging invites a lot more engagement, especially if you know the right people to tag. People who get tagged are more likely to share and interact with your post. Try creating partnerships with other companies or influencers — when you tag them in your posts and they tag you in theirs, you’re both mutually benefiting from exposure to new audiences.

One big-name example of this is Target’s partnership with superstar Taylor Swift.

This mutually-beneficial partnership has helped Swift’s albums consistently top the physical sales release charts for the past decade, and has no doubt been equally fruitful for Target, as well.

If you find brand representatives or Instagram influencers and create partnerships with them, you’ll likely drive more traffic and engagement to your posts.

3. Follow viral trends. If you can find your own humorous or entertaining take on something that’s trending that is also relevant to your brand, adding your post to the mix will help increase your exposure. Everybody loves a good meme!

For instance, check out how SparkNotes uses viral memes and reaction images to humorously promote their brand, while educating the masses about classic literature in the process:

By using these well-known memes from popular media to illustrate their content and make users laugh in the process, SparkNotes effectively promotes their brand.

4. Use calls-to-action. This increases the likelihood of user interaction. For instance, you might write “tag a friend who needs this” or “comment below and tell us what you think” to incentivize your followers to engage further with your content.

For instance, look at how Lush Cosmetics uses a call-to-action to encourage users to interact with their post by suggesting certain emojis for them to use:

Obviously, you don’t always have to use emojis. Instead, you can use other strategies to encourage people to interact with your content, like asking a question and encouraging people to respond in the comments, or using a phrase like, “Like if …” to further incentivize responses.

5. Don’t repost. Only post your own original content, because reposts are demoted in the algorithm.

6. Focus on video content, or add motion to still content. You can use boomerang, motion filters, animation, etc. to bring more life to your pictures, but overall you want to have a video content focus. Videos or pictures with movement are more likely to capture a user’s interest for a longer period of time, and as we saw, they tend to rank highly in the algorithm.

With the introduction of the Explore Page, Instagram has created a unique and exciting opportunity for you to get your brand noticed more than ever. Once you understand the inside scoop on the algorithm, you can make sure you’re creating the perfect content to reach your audience and achieve maximum exposure.

“Disgraceland” by Jake Brennan has been one of my favorite podcasts since the first episode. Last year, it got a feature in The Boston Globe, where the primary audience is between the ages of 50 and 69, and 48% male. These are the kinds of numbers you won’t see about Twitter — an app 24% of adults use. But because of this mix of traditional and digital marketing, “Disgraceland” has over 100 million downloads for a podcast that’s less than two years old.

The debate between traditional and digital marketing is long and lasting. It ultimately comes down to which one fits the needs of your company. When trying to choose between traditional and digital marketing, why not look at both?

What is Traditional Marketing?

Traditional marketing refers to any type of marketing that isn’t online. This means print, broadcast, direct mail, phone, and outdoor advertising like billboards. From newspapers to radio, this method of marketing helps reach targeted audiences.

Image source: Ads of the World

Traditional marketing is not only one of the oldest forms of marketing, but also one of the most researched. Marketers lean towards this method because it’s tried and true. Everyone encounters some sort of traditional marketing in their everyday lives, whether it’s getting the mail or your daily newspaper.

Traditional marketing plays an important part in reaching local audiences. Ads can be kept for a long period of time, if they’re physical. Plus, there’s an audience who’s easier to reach through traditional marketing than online marketing.

What is Digital Marketing?

Inversely, digital marketing is … well … digital. Digital marketing is any marketing a company conducts online, such as paid social media ads, email marketing, and PPC advertising. Digital marketing has become wildly popular due to the cultural, technological, and societal shifts around us.

Promoted tweets, influencer trips, and Tasty videos are all examples of digital marketing and how expansive it’s become. Even Googling “What is TikTok?” is evidence of effective digital marketing.

As the world becomes more digital, the way we market has evolved. Not only is digital marketing sometimes more cost-effective than traditional, but also it is a more direct way to connect with target audiences globally.

Image source: Twitter

Digital marketing is essential for businesses today. It’s become routine for consumers to conduct research and make purchases online. Just this week, I’ve looked up lunch spots, priced couches, and picked an eye doctor — all using the internet.

With all this information, which route should your company go with?

There are a few disadvantages to traditional marketing. First, businesses have little to no interaction with the consumers they are selling their products to in real time. You can’t Twitter DM a Macy’s ad to ask if the grey duvet covers will be available in your store.

Some marketers also see traditional marketing as unreliable. You can’t edit a print ad once it’s out. So, if you recorded the wrong percentage discount on that sale radio ad you recorded, you can’t change it.

Traditional marketing can also be pricier. For instance, it can cost between $2,000-$160,000 to run a print ad. Further, you never know who you’ll reach with that investment because results are difficult to measure. Marketers can’t drive more people to read The New Yorker or watch “The Masked Singer” — and they can’t boost those ads if they’re performing well.

Image source: Campaigns of the World

Image Source: McDonald’s

Traditional marketing is still a realistic and important way to market certain businesses. But digital marketing is an increasingly important revenue driver. In fact, businesses reported that half of revenue is influenced by social selling.

Recently, 50% of marketers said they believe digital marketing has an edge over traditional because of the interaction digital marketing opens with customers. Businesses can have full control of their audience growth and see real-time results of each facet of that campaign. And with inbound marketing, consumers find the business, not the other way around.

Disadvantages to digital marketing do exist, however. Digital marketing depends on technology and, sometimes, technology breaks. When social media sites go down and a social media marketer has posts scheduled to go live, the only solution is to wait it out.

Another issue social media sites have begun to face has to do with security. Since the Facebook scandal in which the private information contained in 87 million profiles was leaked, other platforms have taken strict measures to make sure users’ information is private. But businesses have to keep in mind the legalities of their marketing, too.

Every update to a social platform means a new learning curve for developers and marketers. These are curves that take time out of your workday to learn and incorporate into future strategies.

Can They Work Together?

In short, absolutely. It’s a debate as old as time, and the subject will continue to be debated for many years to come. But there’s a time and a place for both marketing strategies.

Let’s go back to that Macy’s example. No, you can’t DM a Macy’s print ad, but you can follow them on socials and sign up for their automated emails. This way, the older woman who prefers flyers and coupons in the mail — like my mother — and her millennial daughter, who prefers social media marketing, receive the same information.

Image source: Macy’s

Have you ever used traditional marketing to heighten digital marketing? To illustrate, the classifieds section of your local Sun-Times paper might now include “For more information about this job, check out our listing on Indeed.” The effect of this would be local applicants checking the paper for opportunities — and then learning more online.

The question shouldn’t be “To traditional market or to digital market?” Instead, try “How do we use both tactics to market effectively?” Of course, some businesses may benefit from going one way or the other, but on the whole, it is possible for both methods to thrive harmoniously.

In 2016, Facebook launched its live feature. By 2018, one out of every five videos on the social network was a live broadcast.

So far, many brands have gotten on the Facebook Live bandwagon by creating streams to discuss their product, show off knowledge of their industry, or simply entertain and grow Facebook audiences. 

With this in mind, carving out a strategy for Facebook Live seems like a no-brainer.

Now, we get it. Going live, well, it’s kinda scary. What if you mess up? What if the camera wigs out? There are a number of things that could go wrong. But while you’re contemplating the risk, a ton of brands are out there engaging their audience in some really exciting and personal new ways.

To help you shake the nerves, we put together a list of some of the best Facebook Live broadcasts we’ve ever seen. From live debates to intense trainings, you’ll get a little taste of everything to inspire you to add live streaming to your Facebook marketing strategy.

(And read this article for more tips on how to get started with Facebook Live.)

13 of the Best Facebook Live Videos We’ve Ever Seen

1. BIRCHBOX

Birchbox, a company which sends subscribers a monthly box of makeup samples, recently did a Facebook Live tutorial video where a rep from Benefit Cosmetics put its new BADgal mascara on the eyelashes of Birchbox’s host. The mascara shown was also featured in that month’s Birchbox sample box. 

At the beginning of the video, the host and Benefit rep explain that the day before was National Lash Day and that they wanted to celebrate it by highlighting the product. Then the rep explains why the mascara and its unique brush gives eyelashes a more voluminous look. Then the tutorial begins with one eye getting mascara at a time so viewers can see the difference in volume. 

As the tutorial goes on, viewers comment asking the host questions. The host also asks trivia questions and allows commenters to answer. She notes that those who engage the most will be entered to win a giveaway. 

This video is a great example of a live stream that a brand can do on a budget. The video has no editing, doesn’t feature any celebrities or influencers, and doesn’t seem like it required a high production budget. With just a camera, the marketing team was able to film a nice tutorial that showed how a product worked. 

This video is also interactive and gives viewers the option to ask questions or compete to win a prize. Allowing questions or a trivia-based giveaways is a simple, but effective way to get comments and engagement without spending a lot of marketing dollars on a high-budget production.

2. Tomcat

Gearing up for Halloween in 2016, Tomcat, a rodent extermination company, wanted to experiment with a puppet-filled, horror-themed, live video event. The narrative, which was created in part by their marketing agency, told the story of a few oblivious teenage mice that were vacationing in a haunted cabin in the woods. At peak points of the story, audiences were asked to use the comments to choose which mouse puppet would die next or how they would die.

Prior to the video event, Tomcat also rolled out movie posters with the event date, an image of the scared mouse puppets, and a headline saying, “Spoiler: They all die!”

It turned out that a lot of people enjoyed killing rodents. The live video got over 2.3 million unique views, and 21% of them actively participated. As an added bonus, the video also boosted Tomcat’s Facebook fanbase by 58% and earned them a Cyber Lion at the 2017 Cannes Lions awards.

Here’s a hilarious sizzle reel that shows a few clips from the video and a few key stats:

 

This interactive Facebook Live example shows how creative content marketing can help even the most logistical businesses gain engagement. While pest control can be a dry topic for a video, the brand highlighted it in a creative and funny way.

Not only might this interactive video peak brand interest from people who hadn’t thought that deeply about pest control, but it could have also helped the video algorithmically. As more people comment, share, and react to a live video, there’s more likelihood that it will get prioritized and displayed in the feeds of others.

3. Anderson Cooper: Full Circle

One really interesting route brands have taken with Facebook Live is the series approach. In other words, they broadcast a themed video series on a set date and time, usually weekly.

Why does this work so well? As Author Laura Vanderkam explains: “TV shows come on at certain times so people get in the habit of watching them. You can do the same with Facebook Live.”

CNN and Anderson Cooper have embraced this strategy by producing and streaming “Anderson Cooper: Full Circle.”

Anderson Cooper gives news junkies regular rundowns of top U.S. news with his mobile-friendly livestream, “Anderson Cooper: Full Circle.” The show is similar to Anderson 360, the host’s show on CNN. However, he sums up the news quickly and keeps the show within 10 minutes or so. 

The formatting of the show, including its vertical shape, works well on social platforms, where users are quickly surfing through feeds while holding their phones vertically. 

In the example below, Cooper covers political news and interviews a scientist about an upcoming lunar eclipse:

Unlike a newscast, Cooper allows audience members to comment with questions for the people who are on the show. He also occasionally invites them to ask him questions about his journalistic experiences. For example, in the post above, someone asks “How do you make a child interview subject comfortable?” Then Cooper gives a detailed explanation.

Cooper also embraces social media even further by asking audiences what trending topics they want to learn more about in the stream. At the end, he then gives a really short rundown of three of those topics. This is a great strategy from Cooper because he allows fans to engage in the stream and help create a newscast that’s just for them.

4. Red Table Talk: Motherhood

Jada Pinkett Smith was one of the first major celebrities to host a talk show on Facebook Live.

Episodes of Red Table Talk are often conversational, like a podcast. While Pinkett Smith hosts and interviews her guests, they all sit around a red table and have more casual conversation than a usual sit-down interview. On the show, Smith is also not afraid to discuss hard-hitting topics like race, sexuality, and politics.

In the premiere episode of the series, which aired on Mothers Day in 2018, she sits down with her daughter and mother. The family members ask each other deep and emotional questions about life, like, “What is your biggest motherhood regret.” This content keeps you the edge of your seat and makes you relate to each person more — especially if you are a parent or daughter.

Although Red Table Talk airs on Facebook Live, it’s pre-recorded. However, it is still fascinating to learn about celebrities in a new light. It’s also an interesting example of how brands or influencers that don’t want to commit to being recorded on the spot can do something that’s still both creative and different.

5. Stanley Cup Live

During the past few seasons of the Stanley Cup, the NHL has streamed episodes of Stanley Cup Live via Facebook. During each episode, its hosts, Adam Burish and Jackie Redmond, interview NHL players and draft prospects with questions from live commenters. Occasionally, Stanley Cup Live will do interviews on location at game parades, NHL events, and hockey matches. 

Here’s a quick screenshot from an episode where the hosts interviewed draft prospects that had just trained at the NHL Combine. 

While the NHL doesn’t allow Facebook users to take livestream embed codes, you can see the full video here. You can also click here to see a short explainer video about Stanley Cup Live. 

This is a great way for athletic teams or organizations in the sporting industry to market themselves. It not only allows people to learn more about their favorite players, but it also allows social media users to interact with the brand in a whole new way. 

Aside from allowing users to interact with NHL players, this stream is also a great example of live sponsored content. Many of these episodes are sponsored by sporting goods or beer companies. 

For example, in 2018, the series was sponsored by New Amsterdam Vodka. 

6. Tough Mudder

Tough Mudder is an endurance event series known for its military-style obstacles and enormous sense of community. A few weeks ago, they took to Facebook Live to broadcast their Merrell Michigan Training Event with Coach T. Mud, a.k.a. Kyle Railton. Infectious energy aside, this stream made the list for a few reasons.

For one, it serves as a great use case for how to keep your community engaged — even when they can’t make it to your event. By bringing the event right to their audience’s desktop or mobile device, they can choose to follow along with the training, or simply get a sense of what they might be signing up for.

At the beginning of the broadcast, Coach T. Mud gives a shout out to the Tough Mudder Snapchat handle to encourage those at home — and at the event — to follow along with the training there. This is a great way to cross-promote your channels and increase overall engagement.

Around the six-minute mark, the person filming chimes in to reiterate where they are streaming from. She does the same thing again around the eight-minute mark. This is a great strategy for keeping those who might be joining mid-stream in the loop.

Finally, we really love the way Coach T. Mud gets up close and personal with some of the attendees around the 18-minute mark. While he mainly uses this time to get to know the Tough Mudder community a little better, he also sneaks in some subtle promotions, like this:

Well played, Coach.

(Want to learn more about Tough Mudder’s growth strategy? Check out this episode of The Growth Show featuring Tough Mudder Founder and CEO Will Dean.) 

7. Benefit

This cosmetics company takes a traditional on-camera sales approach to Facebook Live. In the past and even still today, many shopping networks have featured reps from various companies which pitch their product live as viewers call in or go online to purchase the product. 

 Recently, Benefit Cosmetics was posting live videos where they would talk about their products in a similar way. From a sound stage, they’d show the product while giving a full detailed description of it. Then, Benefit reps show the product in action with tutorials. They also occasionally answer questions about the product from the audience. 

Below is one example where they talk about a new makeup line. 

Although they do give a traditional order phone number to call, like old shopping-network television shows did, they also include a link where you go go to purchase the product in the video’s caption.

This is a great example of how some old-school marketing strategies can be tweaked to fit newer social platforms. With shows on shopping networks, you’d often see detailed descriptions of the product, tutorials, and discussions from people who’ve already used the product. These things are great to include in a video marketing strategy, which could mean that this format might actually work with slight tweaks on newer platforms. 

8. Jason Carr

The next Facebook video on the list comes to us in two parts. In an interesting series of events, Jason Carr, a former news anchor for FOX 2 in Detroit, takes Facebook Live viewers on a ride to his new gig at WDIV-TV, Local 4 News … but he doesn’t tell them that. At least not in the beginning.

The first video begins with Carr explaining that he’s going Live to follow up on a promise he made during his final broadcast for FOX 2 earlier that morning. This was his first right move: Using Facebook Live to extend the conversation following something like a webinar, interview, or panel discussion is a great way to connect with your audience while they’re already engaged.

Viewers watch as Carr — who is broadcasting live from the back of a Cadillac — takes a trip to what he refers to as “parts unknown.” During the first half of the stream, he provides some context around leaving the station, while engaging with viewers in the comments and continuing to build suspense for where he’s headed.

The whole suspense aspect is key, as it helps Carr spark his audience’s curiosity. After all, a little curiosity can go a long way: Research from the University of California revealed that sparking participant’s curiosity with the right question helped to prepare their brain for learning, while also making learning a more rewarding experience.

Just before the stream wraps up, we see Carr arrive at his secret destination — his new station — where he announces that he’ll pick back up once he has a chance to go in and get settled.

A little over an hour later, Carr fires up his stream again to give viewers a behind the scenes look at his first appearance on the new job.

Talk about a creative way to announce a new hire.

9. Grazia UK

This Grazia/Facebook collaboration just might be the most interesting use case for Facebook Live on our list. This month, the team at Grazia UK, an Italian women’s magazine with international editions, headed off to Facebook’s London headquarters to piece together their first “community issue.”

They took to Facebook Live to document a week’s worth of behind-the-scenes footage, allowing their audience to participate in things like their editorial meeting, cover shoot, and GraziaxFB Brexit Debate.

While all of the footage really helped to pull back the curtain for Grazia’s audience, the GraziaxFB Brexit Debate was one of the most successful broadcasts of the week — and for good reason.

The debate, chaired by The Guardian’s political editor Anushka Asthana, was centered around the UK’s decision to remain in or exit the European Union. The panelists were each given time to discuss their views, while also leaving time for questions from both the live audience and Facebook audience.

Asthana encouraged Facebook Live viewers to submit their ideas via the hashtag #GraziaxFB at the beginning of the broadcast.

f you’re hosting a live debate, discussion, or training, coming up with a hashtag in advance is a great way to organize the submission process for questions. For tips on how to use hashtags on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, read this post.

Overall, the discussion was timely, well executed, and helped to get the Grazia community talking about not only the Grazia/Facebook collaboration, but also the larger political issue at hand.

In the words of Grazia Editor Natasha Pearlman: “This is a fantastic opportunity to bring Grazia to life for our readers, and at the same time launch our real-life community, in partnership with the biggest social media network in the world.”

“The Grazia audience aren’t just readers, they are part of the brand – their views and opinions shape our content and really matter,” she went on to explain. “Now they can participate with us in real time.”

10. Tiny Kitchen from Tastemade

When you live in an apartment in Boston (or any city, really), you quickly learn how to make the most of a small kitchen. But this video from Tastemade takes that concept to a whole new level.

According to Tastemade’s Head of Production Jay Holzer, the tiny cooking concept was inspired by one of Tastemade’s Japanese partners. As it turns out, miniature cooking is quite popular in Japan, as a result of kawaii — the quality of ‘cuteness’ — which is plays a prominent role in Japanese pop culture.

While Tiny Kitchen started as a pre-recorded series, the folks at Tastemade tested their luck with Facebook Live by recording real-time cooking demonstrations. After this, Tiny Kitchen got its own Facebook Page where it began to launch live streams.

In the video below, you’re able to watch tiny donuts being made:

What’s great about this particular use case is that it can be enjoyed without sound. In other words, viewers can tune in without having to stop and adjust their volume, or put on headphones.

The strangely fascinating footage is really easy to consume, which likely contributed to the success of the original episodes. By going live, Tastemade simply added a unique interactive element. And millions of views later, they’ve proved it works.

The lesson? Sometimes, less it more. 

11. BuzzFeed

While BuzzFeed recently made headlines for their not-so-perfect Facebook Live attempt with none other than the president of the United States, we can assure you that they know what they’re doing.

On a much less serious note, the folks at BuzzFeed took to Facebook Live this past March to host an epic live dance battle.

But this wasn’t just any old dance battle: “Dance Craze Battle: Live” was an interactive competition that required the audience to vote on performances and submit suggestions for dance moves.

In between the first two rounds, the host took time to get to know each of the contestants a little better by asking them a few questions. This was really smart for two reasons:

1. It created an opportunity for BuzzFeed to show off their team and humanize their brand.
2. It gave time for viewers to submit ideas for the second round of dance battles.

With the help of user submissions in round two, viewers watched as their ideas came to fruition in the form of some pretty interesting dance moves, like “crying college student”:

After each dance, the person monitoring the comments section prompted viewers to cast their vote:

And the entire thing came to a close with a spirited dance party … because why not, right?

Even though this broadcast carried on for half hour, the level of engagement likely helped them keep viewers interested all the way through. When you’re planning a Facebook Live video, keep in mind that length isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as it provides you with a chance to reach more people. 

12. Callaway Golf

The folks at Callaway Golf are no strangers to live video. In May 2015, Callaway debuted a live show hosted by their SVP of Marketing and Brand Management Harry Arnett. While this particular live series didn’t unfold via Facebook Live, it’s likely that it made the transition to broadcasting content live on Facebook much easier. Later, in 2018, they followed it up with a similar series called “Golf Lives: Home Course.”

According to Arnett, the experience of live video brings Callaway back to their roots: “We felt like if we could figure out a way to be unique in it, provide utility to it, and be a contributing citizen in the community of golfers, we could become sort of the people’s brand,” he told Golf Digest, “which was very closely connected to the DNA of the company when it got started 20 years ago.”

In this Facebook Live video, Creative Content Manager AJ Voelpel announces the Golf Lives live series launch and kicks things off by interviewing prominent golfers:

As 45-minute video progresses, another person sits to the side monitoring social media and occasionally asks the host or interview subjects questions from Facebook Live commenters.

Although Callaway sells golf products, the focus of its live show is to entertain golf fanatics with solid interviews and valuable golf-related information. Because they show a large amount of expertise in their industry, viewers who have heard of the golfers being interviews might want to learn more about the brand. Then, they might develop a sense of trust for the company because they know great golfers and everything else there is to know about the sport. 

If you’re just getting started with Facebook Live, make note of Callaway’s tactics. And remember: Your broadcast doesn’t have to be all about your product or service for it to be successful. At the end of the day, you want people to remember the experience you provided them, which will ultimately help to keep you top-of-mind. 

13. Purple Mattress

The mattress company, which regularly posts odd or funny videos to highlight its Purple Mattress did something that was totally on-brand with their strange marketing strategies in 2018, Rather than live-streaming entertaining content, they purposely aired a 46-minute video of a girl sitting and yawning while reading a book.

The goal of the video was simple, bore fans so they think about sleeping and might also start thinking about mattresses. 

While we don’t encourage boring your fans, this approach was pretty funny and interesting. People might get tired and start imagining how great a Purple Mattress could feel. If they don’t, they might remember this odd-ball video next time they’re shopping for a mattress, or thinking about their own insomnia.

Although you should try to be entertaining and engaging in order to grow your Facebook audience, this is still a unique example of how a brand took a risk by doing something experimental.

Sometimes, an odd experiment can add a touch of humor or memorability to your brand. This memorability can be helpful when a prospective customer decides they need a product within your industry and starts their research stage by looking into companies that they quickly remember. 

Getting Started With Facebook Live

Now that you’re feeling inspired, it’s time to get out there and try it for yourself. As you brainstorm ideas for your first Live stream, keep these takeaways in mind.

• Embrace interactivity: Some of the videos on this list encourage Facebook viewers to comment with questions or take a guess on trivia questions. More comment-related engagement can’t hurt you algorithmically, and it will make your viewers feel like they are part of the live video experience. So, why not experiment with this strategy?
• Try a series: With a series, viewers who like your first few episodes might tune into the next ones. Slowly, you might grow a large following that looks forward to your regular content. If you pre-record the video and can’t have interactive elements, you might still gain some engagement from the loyal fans who’ve watched your previous videos. 
• Consider mobile formatting: If you don’t need narration in your video, consider creating content that has music, but can still be seen and fully enjoyed without sound. If you require narration, you could alternatively include subtitles at the bottom of the screen. Aside from noise, you could also take a note from Anderson Cooper by launching vertical, smartphone-friendly streams. These factors make the video more compatible with the platform and might prevent viewers from turning it off if they’re in a noisy, quiet, or crowded environment.

If you’re feeling up to it, but still think you need a little training, check out this post about how to broadcast on Facebook Live, how to analyze your live video’s performance, and the top tips and tricks for getting the most out of the platform.

You worked a lot to create great content. You posted it on your blog, on your social media accounts, and ensured it’s optimized for search engines.

But the views and subscribers aren’t where you’d like them to be.

If it’s any consolation, know that getting traffic is actually a common problem for most marketers. And while there are many ways to get those numbers up, content syndication stands out because it’s really cost-effective, helps you boost brand awareness, and improves SEO performance.

That’s if you do it right, of course. Otherwise, you risk being outranked by other publications with your own content. Additionally, you could end up negatively impacting your SEO performance by picking the wrong website to syndicate on.

At this point, you might be wondering — what’s the best way to use this tactic, and how can I avoid the drawbacks?

In this blog post, I’ll show you content syndication best practices you need to be aware of to make this tactic work for your business.

But first, let’s talk about what content syndication really is (and what it’s not).

It’s important to note that, although it might seem similar, content syndication is not the same as guest blogging. A guest post is a completely new piece of content, written specifically for one publication. Syndicated content is literally taking the same piece of content and republishing it, with permission, on other platforms.

From the reader’s perspective, one can tell if an article was syndicated, and not a guest post, because there’s usually a mention on the page about the original source. Typically, publications mark syndicated piece with text like this:

“This article originally appeared in [Original publication + Link].”

OR

“This article appeared in [Original publication + Link] and has been published here with permission.”

Image Source

This is a very important mention, not only for giving credit to the original author but also to avoid duplicate content issues.

Content Syndication and SEO

As you probably know, Google doesn’t like duplicate content.

It won’t penalize a website directly for duplicate content, but it might not help with their SEO performance, either.

The good news is that syndicated content isn’t the same as duplicate content. Even Google says it’s OK to syndicate content, as long as you do it carefully and make it obvious for search engines and readers that what they see is a syndicated piece. You can do that by including a link back to the original article and, ideally, getting the third-party publication to include a canonical link.

Read more: Canonicalization 101: Everything You Need to Know About Canonical URLs

How you add the canonical link typically depends on the publication. If the process is not clear, it’s something worth discussing with the editor from the very beginning.

Additionally, let’s not forget about the references (links) included within the content. Again, each publication has its own guidelines about references, so it’s good to discuss this with the editor before starting a partnership. But if you can reference your own content, a syndicated article can be a driver of referral traffic and a way to improve your rankings and organic traffic performance.

Scott Mathson, Senior Web Strategy and SEO Manager at Auth0, says that “if you include internal links, content that you syndicate across platforms often passes authority and equity through to these links. Signals from an increase in traffic from new and different referral channels, alongside a broadened backlink profile (whether nofollow or follow), and other factors gives search engines further context around your content and its relevancy and popularity.”

Scott has seen how content syndication can impact a website’s SEO performance (directly and indirectly). Over the past two years, he’s used content syndication (among other tactics) to grow the website’s backlink profile from 200K to over 4.4 million backlinks.

Now that we have the basics covered, here’s how to do content syndication successfully.

There are two ways to go about content syndication — free, or paid. The free way means you focus on finding the right publications, pitching your content, and building partnerships, one at a time. The paid solution means using tools that allow you to get your content recommended in major publications more quickly.

Here’s everything you need to know about both free and paid content syndications methods.

Free Content Syndication

There are four main ways in which you can syndicate your content for free:

1. Republish your latest or best-performing content on bigger websites, with more readers and higher authority than yours. When you syndicate to a bigger publication, you amplify your reach. However, since readers can consume the entire piece of content directly on the third-party website, there’s little incentive for them to check out the original source. So only a small percentage of the readers will visit your website. That said, if your main goal is to increase your brand awareness, then syndicating on major publications is the way to go.
2. Syndicate old content on websites that have roughly the same audience and authority as yours. If you want to focus more on a niche audience, then you should consider syndicating content to smaller, more focused publications. Ideally, look for publications with similar authority and readership as your blog. They might also allow more contextual links so you can reference back to your blog from the article. It’s a great way to let their readers discover more content on your blog and generate new leads.
3. Guest post on a bigger publication and syndicate later on your website, Medium, or LinkedIn. Sometimes it’s worth publishing on a big site first, as they might only be interested in fresh, original content. You get the benefit of getting your thought leadership in front of a big audience that otherwise wouldn’t have reached your content. After a while, depending on the publication, you’re free to republish that piece to your audience and social channels. Basically, you get more bang for your content buck.
4. Get picked up by websites that naturally syndicate content. If you take the title of a recent article from a big publication and type it into Google, you’ll see it’s been picked up by many small publications. These usually publish an excerpt from the original piece and link back to the source.

Here’s an example:

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To make your blog more visible, try first creating a page where you explain how people can syndicate your content. This “steal our content … please” page from UniverseToday.com is a good example of how to go about it.

Then, make sure you optimize your website for syndication.

Scott Mathson told me, “Syndication often relies on feeds and sitemaps, so take the time to focus on optimizing your website’s posts feeds, sitemaps, and other XML files to ensure it is valid and in line with guidelines for various publishing platforms. Once optimized, setup the connections for automating syndication, whether through setting up connections to sitemaps and feeds or through developing API connections to various syndication sites. Setting up this automation for cross-posting your content to sites like Flipboard saves time in the long run.”

Lastly, give other publication a reason to syndicate your content either entirely or partially. For example, include charts, infographics, or diagrams that can easily be picked up and syndicated.

“Presenting key statistics, tips and takeaways from your content in a visual format, like an infographic or slidedeck, can make your content more attention-grabbing. Even if sites don’t want to syndicate an entire article, they may still be open to sharing your visual content, since it can complement their existing piece and help boost the engagement on their page,” said Sara McGuire, Content Lead at Venngage, where they used visual content to grow their site traffic by 400%.

In this next section, you’ll learn how to find publications where your competitors’ syndicate content, which ones to choose, and which to avoid.

How to Find Content Syndication Partners

There are numerous tools you can use, including BuzzSumo, Ahrefs, SEMRush — just to name a few. You can check any website’s latest backlinks for content syndication opportunities.

Most likely, the easiest place to start is a Google search. Look for articles that mention:

“originally published in”

“republished with permission”

“originally appeared on”

To narrow your search to publications in your niche, add inurl:[domain] to your search. Here’s a real-life example of inbound blogs that syndicate content:

When selecting publications, look for the ones that have:

• similar or better authority than your blog
• a readership that’s similar to your buyer persona
• canonical links to original articles

There are also publications you need to stay away from. Publishing there might ultimately harm your brand and SEO performance. Make sure you avoid publications with:

• low authority
• spammy outbound links
• no clear editorial guidelines

To help you get started, I’ve put together a list of websites where you can syndicate content right away.

Paid Content Syndication

Paid content syndication is, well, when you pay to be published.

The most common form of paid syndication has been around for a while. Big brands often collaborate directly with big publishers and get their content in front of a big audience. This tactic, however, wasn’t available for smaller brands with a more limited budget.

Fortunately, there are now tools like Outbrain and Taboola which make it possible for even smaller brands to appear as recommended content on sites like CNN, BBC, or The Guardian.

You’ve probably seen these ads before:

The way these platforms work is pretty much like any PPC campaign. You can set a capped budget, a cost-per-click, and a target audience. Then the platform serves readers with your ad as a recommended article, featuring an image, a short title, and a link back to your website.

It’s probably worth mentioning here that these links don’t carry any SEO authority. They are seen as “sponsored content” by search engines, and sometimes by readers, too.

Every time a reader clicks on one of these ads, you are charged a cost that varies depending on the target audience and other campaign settings.

That said, paid syndication is a much more straightforward option to get your content featured in major publications. It’s probably also the only way to get your content on sites like CNN. However, paid doesn’t give you the same SEO and even brand awareness benefits as free syndication.

Ultimately, content syndication is a fantastic opportunity to reach a new audience and potentially convert those readers into leads. Additionally, if you syndicate other publication’s content on your own site, you’re able to serve your readers fresh, valuable content without requiring them to leave your site to find it elsewhere.

Recently, we analyzed millions of tweets and found that some Twitter hashtags correlate with a 1,065% increase in engagement — clearly, hashtags still matter in 2019.

More specifically, we found tweets with no hashtags averaged 1.7 interactions per tweet. Tweets that included #ico, the most popular hashtag, had an average of 19.8 interactions per tweet. That’s almost 12x higher engagement with the right hashtag.

We saw similar increases with other popular hashtags, like #medicaid, #ethereum, and #crowdfunding.

There are two possible explanations for this:

1. Hashtags for popular searches like #tuesdaymotivation increase impressions per tweet. More impressions lead to more likes, replies, and retweets.
2. Hashtags provide insight into content that naturally performs well. This might be true for #photography, #funny, or #pets.

To help increase engagement with potential customers on Twitter, we’ve compiled a list of the best hashtags to increase likes, retweets, and replies. Our list is by no means all-encompassing — we only covered a specific time period, and as trends change, so will popular hashtags. But the list should still provide longterm insights into general popular topics on Twitter, helping you create a more relevant content strategy.

Our Methodology

We used a dataset of tweets ranging from January 2017 to May 2018. Hashtags were only included if they occurred in a minimum of 300 tweets, by at least 100 unique accounts. In 2019, we did further research to determine which tweets were still relevant and which needed to be added to the list.

Hashtags That Get the Most Likes

First, let’s take a look at the 30 best hashtags to get likes on a tweet:

1. ico
2. ethereum
3. crypto
4. crowdfunding
5. medicaid
6. blackhistorymonth
7. womenshistorymonth
8. photography
9. iwd2019
10. cryptocurrency
11. happyeaster
12. womensday
13. pressforprogress
14. happybirthday
15. internationalwomensday
16. olympics
17. pets
18. friends
19. piday
20. worldwaterday
21. funny
22. contest
23. starwarsday
24. giveaway
25. tuesdaymotivation
26. mondaymotivation
27. traveltuesday
28. wcw
29. tbt

Some of these hashtags might surprise you — #worldwaterday, for example, doesn’t have much in common with #tuesdaymotivation, and yet both made the list.

The most popular hashtags fit into a few categories:

• Cryptocurrency: The recent rise of cryptocurrency wasn’t lost on social media — #ico, #ethereum, and #crypto occupied the top three spots. In addition, #cryptocurrency and #bitcoin were near the top of the list. It’s uncertain whether this trend will continue beyond 2019.
• History Months: #blackhistorymonth and #womenshistorymonth ranked 5th and 6th, respectively.
• Holidays/Other Days: The rest of the top 25 included #happyeaster, #happybirthday, #internationalwomensday, #piday, #worldwaterday, and #starwarsday. Also, #fathersday, #maythe4thbewithyou, and #memorialday just missed the cut.
• Contests: Social media contests, a popular way to increase engagement, are represented with #contest and #giveaway.
• Evergreen Content: Less topical but strong-performing content like #photography, #funny, and #pets also ranked.

Hopefully, the list is broad enough to help you easily incorporate one or two topics into your social media strategy — when it’s a holiday, for example, your business might do well posting Tweets relevant to that day, or if your engagement is low, you might consider creating a social media contest.

Most Popular Hashtags

Some of the following hashtags overlap with our most-liked hashtags on Twitter, but others stand alone as popular for getting retweets but not necessarily for getting likes. Here’s a list of the 30 we found to be most retweeted:

1. medicaid
2. ico
3. ethereum
4. aca
5. crypto
6. crowdfunding
7. giveaway
8. contest
9. blackhistorymonth
10. womenshistorymonth
11. cryptocurrency
12. womensday
13. happybirthday
14. authentication
15. win
16. medicare
17. internationalwomensday
18. influencermarketing
19. opioid
20. healthinsurance
21. qa
22. funny
23. womeninstem
24. iwd2019
25. photography
26. mondaymotivation
27. ootd
28. vegan
29. traveltuesday
30. tbt

The most-retweeted list was similar to the most-liked list, but there are a few differences:

• Health or healthcare related hashtags like #medicaid, #aca, #medicare, #healthinsurance, #vegan, and #opioid are all highly ranked. This is possibly because these are topics that come up a lot in daily life and in the news.
• Motivational tweets with hashtags like #MondayMotivation that include quotes or tips related to life or work might are retweetable because Twitter users that agree with the advice or tip might also want to share it.
• For fashionistas, #OOTD or Outfit of the Day gives them the opportunity to share their favorite outfits. These might be retweetable but other people who want to use that outfit as fashion inspiration on their own account.
• Twitter considers hashtags like #MondayMotivation, #TBT, and #TravelTuesday as highly engaging because they inspire people to try new things. They often correlate to beautiful imagery.
• Contest hashtags like #giveaway, #contest, and #win also ranked higher.

There are a few possible explanations for these most retweeted hashtags. For instance, contest hashtags might rank high on the list as a result of contest creators asking for retweets instead of likes. This is probably a good strategy for smaller Twitter accounts looking to reach a new audience. However, a Twitter account with a lot of followers might see better results asking for likes, which could re-engage their existing audience.

Best Hashtags to Get Replies on Twitter

If you’re interested in engaging more meaningfully with your Twitter audience, you might benefit from the hashtags in this list. These 29 hashtags are most likely to result in a direct reply on Twitter, ideally sparking a conversation between your business and potential customers.

1. merrychristmas
2. giveaway
3. contest
4. win
5. competition
6. medicaid
7. aca
8. ethereum
9. blackhistorymonth
10. photography
11. ff
12. ico
13. happybirthday
14. metoo
15. crypto
16. womensday
17. alcohol
18. bitcoin
19. gold
20. movies
21. running
22. thankful
23. birthday
24. cryptocurrencies
25. opioid
26. mondaymotivation
27. tbt
28. thursdaythoughts
29. traveltuesday

The most-replied-to hashtags are similar to our previous lists, but there are a few differences:

• #ff or Follow Friday, a popular way to get more followers on Twitter, made its first appearance.
• #TBT or Throwback Thursday is often used when sharing an old photo or tweet. While people might not retweet your memories, they might send a reply related to how much has changed since the time when the memory was captured.
• ThursdayThoughts is often associated with a deep thought or philosophy. These types of tweets might be retweetable if people agree. But, they also might encourage discussion or polite debate if the tweet makes people think.
• Similarly themed but new hashtags that ranked were #merrychristmas, #competition, #metoo, #gold, #thankful, and #birthday.
• Also making its first appearance was #alcohol. Maybe this is the Twitter equivalent of drunk-dialing?

Perhaps you might consider asking a question using one of these hashtags (“Favorite #movies?”) to increase replies from your audience. Twitter is meant to be a social platform — with these hashtags, you can hopefully elevate the conversations you’re having with your followers.

Best Twitter Hashtags

Here’s the list of the 34 highest-performing hashtags for that past two years:

1. crypto
2. influencermarketing
3. womenshistorymonth
4. blackhistorymonth
5. cryptocurrency
6. bitcoin
7. internationalwomensday
8. cryptocurrencies
9. java
10. blockchain
11. iwd2019
12. competition
13. pressforprogress
14. influencer
15. olympics
16. influencers
17. datascience
18. fintech
19. womenintech
20. metoo
21. deeplearning
22. science
23. sxsw
24. fridayfeeling
25. cloudsecurity
26. MondayMotivation
27. tbt
28. wcw
29. thursdaythoughts
30. traveltuesday
31. vegan
32. fitness
33. blessed
34. goals

Currently, hashtags related to technology, health, and lifestyle remain consistently popular. However, there were a few new additions:

• #blockchain, which is the underlying technology behind bitcoin, has seen an increase in engagement. This makes sense, since Facebook, Amazon, and many others have recently made forays into using it. Blockchain also has a wide variety of possible uses, from financial applications to file sharing.
• #influencermarketing and #influencers also appear to be trending. Influencer marketing is an emerging type of marketing that focuses on using social influencers to amplify your message.
• Other rising, tech-related hashtags included #fintech, #deeplearning, #science, #cloudsecurity, and #java.

Finally, a few other top hashtags that just missed the list include #predictiveanalytics, #databreach, #robotics, #machinelearning, and #augmentedreality.

We don’t expect you to create quality content by stuffing your tweets with #java #womenintech and #funny — instead, we hope you can incorporate some of these hashtags into thoughtful messages you believe makes sense for your business, to encourage increased engagement with your audience.

When you’re developing or launching a new product, service, or business, you’ll want to have a general sense of how receptive your target market will be to it.

Typically, this is done through extensive market research — and one key component of the market research process is running a focus group.

A focus group is a small group of people, typically representative of your target market, that you run ideas and questions about your product, service, or business by. The ideal outcome is a stronger understanding of how the subject of the focus group would be received by a wider audience, and what changes (if any) should be made before the formal roll-out.

In this article, we’ll highlight a step-by-step process for running a focus group, from planning your focus group questions in a focus group questionnaire to incorporating the findings into your launch strategy.

Follow Along With a Free Focus Group Questionnaire Template

HubSpot’s Market Research Kit includes everything you need to run an effective round of market research, including a focus group questionnaire and a guide on how to run focus groups. Download the kit now to incorporate the steps in this post into your focus group strategy.

How to Run a Focus Group

1. Choose your topic of discussion.

Going into a focus group, your discussion should be narrowed down to one or a few topics. Keep in mind that you won’t be able to thoroughly address every area you want to discuss in one short focus group session.

Because of this, it’s not uncommon for companies to run multiple rounds of focus groups around different topics. For example, if you’re launching a new product, you could center one focus group around the product’s marketing and brand positioning, and another one around the usability and functionality of the product itself.

2. Choose your questions or discussion prompts.

Once you determine the area of focus for your focus group, create a list of questions and discussion prompts that will help you gather the data you need.

Let’s return to the product launch example from above. If you’re running the product marketing focus groups, you could ask questions like:

• What do you think of the packaging design?
• How much money would you spend on a product like this?
• What other companies do you think of when you see a product like this?

Meanwhile, for the focus group about the product itself, you might want to go in with discussion prompts to ask about the product’s:

• Functionality
• Ease of use
• Perceived favorability

Also, remember to ask open-ended questions — “Do you like the product?” versus “What do you think of the product?” may seem similar in nature, but will likely produce dramatically different results.

3. Prepare your focus group questionnaire.

After you’ve chosen your questions and discussion prompts, organize them on a focus group questionnaire. Be sure to leave enough space on the questionnaire for overall notes, a list of common responses, and one or two noteworthy responses that really stood out.

Download this Template for Free

4. Appoint a notetaker.

Your focus group discussion should be facilitated by at least one person, while another person on your team should be a designated notetaker.

Why? The facilitator’s job is to facilitate — to guide the discussion and foster new ideas from participants. This task can get easily derailed if the facilitator also needs to pause the discussion to write down big, bold ideas and reactions from participants.

To avoid this possibility of disruption, appoint a notetaker before going into the focus group who can focus solely on jotting down the general consensus from the group, unique and noteworthy individual responses, and the key takeaways for the business.

5. Recruit and schedule participants.

One of the most challenging parts of running a focus group is getting people to actually show up. After you select a time and a place, you’ll want to start spreading the word of the group to get participants.

Here are a few ways to find them:

1. Reach out to existing customers.

If you’re doing market research for an existing company, reach out to your customers through account managers or an email database. Since current customers will likely be the first to use what you’re launching, this will be the perfect opportunity to gauge early reactions for its ultimate launch.

For incentives, you could offer free or discounted services or reward them on a customer advocacy program like Influitive.

2. Advertise on social media.

Looking for middle-aged males or senior citizens in the greater Ann Arbor area? No problem! Social media advertising offers advanced targeting options for you to reach your target market.

You should also think about which sites are most used by the people you want in your focus group. If you’re interested in surveying middle-aged working professionals, you’ll probably have better luck on LinkedIn over Snapchat.

3. Try location-based promotion.

If you’re hyper-targeting a location, supplement your recruiting efforts with advertisements that will only be seen by those in your area. A few examples include:

• Billboard Ads
• Public Transit-Based Ads (Trains, Busses, Taxis, etc.)
• Ads in Local Publications and Newspapers

4. Be prepared to offer incentives.

Unfortunately, people rarely do anything for free. In your advertisements and promotional assets, highlight the inventive you’re prepared to offer — which could be cash, a gift card, or a discount on whatever you’re selling.

If you’re scrapped for cash, consider hosting a raffle for participants. That way, if you host a focus group of eight people, you could offer a chance at a $100 gift card (rather than a guaranteed $25 per participant) to save you $100.

6. Get consent and start the discussion.

Before you start your focus group discussion, remind participants of the purpose of the group and hand out a consent form. The consent form should reiterate the purpose of the event, outline the participants’ rights, identify the compensation, list the facilitators’ contact information, and prompt participants to sign.

After everyone signs off, it’s time to run the focus group.

7. Have everyone introduce themselves.

To break the ice and get people talking, start the discussion off by introducing yourself and inviting the participants to do the same.

This is another chance for you to learn more about your target market. In addition to having participants say their names, consider asking them to share their industry or interests to get a more personal understanding of how your product, service, or business could play a role in their everyday lives.

8. Ask your questions.

Start by asking your list of five to 10 prepared questions.

Going into the focus group, it can be easy to tie yourself to your list of questions or discussion points, but sticking too closely to this can hamper natural and effective conversations. If the group takes a slightly different turn that you were expecting, don’t be afraid to allow the conversation to veer off-course from your questions if it seems productive.

The point of a focus group is not just to confirm information you think is true, but also to uncover what you don’t know.

So long as it’s not too far off-topic, allow the conversation to happen naturally and use the discussion prompts as a guide rather than a point-by-point checklist of topics to cover.

Additionally, your list of questions may not all be asked, depending on the direction of the conversation. Make sure you ask the more important questions first, and follow-up on certain discussion points with the right next question to keep things flowing rather than hosting a pure question-and-answer forum.

9. Seek equal representation from the group.

Remember, this is not an interview! You’re running a focus group to solicit multiple ideas, and only hearing from one or two people defeats the purpose of the exercise. Be ready to jump in when someone has been quiet for too long and say something along the lines of “Julie, what’s your input here?” or “Michael, what do you think about what Julie said?”

10. End the meeting in a reasonable amount of time.

Exhaustion and the law of diminishing returns are real, so keep them in mind when planning the time frame for your focus group.

At the start of the focus group, in your advertisements, and/or on your consent form, you should specify a range of how long the focus group will last. It’s your responsibility to moderate the discussion in a way that ensures that time frame is not exceeded.

Now, if the exercise lasts for an hour and five minutes and you promised an hour focus group, that’s totally acceptable. However, if you promised a 45 minute session and it goes well over an hour, your attendees could be resentful and less likely to offer valuable feedback.

When the discussion is over, thank your attendees for their time and feedback and deliver the promised incentive, if applicable. Additionally, remind them of your contact information if they decide they have more feedback or comments they’d like to provide.

11. Analyze and incorporate feedback.

Ideally, your focus group has provided you with plenty of responses, unique angles, and actionable ideas to help your business thrive. After all of your focus groups have taken place, have your team compile and analyze the commonalities of the ideas presented and what changes, if any, they warrant to the product, service, or business in question.

Running a Better Focus Group

Taking this methodical approach to running a focus group can produce better and more insightful feedback from your participants. To keep your questions, thoughts, and responses organized, we developed a focus group template, which you can use to run a better focus group.

Download it for free now to make your marketing research worth the effort.

You know what sounds like a really bad idea?

Deleting 3,000 pages from the HubSpot Blog.

You know what our SEO and Web Dev teams did in February?

Deleted 3,000 pages from the HubSpot Blog.

No, this wasn’t some Marie Kondo-ing team-bonding exercise gone horribly, horribly wrong (although those posts were definitely not sparking joy).

It was a project that our head of technical SEO, Victor Pan, and I had wanted to run for a long time — because counterintuitively, getting rid of content on your site can actually be fantastic for SEO.

In the SEO world, this practice is called “content pruning”. But, while a good idea in theory, content pruning doesn’t mean you should go crazy and hack away at your content like it’s a tree and you’ve got a chainsaw. Content pruning is far more methodical than that — like trimming a bonsai.

I’ll get to the results we saw at the end of this post. But first, let’s explore what content pruning is, and then dive into a step-by-step content audit process, so you’ll have a detailed blueprint of how to do this for your own property (or your client’s).

Which brings us to the next question:

How often should you run a content audit?

Like almost everything in SEO, it depends. If you have a large site, you may want to audit a different section every month. If you have a small site, consider evaluating the entire site every six months.

I typically recommend starting with a quarterly audit to see how much value you receive from doing one. If you end up with so many next steps you feel overwhelmed, try running them more often. If you’re not learning that much, run them less often.

Why run a content audit?

When my team kicked off this project, we already knew there were a ton of older pages on the HubSpot blog that were getting essentially zero traffic — we just didn’t know how many. Our goal from the start was pruning this content.

However, even if that wasn’t the case, there are still several reasons to run periodic content audits:

1. Identify content gaps: where are you missing content?
2. Identify content cannibalization: where do you have too much content?
3. Find outdated pages: do you still have legacy product pages? Landing pages with non-existent offers? Pages for events that happened several years ago? Blog posts with out-of-date facts or statistics?
4. Find opportunities for historical optimization: are there any pages that are ranking well but could be ranking higher? What about pages that have decreased in rank?
5. Learn what’s working: what do your highest-traffic and/or highest-converting pages have in common?
6. Fix your information architecture: is your site well-organized? Does the structure reflect the relative importance of pages? Is it easy for search engines to crawl?

Choosing your goal from the beginning is critical for a successful content audit, because it dictates the data you’ll look at.

In this post, we’ll cover content audits that’ll help you prune low-performing content.

1. Define the scope of your audit.

First, determine the scope of your audit — in other words, do you want to evaluate a specific set of pages on your site or the whole enchilada?

If this is your first time doing a content audit, consider starting with a subsection of your site (such as your blog, resource library, or product/service pages).

The process will be a lot less overwhelming if you choose a subsection first. Once you’ve gotten your sea legs, you can take on the entire thing.

2. Run a crawl using a website crawler.

Next, it’s time to pull some data.

I used Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider for this step. This is a fantastic tool for SEO specialists, so if you’re on the fence, I’d go for it — you’ll definitely use the spider for other projects. And if you’ve got a small site, you can use the free version, which will crawl up to 500 URLs.

Ahrefs also offers a site audit (available for every tier), but I haven’t used it, so I can’t speak to its quality.

Additionally, Wildshark offers a completely free crawler that has a very beginner-friendly reputation (although it only works on Windows, so Mac users will need to look elsewhere).

Finally, if you want to run a one-time audit, check out Scrutiny for Mac. It’s free for 30 days and will crawl an unlimited amount of URLs — meaning it’s perfect for trying before buying, or one-off projects.

Once you’ve picked your weapon of choice, enter the root domain, subdomain, or subfolder you selected in step one.

For instance, since I was auditing the HubSpot blog, I only wanted to look at URLs that began with “blog.hubspot.com”. If I was auditing our product pages, I would’ve wanted to look at URLs that began with “www.hubspot.com/products“.

If you’re using Screaming Frog, select Configuration > Spider. Then, deselect:

• Check Images
• Check CSS
• Check JavaScript
• Check Links Outside Folder
• Crawl All Subdomains
• Crawl Outside Folder

Next, tab over to “Limits” and make sure that “Limit Crawl Depth” isn’t checked.

What if the pages you’re investigating don’t roll up to a single URL? You can always pull the data for your entire website and then filter out the irrelevant results.

After you’ve configured your crawl, hit “OK” and “Start”.

The crawl will probably take some time, so meanwhile, let’s get some traffic data from Google Analytics.

Since we’re evaluating each page, we need the “Site Content > All Pages” report.

If you have a view set up for this section of the site, go to it now. I used the view for “blog.hubspot.com”.

If you don’t have a view, add a filter for pages beginning with [insert URL path here].

Adjust the date range to the last six to twelve months, depending on the last time you ran an audit.

(Also, don’t forget to scroll down and change “Show rows: 10” to “Show rows: 5000”.)

Then, export that data into a Google Sheet.

Title the sheet something like “Content Audit [Month Year] for [URL]”. Name the tab “All Traffic [Date Range]”.

Then go back to GA, click “Add Segment”, uncheck “All Users”, and check “Organic Users”. Keep everything else the same.

(It’s a lot easier to pull two reports and combine them with a V-LOOKUP then add both segments to your report at once.)

Once it’s finished processing, click Export. Copy and paste the data into a new tab in original content audit spreadsheet named “Organic Traffic [Date Range]”.

Here’s what you should have:

At this point, I copied the entire spreadsheet and named this copy “Raw Data: Content Audit May 2019 for blog.hubspot.com.” This gave me the freedom to delete a bunch of columns without worrying that I’d need that data later.

Now that I had a backup version, I deleted columns B and D-H (Pageviews, Entrances, % Exit, and Page Value) on both sheets. Feel free to keep whatever columns you’d like; just make sure both sheets have the same ones.

Hopefully, your Screaming Frog crawl is done by now. Click “Export” and download it as an CSV (not .xslx!) file.

Now, click “File > Import” and select your Screaming Frog file. Title it “Screaming Frog Crawl_[Date]”. Then click the small downward arrow and select “Copy to > Existing spreadsheet”.

Name the new sheet “Content Pruning Master”. Add a filter to the top row.

Now we’ve got a raw version of this data and another version we can edit freely without worrying we’ll accidentally delete information we’ll want later.

Alright, let’s take a breath. We’ve got a lot of data in this sheet — and Google Sheets is probably letting you know it’s tired by running slower than usual.

I deleted a bunch of columns to help Sheets recover, specifically:

• Content
• Status
• Title 1 Length
• Title 1 Pixel Width
• Meta Description 1
• Meta Description 1 Pixel Width
• Meta Keyword 1
• Meta Keywords 1 Length
• H1-1
• H1-1 Length
• H2-1
• H2-1 Length
• Meta Robots 1
• Meta Robots 2
• Meta Refresh 1
• Canonical Link Element 2
• rel=”next” 1 (laughs bitterly)
• rel=”prev” 1 (keeps laughing bitterly)
• Size (bytes)
• Text Ratio
• % of Total
• Link Score

Again, this goes back to the goal of your audit. Keep the information that’ll help you accomplish that objective and get rid of everything else.

Next, add two columns to your Content Pruning Master. Name the first one “All Users [Date Range]” and “Organic Users [Date Range]”.

Hopefully you see where I’m going with this.

Unfortunately, we’ve run into a small roadblock. All the Screaming Frog URLs begin with “http://” or “https://”, but our GA URLs begin with the root or subdomain. A normal VLOOKUP won’t work.

Luckily, there’s an easy fix. First, select cell A1, then choose “Insert > Column Right”. Do this a few times so you have several empty columns between your URLs (in Column A) and the first row of data. Now you won’t accidentally overwrite anything in this next step:

Highlight Column A, select “Data > Split text to columns”, and then choose the last option, “Custom”.

Enter two forward slashes.

Hit “Enter”, and now you’ll have the truncated URLs in Column B. Delete Column A, as well as the empty columns.

This is also a good time to get rid of any URLs with parameters. For instance, imagine Screaming Frog found your landing page, offers.hubspot.com/instagram-engagement-report. It also found the parameterized version of that URL: offers.hubspot.com/instagram-engagement-report?hubs_post-cta=blog-homepage

Or, perhaps you use a question mark for filters, such as “https://ift.tt/30t1Qg3”.

According to GA, the latter URLs will get little organic traffic. You don’t want to accidentally delete these pages because you’re looking at the parameterized URL stats, versus the original one.

To solve this, run the same “split text to columns” process as before, but with the following symbols:

• #
• ?
• !
• &
• =

This will probably create some duplicates. You can either remove them with an add-on (no, Sheets doesn’t offer deduping, which is a little crazy) or download your sheet to Excel, dedupe your data there, and then reupload to Sheets.

3. Evaluate pages with non-200 HTTP status codes.

I recommend filtering the URLs that triggered a non-200 response and putting them into a separate sheet:

Here’s what to investigate:

Redirect audit:

• How many redirects do you have?
• Are there any redirect chains (or multi-step redirects, which makes your page load time go up)?
• Do you have internal links to pages that are 301ing?
• Are any of your canonicalized pages 301ing? (This is bad because you don’t want to indicate a page is the canonical version if it’s redirecting to another page.)

404 error audit:

• Do you have internal links to pages that are 404ing?
• Can you redirect any broken links to relevant pages?
• Are any of your 404 errors caused by backlinks from mid- to high-authority websites? If so, consider reaching out to the site owner and asking them to fix the link.

4. Pull in traffic and backlink data.

Once you’ve standardized your URLs and removed all the broken and redirected links, pull in the traffic data from GA.

Add two columns to the right of Column A. Name them “All Traffic [Date Range]” and “Organic Traffic [Date Range]”.

Use this formula for Column B:

=INDEX(‘All Traffic [Date Range]’!C:C,(MATCH(A2,’All Traffic [Date Range]’!A:D,0)))

My sheet was called All Traffic January-May 19, so here’s what my formula looked like:

=INDEX(‘All Traffic January-May 19′!C:C,(MATCH(A2,’All Traffic January-May 19’!A:A,0)))

Use this formula for Column C:

=INDEX(‘Organic Traffic [Date Range]’!C:C,(MATCH(A2,’Organic Traffic [Date Range]’!A:A,0)))

Here was my formula:

=INDEX(‘Organic Traffic January-May 19′!C:C,(MATCH(A2,’Organic Traffic January-May 19’!A:A,0)))

Once you’ve added this, click the small box in the lower right-hand corner of cells B2 and C2 to extend the formulas to the entire columns.

Next, for each URL we need backlinks and keywords by URL.

I used Ahrefs to get this, but feel free to use your tool of choice (SEMrush, Majestic, cognitiveSEO, etc.).

First, enter the root domain, subdomain, or subfolder you selected in step one.

Then, select “Pages > Best by links” in the left-hand sidebar.

To filter your results, change the HTTP status code to “200” — we only care about links to live pages.

Click the Export icon on the right. Ahrefs will default to the first 1,000 results, but we want to see everything, so select “Full export”.

While that’s processing, add a sheet in your spreadsheet titled “Live Backlinks by URL”. Then add three columns (D, E, and F) to the Content Pruning Master sheet named “Backlinks”, “URL Rating”, and “Referring Domains”, respectively.

Import the Ahrefs CSV file into your spreadsheet. You’ll need to repeat the “Split text to column” process to remove the transfer protocol (http:// and https://) from the URLs. You’ll also need to delete Column A:

In Column D (Backlinks), use this formula:

=INDEX(‘Live Backlinks by URL’!E:E,(MATCH(A2,’Live Backlinks by URL’!B:B,0)))

In Column E (Referring Domains), use this formula:

=INDEX(‘Live Backlinks by URL’!D:D,(MATCH(A2,’Live Backlinks by URL’!B:B,0)))

In Column F (URL Rating), use this formula:

=INDEX(‘Live Backlinks by URL’!A:A,(MATCH(A2,’Live Backlinks by URL’!B:B,0)))

5. Evaluate each page using predefined performance criteria.

Now for every URL we can see:

• All the unique pageviews it received for the date range you’ve selected
• All the organic unique pageviews it received for that date range
• Its indexibility status
• How many backlinks it has
• How many unique domains are linking to it
• Its URL rating (e.g. its page authority)
• Its title
• Its title length
• Its canonical URL (whether it’s self-canonical or canonicalizes to a different URL)
• Its word count
• Its crawl depth
• How many internal links point to it
• How many unique internal links point to it
• How many outbound links it contains
• How many unique outbound links it contains
• How many of its outbound links are external
• Its response time
• The date it was last modified
• Which URL it redirects to, if applicable

This may seem like an overwhelming amount of information. However, when you’re removing content, you want to have as much information as possible — after all, once you’ve deleted or redirected a page, it’s hard to go back. Having this data means you’ll make the right calls.

Next, it’s finally time to analyze your content.

Click the filter arrow on Column C (“Organic Traffic [Date Range]”), then choose “Condition: Less than” and enter a number.

I chose 450, which meant I’d see every page that had received less than 80 unique page views per month from search in the last five months. Adjust this number based on the amount of organic traffic your pages typically receive. Aim to filter out the top 80%.

Copy and paste the results into a new sheet titled “Lowest-Traffic Pages”. (Don’t forget to use “Paste Special > Values Only” so you don’t lose the results of your formulas.) Add a filter to the top row.

Now, click the filter arrow on Column B (“All Traffic [Date Range]”), and choose “Sort: Z → A.”

Are there any pages that received way more regular traffic than organic? I found several of these in my analysis; for instance, the first URL in my sheet is a blog page that gets thousands of views every week from paid social ads:

To ensure you don’t redirect or delete any pages that get a significant amount of traffic from non-organic sources, remove everything above a certain number — mine was 1,000, but again, tweak this to reflect your property’s size.

There are three options for every page left:

• Delete
• Redirect
• Historically optimize (in other words, update and republish it)

Here’s how to evaluate each post:

• Delete: If a page doesn’t have any backlinks and the content isn’t salvageable, remove it.
• Redirect: If a page has one or more backlinks and the content isn’t salvageable, or there’s a page that’s ranking higher for the same set of keywords, redirect it to the most similar page.
• Historically optimize: If a page has one or more backlinks, there are a few obvious ways to improve the content (updating the copy, making it more comprehensive, adding new sections and removing irrelevant ones, etc.), and it’s not competing with another page on your site, earmark it for historical optimization.

Depending on the page, factor in the other information you have.

For example, maybe a page has 15 backlinks and a URL rating of 19. The word count is 800 — so it’s not thin content — and judging by its title, it covers a topic that’s on-brand and relevant to your audience.

However, in the past six months it’s gotten just 10 pageviews from organic.

If you look a bit more closely, you see its crawl depth is 4 (pretty far away from the homepage), it’s only got one internal link, and it hasn’t been modified in a year.

That means you could probably immediately improve this page’s performance by making some minor updates, republishing it, moving it a few clicks closer to the homepage, and adding some internal links.

I recommend illustrating the parts of the process you’ll use for every page with a decision tree, like this one:

You’ll notice one major difference: instead of “historically optimize”, our third option was “syndicate”.

Publishing the articles we removed to external sites so we could build links was a brilliant idea from Matt Howells-Barby.

Irina Nica, who’s the head of link-building on the HubSpot SEO team, is currently working with a team of freelancers to pitch the content we identified as syndication candidates to external sites. When they accept and publish the content, we get incredibly valuable backlinks to our product pages and blog posts.

To make sure we didn’t run into any issues where guest contributors found a post they’d written several years ago for HubSpot on a different site, we made sure all syndication candidates came from current or former HubSpot employees.

If you have enough content, syndicating your “pruned” pages will reap you even more benefits from this project.

Speaking of “enough” content: as I mentioned earlier, I needed to go through this decision tree for 3,000+ URLs.

There isn’t enough mindless TV in the world to get me through a task that big.

Here’s how I’d think about the scope:

• 500 URLs or fewer: evaluate them manually. Expense that month’s Netflix subscription fee.
• 500-plus URLs: evaluate the top 500 URLs manually and hire a freelance or VA to review the rest.

No matter what, you should look at the URLs with the most backlinks yourself. Some of the pages that qualify for pruning based on low traffic may have hundreds of backlinks.

You need to be extra careful with these redirects; if you redirect a blog post on, say, “Facebook Ads Best Policies” to one about YouTube Marketing, the authority from the backlinks to the former won’t pass over to the latter because the content is so different.

HubSpot’s historical optimization expert Braden Becker and I looked at every page with 60+ backlinks (which turned out to be roughly 350 pages) and manually tagged each as “Archive”, “Redirect”, or “Syndicate.” Then, I hired a freelancer to review the remaining 2,650.

Once you’ve tagged all the posts in your spreadsheet, you’ll need to go through and actually archive, redirect, or update each one.

Because we were dealing with so many, our developer Taylor Swyter created a script that would automatically archive or redirect every URL. He also created a script that would remove internal links from HubSpot content to the posts we were removing. The last thing we wanted was a huge spike in broken links on the blog.

If you’re doing this by hand, remember to change any internal links going to the pages you’re removing.

I also recommend doing this in stages. Archive a batch of posts, wait a week and monitor your traffic, archive the next batch, wait a week and monitor your traffic, etc. The same concept applies with redirects: batch them out instead of redirecting a ton of posts all at once.

To remove outdated content from Google, go to the URLs removal page of the old Search Console, and then follow the steps listed above. 

This option is temporary — to remove old content permanently, you must delete (404) or redirect (301) the source page.

Also, this won’t work unless you’re the verified property owner of the site for the URL you’re submitting. Follow these instructions to request removal of an outdated/archived page you don’t own.

Our Results

So, what happened after we deleted those 3,000 blog posts?

First, we saw our traffic go up and to the right:

It’s worth pointing out content pruning is definitely not the sole cause of growth: it’s one of many things we’re doing right, like publishing new content, optimizing existing content, pushing technical fixes, etc.

Our crawl budget has been significantly impacted — way above Victor’s expectations, in fact.

Here’s his plain-English version of the results:

“As of two weeks ago, we’re able to submit content, get it indexed, and start driving traffic from Google search in just a matter of minutes or an hour. For context, indexation often takes hours and days for the average website.”

And the technical one:

“We saw a 20% decrease in crawls, but 38% decrease in the number of URIs crawled, which can partially be explained by the huge drop in JS crawls (50%!) and CSS crawls (36%!) from pruning. When URIs crawled decreases greater than the total number of crawls, existing URI’s and their corresponding images, JS, and CSS files are being ‘understood’ by GoogleBot better in the crawl stage of technical SEO.”

Additionally, Irina built hundreds of links using content from the pruning.

Finally, our Ahrefs rank moved up steadily — we’re now sitting at 249, which means there are only 248 websites in the Ahrefs database with stronger backlink profiles.

Ultimately, this isn’t necessarily an easy task, but the rewards you’ll reap are undeniably worth the hassle. By cleaning up your site, you’re able to boost your SEO rankings on high-performing pages, while ensuring your readers are only finding your best content, not a random event page from 2014. A win, win.

When it comes to content marketing, it can be tough to know which ones to use and which ones will make a statement. There are a variety of content marketing types that marketers can choose from. For example, Southwest likes to mix it up by posting gifs, blog posts, commercials, and retweets on their Twitter page. Delta has recently been on a video and gif kick, posting strictly commercials, videos, and gifs about flight.

It’s ultimately about what type of content marketing promotes your business effectively. And there are a handful of different content marketing types to choose from when you want to make a splash in your campaigns.

1. Blogs

Having a blog on your website that corresponds with your product and its market attracts potential customers looking for the answer your business solves. Blog posts improve SEO and can be a low-cost way to boost organic traffic.

When writing blog posts, be sure to keep these things in mind:

• Optimize your content for SEO
• Use a pillar or cluster model to organize your blog topics
• Keep your content focused and relevant to your product.

For example, Jeff Bullas has been named one of the top influential global marketing officers. Therefore, his website has blog posts about content marketing and global social media. For example, this post is about turning followers into customers.

2. Videos

Videos engage an audience quickly. According to HubSpot research, 54% of audiences want to see videos from brands they support, which is more than any other type of content.

Videos are also a versatile medium; you can create a variety of content in your industry that engages your market and leaves them wanting more. In this post, we walk you through how to use video marketing to your advantage.

For instance, design businesses can benefit from AR video marketing, which delivers a digital model of what you view using a smartphone. In 12 steps, including how to shoot with an iPhone, you can learn how to video market like a pro.

Microsoft uses their technology to empower everyone. Their recent commercials have shown just how inclusive their definition of “everyone” is, producing powerful messages about how technology can inspire many to achieve their goals.

3. Infographics

Infographics are so fun and can wake up a marketing strategy with eye-catching content. They’re bright, visually captivating ways to present stats or processes. Infographics are quick and low-cost music to a marketer’s ears.

Image Source: Towards Data Science

This infographic about content marketing gives 10 ways an infographic can make a difference in landing leads. For example, if it doesn’t gain that much traction on Twitter or Instagram, try uploading it to Facebook.

Data can be easier to recognize and understand when presented in mediums like this. Further, infographics can make your product more reputable if there’s hard data involved.

4. Case Studies

Case studies are effective for leads who want to learn more about your business from the customers themselves. With case studies, buyers see a customer’s journey from start to finish and see similar use cases in real life.

Image Source: LinkedIn

This case study by LinkedIn, provides an in-depth look at how Adobe uses LinkedIn to market their business and drive applicants. It provides data and screenshots of Adobe’s campaign and demonstrates how the brand measured their success using the workplace platform. This case study could help similar businesses see how using LinkedIn in a similar way could improve their applicants.

LinkedIn also conducts video case studies, like this one about HSBC. It shows how LinkedIn’s marketing strategy includes diversifying the way their content is presented.

5. eBooks

If you’ve never created an eBook before, think of them as long-form blog content. They’re not a novel, they’re not a multiple-page ad for your business. Instead, they’re a way to give potential clients valuable information.

The Experience Optimization Playbook by Optimizely is a free eBook that explores optimization strategies from Fortune 500 companies. For an in-depth guide on how to create eBooks, including tips on how to write effective copy (keep it short, use keywords, and check font sizes) click here.

6. User-generated content

User-generated content is an amazing content marketing method because it gets customers involved. People respond to others like them, and it’s more likely to make them interested in your business.

Image source: Netflix Is A Joke

These are user-generated content examples from Twitter. Netflix has a stand-up from Hannah Gadsby and this retweet is from a fan tweeting a quote from the special they enjoyed. A single tweet provided instantly shareable content for Netflix’s comedy account.

Image source: Wendy’s

This Wendy’s fan tweet gave the fast-food giant a way to celebrate Friday the 13th, and promote their customers as well as their fries. As a bonus, Twitter users got to see a spooky Jason/Wendy mashup.

7. Checklists

Checklists provide value to potential customers, especially for SMB customers. They show a step-by-step method for solving a problem and can be formatted to fit your social media pages.

This example, by HubSpot Academy, shows how marketing is tied to the content with the last checkbox. It’s as easy as thinking of how your product fits into your target audience’s daily routine. You can also create an internal checklist to use for the team, making sure some content is always client-specific.

8. Memes

A form of content marketing best described as, “Don’t knock it ’til you try it.” Memes are a relatively new type of content marketing, but they work extremely well. A meme is an image set with culturally relevant text that is rapidly circulated online. If you can time a meme perfectly, and align it with your social aesthetic, it’s a savvy way to increase traffic.

Image source: Hulu

Hulu loves using memes to promote what’s on its streaming service. That’s not surprising, considering they’re some of Hulu’s most popular tweets. Memes require digging into the current social climate and seeing where your company fits. Social listening can help with that.

9. Testimonials and customer reviews

Like user-generated content, testimonials and customer reviews are content generated straight from your audience. If you’re operating in a niche market, testimonials give a short synopsis of why your company stands out.

Nike uses testimonials from top athletes to market their shoes. In fact, most of their Instagram and commercial content comes from celebrity endorsements and reviews. Smaller businesses can benefit from adding customer reviews on their website or in emails (because we all can’t have tennis pro Simona Halep take over our social accounts).

10. Whitepapers

These often misunderstood pieces are not eBooks. Both are forms of lengthy content, but whitepapers are more densely packed with data and information. Whitepapers pay attention to detail and are a key part of the research phase for 71% of buyers, according to the Demand Gen Survey Report.

Image source: Tata Communications

This whitepaper, by Tata Communications, about network optimization is a great example of an in-depth, visually stunning document that breaks down data using charts and graphs.

Whitepapers can be visually appealing, even if the content is more … uh … utilitarian. Keep design in mind when you’re formatting page layout and key takeaways. And use appealing and easy-to-read fonts when constructing your pages, so readers are more inclined to keep turning the page.

11. How-to guides/academies

If you’re offering a product like a CRM, or any other kind of software, how-to guides are a must in content marketing. From Google Ads to Skillshare and even HubSpot, training courses are an interactive way for new and potential buyers to test drive your product before committing.

Image source: Quora

If you’re a smaller business and an academy isn’t feasible for your company, Instagram Carousels might be the answer. Carousels allow for further explanation of products/services on Instagram in a visual way. Instead of creating an entire guide, you can upload 30-second clips or multiple photos in one post and make it a highlight.

12. Influencers

Industry influencers can be highly beneficial to a marketing campaign. Having influencers promote your content can attract an entire audience you weren’t previously able to reach.

Vegan YouTuber Caitlin Shoemaker does sponsorships with other vegan brands on her socials to boost her reach and the brands’ reach as well.

To connect with an influencer in your industry, simply email their representation with a press release or reach out to their company or manager directly.

While these are our must-haves for content marketing, this definitely isn’t a definitive list of content marketing types. When it comes to content marketing, choose the types that fit your business the best and don’t be afraid to experiment. For a complete guide on content marketing, be sure to check out this post.

More likely than not, you see influencer posts on your Instagram feed daily. In many ways, they become part of your life — influencing everything from exercise classes you take, to clothes you buy.

It’s undeniable that influencer marketing is powerful. In fact, over the past five years the tactic has quickly grown into a multi-billion dollar industry.

Plenty of businesses, both large and small, use influencers across their social platforms to reach new audiences, build brand awareness, and increase sales. Examples of successful influencer marketing strategies range from Stride Gum’s partnership with DJ Khaled to Glossier’s partnership with micro-influencers and “regular women”.

And, as influencer marketing grows, it’s no longer just limited to humans — as we’ve seen with Jiff Pom, a Pomeranian with over nine million Instagram followers.

But if any human (or pet) can become an influencer, it begs the question — do influencers even need to exist in real life?

In 2019, computer-generated influencers like Miquela Sousa might argue, “No.”

For instance, let’s take a look at this post by Miquela Sousa (@lilmiquela), an influencer with 1.6 million followers:

By all accounts, the post looks real. Miquela, a 19-year-old Brazilian American model, influencer, and singer, is posting a #sponsored post for Calvin Klein and posing with fellow model Bella Hadid.

But Miquela is a computer-generated character, introduced by Los Angeles company Brud in 2016. Each month, almost 260,000 people listen to her music on Spotify. Miquela works with major brands ranging from Prada to Samsung, and she’s even given interviews at Coachella.

All of which raises the question — why should companies pay real human influencers to promote their products, when they can create their own personal influencer from scratch?

Lil Miquela, a Chinese News Anchor, and Colonel Sanders — Are Virtual Influencers The Future of Marketing?

Before we consider the pros and cons of virtual influencers, let’s explore some examples.

First, as previously mentioned, there’s Lil Miquela. When you scan through her Instagram posts, you quickly realize her captions make her sound like a regular teenager.

In fact, in the following post, she even sounds like she has real emotions, writing, “[One of angel boi’s friends] blew up at me at lunch and stormed out as I ugly cried in front of about 50 strangers … and now he won’t respond to any of my texts”:

While her caption is fake, her followers’ comments are real — many of Lil Miquela’s followers respond with empathy or shared experiences, comments like “This same thing happened to me once, you’ll get through it”.

And then, there are Miquela’s “friends” — Bermuda (@bermudaisbae), with 170K followers and a bio that reads “Robot/Unbothered mogul with daddy’s PIN and a flawless highlight”, and Blawko (@blawko22) a self-described “Young Robot Sex Symbol” with 141K followers.

As Miquela writes on the following post: “Me and my mains! Always getting me through the roughest, there for all the highs, ride or dies … ILU guys!”

While these three are the only robots currently engineered by Brud, there are other “virtual humans” out there.

For instance, Xinhua News, a Chinese media outlet, unveiled an AI news presenter in 2018 who can work 24-hours a day without breaks, reducing news production costs. As the artificial news presenter stated in his introductory video, “I’ll work tirelessly to keep you informed as texts will be typed into my system uninterrupted.”

Image Source

In another example, Balmain, a fashion label, commissioned photographer Cameron-James Wilson to create a diverse “virtual army” of models for Olivier Rousteing’s 2018 collection:

In a statement on the campaign, Balmain writes: “Anyone and everyone is always welcome to join Balmain Army’s growing ranks — they need only share our bold spirit of adventure as our new virtual icons, Margot, Shudu and Zhi who mirror the beauty, the rock style and the confident power.”

Of course, the campaign was met with mixed reviews — one follower wrote, “This is disgusting! I do not understand why they think these models are attractive”, and another commented, “As if Photoshop wasn’t enough, what’s wrong with this world?! #realpeople #realmodels please”.

And, last but certainly not least, there’s KFC’s Colonel Sanders, mocking the very trend of virtual influencers while taking part in it:

All of which is to say — are virtual influencers untrustworthy, or the future of marketing?

What Virtual Influencers Can Offer — and What’s Missing

There are some undeniable benefits to creating or hiring a virtual influencer.

For one, a virtual influencer isn’t human, meaning he or she won’t need breaks. Xinhua News, mentioned above, clearly saw the benefits of this — by using a virtual news anchor to cover breaking news 24-7, they lowered the cost of hiring real people to cover news throughout the night.

If you’re trying to work around-the-clock publishing and promoting content to raise brand awareness, then, it makes sense you’d consider using a virtual influencer, who can post and promote content without sacrificing human needs like … well, sleep.

Additionally, your virtual influencer isn’t as much of a PR liability as a real influencer is. For instance, Debra Davis, founder of NKLS — a company that researches, advises on, and invests in virtual and augmented reality — told WWD, “With a virtual influencer, so much more thought has to be put into the message. It’s not just someone with a Twitter stream. It’s more carefully constructed and thought through, and therefore can be controlled.”

Real influencers and celebrities make mistakes that could influence the public’s perception of your brand. With a virtual influencer, you don’t risk associating your brand with any negative press.

Additionally, it might cost less to hire a virtual influencer compared to a celebrity or supermodel. 

However, if your brand is considering hiring micro-influencers, you’ll more likely find a real micro-influencer for cheaper.

It’s also worth noting that much of what we see on Instagram is edited, filtered, and posed — so, really, is a real person’s highly filtered version of “real life” much different from virtual reality, anyway?

Lastly, a virtual influencer is incredibly rare and unusual, so it draws immediate attention to your brand. If your brand is trying to reach Gen-Z or a younger audience, a virtual influencer might be something that appeals to your intended demographic.

On the flip side, there’s still something uniquely powerful and engaging about real influencers connecting with their audience through social platforms. Virtual influencers like Lil Miquela can pretend they have human emotions, but that can just as easily backfire if her audience doesn’t trust the emotion behind it.

Ultimately, influencer marketing is about engaging in authentic, meaningful connections. How is an audience ever supposed to trust a promoted post when there isn’t a real human advocating for it?

Additionally, influencer marketing is often most successful when it’s seen as real and genuine. For instance, direct-to-consumer beauty brand Glossier has become insanely successful due, in large part, to its authentic marketing strategy.

As Emily Weiss, founder and CEO, said during a live interview with Kara Swisher for the Recode Decode podcast, “At Glossier, something we’ve always stayed very true to, since pre-launch, day one, is that every single person is an influencer.”

You’ll notice Glossier adheres to this strategy on its Instagram page, which exhibits real women using Glossier products:

At the end of the day, there’s something to be said for brands that find real people to promote their products or services to other real people. Sure, there’s risk involved — but that risk is the same component that enables audiences to trust, listen to, and connect with those influencers in the first place.

While Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat seem like incredibly different platforms, there’s one thriving feature that all three have in common: Stories.

By now, many of us have used or viewed a Story on a social media platform. This content serves as a way to chronicle our daily lives, vacations, and interesting outings. Stories also allow us to tap into our creative or highly visual side. As video platforms continue to expand, this type of feature won’t be losing steam any time soon.

Marketers have also become quite Story-savvy. On any given platform with this feature, you can find a number of brands using Stories to publish educational content related to their industry, show how-tos related to their products, or display customer testimonials.

As brands experiment with linking Stories to online content, they’re finding that the strategy can actually generate significant traffic.

Stories provide a number of solid marketing opportunities across platforms. And, right now, the question marketers are asking isn’t, “Should I publish Stories?” Instead, they might be wondering, “Which social platform should I publish Stories on?”

When you think of platforms with Story features, Instagram and Snapchat might be on the top of your mind. We’ve seen that Gen-Z and millennials are flocking to apps like Instagram and Snapchat, while multiple generations continue to use Facebook.

We also know that Snapchat launched the first Story format before Instagram followed suit by launching its own highly-successful Stories feature. Lastly, Facebook got on the bandwagon by launching a Stories feature that looked just like Instagram’s after purchasing the social media company.

Yes, Instagram and Snapchat were the earliest Story pioneers. And the Stories feature has been integral to Instagram’s growth and Snapchat’s primary feature. But, don’t write Facebook off just yet.

When we surveyed 275 consumers from across the U.S., I was surprised to find that a whopping 70% said they prefer to watch Facebook Stories.

Survey Conducted with Lucid

Diving Into This Result

This overwhelming Facebook preference might seem pretty surprising — especially to those who watch Stories regularly on Facebook or Snapchat. But, it actually makes a bit of sense. Facebook Stories surpassed the 500 million daily active user mark in 2018, just a few months after Instagram hit the same milestone.

Although research shows that Gen-Z favors Instagram, Facebook Stories could be growing due to Facebook’s massive audience. Right now, Facebook is still the most used social network with more than 1.59 billion daily active users, while Instagram has just over 500 million.

Because we surveyed a general pool of consumers from all age groups, broad demographics might have also played a role in this result. Had we surveyed just Gen-Z, the results might have swayed toward Instagram, which has a user base that’s booming with young adults.

Does this really impact brands?

Before you start a whole new marketing strategy around Facebook Stories, pause for a minute. Since this was a small survey, you shouldn’t drastically pivot your social media tactics just yet.

However, we’re still discussing this poll, and Facebook’s Story growth, because these factors make you think about how important this marketing tool could be in the near future.

Even though Facebook’s feature was late to the game, it still won this vote — and hundreds of millions of daily users.

Depending on who you want to reach with your branded content, it could be worth experimenting with Facebook Stories. While we don’t encourage you to abandon your current strategy just because of a general poll, these results, combined with data about Facebook’s huge audience, suggest that Facebook Stories could provide solid opportunities to marketers.

To give you some further guidance, here’s a quick comparison of where branded content stands on each major Story platform. At the end of this post, I’ve also included a list of tips for Stories that can be helpful on any platform.

Facebook Stories vs. Instagram Stories

Facebook has the most daily active users of the major social platforms, but it seems to be losing its teen audience year to year. Meanwhile, Instagram is gaining young adults but has half the user base.

Because Facebook has such a broad audience, a variety of brands — from B2B to lifestyle to entertainment — have succeeded on the overall platform. Because Facebook users are regularly following brands and local businesses on the platform, content from businesses might similarly feel natural to these users.

Since the social network already provides strong marketing opportunities for local businesses, it might also be a great place for smaller businesses to post Stories.

With Stories, local businesses can show off their location, products, or testimonials of local customers that benefited from their product or service. These types of content could add more depth, beyond what the average feed post or Facebook Page can offer.

Because Stories pop up above News Feeds on Facebook’s mobile, this also could give the business some additional visibility on the platform. This could be a great way to get your content at the top of a prospect or regular customer’s feed as you update them with a photo or video that gives valuable information related to your brand.

One local business that leverages Facebook Stories for marketing purposes is the Dublin-based Newpark Clinic.

In this example, the Invisalign company has a customer film herself discussing how she successfully straightened her teeth with help from the clinic:

These types of stories allow people to see real, local people that have been positively impacted by a local business. If a prospective customer had liked this business page while researching Invisalign companies, they might see this post and trust the company because it presented a real-world example of its service. If a customer likes the page after working with Newpark Clinic, they might see this Story, get pleasantly reminded of the company, and look into them for another dental service.

Instagram-Specific Stories

Instagram also provides strong local business marketing options similarly to Facebook. Its highly visual platform makes an especially a great home for lifestyle or creative content.

For example, Instagram’s most-followed brand and influencer accounts fall into creative or highly-visual industries like beauty, fashion, wellness, cooking, travel, and other lifestyle topics.

We’ve seen that successful Instagram Stories are often targeted to the younger demographic, relate to the platform’s most popular topics, and usually contain interactive stickers, such as polls or questions.

Branded content can also be highly engaging to Instagrammers. In fact, one-third of the most viewed Stories were posted by brands.

Here’s a quick example of a story that Starbucks made to highlight the return of their s’mores latte. It’s filled with bright colors, interactives, and images of Brent Rivera, a YouTuber who Gen-Z or millennial users might watch or recognize.

If you want more inspiration from other brands that have succeeded on Instagram Stories, check out this list of examples.

Aside from branded Stories, Instagram also hosts plenty of content that’s produced by influencers through partnerships or sponsorships. While you might see an influencer post a brand-related Story on Facebook, this strategy is still much more abundant on Instagram.

Here’s a screenshot from a Story where influencer Lexi Mars tries on outfits from a clothing company called Revolve.

Rather than posting this Story on Facebook, Lexi published it on Instagram which hosts an audience of young adults and fashion lovers.

This benefits her because she may gain some audiences from Revolve fans who tune into the story. But, Revolve can also gain brand awareness from her without having to create their own Story content.

What Facebook and Instagram Have in Common

Aside from differences in audience interests and demographics, Facebook Stories and Instagram Stories are pretty similar. Because Facebook owns Instagram, the interfaces are almost identical. They both also allow you to add similar filters, text overlays, interactive polls, and other features to your content.

Instagram and Facebook also let you link your Stories to web content once you reach a certain number of followers or get your account verified.

While both platforms present Stories on feeds for 24 hours, Instagrammers can save, preserve, and highlight Stories on their profile.

Which do marketers choose?

When it’s time for marketers to weigh these differences and choose a Story platform, many actually post the same exact content on both.

If your team is already using Facebook and Instagram, trying out both could be an easy experiment. Because Facebook owns Instagram, the Story interfaces are very similar and are very interconnected. This makes it pretty easy to post the same Story on both platforms at once.

To share a story on both platforms, upload it to Instagram first. Then, as you share the story on Instagram, tap the “Share to Facebook” CTA.

Here are two examples of big brands that have done this.

Recently, MIT Tech Review uploaded and posted the same story about aging on Facebook and Instagram. (Facebook is to the left and Instagram is on the right.)

On the same day, Martha Stewart Living also did it. Here’s the first page of Facebook and Instagram Stories:

While it might be easy, harmless, and cheaper to place the same content on both platforms, we still encourage you to try customizing content for each social network’s audience to see if it results in more engaging Stories.

For example, if you’re marketing a health and wellness blog and find that your audiences on both platforms are in similar age groups or have similar interests, you could limit the production of Story content by making the same content for both platforms.

If you find that your Facebook audiences are middle-aged and your Instagram audiences are mostly within Gen-Z, you could still probably get away with posting the same health news, recipes, and workout tips on both platforms. But, if you have time and resources, you could test health tip content for middle-aged people on Facebook or a Story about diet tips for young adults on Instagram.

What about Snapchat Stories?

Snapchat has a much smaller user base than Facebook and Instagram, which could be one reason why only 13% of consumers we surveyed prefer to watch Story content there.

There are two ways you can post Snapchat Stories on the app. One is through an individual account and the other is by becoming a publisher on Snapchat Discover. Both are pretty tricky, especially if you’re part of a small organization.

With a free individual account, users would have to look you up via Snapcode or search for you just like other people on Snapchat. This means that you’d need to share your username or Snapcode on other channels so people even know you’re on the app.

When you post a story, it will show up within the user’s friend list, along with Stories from those contacts. Because of this, your content might be buried if someone has a huge friend list.

There are a number of brands with individual accounts on Snapchat, like NASA, Bustle, Forbes, and Sour Patch Kids, but they’ve either left Snapchat or haven’t posted in a while.

When these brands did post content on Snapchat, Stories were pretty similar to what you’d see on Instagram. Usually, they’d included behind-the-scenes material, how-to advice, or short narratives related to the brand’s industry or product. Here’s an example of a story from NASA:

And here’s another from Bustle:

For small to medium-sized companies, there doesn’t seem to be much of a benefit to posting Snapchat stories this way. Even when we asked our own marketers about whether they preferred Snapchat or Instagram Stories, most said that Instagram saw more engagement than Snapchat.

The Discover route is also pretty challenging because you’d need to work with Snapchat directly to become a publisher. Additionally, because most publishers create high-quality original content that features animations, graphics, and other high-quality elements, you’d also likely need a lot of design and editorial resources.

This seems like a costly process that might not pay off or even be accessible to smaller brands.

However, watching Snapchat Discover Stories from publishers could inspire a smaller-scale Instagram or Facebook Story.

Although a chunk of the consumers we polled preferred to watch stories on Snapchat, we don’t encourage you to focus your branded strategy on this platform right now.

Tips for Producing Social Media Stories

Regardless of whether you go with Instagram, Facebook, or any other popular Story platform, here are a few tips that can amp up your content:

• Cut to the chase: Most likely, your viewers will find your Story after aimlessly stumbling through a social platform looking for entertainment. If your content doesn’t appeal to them quickly, they’ll drop out of it and move on to the next thing. Come up with ways to grab attention, like a newsy headline, interesting animation, or an interactive element.
• Use interactive features: On Facebook and Instagram, you have access to the exact same interactive tools. Use them! They can make Stories more engaging, might enable users to think deeply about the topic, or they could even give you data about your audience that leads to more ideas.
• Understand your audiences: If you post Stories on multiple platforms, you should know each network’s audience and adjust your content to fit them. For example, if you find that your audience is middle-aged on Facebook and primarily Gen Z on Instagram, post content that speaks to each group. If you use both platforms but are low on time or resources, consider a strategy where you’re crafting broad content that you know will engage both rather than forcing “older” or “younger” content to both audiences.

If you’re looking for inspiration specifically for Instagram, check out this detailed list of branded Story examples. You can also check out our Ultimate Guide to Instagram for Business to learn about boosting brand awareness with the platform.