Author Archives: i4lead

According to Microsoft’s 2022 Annual Work Trend Index Report, 53% of employees are considering transitioning to a hybrid work setup in the next year and hybrid work is up seven points from 2021.

So, what does it take to lead a hybrid team? We’ve got a few tips.

1. Set rules of engagement.

When everyone’s in the office, many rules and behaviors go unsaid. After all, everyone is in the same space, so it’s easier to pick up on cues. However, when everyone is scattered, it changes how you approach them.

Microsoft’s report found that following the pandemic, few companies (only 28%) have met with their teams to define their new normal since switching to a hybrid or remote model.

This can lead to confusion, unmet expectations, and high attrition rates. Setting a structure around communication and collaboration allows the team to work more efficiently as it promotes cohesion among all members, despite the physical distance.

2. Leverage asynchronous communication.

Speaking of distance, it can be nearly impossible to get everyone on a call at the same time depending on where your team is.

For instance, say you have some team members in California, others in New York, and some overseas in Kenya. Those are three time zones, meaning three different work schedules.

One way to keep your team connected is to leverage asynchronous tools.

For instance, you can utilize bots within your messaging system, whether it’s Slack, Teams, or another platform, to invite your team to share updates, check-ins, etc.

With Geekbot, the software can be programmed to ask your team specific questions, then share their answers.

So, if your team is unable to sync up for daily meetings, you can still get progress updates from everyone in a channel of your choosing.

3. Have a robust onboarding process.

Having a strong onboarding process is more important than ever.

Data from the Microsoft report shows that employees onboarded during the last two years are at greater risk for attrition, are less likely to feel included within their teams, and tend to have weaker relationships with their direct teams.

Since the pandemic, new hires are relying more on their managers for onboarding – and that’s a good thing for the company.

The study found that new hires whose managers played an active role in their onboarding process were 3.5 times more likely to be satisfied with their experience.

Here are some tips to optimize your onboarding process:

• Prepare training materials and create an onboarding guide.
• Launch an internal mentorship program to guide new hires within the first few months.
• Have a welcome chat to introduce the new hire to the team.
• Send your new hire a survey about their onboarding experience to assess gaps in the process.

4. Trust your team.

Trust is the number one component of a successful hybrid or remote team. Without it, neither party is able to successfully respond to their responsibilities.

In the office, you can always keep an eye on your team. Walking by their desk to check in on a project, peeking to see if they’re actively working. When your team is hybrid, you lose that level of visibility.

As such, you’re forced to trust your team. How do you build trust? Well, it’s a two-way street and it starts with you.

Firstly, be transparent. This encompasses everything from sharing feedback on performance to sharing resources to sharing team and company-wide updates.

Secondly, create a space where your team feels psychologically safe – safe to share ideas, be themselves, learn, and challenge the status quo.

Lastly, find out what matters to each person on your team. What do they value? What are their goals? How do they like to be celebrated? How do they learn best?

Trust also extends to their work. Even though 80% of employees say they are just as productive since going hybrid or remote, most leaders (54%) fear productivity has or will negatively impact their teams, according to the Microsoft report.

Avoid the temptation to micromanage your team. Instead, set the parameters for their tasks, check in with their progress, provide resources when needed, and offer feedback. This will empower your team to do their best work knowing that they have the full support and trust of their manager.

5. Prioritize team culture.

According to the 2022 Microsoft report, the top aspect of work employees views as important – other than money – is a positive culture.

Even though your team is hybrid, you still have to work hard to build its culture. If anything, it’s even more important since you don’t have the physical environment to rely on.

When you have a hybrid team, you have to be intentional about everything – particularly connecting on a non-work level.

43% of leaders surveyed in the Microsoft report say relationship-building is the number one challenge in remote and hybrid work.

After all, you can’t just invite your team to a happy hour at a local restaurant or have an impromptu group lunch.

What you want to avoid is an imbalance where some members feel disconnected from the team because of their distance, which is pretty common. In fact, 44% of hybrid employees surveyed said they do not feel included in meetings.

Here are a few ways to make sure your team feels connected:

• Host virtual events, such as escape rooms, magic shows, and cooking classes, that your team can enjoy as a group.
• Have regular “watercooler” meetings that allow your team to gather and talk about anything non-work related.
• Create non-work-related messaging channels based on your team’s interests, like cooking, TV shows, home renovation projects, pets, etc.
• Plan annual or quarterly meetups with your team, if your budget allows.

This is your opportunity to shape it into one that fosters inclusion, collaboration, and trust.

6. Invest in your team’s equipment.

When your team works in an office, there are certain things you don’t need to account for, such as Wi-Fi, computer, headset, desk, etc.

However, if you have some people from your team working from home, they will need to have access to the same equipment to succeed in their role.

There are also nice-to-have items that aren’t needed to complete the job but can make your team happier and more productive. Think headphones and ergonomic equipment.

Instead of seeing it as an additional expense, consider it an investment into your team that will pay off tenfold.

There you have it – whether your team is newly hybrid or has always been, there’s always room for improvement. With these tips, your team will work as seamlessly as you would in person.

Home to countless cookie recipes, laughable memes, and perfect last-minute gift ideas, there’s certainly already a lot to love about Pinterest. But what if we told you that it’s possible to make money on Pinterest?

The simple truth is this: Amidst the ab workouts and IKEA furniture hacks, there lies a huge opportunity for businesses to use Pinterest to drive revenue. And with 31% of online American adults using Pinterest, this isn’t an opportunity you’ll want to leave on the table.

Can you make money on Pinterest?

Whether you are a content creator, have an eCommerce business, or are trying to drive traffic to your blog, Pinterest can be a key tool for monetization.

If your target customers are on Pinterest, they’re likely ready to buy. According to demographic data from Pinterest, 45% of adults in the U.S. with a household income over $100K per year are active on the platform. Additionally, 83% of Pinterest users make purchases based on what they see on the platform.

If you aren’t monetizing through Pinterest, now is a great time to start. To help you get a handle on how to make Pinterest work better for your business, check out the tips below.

How to Make Money on Pinterest

1. Generate traffic to your eCommerce products.

Best for: eCommerce businesses.

If you sell products online, one of the simplest ways to drive more sales is to pin your product pages directly to Pinterest. Creating pins that are linked directly to your online shop can generate meaningful traffic when paired with the keywords your ideal customers are searching for.

Before you start sharing your products on Pinterest, make sure you’ve enabled Rich Pins, which sync the latest information from your website into any pins created from your site. Product Rich Pins are able to pull the most up-to-date price, inventory, and product description from your website so you don’t need to worry about manually updating existing pins.

Rich Pins are free to use and only require adding a bit of code to your website. New websites requesting Rich Pins are typically approved within 24 hours.

2. Create pins for your affiliate partnerships.

Best for: Users with strong relationships with their affiliate partners.

Affiliate marketing is a popular tactic for marketers and entrepreneurs looking to build passive income. As an affiliate, you can receive a commission anytime someone makes a purchase from your unique link to a product or service.

To leverage Pinterest for your affiliate marketing efforts, consider creating pins that link directly to your affiliate links or to blog posts or YouTube videos that incorporate your affiliate links. By sharing your affiliate links on Pinterest, they can be found by anyone searching for that particular product, earning you a commission if they make a purchase.

Here are a few best practices to keep in mind when using Pinterest to make affiliate sales:

• Disclose when affiliate links are present. Per FTC guidelines, clearly state when affiliate links are being shared within a piece of content.
• Only share direct links. Pinterest discourages the use of link shorteners or tools that disguise the final URL when sharing affiliate links.
• Optimize your pins for keywords related to affiliate products. The beauty of Pinterest is that it operates as a search engine. When your content features keywords users are searching for, the content is more likely to generate clicks and engagement which could lead to increased sales.

3. Send traffic to your blog.

Best for: Inbound marketers and bloggers.

Whether you rely on web traffic for advertising revenue, or as part of an inbound marketing approach, you can incorporate Pinterest into your traffic-building strategy to drive revenue. Ranking for keywords on Google can be a complex, time-consuming endeavor. However, ranking for keywords on Pinterest can be more straightforward, and can lead to meaningful traffic gains.

According to Pinterest, 85% of users turn to Pinterest to start a new project or learn something new. If you’re creating helpful content that aligns with the keywords your potential audience is searching for, you can potentially capture some of this search traffic through Pinterest.

Here are some tips to help you grow your web traffic through Pinterest:

• Use Pinterest Trends to discover which keywords are trending with Pinterest users.
• Create multiple pins for each blog post that have an optimized title, description, and image that align with the keywords users are searching for.
• Save your pins to boards that have optimized titles and descriptions incorporating the keywords users are searching for.
• Create article Rich Pins from your website to incorporate the blog post title, description, and author information in your pins.

4. Join the Pinterest Creator Fund.

Best for: Creators who want to grow and monetize their Pinterest account.

In 2021, Pinterest launched the Creator Fund to help creators grow and monetize their content on the platform. These cohorts open quarterly and participants have access to unique brand partnerships and tools and resources from the Pinterest team to help them grow their reach.

This year, Pinterest announced an expansion of the program’s fund to support a wider range of creators.

Image Source

5. Share shoppable pins for your products.

Best for: Online shops and eCommerce businesses.

If you sell products online, creating shoppable pins for your products can be an effective way to increase sales. According to Pinterest, engagement with shoppable pins increased by 20% in 2021. One way to drive conversion from Pinterest is to enable Product Pins on your account.

Product pins allow online merchants to list their products on Pinterest so customers can make a purchase without leaving the platform. To set up shoppable pins, start by applying to be a Verified Merchant on Pinterest.

Below, you can see an example of shoppable pins by the skincare brand, Summer Fridays.

6. Create sponsored content.

Best for: Content creators and influencers.

Pinterest can be a lucrative space for influencer marketing. Content creators can work with brands to create sponsored content specifically for Pinterest or can negotiate a higher rate for sharing their sponsored blog and social content from other platforms with their Pinterest audience as well.

7. Manage Pinterest accounts for other businesses.

Best for: Virtual assistants, social media managers, and administrative professionals.

If you have the skills to manage and grow a Pinterest account, consider lending your services to other businesses. Many busy entrepreneurs don’t have time to manage their own Pinterest accounts despite the benefits of remaining active on the platform.

In this role, you could develop a Pinterest strategy for your client’s primary business objectives (such as growing web traffic or increasing conversions of shoppable pins), do keyword research to determine what their audience is searching for, and create and upload pins to their account.

It helps to have demonstrated experience in this area. Try creating a portfolio outlining the results you’ve gotten from growing your own or other businesses’ Pinterest accounts to share with potential clients.

8. Use Pinterest Ads to reach new users.

Best for: People selling digital and physical products online.

If you have an online business, consider running ads on Pinterest to get your offerings in front of potential buyers. Pinterest ads look like regular pins but can be strategically placed where your audience is most likely to see them including on the home feed and in search results.

To start running ads on Pinterest, make sure you have a business account. After you have your business account created, visit the Ads Manager to create a campaign and ad group.

Lastly, you’ll have the option to create new pins or select the existing pins you want to promote. Here’s how the company Daily Harvest uses paid ads on Pinterest to reach new customers.

9. Showcase your products with video content.

Best for: eCommerce businesses.

Idea Pins are multi-page video posts that are quickly gaining popularity on Pinterest. Though Idea Pins can’t link directly to web pages like standard pins can, users can tag specific products featured in their Idea Pins to make them shoppable. Cosmetics company Fenty Beauty frequently features video tutorials on Pinterest to promote key products.

Users can tag products using affiliate links, and merchants can tag products from their own businesses to drive sales. By sharing Idea Pins that feature video clips of your products in action, you can help expose new buyers to the features of your products.

With over 400 million users who are looking for inspiration and are ready to buy, incorporating Pinterest into your business strategy is a great way to engage with your audience and drive potential revenue.

College graduation is just around the corner, which means it’s almost speech season. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good graduation speech and all the platitudes that come along with it, but very few of them give guidance on how to find a job after college. 

We want to help. At HubSpot, we’re lucky enough to interview and hire a lot of recent graduates, so I’ve rounded up some advice below based on interviews, applications, and feedback we hear from hiring managers, recruiters, and job candidates alike. And for free templates and tools you can use to put the advice below into practice download this post’s complementary guide here.

But before we dive into how to find a job after college, let’s first shed some light on why the job searching process is so difficult for college graduates. 

Why is it hard to find a job after college?

One of the leading factors that make finding a job after college difficult is fierce competition.

According to Statista, the percentage of the U.S. population that have a 4-year college degree has steadily increased since the 1940s. As of 2020, 38.3% of women and 36.7% of men have completed four years of college or more.

With college degrees becoming more and more common, graduates are finding it difficult to stand out to employers. The competition can be even more intense for college students who either did not complete an internship in their field studies while pursuing their education. 

With that said, here is some advice to make finding a job after college less daunting. 

12 Tips for Finding a Job After College

1. Narrow down your search.

I asked a recent college graduate how many applications he submitted to companies each week as part of his job search. His response was, “As many as I need to get my parents off my back.”

Unfortunately, sending out countless applications isn’t strategic and is typically unsuccessful because:

• It’s hard to stick out from the pack of other applicants when you’re trying to be all things to all people. 
• You can’t properly research and follow up with hundreds of job applications. 
• Juggling too many applications can increase the likelihood of spelling mistakes, misstating goals, or missing scheduled phone screens. 

Instead, I recommend doing enough homework to reasonably target 10-12 companies. This way you’ll have the time and energy to give each application the attention necessary to ensure they’re filled out properly. And you’ll be able to better hone in on the unique skills you’d bring to the job and really stand out to employers.  

2. Talk to 10 people about their jobs.

I recommend scheduling a 30-minute, well-organized and orchestrated phone interview with someone familiar with the company or its field.  

Ask a friend who graduated recently, a neighbor from your hometown, or check in with your career services office to ask for some input. If your immediate network isn’t a great resource, get to work on LinkedIn — identify individuals with job titles that interest you and ask if they would be open to a quick conversation.

Regardless of the field you choose, you are going to spend a lot of time at work, so it’s worth investing the time beforehand to understand what roles will actually be like after you secure the job.

3. Reach out to entry level employees.

You’ll want to focus on selecting people at or close to entry level jobs as they’ll give a much more realistic sense of what your day would be like and what skills you would need to succeed. This step can help you significantly refine your search and align your applications accordingly. 

While it may be tempting to reach out to senior leaders, it would be better to wait until after you have clear context on the types of roles you’re most interested in pursuing.

4. Ask Good Questions. 

Focus on asking questions about what their average day looks like:

• What do they work on?
• Are they mostly working alone at a computer or in meetings with other people?
• How (if at all) do they interact with their boss?
• What’s the culture at their organization like?
• What do they like about it and what do they wish they could change?
• What’s the most important skill to succeed in the job they have, and why?

These types of questions are specific and give you a real sense for what it’s like to actually do a given job.

5. Listen.

Active listening can be the single most effective tool in identifying the right company and role for your skill set.

Ask your professors and advisors if they know alumni working at companies where you could be a good fit. Ask your previous employers for feedback on what you’re best at and what you can do better. The answers to these questions should help inform your job search, but you need to actively listen to make their advice actionable.

Moreover, take good notes during these conversations. I’d recommend creating a Google doc with:

• The name of the person you’re talking with

• The company they work for

• Key takeaways from the call

• Next steps

After these conversations, make clear follow-ups and carve out time after every informational conversation to thank the person who gave you their time.

6. Identify three job tracks and create a playbook for each one.

After your phone calls and interviews help you identify a few roles that really interest you, visit the career site for a few of the companies in your preferred geography that offer the roles you’re seeking. Take note of the specific skills the position demands. 

Many applicants skip this step entirely, but it’s imperative to understand what the hiring managers are seeking and what experience is most relevant to the career paths you’re targeting.

Recognizing that the best hiring managers can screen for potential and skill, you need to craft a compelling narrative for why you are positioned to succeed in a role. Does that mean you need to check every single box? Absolutely not, but you do need a compelling story for why you are uniquely suited to the position.

Far too many people send the same resume for multiple positions that require very different skills and experiences. 

To avoid this, my recommendation is to fill in the blanks of this sentence before you start on a resume or cover letter: “I would be a great (_______________) because I have _________, ________, and _______ skills as evidenced by my work with ___________ and _____________.” 

This may seem elementary, but when you’re in the thick of a job search it’s easy to get lazy and ship the same materials to everyone. Creating a clear, concise summary of why you are positioned to succeed in a given role is a great foundation for the materials you’ll create next before applying.

7. Craft compelling application materials that tell your story.

Far too many people treat creating their resume, cover letter, and any other necessary application materials as a chore to be completed or a checklist to be generated. In reality, recruiters and hiring managers scan through hundreds if not thousands of resumes on a weekly basis, so make their lives easier by creating a truly compelling narrative on your interest in the role. 

Telling a great story doesn’t mean filling every square inch of space on a page. In fact, the best resumes and cover letters use spacing, italics, and bold text to make the materials more readily digestible and enjoyable to read for the hiring manager.

When it comes to crafting your narrative for applications, don’t underestimate the role of activities outside of work: You don’t need a formal internship or summer job to show that you’re interested in and capable of blogging, or a seasoned job in sales to show that you’re passionate about engaging people.

Did you blog for your college admissions office to help recruit incoming students? You should include that experience if you’re applying for a marketing, recruiting, or human resources position.

Did you use iMovie to create videos for your university’s theater program? Learn enough code to launch a website for your parents’ restaurant? If you’re applying for any role in technical support, design, or engineering, incorporate it.

Far too many people underestimate the role activities outside the classroom can play in demonstrating your potential and drive, so don’t overlook these experiences when you’re crafting your story.

8. Google yourself.

Most hiring managers will run a quick Google search before reaching out to you for a phone screen, so Google yourself before you start applying for jobs and ask yourself what story your online presence tells. If it doesn’t align with the narrative you’re using in your job applications, invest the time and energy to change it. 

Your online presence should reflect your personal and professional interests, and with the proliferation of free publishing forums (from LinkedIn to Medium to About.me), you have no excuse not to put them to work on your behalf in the job search process.

For example, let’s say you are interested in applying to Wistia, an online video hosting platform and one of our neighboring companies here in Boston. How could you convey a passion for video if you’re not an editor, producer, or director? 

You could share remarkable videos you see online as a consumer, or blog about how video marketing can influence the sales process. You can also incorporate your previous experience with video on your LinkedIn profile, or tweet articles covering recent brand video launches, among other things.

Be honest about what your current digital footprint says about your candidacy, and then invest some time and energy to change it from a liability to an asset before you start sending your resume out.

9. Apply thoughtfully.

Before you hit submit, triple-check everything for spelling, syntax, and grammar. Everyone knows someone with a particularly good eye for catching mistakes — pay them in lunch or coffee to help you do a final check of your materials before you ship them. Don’t let a spelling or grammatical mistake be the reason you don’t land a job. 

Also, be sure that you have the right details in the right applications. Create separate folders on your computer for each company so that you don’t proudly state how excited you are to work at Company X when your application is for Company Y.

Once you hit submit, you’re not done yet. I recommend creating a Google spreadsheet with tabs for each of the job types you’re applying for, along with the name of the company you applied to, the date you applied, a link to the job on the careers site (so you can reference it easily if asked down the line), as well as the name of the hiring manager or recruiter if available.

This quick exercise makes follow-up a breeze. If you haven’t heard back within a week, sending an email to your contact to politely check in and ask if there is anything you can do to support your candidacy is a great way to show interest without being overbearing. 

Logging everything (including return phone calls, informational screens, and rejection emails alike) in one document will also minimize embarrassing gaffes such as applying for multiple positions at the same company or missing a scheduled informational interview. Plus, having a centralized location means it’ll be much easier for you to react if something unexpected comes up, such as if a hiring manager calls you to discuss the role in depth.

10. Respect the process.

Treat every element of the entire candidate experience like a formal interview. A recruiter calling you to role-play what it’s like to work on our services team? That’s part of the job audition. The emails the hiring manager sends you with details on what to expect in the interview? Your response and timeliness are part of the interview process as well. 

If you’re taking a phone call from the company, find a quiet place to talk, answer the phone appropriately, and thank the hiring manager or recruiting coordinator for making the time to connect with you.

Part of respecting the process is really doing your homework. Here’s a checklist to consider when you’re doing your research:

• Can you describe, clearly and concisely, what the company does to make money and the problem they are solving in the market?
• Have you visited their leadership page to understand the backgrounds of people running the company and how the organization is organized?
• Did you check out interview questions along with recent candidate experience reviews on Glassdoor to check out what people are saying about the company so you can ask better questions when you meet with current employees?
• Can you reference any recent news the company announced on its company news page, investor relations site, or blog?
• Have you followed the company on one or more social media channels so you can see how the organization positions itself in the market?
• If you’re lucky enough to get an interview, have you checked out the LinkedIn profiles of everyone you’re meeting with so you know their role and tenure at the company?

It’s important to treat every interaction with the company and its hiring team with the highest degree of professionalism and consideration. Visiting a company’s website on the train en route to the interview does not constitute research. 

If you expect an organization to invest in you, invest two hours to properly understand its products, people, and value proposition so you can tailor your approach and responses accordingly.

11. Pass the receptionist test with flying colors.

No one wants to work with a jerk, and if you’re rude or dismissive of the person who greets you upon arrival for an interview, chances are you’re not the type of person I want to be in the trenches with on a daily basis. Plus, receptionists usually have the ear of top executives, so if you underestimate them, it could cost you.

Treat everyone you interact with at the company as though they are your interviewer. People don’t want to work with anyone who can’t make time for general pleasantries. 

In fact, when the co-founder of Warby Parker, Neil Blumenthal, appeared on The Growth Show, he said their entire organization screens heavily for empathy and humility in the hiring process. As Blumenthal correctly pointed out, you spend most of your waking life with coworkers, so hiring people who are jerks just creates “culture debt” — a huge price that your organization has to repay for years to come.

So be nice and gracious to everyone you meet: It will pay off for many years to come.

12. Know how to accept and negotiate an offer.

If you make it through the interview experience and are lucky enough to be offered a job, don’t botch your hard work at the one-yard line.

Instead, start off by thanking the company for the offer and asking clarifying questions to better understand the role you’re being offered, the team you’ll be joining, and the salary and benefits associated with the job. Typically, you’ll receive a call from a hiring manager or recruiter with this information, and then ask for the offer to be sent in writing. 

I generally recommend that people profusely thank their interviewer, then ask for a day to review the offer in detail and return with any questions you may have. Doing so ensures they know you are interested and gives you time to pour over the materials in depth to formulate good questions to ask of your potential employer.

For an entry-level position, you have to strike a balance between negotiating a fair deal and being a high-maintenance hire. I recommend formulating a list of your questions then reviewing the materials a second time to ensure that the answers aren’t contained in the information they sent for you. 

You want to ask questions that are thoughtful, insightful, and reflect what matters most to you. In other words, if your base salary is the most important factor in your job decision, invest most of your time on the phone asking clarifying questions — not on how much vacation time you will have.

There is no better time than the present to pursue the job and career track you love, but it’s not going to fall in your lap. Follow the guide above to narrow your search, target your prospects, and prepare yourself for the application and interview process. It’s an investment of time and energy well worth making — one that will pay dividends for your entire career. 

According to Hubspot Blog Research on content and media planning, 14% of media planners currently leverage non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Conversations surrounding NFTs and Web3 have risen in the past year and continue to pique marketers’ interest. In this article, we’ll cover what NFTs are, how brands are using it, and if it’s worth the investment.

So, how exactly do they work? Well, when an NFT is created, also known as “minted,” it can represent tangible items like art and clothing and non-tangibles like music, videos, and images.

For instance, Twitter’s founder, Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet for $2.9 million in 2021. Who determines the value of the item in question? The community. Unlike real-world or cryptocurrency, an NFT’s value is speculative.

What makes NFTs so popular is that they represent the decentralization of power from the few to the many. This is particularly valuable for creators who have historically relied on third-party platforms like Spotify, YouTube, and Instagram to share their content and gain from it.

NFTs put the power back in the hands of the community by letting them decide what’s popular and incentivizing them to support what they like.

They’re so popular in fact that Open Sea’s Alex Atallah, the cofounder of the largest NFT marketplace, recently shared on Twitter that there are more NFTs on the platform than there were internet pages in 2010.

1/ There are now more NFTs on OpenSea than there were websites on the internet in 2010.

Very soon, NFTs will outnumber websites, maybe even webpages. This growth has major implications for how we should index NFTs…

— Alex Atallah | OpenSea (@xanderatallah)
March 9, 2022

For context, the platform houses over 250 million searchable NFTs. In 2010, there were roughly 200 million websites.

Let’s see what this means from a marketing perspective.

How Brands Use NFTs for Marketing [+ Examples]

Lomit Patel, senior vice president of growth at Together Labs, recently shared on LinkedIn that he believes NFTs are doing today what social media did in 2010 – drastically improve their potential for brand awareness and audience reach.

NFTs are disrupting the current marketing landscape and prompting brands to find innovative ways to incentivize their audience to engage.

“We’re moving to a market-based society where everything is going to be ownable, priceable, traceable — everything — and NFTs is just a fancy way to do that and create the marketplace around it,” said HubSpot’s CMO Kipp Bodnar on an episode of the Marketing Against the Grain podcast.

Because it’s so new, it’s a way to build buzz around your brand.

Let’s look at one brand that’s already doing this: Norwegian Cruise Line.

To celebrate the launch of Norwegian Prima Class, a new class of vessels, the brand collaborated with an artist to create six NFT art pieces. Each piece has been put up for auction, with the first starting at $2,500 and the proceeds will be donated to Teach For America.

Image Source

In a press release, the brand shared that they chose to celebrate the launch using NFTs because it’s cutting-edge technology, which reflects how they approach their products and services.

By doing this, Norwegian leveraged the buzz surrounding NFTs (basically newsjacking) to create buzz surrounding its launch.

NFTs also allow brands to better incentivize their audience through exclusive content and shift the focus to community building.

In March 2022, beverage company Anheuser-Busch hosted an #NFTBeerFest event at its flagship brewery reserved for holders of specific NFTs from Budweiser, its child company.

Just kicked off #NFTBeerFest!

Are you here? Let us know below 👇 pic.twitter.com/Rxm3aaSOhN

— Bud Light (@budlight)
March 27, 2022

Those who bought either a Budweiser Heritage Can NFT or Royalty Collection NFT reportedly enjoyed free beer, tours, giveaways, and performances at the event.

Having access to exclusive content is exactly the sort of incentive that marketers can leverage. They already do so through gated, premium offers, this is just another version of it.

“In the future, really understanding incentives is going to be a marketer’s core skillset to acquire customers,” said HubSpot’s SVP of Marketing Kieran Flanagan on an episode of the Marketing Against the Grain podcast.

(Check out this roundup for a detailed list of how brands have leveraged NFTs.)

Cons of Using NFTs

The biggest drawback of minting and using NFTs is the environmental impact.

You may be thinking, “It’s a digital asset, how does that affect the environment?” Well, the creation of an NFT consumes a great deal of energy (electricity) – depending on how complex it is – and can emit devastating amounts of greenhouse gas emissions.

Some creators are finding more sustainably conscious and less energy-intensive ways of minting NFTs. However, there is still limited data to validate these efforts.

Another con of using NFTs is that there’s still so much we don’t know. Similar to cryptocurrency, it’s subject to a lot of volatility as it is not regulated by any particular entity.

In addition, they don’t hold specific value, leaving you at risk to lose your entire investment.

From a marketing perspective, many consumers are still confused and skeptical about it, making it difficult to entice them. This is usually what happens with any new technology – early adopters face the brunt of the impact while late adopters learn from their predecessors’ mistakes.

Are NFTs Worth Your Marketing Investment?

NFTs can be a difficult sell to brands because they’re risky. It’s unclear what the future holds and it’s a bit too early to judge their impact on a large scale.

What we do know is that many of those who do use it have seen a lot of success.

In fact, 39% of those who use NFTs say they have the best ROI of any channel in their media mix, according to HubSpot Blog Research.

For many marketers, it’s still an undiscovered territory, with 16% surveyed saying they plan to use NFTs for the first time in 2022.

“How you think about acquiring customers and the cost of doing that is greatly changed when you’re using different incentives through tokens to build your business,” said Flanagan.

He adds that through Web3 and NFTs, brands get more trackable incentives. So, whether this holds value will depend on the brand and goals.

However, one thing is for sure: It’s definitely worth keeping an eye on.

In April, BeReal – a social media app that hosts many Gen Z users, saw 315% YoY daily download growth. Meanwhile, another popular Gen Z app called Poparazzi is seeing 96,100 downloads per month (just from the Apple App Store.).

And, these apps – which both encourage “authentic” photo-sharing, come a few years after VSCO – another image-sharing app – went viral (particularly among Gen Z demographics).

Haven’t heard of any of these apps? Don’t panic.

Ultimately, we haven’t written much about them for a reason: Because these apps aim to offer safe spaces for users to share their most authentic selves, we don’t really think there’s a place for brands or marketing on them just yet.

So, why are we discussing them now?

At this point, we’ve continued to watch as multiple apps that encourage minimal filtering, authenticity, and unedited content go viral with an influx of Gen Z users. And although marketers might not be a great fit for many of these apps, the trends themselves ultimately bring up themes about Gen Z that marketers will need to know as the group reaches full buying power.

In this post, we’ll discuss some of the newer social platforms used by Gen Z, if you should even be on them, and what to do to continue reaching this group in alternative areas of the web.

3 Newer Social Media Platforms With Large Gen Z Audiences

BeReal.

BeReal. has a perfect 5-star rating in the Apple Store with over 20,000 reviews. The app aims to fight materialism, social media insecurity, and false narratives users of Instagram or other social media platforms might run into by forcing users to publish a photo within a certain time limit and with minimal editing tools each day.

When you create an account on the app, you’re asked to enable your notifications, permit both front and back cameras, and create a username.

Each day at a random time, BeReal will send a notification saying you have 2 minutes to take a photo exactly where you are. You’ll open the app to a camera screen with a ticking timer at the top.

When you press the capture button, the camera will take a picture of what your back camera is facing and a picture of you (or whatever your front camera is facing). You can then add a caption and a location, but you cannot remove either of the images captured or add filters.

Once your image is published either with the “Only Friends” or “Discovery” privacy settings, you’ll either see it in a feed with all of your friends’ photos taken at that relative time – or see it on a public Discovery feed with photos from all other users taken at that same relative time.

After publishing, you can edit your captions or post the photo after the 2-minute time period (if you want to wait til you’re in a more aesthetically pleasing location), but then, the app will show that your photo was published late and/or that your caption was edited for added user transparency.

Does BeReal. have brand potential?

At the moment, BeReal. is quite interesting for consumers and demonstrates a lot of the things Gen Z enjoys on one platform.

Here’s what our very own Gen Z social media manager, Kelsi Yamada says about it:

“It’s almost like a game. You get one notification per day, and can mentally check off a box after you’ve posted. It allows users to connect on one common thing at one time, which is what allowed games like Wordle to absolutely blow up.”

Yamada adds, “In addition to wanting more authenticity on social, I think Gen Z is attracted to these unique ways of connecting and being ‘in’ on the action of getting the notification, getting their post in, and seeing what everyone else posted. It’s a fun thing to look forward to, and there’s an instant gratification element to it, too, since your friends will post within the same 2-minute time window.”

Despite how interesting the platform is for users, we’ll still need to watch it for a bit more time before determining if it will ever be a great place for brands.

From browsing the app, it looks like there are minimal options for marketing offered by the platform itself – which makes sense due to the platform’s authentic, consumer-facing mission. While you could hypothetically create an account for yourself and use your BeReal images to chronicle work at your brand, this could come off as advertorial or over-promotional if done too often.  

However, BeReal. is still worth knowing about and even exploring to get insight into the minds and day-to-day lives of Gen Z.

Poparazzi

Another platform that’s been discussed in the news lately is Poparazzi. A social media app where your friends build your profile. With Poparazzi, you get to create a username and follow your friends or contacts. But, you can’t edit or manipulate your profile or the pictures on it either way.

The platform which aims to discourage selfies, relies on your friends (those who have permission, of course) to post images of you – similarly to how paparazzi photographers capture and publish photos of celebrities. Additionally, as a user, you are also encouraged and able to post pictures of your friends right back.

Once your profile’s created by your friends, it’s easy to find and follow it via the app’s search and contact matching functions. Profiles look very similar to Instagram’s layout, but they’ll contain one feed with photos – called Pops – of you, and one feed of Pops you’ve taken of others.

Does Poparazzi have brand potential?

While this is an interesting social media app, you don’t need to rush to it yet. While you could hypothetically ask fans to Pop influencers, experts affiliated with your brand, or one of your products or store locations, but this might be considered annoying rather than clever on an app like this.

Additionally, despite thousands of positive Apple Store reviews and downloads, Poparazzi isn’t available for Android – meaning millions of people can’t access it yet. While swiping through Poparazzi, or even making your own personal account, could help you get some great insights on the daily lives of Gen Z, there’s no need to pivot your marketing strategy over to this app.

VSCO

In 2019 and 2020, millions of people began posting photos on VSCO instead of Instagram. The low-pressure app, which still claims to be a photo-sharing and editing tool, evolved into an unexpected form of social media with Gen Z usage.

VSCOprovides a low-pressure sharing experience primarily because it allows users to publish images with no caption, like or comment capabilities. All you see when a photo is published is the image, a follow button, the date, and the name of the filter used on the photo.

With no fear of negative conversation, criticism, low like-counts, many users felt VSCO allowed them to explore a creative or more personal side of themselves that they couldn’t show on other mainstream platforms.

Does VSCO have brand potential?

While everyone was buzzing about it years ago, it seems you don’t hear about the platform as much anymore as Gen Z has begun to move on to the next one.

But, the same no-comment, no-text features that made VSCO interesting has also stagnated it’s growth and caused some members of Gen Z to put attention back on Instagram.

My Gen Z sister, Tess, who joined VSCO early on, says the app is “still a thing”, but it’s stayed “more photo editing-focused rather than becoming an actual social media channel.” She adds that the lack of captions, which initially interested her caused VSCO to lose out against social media competitors.

“With Instagram, you give feedback and VSCO lacks that,” she adds.

What Gen Z Social Media Preferences Mean for Marketers

As a marketer who’s probably auditing which platforms will be most effective for you as they evolve daily, we can safely say you don’t need to rush on to any of these yet – even if you are marketing to Gen Z.

However, there are a few themes that you need to recognize if Gen Z will be a future or upcoming audience target.

1. Gen Z craves realness over brand promotion online.

Unlike millennials who struggle with FOMO, material concerns, and can be persuaded to buy products due to brand loyalty, high-budget marketing campaigns, and other factors, Gen Z wants to engage in authentic interactions.

“Social media is like a second language to Gen Z. We grew up with the Internet and social media has pretty much become a primary way of connecting or keeping up with friends,” says Yamada. “Because of that, Gen Z is also great at spotting when a brand is trying too hard, being inauthentic, or just doesn’t get it. I feel like I see a lot of brands fall flat when they try to copy trending content.”

“I would advise brands to either completely commit to going with trends if they fit the brand, or just letting go of the pressure of following trends altogether if it isn’t the right fit.”

Although your marketing campaigns might not a good fit for BeReal, Poparazzi, or other authentic or community-led platforms, you can still leverage the generation’s craving for authenticity to grow a fanbase in this target.

Why? Because this craving for authenticity, realness, and transparency sticks with Gen Z in their product discovery and purchasing behaviors.

While many millennials grew up in long lines waiting for the launch of iPhones, Xbox 360s, or major store brand grand openings, Gen Z members are more likely to research a product, consider word of mouth recommendations, and look at how it compares to cheaper competitors before making large purchases.

Tactics like having customers share reviews or testimonials on social platforms, opening your brand up to honest unboxing or review videos, and offering the most up to date and transparent content about your brand or offerings, as well as your mission, can help Gen Z to realize your brand is worth considering.

2. Gen Z wants new, niche, and more personal experiences.

If you go on TikTok and see hundreds of ads for new, gimmicky products, you might actually be shocked by the subhead above. But, many data points back this up

As Gen Z began to reach buying power in the teens and early 20s, research suggested that they’d be more niche, thrifty, and creative. Today, their interest in less mainstream, but more creative and transparent apps like BeReal, Poparazzi, VSCO, and the rise of TikTok prove these theories.

Even before these platforms came to fruition, we saw Gen Z begin to embrace their personal and creative sides with fake Instagram accounts (or Finstas) that aimed to show another side of them to just a few close friends rather than public followers.

3. Gen Z will almost always experiment with new digital platforms.

Gen Z is the most hyper-connected generation yet – aside from Gen Alpa which will likely beat them in a decade or so. Because of this, when a new social media platform launches or gets even slight popularity, they might try it just to stay in the know.

However, their eagerness in new social media platforms doesn’t mean that every app will become TikTok. And, unfortunately, most brands can’t easily exist or thrive on every single app.

Even on the HubSpot Blog, we take time to think about and strongly vet the opportunities a social app or new platform can provide to brands before we give our time to writing about them.

Ultimately, we’re writing about these apps not because we think everyone should use them, but because they signify shifts from generation to generation. And, while you might not be able to leverage these channels in your marketing campaign, you can leverage authenticity, creative features, transparency, and maybe even the sense of trust that Gen Z is craving from companies (like these platform owners) today.

Which Gen Z Platforms (If Any) are Right for You?

As marketers or business owners, you should vet the opportunities, audiences, and consumer behaviors from platform to platform to determine which social media channels you really need to spend time on. But, you can still take time to learn about the platforms you aren’t going to use by asking yourself:

• Why is our target audience interested or not at all interested in this platform?
• What does it have that other platforms don’t?
• Is there a way we can embrace their needs or preferences in our products, offerings, or campaigns (even if they don’t launch on this social media channel)?

Remember, you can learn a great deal from both platforms you do use (like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or even TikTok) — as well as the platforms you decide not to publish on.  

Social media is one of the best ways to amplify your brand and the great content you’re creating. But it isn’t enough to just post content to social whenever you feel like it – posting at some times performs better than others.

So, what are the best times to post on each social media channel in 2022? We surveyed over 300 social media marketers in the United States and got the answer.

Before we get into the specifics for each platform, it’s important to note that for our survey, we asked respondents to answer in their current time zone – with 38% of respondents located in the Eastern time zone. Keep this in mind as you review the information and see how that is applicable to your brand.

Best Time to Post on Instagram

In 2022, Instagram has surpassed 2 billion monthly users, with most of its base accessing the platform via mobile.

• On average, the best times to post on Instagram across industries are in the mid- to late afternoon, specifically between 6 and 9 p.m., 3 and 6 p.m., and 9 and 12 p.m.
• The best day to post on Instagram is Saturdays. The worst is on Mondays. However, when comparing B2C and B2B brands, the former report Saturdays as the best day while the latter say it’s Friday.
• The worst times to post are:
  • 6 a.m. to 9 a.m.
  • 9 p.m. to 12 a.m.
  • 12 p.m. to 3 p.m.

One industry that reports a lot of success in the 12-3 p.m. time frame is manufacturing and materials, with 50% surveyed saying it’s the best time to post.

Best Time to Post on Facebook

When it comes to best times to post, marketers report almost identical numbers on Facebook as they do on Instagram.

• On average, the best times to post on Facebook across industries are in the mid- to late afternoon, specifically between 6 and 9 p.m., 3 and 6 p.m., and 9 and 12 p.m.
• The best day to post on Instagram is Saturdays. The worst is on Mondays.
• The worst times to post are:
  • 6 a.m. to 9 a.m.
  • 9 p.m. to 12 a.m.
  • 12 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Industries that have more success posting early morning are agriculture, food, and beverage brands, with 50% choosing 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. as the best time to post on Facebook. In addition, 100% of marketers surveyed from travel and hospitality brands also chose this time frame.

Best Time to Post on Twitter

This text-based social media platform is known to draw early morning users who use the app to get their news and night owls looking to share their late-night thoughts.

However, the data suggests that the best time to reach users is the afternoon, between noon and 9 p.m.

• 27% of marketers surveyed say 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. is the best time to post on the platform, followed by 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., then noon to 3 p.m.
• Unlike Instagram and Facebook, Friday is the best day to post on the platform.
• Worst times? Early morning. Specifically 6 a.m. to 12 p.m.

Best Time to Post on LinkedIn

Roughly 28% of U.S. adults use LinkedIn to network and share their professional endeavors. It’s no surprise that it’s the only social platform to report a weekday as one of the top days to post.

• Aim to post on LinkedIn between 6 – 9 p.m., 3 – 6 p.m., or 12 – 3 p.m.
• The best day to post is Saturdays, Sundays, and Wednesdays.
• The lowest-performing days are Mondays and Fridays.

Best Time to Post on Pinterest

• The best times to post on Pinterest are between 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
• The second most popular time is noon to 3 p.m., selected by marketers surveyed in construction, financial services, agriculture, food and beverage, chemicals and metals, consumer product manufacturing, plus travel and hospitality.
• 22% of B2C brands say Sundays are the best days to post on Pinterest, compared to only 6% of B2B brands. Conversely, only 2% of B2C brands chose Mondays versus 13% of B2B brands.

Best Time to Post on YouTube

Over 80% of U.S. adults use YouTube and data from a 2021 Pew Research study suggests that its reach is growing. So, how can you get the best reach on the platform? Let’s dive in.

• Post between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. (31%), 3 to 6 p.m., and noon to 3 p.m.
• 25% of marketers surveyed recommend posting on Saturdays while 23% say Friday is the best day to post.
• Monday through Wednesday are the worst days to post on the platform, along with early mornings from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m.

The most popular time frame for advertising/marketing, electronics, and financial services brands is 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Best Time to Post on TikTok

Since 2020, TikTok has become the go-to short-form video platform for Gen-Z and Millennial consumers.

• The best times to post are 6 to 9 p.m., 3 to 6 p.m., and 12 to 3 p.m.
• For B2B brands, Saturdays and Thursdays are the best days to post. For B2C brands, it’s Saturdays and Sundays.
• Although transportation and financial services brands seem to find success in posting between 6 to 9 a.m., most marketers don’t recommend it.
• The worst day to post on TikTok is Tuesday, followed by Monday, then Thursday.

Creating an Effective Posting Schedule

Although each social network sees its engagement increase at specific hours and days of the week, you’ll still have to tailor your approach to your audience.

Use this data as a guide if you don’t have enough data yet. Once you start posting regularly and have collected data, review it to determine when your audience is most active on the platform and what posting schedule they respond to the most.

You may find that certain content types work better when posted at certain times. For instance, your videos may perform well when posting in the morning while your images may do better in the late afternoon.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in 2017, but was updated for comprehensiveness.

When it comes to building effective social media ad campaigns, the biggest question isn’t “how much should I spend?”

It’s “for every dollar I spend, how much do I get back?”

In other words, it’s all about return on investment (ROI) — how are ad spending and customer conversion linked? Understanding this connection makes it less important how much you spend, and instead lets you focus on the impact of your social ads. In this piece, we’re taking a look at how to measure social media marketing ROI and offering a look at eight tools to help streamline the process.

ROI is a measure of spend versus value: If I spend “X” amount, how much do I get back? The best-case scenario is an ROI greater than one, where companies get back more than they spent on an investment.

Consider a manufacturing company buying a new piece of production line equipment that costs $10,000 but brings in $20,000 worth of revenue each year. The result is a positive ROI and a worthwhile investment. While measuring social media ROI isn’t quite as straightforward since companies need to account for the reach and impact of specific ad campaigns, the underlying concept is the same: Over time, the goal is to get back more than you spend.

While specific measurement timelines and media metrics will differ, the role of ROI remains the same.

How to Measure Social Media Marketing ROI

One of the most popular and data-driven ways to measure social media marketing ROI is through paid advertising. The problem arises, though, when there isn’t a sound strategy in place to yield a positive return on investment.

How does this happen? Typically, social media marketers build an AdWords campaign to rank for important search terms. The campaign drives clicks, traffic, and leads, but ultimately the ad spend outweighs the impact of the ads which is bad news for ROI.

These marketers end up learning a really expensive lesson, one that could be easily prevented by following these simple steps:

1. Develop a Budget.

Ads aren’t right for everyone. Some industries have extremely high competition with astronomical CPCs. Some products have too low of an average sales price for the economics to work.

To determine if ads are worth your time, start by building a budget. This isn’t always an easy task, especially considering the hit many marketing budgets have taken over the past two years. According to Tequia Burt, Editor in Chief of the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Blog, market knowledge is a key component of this process. “As marketing leaders evaluate their budgets and organize their plans for the year ahead,” she says, “a bit of context and clarity can lend helpful structure.”

Consider that 76% of companies plan to boost spending across areas such as branded influencer content, ads in social media stories and ads in social media feeds. Knowing where and when this spending makes the most sense is critical to drive ROI.

Featured Resource: Budget Templates To Manage Your 2022 Spend

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2. Continually Evaluate Ad Performance.

Try not to look at ads as a shortcut. It’s possible to get to a place with ads where they become a recurring source of profit, but typically that’s not how things start.

Don’t be surprised when a week after your campaign launches your ads aren’t generating tons of profit. “Around 80% of businesses online feel that they deliver great assistance via social media, but only 8 percent of their customers agreed,” says John Kopanakis, professor of Business Intelligence at Hellenic Mediterranean University. “Despite putting in a lot of effort, many marketers hardly reach their targeted sales. It is because they struggle to measure the impact of their social media efforts on their sales.”

As a result, incremental improvements in clickthrough rates and conversion rates can have a huge impact on profit. Use the ads calculator to explore the impact these changes could have. Watch your ads like a hawk for the first month and you’ll avoid big mistakes.

3. Make Sure You’re Amplifying the Right Message

Ads act like a megaphone to amplify your marketing campaigns and content. The more complete and well-developed your campaigns are, the better your ads will perform.

As noted by Samuel Bu, Marketing Director at FortuneNote Chinese Business Magazine in a recent LinkedIn Pulse post, it’s also critical to find the right channel for your business. While he highlights LinkedIn as a great way to generate leads and calls out Facebook’s huge impact on the social market, he also highlights challenges with platforms such as Instagram. Why? Bu says “Most likely, Instagram falls short of producing strong ROI due to its more intangible metrics — such as brand awareness, reputation, loyalty, and consumer engagement.”

Think about it: Which ads do you think perform better? Those promoting your homepage or those promoting a remarkable piece of content that helps someone?

Bingo. Those promoting awesome content.

Campaigns that use ads should be treated like other campaigns. Establish your goals first, build great content, focus your message and optimize your landing pages, then figure out how ads can help amplify your message. Taking this combined approach and only using ads as a strategic component of your marketing campaigns will pay off.

How Much Should You Spend on Ads?

Assuming you’ve run the numbers and now know what you can expect in terms of profit and ROI, it’s time to launch a campaign. To do this you’ll have to make two budget decisions, regardless of where you are advertising:

• Total campaign budget or duration: How much do you plan to spend in total? How long will the ads run for? Be aware that if you don’t set a limit there will be no maximum or end date.
• Daily budget: How much do you want to spend a day?

There are two ways most marketers use ads, short-term and long-term. Let’s take a look at both …

Short-term ads. Budget = at least a few hundred dollars over a month.

When marketers use ads for a short-term goal, it’s usually to jump-start a campaign or boost content that needs a bump. These ad spends are generally smaller and shorter, but can be large.

If you have a few hundred dollars to spend, spend it this way. Create a social post that promotes a piece of content and then use your ads to boost the post. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all have good solutions for this. Make sure you use the social network that gives you the best targeting for your persona and returns the most valuable leads. Measure this by assessing the quality of the leads generated after the campaign.

Long-term ads. Budget = at least a few thousand dollars over a quarter.

Ads can be a great solution in a pinch but if you really want to use ads strategically build them into your overall marketing strategy. This means more consistent, quarterly ad spends.

Consider how potential customers make purchase decisions and use ads to influence them. This may mean always relying on search ads or retargeting to make sure prospects find you when they are ready to buy. You’re more likely to accumulate better data taking this approach, which will allow you to get more sophisticated in how you optimize your ad spend.

Given the quickly-changing nature of social media platforms and posts, it’s worth considering social media ROI tools to help stay on top of spend and revenue measurements. Here’s a look at eight great options.

1. HubSpot

The HubSpot Advertising ROI Calculator makes it easy to narrow down when and where it’s worth spending on social ads.

Start by inputting your projected monthly budget, then your expected cost-per-click (CPC), target conversion rate, average sale price and lead to customer rate to get a general idea of your ROI on advertising spend. Use the calculator regularly to reevaluate your campaigns and make sure they’re delivering on key metrics.

2. Hootsuite

Hootsuite also offers a free Social ROI Calculator that lets you input ad spend data to determine potential ROI. While it uses slightly different metrics and has a different setup than the HubSpot version, the general function is the same: Input your data to see where it makes sense to spend on ads and where the return may not justify the investment.

While both offer a solid starting point for ROI, we’re naturally biased toward the HubSpot version.

3. Sprout Social

Next up is Sprout Social. Unlike HubSpot and Hootsuite, you’ll need to sign up for a free trial to access Sprout Social’s ROI calculator. After 30 days, it’s $99 per month if you want to keep using the tool.

Depending on your current ad campaign and ROI goals, however, the cost may be worth it. Sprout’s tool offers message-level insights to see which posts are proving their worth along with follower, engagement, and keyword analytics that cover the entire publishing process from draft to queue to posting.

4. Cyfe

Cyfe provides a set of all-in-one business dashboards that provide insights across key social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Easily monitor what ads are being posted, how they’re performing, and how users are interacting with your campaign efforts.

Cyfe comes with a 14-day free trial. After that, it’s $19 per month for two dashboards and one user.

5. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is familiar, free, and functional. While it doesn’t have the same laser-focus on social media as some other offerings on our list, it comes with the advantage of access to massive data sets, and also helps inform social advertising SEO, which is critical to any effective campaign.

To see how your social ads are performing at a high level, first log into your Google Analytics dashboard. From there, select Acquisition, then All Traffic, then Channels. This will bring up a list of your traffic sources, including those from social sites, in turn helping you get a general sense of how social ads are working to drive revenue.

Featured Resource: The Ultimate Google Ads PPC Kit

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6. Buffer

Buffer is an all-in-one social media marketing and ROI tool that’s designed to simplify the process of measuring and managing ads. The tool streamlines the creation of social ad content and lets you measure impact in just a few clicks to see what’s working, what isn’t, and what needs to improve.

If you’re just getting started with social media ads, Buffer has a free plan that lets you manage up to three channels with basic tools. From there, plans start at $5 per month for “Essentials”, $10 per month for “Team” and $100 per month for “Agency”.

7. Keyhole

Keyhole lets you accomplish two key tasks: Listen to what people are saying about your brand in real-time and monitor the impact of your influencer marketing campaigns.

The first is critical because customer sentiment is a solid bellwether when it comes to ad effectiveness. If the number of people talking about your brand is going up — and if most of what they have to say is positive, you’re on the right track.

Influencer marketing reports, meanwhile, help keep tabs on influencer partners who exist outside your business ecosystem but offer potential benefits for your brand, as long as they’re posting consistently and in line with your messaging.

8. Social Mention

The simplest tool on our list, Social Mention lets you search any keyword or key phrase for recent social mentions.

In practice, companies can use Social Mention to see what’s currently trending and what opportunities exist to target specific keywords, and can then follow up after ads have gone live to see how campaigns are performing.

Getting the Biggest Social Impact for Your Spend

Bottom line? There’s no single way to spend your social marketing budget. Some companies may prefer to keep spending low and handle most of their ads through free platforms and word of mouth, while others are willing to spend top dollar for on-demand results.

Whatever budget you choose and whichever approach you take, however, there’s a common rule of thumb: Ask lots of questions about your ad spend, and make sure ads are performing as intended.

Why? Because even targeting the right market with the right approach, it’s easy to burn through money fast. Safeguard yourself by knowing what to expect, having clear expectations, and using the right tools to measure social ad ROI.

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

Public relations is the practice of creating mutually-beneficial relationships by providing relevant and timely information to an audience that already exists. Content marketing, meanwhile, is all about creating content that attracts and retains new audience members.

While these concepts may seem like opposite ends of the communication spectrum, combining content marketing and PR offers a new approach to lead generation for your organization.

Current Challenges in Lead Generation

Customer acquisition costs (CAC) are on the rise. About 60% of marketers say that their CAC has increased over the past three years, making it more important than ever for companies to both identify potential leads and increase the chances that these leads are quickly converted into paying customers.

Content marketing excels at the second part of this equation. As a result, companies are earmarking more of their marketing budgets for content-based campaigns; as noted by the Marketing Insider Group, the most successful companies now spend up to 40% of their total marketing budget on content-driven campaigns. PR budgets are also growing as companies look to keep existing connections strong — in the U.S. alone, businesses now spend more than 6 billion per year on public relations efforts.

The result? Spending to keep current customers and drive conversions is on the rise. However, for many companies, lead generation is hampered by content nets that are too wide to capture the ideal audience, and PR approaches that focus too much on maintaining the status quo.

On its own, PR is designed to keep current audiences interested and disseminate key information about business operations to relevant news and industry outlets.

By integrating techniques that content marketers use to drive engagement (quizzes, questionnaires or user generated content), it’s possible for PR teams to generate new leads that have existing connections with current audiences in order to capture more of the target market.

How Content Marketing and PR can Work Together

PR and content marketing are two sides of the same coin. Both focus on creating and communicating valuable information — just for two different audiences.

When it comes to PR, the goal is to educate existing audiences, such as loyal customers, stakeholders, and social media followers, about topics of interest. Assets created by public relations teams — such as press releases, white papers, or eBooks — are often posted on news sites or shared with industry publications to reach an audience that’s already listening.

Content marketing teams, meanwhile, focus on consistently creating high-value content that’s both timely and relevant and then sharing this content in hopes of generating new customer interest and expanding the overall audience. Content marketing teams are often responsible for email campaigns that encourage users to click through on new products or download reports; they may also create newsletters and social media posts and coordinate marketing partnerships such as those with social media influencers.

Combining these two approaches makes it possible to find and generate leads that are likely to become loyal customers.

Not sure where to get started with lead generation under a content marketing/PR model? We’ve got you covered with seven strategy options.

1. Find new channels

News travels fast. So fast, in fact, that even digital news outlets often can’t keep up. For businesses, this means that it remains important to submit PR pieces to familiar news sources and industry publications. It’s also worth finding accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn that offer similar news coverage at speed.

By using a combination of familiar and fast-moving options for content distribution, companies can increase their reach and their impact.

2. Combine science and art

While PR’s focus has long been on written content— press releases and white papers that contain the science of data collection and statistical interpretation — there’s a growing demand for visual content that offers a lower bar to entry.

The result? Marrying the in-depth content created by PR teams with more broadly-applicable infographic art developed by content marketing experts will help your content reach the widest audience possible.

3. Repurpose content

When it comes to content marketing and PR combined, there’s nothing wrong with copying yourself, so long as you do it the right way.

Here’s what it looks like in practice: You create a white paper or eBook about a new product, then repurpose this content to create multiple, shorter blog posts. The result? You capture both PR and content markets with similar — but not identical — content.

4. Talk up your accomplishments

Don’t be shy about awards you’ve won or honors you’ve received. Often listed on press releases, companies may be reluctant to mention awards in content marketing efforts for fear of veering too far away from social conversation into sales.

In reality, it’s worth highlighting what you’re good at, both on your website and in any content marketing campaign efforts. While there’s a balance to strike here between self-love and self-awareness, the evolving nature of consumer expectations has customers seeking out brands who have the credentials to back up big claims.

5. Create a reciprocal content framework

Your content doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Consider a white paper used by PR teams and then reposted as a blog and social media link by content marketers. If content teams can prompt engagement from potential customers, such as giving feedback or leaving comments, this can help inform the focus of the next piece of PR content, which in turn gives rise to the next content campaign.

6. Lean on established connections

Both what you know and who you know matters in marketing. It’s worth leveraging PR connections to help drive content strategies. These could be social media influencers, industry experts, or even long-term customers who are willing to share your content.

For influencers, this could mean an ongoing freelancer arrangement that requires a specific number of posts. For long-term clients, discounts or other offers could pave the way for content sharing.

7. Keep communications open

Last but never least in the fast-moving world of consumer purchasing trends? PR and content marketing teams need to stay in constant communication. This both reduces the risk of redundant or outdated content making it to news outlets or onto social media sites and helps ensure that new campaigns are coordinated for maximum effect.

Examples of Content Marketing and PR Lead Generation Strategies

So what does this combination of PR and content marketing look like in practice? Let’s take a look at four real-world examples.

1. Wells Fargo

PR is about digging into the details, while content marketing focuses on the outcome. Both work in favor of Wells Fargo, which donates up to 1.5% of its total revenue to charitable causes every year.

As a press release this is good information, but as part of a larger content marketing campaign, especially during the covid-19 pandemic, it’s a great way for the company to show themselves doing some good and connect with new customers.

2. Ford

Ford is focusing on sustainability and has committed $22 billion for vehicle electrification efforts to help achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. It’s an ambitious goal with a substantial timeline — but it also fits neatly with the current public focus on green initiatives.

By creating a narrative around this sustainable approach, Ford has the potential to reach environmentally-conscious consumers who would have otherwise avoided the popular vehicle maker.

3. Google

Google is also committed to energy reduction but has had more impact on the social side of corporate social responsibility (CSR) thanks to its outspoken CEO, Sundar Pichai, who is willing to engage both industry and world leaders in areas of social responsibility and equality.

As a result, Google is not only able to leverage its massive data resources to deliver relevant PR statistics but can back it up with socially-conscious action that makes for compelling content.

4. Netflix

Streaming giant Netflix offers paid parental leave for parents — most take between four and eight months but they can take up to a year — putting them well ahead of most corporations.

While the parental leave itself is a great talking point, combining information about this program with details about the ongoing success of the company at scale creates a great content narrative, one that could pay significant dividends over time as companies grapple with the ongoing impact of The Great Resignation.

PR and Content Marketing: Making the Most of this Dynamic Duo

PR and content marketing together can bring lead generation opportunities to the table. Public relations offers relevant information for interested parties to help create reciprocal relationships, while content marketing makes it possible to streamline the process of lead-to-customer conversion.

By combining forces, these disparate delivery methods become a dynamic duo, capable of generating leads that are more likely to convert — and more likely to share their experiences with other potential customers.

Want to make the most of this practical pairing? Use PR to establish and reinforce relationships with industry insiders and influencers, then lean on their connections to distribute purpose-built content that helps generate high-quality leads across your target audience.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in February 2010 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

It can be intimidating to create your own infographic when you don’t have a design background. You could always commission an agency or hire a designer — but that can get pricey fast. To create professional-looking infographics and captivate your audience, you can benefit from learning how to create your own infographics in PowerPoint.

PowerPoint can be a marketer’s best friend when it comes to visual content creation. In fact, Infographics are the fourth most used type of content marketing. And it’s plain to see why, marketers who align the topic, content, and style of their infographics with the needs and preferences of their target audiences are still finding success among their audience.

So you may be thinking, where do I start? We’ll guide you through how to create your own infographics and even give you examples of different types you can work with using our 15 fabulous infographic templates for free within PowerPoint.

For better comprehension, we’ll walk through how to make a simple timeline infographic in PowerPoint.

1. In the Design Tab, adjust the Slide Size to best fit your infographic.

To begin making an infographic from scratch, you have to readjust the size of the PowerPoint Slide to give you more space to work with.

Begin by opening a new PowerPoint, in the top navigation bar, click on Design and select Slide Size.

Then in the drop-down menu, select either one of the predetermined sizes or click Page Setup.

Input your preferred width and height dimensions and click OK.

2. Select SmartArt from the PowerPoint navigation bar.

To make a timeline graphic in PowerPoint, suitable for any infographic, open PowerPoint and click Insert from the top navigation bar, then select the SmartArt icon beneath the navigation bar, where you’ll find several categories of graphics to choose from.

3. Find a graphic that fits your data from the Process or Picture menu.

There are two categories of graphics that make effective timelines. The first is the Process category. Click this option to expand the graphics menu shown below. 

Creating Graphics for Timelines

If you’re working to create a timeline infographic, we’ve highlighted in red a few of the most fitting timeline-related graphics.

Aside from the Process menu of graphics, you’ll also find a viable timeline graphic in the Picture category. Select this category and you’ll find the Alternating Picture Circles option near the center of the graphics menu. We’ve highlighted it in red, below.

4. Add or remove data points, time stamps, or other key information.

For the sake of these instructions, we’ll use the Alternating Picture Circles graphic from the Picture menu. Once you’ve inserted this graphic into your first PowerPoint slide, you can add or remove circular icons to match the types of data and inputs you’re presenting.

5. Insert your data into the graphic.

At this point, the size of your timeline graphic should match the amount of data you have. Begin to fill your timeline with the information you plan to report on using this timeline and explore PowerPoint’s excellent drag and drop features to help arrange graphics as necessary.

6. Edit the text and imagery of your SmartArt graphic.

As with the other graphics available in PowerPoint’s SmartArt, you can edit the text and the images associated with your timeline to your liking. As you can see below, we’ve edited the years and the images to better represent what happened at each point in time.

To insert images into your timeline graphic, right-click the square landscape icon, select a graphic From File and upload an image from your computer onto your PowerPoint slide.

To tell your story you can update the time periods in the center circles, replace the placeholder text, and adjust the visuals and colors to your liking. For those latter adjustments, you can choose Insert > Shape in PowerPoint to add in different visuals and use the paint bucket (a.k.a. Color Fill) icon to change the colors of different elements.

You can choose to create the infographic of your liking, adding background colors, more imagery, or other visual elements as you please, but for the sake of guiding you through the basic way to create your own infographic, the example stops here.

But if you’re looking for something more convenient, you can download some of our infographic templates that open directly in PowerPoint so you can get to creating faster.

PowerPoint Infographic Examples

1. Data-Centric Infographic Example

Infographics and data visualization are the peanut butter and jelly of the visual content world.

When you have new data to reveal to the world, you can use an infographic to display that data as part of a cohesive, visual narrative. And that’s exactly what the Data Geek template is for.

We’ve loaded this template with a variety of different charts and graphs, which you can easily update with your own data. (Just right-click on a graph, choose Edit Data, and you’ll be able to customize the values in an Excel spreadsheet.)

What to Add to a Data-Centric Infographic

• Column chart: Use for comparing different categories or for showing changes over time (from left to right).
• Pie chart: Use for making part-to-whole comparisons. (Note: They work best with small data sets.)
• Line graph: Use for showing data that changes continuously over time. Ideal for displaying volatility, trends, acceleration, or deceleration.
• Doughnut chart: Use a pie chart. This stylistic variation allows you to put a number, graphic, or other visual in the center of the chart.
• Bar chart: Use a column chart. (The horizontal bars make it easier to display long category names.)

2. Timeline Infographic

Telling the history of a particular industry, product, brand, trend, or tactic can be a great topic for an infographic. And while there are a variety of different ways that you can visualize time — including in a circle, which is what we did with our Google algorithm updates infographic — the timeline is by far the most common and easiest design method to use.

Timeline Infographic Best Practices

• Research. Research. Research. The best timeline infographics aren’t just beautifully designed — they also tell a great story based on extensive research. So before you start the design phase of your infographic, put in the time to surface the best information possible.
• Narrow the scope: Timelines that cover hundreds or thousands of years can certainly be interesting, but they can also require weeks or months of research. To keep your sanity, stick with shorter time periods.
• Keep your copy concise: Infographics are supposed to be visual. If you find yourself writing 100+ words for each date on your timeline, a blog post may be the better content format.

3. Modern Design Infographic

For this infographic template, we wanted to do something that reflected modern design trends, including using banners and arrows.

In terms of content, we provided plenty of space for both stats and copy. There’s also a column chart at the bottom. But remember, you can always add different charts and graphs to the template wherever you see fit. Just select Insert > Chart … and you’ll have several options to choose from.

Modern Design Infographic Best Practices

• Experiment with new color palettes. There are tons of free color palettes online. Don’t believe me? Do a Google image search of “Color Palette”. When you find a palette you like, drag the image directly into your PowerPoint presentation. Next, select the Color Fill bucket, choose More Colors … and click on the eyedropper icon. With the eyedropper tool, you can select colors from your palette and use them for elements in your infographic.

Take the time to manipulate shapes. PowerPoint has an extensive library of shapes — including banners, ribbons, and arrows — that you can use in your infographic design. By clicking and dragging on the little yellow diamonds that appear on these shapes, you can customize them. For example, you can make the pointy ends of a ribbon longer or shorter, or make the body of an arrow thinner or thicker.

 4. Flowchart Infographic

While on the surface a flowchart infographic may appear simple and fun, a lot of thought and planning needs to go into making sure the different sections logically flow into each other.

In our flowchart PowerPoint template, we created a basic flowchart structure, with positive responses guiding viewers to a conclusion at the bottom left of the infographic and negative responses guiding viewers to a separate conclusion at the bottom right of the infographic.

Flowchart Infographic Best Practices

• Draw out the branches beforehand. Before you dive into PowerPoint, get out a pen and paper and do a rough outline of your flowchart. Test for weaknesses in your logic by answering questions in every possible combination and seeing where you end up. For best results, have a friend or coworker run through the flowchart, too.
• The smaller the scope, the easier the execution. The more questions or stages you add to your flowchart, the more difficult it will be to create (and the harder it will likely be for viewers to understand). So try to narrow the focus of your flowchart.

5. Image-Heavy Infographic

So far, the infographic templates we’ve looked at have relied primarily on illustrations that you can create within PowerPoint. But of course, there’s no reason why you can’t bring external photos and other images into your infographic design.

We’ve created this image-heavy infographic template for that exact purpose. It’s great for comparing different categories, ideas, or results, and since you don’t need to create or customize a lot of shapes, it’s a lot less work.

Image-Heavy Infographic Best Practices

• Use high-quality images. It’s better to scale down a big image (e.g. 2,000 pixels by 2,000 pixels) than to scale up a small image (e.g. 20 pixels by 20 pixels) to fit a particular space. The latter approach will result in images appearing pixelated and grainy.
• Use borders. Adding borders to your images will help make them feel like their part of a cohesive design. In PowerPoint, you can control the size, style, and color of borders under the Format Picture tab.
• Save your infographic as a PNG file. This is a best practice for all infographics but is particularly relevant when publishing an infographic that contains photographs. The PNG extension offers better quality than other options. To save your finished infographic as a PNG file, you simply need to choose File > Save As … and select PNG from the dropdown.

Make an Eye-Catching Infographic Today

The possibilities are endless when you discover how to start creating infographics. You’ll be able to expand your skills as a marketer and create more elaborate content that your audience will be intrigued by and engage with. We hope you found this article useful and that you’ll take the initiative to build your own infographics in PowerPoint.

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

There’s something every single company needs to operate, regardless of the industry or product, and that’s people.

Just as there are professionals who specialize in managing products and services, there’s also a need for human resource management.

Learn what it is and the key functions every HRM needs to operate.

• What is human resource management?
• 5 Main Functions of Human Resource Management
  • Recruitment and Staffing
  • Employee Relations
  • Learning and Development
  • Performance Management
  • Company Culture

Recently, we’ve heard the term “People Operations” used much more frequently than human resources. Are they the same? Not exactly. People ops is technically considered a subset under HR. However, in many companies, they are used interchangeably.

While human resources focus on the structural and legal pillars such as hiring, compliance, compensation, and benefits, people ops look at the cultural implications and focus on things like employee satisfaction, productivity, and diversity and inclusion.

5 Main Functions of Human Resource Management

1. Recruitment and Staffing

When you think of HR, recruitment and staffing is probably the first thing you think about.

HRM requires working hand-in-hand with recruiters to identify top talent, set budgets, conduct background checks, and negotiate compensation and benefits.

In addition, they must be well versed in employment law to know how to comply with federal and state legislation regarding worker rights, discrimination, and more.

HRM also oversees onboarding, the process of integrating a new hire into the company. This involves setting up training, providing equipment and access to necessary software, and team introductions.

Knowing how new employees are responding to them can be helpful in ensuring the employee’s long-term success at the company.

In fact, a 2021 data by Microsoft revealed that new hires are 3.5 times more likely to be satisfied with their onboarding experience if their manager played an active role.

By knowing this information, they can tweak the process to increase managerial involvement in onboarding.

2. Employee relations

A 2021 HBR study found that 89% of workers were not satisfied with their jobs – 85% said that their well-being had declined and 56% said that their job demands had increased.

For HR, that’s a major concern because that can directly lead to high attrition. HR professionals are tasked with identifying these issues through internal NPS surveys, meetings, and other methods, then putting systems in place to address them.

In addition to these responsibilities, conflict resolution is another major aspect of employer-employee relations at the workplace. This can be anything from friction between two employees who don’t get along to a sexual harassment claim.

Human resources management is tasked with investigating these claims and taking appropriate action to maintain a safe workplace for all.

Beyond conflict, a communication standard can also be set by HR to promote transparency and encourage openness. This can look like mandatory weekly one-on-one meetings between managers and direct reports, monthly skip-level meetings, quarterly AMAs, and more.

3. Learning and Development

According to 2021 Glint data, having opportunities to learn and grow is now the top factor that people say defines an exceptional work environment.

The survey also found that employees who rate their culture highly are 25% more likely to be happy at work and 31% more likely to recommend working at their organization.

This is why investing in employees’ development can directly impact a company’s bottom line.

This can look like allocating stipends for role-related courses, providing access to third-party providers, and hosting management training. Having options that cater to both individual contributors and managers is essential to making sure all employees are growing.

Once these programs are up and running, HR must evaluate their effectiveness and make changes as needed.

4. Performance Management

Performance management is another key function of HR, which involves setting performance metrics, review schedules, conduct guidelines, and more.

For instance, what happens if an employee underperforms during the quarter? What are the steps they and their manager can take? This process should be determined by HR.

From probation to termination and everything in between, HRM has it covered.

5. Company Culture

A company’s culture is the set of values, beliefs, and behaviors that define its way of doing business.

Culture is incredibly important because it affects every aspect of a company, from how employees interact with each other to how they serve customers. Unhappy employees make for unhappy customers.

HRM entails figuring out what employees want and care about and balancing them with company resources. For instance, there has been a shift to remote work since the start of the pandemic in 2020.

While this may seem separate from company culture, how easily companies adapted to this shift is representative of their culture.

In 2020, a Glint report found that a sense of belonging is the second-highest driver of work culture, behind opportunities to learn and grow. How do you create that belonging?

That’s where HRM comes in – creating this environment and making sure it’s scalable and flexible.

Human resources management is an essential part of every organization, making sure that their most important asset – the people – has everything they need to succeed.