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If you want to hold brainstorms that unearth better, more creative ideas, it all starts with the people in the room. Like, the actual number of people in the room.

That’s my first tip for you: Follow the “pizza rule” for brainstorming. If you’re unfamiliar with the “pizza rule,” it’s the idea that if you have more people in a room than you could feed with a pizza, there are too many people in that room to hold a productive meeting.

The same rule goes for a brainstorming session: If you’ve got a dozen people sitting around a table, expect a really long list of truly mediocre ideas.

So, what else can you do other than bribe a group of two to six people with pizza to unearth good ideas? So glad you asked.

12 Team Brainstorming Techniques for Getting to Good Ideas

1) Invite a diverse group of people.

If your team works on all of the same projects together, goes to team meetings together, sits next to each other in the office, and hangs out in the same group chats all day … well, needless to say, the ideas will likely start to get pretty homogenous.

Instead, invite new people from other teams to your brainstorms — people with different skill sets and experiences to help get you out of your rut and see things in a new way. It’ll give you that great mix of new perspectives and contextual knowledge that’ll help you land on ideas that are both original and doable.

2) Keep the meeting to 22(ish) minutes.

Nicole Steinbok advocates this technique, and it’s one I’ve used with positive results. (I usually round up to 30 minutes, but what’s a few minutes among friends?) It works particularly well for people like myself that thrive under the threat of a deadline.

In my experience, having a limited amount of time to brainstorm only works if all participants are actually ready for the meeting. (More on that in a minute.) But two other tenets Steinbok harps on are a no-laptop rule, and a no off-topic-banter rule. While some might disagree with the latter, I have found that aggressive time constraints help keep people on task and delivering their best ideas as a result.

3) Provide context and goals well before the meeting.

“Well before the meeting” doesn’t mean that morning. Offer any pertinent information at least two business days in advance so people have a fighting chance at actually being prepared for the brainstorm.

In addition to providing any reading materials or contextual information that help set up the reason for the brainstorm (and explicitly asking that they read it, too), describe what the ideal outcome of the meeting looks like. This will help people come into the meeting understanding the scope of what you’re all trying to do. I think you’ll find this helps you avoid wasting time catching everyone up so you can get to the brainstorm right away.

If necessary, run your meeting like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and dedicate 30 minutes specifically to quietly reading in a group to bring everyone together — especially if they won’t have time to read before the meeting.

4) Ask people to come prepared with some ideas.

Often, great ideas don’t show themselves when you ask them to. They pop up on the train, in the shower, while you’re watching TV … basically any time you’re not actually trying to come up with the idea.

This is one reason why it’s good to provide a few days of lead-time before your meeting, but it’s also why you might want to explicitly ask people to think of some ideas beforehand. With this approach, you might find that you start the meeting off with pretty strong ideas from the get-go, and the group can add to and modify them to make them even stronger. In fact, this hybrid brainstorming approach was found to be more effective in a University of Pennsylvania study.

Frankly, I’ve also found that when everyone comes in cold turkey, the brainstorm often ends with a long list of very uninspired ideas. At the very least, whoever runs the brainstorm should come with a few ideas to kick off the brainstorm and give an indication of what a good idea looks like.

5) Say “no” to the bad ideas. Fast.

It might be brainstorm heresy to recommend people squash bad ideas, but I’ve seen one too many brainstorms go astray because people are too scared to say “no.” This is particularly important if you’re trying to run a quick brainstorm session.

Yes, there’s a fine line: Squashing bad ideas could lead people to fear speaking up, missing out on good ideas as a result. But if you’re giving every idea equal due regardless of merit, then you get off-track real fast and end up down a bad idea rabbit hole.

Better brainstorms that yield better ideas leave time to nurture the strongest inclinations.

On that note …

6) Foster an environment where bad ideas are okay.

Yes, you should call out bad ideas. But you should also make it okay that people had them. Call out your own ideas, in fact. If people can speak freely, but not feel stupid for doing so, you’ll get more ideas out — which makes it more likely you’ll land on a good one.

7) Lean into constraints.

If you have every resource and opportunity in the world, creativity will naturally stifle. Lay out the constraints you’re working within in terms of goals and resources for executing any idea you come up with. Then, try to see those as opportunities for creativity instead of roadblocks that make it impossible to come up with a good idea.

8) Lean into silence.

Anyone in sales already knows: Silence is power. In a brainstorm, silences are times when people get thinking done — either about their own ideas, or how to build on the last idea that came up.

And hey, it might also encourage more people to speak up with an idea, just out of their hatred of uncomfortable silences.

9) Lean into failure … outside of the brainstorm.

If you have a team where taking smart risks — regardless of outcome — is rewarded, people will have a better sense of what ideas are worth pursuing and what’s worth passing on. Because, you know, they do it a lot and get a second sense for these things.

If experimentation is a part of your team culture, that’ll manifest itself in better ideas than if your team is stuck in stasis. You’ll have better brainstorms where creative and smart, yet risky ideas come out.

10) Be prepared to ditch the meeting altogether.

Sometimes in-person meetings aren’t the right format for unearthing good ideas. Certain brainstorms can be better performed digitally.

For example, we often resort to Google Docs or Slack for brainstorms when curating blog post or title ideas across a large group of people. There’s really no need to pull everyone away from their work to participate in a brainstorm like that — and the benefit is that people can participate on their own time, when they’re ready and eager to contribute ideas, not when the meeting happens to occur.

11) Provide a place for anonymous submissions.

For some people, the “right” format might be an anonymous submission. Provide a place for anonymous idea submission both before and after the meeting. People might have some ideas that they’re reticent to bring up in front of the group. It’d be a shame to miss out on those ideas due to shyness, discomfort, or simply a preference for writing out ideas instead of speaking about them. This is easy to set up through a Google form.

12) Be prepared to pursue absolutely nothing that came out of that brainstorm.

Don’t feel like you have to choose and pursue an idea just because you had a brainstorm. If the brainstorm didn’t yield any good ideas, that’s fine. It wasn’t a waste of time. But you will waste your time if you pursue an idea that isn’t worth doing. Moving forward with the lesser of all evils is still … evil.

Instead, do some reflection on your own about why the ideas aren’t ready to see the light of day, and see if any are worth more thought before ditching them. Perhaps you’ll get another group of people in a room to iterate on them — or even the same group once they’ve had some distance from the ideas. Now that ideas have started flowing, you might find a second round of brainstorming yields something even better.

What other tips do you have for getting more out of brainstorms? Share with us in the comments.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in March 2016 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

If you’ve been following the HubSpot Marketing Blog, you already know there’s a battle going on — between Facebook and Snapchat over the disappearing message.

And so far, Facebook’s winning the battle — all because of Instagram.

When Instagram Stories launched in August 2016, Snapchat had already been the first mover in the ephemeral, or disappearing, messaging space since Snapchat Stories were created in 2013. Fast forward to Snapchat’s March 2017 initial public offering (IPO), and Snapchat user growth had slowed significantly — and Instagram Stories’ user growth was rapid and nonstop in the meantime (to date, there are roughly 40 million more Instagram Stories users than Snapchat users).

Today, Snapchat faces an uphill battle: Instagram has more users in total, and more Instagram Story users alone. Plus, Instagram and Snapchat are now competing to roll out new features — and to copy features from each other. In the last month alone, both apps rolled out features that were original, and some that were inspired by the other app.

Snapchat started the disappearing messaging wave, but it doesn’t mean brands are staying exclusive. In fact, a lot of brands have already talked and written about decisions to prioritize Instagram Stories over Snapchat for ephemeral messaging and advertising.

In this post, we’ll dive into brands and marketers making the switch — and the reasons why.

Instagram Stories vs. Snapchat Stories

In essence, both apps and features function in the same way:

• On both platforms, users and brands can post photos and videos that are viewable for 24 hours.
• Videos can be up to 10 seconds in length.
• Photos and videos can be embellished with doodles, emojis, geotags, lenses, and text.
• Media is visible to the public, unless you make your Instagram or Snapchat account private.
• Both apps let users search through public stories, and see what other users and brands are sharing about.

But there are a few differences worth pointing out, too:

• It’s slightly easier to search for and discover new users on Instagram than on Snapchat, where you have to spell out the exact username.
• Instagram allows brands to attach to links and landing pages to their Stories.
• Instagram permits clickable hashtags and geotags to be added to Stories — on Snapchat, they’re manually searchable.
• Instagram Stories are an addition to an existing photo and video-sharing platform — Snapchat is only about ephemeral content-sharing.

As we’ve mentioned, Instagram Stories alone have more users than Snapchat, and some brands are starting to move their ephemeral messaging strategies away from Snapchat to reside primarily or completely on Instagram Stories.

6 Reasons Users Are Switching to Instagram Stories

1) Greater Scale

The simple fact that Instagram has such a big user base — 700 million and counting, to be exact — automatically made it a formidable Snapchat competitor. Instagram Stories creators had instant access to their audiences on the platform when they started posting ephemeral messages, and it caught on quickly — over 200 million Instagram users are posting Stories.

When compared to Snapchat, where brands had to create new followings from scratch, Instagram offers some brands greater reach and scale to connect with people on social media.

That’s what Ben and Jerry’s found out when it started creating content on Instagram Stories. The brand’s senior global marketing manager, Jay Curley, told Digiday about the success it had seen in achieving better results at a greater scale on the platform. He said ads on Instagram Stories were particularly successful and achieved a “higher CPM (cost per impression) rate than usual.” In general, Curley told Digiday, the brand’s large number of Instagram followers were already engaging and interacting with Instagram Stories, so they’d continue creating content there to “serve up relevant stories to [their] fans wherever they are.”

2) Better Targeting

Instagram is part of the Facebook ecosystem, which means its content and ad targeting capabilities are part of Facebook’s platform — which is robust, to say the least (just look at all the ways you can target ads illustrated in this Wordstream infographic). It also means Instagram ads can be targeted and curated based on users’ data on Instagram, and on Facebook.

Snapchat has only just launched a self-serve ad platform in May 2017, making it easier for advertisers to purchase and create ad space on the platform, so we can’t say for certain which offers a better user experience for brands. But when you consider the wealth of data behind billions of Facebook and Instagram users combined against Snapchat’s data of only 166 million users, Instagram’s targeting takes the cake.

Mediassociates’ senior vice president of marketing and content, Ben Kunz, told Digiday that Instagram also offered users more flexible ad buying options. Instagram ads can be purchased on a cost-per-click basis, in addition to the cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) basis — making Instagram ads potentially more valuable, since brands only have to pay for the ads that users actually interact with.

The bottom line, for Kunz, is data. He told Digiday, “it’s not the ‘billboard’ space that matters; it’s the quality of the data behind it. Better audience data always equals better advertising performance.”

3) More Traffic

Another benefit to Instagram’s larger audience is its ability to drive more traffic to brands’ websites and landing pages. Social media helps drive brand awareness on its own, and Instagram Stories also added the ability for brands to link to web pages — making it undeniably easier for audiences to find and interact with brands on their sites, too.

Instagram also offers brands a unified dashboard where they can easily view analytics of Story and ad performance in one place — and see which Stories are driving visitors to websites.

Marissa Emanuele manages social media at Pegasystems, and she’s switched from Snapchat to Instagram Stories for these reasons. “The analytics on Instagram can’t be matched by Snapchat yet. Plus, Instagram Stories let you link to blog posts or landing pages, so you can drive traffic directly from social.”

4) More Discoverability

Snapchat and Instagram are racing to innovate new features — and copy features from one another. Snapchat created a search bar and universal Stories to help users find new content and accounts to follow, and Instagram rolled out Location and Hashtag Stories to do the same — with a key difference.

Users can tap geotags and hashtags on Instagram Stories, and navigate to see what other users are posting about the location or topic — on Instagram, or within Stories. Snapchat users can head to the search bar to choose locations and events, and see what Stories users are posting … but they can’t do it directly from within the Snapchat Story they’re watching.

This extra manual step makes getting found and discovered on Snapchat that much harder than it is on Instagram, making Instagram more compelling for brands that seek to build up and engage a broader audience.

5) More Authentic

Snapchat’s means of monetization lies within the Discover tab and in Snapchat Stories, and some users have cited a better, more authentic experience on Instagram Stories. Instagram users can easily jump between ephemeral content on Instagram Stories and curated, beautiful photos on the Instagram feed, and auto-advance through Instagram Stories seamlessly without being interrupted by ads. Plus, Instagram’s Explore tab suggests new content and users, so the experience isn’t interrupted and inundated by low-quality ads.

Owen Williams cited a lack of authenticity as his reason for moving from Snapchat to Instagram Stories. “Now you’re forced to pick which stories to watch end-to-end before even starting, and it’s filled with either advertisements between each one, or … clickbait.”

6) More User-Friendly

Perhaps the most compelling reason brands are moving from Instagram to Snapchat is that it’s easier to use than Snapchat.

Instagram has made it easier to add new followers, watch (and re-watch) content, share Stories, and reply to Stories. The discoverability discussed previously makes it easier to attract new followers, and for users, it’s easier to find and connect with content they’re interested in checking out. The power of Instagram’s huge network makes it easier for brands and users to get what they want out of social media — to be social.

Social media influencer Erica Moss switched to Instagram because she got a better user experience there:

While Snapchat was busy pretending to be exclusive and untouchable, Instagram leveled up on its broad appeal and user-friendliness to replicate — and improve — the ephemeral photo and video experience. After some testing on my personal Snapchat and Story, Instagram was the clear winner with higher view counts (by about 3X) and more comments. From a brand perspective, any users who follow you on Instagram are already opted into your Story, and the auto-advance feature means if you focus on creating great content, you’ll remain top of mind in a more authentic way.”

Snapchat’s Not Over Yet

Just because Instagram might be a better fit for brands and social media marketers specifically, it doesn’t necessarily mean you should abandon efforts on Snapchat entirely. Audiences on Snapchat are highly engaged — users spend an average of 25-30 minutes per day on the app. So if you’ve built an audience there, don’t abandon them altogether, but see if you can keep them engaged while also building an Instagram Story following.

Emanuele noted the importance of meeting your audience where they already are. “If you’ve built an audience on Snapchat, you should still post from time to time to keep them engaged.”

Whether you’re fully invested in Instagram Stories, or are still engaged with your Snapchat audience, our advice for social media strategy is to experiment, analyze the results, and make changes from there. We’ll keep you posted about new innovations on both platforms to help make the decision easier. For more information on how to grow your ephemeral messaging followings, download our guides to using Snapchat and Instagram for business.

Have you switched to Instagram Stories, or are you a Snapchat loyalist? Share with us in the comments below.

We all know that words matter — in life, but also in marketing.

When it comes to landing page copy, many a debate have begun over which words to choose, the context in which they’re used, the order they’re presented in and the amount you use to convey a message.

“Shorter is always better — no one has the attention span to read hundreds of words!”

“Longform pages get better results!”

“Use fear to persuade readers to act!

“Forget fear, pull at their heartstrings!”

The truth is, these quote-unquote best practices are the result of gut instinct and a ton of trial and error. And what works for one industry might not work for the next. So even if so-and-so does figure out the key to high-converting real estate landing pages, that same key might not unlock the full potential of your legal landing page.

I get it, you need more granular, data-backed insights to help inform your marketing copy. Hell, we need data-backed insights.

So we did a thing.

With the help of Machine Learning model and an Emotion Lexicon, Unbounce data scientists analyzed the behavior of 74,551,421 visitors to 64,284 lead generation landing pages to reveal what kind of emotional language is effective across 10 popular industries.

They looked at eight basic emotions (anger, anticipation, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise and trust) and analyzed how copy associated with these emotions affected user behavior. Specifically, they looked at how language associated with these emotions correlated with the number of users who converted on a page. Not only that, they looked at how word count affected conversions — helpful for marketers and copywriters alike.

Download the full report here, or check out some of the juicy insights below.

9 Industry-Specific Takeaways About How Emotion and Word Count Affect Conversions

1) In the Travel Industry, Keep Language Positive

Our findings showed that if even 1% of page copy evoked feelings of anger or fear, conversion rates could be up to 25% lower.

Data from The Unbounce Conversion Benchmark Report

Some of the keywords that evoke fear or anger include: “limited,” “money,” “hot,” “desert,” “endless,” “challenge,” “treat,” “fee,” “rail,” “bear,” “buffet,” “bang,” “cash” and “despair.”

(I don’t know about you, but limited money, hot deserts, and endless fees sure sound terrible to me.)

On the opposite side of the spectrum, words that established trust include: “enjoy,” “secret,” “top,” “guide,” “save,” “personal,” “spa,” “policy,” “provide,” “star,” “award,” “friendly” and “recommend.”

Keep in mind, though, this data was generated by an algorithm, so if you’re using it as a jumping off point for optimization, use your best judgement.

2) Don’t Disgust in Business Consulting

Business consultants get a bad rap. Television shows like House of Lies paint an image of the cutthroat consultant out to make a buck.

Whether or not this has any impact on conversion rates, we’ll never know for sure. What we do know, however, is that you should probably avoid words associated with disgust.

Data from The Unbounce Conversion Benchmark Report

The study found that words like “blame,” “cheat,” “collapse,” “disaster” and “offend” tend to negatively affect conversions.

Which, when you look at them together like that, is not all that surprising.

3) Fear mongering doesn’t lead to more conversions (most of the time)

Words associated with fear often had a negative impact on conversions, particularly in Health, Legal and Travel.

Data from The Unbounce Conversion Benchmark Report

In Business Consulting, however, we found that filling between 1% to 2% of your copy with words that create a deep-seated sense of fear and unease can actually help conversion rates.

So, certainly don’t be liberal with the scary words, but you might see improvement with a little peppering here and there.

4) Shoot for Short and Sweet Business Services Pages

When it comes to Business Services, treat your landing page like an elevator pitch and keep the copy tight and concise.

Data from The Unbounce Conversion Benchmark Report

Data showed that overall, pages with fewer than 100 words convert 50% better than those with more than 500 words.

And when you’re considering words to cut or keep, keep in mind that words that evoke trust may have a positive effect on your conversion rates. The caveat? You have to be extremely trustworthy, meaning more than 8% of your language needs to imply trust — words like “leading,” “compliance,” “account,” “powerful” and “maintenance.”

5) Spread the Joy of Higher Education

Advancing one’s education is a beautiful thing, so it’s no surprise that words associated with joy correlated with higher conversion rates on average in the Higher Education industry.

Data from The Unbounce Conversion Benchmark Report

Words associated with joy commonly found on Higher Education pages include “scholarship,” “graduation,” “share,” “succeed,” “success” and “excellence.”

6) Trust Words Work in Some Industries … But Not Others

Using words that subconsciously evoke feelings of trust can lead to higher conversion rates in the Travel and Business Services industries.

In Credit & Lending, however, trust words can hurt conversions:

Data from The Unbounce Conversion Benchmark Report

The study showed that words which reinforce a sense of trust should be used strategically and sparingly — for up to 3% of your copy. Anything beyond that resulted in up to 10% lower conversion rates.

Among the common words associated with trust in Credit & Lending were “advice,” “pay,” “cash,” “lender,” “law,” “fixed” and “council.”

7) Keep Copy Concise in Credit & Lending

Analysis of thousands of lead generation landing pages in Credit & Lending revealed that less copy is often correlated with more conversions.

In fact, the study found that while keeping to under 400 words is good, pages below 100 words have nearly double the conversion rate.

Data from The Unbounce Conversion Benchmark Report

8) Avoid buzzwords in Business Consulting

If you work in the Business Consulting industry, you may think that words like “predict,” “attainable,” “achievement,” “exceed” and “excel” help hype your offering, but your audience may perceive these as empty buzzwords.

The report showed that pages with more than 1.5% of copy building a sense of anticipation around the offer were correlated with pages with up to 25% lower conversion rates.

Data from The Unbounce Conversion Benchmark Report

9) Joy Isn’t Always a Conversion Booster

Although joy had a positive impact on conversion rates for the Higher Education industry, having too many words associated with joy is correlated with fewer conversions in the Legal and Home Improvement industries.

Data from The Unbounce Conversion Benchmark Report

In Home Improvement in particular, the best converting pages tend to have less than 1% of their copy communicating joyful concepts. Words associated with joy for Home Improvement included sun, perfect, satisfied, money, pay, special, safe, happy and more.

Choose Your Words Wisely

When it comes to writing marketing copy that converts, no word should be selected without a purpose in mind. As you build your landing pages, make sure you’re giving extra consideration to how each and every word will affect your target audience and influence conversions. 

Did any of the data surprise you? Let us know in the comments!