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What do cross-country road trips, wedding speeches, and social media marketing have in common? Planning.

You could improvise all three, but it’s better to have a plan for what direction you’re heading — especially when developing your social media content strategy.

By now, most marketers recognize that social media plays an integral role in an effective inbound marketing strategy. And with so many social networks available to us, it’s important to stay organized and have a plan for when and what you’re going to share on these platforms.

Let’s dive into our list of top tools to stay organized and on top of your game.

Social Media Content Calendar Tools to Plan Your Messaging

1. HubSpot’s Downloadable Template for Excel

Content Calendar

Price: Free

Download This Template

Marketers might already use Excel for different types of reports and data analysis in their roles, but this multifaceted tool is perfect for social media content calendar organization, too. Excel can be customized according to the priorities and metrics your team is focused on, so it’s a great option for planning ahead.

The good news? We’ve already done the heavy lifting for you by creating a free, downloadable social media content calendar template using Microsoft Excel. Marketers can use this template to easily plan out individual social media posts — monthly or annually — while keeping an eye on bigger picture events, holidays, publications, and partnerships.

• Use the Monthly Planning Calendar Tab above to get a bird’s-eye view of what’s coming down the content pipeline in a given month.
• In the Content Repository tab, you can add the content you’ll be publishing on this tab to keep track of which pieces have been promoted already and to easily recall older content that can be re-promoted.
• On the Social Network Update tabs, you can draft and plan out social media posts in advance. These tabs are for organizational purposes, then you’ll manually upload the content of the posts to a social media publisher.

For more on how to use the templates, check out this in-depth guide from my colleague Lindsay Kolowich.

This free resource can be used to draft social media posts, or it can be bulk-uploaded into a publishing app to maximize efficiency. (HubSpot customers: You can use this spreadsheet to organize content and upload it directly into Social Inbox. For instructions on how to do this, check out the template’s cover sheet here.)

Why we like this social media tool:

Marketers with small teams and heavy workloads will love this intuitive template. It acts as a social media content planner, tracker, and archive. This makes it perfect for sharing your social plan with stakeholders and referring back to it when you need to repurpose old content.

2. Google Drive

Content Calendar and Asset Organization

Price: Free for personal use. Google Workspace plans for businesses start at $6 per month.

Google Drive has several helpful features that make it easy for social media marketers to build out an effective content calendar.

Here’s an example of how a team might use Google Calendar to track both their editorial and social media calendars to make sure they’re aligning posts with new blog content. These calendars can be easily shared with multiple teams to avoid scheduling conflicts and ensure that campaigns are aligned.

Marketers can also use shared Google Sheets to schedule posts on social media, track the status of different pieces of content, and assign tasks to team members — all on the same platform as their calendar.

With the help of Google Docs, users can keep comments all in one place and collaborate on different projects without emailing back-and-forth or having to schedule a meeting. This is a particularly useful feature when editing content for social media, which may need to be drafted and approved quickly.

Why we like this social media tool:

Google has several products that can be used together to create quick, seamless workflows. Whether you’re publishing dozens of posts per day across multiple platforms, or ramping up one channel for your freelance business, you’ll find value in the Google Drive system. The best part is that HubSpot customers can link their Google Drive accounts to the HubSpot portal to easily upload files from Drive into the HubSpot software.

3. Loomly

Content Planning, Creation, Publishing, and Calendar

Price: 15-day free trial. The Base plan is $25 per month for 2 users and 10 accounts when you choose the annual agreement.

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If you want more mileage out of your content calendar, you can turn to an all-in-one content planning and publishing platform such as Loomly.

Loomly offers tools beyond content scheduling and management. This tool goes further, providing inspiration and direction to help you create content. It also allows you to manage your content assets, schedule posts, view them as a list or a calendar, and analyze what posts are working vs which ones need work.

Loomly’s most robust feature set includes a collaboration and approval environment so that teams can submit mockups, provide comments, see version logs, and flag for approval. This can help you streamline processes for efficiency when there are “too many cooks in the kitchen” on a particular project.

Why we like this social media tool:

If your team is responsible for organic and paid social, this tool can do both. And for your team who wants to avoid using their personal account for social media duties, they can respond to comments and replies directly in Loomly — that means they won’t need to login to each native platform to engage with followers.

4. Trello

Task Management and Content Calendar

Price: Free for individual use. The Standard plan starts at $5 per user per month, billed annually.

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Looking for an organizational tool that’s highly effective for team collaboration? Try Trello. This platform offers a full calendar view which makes it easy to visualize what content is going out, and when. More specifically, social media managers can use Trello’s flexible assignment “cards” and customizable “boards” and “lists” to map out to-do lists, manage a content calendar, plan a campaign, and store brainstorm ideas.

You’re not limited to just one structure, though. Users can customize boards according to their needs. For example, a team could create a board to organize social media posts for a given week, on a specific platform, or post ideas around a topic, such as a campaign or awareness day.

Why we like this social media tool:

Trello cards can be assigned to different team members, marked with due dates, and commented on. Users can even customize labels with different publication statuses so the entire team can see the progress of their social media posts and when they’re due on the calendar. The labels could also indicate different social networks that content is being published on.

5. SproutSocial

Social Publishing and Content Calendar

Price: The Standard plan starts at $89 per month for five social profiles, billed annually.

Sprout Social’s social media calendar and publishing tool make it easy for teams or individuals to plan and schedule all of their social posts. You can schedule content to automatically post to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and more.

You can also tag each social post and add notes to better track and report on your posting strategy and campaigns. Additionally, their publishing suite includes a tool called Optimal Send Times which analyzes your social media data and automatically publishes at a time your audience is most engaged.

Why we like this social media tool:

Coming up with social media content ideas isn’t always easy. Sprout Social’s social listening tool lets marketers like you uncover niche conversations that your audience is interested in. From there, you can join the conversation for brand awareness or start your own conversation on the topic to grow your following.

6. Evernote

Content Calendar, Task Management, and Asset Organization

Price: The Basic plan is free. Create a custom template using the Personal plan for $7.99 per month.

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Evernote is a note-taking app that marketers can use to keep track of all the moving parts that comprise a social media campaign.

The tool also features yearly, monthly, weekly, and hourly logs, which make it easy to keep track of when you’re publishing content on social media, when you’re producing blog content, and other team-wide priorities. (Evernote offers customizable templates for each of these that can be downloaded into the app.)

Another useful feature is Evernote’s Web Clipper extension for Chrome. Marketers can use this tool to easily save links to their Evernote Notebook for sharing later on.

Why we like this social media tool:

The Evernote mobile app also boasts some interesting features to help marketers keep their social content ideas straight. For example, you can easily snap a photo and save it to your Evernote files for review later. This feature is of particular value for social content creators looking to maintain a backlog of photos to publish on Instagram.

7. Hootsuite

Social Publishing and Content Calendar

Price: The Professional plan starts at $49 per month and starts with a free 14-day trial.

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Hootsuite offers a built-in Planner tool to help you create campaigns, identify publishing gaps, and collaborate with your content creation team. Its primary features are in social publishing so that you can release content to your networks in advance, but it also has rich features for collaboration and post approvals.

You can even curate content from other sources without logging into your account. Once your content is created, you can preview it with the Composer tool, which displays according to each social network’s unique format.

Why we like this social media tool:

Cross collaboration is a big deal on just about any marketing team, and Hootsuite has a way to make this even easier. The social publishing platform comes with a built-in content library that serves as the single point of truth for your entire organization. Does your sales team need a product feature cheatsheet? Customer service looking for details on the latest product feature? All that and more can be found in your team’s Hootsuite content library.

8. Agorapulse

Social Publishing and Content Calendar

Price: The individual plan is free, or you can use the Pro plan for small teams starting at $79 per month.

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Similar to Hootsuite, Agorapulse offers social publishing tools and a content calendar so that you can manage your social media accounts with ease. This includes scheduling (or rescheduling), queuing, and bulk uploading posts, which is incredibly helpful for teams who use quarterly or monthly content plans.

Why we like this social media tool:

What makes Agorapulse different is its social inbox that allows you to manage all the interactions from various platforms in a single place. After all, content isn’t just a one-and-done activity; it’s about building awareness and engagement with your readers as well.

9. StoryChief

Content Planning and Distribution

Price: Team pricing starts at $90 per month, billed annually.

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If you want more from your content calendar than simply knowing when posts go live, StoryChief is the option for you. With StoryChief’s smart calendar, you can better strategize and plan your content strategy across channels.

It displays much more than your timetable — it also allows you to assign collaborators to tasks and filter them by campaign. StoryChief self-describes its tool as a “content distribution platform” that unifies analytics and publishing across multiple channels for a more simplified approach to content creation. Best of all, it syncs with HubSpot and all of your favorite calendar apps.

Why we like this social media tool:

Believe it or not, there are quite a few similarities between social media marketing and SEO marketing. StoryChief bridges this gap with its SEO Copywriting tool. By highlighting the areas you can improve your copy for the reader (and subsequently the search engines), you can write clearer, more engaging content that works on both social media and on your website or blog.

10. ClearVoice

Content Creation and Management

Price: Request a free consultation for pricing.

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So what about content planning and creation? ClearVoice offers content creation tools to fit into your workflow. While their big claim to fame is their Talent Network Search which allows you to find and connect to content creators to work on your projects, ClearVoice also has features for task management for internal and external collaborators.

You can create, edit, and approve projects in an interface that makes editorial management easy. It also includes a dashboard and dynamic editorial calendar with plenty of interactive functionality, and integrations with other popular software.

Why we like this social media tool:

Not every social team is working for a big agency or client. For freelance content teams who want to stay organized and on time with their social media publishing, ClearVoice offers some of the same great features at a price customized to your team.

11. Zerys

Content Creation and Management

Price: $40 per document plus $49 per month for project management.

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Zerys is another platform that matches you with your ideal content creation freelancers. However, it markets itself as a platform dedicated to content success, offering features for content planning, production, publishing, promotion, conversion, and analytics.

Why we like this social media tool:

You can manage unlimited content projects, plan keywords and titles for blog content, hire writers, and view all deadlines on an integrated calendar. With the project management features that Zerys offers, in-house writers can use the platform to produce quality work on time every time. It also integrates with HubSpot so that publishing is a breeze.

Social Media Templates

HubSpot’s Social Media Calendar Template

If you’re new to setting up social media calendars, HubSpot offers a pre-made, free, and downloadable template that you can use to schedule out full weeks of posts.

HubSpot’s Social Media Content Calendar Template for Startups

This template is very similar to the one seen above but also has tabs that work as a repository for content ideas. The template also includes helpful tips for posting on specific social media networks.

If you’re aiming to get all of your ideas down in order to develop a big-picture plan for your social assets, we recommend starting with this template.

The Benefits of Using a Social Media Content Calendar

We’re all busy, and inevitably, tasks slip through the cracks. Social media content is no exception.

Just like with blogging, a successful social media strategy requires regular publishing and engaging with followers to see positive results — whether that’s in terms of SEO, brand recognition, lead generation, or all three.

So, if you’re not already using a social media content calendar, here are three facts to pique your interest:

1. You can pivot flawlessly when plans change by using a content calendar. With a social media content calendar, marketers can plan out posts for entire weeks or months in advance, which frees up working hours to strategize for the future. The best part is that you can always leave space for breaking news or current events in your industry. Otherwise, you’ll spend valuable time each day searching the internet every day for content to share, which is a known productivity killer.
2. Grow your audience on each platform by curating content specifically for them. Social media marketers should take the time to craft custom messages for each network because the audience expects to see something different on each one. For example, your Instagram followers want to see Reels and Videos while your Twitter followers like quick sound bites and shareable quotes. Planning this content in advance using a social media calendar will save you time throughout the week and ensure you’re being thoughtful and intentional when you post on each site.
3. Optimize your social strategy by tracking the performance of your content each month. Without a calendar, social media marketers are publishing content into the void and are unable to track big-picture and past performance. With a calendar, marketers can look back and analyze which content performed best so they can adjust their strategy accordingly. If a particular type of post received a significant amount of views, you could recreate it for a different topic and see the same success.
4. Take advantage of social media holidays to tap into a new, but relevant audience. With the help of a calendar, marketers can plan for holidays and observance days, such as National Cat Day, when they can tailor their content and engage with a wider audience.

Social Media Calendar Examples

1. JotForm Social Media Calendar

JotForm’s social media calendar isn’t just visually appealing, it’s also functional. The tabs at the top reveal your social plan for every channel you execute your strategy on, including in-person or virtual events. If you’re modeling your social calendar after this one, don’t forget to include a tab for content details and who on your team will be responsible for creating the content. You might also include a separate tab for each month to keep things organized.

2. Firefly Marketing Social Media Content Calendar

Going a more traditional route with your social media calendar? Try a Google Sheets template like the one created by Firefly Marketing. Each tab is dedicated to a different month while the worksheet includes every channel you might need across the top. The rows are separated by week so you can easily identify the date and time a post is scheduled for publishing. Our favorite part of this template is the social media holiday column that is pre-populated with fun dates that your audience will love.

What is the best social media calendar?

Now that we’ve reviewed a few helpful tools to kick your social media strategy into high gear, it’s time for you to experiment with them. The best social media calendar is one that saves you time, streamlines processes, and helps you work smarter, not harder.

Several of the platforms we’ve suggested are free to use or offer a free trial. Have one person on your team test one out and report back on their findings. You might just find the tool that helps you reach your next social media KPI. Don’t forget, every social media team is different, and it could be a combination of these tools that helps you execute your strategy efficiently to drive ROI.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in 2017 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

When people arrive at your Facebook Page, where do you think they’ll look first?

I’ll give you a few hints. It’s a visual piece of content that sits at the top of your Page. Its dimensions are 820 pixels wide by 312 pixels tall. It takes up almost a quarter of the screen on most desktop browsers.

That’s right — it’s your Facebook cover photo.

A cover photo can transform your Facebook Business Page from a passive repository of your business’ activity to an inviting community. Whether you’re using Facebook to generate leads, close your next sale, or create a customer network, knowing how to create and optimize your Facebook cover photo will be essential to the success of your Page.

In this post, you’ll learn Facebook cover photo best practices with real-world examples of each tip we recommend. To get started, let’s dive into Facebook cover photo dimensions.

Sometimes called your Facebook banner, this graphic is one of the most noticeable parts of your Page. Facebook sets specific dimensions for cover photos in order to create a standard look across all Facebook Pages no matter what device they’re viewed on. Therefore, you’ll want to follow Facebook cover photo best practices and optimize your cover photo for the correct dimensions.

When you consider the Facebook cover photo dimensions above, it can be tough to balance creativity with the requirements of the platform. Mobile and desktop screens have different requirements and will display the same cover photo differently. Here’s what to look for when optimizing your cover photo for mobile and desktop devices.

How do Facebook cover photos appear on mobile screens vs. desktop screens?

It makes sense that mobile devices would display a smaller version of the cover photo than a desktop screen would, and the image below describes exactly why that happens. As you can see, there’s a lot of space around the perimeter of the photo that could be cut off when a visitor is viewing it on a mobile screen vs. a desktop screen if you’re not careful with your design.

Therefore, it’s best to place the important parts of your content in the green space. Doing this will make sure everyone can see your cover photo properly regardless of the device they’re using.

Need help getting started? Below, you’ll find Facebook cover photo templates and best practices to guide you when designing your brand’s cover photo artwork.

1. Abide by Facebook’s cover photo guidelines.

It seems like a no-brainer, but following Facebook’s cover photo guidelines is the first step to keeping your Facebook Page visible on the platform. I’d highly suggest reading through the full Page Guidelines, but here are a few important things to keep in mind for your Facebook cover photo:

• Your cover photo is public.
• Cover photos can’t be deceptive, misleading, or infringe on anyone else’s copyright.
• You can’t encourage people to upload your cover photo to their personal timelines.

If you get caught violating the above terms, Facebook could take action against your Page. And while Facebook doesn’t explicitly say what will happen if you violate their cover photo guidelines, it’ll be pretty inconvenient to have your Facebook Page removed because of a cover photo infraction.

2. Make sure your Facebook cover photo is the right size.

As I mentioned earlier, the Facebook cover photo size is 820 pixels wide by 312 pixels tall for desktop screens, and 640 pixels wide by 360 pixels tall on mobile screens.

After spending time designing the perfect cover photo, the last thing you’ll want your visitors to see is a truncated version of it. If you upload an image smaller than those dimensions, Facebook will stretch it to fit the space. That means Facebook may only display a third of the image you designed.

If you want a no-hassle way to make sure your cover photos are the right size, download our pre-sized template for Facebook cover photos.

Featured Resource: Facebook Cover Photo Templates

Download the Free Templates

3. Don’t worry about the “20% text” rule.

Back in 2013, Facebook removed all references to the 20% rule on text in cover photos, but that doesn’t mean you should use a lot of text in your design. The previous rule stated that only 20% of a cover photo could display text. Although this rule might sound restrictive, the sentiment behind it had merit — you want your visitors engaged with visuals, not a wall of text.

If you’re going to use text in your cover photo, keep it concise and let the imagery speak for itself. You can see how we struck this balance on HubSpot’s Facebook Page below.

For more cover photo inspiration, check out our Facebook Page.

4. Give your cover image a focal point.

Think of your cover photo as the portion of your Page that’s “above the fold.” If it’s distracting or confusing, people will be more likely to click off the Page.

Many of the best Facebook cover photos include a focal point along with a color scheme that aligns with the rest of the brand. Remember, your social media accounts are extensions of your business and they should make a good first impression on visitors.

Great Facebook cover photos also have ample negative space to make the subject, the copy, and the elements unique to Facebook (like the CTA button on Facebook business Pages) stand out even more.

Here’s an example of a good use of negative space from The New York Times:

And here’s another example from social media management platform Sprout Social:

5. Avoid blending the contents of your cover photo with your profile picture.

With some clever design techniques, you could manipulate your profile picture and cover photo so they appear as if they’re two parts of the same canvas.

One of Paris’ old cover photos is a great example of this:

You can still do this on your personal profile, but Facebook no longer sets up Business Pages this way. Now, as shown in the examples earlier in this article, the profile picture is completely separate from the cover photo. So, instead of merging the two photos into one, have them complement each other with similar colors or contrasting patterns while still adhering to your brand guidelines.

6. Draw attention to the action buttons on the bottom right.

You may have noticed in a few of the cover photo examples above that the primary call-to-action (CTA) buttons were different. HubSpot’s CTA button says “Follow,” while Sprout Social’s says “Sign Up.”

Depending on your business, you can launch a Page on Facebook with a unique CTA button to the bottom right of your cover photo. Take the placement of this button into consideration when designing your cover photo.

LinkedIn Learning does this in a subtle way below, placing the graphic of a person on a laptop over the “Sign Up” button, drawing your eye to that blue CTA.

Note: While it might seem like a good idea to add directional cues like an arrow to get people to click on the CTA buttons, note that those CTA buttons don’t appear the same way on the mobile app. In other words, it might be confusing to mobile users if you directly integrate the cover photo design with the CTA buttons.

7. Right-align the objects in your cover photo.

Since your profile picture is on the left, you want to add some balance to your Facebook cover photo design by placing the focus of the image on the right.

Take a look at these cover photos. Which one looks more aesthetically pleasing?

Right-aligned focus:

Left-aligned focus:

Doesn’t the right-aligned cover photo look and feel a lot better? In Samsung’s new cover photo, the biggest design elements (the profile picture, the text, and the two phones) are evenly spaced. In Samsung’s old cover photo, your attention goes immediately to the left side of the Facebook Page, causing you to miss the name of the product on the upper-right side.

Not only is adding balance a crucial element of design, but it also allows your cover photos to be more visually effective on mobile. This brings me to my next point…

8. Keep mobile users in mind.

Statista reports that 98.5% of Facebook’s user base accesses the social network from mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. That’s huge — and it’s exactly why it’s so important to keep mobile users top-of-mind when designing your Facebook cover photo.

On mobile, a much smaller portion of the cover photo is visible. The right side is typically cut out entirely.

Let’s take a look at what Cisco’s Facebook Page looks like on a desktop browser versus on Facebook’s mobile app.

Desktop:

Mobile:

It’s important to note that the text in Cisco’s cover photo doesn’t appear. While right-aligned visual elements look great, be careful not to put important content so far to the right that it gets cut off when being viewed on a mobile device.

9. Include a shortened link in your cover photo description that aligns with your Page CTA.

If you want to use your cover photo to support a Page CTA, make sure your cover photo description also includes a text CTA and links to the same offer. This way, any time people view your cover photo by itself, they can still access the link.

Here’s this practice in action on the Adobe Creative Cloud Facebook Page:

Pro tip: Shorten your links and add UTM codes to track the visitors who view your cover photo and click the link in the description. Shortening and tracking features are available in HubSpot’s Marketing Hub and with tools like Bitly.

(If you want to learn more about how to write effective call-to-action copy for your cover photo description, download our free ebook on creating compelling CTAs.)

10. Pin a related post right below your Facebook cover image.

Pinning a post allows you to highlight a typical Facebook post at the top of your Timeline. It’s signified by a PINNED POST title on the top right of the post, like on Behance’s Page below:

How does this relate to optimizing your Facebook cover photo? Well, if you’re spending time aligning your Facebook Page CTA, your cover photo design, and your cover photo description copy, you should also make sure to post about the same thing directly to your Page and pin that post to the top of your Timeline.

That way, your visitors have one very clear call-to-action when they land on your Page (albeit in several different locations) — which will give them more opportunities to convert.

How to pin a Facebook post:Publish the post to Facebook, then click the three dots on the top right corner of the post and choose Pin to Top of Page.

Facebook Cover Photo Sizes that Work for Your Business

Choosing the right cover size for your Facebook Page may seem simple, but it can have a huge impact on users and prospects visiting your Page. An ill-fitting cover photo or video can look unprofessional and give the wrong impression about the quality of your products or services.

With the tips in this article, you have the information you need to create a Facebook cover photo that embodies your brand and engages users on the platform.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in July 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

“We have a 9 a.m. meeting? Hold on — let me scour the internet to find content for the morning tweet.”

Sound familiar?

Scrambling for social content is nothing new. We have meetings. We miss deadlines. Things come up. And it’s really hard to get any meaningful amount of work done when you have the next social media update looming over your head every 30, 60, or 90 minutes. Social media content moves so fast that you might occasionally feel thrown for a loop, which is why a pre-scheduled social media content calendar should be your new best friend.

To make social media content easier for companies to plan and schedule across the accounts they manage, we created a social media content calendar template. And because this field moves so quickly, we’re always updating this template with the latest social platform features to help you share your content strategy at a tactical level.

Use the Above Template to Plan Out Your Social Media Holiday Posts

What’s in this social media content calendar template?

Every social media content calendar is different and should be customized to fit your unique social media strategy. In this one, you’ll find a schedule tab, your monthly planning calendar, a repository for website content, and updates for each of the top social media platforms:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• Pinterest

The great thing about this template is that as new social media platforms become popular and part of your content strategy (looking at you Tik Tok and Clubhouse), you can simply copy the spreadsheet and repurpose it for that new channel.

This blog post will walk you through exactly how to use a social media content calendar template to stay on top of your social media content planning for each channel.

Pro Tip: HubSpot customers can also schedule content through HubSpot’s Social Media Management Software, or use this spreadsheet to organize and upload content. Detailed instructions for doing this can be found in the cover sheet of the template.

How to Create a Social Media Content Calendar Template

When you open the social media content calendar template, you’ll notice the bottom of the Excel spreadsheet has several different tabs, most of which are dedicated to a specific social network.

Since each social media network is a little different, you don’t want to craft a generic social media post and use it across LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Instead, it’s best practice to create a different worksheet for each platform.

Why?

A few reasons. Image sizes vary across all platforms, the types of content that work well on Facebook might tank on Twitter, and external links are great for Twitter but nearly impossible to use effectively on Instagram.

You can certainly promote the same piece of content across those networks, but that doesn’t mean you’ll craft your update the same way for each of them. In fact, you may want to add additional tabs if you’re active on other networks, like Quora or YouTube.

How to Use this Template

The following subsections will show you how to fill out each of the tabs you see in this template — Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest. But before we get to that, let’s start with the Monthly Social Calendar.

Monthly Planning Calendar

The tab Monthly Planning Calendar provides an overall snapshot of your monthly social media campaigns. It’ll help you coordinate with other stakeholders and keep all the moving parts in order. Here’s what it looks like:

There are three sections to take note of when you edit this template. First, the color-coding key. Each color represents a type of content or campaign you might coordinate, like ebooks, webinars, blog posts, product launches, and so on. Though only some of these might be relevant to you, they’re just the beginning of what you may want to include here — so be sure to add and remove categories that align with your own types of content.

The other two sections you’ll need to edit are the Month and Year at the top of the calendar, as well as the cells below each day of the week. In those cells, you should enter the type of content you’ll be promoting that day and color-code it to align with the campaign it’s supporting.

Instead of deleting all the content in this spreadsheet each month, I recommend copying this worksheet twelve times over and creating a separate sheet for each month. (If that gets to be too overwhelming, you can always save those tabs as a separate workbook.)

Planning Your Social Media Content Calendar for Twitter

Alright, now let’s get to the social media content part of the calendar. This section will be the longest because all subsequent sections will draw on the instructions we go through here. If you only read one section in this whole post, make sure it’s this one.

Let’s say you want to add some tweets to your scheduling template. Scroll over to the Twitter Updates tab in the content calendar spreadsheet, where you’ll see this:

The first four columns, Day, Date, Time, and Date & Time are there for your convenience, and if you choose to use a third-party app for pre-scheduling your tweets (like HubSpot’s Social Media Management Software), then these columns will be useful. For now, just fill in the date for when you’ll publish updates to Twitter, and the time at which you’d like them to go out. The Date & Time column will automatically change based on what you type in the previous two columns.

Now, let’s move over to the Message column. Here, input the copy you’d like to appear in your tweet, bearing in mind you should cap it at 217 characters to allow enough room for a link. (Read this blog post for a full character count guide.) This spreadsheet will auto-calculate the number of characters you’ve entered to keep you on-point, turning yellow and eventually red as you approach 240 characters.

After you’ve composed your tweet, paste the URL you’d like to include in your tweet in the Link column. Be sure to include UTM parameters so you’ll know whether these tweets are driving traffic, leads, and customers. This is an important step to remember if you’d like to demonstrate ROI from social media. You can also use the Campaign column to add an associated campaign which helps with more detailed tracking and reporting.

Finally, in the Image column, attach the tweet’s image (if you have one). For Twitter, we recommend images that are 1200 x 670 pixels.

(Click here for a full cheat sheet of social media image sizes.)

If you’re having trouble attaching your image to the spreadsheet, follow these steps:

Step 1: Click on the cell where you’d like to place your image.

Step 2: Click Insert in the top row, then click the Image button, and finally, click Image in cell to choose your image.

Step 3: In the Insert image window, choose the option your photo will come from. In this example, we uploaded an image from our computer.

Step 4: You’ll now see the image appear in the cell.

Pro Tip: This process is just for organizational purposes. If you decide to upload the spreadsheet to your social media publishing software, it will not attach — you’ll have to do that manually. If you’re a HubSpot customer, details for how to bulk upload your Twitter content to the HubSpot Social PublishingTool can be found within the downloaded template.

Planning Your Social Media Content Calendar for Facebook

Now, let’s talk about how to plan your Facebook marketing content with this template. First, navigate to the tab in your template labeled Facebook Updates.

The first three columns, Day, Date, and Time are there for your convenience. Scroll over to the column labeled Message and input the copy you’d like to appear in your status update, corresponding to the days and times you’d like those updates to run. Then, move to the Link column and input the link that’ll be included in the update. (Don’t forget that UTM parameter.) If you’d like the update to be tagged to a certain campaign, include this in the Campaigns column. Finally, attach an image just like you did with your Twitter updates — if you’re using one. (These images should fit the dimensions of 1200 x 628 pixels.)

Planning Your Social Media Content Calendar for LinkedIn

LinkedIn Groups let you start conversations with your Group members and share company updates on your Company Page.

To begin, fill out the first column, Message, for every post you create, including those for a Company Page or a Group. Simply enter your copy into this column, and then navigate to the next two columns, Link and Campaign. Here, you’ll add your URL with a UTM parameter that you’ll use to track activity. Then add the campaign in the Campaign column, if you’re using one. If you’d like to use an image for an update, attach one using the instructions we shared earlier. We recommend uploading the image in the dimensions of 1200 x 1200 pixels for a clear, professional-looking post.

Planning Your Social Media Content Calendar for Instagram

Now, let’s move on to setting up your Instagram photos and videos. Scroll to the tab in your template labeled Instagram Updates.

The first three columns, Day, Date, and Time are there for your convenience. Head on over to the column labeled Message, and input the copy you’d like to appear in your post’s caption, corresponding to the days and times you’d like those updates to run. Keep in mind that although Instagram captions can be up to 2,200 characters long, they cut off in users’ feeds after three lines of text. The exact length of these three lines depends on the length of your Instagram handle. (Read this blog post for a full character count guide.)

Next, move to the Link for Bio column and input whichever link you plan to put in the bio when you publish the accompanying Instagram post. Oh, and don’t forget the UTM parameter.

If you’d like the update to be tagged to a certain campaign, include this in the Campaigns column. Finally, attach an image just like you did with your other social media updates — we suggest you edit it to be 1080 x 1080 pixels. (Here’s the cheat sheet of social media image sizes.)

Pro Tip: Even though you can’t schedule Instagram stories automatically, you can still add them to your social media content calendar. Stories also support links once your account has over 10,000 followers, so you can include specific links for these types of posts in your content calendar. The dimensions for Instagram Story posts are 1080 x 1920 pixels.

Planning Your Social Media Content Calendar for Pinterest

Next, let’s go over how to set up your Pinterest Pins in advance with this template. Navigate over to the tab in your template labeled Pinterest Updates.

For your convenience, we’ve added Day, Date, and Time columns, but you can skip them if you don’t need them.

Next, go to the column labeled Message, and enter the information for the pin’s description. Then, scroll to the Link column and add the link you’ll be including in the update. (And seriously, don’t forget the URL Parameter.)

If you’d like the update to be tagged to a certain campaign, include this in the Campaigns column. Finally, attach an image the same way you did with your other social media updates — we suggest you edit it to fit the dimensions of 1000 x1500 pixels. This is the standard size, but Pinterest Pins can be much longer if your audience responds to longer content. Just make sure your Pin fits the aspect ratio of 2:3.

Content Repository (Or, Where to Source Social Media Content)

This template also provides you with a tab called Content Repository, which should help you keep track of all your content and maintain a healthy backlog of fodder to make sourcing social media content easier.

As you create more assets, you’ll likely want to resurface and re-promote those pieces down the line, too. To ensure you don’t lose track of all of that content, record it on this tab so you’re never at a loss for what to publish on social media. If the content you’re promoting isn’t evergreen, be sure to include an expiration date in the column marked Expiration so you don’t promote it after it’s out of date.

This tab will also help you maintain a healthy balance of content. Here you can include a mix of original content, curated content, various formats and types, and lead generation content vs. MQL-generating content.

Perfecting your social media content calendar doesn’t have to be a chore. With these essential components, you’ll have a foundation to organize your social media strategy at a tactical level.

Key

As you noticed in earlier sections, your stakeholders will appreciate having an easy-to-read key that they can use to understand the information in the calendar. We’ve color-coded our example here, but you don’t have to go that extra step if you have fewer channels and types of content to differentiate between. As long as your key is clear, just about anyone in your organization can view your social media content calendar and understand exactly what’s happening on all platforms.

URLs and UTM Parameters

We’ve harped on these UTM parameters throughout this post for good reason. They’re critical to tracking the success of your campaign. Without them, you won’t know what’s working and what isn’t.

URLs and UTM parameters are similar, but they’re not one and the same. URLs are the links you’ll want to share from your website (or even another website if you’re curating content) on your social media platforms.

On the other hand, a UTM parameter is an extension of your URL. It’s a string of tracking code that’s appended to the end of the URL and it helps social media marketers track how well their posts are driving traffic to their website. By tracking and analyzing UTM parameters, you’ll be able to see what content is meeting your conversion goals and what content is better for engagement on social media platforms.

Date and Time

If you have stakeholders or other teams that rely on your social media content, you’ll quickly see the benefit of including dates and times in your social media calendar. When teammates can view the calendar and identify exactly when a post was or will be scheduled, they’ll be able to quickly proceed with their workflow which is beneficial for you, too. That means you won’t be interrupted to give status updates about every Tweet on the docket for the day.

Message

Transparency and context are invaluable when it comes to social media content calendars. Giving a brief synopsis of the message or even sharing the caption for a post can go a long way in helping others within and outside your team understand what the intent of the post will be.

Pro tip: If you’re adding a video to your social media content calendar that isn’t finished, consider adding a short Loom video that gives an overview of what the video will be about.

Campaign

When it comes to tracking, it’s too late to start when the campaign is over. Start tracking your social media campaigns in your content calendar. You can make this prescriptive by having a dropdown list of predetermined campaign names, or if your campaigns are few and far between, simply copy and paste the names next to the corresponding content.

Pro tip: Align your campaign name with the campaign section of your UTM parameter for seamless tracking.

Image

Your social media content calendar will become just another spreadsheet without some imagery. Since much of your social media content will probably be visual, add a thumbnail-sized version of the image that will be included in the published post. Coupled with the message, stakeholders who view the calendar images will have a pretty good idea of what will be shared and when. To make editing your images for each platform easier, check out this cheat sheet for ideal image dimensions on each platform.

Don’t Forget to Interact With Your Followers

Whether you use this spreadsheet to plan your content or upload it to a third-party app, you’ll still need to supplement these updates with on-the-fly content. Breaking news hits? Whip up a quick update to share it with your network. Did someone in your network tweet something interesting? Give it a retweet with some commentary. Got a fascinating comment on one of your updates? Respond with a “thank you” for their interaction.

Coming up with and scheduling your social media content in advance is a huge time-saver, but it should go without saying that you still need to monitor and add to your social presence throughout the day.

Finally, we encourage you to experiment with your social media publishing. This template provides publishing dates and times for each social network, but you may find those are way too many updates for you to fill, or perhaps too infrequent for your booming social presence. If this is the case, you should adjust your social media publishing frequency as needed.

Now that you’ve got the ins and outs of a social media content calendar, download the one below for free and start planning your content.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in January 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

INBOUND 2021 — hosted with love by HubSpot — is a fully immersive, online experience that gives you access to transformative business trends, proactive conversations, and key actionable takeaways that future you will appreciate.

INBOUND has been hosted by HubSpot for over ten years, and is one of the world’s largest marketing conferences, attracting more than 26,000 attendees from 110 countries.

But this year, INBOUND is especially unique — as it’s built with remote work in-mind, so you can learn from anywhere with audio sessions, meetups, and on-demand content.

Additionally, you’ll hear from Oprah Winfrey, Spike Lee, David Chang, and more.

Here, let’s explore five reasons you’ll want to attend INBOUND 2021, according to HubSpot’s Global Events team.

1. BLACK@INBOUND

Black@INBOUND is a global community that gathers Black professionals across industries to grow and network. HubSpot customer Devyn Bellamy first founded Black@INBOUND at INBOUND to find and connect with other Black professionals.

Since then, Black@INBOUND has grown into a dynamic and interactive meet-up for passionate HubSpot fans and INBOUND enthusiasts.  

Don’t miss the Black@INBOUND events just for you — including our exclusive Meetup with the community at 3:45 PM EST on October 12. Join the virtual cookout and meet all the members of the Community. Then stay tuned for an amazing panel: Mentorship and Advocacy in Black Business Leadership. 

Black@INBOUND is an inclusive community intended for Black business professionals as a space to gather, connect, and share resources.

Black HubSpot users, customers, or fans are welcome to join this space by creating a HubSpot Community profile.

2. The HubSpot Podcast Network

The HubSpot Podcast Network Live will be live at INBOUND 2021! Yes, we want you to step away from your computer screen, give your eyes a rest, head out for a walk and learn from anywhere.

HubSpot’s Podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals who seek the best education and inspiration to best approach the ever-evolving business landscape.

We will feature exclusive episodes recorded specifically for INBOUND from Entrepreneurs on Fire, My First Million, The Salesman Podcast, and the MarTech Podcast at INBOUND 2021:

Entrepreneurs on Fire

Host John Lee Dumas delivers the inspiration and strategies you need to fire up your entrepreneurial journey and create the life you’ve always dreamed of.

My First Million

Host Sam Parr and Shaan Puri brainstorm new business ideas based on trends and opportunities in the market and share the stories of how companies made their first million.

MarTech Podcast

The MarTech Podcast tells stories of marketers who use technology to generate growth and achieve success. It unearths the successes and pitfalls of industry experts and teaches the tools and tips that they’ve learned along the way.

The Salesman Podcast

The Salesman Podcast is the world’s most downloaded B2B sales podcast. Host Will Barron helps sales professionals find buyers and win business in a modern, effective, and ethical way.

3. HubSpot at INBOUND

Join us at HubSpot’s Product announcement, where you can join Yamini Rangan, Brian Halligan, and Dharmesh Shah as they continue to push the boundaries at HubSpot. Explore some of HubSpot’s new and improved product offerings and how we are focusing on customer success to meet our goals.

This is Yamin Rangan’s first INBOUND as the CEO of HubSpot.

Of her new role, Yamini Rangan said, “It’s the honor of a lifetime to partner with our founders to write HubSpot’s next chapter. My goal is to make our customers, partners, employees, and investors proud — proud to grow their businesses, careers, and futures with HubSpot … I couldn’t be more excited for the future of HubSpot’s journey.”

4. Diverse Spotlight and Breakout Speakers

Oprah Winfrey will be headlining INBOUND 2021.

Oprah Winfrey is a global media leader, philanthropist, producer, and actress. She has created an unparalleled connection with people worldwide, making her one of the most respected and admired figures today.

For 25 years, Winfrey was host and producer of the award-winning talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show. In her role as Chairman and CEO of OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network, she’s guiding her cable network to success. Winfrey is also the founder of O, The Oprah Magazine, and oversees Harpo Films.

Oprah Winfrey’s exclusive session at INBOUND 2021 is all about the lessons learned on the road to success. See how Oprah — and yourself — can transform failures into lessons.

Spike Lee will guide attendees through an exclusive session that helps you draw ambition out of themselves and others.

Hasan Minhaj takes attendees with him as he explores different ways for you to find your inner voice and follow your passions.

David Chang of Momofuku helps you turn those passions into a business, and he gives you his secret recipe on how he did just that.

Additionally, join lifelong advocate and internationally recognized leader Judith Huemann for an insightful discussion on what ableist privilege looks like and what it means for companies to truly support disabled employees as a prominent community in the DI&B ecosystem.

Experience over 100+ similar sessions at INBOUND 2021 with some of the smartest and innovative thought leaders.

5. The Agenda

INBOUND 2021 offers an immersive and interactive digital experience for all attendees. You will get the chance to create a personalized avatar, join sponsoring partner’s meetups, explore workshops for personal development, and network with a global audience from various backgrounds and industries.

The agenda this year is extraordinary. You can find educational sessions, workshops, Ask Me Anything, debates, and meetup networking sessions. You can customize your agenda by filtering out tracks for Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, HubSpot Academy, and RevOps. There’s something for everyone.

How to attend?

The great thing about INBOUND 2021 this year is that it’s a fully immersive digital experience. You can attend from the comfort of your couch, hop on over to your favorite cafe, listen to sessions while you’re working out. There are endless ways to attend and enjoy INBOUND this year.

You can go ahead and claim your free starter pass, which will allow you to attend our exciting spotlight speaker sessions. You can purchase our Powerhouse pass, which gives you full access to the INBOUND 2021 agenda and platform.

Even though LinkedIn has been around since 2003, the platform didn’t allow the use of clickable hashtags until 2016.

Social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram have encouraged hashtag use for years as a way for users to connect with their communities. They even offer analytics, allowing content creators and influencers to gauge their impact.

Now that LinkedIn has fully embraced the use of hashtags, brands can too.

Let’s get into the basics of using hashtags on the platform and dive into how to find the top trending ones in your industry.

How To Use Hashtags on Your LinkedIn Status Update

There are a few ways to add hashtags to your status update.

As the GIF illustrates, you can add a hashtag by:

1. Typing out the pound sign followed by the word or phrase. As you type out your hashtag, LinkedIn will auto-generate hashtag suggestions based on what’s trending and popular.
2. Clicking on the “Add Hashtag” button located on the bottom left of the box.
3. Selecting one of the related hashtags next to the “Add Hashtag” button.

Pro-tip: Don’t add spaces or symbols in your hashtags, as they will no longer be clickable.

How To Use Hashtags on Your LinkedIn Article

As it currently stands, users cannot add clickable hashtags in the body of their articles published on LinkedIn. However, they can make it discoverable by adding hashtags to the article description box.

How To Use Hashtags on Your Business Page

If you have a business page on LinkedIn, you can associate it with relevant hashtags. This will put you right in the center of conversations surrounding those hashtags and allow you to connect with relevant audiences. Here are the steps to add them:

1. Start on your business page’s homepage.

2. Click on the “Add” button on the bottom right under “Hashtags.” A smaller page will open up.

   

3. Click “Add a hashtag” and select up to three hashtags.

   You’re all set.

Should I use hashtags on LinkedIn?

The short answer is yes, hashtags are a great way to reach audiences beyond your direct connections on LinkedIn.

Benefits of Using LinkedIn Hashtags

Let’s say you only have 200 connections on LinkedIn. You publish an article on SEO and don’t use any hashtags. For it to make a substantial impact, you’ll need a lot of post engagement from second-and third-degree connections.

Why place such limits on your content? By using hashtags, you maximize your post’s reach potential. If the SEO hashtag has 100,000K followers and you use it, your post engagement can easily triple what it was without hashtags.

Higher engagement can help you establish credibility and can facilitate meaningful connections with other LinkedIn users.

Now that you know why and how to use LinkedIn hashtags, let’s review some common hashtag mistakes you’ll want to steer clear of. Here are a few tips to keep in mind. 

LinkedIn Hashtag Mistakes to Avoid

• Don’t go overboard – As mentioned above, LinkedIn’s former senior director of product management, Pete Davies, recommends sticking to three hashtags. That should be enough to target the main keywords without looking spammy.
• Hashtags don’t replace copy – Hashtags don’t provide context, they should only be used to improve your discoverability. You should still have descriptions in everything you post.
• Only using popular hashtags – When you only use popular hashtags, your content can get lost. If you go too niche, you may not reach enough people. Using a mix of niche and broad hashtags strikes the perfect balance.

Once you get comfortable with the use of hashtags, you can start identifying which ones are performing the best. You may find that some lead to higher engagement rates than others. If so, those are worth reusing.

LinkedIn Trending Hashtags

LinkedIn released data on the top trending hashtags for Q1 in 2020.

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In January and February, the list was virtually identical. However, conversations shifted in March when the pandemic started. Searches for topics on remote working tripled and the #remotework hashtag also started trending.

The best way to optimize your hashtag use is by referring to your recommended hashtags and analyzing their performance on your posts.

Where do I find trending LinkedIn hashtags?

There are three types of hashtags that LinkedIn recommends to its users based on their network and industry: recommended, popular, trending. LinkedIn’s ‘Discover More’ page is the first – and best – place to look when considering which hashtags to use in your posts.

To access this page, follow these steps:

1. Click on the “Discover More” button.
   • On the mobile app, this will appear when you click on your profile picture on the top left corner of the page.
   • On desktop view, it will be at the bottom of the left sidebar.
2. On this page, you’ll see trending pages, recommended connections and pages, and hashtags toward the bottom of the page.

As a marketer, LinkedIn recommends me many marketing-related hashtags, such as #digitalmarketing, #seo, and #contentwriter. However, this list will vary from one user to the next.

How To Follow Hashtags on LinkedIn

Following hashtags will allow you to see what other content creators are posting, how users are responding, and get ideas for future posts.

1. Head to the search bar and type the hashtag you want to follow.
2. Select an option from the dropdown menu.
3. That will take you to the hashtag’s feed where you can see all content published with this hashtag. Click “Follow” at the top of the page.

See the GIF below to see the steps in action.

Now that you’re following the hashtag, you’ll see it on the left sidebar under “Followed Hashtags” when navigating on a computer. When using the LinkedIn mobile app, you can access the hashtags you’re following by clicking on your profile picture on the top left of the window and scrolling down to the “Followed Hashtags” dropdown menu.

Hashtags are integral to the success of your content. By relying on LinkedIn’s hashtag recommendations and your analytics, you can ensure your posts are reaching the right audience.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in March 2021 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

The landscape of web design is always evolving.

Something that looked modern and fresh yesterday can appear dated seemingly overnight, and trends once dismissed as irrevocably passé can unexpectedly cycle back in vogue.

Still, one thing remains constant: Websites are the most important marketing channel for many businesses, and the second most popular marketing channel among businesses according to HubSpot research.

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Given the importance of websites to most businesses and the fact that half of consumers think website design is crucial to a business’s brand, it’s worth the effort to make your own website that matches today’s trends.

However, this doesn’t mean you need to scrap your site’s vision to engage visitors. There’s plenty of room for stylistic choices across the spectrum. As HubSpot Senior Product Designer Dan Hartshorn notes, “I’ve noticed lately many SaaS offerings go either monochromatic or black&white in their UI, or go the opposite direction, and just COVER their UI in color, shadows, gradients, skeuomorphic, etc.”

To help you prepare for wherever the web design tide takes us, we’ve put together a list of 16 trends to keep a close eye on. Check them out below, and get inspired to tackle your web design projects this year with style.

1. Bold Typography

More and more companies are turning to big, bold typography to anchor their homepages. This style works best when the rest of the page is kept minimal and clean, like this example from Brooklyn-based agency Huge.

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2. Cinemagraphs

Cinemagraphs — high-quality videos or GIFs that run on a smooth, continuous loop — have become a popular way to add movement and visual interest to otherwise static pages. Full-screen loops, like this example from French creative agency Social Brain, create immediate interest on an otherwise simple page.

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3. Brutalism

To stand out in a sea of tidy, organized websites, some designers are opting for more eclectic, convention-defying structures. While it can seem jarring at first, many popular brands are now incorporating these aggressively alternative design elements into their sites, such as Bloomberg.

Brutalism emerged as a reaction to the increasing standardization of web design and is often characterized by stark, asymmetrical, nonconformist visuals, and a distinct lack of hierarchy and order. In other words, it’s hard to describe but you know it when you see it — like with the below example from Chrissie Abbott.

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4. Saturated Gradients

Gradients have been all over the web for the past few years, and it doesn’t seem like they’re going anywhere just yet. Copywriting agency Monograph Communications illustrates a perfect example of how to make this effect look fresh and modern, with its full-screen, gradient-washed homepage.

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5. Vivid Layers of Color

Staggered, stacked layers of color add depth and texture to a simple site layout, as seen in this stylish example from the snack food brand Pipcorn. A vibrant color palette like this one instantly distinguished itself from competing sites.

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6. Text-Only

Some websites are cutting out images and prominent navigation sections altogether, relying on a few choice lines of straightforward text to inform visitors about their company.

Danish agency B14 uses their homepage real estate to simply describe their mission statement and provide links to samples of their work. It’s a modern, uncluttered approach to presenting information.

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7. Illustration

More companies are turning to illustrators and graphic artists to create bespoke illustrations for their websites. After years dominated by flat design and straightforward minimalism, adding illustrated touches to your site is a great way to inject a little personality, as seen in this charming example from NewActon (designed by Australian digital agency ED).

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8. Ultra-minimalism

Taking classic minimalism to the extreme, some designers are defying conventions of what a website needs to look like, displaying just the absolute bare necessities. The site from designer Mathieu Boulet is centered around a few choice links to their social profiles and information.

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9. Mixing Horizontal and Vertical Text

Freeing text from its usual horizontal alignment and placing it vertically on a page adds some refreshing dimension. Take this example from action sports video producers Prime Park Sessions, which combines horizontal and vertical text alignments on a minimal page.

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10. Geometric Shapes and Patterns

Whimsical patterns and shapes are popping up more frequently on websites, adding some flair in a landscape otherwise ruled by flat and material design. Canadian design studio MSDS uses daring, patterned letters on their homepage.

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11. Serif Fonts

Due to screen resolution limitations and an overall lack of online font support, designers avoided serif fonts for years to keep websites legible and clean. With recent improvements, serif fonts are having a big moment in 2021 — and they’ve never looked more modern. As seen on The Sill, a serif headline adds a dose of sophistication and style.

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12. Overlapping Text and Images

Text that slightly overlaps accompanying images has become a popular effect for blogs and portfolios. Freelance art director and front-end developer Thibault Pailloux makes their overlapping text stand out with a colorful underline beneath each title.

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13. Broken Grids

While grids remain one of the most common and efficient ways of displaying text and images on websites, broken grids continue to make their way into mainstream sites and offer a change-up from the norm. Check out the website for HealHaus, for example. Its homepage features images and text blocks that overlap.

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14. Organic Shapes

Gone are the days of strict grid layouts and sharp edges — now it’s all about curved lines and soft, organic shapes. In the example below from Neobi, the borderline-cartoonish background adds a generous hit of personality and vivid color to the uncomplicated design.

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15. Web Textures

Web textures are background images that visually resemble a three-dimensional surface. When done well, textures can immerse viewers in a website by engaging tactile senses, as demonstrated by Color Of Change — the background evokes a duct-tape-like texture.

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16. Hand-Drawn Fonts

Custom, hand-drawn fonts have started cropping up more and more in recent months, and for good reason. These unique typefaces add character and charm, and help designers create a distinct look and feel without a complete overhaul. On the KIKK 2017 Festival website, a hand-drawn font provides a whimsical anchor for the homepage.

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Design Trends You Can Use on Your Website

Of course, you don’t need to incorporate all of these trends to build an effective website — we doubt that’s even possible. However, even adding a couple as prominent components or subtler details can improve your site’s UX significantly, leading to higher engagement, more CTA clicks, and a better outcome for your online business.

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

Deciding how you’ll generate revenue is one of the most challenging decisions for a business to make, aside from coming up with what you’ll actually sell.

You want to ensure that you’re accounting for production costs, salaries for workers, what your consumers are willing to pay, and that you generate enough to continue business operations. You also want to make sure that your strategy fits with what you’re trying to sell.

Various revenue models will help you set your business on the right path. In this post, we’ll outline what they are and how to choose the right one for your company.

Revenue models are not to be confused with pricing models, which is when a business considers the products’ value and target audience to establish the best possible price for what they are selling to maximize profits. Once the pricing strategy is set, the revenue model will dictate how customers pay that price when they purchase.

RevOps teams also use pricing models to predict and forecast revenue for future business planning. Knowing where your money is coming from and how you’ll get it makes it easier to predict how often it will come in.

There are various revenue models that businesses use, and we’ll cover some below.

Types of Revenue Models

Recurring Revenue Model

Recurring revenue model, sometimes called the subscription revenue model, generates revenue by charging customers at specific intervals (monthly, quarterly, annually, etc.) for access to a product or service. Businesses using this model are guaranteed to receive payment at each interval so long as customers don’t cancel their plans.

Recurring Revenue Model Example

Businesses that benefit from recurring revenue models are service-based (like providing software), product-based (like subscription boxes), or content-based (like newspapers or streaming services). Businesses you may be familiar with that use this strategy are Spotify, Amazon, and Hello Fresh.

Affiliate Revenue Model

Businesses using affiliate revenue models generate revenue through commission, as they sell items from other retailers on their site or vice versa.

Sellers work with different businesses to advertise and sell their products, tracking transactions with an affiliate link. When someone makes a purchase, the unique link notes the responsible affiliate, and commission is paid.

Affiliate Revenue Model Example

Businesses you may be familiar with that use the affiliate revenue model include Amazon affiliate links and ticket promoting services. Influencers also use this model to advertise products from businesses and entice users to purchase them through custom links.

Advertising Revenue Model

The advertising revenue model involves selling advertising space to other businesses. This space is sought after because the advertiser (who is selling the space) has high traffic and large audiences that the buyer (who is purchasing the space) wants to benefit from to give their business, product, or service visibility.

Advertising Revenue Model Example

Various types of online businesses use this model, like YouTube and Google, and so do traditional outlets like newspapers and magazines.

Sales Revenue Model

The sales revenue model states that you make money by selling goods and services to consumers, online and in person. Therefore, any business that directly sells products and services uses this model.

Sales Revenue Model Example

Clothing stores that only sell their products in a storefront or business-specific retail website use the sales revenue model as they sell directly to consumers with no third-party involvement.

SaaS Revenue Model

The Software as a Service (SaaS) revenue model is similar to the recurring revenue model as users are charged on an interval basis to use software. Businesses using this model focus on customer retention, as revenue is only guaranteed if you keep your customers. The image below is the HubSpot Marketing Hub pricing page that uses the SaaS recurring subscription model pricing.

SaaS Revenue Model Example

Businesses using this revenue model include video conferencing tool Zoom, communication platform Slack, and Adobe Suite.

How to Choose a Revenue Model

Choosing a revenue model is entirely dependent on your specific business needs and your pricing strategy.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution, and some businesses have multiple revenue streams within their revenue model. For example, if you use a recurring revenue model, you still may sell advertising space on your website to other businesses because you have a high-traffic page.

There are some key factors to keep in mind, though:

1. Understand your audience.

When picking a revenue model, the most important thing to remember is the target market and audience your pricing strategy has identified. You want to understand their pain points and what model makes the most sense for charging them.

For example, if you’re a service that sells meal kits, your target audience is likely busy and wants the convenience of food that is set up and easy to make after a long day. Using the recurring revenue model makes sense, as you’ll automatically charge them on an interval basis, and they won’t have to remember to submit payment — speaking directly to their desire for convenience.

2. Understand your product or service.

It’s also essential to have an in-depth understanding of your product or service and how your audience will use it. For example, if you sell shoes, your audience likely won’t need a new pair every month, so it may make sense to go with the Sales Revenue Model. Instead, your customers can come to you directly every time they need a new pair.

Choose the Model That Best Fits Your Needs

Ultimately, choosing a revenue model is centered around understanding what makes the most sense for what you’re selling and what makes the most sense (and will be most convenient) for the audiences you’re targeting.

Take time to develop your pricing strategy, choose a revenue model aligned with it, and begin generating revenue.

We’re reminded daily about how change is coming, and to succeed in business, we must remain agile. That all makes sense in theory, but in practical application, to change how you operate or serve customers is no small feat.

At IMPACT, we’ve gone through quite a bit of change, going from a small core team to a good-sized agency. After struggling to implement a change to our client onboarding process, we decided to take a step back and re-evaluate our approach to change management.

Below, I’ll share with you the key change management models and tools we reviewed, and how you can avoid becoming another statistic.

Why is change management important?

A 2019 Gartner study revealed that most chief human resources officers are unhappy with the speed of change implementation in their organizations.

Why is that? Well, 80% of companies manage change from the top-down, according to the study. With this approach, leadership makes the calls, creates the plan, and sends instructions for company-wide rollout.

While it may seem like the quickest way to implement change, it’s not the best solution in the long term.

Many times, leadership blames employees for unsuccessful changes. However, the data suggests that most employees possess the skills and willingness to undergo organizational changes.

The issue lies in deciding who is part of the strategizing, decision-making, and implementation part of change management.

Today, companies are much more complex and for changes to be effective, they require more input across the organization. In other words, change management should be inclusive.

Change is constant, and developing a model that works for your business is the best way you can manage the people-side of change and set everyone up for success.

4 Common Change Management Models

1. Kurt Lewin’s Unfreeze-Change-Refreeze Model

Picture an ice cube.

Kurt Lewin’s Unfreeze-Change-Refreeze model is exactly what it sounds like.

In the unfreeze stage, you are essentially breaking down the current way of doing business and noting what needs to change. It’s crucial in this stage to obtain two-way feedback of what needs to change (vs. solely top-down).

After noting and communicating the need for change, gather the key stakeholders necessary to proactively implement what needs to be done.

Once everyone has bought in, “re-freeze” to institutionalize the change.

In our experience, this model focuses more on process than people. If you have a smaller team, this could be a good option.

2. The ADKAR® Model of Change

The ADKAR® model breaks down the human side of managing change.

The idea is you should work through each letter of the acronym, focusing heavily on the individuals within your company.

Awareness. Here, the goal is to learn the business reasons for change. At the end of this stage, everyone should be on board.

Desire. This focuses on getting everyone engaged and willingly participating in the change. Once you have full buy-in, the next stage is measuring if the individuals in your company want to help and become part of the process.

Knowledge. In this stage, you’re working toward understanding how to change. This can come in the form of formal training or simple one-on-one coaching so those affected by the change feel prepared to handle it.

Ability. Next, you must focus on how to implement the change at the required performance level. Knowing the required job skills is only the beginning – the people involved need to be supported in the early stages to ensure they can incorporate change.

Reinforcement. Lastly, you need to sustain the change. This final step is often the most missed. An organization needs to continually reinforce change to avoid employees from reverting back to the old way of doing things.

Unlike Lewin’s model, this focuses on the people-side of the stage. We like its idea of using reinforcement to make your changes stick and this model takes it a step further.

It’s a good approach to consider if you have a larger team or a more complex problem you’re trying to solve.

3. Kotter’s 8-Step Model of Change

In his 1995 book, Leading Change, Harvard Business School Professor John Kotter, lays out eight stages all companies must go through to see effective change management.

1. Create urgency through open dialogue that leads others in the organization to want the change as much as you.
2. Form a powerful coalition of change agents in your organization. This can go beyond leadership.
3. Create a vision for change to reinforce the why behind it and the strategy to achieve the end result.
4. Communicate the vision regularly to ease team anxiety and reinforce the “why.”
5. Remove obstacles to pave the way for the needed changes to happen.
6. Create short-term wins to keep up morale and show the team you’re moving in the right direction.
7. Build on the change by analyzing what went well and didn’t go so well in your quick wins to keep pushing to the desired end result.
8. Anchor the changes in corporate culture as a standard operating procedure, reinforce why change is necessary, and embrace it as part of your company culture.

If you have a more agile team, this model’s iterative process syncs nicely with the agile methodology.

4. Kim Scott’s Get Stuff Done Model

OK, so maybe this one isn’t as common yet, but it soon will be, so you might as well get ahead of the curve.

Kim Scott outlines the GSD model in her bestselling book, Radical Candor, the following process:

1. Listen: Listen to your team’s ideas and create a culture where they listen to each other.
2. Clarify: Make sure these ideas aren’t crushed before everyone has a chance to understand their potential usefulness.
3. Debate: Create an environment where it’s OK to critique, debate, and improve ideas.
4. Decide: Select the idea that will best solve the issue.
5. Persuade: Since not everyone was involved in the listen-clarify-debate-decide stages, you have to effectively communicate why it was decided and why it’s a good idea.
6. Execute: Implement the idea.
7. Learn: Learn from the results, whether or not you did the right thing, and start the whole process over again.

We included this in our mix at IMPACT because of how much it focuses on obtaining ideas from the frontline. People buy into what they help create and Kim Scott’s GSD model provides a framework to make that happen.

There are many more models out there for change management and if you’re anything like us at IMPACT, you may take away something valuable from each model and find a combination that works best for your company.

Below is a real example of how my team approached a major change and the steps we took to ensure everyone was moving in the same direction.

1. Determine what needs to change and craft the message.

Over the course of three months, IMPACT completely restructured the agency-side of our organization. In March, our agency team looked like this:

This structure worked for us before, but as we came into a new year with an even larger team, our quarterly team survey results told us a different story.

For the first time in several years, not everyone could see their future at IMPACT.

Some had no idea what was going on or why certain decisions had been made. And what stung the most is we had a few happiness scores below seven, which we haven’t had since 2015.

Ouch.

In our February leadership team meeting, we debated for hours why some in the company were feeling this way.

After several ideas, we all determined one area we should focus on was our structure.

We were setting our managers up for failure with competing responsibilities. In doing so, we made it extremely difficult for them to effectively communicate with their teams, coach them in their careers, and ensure they could see their future at IMPACT.

The ones who did better in this area suffered in others, like client results and retention.

It was a huge issue that needed to be solved immediately.

This leadership team meeting was the beginning of step 1 in our change management plan: Determine what needs to change and craft the message.

In our monthly all-hands meeting following that leadership team meeting, our CEO Bob Ruffolo explained the “why” behind our decision.

He explained the survey results, our thought process, and everything that led to the conversation.

Then, he explained that we had outgrown our current structure, placing too much responsibility on our current managers. We inadvertently set up our teams to fail and that wasn’t OK.

To improve this situation, we needed to create a structure that scales.

Planting the seed for a change is just the first step. After this meeting, we knew there would be fear and confusion, so we got to work on step two.

2. Identify your stakeholders and how to manage them.

We knew that a complete structure change would not go well if it was strictly a top-down initiative. We needed help and a core coalition to get it off the ground.

However, not every single person would need to know every single detail of what was going on.

While all teams were involved, most were focused on how they would personally be affected in their day-to-day responsibilities and cross-functional work.

To keep communication clear and ensure everyone a chance to enact Kim Scott’s debate stage, we had to identify stakeholders across the agency team.

In this case, our stakeholders were the team managers. We were essentially changing their job responsibility, so it was essential to include them in the conversation.

Although we created a committee of stakeholders, what we failed to do was take our communication a step further by managing the other agency team members more closely.

The matrix below outlines a way to segment your team and your communication with each segment so you can better communicate across the board.

We only had our managers involved, and we updated the rest of the team all at once in our monthly all-hands. Next time, we will definitely create a strong communication plan based on this matrix.

Once we identified our key stakeholders, we met with each one and some of their teams to get their feedback, pushback, concerns, and ideas about the structure change.

In full transparency, not all these meetings were fun.

There was high emotion and rigorous debate. However, we had not zeroed in on our exact plan at this point. So, they helped us understand the team’s concerns and ideate on the best way to structure for scale – together.

3. Systematically communicate.

This is an area we got wrong.

In step one, we announced at a company meeting a pretty earth-shattering idea. Our managers felt blindsided and not all the team members were convinced a structure change was needed.

We learned the hard way that surprising people in a company meeting was not the way to go.

Our intention was to be transparent about what was discussed in our leadership team meeting, but there was definitely a better way to do that.

After identifying key stakeholders, this is the path we believe is the best for disseminating information:

Managers can communicate to their own teams in a style that they know will resonate and create shared understanding. They can also help identify issues and concerns so we can all co-create a solution.

This eliminates groupthink and reduces the timeline to extinguish fear.

Although our path was a little messier here, once we received all team feedback, we all agreed to what our new agency structure should be:

Then, we moved on to step four.

4. Get organized with incremental steps.

At this stage, everyone knew a change was coming, but no one knew how we were going to make it happen.

This was the time to get organized and get buy-in on the “how” of change management.

Now that we knew what our new structure would be, we developed a project plan with the incremental steps to get us there by the end of the quarter.

We created a video explaining the structure and project plan for all teams to review in their weekly meetings.

Our managers and key stakeholders were involved and accountable for different parts of the plan, and in our all-hands meetings, we updated on the progress of the plan so everyone could stay informed.

In our plan, we also mapped out some “quick wins” in the first month so the team could feel major progress was happening.

In our case, this was selecting new team managers for the teams whose principal strategists moved over to another team.

We interviewed internally and selected our new managers within three weeks of rolling out our initiative. This was exciting for our new managers and the team to see we were already making huge steps.

5. Equip your managers to handle teams’ emotional responses to change.

It’s great to have good communication and a solid plan but at the end of the day, change is hard.

Everyone responds in their own way. What would have been helpful is knowing this concept of The Change Curve.

After our initial all-hands meeting, we had people all over the curve. We then, in essence, said, “Managers, figure it out!”

As we went through the process, we learned another lesson the hard way: We needed to adapt our communication and management style for each individual based on how they were responding to change.

The graphic below illustrates a concept by Expert Program Management, which shows how to change your response along The Change Curve to gain buy-in sooner and give better coaching to your managers.

By meeting team members where they are at, our managers could adapt their communication style to coach each team member through the process, allowing for a more personalized, effective transition.

Keep in mind that this isn’t just advice for managers. Our teams operate in Scrum, and in their team retrospectives, a shared understanding of this tool could have facilitated stronger conversations and better problem-solving.

6. Manage by OKRs.

To stay focused throughout the quarter, we created an objective and corresponding key results (OKRs) for our structure change.

The objective was essentially “Make the structure change happen” and we measured by tracking the milestones from our project plan.

In every all-hands meeting, we updated the team on our efforts using a percentage chart so they could visualize our progress.

This was also a time for those working directly on the project plan to celebrate and give themselves a pat on the back. There was a ton of work involved, and they deserved to be recognized for crushing it.

By breaking down exactly what needed to happen, we were able to keep the team focused and motivated to reach our goal.

7. Continue to prioritize communication.

As I mentioned in step one, discussing the idea is seriously only the first step. To keep everyone motivated, organized, and informed, we had to communicate a lot.

We focused on three types of communication: motivational, informational, and two-way:

• Our motivational communication often came from our CEO to reinforce the “why” behind this major change.
• Informational communication came from updates on our OKRs in our all-hands meetings, as well as one-off videos from the team working on the project plan to update on progress.
• Two-way communication was (and is) arguably the most important one. We started off slow in this area, but after getting feedback in our Q2 team survey and from people on the team, we doubled down on this much more in the last month of the transition.

A regular cadence of two-way communication means your team understands what’s being shared, but you also learn and address if there’s underlying dissent or miscommunication.

Although I put this as the last step, it’s the most crucial.

Communication must happen throughout your entire initiative or you’ll risk falling short and potentially damaging company morale in the process.

If you focus on the three types of communication above, you will reach your goals faster with a happier team to boot.

Why is change management important?

There is rarely a beginning and a clear-cut end like the more traditional models. I’m sure we’ll discover more tweaks we need to get our structure right, and that’s OK.

As a leader, you can choose a model, or a mix of models like what we do at IMPACT, to help organize effective, lasting change in your organization.

By incorporating your team via the communication methods outlined above, you can empower and enable your team to take action – and have pride in the change they helped make.

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

Running an ad campaign is no small feat. From narrowing down your target audience to designing your landing page, there are many pieces to the puzzle.

Once you put in all that work, you want to make sure your ad is ready for bidding. Google Ads helps advertisers ensure their ad quality is high by assigning them a quality score.

Not sure what that is? Let’s cover what a Quality Score is, how to see it in your account, and how to improve it for your next campaign.

Google wants to match users to the most relevant ads because they only make money when users click the ad. So, if they consistently show low-quality ads, they won’t earn as much.

To determine an advertiser’s Quality Score, Google looks at how other advertisers have performed in the last 90 days for the exact same keywords. If there isn’t enough data gathered in that time frame, there will be no score displayed.

Does your Quality Score affect ad rank?

In the bidding process, your Quality Score is not considered by Google’s algorithm. Your Quality Score can signal how your ad will rank but it’s not a direct input in the auction.

However, there is a non-direct link between your Quality Score and your ad ranking. If you have a low Quality Score, that suggests that your ad doesn’t provide a good user experience. As a result, your ad may not rank well.

Think of the Quality Score as a diagnostic tool you can leverage to create a more relevant and useful ad for your target audience.

Now that you know how it works, let’s talk about the three components that make up your Quality Score.

Quality Score Components

In the past, the QS was a clickthrough rate (CTR) predictor. Before assigning Quality Scores, Google used CTR to weed out ads that were irrelevant or ads that should have a higher cost-per-click (CPC), according to the Search Engine Journal.

Today, the expected clickthrough rate is still one component of the Quality Score. It refers to the likelihood that your ad will be clicked once seen. Here are two additional factors that influence your Quality Score:

• Ad relevance – How relevant your ad is to the keyword or ad group based on the user’s intent.
• Landing page experience – How useful your landing page is once users click on your ad.

For each component, you’ll get a subscore: below average, average, or above average.

Despite popular belief, your Google Ads history also has no impact on your Quality Score. Here are additional factors that are not measured in your Quality Score:

• Devices used in search
• Time of day
• Ad extensions
• Location of user

Why Your Google Ads (formerly Adwords) Quality Score Matters

The biggest reason to pay attention to your Quality Score is cost: The higher your Quality Score, the less you’ll pay per click. And that comes straight from Google.

Even if there’s low competition for your keywords, you may still end up paying close to your maximum CPC if your ad quality is low.

With this in mind, it’s in your best interest to ensure your ad meets Google’s standard of quality.

From a value perspective, your Quality Score can help you optimize your ad for better performance.

Knowing where you fall in each component allows you to ensure users enjoy every stage of the ad experience, from seeing your ad to landing on your LP.

For instance, your Quality Score could reveal that ad relevance is above average but your landing page is below average. From there, you have clear direction on what to focus on to improve your ad quality.

If you want to see past Quality Score stats for a specific reporting period, you can select one of the following and click “Apply.”

1. Quality Score (hist.)
2. Landing Page Exper. (hist.)
3. Ad Relevance (hist.)
4. Exp. CTR. (hist.)

1. Review your Quality Score components.

The first place to look when attempting to increase your QS is your Google Ads account. Where do you fall in expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page?

If you have “average” or “below average” listed for any category, those are the elements you want to tackle first.

While they all play a role in your score, working on your CTR or LP has twice the impact as working on your ad relevance, according to Search Engine Land.

But this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t care about your ad relevance score, you may just want to focus on those two first and then tackle ad relevance.

2. Tweak your keywords.

If your ad relevance score is low, there are a few things you can do to improve it.

The first is making sure the keywords in your ad group are relevant and all follow the same intent.

For instance, say you have these two versions of an ad group:

• 1st – Puzzles, puzzle games, kids games, children’s puzzles, puzzles online, online puzzles to solve
• 2nd – Children’s puzzles, puzzles for kids, puzzles for 3-year-olds, puzzles for 5-year-olds

The first ad group is scattered – it has broad terms like puzzles as well as specific terms related to the type of puzzles as well as online puzzles.

The second group on the other hand keeps the ad group focused on puzzles for children. It’s likely that if a user searches any of these terms, the intent will be the same whereas, in the first group, the ad may not be relevant.

The second thing you’ll want to do is have a negative keywords list. This will prevent your ad from showing up for keywords that have a different intent than your ad.

3. Check your site speed.

Site speed can greatly affect user experience. If your page loading time is too high, users will get impatient and quickly leave your site.

If you’re already paid for a user to get to your landing page, the last thing you want is a slow load time to steer them away.

Here are a few ways to test your site speed:

• PageSpeed Insights – It offers a quick but thorough overview of your site’s mobile and desktop performance. You can test your website for free and there’s no login required.
• HubSpot’s Website Grader – Want to test everything on your landing page, including security, performance, and SEO? Use this tool.
• Google Analytics – If you already have an account, you can access site speed data by:
  • Navigating to your view.
  • Opening “Reports.”
  • Selecting “Behavior” then “Site Speed.”

4. Align your ad to your landing page.

Ever go to a store and ask an attendant where something is? They point you to Aisle 7, you get there and it only takes a few seconds for you to get frustrated because you still can’t find what you’re looking for.

You don’t want your users to have that experience when they get to your landing page. It should always deliver on its promise.

For instance, say your ad is about puzzles for children. Your landing page shouldn’t include puzzles for adults, teenagers, etc. It should be specific to the ad so that the user gets exactly what they’re looking for.

If a consumer has to look around, as if they just landed on your homepage, they may just exit.

On that same note, don’t forget to check your URLs and ensure they’re working properly. A wrong forward or backslash, ampersand, hyphen, or parentheses can throw off your URL.

5. Test your copy and CTA.

When a user sees your ad on Google, you only have a few seconds to get their attention. What’s going to make them click on your ad instead of a competitor’s?

That’s what you should have in mind when crafting your copy and CTA.

Highlight a unique benefit that separates you from your competitors. Say you sell children’s puzzles and have won awards, that’s something you want to showcase. Or perhaps they’re sustainable and eco-friendly.

Leverage whatever details you believe will resonate best with your target audience.

In addition, use action verbs that have power and evoke emotion.

6. Optimize mobile experience.

Imagine running an ad to find out later that most clicks came from mobile users yet your landing page wasn’t designed for mobile shopping.

Today, the mobile experience is as important, if not more, to users when navigating the web.

As you design your landing page, make it responsive (i.e. mobile-friendly) to ensure it works well on all device types. Don’t just work on the LP, the entire shopping experience should be frictionless, including:

• Visiting product pages
• Checking out

You should also think about any pop-ups and other interstitial pages you may have that can impact the user experience.

Your quality score is a diagnostic tool that you should leverage to optimize your ads. With so many factors that can seem out of your control when it comes to ad performance, here’s something that you have the opportunity to control and improve.

If you are running a business, odds are, you’ve already figured out your business model.

It’s usually the first thing entrepreneurs build out, as it’s key to figuring out the value you’re bringing to the market and consumers.

But what about your people, processes, systems, and technology? Those are all key components of your business that should be outlined in your operational model.

Let’s dive into what an operational model is and how it compares to a business model, plus cover the steps to create one today.

Many people confuse business models with operating models. However, they outline different things and serve different purposes.

A business model outlines how a company captures and offers value through its products/services, value proposition, customer segments, key partners, etc. An operating model, on the other hand, lays out how a company will run in order to deliver that value.

So, in simple terms, a business model looks at the what. An operating model focuses on the how.

Let’s take the example of a fictional lifestyle business called EarthBound. Their business model will describe their sustainable and eco-friendly approach as their value proposition, outline their various product lines, lay out their customer channels through brick-and-mortar and ecommerce stores.

Their operating model will focus on how they source their products, the roles they need within the company, the systems they use in each business area, their data management plan, and more.

Unsure why you should design an operating model? Here are the benefits:

• It helps you identify the systems and structure necessary to serve your customers in a way that’s in line with your larger strategy.
• It’s a blueprint for how resources are organized and operated so, that serves as a baseline from which to scale your business.

Operating Model Template

When you build out your operating model, you focus on three key elements: process, people, and technology.

There are two approaches you can take: role-based or process-based.

When you take the role approach, you design your operating model based on hierarchy and the roles within your company. With a process approach, you focus instead on the journey to deliver value to your consumers.

The template you follow will depend on what makes the most sense for your business based on strategy. For instance, say you’re reviewing your operating model because you’re considering restructuring or reallocation of resources. In this case, a process-based approach may work best.

What You Need To Build Your Operating Model Design

You have to start by asking yourself: “How do we manage our resources to effectively run our business and deliver our services as intended while meeting our goals?”

As you start to think about that, focus on each area outline here.

1. Strategy

To build your operating model, you first need to be clear on your strategy.

This is because your strategy and core priorities will inform your operating model. Once you define it, the next step is creating a set of design principles.

Bain & Company, a global management consulting firm, suggests drafting a list of around seven statements that outline what your company must do to execute your strategy. This will serve as an anchor as you build out your model.

Anyone on your leadership team should be able to state these concisely and clearly using simple language. Here are a few examples:

• Standardize the customer experience across all regions.
• Reduce siloes and align the organization on key company priorities.
• Transition to digital-first approach.

2. Systems and processes.

For any company to run smoothly, they need systems and processes.

When creating or reviewing an operating model, you need to fully understand the inner workings of every business area.

What business systems are in place in X department? What hardware and software do they rely on?

As you think about these questions, make sure you consider both internal and external tools that your organization relies on.

This means knowing what every department needs to succeed in its roles. For instance, EarthBound’s finance department handles activities like invoicing, accounting, payroll, and billing. Going deeper, this means they may use software like Quickbooks.

The marketing team is likely responsible for lead generation and brand awareness through content, social media, paid advertisement, and more. As a result, they rely on tools like Casted to achieve their goals.

Once you know the systems and processes, you can figure out how it fits into your strategy and what changes can or should be made.

3. Organizational Structure

Over the years, new methodologies have been introduced that invite business leaders to revisit their organizational structure and make changes to their operational model.

One big shift in recent years has been how companies tackle projects. In the past, companies followed the waterfall methodology, which organized projects in linear, sequential phases. Today, many companies prefer the agile methodology, which is iterative and offers more flexibility.

Each framework is unique and comes with its own advantages and limitations. As such, it’s important for a business to know what direction they want to head in as they develop their operational model.

4. Talent Management

You can’t have a successful company without talent.

As you develop your operating model, one important question to answer is, “What do your teams look like?” and “What does success look like in every role?”

In this phase, you’ll want to understand the key roles and responsibilities needed to run the business and how those roles will evolve over X period of time.

Furthermore, you should also have a clear culture code that outlines the norms and behaviors you expect from your team and the values you celebrate.

These elements seep into other areas of your business and as a result, are incredibly important when working on your model.

5. Technology

As we’ve seen in recent months, the world is constantly changing.

More teams are remote than ever before and companies are investing in virtual tools like video conferencing and messaging. With this shift comes a need to have the technology to support growing global teams.

Beyond that, there is also the business technology needed to keep everyone in sync. Too often, companies suffer from siloes and have difficulty creating cross-functional teams. By understanding how you envision your team operating, you can seek out software that meets those needs.

Building your operating model is essential in maintaining the health of your company. Whether you’re just now creating one or revisiting an old one, doing so will help you better understand how to execute your strategy.

Podcasting is here to stay. According to Insider Intelligence, there are over 117 million podcast listeners in the U.S. alone, a 10% increase from last year, and that figure is expected to rise.

So why are so many people listening to podcasts? 74% of podcast listeners say they tune in to their favorite shows to learn new things.

Podcasts offer knowledge and inspiration in an easy-to-digest format for a variety of topics. If sharpening your skills as a marketer is on your list of priorities, then tuning into marketing-focused podcasts can be a great way to prioritize your professional development.

I asked members of the HubSpot content team what podcasts they like to learn the latest in marketing and entrepreneurship from. Here are their recommendations for the best podcasts covering digital, content, and affiliate marketing.

Best Marketing Podcasts

1. The Shake Up

Why Listen: The Shake Up is a weekly podcast hosted by Alexis Gay and Brianne Kimmel. Each week, the hosts facilitate engaging discussions about business leaders and companies that shake up the status quo. In each episode, you’re bound to learn a new perspective or strategy to support your work.

2. My First Million

Why Listen: Looking for your million-dollar idea? Add My First Million to your podcast queue. Hosts Sam Parr and Shaan Puri examine business trends and opportunities and brainstorm potential business ideas on-air. If you’re in a creative rut, My First Million can help inspire new ideas for campaigns and offerings.

3. iDigress

Why Listen: If you need strategic direction, tune into iDigress, hosted by Troy Sandidge. Troy specializes in finding creative solutions to complex problems, leaving listeners with actionable takeaways to implement better marketing and business strategies.

4. The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast

Why Listen: The Duct Tape Marketing podcast has been delivering expert insights and tips for marketers since 2005. Host John Jantsch interviews top marketers and thought leaders for daily tips, tactics, and sources of inspiration geared towards small businesses.

5. Marketing Made Simple

Why Listen: Marketing doesn’t have to be complicated to be effective. The Marketing Made Simple podcast by StoryBrand offers weekly tips to help marketers simplify their efforts for better results.

6. Go-To Gal with Jaclyn Mellone: Online Marketing + Mindset for Female Entrepreneurs

Why Listen: A healthy mindset is a non-negotiable trait for successful marketers and entrepreneurs. Host Jaclyn Mellone along with her guests tackle important topics such as building a personal brand, creating effective marketing systems and creating equitable and inclusive businesses.

7. The Marketing Analytics Show

Why Listen: In marketing, data is everything. The Marketing Analytics Show helps listeners feel more confident working with marketing analytics. In each episode, host Anna Shutko interviews marketers and analysts who share how they leverage data to make informed decisions and strategies.

8. The Market Your Genius Podcast

Why Listen: Nikki Nash is the author, speaker, and marketing mentor behind the Market Your Genius book and podcast. In weekly episodes, Nash and guests share personal anecdotes mini-trainings with actionable takeaways to empower listeners to grow their businesses and reach the right audience.

9. The CMO Podcast

Why Listen: Ever wish you could pick the brains of top Chief Marketing Officers? Well, you can by tuning into The CMO Podcast. Each week host Jim Stengel, former CMO of Procter & Gamble turned entrepreneur, facilitates in-depth conversations with CMOs of all backgrounds to inform and inspire.

10. The Sakita Method

Why Listen: Award-winning publicist and entrepreneur Sakita Holley shares a mix of solo episodes and interviews featuring successful creatives, entrepreneurs, and business professionals. Each episode has tangible insights listeners can apply to their own careers and businesses to drive positive results.

11. Metrics & Chill: The Podcast About Improving Business Metrics

Why Listen: The Metrics & Chill podcast by Databox takes the saying “what gets measured gets done” to a whole new level. For listeners looking for innovative ways to collect and analyze business data, Metrics & Chill offers informative case studies and takeaways from how successful companies manage their data.

12. MarTech

Why Listen: Tune in to the MarTech podcast to earn directly from marketers just like you. Each episode features an innovative marketer who shares the challenges and triumphs of their careers in the field. By the end of each episode, you’ll hear tangible tips and tricks to take your career to the next level.

Best Digital Marketing Podcasts

1. Online Marketing Made Easy

Why Listen: Online Marketing Made Easy hosted by Amy Porterfield is a top-rated business podcast covering digital marketing strategies for online business owners. Porterfield specializes in taking big ideas and breaking them down into actionable steps the listener can immediately apply to their own business.

2. Marketing School

Why Listen: Digital marketing experts Neil Patel and Eric Siu share bite-sized daily episodes packed with actionable advice. Topics covered include the latest SEO strategies, maximizing engagement on social media, and setting meaningful goals.

3. The Digital Marketing Podcast

Why Listen: The Digital Marketing Podcast hosted by Ciaran Rogers and Daniel Rowles is equal parts informative and entertaining. With many episodes clocking in at under 30 minutes, listeners can gain a wealth of information about the latest and greatest digital marketing strategies in an easily digestible format.

4. Socialette: Bite-Sized Online Marketing Podcast

Why Listen: If you’re looking for quick tips you’ll actually use, Socialette by Steph Taylor is for you. In each episode, Taylor dives into a different area of digital marketing to answer questions at the top of every digital marketer and online entrepreneur’s mind.

Best Content Marketing Podcasts

1. Copyblogger

Why Listen: If you enjoy deep dives into content marketing, email marketing, lead conversion, and copywriting the Copyblogger podcast is for you. Each week host Tim Stoddart sits down with content marketing experts who share their lessons learned and actionable takeaways for the listener.

2. Social Pros Podcast

Why Listen: Social media is an ever-changing, yet critical component of many company’s marketing strategies. Social Pros features top social media strategists who spotlight key trends and changes happening in the social media landscape so marketers can be ahead of the curve.

3. Actionable Marketing Podcast

Why Listen: The Actionable Marketing Podcast is a weekly show for marketers who are ready to roll up their sleeves and get to work. Each episode is designed to be concise and actionable for marketers at any stage in their careers.

4. The Agents of Change: SEO, Social Media, and Mobile Marketing for Small Business

Why Listen: The Agents of Change helps listeners learn how to use content to get in front of their ideal customers. Host Rich Brooks interviews guests who offer practical advice on SEO, social media marketing, and more.

5. Build Your Tribe | Grow Your Business with Social Media

Why Listen: Though primarily geared towards entrepreneurs, Build Your Tribe by Chalene and Brock Johnson offers valuable advice for anyone looking to leverage online platforms for business growth. Topics include branding basics, the latest hashtag strategies, social media content ideas, and more.

6. Perpetual Traffic

Why Listen: Perpetual Traffic, produced by DigitalMarketer, is all about lead acquisition and audience growth for businesses of all sizes. Hosts Ralph Burns and Amanda Powell discuss paid advertising strategies companies can use to expand their reach.

7. The Influencer Podcast

Why Listen: The Influencer Podcast is a must-listen for those who focus on influencer marketing. This show provides valuable insight into the world of influencer marketing and has key anecdotes for influencers and marketers alike.

8. Social Media Marketing Podcast

Why Listen: Social Media Marketing is hosted by Social Media Examiner’s Michael Stelzner and has been a valued resource on all things social media since 2012. This podcast delivers weekly episodes designed to help marketers learn new strategies and deliver better campaigns.

Affiliate Marketing Podcasts

1. The Smart Passive Income Online Business and Blogging Podcast

Why Listen: Smart Passive Income hosted by Pat Flynn covers various topics related to online business and affiliate marketing. Flynn offers a mix of solo episodes and interviews with guests to cover a variety of topics including ethical affiliate marketing to help companies and their affiliate partners generate revenue.

2. The Affiliate Guy

Why Listen: Marketers interested in learning the latest affiliate marketing news can subscribe to The Affiliate Guy hosted by Matt McWilliams. This weekly podcast shares tips, news, and insights related to how companies can better manage affiliate programs and help their affiliates earn higher commissions.

3. Affiliated: ClickBank’s Official Affiliate Marketing Podcast

Why Listen: Hosts Thomas McMahon and Kyle Kostechka publish bi-weekly to share effective affiliate marketing strategies that work across industries.

Press Play

For marketers ready to expand their skillset and learn new strategies, there is a wealth of information waiting for you.

Did you know LinkedIn has over 774 million users across the globe? This metric alone makes the platform one of the top social networks today.

Is your business using LinkedIn to its fullest potential to improve brand awareness, build your network, boost leads and conversions, and increase revenue? With new social networks sprouting up constantly, LinkedIn is a platform that’s often underutilized. The truth is, LinkedIn can be a powerful addition to your social media content strategy.

This guide is chock full of LinkedIn tips you can begin implementing immediately to help you learn how to use the platform to improve brand awareness, share your marketing content, and grow your business.

When you use LinkedIn to market your business, you gain access to useful features related to analytics, connections, and brand-building, just to name a few. (Don’t worry, we’ll review all of these in-depth momentarily.)

But first, here’s a quick primer for those of you who may be new to LinkedIn.

About LinkedIn

LinkedIn launched in 2003 with a focus on networking, building careers, and sharing ideas. The platform enables its members to connect and share content with other professionals including colleagues, potential employers, business partners, competitors, new employees, and customers.

This is why having your business on LinkedIn is so powerful — the platform is a fantastic marketing tool.

For a quick guide on the tips below, check out our video on “How to Use LinkedIn for Business and Marketing.”

Now, let’s review the ways you can use LinkedIn to market and grow your business.

LinkedIn allows you to drive traffic to your website, identify quality leads, share your expertise through thought-leadership content, and grow your network. It’s also a great way to market job openings and attract new talent to your company. These are just some of the reasons why LinkedIn is an ideal platform for all businesses to market on. Here are a few more tactical ways you can incorporate LinkedIn into your social media content strategy.

1. Use hashtags.

Hashtags are often used to add emphasis to your LinkedIn post, but they actually serve a purpose that can change your marketing strategy for the better. These simple phrases preceded by a hashtag symbol are goldmines for tapping into new audiences, industries, and niches. But using too many, or worse — the wrong ones, can hinder your reach.

That means you’ll want to strike a balance between relevant and popular hashtags by doing hashtag research on LinkedIn. Use the search bar to query a broad hashtag first. For example, if you work in growth marketing, start by searching #growthmarketing to see how many people are following the hashtag, and how often it is being used.

From here, start with three to five hashtags that reach the audiences you want to speak to. These hashtags should vary in the number of people following them, so don’t get too fixated on high numbers. Related but lesser-known hashtags can narrow your reach to an audience who would be likely to engage with your LinkedIn content.

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LinkedIn Pages are able to be followed without sending a connection and waiting for approval. That means when a LinkedIn user shares your Page with their connections, those individuals will be able to follow your page and see your business’ content right away which has the potential for high engagement. LinkedIn Pages and LinkedIn Profiles serve different purposes in LinkedIn marketing. Pages are public and used primarily by businesses. Profiles are private and used by individuals. Each of them works with the LinkedIn algorithm, but you’ll have different tools that you can leverage to grow your audience.

LinkedIn Profiles can be followed as well, but what makes them unique is the ability to have one-on-one, private conversations with connections who request to join your network. If you’re a consultant, work in direct sales, or prefer to take an individualized approach to your business, you’ll want to have a LinkedIn Profile to capitalize on this feature.

Both of these LinkedIn entities can work in tandem to create the ultimate marketing workflow. For example, you can list yourself as an employee of your business by listing your business’ LinkedIn Page as your employer on your personal Profile. That way, when a visitor lands on your Profile, they’ll see your Page, too.

3. Create posts of varying lengths.

Quick, bold posts pack a punch on LinkedIn. Long-form stories capture the readers’ attention and lead to a longer dwell time on the app. Both of these types of posts should have a place in your LinkedIn content plan.

You don’t want to become known as the person who only shares monologues because your network won’t always have time to read them. Along the same lines, too many short posts can come across as lacking substance which could make you seem less authoritative as a thought leader.

Varying the length of your posts (as well as adding images and videos) can keep your content fresh and relevant to your network. You’ll have content that gets people excited to see what gems you drop next.

4. Share external articles on the platform.

Unlike other platforms such as Instagram, LinkedIn’s algorithm supports external links to blogs and websites. So long as the content you post has value and is relevant to your audience, you’ll find success posting other people’s content on the platform.

Although you don’t have to worry about formally crediting the author if you’re linking directly to their website, it’s not a bad idea to tag them in your post or use their hashtag to give credit. Sometimes, they’ll share your post with their own followers, or comment under the post which introduces your Profile to their audience. How cool is that?

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5. Keep your publishing schedule consistent.

Known as the platform for having one of the longest content lifespans, LinkedIn is a platform that doesn’t need a ’round-the-clock publishing schedule. What it does need is a consistent one.

Whether you publish every day, every other day, or even once a week, your network will come to expect your content regularly which builds trust. Choose a schedule that makes sense for your business and stick to it for a month. See what days and times are yielding the best engagement and make those part of your publishing schedule.

Below, we’ll cover some effective ways to use the LinkedIn platform. These tips can be tailored to your needs — whether you have a personal LinkedIn page, business page, or both — no matter your industry or size. However, you’ll notice some of the points we’re going to cover are more suited for businesses looking to boost brand awareness or share content while others are more tailored towards those looking to recruit and hire new talent.

1. Customize your public Profile URL.

Make your Profile look more professional, and easier to share, by customizing your LinkedIn public Profile URL. Instead of a URL with confusing numbers at the end, it will look nice and clean like this:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/amandazantalwiener.

You can do this by clicking View Profile and then clicking Edit Public Profile and URL. Here you can change your URL to anything you’d like — such as your first and last name or business name — assuming it hasn’t already been taken by another LinkedIn user.

2. Add a LinkedIn background photo to your Profile.

Give your LinkedIn Profile a little bit more personality by adding an on-brand background photo. Although one is automatically provided to you, you can update it to showcase your personal brand, special interests, or catch the eyes of hiring managers and recruiters.

LinkedIn recommends a background photo size of 1584 x 396 pixels, and it must be a JPG, PNG, or GIF file under 8MB.

3. Add a ProFinder Badge to your Profile.

You might consider adding a ProFinder Badge, which is used to identify freelancers within LinkedIn’s ProFinder. This service matches contractors with project managers who are seeking help. Freelancers can display a ProFinder badge on their Profiles to show prospective clients their skills, expertise, and recommendations.

LinkedIn offers two badge themes for you to choose from:

4. Take advantage of the blog and website links on your LinkedIn Profile.

You can add portfolio links and social networks to your LinkedIn page. Links to your content and business information can also be added to your Profile to increase clicks. This feature allows you to draw greater attention to specific areas of your page to drive traffic elsewhere.

For example, if you produced a podcast, you can share links to your episodes on LinkedIn (e.g. SoundCloud tracks) to promote your work.

5. Optimize your LinkedIn Profile for the search engines.

Search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t limited to blogging — you can also optimize your Profile to get discovered by people searching LinkedIn for key terms you want to be found for. You can add these keywords to various sections of your Profile, such as your headline, your summary, or your work experience.

Download a free SEO starter pack to learn everything you need to know about optimizing your business’ content.

6. Add, remove, and rearrange sections of your Profile.

You can edit and reorder sections of your LinkedIn Profile to highlight specific pieces of information in any way you see fit. When you’re in edit mode, simply hover your mouse over the double-sided arrow in each section. Your mouse will turn into a four-arrow icon, at which point you can click, drag, and drop to another position on your Profile.

7. Use Saved Searches and Search Alerts in LinkedIn Recruiter.

If you use LinkedIn Recruiter, you can use Saved Searches to save your search criteria — if you’re marketing job opportunities via LinkedIn, this is a great addition to your tool belt.

With the feature, you can save as many searches as you want and receive alerts when new candidates match your filter refinements and criteria. You can elect to receive daily or weekly search alerts from the system about relevant results via the Recruiter homepage.

8. List job opportunities and recruit new talent with LinkedIn’s job postings.

And speaking of your business’ open job opportunities, don’t forget to add and market your new positions on the LinkedIn Jobs page.

Here, candidates can learn about your business and openings by searching for specific keywords such as job title, industry, location, salary, experience level, and more.

9. Take advantage of LinkedIn Endorsements.

LinkedIn offers a feature called Endorsements — this allows you to recognize people you work with by endorsing their skills.

You can promote and endorse the skills of the people you work closest with to help refer them for other work, make their Profiles more impressive, show your support, and more.

10. Use Open Profile to send messages to people you’re not connected to.

To branch out and make new connections with potential partners, customers, and other industry leaders, you might want to send them a personalized message.

With the exception of fellow LinkedIn Group members, the platform only allows you to send messages to people with whom you share a first-degree connection. But did you know some people let you send them messages anyway, even if you’re not connected?

Here’s how that works: The ability to be part of the Open Profile network is only available to Premium account holders, but it allows those users to be available for messaging by any other LinkedIn member regardless of membership type.

Additionally, there are options for sending messages to those with whom you’re not yet connected, similar to sending a request to connect with a note (though we don’t recommend overusing this technique). Additionally, if you have a premium account, you can use InMail.

11. Check your Network Updates (or share your own).

Found on your LinkedIn homepage, Network Updates are essentially LinkedIn’s version of the Facebook News Feed. Check this feed periodically for a quick snapshot of what your connections, customers, competitors, and others are up to and sharing. You can also share updates of your own, such as details about your products or services and noteworthy content your business has created and published.

You may choose to sign up for email notifications or sort by “Top Updates” and “Recent Updates” to filter your feed in any way you choose.

12. Be identifiable.

Your LinkedIn connections should recognize your Profile the moment they look at it. A great way to make your Profile easily identifiable is by ensuring your Profile’s name, headline, and other simple identifiers are easy to see.

Note: You should always have your Public Profile setting enabled as well, to be visible and identifiable for your audience.

13. Check out who’s viewed your LinkedIn Profile.

Learn a little about your audience members, potential leads, and customers who are viewing your Profile and marketing content that you’re sharing on LinkedIn.

How? With the Who Viewed Your Profile feature.

This tool, which is accessible in the main navigation via the Profile drop down, enables you to identify the exact people who have visited your page. You can see how you stack up against the Profile views for your connections, other businesses like yours, and more.

14. Export connections.

Now, it’s no secret that you can use the connections you make on LinkedIn to drive traffic to your site and grow your base of paying customers. Exporting your connections — to a contact management system, for example — is a great place to start.

Under your Advanced Settings, you can start exporting your LinkedIn connections.

15. Customize your Connections to grow your professional network.

LinkedIn offers features to help you grow your professional network and make valuable connections. There are several ways to do this depending on what you’re looking to accomplish.

Here are some examples:

• Add, view, and remove connections depending on their level of value to your business.
• Control who can see your connections — maybe you do or don’t want your competitors to see that list of people.
• Leverage your second and third-degree connections to grow your network and build new relationships.
• Import and sync your contacts from your email and other sources to stay in touch with colleagues, partners, leads, and customers across the board. These connections will see your content in multiple places so they learn more about who you are as a business, deepening their relationship with your brand.

16. Join LinkedIn Groups.

LinkedIn Groups are a great way to make connections with people who work in, or are interested in, your industry. They serve as a hub for you and other members to share content, grow your contact list, establish yourself as an expert in the field, and boost brand awareness.

There are several other benefits that come from joining LinkedIn Groups. For example, by joining Groups related to your industry and participating in discussions within those groups, you’ll inspire thought leadership in your industry.

Additionally, by joining Groups, you can view complete Profiles of other members of the same group without being connected. Also, if you’re a member of the same group as another user, LinkedIn allows you to send up to 15 free 1:1 messages to fellow group members per month (typically, you can only do this if you’re a first-degree connection).

17. Create your own LinkedIn Group.

Consider creating a LinkedIn Group of your very own, like HubSpot did with the popular Inbound Marketers Group.

You can use your group to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry, grow a community of advocates, generate new marketing content ideas, promote brand awareness, and generate new leads.

18. Communicate with your LinkedIn Group.

And on that note, there are more reasons to create your own Group on LinkedIn. In fact, one of the perks of managing a LinkedIn Group is that LinkedIn makes it simple to interact and communicate with the members of the Group you’re in charge of.

You can either send messages to group members or create a group post. Sending messages allows you to write a member of your group directly, or share content with them, from your group’s page. This is great if you have something to share with a specific person in your group. Creating a group post allows you to share any content you’d like on your group’s page which is ideal for initiating a discussion.

19. Share your LinkedIn status updates on Twitter.

Add your Twitter account to your LinkedIn Profile so you can share status updates across platforms. This is also a great way to boost your Twitter followers and LinkedIn connections.

For example, if you’re posting an update to LinkedIn that you’d also like your Twitter followers to see, you can easily syndicate that update to Twitter by selecting the Public + Twitter option in the dropdown menu within the LinkedIn update composer.

20. Leverage @mentions in your status updates.

Want another LinkedIn user or company to see your status update? On LinkedIn, you can tag — or @mention — users and other companies in your status updates much like the way it works on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Include the @ symbol immediately followed by the user’s/ company’s name in your status update or post. As a result, that user/ company will be alerted that you mentioned them, and their name will also link to their Profile and Page in the status update itself. This is a great way to boost engagement and interaction on your content as well as improve brand awareness.

21. Design all aspects of your LinkedIn page.

The design of LinkedIn pages has changed a lot over the years. Make sure yours is set up correctly and optimized for the latest layout, featuring a compelling and high-quality banner image.

Take a look at what HubSpot’s Company Page looks like for inspiration:

Use guides and templates to discover the best ways to design your LinkedIn page for optimal business, marketing, and professional networking.

22. Create LinkedIn Showcase Pages.

LinkedIn Showcase Pages are niche pages that branch off your business’ page to highlight specific initiatives and campaigns or feature specific content you’re working on.

Think of Showcase Pages as extensions of your main page that allow you to promote specific products or cater to your marketing personas — this provides a more personalized and targeted experience for your page visitors. This is a great way to expand your network on LinkedIn because other users can choose to follow your Showcase Page(s) even if they haven’t followed your main page.

23. Post company status updates and target them.

Publish Status Updates for your business on your LinkedIn page for your followers to see. This keeps your LinkedIn connections engaged and in the loop regarding your business’ latest developments, work, content, and updates. In your status updates, you can share written information, images, videos, documents, and more.

You can also post Targeted LinkedIn Status Updates tailored towards specific people and groups within your audience. To do this, use criteria such as company size, industry, job function, seniority, geography, language, or by including/ excluding company employees.

These targeted updates will appear on your page — or Showcase Page — as well as on LinkedIn for the targeted users (specifically, in their Network Updates feed).

24. Check out LinkedIn’s Content Marketing Score & Trending Content resources.

You can learn how impactful your organic and paid LinkedIn marketing content is with the platform’s Content Marketing Score and Trending Content resources.

Your Content Marketing Score tells you your impact on LinkedIn by measuring overall audience engagement with your content. Trending Content tells you which topics you are posting and sharing content about that are resonating with specific audience groups on the platform, allowing you to optimize your content for greater impact.

25. Experiment with LinkedIn Sponsored Content and Native Ads.

If you’re looking to complement your organic LinkedIn marketing efforts with some paid advertising, LinkedIn Ads are a smart choice. One of the biggest benefits of LinkedIn advertising: the targeting options.

LinkedIn’s PPC ads let you target specific job titles, job functions, industries, or company size, to name a few — you know, the people who are more likely to want/ need what you sell.

If you want to get started with LinkedIn’s advertising platform, check out our free guide to advertising on LinkedIn.

26. Share content through LinkedIn’s publishing platform.

Good news! You no longer have to be a LinkedIn influencer to publish new articles on LinkedIn. Publishing is available to all users on the platform. Experiment with how this feature can support your marketing goals by creating content and promoting it on your business’ LinkedIn page.

For example, you might experiment with syndicating content from your blog to LinkedIn — this way, you can promote subscriptions to your blog via LinkedIn.

27. Add a Page Follow Button to your website.

Add the LinkedIn Company Follow button to your website to promote your company’s LinkedIn presence and the content you share on the platform. When your website visitors follow your LinkedIn page via your site, they’ll automatically become connected to you and be able to view your company’s latest updates on the platform.

Using this method, you can boost your engagement and number of connections on LinkedIn by driving traffic to the platform directly from your website.

28. Analyze your LinkedIn marketing performance.

So … how are your LinkedIn marketing efforts faring? Analyzing your efforts and making necessary adjustments is critical to your success on the platform.

LinkedIn has in-depth page analytics as well as reporting tools for businesses to evaluate overall performance. There are specific data about how effective your status updates, content, and reach are as well as details about your page’s engagement and followers (like audience member demographics).

Market Your Business on LinkedIn

Are you ready to get started marketing your business on LinkedIn?

With so many updates and additions to LinkedIn on the horizon, we can’t wait to see how the network continues to make itself an integral resource and platform for marketers, job seekers, candidate seekers, and other professionals. Get started marketing on LinkedIn by experimenting with one of these best practices.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in August 2017 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

In 2018, 63% of consumers surveyed in an Accenture study revealed that they preferred to shop from purpose-driven brands. Fast forward to 2021 and that sentiment has only grown.

IBM ran a study in 2020 on consumer behavior and found that 57% of consumers are willing to change their shopping habits to be more environmentally conscious. In the same study, nearly eight of out 10 respondents stated that sustainability is important to them.

So, how does a brand leverage sustainable marketing to appeal to a growing, socially conscious audience? We’ll cover that and more below.

Green Marketing vs. Sustainable Marketing

While both terms are often used interchangeably, there is a difference between green marketing and sustainability marketing.

Green marketing focuses on strategies that promote environmental awareness and protection. Sustainable marketing, on the other hand, is a little broader.

It encompasses green marketing but it also includes practices that go beyond the environment, like social and economic issues.

1. Have a larger purpose.

Brands typically judge their success by the numbers. How much revenue they have or will generate in any given period is usually the biggest indicator of success.

Sustainability shifts this perspective by having brands evaluate themselves by something bigger than profit.

As a brand, you have to promote something that’s bigger than your products and services and transcends any particular industry.

Do you have a clear social mission? If not, spend time discovering what that is and how your brand plays a role in furthering that mission.

For instance, fashion brand Autumn Adeigbo sells clothing, accessories, and home decor items. However, its mission, as stated on its website, is to impact the lives of women on a global scale. They do so by using female-owned production facilities, employing female artisans, among other practices.

2. Think ahead.

Sustainability marketing is all about building long-term value.

Too often, brands focus on gaining immediate returns. For instance, many marketing tactics like running Google Ads and blogging are great lead generators.

However, what happens once your lead has made a purchase and turned into a customer? How will you build loyalty and create brand evangelists?

Sustainable marketing looks at ways to nurture consumers during the entire buyer’s journey.

Education is one way to build loyalty with your audience early on. From when they first discover you on social media to after they’ve made a purpose.

For instance, a food brand could educate its audience on the importance of ethical farming on social media and continue this process post-purchase with package recycling tips.

3. Be customer-oriented.

You might be thinking, “Isn’t being consumer-oriented what all marketing is? “

Ideally, yes but that’s not always the case.

In traditional marketing, a brand will often try to push a product or service to a customer. With consumer-oriented marketing, it’s more about understanding your customers’ needs and tailoring your marketing to that.

For instance, say your audience is craving more transparency in your sourcing practices or want you to be more vocal on social issues. You could use that information for your next campaign.

With so much competition out there, one way to stay customer-oriented is by innovating.

We’ve all heard the Blockbuster and Netflix cautionary tale. But that speaks to a huge societal shift that Blockbuster was unwilling to make.

But the truth is, innovation doesn’t always have to be so big. It can happen in small iterations – the key here is staying in touch with your audience’s needs.

4. Reflect sustainability in every aspect of your brand.

Sustainability marketing doesn’t work if it’s not authentic.

Imagine finding out a business that claims to be sustainable has failed to implement any practices to promote its mission. Consumers would distrust that brand and it would be difficult to earn it back.

Make sure your brand is looking at sustainability from a holistic lens.

Are you preaching about sustainability but use unsustainable resources to build your product? Are you collaborating with brands that conflict with your mission? Is your team representative of the future you want to promote?

These are the questions you should ask to determine if your brand reflects the mission you’ve set out to achieve. Identify the areas that need work and go to the drawing board to figure out strategies that align with your mission.

Audiences don’t expect perfection, they do, however, value transparency. It’s OK – and recommended – to share where you currently fall short and how you plan to remedy these issues.

Sustainable Marketing Examples

1. Pangiai

Materials science company, Pangiai, wants to save the environment.

Every piece of marketing the brand puts out is centered around this core mission, including this video campaign.

In it, the brand explains its mission to “reverse the cycle from the unnatural to natural, from plastic to plants […], from the new to the recycled.”

What’s effective about this ad is that Pangiai describes the future they want to see and outlines the strategies it will implement to get there.

Throughout the ad, you see Pangiai products but they’re not the focus. This tells viewers the mission drives the products, not the other way around — and that’s sustainable marketing done right.

2. Nada Duele

In the previous section, we discussed the importance of having a holistic approach to sustainability marketing.

With Nada Duele, their mission is reflected in everything: from their name, which represents the idea that products should not cause harm, to the initiatives they take part in.

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When you visit their “How We Work” section, you learn about their collaboration with a Guatemalan institute dedicated to protecting the forestry sector.

It’s important that the partnerships your brand takes on align with your values. Otherwise, you risk losing credibility and trust.

3. Satya + Sage

Social media is one of the best and easiest ways to implement a sustainable marketing strategy.

You can share a range of content, from educating your followers on sustainable practices to sharing ways your brand is being sustainable.

In this example from candle company Satya + Sage, they share tips on how to use the seed paper that comes with every candle.

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On social media, in particular, pay attention to the questions your followers ask and the comments they make, as that can inform which marketing strategies you test in the future.

Why is sustainable marketing important?

Sustainability is a topic that has gained a lot of traction as of late, however, research shows it transcends age.

The 2020 IBM study on consumer behavior revealed that while Millennials are the most interested in sustainability awareness, Boomers (and all consumers in between) strongly consider it when choosing brands.

As a result, even if your brand isn’t rooting in this mission, you will still find value in investing time and resources in sustainable practices and marketing to attract more customers.

Back in 2007, a research firm estimated that the average person saw up to 5,000 ads a day.

Fast forward to 2021, there’s no official number, but we can assume that number has probably doubled. I mean, you can’t stream a show or scroll on social media without being inundated with ads.

On YouTube, in particular, we’ve come to expect at least one ad per video. The question is, which ads are consumers paying attention to?

In this article, we’ll cover the top YouTube ads of the last two years and what made them so effective.

Best YouTube Ads of 2021 and 2020

1. Amazon: “Alexa’s Body”

At 78,344,440 views on YouTube, this ad had everyone’s attention.

To promote its virtual assistant technology, Alexa, Amazon delivers a creative and hilarious ad featuring movie star, Michael B. Jordan.

The ad starts out simply enough with a woman admiring Amazon’s Echo Dot. She then turns to the window, sees an ad for Jordan’s movie “Without Remorse” and imagines a whole life in which Alexa is actually Jordan.

The audience takes this hilarious journey with her, as she enjoys life just a little too much with Jordan until she snaps back to reality.

Here’s why this ad is fantastic: It takes a product that can be hard to advertise and quite literally brings it to life with a celebrity, People Magazine’s 2020 “Sexiest Man Alive” recipient no less.

A celebrity endorsement can definitely help boost brand awareness and recall, as long as they’re well aligned. In this case, it made for a memorable and effective ad.

2. Nike: “Never Too Far Down, You Can’t Stop Us”

When you think of Nike, one word that probably comes to mind is “inspiration.”

That concept is embedded in the brand’s values and mission statement. It’s also reflected in their ads.

Featuring some of the world’s top athletes, this ad dives into the ups and downs of success.

Footage of athletes at their lowest moments floods the screen, as basketball star Lebron James narrates the journey. He describes the struggle of falling down and the ability to get back up.

Nike has found which messaging resonates best with its audience. As a result, they don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Instead, they focus on recreating the same impact with influencers, celebrities, and everyday people.

The takeaway here is if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

3. Ad Council: Child Car Safety

This PSA is a personal favorite of mine.

You’ve got to admit: Any commercial with kids is usually a winner. But this one, in particular, stands out because it doesn’t try to use cuteness as the hook.

In this ad, two children stand in their yard as they watch their parents argue about the installation of a basketball hoop.

The father reassures the mother that “it’s all good” but all it takes is the hoop slamming to the ground for him (and her) to lose all confidence. The perspective then changes to one of the children as they encourage parents to visit a website for safer car rides.

How does it connect? Well, the idea is that the father has proven he’s willing to do anything for his kids including “routinely test [his] handyman skills” and “the strength of [his] marriage,” so this task should be an easy one.

Who said serious topics required serious ads? Often, humor is the best way to get the message across.

4. Zillow: “Susans”

Making a decision isn’t as simple as saying “yes” or “no.” You often go back and forth discussing pros and cons, battling with different versions of yourself.

For instance, the indulgent me often struggles with the foodie me. One side says, “be conscious of the foods you eat,” while the other screams “CAKE.” That one usually wins.

This Zillow ad takes this concept and runs with it.

Susan, the woman featured in the ad, talks through selling her home and buying a new one with the various versions of herself, including Negative Susan, Spontaneous Susan, and Paranoid Susan.

The second best part of the ad – the first is when Late Susan sneaks into the meeting – is when Lazy Susan brings up the hassle of going through that process. Helpful Susan then brings up how Zillow is the solution to this issue.

What Zillow has accomplished here is tackle the objections consumers typically have about real estate in a relatable way. By understanding how their audience thinks and what they struggle with, they made an ad that was engaging and relevant.

5. AT&T: “Say Goodbye to Awkward Chats”

Bad video connection? We’ve all been there.

The person you’re video chatting with starts buffering and frozen for seconds at a time. After you’ve taken the embarrassing screenshot, it stops being funny and you wonder how long it’s going to last.

AT&T takes this situation one step further.

The ad shows a new mom introducing her sister to her newborn. Unfortunately, just as the baby reaches the screen, the aunt’s signal lags and causes her to freeze as her face shows disgust.

The sister inevitably mistakes the sister’s facial expressions regarding the internet and takes it to mean something about her baby.

In just 30 seconds, the ad takes something that happens in everyday life and turns it into an ad.

Moral of the story: You don’t always have to go far to create a great ad. There are great ads that come from the seemingly mundane parts of our lives.

6. Masterclass: “Chris Voss Teaches the Art of Negotiation”

Masterclass’ top viewed video on YouTube is an ad for one of their masterclasses: the art of negotiation.

Despite having other videos that feature more household names, this seems to be the video that captured most viewers’ attention.

Some will argue it’s the content, and they may be right. I think it’s the formula they used.

From the second this ad starts, it sucks you in with the statement: “Everything in life is a negotiation.” From there, you’re immersed in the world of the subject and narrator.

The reason this ad is so powerful is that it answers the most important question: Why should I care?

It tells viewers exactly how this relates to them, how they would benefit from it, and how they can use it in their daily life.

Unless your ad is product-focused, it should give them the answer to those questions.

7. Travelers Insurance: “Legacy”

It wouldn’t be a top 10 YouTube ad list without an insurance company listed, right?

Insurance companies are notorious for taking the funny route for commercials. Because how else do you market a product that’s only needed in the event of something terrible?

Travelers Insurance did something different with this YouTube ad.

The brand told the story of a businessman passing his legacy, the family business, to his daughter. And they’re able to do that because they had insurance to rebuild the store following a natural disaster.

Using the concept of legacy isn’t something we’ve seen much from insurance ads. It’s heartwarming without fearmongering and that’s why it works so well.

8. Bluehost: “Build Beyond Boundaries”

When it comes to generating buzz for your product or service, showing is better than telling.

In 55 seconds, Bluehost delivered a fantastic ad that covered the brand’s top features without overwhelming the viewer.

The ad serves as a mini product demo, showcasing how easy it is to use using a fictional website concept. Here’s why it works:

• The viewer leaves knowing how it works and what are some top features.
• The video includes rich media to keep viewers engaged.

If you’re interested in creating a media-rich ad like this, consider the audio and video content platform, Casted. 

9. The General Auto: “The Lunchroom”

For years, The General had commercials that many consumers thought were low-quality. In their 2021 ad, the brand came with a fresh new look.

This ad starts with two men approaching former athlete Shaq in a lunchroom as he eats with a young friend. They reference a previous conversation in which they disagreed with Shaq about The General and refused to sit with him.

They acknowledge that they “misjudged them based on their commercials” then ask for forgiveness, plus a seat at his lunch table.

Now more than ever, consumers crave transparency. This was a great move for the brand because it addressed the elephant in the room.

The General realized their ads were contributing to (or causing) a negative perception of their brand. Instead of quietly rebranding, they took the objection and tackled it head-on, weaving it into their new ad campaigns.

The messaging is clear: Our brand is still trustworthy and credible despite our old ads.

So, if there’s a misconception about your brand, don’t be afraid to use that in your next campaign.

So, there you have it – the top YouTube ads of the last two years. What they all have in common is a deep understanding of their audience’s needs, behaviors, and own perceptions of the brand.

Recently, I set an iPhone time limit on my social media use to “45 minutes”.

I figured 45 minutes would be more than enough. Almost an hour? In between working at HubSpot, catching up with friends, and attending exercise classes, I had no doubt 45 minutes would be plenty of social media consumption.

Unfortunately, I learned pretty quickly that I actually spend 45 minutes on social media before I even get to work in the morning.

I know I’m not alone. In fact, the average daily social media use of internet users worldwide amounts to 145 minutes per day.

With all that social media consumption, it makes sense that more businesses are turning to social media to market to their audiences. But marketing is just one aspect of the buyer’s journey — what about sales? Can that be done within social media platforms, as well?

It’s actually now entirely possible for businesses to sell products and services natively within social media sites.

Here, we’re going to explore that very concept — known as social commerce — and take a look at some impressive examples of social commerce, so you can consider trying it for your own company. Additionally, we’ll list some of the most popular social commerce platforms available today, so you can decide which one could give you the highest ROI.

Since many businesses are marketing on these social media sites already, it makes sense to allow users to purchase from within these platforms without leaving the site at all.

Should you leverage social commerce?

If you sell physical products online, leveraging social commerce is a great way to drive sales and revenue to your business. Users are used to the native purchasing experience at this point and prefer to be able to quickly make a purchase right on the social media app.

1. Social media checkout capabilities.

One of the best examples of social commerce is the ability to click a product and checkout right from within a social media site, like Instagram or Facebook.

For instance, Instagram has a “checkout” feature on their app, which allows you to click on a product within a post, choose a size and color, and proceed to payment within the platform.

The first time you use Instagram’s checkout feature, you simply need to enter your name, email, billing information, and shipping address. Once your order is complete, Instagram saves your information so you don’t need to enter it the next time you shop.

Additionally, you’ll receive notifications about shipping and delivery right from within Instagram, so you can also track your purchase without leaving the app.

For instance, let’s take a look at what happens when I click the “View Products” button (bottom right) on one of @NikeWomen’s Instagram posts:

Instagram immediately pulls up a page with all the details of every product included in the image.

Let’s say I’m particularly interested in the sneakers. From within Instagram, I can choose a color and size and then click the blue “Checkout on Instagram” button. If I’ve shopped on Instagram before, I don’t even need to re-enter my information. Pretty simple, right?

Plenty of other social networks have these checkout features, including Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.

2. Social commerce plugins and apps.

As social commerce continues to rise in popularity, we’ll continue to see more plugins and third-party apps emerge to make the process even more seamless for businesses and users alike.

For instance, one third-party app called Soldsie allows your followers to make a purchase on one of your products by simply typing “Sold” into the comments section of a post. Once they’ve commented “Sold”, the app takes care of the rest, emailing the user an invoice to complete.

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Soldsie notes — “As fans comment, your sales trend on Facebook as each photo is shared with your fan’s Facebook friends.” For instance, if my friend comments “Sold” on a Facebook post of a cute sundress, I’ll see the picture in my News Feed and might consider purchasing one for myself.

Ultimately, social commerce is a good opportunity to increase brand awareness while also increasing sales — a win, win.

3. Shoppable ads.

Shoppable ads is another example of social commerce, and is currently available on both Instagram and Snapchat.

Simply put, shoppable ads allows businesses to tag products in an Instagram or Snapchat sponsored post, ideally creating a more efficient ad-to-purchase experience. Best of all, this type of social commerce helps businesses collect valuable data on which ads convert prospects into customers immediately.

The features you’ll find on shoppable ads within both Snapchat and Instagram continue to improve — for instance, Snapchat has advanced features on their shoppable ads, including collection ads, product catalogs, advanced pixel targeting, and 30+ new Snapchat partners.

Wish, an e-commerce app, successfully uses Snapchat’s product catalog feature to create different Snap Ads and Story ads to showcase a large variety of their products, as shown below.

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Shoppable ads are undeniably profitable if done well — on Snapchat alone, FabFitFun lowered cost-per-purchase by 36%, while American Eagle increased return-on-ad-spend (ROAS) by more than 3X.

With shoppable ads, you’re able to market and sell directly to your intended audience without causing friction in a user’s social media experience. For instance, 73% of Snapchat users are between 18-24 years old. If this is your ideal demographic, why not try including your products or services directly within the ads you’re creating on Snapchat? This allows users to find products of interest to them without needing to leave the app at all.

4. Chatbot checkouts.

One final example of social commerce that’s critical to point out is chatbot checkouts — the ability for a user to find and purchase a product by chatting with a chatbot within a social platform.

For instance, consider SnapTravel’s Facebook Messenger bot, which helps people find hotel deals and book rooms right from within Messenger:

As you continue chatting with the bot, you’ll receive better, more customized deals based on your requirements. Additionally, you can click “Open Filter” to further modify your search based on your criteria, and a new screen will open up right from within Messenger:

SnapTravel offers deals only available in Messenger, incentivizing users to book with the chatbot rather than on their website.

Using a chatbot to streamline your buyer’s journey is particularly helpful for mobile users who want to find and purchase products on an app they already have on their phones — like Messenger.

1. Instagram

Between its checkout capabilities and shoppable posts tool, Instagram is undeniably one of the most popular platforms for social commerce. Many Instagram users are already using Instagram as an opportunity to discover and purchase new products — for instance, 80% of users use Instagram to decide whether to purchase a product or service, and 83% use it to discover new products. Since these users are already prepared to find and purchase new products, it’s critical that they’re given the option to buy them in-app.

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2. Pinterest

People often turn to Pinterest for fashion, home decor, or beauty inspiration, so it makes sense that Pinterest would be a viable platform for social commerce. In fact, 93% of active Pinterest users said they use Pinterest to plan for purchases, and 87% said they’ve purchased something because of Pinterest.

Pinterest’s Shop the Look Pins allows users to click on small white dots on various products within a post, and either purchase that product within the app or browse similar products. They can make purchases on both desktop and mobile.

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3. Facebook

With over two billion active users, Facebook is one of the most popular social platforms in the world, making it a good place for social commerce.

If you have a Facebook Business Page, you can set up a Facebook shop to sell your products and services directly within the social platform.

Facebook notes — “While any business can have a shop, this feature best serves merchants, retail and e-commerce advertisers. We recommend it for businesses selling apparel, accessories (including bags and luggage), home furnishings, and baby or kids’ products.”

To upload your inventory to Facebook and create a shop section, you can either use a third-party ecommerce platform like BigCommerce or Shopify, or you can upload and manage your products yourself.

For further inspiration, try searching for major retailers and checking out how they’ve set up their Facebook shop. For instance, take a look at New Balance’s Facebook shop:

Facebook shop is a fantastic opportunity for your business to reach a larger audience — and, even if your customers don’t end up purchasing your products on Facebook, having these products listed on your Facebook Business Page is a good idea for making Facebook users aware of the products you sell in-store.

4. Poshmark

Poshmark is a social commerce marketplace that allows people in the U.S. to buy or sell clothing, shoes, and accessories, either new or used. Poshmark makes the experience even more social with features like “Posh Parties”, which are virtual buying and selling events that you can attend with friends.

Popular brands on Poshmark currently include Nike, Lululemon, and Chanel — to sell on Poshmark, simply download the app and follow seller instructions from there.

5. Shopee

Shopee, reportedly the largest online shopping platform in Southeast Asia and Taiwan, is a social commerce marketplace that enables users to buy and sell products ranging from home & living to mobile & gadgets.

Major brands on Shopee include Kleenex, L’Oréal, and Oreos. Selling on the app is easy enough — simply verify your phone number, ensure your products aren’t prohibited and click “Add New Product” on your Shopee page. With over 95,000 users on the app worldwide and a unique focus on the Asian market, Shopee is a good option for brands looking to expand their global presence.

Ultimately, social commerce has the ability to eliminate friction in a user’s online shopping experience, and catch users’ at moments when their excitement over your products is highest.

However, it’s critical you do market research to ensure you’re using the right social commerce platforms or apps to reach your audience in the social spaces they frequent the most.

Additionally, remember social commerce is fundamentally social in nature — if your business doesn’t also engage and communicate with its followers, then your company won’t get much out of social commerce as a long-term strategy.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in February 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Your business data is the lifeblood that runs through your organization. It powers automated workflows, gives customer service reps the full story every time the phone rings, and informs decision-making.

Even small businesses can benefit from the rise of big data by optimizing their organization’s data and creating processes to put it to work. According to Experian, eight in ten businesses believe data is one of their most valuable assets.

When your business data is reliable and accurate, it’s smooth sailing. But when errors, duplicates, and question marks surface… it’s not so pretty. When you can’t trust your business data, problems quickly arise and multiply in every area of your organization.

Businesses lose as much as 20% of revenue due to poor data quality, shares Kissmetrics. Back in 2013, HBR also talked about the ripple effect of unreliable data as part of “Data’s Credibility Problem”:

“When data are unreliable, managers quickly lose faith in them and fall back on their intuition to make decisions, steer their companies and implement strategy. They are, for example, much more apt to reject important, counterintuitive implications that emerge from big data analyses.”

To get the best results as a data-driven organization, here are some of the best practices to strengthen the foundations and make your business data the most reliable it can be.

9 Ways to Fix Unreliable Data and Increase Accuracy

1. Improve your data foundations.

Data debt – the cost attached to poor governance of data in a business – is a significant problem for many organizations, and 36% of businesses say data literacy is crucial to future-proof their organization, shares Experian.

Making your business data more reliable doesn’t just happen by magic: it requires strong frameworks, processes and a data-literate workplace. As early in your business journey as possible, ensure that you have:

• A strong CRM system to centralize all contact data
• Processes to organize and segment data
• Integrations between apps
• Formal data literacy programs in place to educate your team
• A clear strategy of how you will use and maintain the data you collect

Remember the old proverb: the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second-best time is now. The same goes for getting your data in order!

2. Look at where new data is coming from.

Just like reliable data, messy and unreliable data doesn’t happen accidentally. There’s always a source. To make your business data more reliable, follow the trail back to where data is coming from.

How is data being added to your CRM? Are there forms or manual imports that are causing bad data to clutter your database? Are different team members importing conflicting data in different ways to multiple apps?

3. Optimize forms and data collection channels.

Once you have identified how new data is entering your apps, take some time to optimize these data collection channels.

To collect valid and reliable data, make sure that these factors are true for every piece of data you collect:

• You actually need to collect the data
• You are collecting it in a consistent and standardized format between apps
• You have clear permission to collect it based on data protection regulations
• It will be stored and organized in the right app for the right purpose

4. Break down data silos.

A recipe for unreliable data is having data silos. A data silo is a collection of data that one department has access to but others do not.

The negative effects of data silos are bad news for performance and productivity for any organization: they include a lack of transparency, efficiency, collaboration, and trust.

To remove data silos, use a central CRM between departments, connect data between the apps in your tech stack, and focus on building a culture of collaboration between departments.

5. Segment your data.

Good business data is organized, adds value to your company, and is collected with explicit permission from users. To make your data more organized, segmentation is your friend.

Segmentation can look like labels, tags, list memberships, groups, or other properties that tell you more about each contact and divide your database into clear categories of preferences, demographics, buying history, and more.

When you integrate your data between apps using an iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service), you can create syncs based on your segments and connect the right data two ways between your apps.

6. Clean up your databases.

To make your business data more reliable, clean up any messy data as soon as possible. This means fixing or removing:

• Incorrect data
• Outdated data
• Duplicate data

According to SiriusDecisions, on average it costs about $1 to prevent a duplicate, $10 to correct a duplicate, and $100 to store a duplicate if left untreated.

To help prevent duplicates and other bad data, create company-wide standards for data entry and maintenance, then sync data from the most accurate source to your other apps and create a holistic view of your database. It’s also valuable to set up and document processes to standardize and verify new data.

7. Connect your apps to integrate data.

The most effective data management strategies connect data between apps. This removes data silos, creates an integrated view of all of your data, and syncs up-to-date data to the right places as soon as anything changes.

The easiest way to achieve quality data integration is with a zero-code iPaaS solution that connects the dots between all of your key business apps, from your CRM to your email marketing system and customer support software.

8. Create accessible reporting dashboards.

Instead of hiding your data insights away on private dashboards, make them transparent to the right people in your team. For many KPIs, that means your whole team.

Organizations with the most effective and reliable data typically choose a limited number of impactful KPIs and make these very visible inside the team.

Not only does this help your team to be invested in company, team, and individual performance, but it increases the odds that errors and discrepancies in your data are picked up on. *The most reliable data has eyes on it. *

9. Schedule regular maintenance.

Maintaining data quality in your business isn’t a one-time job: it requires continual upkeep, cleanups, and optimization. If your organization has a dedicated operations manager, part of their job role can be to monitor and optimize data quality. But in any case, it’s worth making data integrity and literacy part of your company DNA – or part of every team member’s day-to-day role.

This means creating the foundations for healthy data to flow into your organization and undergo regular cleansing, alongside processes to fix problems and automate integration.

By optimizing data reliability, you can ensure your company can receive the most accurate results and insights from your database both now and further down the line as data integrity keeps gaining importance.

With automated two-way syncs between apps including your CRM and email marketing tool, you’re in the best position to manage your data holistically, perform regular health checks, and create an updated 360-degree view of your customer data.

When it comes to owning a business, time is your most valuable resource — but, time is finite, and are a lot of tasks competing for your attention. You need to make sure the right products are listed on your website, that you’re fulfilling orders and payments 24/7, and that you’re processing and dispatching packages efficiently… all while staying on top of marketing campaigns, user reviews, and customer service.

And, as you scale, your ecommerce processes get even more demanding.

So, how can you make time for the work that brings in more customers while keeping everything else on track?

With ecommerce automation.

Automation is playing a vital role in the future of tech — and it’s no surprise that we’re seeing more of it in tools designed for ecommerce businesses. As a store owner, it’s your secret to putting your time-consuming tasks on auto-pilot.

In this post, we’ll explain what ecommerce automation is, then show you what it looks like with 15 ways you can automate your online business.

What is ecommerce automation?

It means using software to turn manual tasks into automated workflows. These workflows can trigger internal or external emails, notifications, or actions in other apps — such as creating new support tickets in your help desk. To make sure everything works perfectly, you can set multiple conditions that need to be true for the workflow to run.

Although ecommerce automation saves you time, it doesn’t mean firing your employees — or yourself. Rather, it frees up your team’s time for the customer interactions, creativity, and big-picture thinking that matter most in your line of work.

To get started, here’s a list of some of the best ways to use marketing automation for ecommerce, whether you’re using Shopify, WooCommerce, or another platform.

Ecommerce Automation Software

There are several types of automation software you can use for your ecommerce business. The most popular tools are:

Shopify

One of the most popular ecommerce platforms, Shopify offers plenty of powerful productivity apps in its App Store. Many of these are designed for automation, including Arigato Automation, or “the app with a million uses,” Shop Workflow Automation, and Stock Sync.

Shopify Flow

This ecommerce automation suite is available with Shopify Pro – which certainly isn’t the cheapest (you’ll want to be making over $1 million in annual revenue to justify it). It’s workflow-based and makes it impressively simple to create automation both within Shopify and with other apps via seamless integrations. It includes automation templates that you can copy and adapt to easily get set up.

Shopify Flow automation templates are divided into buyer experience, customers, inventory and merchandising, loyalty, orders, promotions, and risk.

WooCommerce

If you’re using WooCommerce to power your store on WordPress, you also have a lot of options for automation. Most of these are powered by WooCommerce’s huge number of extensions, which enable you to power up your WooCommerce site with premium features and integrations.

Other Software to Integrate With Your Ecommerce Platform

You can also use automation software on top of your ecommerce platform. These include:

• Email marketing automation tools, like Mailchimp to trigger emails to your customers
• Automation tools like ActiveCampaign to trigger workflows for internal process and communication with customers
• CRM tools with automation features, like HubSpot
• Help desk tools with automation features, like Freshdesk and Zendesk
• Accounting and invoicing tools like Wave Accounting, Xero or Quickbooks Online

Read on for 14 of the best ways to automate your ecommerce business, including features from your ecommerce platform as well as other automation tools you can easily keep in sync.

15 Ways to Automate Ecommerce Businesses

Customer Experience & Management Automation

1. Track and reward your most engaged customers.

Do you reward your best customers? Customer retention is valuable for all businesses, including ecommerce.

Turns out you can increase your profits anywhere from 25-95% by increasing your retention rates by just 5%.

To reward customer loyalty, you could automatically add a free gift or free delivery to orders over $100. With a tool like ActiveCampaign, you can also segment customers based on lifetime spend and send them automated emails with rewards inside.

2. Sync your customers to a Mailchimp list.

All of the top ecommerce platforms — including WooCommerce and Shopify — have native integrations with Mailchimp. So, if you’re using the popular email marketing tool to send your newsletters and email marketing workflows, make sure to sync your accounts.

An integration with Mailchimp can automatically pass the email addresses of shoppers who show interest in your emails into a specified Mailchimp list, so you can keep them updated with your latest products and offers.

3. Gather feedback after a purchase.

Every ecommerce store knows how powerful reviews and honest feedback are. It can make or break your business. To encourage reviews, set up automated email workflows to send follow-up emails a certain amount of time after a purchase is made. Ask for honest feedback and share a link to where they can post their review.

4. Reach out to negative reviews.

If you receive an unfortunate 1-star review, make sure you respond to it. You can set up an automation to create a support ticket in your helpdesk software to make it easier to reach out quickly and make amends — or at least listen and understand what’s happened.

5. Tag and segment customers based on buying behavior.

Segmentation can help you understand your customers and stay on top of the different individual needs they might have. With a CRM, you can tag or segment based on demographics (e.g. gender or location), lifetime order value, milestones, number of orders, or any subscriptions or memberships, for example.

Inventory Automation

6. Automate inventory management for low-stock items.

Running out of a product can mean missed income and frustrated customers. To avoid this, automate your inventory management so you know when a product is low in stock.

With Woocommerce, you can trigger low stock notifications (based on thresholds you set) and out-of-stock notifications. This way you can instantly know when a product needs reordering from your supplies.

Order Management Automation

7. Send abandoned cart emails.

75% of ecommerce shopping carts get abandoned. Abandoned cart reminders help you bring customers back to your site — and with automation, you don’t have to do a thing.

Integrating your ecommerce software with a mailing provider is an easy way to send abandoned cart emails. You can also look at other native integrations between your ecommerce platform and transactional email providers.

8. Try dropshipping for passive income.

Did you know some ecommerce businesses automate order fulfillment and delivery? It’s possible with dropshipping — a way to find products, add them to your online store, and ship them directly to your customers without holding any inventory or risk yourself.

Oberlo, acquired by Shopify in 2017, is one of the most popular dropshipping tools. As expected, it integrates neatly with Shopify and you can add dropshipped products to your existing Shopify store, or create a new one for your dropshipped products.

The main challenge with dropshipping is finding the products that match your store’s branding and quality standards.

9. Print shipping labels and send out tracking numbers with one click.

By integrating WooCommerce with ShipStation, a single click can complete several time-consuming tasks:

• Sync your orders with ShipStation.
• Create and print shipping labels for your WooCommerce orders.
• Mark all orders as complete.
• Generate and send tracking numbers.

10. Send reminders to re-order consumables.

Do you sell food, health, or beauty products? Your customers might be interested in repurchasing consumables once they run out.

To let them know, set up automated workflows to send reminder emails for these products a certain time after purchase.

Marketing Automation

11. Nurture leads into customers with email marketing.

People don’t always become customers right away. Your company will have its typical customer journey, with people spending time in research and consideration phases before deciding to hand you any money.

However, if someone has given you their email address and permission to contact them, you can nurture this process along with marketing content. Just make sure that anything you send them is top-quality and valuable, perhaps with discount codes or free gift offers.

12. Schedule social media posts automatically.

If social media takes up too much of your time, there are lots of tools out there to streamline processes.

Use the Shopify app, Post Studio ‑ Auto Posting, to automatically post products to your Facebook and Twitter pages every day.

Buffer is another app that lets you easily schedule messages ahead of time. It’s simple to reschedule content that’s performed well, too.

Business Management Automation

13. Add tasks to Trello, Asana, or Slack.

If you’ve used automation to find out when a product is low in stock or when a customer left a frustrated review, you will also want to notify your team so they can do something about it. Another perk of using automation is that you can notify your team on the internal platforms that you use most — like Trello, Asana or Slack.

If you’re a Shopify user, Arigato Automation offers 100+ pre-built automation features including pushing data to Google Sheets, Slack messages, Trello cards, and more.

14. Choose a powerful help desk software.

As you scale your ecommerce business, it’s important to make sure your customer service is covered. Implementing help desk software is one of the best ways to do this.

With a help desk platform, you’re in the best position to centralize your customer support in one place and get a clear view of tickets from all channels. These tools also give you many options for improving your customer experience with automation, such as with bots and satisfaction surveys.