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Words are hard.

Whether you’re a published author or just getting started with blogging, it’s not always easy to string words together in a way that makes sense, sounds good, and makes the reader feel something.

But every marketer should be able to write — and, more importantly, every marketer can write. It’s just a matter of finding the writing environment that works best for you, expanding your vocabulary, asking for feedback (and listening to it), and practicing.

Luckily, there are a slew of great tools you can use to help improve your writing. Check out the list below, and feel free to add the most helpful ones you use in the comment section.

The 34 Best Tools for Improving Your Writing

1) Daily Page

“Writer’s block is a comforting lie we tell ourselves so we can stop writing and go do other, more pleasurable things,” said Beth Dunn, HubSpot’s UX writer and editor. “If your fingers still work, you can write. Sit down at the same time every day and start typing.”

Want to get into the habit of writing every day, but don’t know what to write about? Daily Page emails you a writing prompt every morning, and you have the rest of the day to write your response. Once you’ve written your response to the prompt, you can either share it or keep it private.

2) 750 Words 

Another way to practice your writing is to do a “brain dump” exercise using a tool like 750 Words. “Brain dumping” means getting all that stuff in your head down on paper — without having to worry about incomplete ideas, tangents, and private stuff.

It’s not blogging or status updating — it’s just you, writing whatever you want on a totally private account, without ever having to title your content or tag topics or share with your friends.

What it does do is track your word count so you’re sure to write 750 words (about three pages of writing). Plus, it’s gamified, which makes it kind of fun: You get a point for writing anything at all, two points for writing 750 words or more, and more points if you write consistently. And every time you write, it’ll give you some cool statistics on how much time you spent writing, the feelings and themes of your words, and so on.

Image Credit: 750 Words

3) Twords 

Publishing content on a consistent basis is crucial in the blogging world. Our own research concludes that companies that commit to regularly publishing quality content to their blogs tend get the most website traffic and leads — and those results continue to pay out over time. Tools like Twords can help bloggers commit to writing consistently.

Twords calls itself “the app that nudges you to write.” It notifies you when you haven’t written in a while so you can keep yourself accountable — and even gives you the option to connect with others who will help keep you accountable. It also tracks your writing so you can start to see patterns for the days you’re blogging more versus less, and so on. Finally, it includes some cool resources like a prompt library and articles about habit formation, writing resources, and so on.

Image Credit: Twords

4) Your Own “Swipe File” 

I read about a “Swipe File” on the “Kopywriting Kourse” blog and loved the idea. Basically, a swipe file is just a folder where you can curate cool stuff you come across, like advertisements, copy, emails, etc. “Save things that make you click, sign up, laugh, or go ‘whoa!'” says the post. The purpose? To flip through it for inspiration.

A swipe file can be physical or digital.

• A physical swipe file would be something like a folder or envelope where you can keep print ads, pieces of copy, letters, and so on for inspiration.
• A digital swipe file on desktop would be a digital folder, like one on your desktop. Whenever you see something interesting, screenshot it (by pressing Command + Shift + 4 on a Mac or Ctrl + Shift + 4 on a PC) and dragging that screenshot to your swipe folder.
• A digital swipe on your mobile device is good for all the stuff you see when browsing the internet on your phone or tablet. The author of the post, for instance, created a specific folder in his iPhone and made a Phone Swipe File there. He stores screenshots when he sees something on mobile that grabs his attention.

Image Credit: KopywritingKourse.com

5) Help me Write 

What better way to make sure you’re writing about stuff your audience actually wants to read than by actually asking them? When you create a profile using Help me Write, you can post ideas of what you’re thinking about writing about. Then, you can share those ideas with your network via Twitter, Facebook, email, and so on — and ask your networks what they’d like to read most. They’ll be able to vote on their favorites, and you’ll be able to pick topics and better manage your time. 

Image Credit: HelpmeWrite

6) Blog Topic Generator

Do you have an overarching theme or keywords in mind for your next blog post, but you’re not sure at which angle to tackle it? HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator could come in handy. Simply type in three keywords, and the tool will auto-generate five potential topics for your post. If you’re not keen on the suggestions, you can always click “Try Again” and it’ll give you five more topics.

7) Trello

Writing efficiently and organizing well is a part of writing well. Use a tool like Trello to collect content ideas, assign them to different members of your team, attach due dates, collaborate with other team members, track their progress, and move them from conception to completion.

Here at HubSpot, we add all our blog post ideas to Trello, turning each idea into a card that we can expand on with notes and move from list to list with a simple drag-and-drop.

8) Google Docs

There are many ways you can use Google Docs to improve your writing. For example, you can use the research tool to do online research on the topic you’re writing about, find quotes or educational information, and so on (see #4 on this list). You can use it to request edits or comments from your peers. It even has a built-in dictionary.

One of my favorite ways to use Google Docs to improve my writing is by crowdsourcing ideas from my coworkers. Here at HubSpot, the blogging team uses this method all the time — and it shaves off a significant portion of research time that goes into curated posts. The result? Better examples and more comprehensive posts with less effort.

9) Quora & 10) inbound.org

Speaking of crowdsourcing, Quora is a great place to go for crowdsourced answers if you want to reach outside your network. Simply search for a keyword, follow topics related to the topics you’re interested in, and/or post your own questions.

If you’re looking for answers from inbound marketers specifically, inbound.org is a great place to source answers from professionals. Here’s an example of a post where the author asked about people’s productivity and time management habits.

11) Blog Post Templates & 12) Ebook Templates

If you’re all set on a topic but need help with organizing your writing so it’s interesting to read, you may want to check out our free, downloadable blog post templates or ebook templates, depending what you’re writing.

• The blog post templates will give you an outline of five different types of blog posts: how-to posts, listicles, curated collections, SlideShare presentations, and newsjacks.
• The ebook templates are available as both PowerPoint and InDesign files. All you have to do is paste in your text, drop in your images, add your company’s logo, and voila — a finished ebook.

13) HubSpot Composer

For HubSpot customers, Composer is a new distraction-free writing tool that helps writers easily turn their brainstorm ideas and research notes into a blog post. Composer handles the work of formatting drafts into blog posts — users can copy and paste text from Microsoft Word or Google Docs into Composer, and Composer will automatically reformat them for blog publication with the press of a button.

Other team members can collaborate and share comments on documents in Composer so bloggers can get team feedback prior to publishing content on their blogs. Check it out in action below:

14) oTranscribe 

If you’re writing something that includes an interview with someone else, oTranscribe is a great tool that’ll make the transcription process much less painful — allowing more time for your own writing and analysis.

There are a lot of transcription tools out there, but this one is one of my favorites. It’s a web app for transcribing interviews created by Elliott Bentley, a graphics writer at Wall Street Journal. The audio player is integrated with the editor meaning you won’t have to click back and forth. You can pause, play, rewind, and fast-forward using keyboard shortcuts. Every second, it automatically saves the transcription to your browser’s storage. You can export it to plain text or Google Docs. Finally, it’s open source under the MIT license.

15) Coffitivity

Ready to start writing? Here’s a tool that’ll boost your productivity. A study out of the University of Chicago found that a moderate level of ambient noise, or “white noise,” helps people be more creative. While there are a lot of white noise generators out there, Cofftivity is my favorite. It offers non-stop café background sounds at varying intensities, from “Morning Murmur” and “University Undertones” to “Lunchtime Lounge” and “Brazil Bistro.”

16) E.ggtimer.com & 17) Tomato Timer

If you like to write with a little pressure (or you’re just on deadline), then tools like e.ggtimer.com and Tomato Timer are useful (and free). Both of these tools offer a “pomodoro” option, which refers to the Pomodoro technique: a time management technique created by Francesco Cirillo based on periods of distraction-free work followed by short breaks — which is supposed to be optimal for productivity.

18) ZenPen 

If you don’t do well with distractions while you’re writing on a computer, then use a tool like ZenPen to help block out all the distractions and focus on your writing. It’s a web app that gives you a “minimalist writing zone.” There are a few, minimalist features available to help you stylize the text, add hyperlinks, and block quotes. Once you’re done, simply copy the text and paste it in your blog editor or wherever you’d like it to go.

19) Power Thesaurus & 20) Thesaurus.com 

Power Thesaurus isn’t just any thesaurus: It’s a crowdsourced thesaurus that provides alternative word choices from a community of writers. The word suggestions are totally original, and are based on the editorial work of a team of writers and years’ worth of reviews visitors’ suggestions.

But hey, when you want a good ol’, regular Thesaurus, you can’t beat Thesaurus.com.

21) OneLook Thesaurus

In addition to its thesaurus functions, OneLook Thesaurus also has a “reverse dictionary”: users can type in a definition or group of words related to the word they’re searching for and find the right word for their piece. Users can also type in a category of items, and OneLook will serve up multiple words that fall under that umbrella.

For example, here’s what happens when you search for “study animals.” OneLook then ranks synonyms according to how related or distance they are from the original search query. This is a great tool for when you have that “what’s the word for this?” moment and can’t bug your deskmate.

Image Credit: OneLook Thesaurus

22) Twinword Writer 

Here’s another help that’ll help you if you get stuck on a word and don’t want to leave your browser or skim through synonyms. If you type using Twinword Writer, it’ll automatically sense if you pause because you’re stuck on a word. Then, it’ll analyze the context of your writing and open a box suggesting alternate words you can use. You can also click any word to get suggestions.

23) Prompts 

If you like typing out posts or ideas using your iPhone and tend to hit a wall in the middle of a thought or idea, this $2.99 iOS app may be worth the investment. It uses an algorithm to make suggestions for what you should write next. It also tracks stats about your writing habits, can remind you to write regularly if you allow it, and lets you schedule the best day and time to write based on your writing history.

Image Credit: Prompts

24) BrainyQuote 

You may also find you want to include a quote from a famous author, politician, celebrity, or other public figure to strengthen your writing or inspire your readers. BrainyQuote is a library filled with millions of interesting quips that you can search by speaker (from Aristotle to Dr. Seuss to Audrey Hepburn) or by topic (like peace, success, leadership, and more).

25) Hemingway App

Ernest Hemingway, admired for his succinct writing style, is the namesake for this handy editing app. Want to make your content more easily readable? Paste your text into this free web app and it’ll assess your writing and identify opportunities to make it simpler. First, it sums up how readable your writing is with a grade. Then, it suggests how to improve readability. (Read this blog post for more tips on simplifying your writing.)

26) AtomicWriter 

Here’s another tool that’ll assess your writing — but this time, it’ll assess it depending on your specific target audience’s reading level and which content they relate to the most. After all, writing for your target audience is an important part of content marketing.

How? Simply hook up your Google Analytics and social media accounts to AtomicWriter, and then paste your content into the app. It’ll analyze your historical data and engagement data from those accounts, and then tell you whether it’s suitable for your target audience. 

Image Credit: Jeff Bullas

27) ProWritingAid

Here’s another tool that evaluates your writing, but it boasts some unique features that differentiate it from the tools above. For example, ProWritingAid highlights overused words, redundancies, plagiarism, and sentence length, making it easy for writers to identify trouble areas and strengthen them. 

The free version of this tool only analyzes 3,000 words at a time, so the $40 investment per year for Premium may be worthwhile if users publish multiple pieces of content per month. 

Here’s an example of what ProWritingAid looks like in action:

Image Credit: ProWritingAid

28) Grammarly & 29) Correctica

Once the actual writing part is done, it’s time to edit. While human editors will be able to catch most grammatical errors, editing tools like Grammarly and Correctica are great tools for triple-checking before you press “publish” or “send.” Both free tools check for grammatical errors — and Grammarly even checks for plagiarism.

30) Draft 

When you upload your document to draft (from cloud services like Dropbox, Evernote, Box, or Google Drive), there’s a lot you can do with it. You can edit your document, share it with colleagues or friends, and manage your friends’ suggestions — much in the same way you can with Google Docs.

One big differentiator, though? It calls itself the “Uber for copyediting”: Draft lets you call on a staff of reviewers to get suggested edits, for a price. (Learn about more features here.)

Image Credit: Draft

31) Cliché Finder 

Unleashed too many clichés in your most recent piece of content? To help your writing be more specific, it’s generally best to avoid clichés. To ensure you leave no stone unturned, paste your text into Cliché Finder and it’ll highlight any you missed so you can replace them with more specific text.

32) Listly

When you’re creating list posts — like this one — it’s easy to hit a wall. Sure, you know there are other great examples out there, but you’ve already exhausted the ones you know of. With Listly, you can invite your audience to contribute to your list. The Listly community can then vote on list items to move them up the list. 

You can either embed the interactive list in your post or use it do conduct research before you publish to ensure that the examples, items, or tips you’re including are the best of the best.

33) Style Guide

The more content your business puts out, the more consistent that writing and messaging should be. This includes everything from what official names to call your products or services, down to whether to use an Oxford comma.

At some point, most companies accept that they’ll need to develop a writing style guide: a document that indicates the basic rules of writing we’ll all agree to follow (like whether I should’ve capitalized the “a” after the colon in this sentence).

Most businesses adopt either the AP Stylebook, or the Chicago Manual of Style. If you want to customize your style guide, you can download the writing style guide template we’ve created here.

34) WritePls

If you type “how to improve writing skills” into Google, you’ll notice that there are almost six million search results. WritePls has organized the best of the best articles about writing into specific categories for different writing types (fiction, nonfiction, and emails), as well as articles about general writing, growth hacking, and resources for ebooks and online education.

This is a great home base for new and experienced writers alike. Blogging and email writing are two very different crafts, and WritePls has collected a variety of great resources to help any writers working on any type of project to refer to in a one-stop shop.

Which tools for improving one’s writing would you add to the list? Share with us in the comments.

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

 

Some of the greatest discoveries of all time came to fruition at the intersection between two ideas. Think about it: Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, pajama jeans, and sporks … just to name a few.

This week, Instagram proved the power of cross-pollinating ideas once more when it announced the addition of live video on Instagram Stories and disappearing photos and videos in Instagram Direct.

If those new feature announcements look and feel a whole lot like the experiences you’re used to on Snapchat and Facebook Live, your instincts aren’t wrong. Instagram’s new features directly reflect a larger shift in the user’s desire to share content “freely and in the moment,” as explained in the official announcement. While these features will be rolling out globally over the next few weeks, we wanted to make sure you were equipped with the know-how to start planning your strategy right now. Below, we’ll dive into each of the new features in detail, covering everything you need to know about what to expect, how to get started, and what this means for social media managers and marketers.

What’s Different About Instagram’s New Features?

To answer the question that everyone is asking themselves right off the bat: Yes, the live content update does seem eerily similar to Facebook Live.

But there are actually some noteworthy differences that set Instagram’s live video feature apart. And from a technical standpoint, Instagram’s live content is better represented as a healthy mix between Facebook Live and Snapchat.

The key difference between live video on Instagram Stories and Facebook Live is that live Instagram video disappears once the publisher finishes the broadcast, creating the transient experience offered by Snapchat.

“It’s a bi-directional experience, and you only get that when you’re actually live with someone,” Instagram’s Head of Product Kevin Weil told Recode.

But that’s not the only difference. According to that same Recode article, Instagram has no plans to pay media companies or celebrities to hop on a broadcast. This suggests that live Instragam content is intended to be less about creating important moments that need to be saved, and more about sharing unscripted, real-time experiences with friends and family.

Wired Staff Writer Davey Alba echoed this in her recap of the announcements:

With Instagram Stories, Facebook seems to be trying out a tack it used (to great effect) with messaging, splitting the use cases for Facebook Messenger (a tool for expression, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg explains it) and WhatsApp (a “more utilitarian” messaging app). Similarly, Facebook Live looks to be a more robust tool for archiving important video, while Instagram Stories is for your friends’ eyes only.”

As for the introduction of disappearing photos and videos in Instagram Direct, the divergence from Snapchat’s functionality is less obvious. In fact, one of the only major distinctions between the two is that Instagram makes it easier for users to continuously send disappearing messages to a set group of friends, whereas Snapchat requires you to manually select recipients each time.

In other words, the process for sending Instagram’s ephemeral direct messages mirrors a “group text” experience, which is informed by the company’s knowledge of users’ adoption of Instagram Direct over the last year. Since that launch, users have grown from 80 million to 300 million people around the world — and many of them are using the messaging feature to share content with group threads, according to the official announcement.

Ready to see these updates in action? Let’s walk through each step.

How to Get Started with Live Content and Disappearing Messages on Instagram

How to Go Live on Instagram:

1) Open the Instagram app and navigate to ‘Your Story’ in the top left corner.

2) Toggle left at the bottom of the screen to select the ‘Live’ option. Then, tap ‘Start Live Video.’

Just like on Facebook Live, comments will appear in a feed at the bottom of the screen during your recording. Here’s an example we captured:

In the live view, you can also keep tabs on the number of viewers checking out your broadcast by referring to the number in the top right corner.

3) Once you end the broadcast, you’ll see the following screen, complete with a final view count and timestamp. To return to your feed, tap ‘Done.’

We recommend taking note of the total number of viewers and the duration of your broadcast to inform your strategy in the future.

Looking for more ways to inspire your videos down the line? Check out the Explore tab to view live stories from others. Simply tap ‘Top Live’ to watch live stories unfold in real time, and swipe right and left to skip ahead or go back.

How to Send a Disappearing Message on Instagram:

1) Open the Instagram app and swipe right to open the camera view. You can snap a photo by tapping the white circle button, or hold the button down to capture a video.

2) To add text or doodle on your photo or video, use the annotation icons in the top right corner.

(Need artistic inspiration? Check out this roundup of clever Snapchat drawings.)

3) When you’re ready to send the message, tap the white arrow button.

4) Time to select your recipients. You can either select one or several people to send the message to directly or tap ‘New Group’ in the top right corner to create a group message.

To select users to add to a direct message, simply tap the circle next to their name to turn it into a blue check mark. If you’re creating a group, tap ‘Create’ in the corner once you’re done adding recipients.

(Note: You have the option to name the group, too. This makes it easy to find and use it again when you want to send a message to the same people.)

5) To view your direct messages, tap the new airplane icon in the top right corner of your feed or swipe left.

A few things to note about sending and viewing messages:

• A blue ring will appear around a new message in your inbox.
• In a group message, you can see others’ responses, as well as who else has seen them.
• To send a response, simply tap the user’s faded profile photo.
• You’ll be notified if a friend replays or screenshots your message.
• You can only send disappearing messages to those you follow — regardless of whether your account is private or public.

So now you know how to get started, but what does this all mean for marketers and the future of Instagram? Let’s walk through all of that below.

The Era of Ephemeral Marketing Is Here

As marketers, you already know the importance of catering your social media content distribution to the platform you’re publishing on. You might turn to Twitter for snappy, 140-character breaking news, or Snapchat for a selfie of you and your coworker disguised by a funny filter. But the etiquette on Instagram was in a league of its own — until just recently, at least.

“Each social network has its differentiating factor, and Instagram has always been a place to showcase the most beautiful, curated version of your life,” explained HubSpot’s Social Media Marketing Manager Marissa Emanuele in a post following the announcement of Instagram Stories back in August.

The introduction of Instagram Stories was the social network’s first foray into a more authentic and open sharing environment, as it lowered the stakes for those feeling pressure to produce the perfect Instagram post. Unlike the traditional Instagram post, Stories could be unpolished and even a little silly.

By opening up the platform to live video and disappearing content, it’s clear Instagram is making a more aggressive shift towards becoming a network where users have the freedom to share whatever they want — whether it be raw, picturesque, or somewhere in between.

“We want Instagram to be a place where you share all of your moments,” Weil told Recode. “[That includes] the more private moments or the inside jokes that are relevant not for your entire Instagram following but for a smaller group of folks.”

Depending on your industry and audience, Instagram’s move towards a more consolidated platform for capturing and sharing moments could mean a few different things for your strategy.

“If you’re a one person marketing team, managing an ongoing Snapchat presence and an ongoing Instagram Stories presence is a little crazy,” noted Emanuele during a Facebook Live recap of the announcements yesterday afternoon. (Check that out below.)

It might not make sense for you to stretch yourself thin across every single platform. Emanuele’s rule of thumb: Don’t be on a channel just to be on a channel.

So how do you determine which channels are right for you?

“I think it’s all about testing,” explained one of HubSpot’s Content and Growth Marketers, Katherine Boyarsky, in the same live broadcast. “I probably wouldn’t [have] bet on our audience being on Snapchat. But they are,” she added.

In other words, take what you’ve learned above and give it a try — the response might surprise you, or at the very least validate your instincts about your audience’s preferences.

And whether these new features are right for you or not, Instagram’s announcement signals a larger sea change in marketing. Authenticity and real-time, ephemeral experiences are beating polished and hyper-produced content, and you should be thinking strategically about how to incorporate them into your marketing efforts.

Need help getting up to speed on some of the other real-time advancements on social media? Check out our guide to Facebook Live here, as well as our guide to Instagram Stories here. And for more on our reaction to these new Instagram announcements, check out the two-part Facebook Live recap from Emanuele and Boyarsky below:

Part One:

Part Two:

What questions do you have about the latest Instagram news? Share them in the comments.

It goes without saying that employees are the lifeblood of any marketing agency.

They bring the talent needed to fulfill your agency’s strategic and creative commitments to clients, and they represent the first line both in new business development and in client service and satisfaction.

They also — of course — represent the largest financial commitment in an agency’s budget.

Attracting and retaining the best talent is high on the list of priorities for any agency owner. Leaders today faces complex decisions about how best to source, develop and reward the right mix of talents and temperaments to fit the agency’s mission and its client base.

Millennials, in particular, seem to be a particular source of heartburn for agency owners. These 18- to 34-year-olds represent the greatest source of new agency employees, and agency owners worry that they are ineffective at motivating these workers and concerned that their investment in their education and training will be for naught if they choose to move elsewhere prematurely.

The Research

Agency Management Institute and Audience Audit decided to tackle this question head-on, by surveying agency employees of all ages and gaining insight into their opinions, attitudes and influences, and the extent to which these differ between millennials and older employees — or if there’s another explanation for the behavior that agency owners highlight in their complaints.

With the help of HubSpot and Research Now, the survey received over 950 responses from full-time agency employees. 55% of the respondents are millennials (under the age of 35). 40% are younger millennials (26 or younger) and the remaining 60% are 27-34.

45% are older employees — about half of whom are 35-44.

In this article, we’ll examine some of the key takeaways from the report. To read more about the survey and get a much deeper dive on the results, you can download the full research report here. You can also sign up for a free webinar (December 1st at 1 PM eastern) where we’ll walk you through all of the results of the study and there will be a live Q&A.

Are Millennials Really Different?

56% of our respondents feel that millennials are fundamentally different than older employees when it comes to their priorities and attitudes about work. Both millennials and non-millennials feel similarly with regard to this question. 24% say they aren’t sure.

But our research revealed that assumptions that lump all millennials into one set of attitudes are missing the real story.

The Real Story: Attitudinal Segments

While our research revealed some differences by age, we found much greater divides between agency employees when it comes to their attitudes about work, and what they expect of their employer — and themselves.

The results were fascinating.

Segment 1: Agency Advocates (37% of respondents)

Agency Advocates love their jobs, feel respected and valued, and say they are appropriately compensated.

They believe their employers understand the needs of younger employees and are focused on keeping their employees happy at work.

They also feel their job provides lots of opportunities to learn important skills, which we know is the most important characteristic of a job for the respondent group overall.

They appear to place the responsibility for their career success largely on their own shoulders. They are less likely to feel that employers have an obligation to help their employees become more successful, or are responsible for helping employees build their own networks.

Segment 2: Prosperity Partners (31% of total)

Prosperity Partners feel employers and employees have a responsibility to help each other. They overwhelmingly agree that people should always be working to build their own brand beyond their current job, but also say that employers have an obligation to help their employees become more successful.

They believe employers should help their employees build social networks, should provide opportunities for employees to socialize and have fun, and should be active in their local communities.

They overwhelmingly believe the ability to collaborate and work in teams is a critical skill for everyone, but say they also need independence and flexibility to do their best work.

Despite the fact that these respondents overwhelmingly say they always give their best effort at work, they are less likely to feel that their compensation is appropriate given their responsibilities, experience and performance.

Segment 3: Millennial Mindset (32% of total)

The final segment, which we have termed the “Millennial Mindset”, are much more likely than other respondents to feel that younger workers are both more talented and less valued than older employees.

They are more likely to credit younger workers with being more innovative than older workers, and better at understanding today’s marketing environment.

They also say that younger workers are typically undervalued and deserve more responsibility than they are typically given.

They are less likely to say they give they always give their best effort at work, and that employees have an obligation to help their employer become more successful.

They are much less likely to say that they feel valued, that they love their job and that it provides lots of opportunities for learning important skills.

Millennial Mindset respondents are more likely to see their jobs as just something they have to do for now, to earn money for the things they enjoy doing and to bide their time until they can do something they’d prefer.

The most striking finding about the “Millennial Mindset” segment is that they aren’t all millennials.

In fact, while there are many more millennials in this segment than there are older respondents, 28% are not millennials at all.

And 59% of the millennials in our study are NOT in the “Millennial Mindset” segment (hence the quotations around the segment name).

So while a millennial is more likely to be in this segment than are older respondents, they are still more likely to be either an Agency Advocate or a Prosperity Partner than a “Millennial Mindset” member.

For agency owners, the study offers both challenges and opportunities. It challenges many of the pre-conceived assumptions about agency employees, their attitudes and what matters most to them.

The research was very revealing about employees attitudes regarding compensation, their intentions to stay at their current agency or in the agency business, how they want to contribute and what they expect from their employers.

Implications

Think attitude, not age: It’s easy to categorize employees by generation but this study is evidence that owners must be to stop thinking about employees in terms of age, and start thinking of them in terms of attitude.

Not only do they do the majority of millennials a disservice by painting them with the same negative brush, but they fail to recognize the number of older employers who may in fact have many of the attitudes the owners are hoping to avoid.

The stereotypes can get in the way of having meaningful conversations about the motivations, goals and concerns of each employee. They also can create resentment and a sense of being disrespected among employees that owners would like to nurture/keep.

As content marketing continues to prove itself in the digital marketing realm, an increasing number of business owners find themselves balancing precariously at the edge of the blogosphere, building up courage to take the plunge.

But if you’re new to the practice, you need to be extra careful not to make any rookie errors. A few simple blogging mistakes can turn an otherwise stellar content marketing strategy into an embarrassing, sticky mess. Thankfully, these blunders are easy to avoid when you know exactly what you shouldn’t be doing.

Here are seven common blogging mistakes your business will want to stay away from…far, far away:

1) Typos, typos, typos

Typos are one of the biggest – and most unforgivable – blogging mistakes. They show a lack of attention to detail, imply sloppy work, and ultimately put off prospective customers. Would you really want to work with a business that lets mistakes slide on their own work? We didn’t think so.

2) No conversion points

Not having conversion points in your content undermines your entire digital marketing strategy. Readers who resonate with your blog will probably be interested in premium content like an ebook, which can further guide them along their buyer’s journey. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to convert them into a lead by not including a call to action within your blog.

3) No images

A blog without images is like a video without sound. And while an image might not always be essential to understand the point of your article, it will make the experience a lot more enjoyable. Inserting images into your blog will hold your audience’s attention for longer, add value to the content, and increase your chance of converting the reader into a lead.

4) Rambling on and on (and on)

We hate to break it to you, but unless someone is a hard-core fan of your content then they probably aren’t going to read your entire 800+ word blog. Writing unnecessarily long posts is a common blogging mistake, as writers confuse quality with quantity. Keep it short and sweet to around 500 words and you’ll be flying. Your reader’s time is valuable, and they’ll appreciate it being treated as such.

5) Sales-speak overload

Think about why your company has a blog in the first place – to attract potential clients with informative and intrinsically valuable content. Don’t undermine this strategy with transparent attempts to push your product on digital passers-by who’ve yet to indicate any interest.

Even if you’re writing a bottom of funnel blog that describes your offering in detail, try to frame it as a solution instead of a direct sales pitch. Your reader is smarter than you think, and will see straight through any attempt to underhandedly force your product on them.

6) Clickbait titles

Clickbait is the scourge of content. Even though shamelessly exploiting human curiosity might get you a few extra clicks and page views, it just isn’t worth it – your reader will lose respect for your company and brand. Your goal should be to build a following of readers who find value in your writing and content – not to become Buzzfeed Wannabe 2.0.

7) Unprofessional content

Your tone should always reflect that you’re writing on behalf of your company. If your culture allows for satirical posts and celebrity gossip, by all means go to town. Just be wary of being overly casual and driving away potential clients looking for serious solutions to their serious problems.

Most readers respond infinitely better to fact-driven blog posts that address their pain points effectively. And if you are overcome by the urge to Biebs it up do everyone a favour and confine it to a personal blog or Tumblr.

At the end of the day, avoiding blogging mistakes only addresses one part of an effective content marketing strategy and a successful business. If you’d like to learn more about content marketing strategy download our ‘5-step plan to generating leads from content marketing’ today!