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Every successful campaign has two things:

Good materials and quality amplification.

Without one or the other, you cannot expect your campaign to succeed.

Even when you have all the elements, however, you still need the right tools.

To compete in this crowded space, B2B marketers need innovative solutions that boost reach and ROI in short order.

It’s this exact reason why ON24 and NetLine have joined forces—to empower enterprise customers with an unprecedented advantage in the digital marketing landscape.

Combining Forces to Reach Net New Audiences

Finding and engaging net-new prospects is crucial for B2B marketers.

Without continuously adding new opportunities to the pipeline, things can go south rather quickly.

But if these net-new prospects don’t see your content, you’ve lost before you’ve even begun.

The partnership allows ON24 clients to boost their webinar and digital experience across NetLine’s vast B2B content syndication lead generation network to increase total registrations.

By teaming up, these two powerhouses are paving the way for B2B marketers to achieve unparalleled results, supercharging their reach and ROI.

Why This Partnership Matters

With the growing demand for seamless, effective, and data-driven omnichannel strategies, this partnership aligns perfectly with the needs of today’s marketer.

According to McKinsey & Company, B2B companies with the best omnichannel experiences improve their market share by 10% annually.

In short, the companies with the best CX win.

NetLine and ON24 aim to simplify this process and expedite the time it takes for brands to reach the right buyers through webinars and digital experiences.

ON24’s Chief Marketing Officer, Callan Young, acknowledges the challenges modern enterprises face when trying to engage and convert today’s buyers effectively.

“To effectively engage and convert today’s modern buyer, enterprises need to deliver high-value content across multiple digital channels,” Young said. “But, executing an omnichannel strategy takes time and bandwidth that teams today just don’t have.”

With the ON24 and NetLine partnership, these challenges are addressed head-on.

How This Partnership Empowers B2B Marketers

So, what can B2B marketers expect from this powerful collaboration? Here are some key highlights:

1. Expanded Audience Reach
   • B2B marketers can now promote upcoming webinars and digital events through content syndication, reaching a broader audience and increasing visibility.
2. Improved Lead Quality
   • Thanks to NetLine’s extensive targeting features, clients can reach specific audiences by location, industry, job level, job area, and more. Powered by first-party data, this partnership ensures your leads are more relevant and valuable.
3. Streamlined Processes
   • ON24 and NetLine provide a direct integration with CRM and marketing automation platforms, simplifying lead flow management and enhancing overall efficiency.
4. Content Repurposing
   • Marketers can repurpose content by promoting on-demand webinars and other assets to new audiences, maximizing the value of their existing materials.
5. Maximized ROI
   • Distributing content across a network of media publications allows marketers to improve their cost-per-lead and enhance their return on investment.

First-Party Data: The Key to Expedited Deals

As mentioned, this partnership provides customers with access to first-party data.

Thanks to naturally being closer to a buyer’s desires, first-party data is a valuable asset that can expedite deal closure and drive meaningful results for businesses.

David Fortino, NetLine’s Chief Strategy Officer, emphasized the power of combining NetLine’s robust content syndication network with ON24’s digital engagement platform.

“We are equipping our customers with access to first-party data that can expedite deals,” Fortino said. “This powerful combination will be a game-changer for marketers, enabling them to provide their audiences with highly relevant content and drive meaningful results for their businesses.”

Accelerate Your B2B Marketing Through this Partnership

In a world where B2B marketing success is measured by the ability to engage and convert the whole buyer effectively, the ON24 and NetLine partnership is a sanctuary from the black hole of modern marketing.

It empowers B2B marketers with the tools they need to deliver highly relevant content, streamline processes, and achieve remarkable results.

As the digital marketing landscape continues to evolve, ON24 and NetLine stand ready to help B2B marketers supercharge their reach and ROI, ultimately advancing their success in the competitive world of enterprise marketing.

For more information on our partnership, please visit our Newsroom.

Taylor Swift is one of the biggest stars in music with an incredibly engaged fan base. Over the years the singer has generated as much interest in her personal life as she has in her music, and her most recent relationship is no exception.

News recently broke that Swift is dating Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. Swift has been photographed attending some of Kelce’s games in his suite with family and friends, and the NFL immediately jumped on the opportunity to use her appearances as marketing moments.

How the NFL Used Taylor Swift in Its Marketing

The NFL frequently updates its social media profiles to highlight key games happening that week. Recently on Instagram and X, the NFL highlighted Swift’s attendance at Chiefs games to generate interest and engagement.

During her second game appearance, the cameras cut to her 17 times throughout the game. Featuring her so many times created excitement among her fan base who likely tuned in hoping to see her.

Why is the NFL doing this?

Taylor Swift’s fan base, also known as “Swifties” are some of the most engaged fans in pop culture. Swift’s Eras tour was one of the year’s most popular attractions, generating $2.2B in North America.

With her entering WAG territory, her fans are now interested in football. The recent Chiefs-Jets game she attended averaged 27 million viewers, making it the second-highest-watched game of the regular season. Viewership among teen girls (a firm demographic in Swift’s fan base) is up 53%.

Kelce has also benefitted from the frenzy. Sales of Kelce’s jersey saw a 400% spike after news broke of the relationship, and he’s gotten an influx of Instagram followers.

Is it too much too soon?

What started off as lighthearted coverage reached a bit of a saturation point, as voiced by Kelce. Like many celebrity pairings, there is also speculation that the relationship is fake and purely for PR.

While the longevity and authenticity of the relationship are TBD, the NFL will likely continue capitalizing on the moment as long as it can.

I fly Southwest Airlines almost exclusively. They offer reasonable prices, make racketing points easy, and always have fun and kind flight attendants.

One thing I’ve noticed about Southwest is their branding is on point.

Whether I’m booking a flight on their mobile application, being served my go-to in-flight ginger ale, or walking through the terminal at Midway Airport, I’m surrounded by Southwest’s consistent brand colors, messaging, and imagery.

This is an example of integrated marketing at work. If you’re interested in presenting a cohesive, consistent brand experience that leaves your products or services top-of-mind — like Southwest does — this guide is for you.

Read on to learn more about integrated marketing and how to create your own campaign.

 

 

Imagine discovering a new brand on Instagram and visiting the company’s website to purchase one of its products. If their website promoted a different message or campaign than the one you found on their Instagram account, you’d have a hard time understanding the gist of the brand, right?

Integrated marketing exists to eliminate these disparities and differences regardless of how or when a customer interacts with your brand. It’s similar to multi-channel marketing, except integrated marketing aligns the message you share on all those channels.

Regarding channels, integrated marketing doesn’t apply to just your inbound or digital marketing channels; it also includes traditional media channels. Many integrated marketing examples we’ll review below incorporate conventional marketing channels such as print, radio, and TV ads.

Now, let’s talk about integrated marketing campaigns.

Why are integrated marketing campaigns effective?

While integrated marketing campaigns can differ in their goals (e.g., converting views, building brand awareness, etc.), they should all have one component in common: to align your marketing channels to present a united marketing “front”.

If your marketing channels are players, consider your integrated marketing campaign the coach in charge of running plays and helping your channels work as a unified system — not disparate ones.

It’s also more effective to run integrated marketing campaigns than campaigns on individual channels. Integrated marketing campaigns are impactful for a few reasons:

• They reach a wider audience than a single marketing channel.
• They have a greater chance of being seen on multiple channels, thus keeping your brand top-of-mind and pushing visitors closer to conversion.
• They build trust with visitors as they see a consistent message on multiple channels.
• They save you money since assets are shareable between and repurposed for different marketing channels. Depending on your campaign, customers can help you market your product or service for you.

So, how can you build your integrated marketing campaign? Follow these steps to get started.

1. Establish your overarching campaign goal.

Before you consider what channels will be part of your integrated marketing campaign, you must consider the goal of the entire campaign.

Maybe you’ve launched a new product, service, or initiative and want to get it in front of customers — like Southwest’s Transfarency. Perhaps you’ve rebranded and wish to broadcast your new message — like Old Spice’s Smell Like a Man, Man. Maybe you’ve chosen a new positioning tagline and want your audience to start associating your brand with it — like Snickers’ You’re Not You When You’re Hungry.

(Don’t worry, we’ll dig deeper into these examples later.)

Whatever your campaign goal may be, always remember to make it SMART. This will help you stay focused, track your campaign success, and learn how to improve the next time.

These goals should also relate to at least one of the following key performance indicators (KPIs) and their subsequent metrics, which you can track when you launch your campaign.

KPI	related Metrics
Traffic/reach	Unique page views by channel and source
Engagement	Bounce rate; average time on page
Top (and falling) content	Top page views; top exits
Impact	Click-throughs; conversions; backlinks
Sentiment	Comments; social shares
Lead generation	Total leads; total sessions; session to lead conversion rate
Sales	Lead to marketing qualified lead (MQL); MQL to sales qualified lead (SQL); customer purchase/closed-won business

Also, while increased engagement and new leads are always exciting, a multi-channel campaign should consider the bigger picture: how your campaign impacts sales opportunities and business revenue. Take a moment to map out how you want your campaign to impact your bottom line, too.

2. Choose your marketing channels and set goals for each one.

Now that you know your overarching integrated marketing campaign goal, you probably have a better idea of what channels (if not all of them) can help you reach that goal.

For example, if you want to roll out a new logo and branding suite, you don’t necessarily need to leverage radio ads. On the other hand, if you’re extending your audience to target a new geographic region or city, radio ads, billboard ads, TV ads, and other local channels may come in handy.

Choosing your channel(s) all boils down to what you’re trying to achieve through your integrated marketing campaign. There are 10 major marketing “channels” that you can use to distribute your campaign content.

• Advertising (both print and PPC)
• Direct marketing
• Email marketing
• PR
• Personal selling
• Sales promotions
• Digital marketing (e.g., website, content marketing, and SEO)
• Social media
• Events and sponsorships
• Packaging

Your integrated marketing campaign should include a variety of marketing channels to reach the widest audience and drive home your campaign message. If you see one or more channels plateau, don’t hesitate to add, remove, or test new ones.

3. Define your buyer personas by channel.

Every marketing channel targets its specific buyer persona. For this reason, instead of defining a broad persona for your campaign, you must define your audience by channel.

There will inevitably be some overlap, but it’s wise to understand exactly who you’re talking to on each medium and how to tailor those specific assets to be the most successful.

Note: With some campaigns, you may be targeting a specific audience. In this case, flip steps 2 and 3 — define your buyer persona(s) first and then decide which channels can help you reach that audience.

Download our free Persona Templates to organize your audience segments and quickly strengthen your marketing.

4. Identify your channel managers.

Depending on the size of your marketing team, you may have different people (or entire groups) in charge of other channels. When running a multi-channel marketing campaign, you must determine who specifically will ensure their channel(s) align with the campaign.

This is important for two reasons: 1) the manager is the expert on their channel (e.g., audience, posting cadence, optimization tactics, reporting strategies, etc.) and will know how to tailor the campaign content to be the most successful; and 2) putting one person in charge of all channels may be overwhelming and will cause the content and campaign to suffer.

You may have a more minor marketing team where one person handles multiple channels. Regardless of your team size, do your best to share channel management responsibilities across a few people — ideally, with one person running one or two channels.

5. Create adaptable marketing assets and messaging.

You have your campaign goal, target audience(s), and marketing channels. It’s now time to create your integrated marketing campaign content. This stage is where copywriting, graphic design, and other creative processes come into play.

Before I dive into how, let’s talk about an essential component of integrated marketing content: adaptability. To keep your campaign consistent (and ease your workload), you should be able to repurpose any content to use on different channels.

For example, let’s say your integrated marketing campaign focuses on the launch of a new 3-minute brand video. You could repurpose this video into:

• 30-second and one-minute “trailer” videos
• Still images
• Quotes
• GIFs
• Hashtags
• Blog posts
• Soundbites

As you develop and repurpose these creative assets, keep them aligned with your brand guidelines and consistent with each other. Create your brand guidelines for your integrated marketing campaign to share with your team and any channel managers.

This documentation could include a few things:

• Visual guidelines (logo, color palette, typography, etc.)
• Any developed and repurposed assets in multiple file formats
• Voice and tone guidelines (taglines, preferred language, words to avoid, etc.)
• Messaging guidelines (pain points, goals, types of content, resources, etc.)
• Buyer persona information and guidelines

Integrated marketing is all about a consistent brand experience. Be sure your campaign assets reflect that, regardless of what channel your audience visits or sees.

6. Establish your plan for collecting leads.

Whether or not you intend your campaign to collect leads, you should always be ready to receive them. You don’t want to leave this as an afterthought once you launch your campaign. Even if you’re simply campaigning to raise awareness of your brand, consider how your visitors might convert to leads — and, eventually, customers.

First, consider how a visitor might convert to a lead. Would they subscribe to your newsletter? Or input their information to download a content offer? Or create an account on your website? Ensure these conversion aspects of your campaign are also on-brand with the rest of your visual and messaging assets.

Next, consider how your leads will be nurtured once they convert. Would they roll into an automated email workflow? Would you pass them along to Sales? However you go about this step, make sure your leads aren’t forgotten once they willingly give over their information.

As always, communicate with Sales to confirm that they’re aware of your campaign and on board with your plan for new leads and customers.

7. Launch, measure, and iterate your campaign.

Ready to launch your integrated marketing campaign? It might be time to put your campaign to work — but it’s not time to rest.

Remember those KPIs and metrics from step one? Whichever KPIs relate to your overarching campaign goal (e.g., boosting brand awareness, rebranding, new product, etc.), start tracking those subsequent metrics each week, month, and quarter (depending on how long your campaign is running) to see how successful it is at reaching your goal.

As always, apply what you learn from each integrated marketing campaign to future campaigns. With the right strategies, managers, and tools, you can create a never-ending cycle of integrated marketing campaigns — and wins.

Integrated Marketing Strategies and Best Practices

As you construct your integrated marketing campaign, there are a few key strategies and best practices to remember. We’ve detailed them here, and they apply regardless of your chosen media, channels, or goals.

Align behind the scenes.

For you to successfully implement an integrated marketing approach, it’s imperative that you not only choose marketing channel managers but that all your marketing managers also communicate often about projects and campaigns.

While not every integrated marketing campaign or promotion needs to be on all your channels, they should complement each other to avoid a fragmented brand experience for customers.

Consider the channel transition.

Integrated campaigns receive traffic from several sources — and pass along those sources like a game of Hot Potato. Consider how a visitor may view/experience each marketing channel: 1) if it was their first visit and 2) if they transitioned from another channel. Think about how each channel can help others convert.

For example, say a customer saw your new billboard on their way to work and, once they arrived, visited the website on the billboard. Imagine if, on your website, the customer couldn’t easily find whatever your billboard was marketing. How confusing would that be? That customer would likely drop off immediately.

Don’t neglect the small overlaps.

When preparing to launch your integrated marketing campaign, it’s tempting to think about each channel and its respective media assets. However, this thought process inherently goes against the ethos of integrated marketing. Integrated marketing exists to eradicate the silos of traditional marketing and bring together a cohesive campaign experience.

For this reason, don’t neglect the places in which your campaign overlaps. Here are a few examples:

• Your email signature, where you can plug your social media handles, website URL, or video links
• Your social media bios and posts, where you can include links to your website, blog posts, content offers, or other digital content
• Your blog and website, where you can incorporate social sharing buttons
• Your standalone landing pages, where you can optimize for relevant keywords and SEO
• Your PPC copy, where you can test subject lines to see what your audience responds to

While these overlaps might not directly support your campaign goals, they help your audience transition seamlessly between channels, enjoy that consistent, cohesive brand experience, and ultimately find their way to a page that converts them.

Every marketer knows how much you can learn from those before you. In this section, we’ve pulled together a handful of well-executed integrated marketing campaigns to give you an example of this tactic’s success.

1. Smell Like a Man, Man by Old Spice

For years, I associated Old Spice with something only my dad or grandfather would wear. I remember the old, white bottle of aftershave with the faded pirate ship that used to sit in my dad’s cabinet.

 

But Old Spice didn’t stop at the TV commercial. They also included their website, product pages, Instagram, YouTube, and other channels in their campaign.

No, they don’t all feature the specific characters or taglines from the original TV spots (remember, the campaign launched almost 10 years ago). Still, they reflect the same tone, theme, and brand, thus giving customers a consistent brand experience across all media.

2. Transfarency by Southwest Airlines

I discussed Southwest Airlines’ consistent branding at the beginning of this article. One campaign that stands out is their Transfarency movement, which introduced a new word that marketed Southwest as an airline with straightforward pricing and no hidden fees.

The campaign initially launched in 2015 and remains an enduring airline brand staple. 

Southwest has used almost every possible marketing channel to broadcast this campaign: a dedicated landing page on which you can purchase tickets, print advertisements posted along airport walls and tucked behind airplane seats, a slew of video spots, and plenty of user-generated content on their social media.

3. You’re Not You When You’re Hungry by Snickers

Snickers is one of my favorite chocolate bars, so I paid close attention when I started to see commercials for their You’re Not You When You’re Hungry advertisements.

Launched at the 2010 Super Bowl, this Snickers campaign has remained top-of-mind for chocolate and candy lovers everywhere.

 

One reason for this is the campaign’s humor. Still, the other, more pertinent reason is that Snickers pasted this movement everywhere — on its website, social media, TV, print ads, and more- including plenty of celebrities. 

By presenting an aligned, cohesive, integrated marketing campaign, customers now think of Snickers when craving a sweet snack — and the company has benefitted.

4. Share a Coke by Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola’s Share a Coke campaign was unique in that the company put its customers front and center by featuring names and fun phrases on its product. This created endless advertising angles and led to unlimited user-generated content from customers wanting to share products with their names. The #ShareaCoke hashtag was shared via 500,000+ customer photos.

When this campaign was at its height, I took pictures of and even bought Cokes featuring the names of my friends and family. It seems that others did the same — the campaign increased Coke consumption from 1.7 billion to 1.9 billion daily servings.

5. Grow Better by HubSpot

HubSpot has countless digital properties — its blog, website, social media channels, and SaaS products. This level of variety requires a lot of consistency in messaging and marketing.

HubSpot recently set its ultimate vision to help customers grow better — all customers on all channels. To promote this messaging, it updated all content to reflect this vision.

The message may be short, but the impact is significant. However, wherever customers interact with HubSpot, its integrated marketing has ensured that they know how HubSpot operates — and why they should become a customer.

Creating Your Marketing Plan

As you can see, planning is the key to successful integrated marketing. If you need extra guidance through the planning process, HubSpot offers a free marketing template to help set you off on the right track. 

 

The template includes: 

 

• A business summary 
• Business initiatives 
• Target marketing 
• Market strategy 
• Budget 
• Marketing channels 
• Marketing technology 

 

Budgeting a structuring your marketing plan is made simple with this template. 

Integrated Marketing Helps You Grow Better

Integrated marketing turns your marketing campaigns into multi-channel movements. In today’s omnichannel world — with consumers encountering your brand online, on social media, and on their daily commutes — integrated marketing is more important than ever to capture new customers and build brand recognition and loyalty.

Implement these steps and strategies for your next integrated marketing campaign, which will surely be successful.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

 

If you want to drive organic traffic to your website, you must understand two critical aspects of SEO strategy:

• Relevance
• Authority

With relevance, the key is knowing what your audience is searching for and providing the highest quality and most relevant content so it’s a no-brainer for Google to serve it up to them.

But this isn’t an exact science.

You could create the best content out there from your perspective, but it’s a competitive landscape, and Google takes myriad other factors into account when ranking pages on the SERPs.

One of those is how authoritative or trustworthy the provider of that content is.

You might think that “authority” is subjective, but Google has one critical way to measure it: backlinks.

Why are backlinks important?

While there are 200 known Google ranking factors, backlinks are key to Google search.

That’s because a link to another website is more than just a link — it’s a vote of confidence, a recommendation, a way for publishers to say to their readers: “Here’s a source I trust. Go check it out yourself.”

It’s incredibly difficult to get that kind of endorsement, especially for small businesses or startups.

But if you want to boost your SEO performance, you must ensure you consistently earn high-quality backlinks to your website, better and faster than your competition.

Additionally, Gabi Theard, former Director of Marketing at Trujay, says:

“A link-building strategy doesn’t just increase your SEO score and visibility on Google.

It also shows readers where your company falls in relation to other brands — and reminds readers that there is, in fact, a human behind the screen. Backlinks can demonstrate a relationship between two sites and how each works to help the other grow.”

“Plus, backlinks help readers get the highest degree of information that answers their questions.”

High-Quality Backlinks

Keep in mind, though, that not all backlinks are created equal. If you think of a backlink as a vote of confidence, it only makes sense to also evaluate the credibility of that vote.

In the past, tactics such as link farms, PBNs, and comment spam allowed black-hat SEOs to create vast backlink profiles and successfully game the system.

However, these black-hat link-building techniques no longer work because Google has gotten savvy to them. In fact, too many “unnatural” links may even earn your site a penalty.

In other words, quality matters just as much as quantity when it comes to backlinks.

Specialists at Editorial.Link, a high-end backlink-building agency, claims: It is not necessary to have hundreds of links pointing to your website.

In fact, even obtaining 20-30 high-quality links can significantly boost your website’s ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). Sheikh Shadi Shuvo, the founder of Desire Marketing, explains, “Building links is an art, and focusing on high-quality links over quantity helps to boost ranking on search engine results immediately and using niche edits/links insert technique is the fastest way to build quality links.”

Earning high-quality backlinks is probably the most challenging part of SEO. You’ll want links that are:

• Authoritative – The site has an authoritative backlink profile (many votes of confidence), generates a lot of traffic, and even ranks well in the SERPs itself. In addition, .gov and .edu sites tend to carry more weight, as do industry-leading sites.
• Relevant – The referring page tackles a similar topic or niche. e.g. If your technology company’s homepage gets a backlink from a blog post on “how to golf,” this would not be seen as a relevant or quality backlink.
• Unique – You will get an edge if the site refers to you but does not refer to your competitors. Otherwise, the backlink may be good to have, but it’s table stakes.
• Natural – The link is not sponsored, the anchor text is not branded or spammy, and the referring page has a natural number of links on it.

For a real-world example of a company that utilized these backlinking rules to rise to the top of the search pages, check out our video case study on Glassdoor.

As an SEO strategist specifically focusing on link building at HubSpot, I’m no stranger to the challenge of finding high-quality sources that will link back to your site.

To help you improve your company’s SEO ranking, I’ve cultivated this list of creative and unique ways to earn backlinks.

1. Reclaim Unlinked Mentions

Reclaiming unlinked brand mentions is probably the easiest, quickest way to build high-quality backlinks.

All you need to do is keep an eye on who is mentioning your brand, on blogs or in the news. You can do that using something as simple (and free) as Google Alerts.

If you want more insights into your mentions, like the number of shares or the domain authority of the website where the mention comes from, you can opt for tools like BuzzSumo, Ahrefs Content Explorer, or Mention.

Image Source

Oftentimes, you’ll notice the author hasn’t included a link back to your website when they mention your brand, product, or service. That’s when you can send them a quick note, asking for a proper link attribution.

This also allows the publisher to give their readers a better experience, letting them click through and learn more about the brand mentioned. It’s a win, win.

The creative part of this tactic is that you can use the same method to reclaim links for other mentions that are related to your brand — including events you organize, employees’ names, research reports, etc.

For example, you can keep a lookout for interviews that feature your company’s executives and ask for a link back to their profile page on your website.

Or, you can look for mentions of reports or statistics you’ve published and ask for a proper link attribution to the original source.

Stewart Dunlop, the founder of the link-building agency, LinkBuilder.io, explains why this method works so well:

“Nowadays, website owners and editors are bombarded by link builders using low-quality outreach strategies. Fortunately, for those willing to take the time to send polished and well-thought outreach emails, this presents a real opportunity.

The beautiful thing about unlinked mentions is that the website you’re reaching out to has already mentioned your brand, so there’s a real reason for your being in their inbox.

A polite and friendly email is often enough to do the trick, and our win rate for this type of campaign is considerably higher than any other type of link-building strategy.”

2. Get Contextual Links

Have you noticed how some articles feature additional resources, either recommended in text or inside a “Read more” section?

Here’s an example of a “read more” section from SEJ, where they link to a related piece:

These links embedded in the text of an article are called contextual links.

The key to getting contextual links is to find the right link prospect to reach out to. You can find them by researching articles that are related to the content you’re promoting and already have a “Read more” section.

For instance, let’s say you have a new study on email marketing. Try looking for articles that speak about marketing trends and recommend other articles.

Here’s how to find them using search engines like Google:

• marketing trends inurl:blog intext:”Read more”
• marketing trends inurl:blog intext:”Recommended articles”
• marketing trends inurl:blog intext:”Recommended reading”

When you reach out to the author to pitch your study, don’t forget to mention why your content is worth getting featured. A persuasive boilerplate and a personalized email will go a long way.

Additionally, Theard says: “Once you get into the habit of earning backlinks, you may start to notice that other publishers come to you directly. With the right relationship-building strategy, publishers come to you rather than you inquiring to them.”

She adds:

“Relationship-based backlinks are critical, as opposed to simple (and frequent) link exchanges. Google can, and will, pick up on backlink publications that are whimsy; a backlink for a backlink is not a good backlink.

A relationship-based backlink is accepted by Google through relevant keywords, the credibility of websites, and genuine effort to have website referrals be at the top of calibers.”

3. Get “Best X” List Mentions

Today’s consumers look for all available options before making a purchasing decision. They often use comparison websites or articles, like “The Best Free Email Marketing Software: An Honest Roundup,” to see what others recommend.

To understand how popular these Best X articles are in your industry, use a keyword research tool and check for monthly search volume.

For instance, there are more than 3,400 searches per month for the query “best CRM for small businesses” (according to data from Ahrefs).

Getting mentioned in articles that list the best products like the one you offer is a fantastic way to reinforce your brand, get more people to try out your product, and, of course, earn high-quality backlinks.

Alex Birkett, former Senior Growth Marketing Manager at HubSpot, explains why getting featured on these lists is so important for your business:

“If you look at these search results in terms of pure click-through rate, there’s an upper limit on how much traffic you can bring to your own product page by ranking on your own site’s listicle.”

Birkett continues to say:

“As Nick Eubanks has mentioned, if you can broaden your view from trying to rank #1 to trying to monopolize all of the sites on the first page of a search query, you can multiply the amount of click-throughs to your site, your website traffic, and, down the line, your sales volume.

And that’s not even factoring in the less trackable aspects, such as social proof and brand awareness.”

Birkett says, “In other words, this tactic goes beyond just link building and taps into acquisition and brand awareness potential, too.”

To get your product or service included in a list round-up, start with a simple Google search to find high-ranking blogs that write about your product or industry.

Here are some useful search terms to help you find relevant prospects:

• Best [X]
• Best [X] for [Y] e.g. Best CRM for entrepreneurs
• Top [X]
• Top [X] for [Y] e.g. Top 10 CRM for small businesses

Collect the most relevant prospects in a list and prioritize them based on domain authority (or Domain Rating if you’re using Ahrefs), backlink profile, ranking, and referral traffic potential.

Once your final list is ready, write a short pitch for the author to show them why your product or service deserves to be included in their list.

As per any outreach campaign, a short, persuasive pitch and a customized email will help you stand out.

4. Become a Source for Other Publishers

By using your expertise and unique data, you can become a source for other bloggers and journalists.

Every time someone quotes you, you’ll earn a backlink. But high-domain authority backlinks aren’t the only benefit of this tactic (although they are a huge benefit on their own).

By becoming a trusted source, you’ll increase your brand awareness and drive referral traffic to your website.

Best of all, it isn’t as difficult as you may think.

To start, simply subscribe to HARO (Help A Reporter Out). This is a free service that connects expert sources (like yourself) with bloggers and journalists who are looking for contributors.

Here’s how it works — every day, HARO will send you an email with queries from writers in your industry. You can pick the ones that resonate with your business and respond via email, including your credentials.

Speed is very important here, as most of these writers get many submissions. If you’re among the first to respond, you have a bigger chance to be seen and selected for the final piece.

If you’re selected, you’ll likely receive an email from a journalist or blogger letting you know the article is live.

For instance, here’s an email I got a few days after I submitted a quote on HARO:

From my experience with HARO, it takes about four weeks for an article to get published after you send your response.

Even if you don’t receive a follow-up email from the writer, keep an eye on the publication to see if your quote makes it into the piece.

I found that, on average, two out of 10 answers get picked up. That isn’t too bad, but if you’re like me, you don’t want to waste those eight other answers that don’t get to be published.

To ensure you still use those quotes elsewhere, I suggest you create a backlog of content and use it to answer similar questions on Quora, LinkedIn, or even your own blog or social channels.

5. Reach Out to Journalists

Bloggers and journalists are bombarded with emails pitching them information that is too promotional and doesn’t add value to their readers. That’s why many outreach emails don’t get any responses.

However, there are effective methods to make your pitch stand out. Paddy Moogan, Co-Founder of Aira, explains how his team uses this tactic successfully to earn high-quality backlinks for their clients:

“We take an individual from a client’s company, usually the founder, Managing Director, or CEO (although it can be anyone, really) and get them to provide us with their views and opinions on a set of topics.

These topics should be a sweet spot between what their company is credible to talk about, and general newsworthy topics.

Classic examples at the moment are things such as what Brexit means for the X industry or what the future of X industry is in the world of AI or automation.

These broader topics are being talked about a lot in the press, so tying it to a topic that your client can talk about allows you to approach journalists and offer their comments for any upcoming articles.

They often link to you because of this and will also often link to profile pages on your client’s website, as well.”

Jeff Previte, Content Manager at Bluleadz, also told me a tip on how their agency stands out when pitching journalists:

“When we conduct outreach for new link-building opportunities, we like to use HubSpot video in our emails. We record a short video introducing ourselves and our company.

After the introduction, we briefly explain how our content can deliver value to their audience and suggest what they can link to. This lends a human element. Most link-building outreach comes from cold email templates.

With a video, we give recipients a name, a face, and a voice they can associate with our company. That small touch helps us stand out.”

6. Update Old Content

If you find an article or a research report that hasn’t been updated in a while, check how many backlinks the piece has. If there are many publications referencing that content, then you find yourself a real gem.

You can simply go ahead and create a better, fresh piece with more relevant data.

Once the content is live, you can then reach out to bloggers or journalists who’ve linked to the old content to let them know about your updated version.

Oftentimes, you’ll see the results of your outreach in a matter of days or weeks in the form of backlinks or social media shares. But there are also other benefits that come out of building that relationship in the first place.

For instance, you might end up collaborating on other projects that can help you grow your brand and your traffic.

Ultimately, when building your email outreach list, have a long-term benefit in mind and try building a relationship — instead of just focusing on the backlink.

7. Build Free Tools

Creating free tools, like calculators or template generators, is an effective method for earning links and even generating new leads.

In a nutshell, here’s how to get started:

1. Start with keyword research and see what comes up for “templates”, “tools”, or “generator” in your industry.
2. Check out what tools appear in Top 10 search results for those keywords.
3. Try to figure out which tool or generator receives the most backlinks right now.
4. Build something similar but way better, e.g. better design, more customizable options, etc.

For example, take HubSpot’s Email Signature Generator. There are over 29,000 searches for “signature generator” on any given month on Google, and our tool offers a very simple, aesthetically pleasing solution.

Since we launched it, it’s been highly used and recommended, having earned over 5,520 backlinks from 1,168 referring domains.

8. Publish Ultimate Guides

An Ultimate Guide is a piece of content designed to be the best, most comprehensive resource on a given topic. It covers enough information that you don’t need to go elsewhere to learn more about that subject.

Here are two examples from our own blog:

• The Ultimate Guide to Video Marketing
• The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing

The reason why these Ultimate Guides attract inbound backlinks is because they help bloggers and journalists reference a concept they mention.

For instance, if someone writes an article titled “How to get started with SEO”, they can focus on a few tips and tactics without explaining, in-depth, what SEO is — instead, they can simply link to an SEO Ultimate Guide if their readers have further questions.

Here’s an example:

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Alex Birkett, Senior Growth Marketing Manager at HubSpot, uses this approach with his personal blog, as well.

Here’s how he explains it: “An Ultimate Guide doesn’t have to explicitly tell you it is an Ultimate Guide. It must go above and beyond in its utility or perceived value.”

“For example,” Birkett continues, “I recently wrote a 6,500-word guide on A/B testing. It ranges from beginner issues all the way through advanced topics and fringe cases.

Basically, it’s a bookmarkable article for anyone who runs A/B tests. Not only did it get a really solid initial spike of traffic from social shares, but it consistently gains organic links month-by-month.”

9. Use Images to Earn Links & Mentions

Infographics are probably the most common visual asset used to earn backlinks. It’s always good to experiment with them, if you haven’t done it before.

However, if you feel infographics don’t work well for your brand, here are a few other visuals you might consider creating:

• Charts and graphs with original data
• Diagrams to visually explain complex concepts
• One-page templates
• Free photo galleries for others to use

To give you an idea of how other brands use free photo galleries, check out this creative campaign from LinkedIn: The Real Face of Sales. The brand has created a free downloadable library of photos that feature real, non-cliche salespeople.

The photos are also available on Unsplash and Pexels (where they got over 35 million views), which helped with distribution.

10. Use Directories (yes, Directories!)

Despite what you may have heard, directories aren’t dead. In fact, they are probably one of the best ways to improve your local SEO and help potential customers find your business.

Of course, I’m not talking about spammy directories that are there just for the sake of links. Those are more likely to harm your SEO performance than anything else.

The directories you need to be on are the ones people actually use — like Google My Business, Yelp, and TripAdvisor. Beyond these famous ones, there are many other general and niche directories that can help your rankings and traffic.

Here are a few resources to help you find relevant directories:

• 21 Web Directories That Still Have Value (Search Engine Journal)
• Top Local Citations by Business Category (BrightLocal)
• The Ultimate List: 57 Online Local Business Directories (HubSpot)
• 600+ Directory Sites and How To Do Directory Link Building (Linkio)

11. Use the Broken Link Building Method

This tactic involves reaching out to a website that has a broken outbound link (a link to an external source) and suggesting they update it with a link to one of your pages.

Of course, your page has to be a good resource on the topic to which they were originally linking, so it makes sense to swap the broken link with yours.

The reason this tactic works so well is because it adds a ton of value to the webmasters — it helps them fix an error on their website, and it improves the experience for their readers.

The challenge with this tactic is, of course, finding these broken links.

You have a couple of options here:

1. You can look for websites with broken links and find relevant resources on your website that you might suggest in its place.
2. You can look for one dead page (404) that used to get many links, recreate that article or offer better, more relevant content, and then reach out to those who linked to the initial piece.

Either way, you’ll need a good SEO tool to help you identify broken links.

You can try Siteliner, which is free if you have under 250 pages to review, or Ahrefs, which also published a guide on how to use the broken link-building method using their tool.

Once you identify the target websites and have your content ready, you can start working on your outreach. Make sure to keep your email short and sweet and focus on being helpful rather than just getting a backlink.

Make Sure You Have The Right Backlink Checkers in Your SEO Toolbox

Now that you have a list of tactics to try out in your next link building campaign, it’s time to ensure you also have the tools you need to succeed.

Because there are so many options out there, I thought I’d end this article with a list of my top free, tried-and-tested backlinks checkers.

To make it easier for you to pick the right tool for your next project, I went ahead and tested each tool to see how many backlinks they can find, as well as other unique features they each offer.

I used our domain (www.hubspot.com) to test the capabilities of each tool and here’s what I found:

1. Ahrefs Backlink Checker

With the second most active crawler besides Google, Ahrefs has the most comprehensive backlink database, giving you up-to-date data.

In the free version of the tool, Ahrefs shows you Top 100 backlinks, Top 5 anchors, and Top 5 pages. That’s enough to get a birds-eye view of your website’s backlinks.

If you’d like to get into more details, the paid version offers far more extensive data and access to other tools that might be useful in a link building campaign, like Content Explorer or Broken Outbound links, to name a few.

2. SE Ranking

SE Ranking is another software that stands out for its extensive backlink analysis features.

SE Ranking’s Backlink Checker provides essential data on any domain’s backlink profile, including the list of all referring domains and backlinks, anchor texts, and top-linked pages.

All of this comes with important metrics like Domain Trust score, target URL, toxicity score, etc.

If you’re looking for link-building opportunities, the Backlink Gap Analyzer a try will show you websites that are linking to your competitors but not to your website.

To track the performance of your backlinks and identify any status changes, you can use SE Ranking’s Link Monitoring feature.

Although it doesn’t offer a free version, there’s a 14-day free trial that allows you to check three domains and monitor 250 backlinks.

3. MonitorBacklinks

MonitorBacklinks picks up almost as many referring domains as Ahrefs. Additionally, what’s unique about MonitorBacklinks is that it offers details on the top backlinks that you can see based on Trust Flow or Citation Flow.

However, to access more of their database, you need to switch to their paid version.

4. OpenLinkProfiler

OpenLinkProfiler is a great tool for analyzing your backlink profile. The downside is that their database of links is fairly limited compared to Ahrefs or MonitorBacklinks.

Still, there are a lot of insights you can gain (for free) by filtering the available backlinks by categories such as industry, TLDs, anchors, or LIS (Link Influence Score). That’s something I haven’t seen in other free tools.

This tool also provides charts to show you which pages get the most links or which countries link most to your website.

5. RankWatch

RankWatch has a great Dashboard feature where you can visualize your backlink profile. Among other things, you can see your link acquisition trend for the past three months, referring to domains acquisition, and anchor distribution.

The overall summary charts are available for free. However, if you want to see the exact list of backlinks or referring domains you’ve earned, you need to switch to the paid version.

6. CognitiveSEO

CognitiveSEO is great for getting an overall view of the total backlinks and referring domains — and, most importantly, checking your link velocity.

You can see the link acquisition trend for the past 6 months for free, even without creating an account. Another interesting visual report is the Top 5 website pages, where you can see how your website performs by backlinks or referral domains.

All of the above tools provide valuable insights that can help you get started with link building. They all give a macro view on your backlink profile, but each comes with additional information. Try them out and see which one is best for you.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in September 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

 

Can you believe it’s been almost 20 years since Facebook was founded? Perhaps many of you feel like it was just yesterday when “friend” was a noun.

The same goes for YouTube, which made video accessibility and shareability online as simple as can be. And Twitter, for that matter — sponsored tweets have only been around since 2010!

It’s interesting to look back at these iconic moments in the last 20+ years of social media. In this post, we’ll go over a complete timeline of social media history and what each network’s usage stats look like now.

Table of Contents

• What is the history of social media?
• The Early Years (1970s – 1990s)
• The Original Social Networks (2002-2007)
  • The Microblogging Era
• The Visual and Mobile Era (2007 – Today)
• How Social Media Could Evolve Next

What is the history of social media?

The history of social media is characterized by constant innovation, technological advancements, and transformation.

The Early Years

The early years of social media (1970s – 1990s) laid the foundational elements of the platforms we know today.

• 1971 – Ray Tomlinson sent the first email, marketing the beginning of modern electronic mail.
• 1978 – The Bulletin Board System (BBS) is introduced, allowing users to upload and download software and data, read news online, and exchange messages with people in online communities.
• 1985 – America Online (AOL) is founded, and it lets users communicate online via email and messaging.
• 1997 – Six Degrees is launched, and it’s one of the first recognizable social media platforms compared to those. Users could create profiles, make friends, and send messages.
• 1999 – Livejournal became available, allowing people to share information about themselves with friends and other users. It’s one of the earliest blogging platforms and is still operational in 2023.

Birth of The Original Social Networks

What followed the first wave of “social networks” are the platforms we know today, or the initial stages and first versions of those we use today. Friendster, founded in 2002, is one of the first. It lets users connect with friends, share pictures, and discover new content. A steady stream of platforms followed.

• 2003 – LinkedIn is launched as a professional networking platform that connects people in a business context.
• 2003 – Myspace is introduced to the world as a platform for customizable profiles, music sharing, and blogging. It became the largest social media platform when it was in its prime.
• 2004 – Facebook, originally for Harvard students, was founded. Users connected with their friends and shared their thoughts. Facebook is now the world’s most popular social networking platform, with 2.9 billion monthly active users. The image below is what the first Facebook profile layout looked like.

  

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• 2005 – YouTube was launched and became the first video-only sharing platform and the first visual-first network. It lets people upload, share, and view other videos made by others. Jawed Karim, one of its founders, shared the first video on the platform titled “Me at the zoo.” Eighteen years later, it has more than 287 million views.

• 2005 – Reddit was launched as a text and community-based platform for people to interact and discuss topics with like-minded people. It was the first discussion-forward website of its kind.

The Microblogging Era

• 2006 – Twitter (now X) is launched, introducing microblogging and real-time communication. It was initially meant to be an SMS-based platform for people to share short updates with their friends. Jack Dorsey, one of its founders, sent the first Tweet, and it said, “just setting up my twttr.”

• 2007 – Tumblr, another microblogging platform, launched and became popular among those engaging in niche fandom communities. It gained 75,000 users in two weeks and currently hosts almost 500 million blogs.

The Visual and Mobile Era

A pivotal moment in social media history came in 2007 when the first iPhone hit the market. It blew open the future potential for social media, as people could now access platforms on the go from a device kept in their pockets.

During this same era, we saw the creation of more platforms that prioritized visuals over all else.

Instagram was the first social media app available on iOS, and it was the first mobile-only platform and the second visual-first platform. It gained 100,000 users in a week, 5 million in 8 months, and now has 2 billion global monthly active users. Social media marketers in 2023 say Instagram has the highest ROI and engagement of all other apps.

The image below is the first layout of an Instagram profile.

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From 2007 until today, we also saw the creation and advancements of social media algorithms that offer personalized experiences, niche social media platforms catering to specific interests and communities, and mergers and acquisitions. Let’s go dive into the timeline of events.

• 2010 – Pinterest was launched as another photo-dominating platform, letting users upload and save images for curated mood-board-type experiences.

• 2011 – Snapchat followed Instagram as a mobile-only experience and the first app to popularize disappearing messages and ephemeral content.
• 2011 – Google+ was created, where users could create Circles of people they wanted to connect with and share content exclusive to those micro-networks. It shut down in October 2018.
• 2011 – Keek, another video-sharing social media service, launched. It had 45 million users in its prime and was only available on mobile devices.
• 2011 – Twitch launched as a live-streaming service for broadcasting video game plays.
• 2012 – Facebook buys Instagram.
• 2012 – Twitter buys Vine pre-launch.
• 2013 – Vine is launched, popularizing snackable, short-form video content on mobile devices. While YouTube and Keek were meant for video, it was the first to exist for short-form content. Vine significantly impacted pop culture, popularizing phrases like “Do it for the vine.” Many of the most popular videos are still quoted today.

• 2013 – YikYak is released as a local message board for college students. It was shut down in 2017 after a decline in its user base.
• 2014 – Musical.ly launched, letting users create short lip-sync videos.
• 2015 – Discord launches as an instant messaging and voice chat platform for gamers.
• 2016 – TikTok was launched in China as a short-form video platform, attracting millions of users.
• 2017 – TikTok became available in the United States in late 2017 and has since reached over 130 million downloads. Vine shut down in January of 2017, making TikTok the premier app for short-form video content. Our Consumer Trends Report shows that 73% of Gen Z currently use TikTok.
• 2017 – ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, purchases Musical.ly.
• 2018 – TikTok and Musical.ly merge.

• 2020 – Clubhouse is launched as an audio-chat networking app. It was initially invite-only and skyrocketed in popularity during the pandemic as it offered a new way to interact. When social distancing regulations eased up, its user base fell.
• 2020 – BeReal is launched as an ephemeral picture-sharing app focused on users showcasing unedited real-life snippets of their lives.
• 2020 – Lemon8 is launched as a lifestyle app that blends elements on Instagram and Pinterest.
• 2021 – YikYak is relaunched.
• 2023 – Meta launches Threads, a text-based conversational app similar to Twitter (now X).

How Social Media Could Evolve Next

Asie from the timeline above, other key moments in social media history include applications adopting similar features as competitors, like Facebook adding photos, Instagram launching “Stories” (a feature similar to Snapchat), and Twitter Spaces allowing users to have voice-chat rooms like Clubhouse.

We also can’t forget the rise of social media as a marketing platform, giving businesses a new and unique way to build brand awareness, interact with audiences, and inspire sales.

Let’s go over some ways that social media could evolve next.

1. Social media will become a search engine:

31% of consumers use social media to search for answers to their questions, and one-fourth of 18 to 54-year-olds prefer to search on social media.

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Google has noticed this switch, with one of its executives even saying that Google Search and Maps have lost searchers in younger generations who instead turn to apps like TikTok and Instagram to look for places to eat.

Takeaways for Marketers: With social search on the rise, brands will need to adapt to this desire by making it easier for consumers to discover them on social media by using relevant hashtags on posts and content and making easily identifiable and searchable profiles and usernames.

2. Social shopping is the new frontier for ecommerce.

One of the biggest new waves of social media is the rise of social shopping. Consumers of all generations browse for products and make purchases within social media apps, with Millennials and Gen Z taking the generational lead. Social media marketers predict that consumers will buy products on social media more often than brand websites in 2023, and social sellers say their companies are making more sales on social media this year than last.

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Takeaways for Marketers: As consumers continue to use social media as a search engine and discover products, brands will need to embrace social selling and consider leveraging the platforms’ tools to make it easier for consumers to purchase the apps they already use.

3. Social Media Customer Service

With the rise of shopping on social media, consumers look to those same platforms for customer service when buying products. Nowadays, 76% of social media marketers say their business offers customer service on social media, and as time goes on, it will likely be more important for brands to offer.

Takeaways for Marketers: When it comes to offering service on social media, businesses already doing so either have a dedicated customer service rep to handle it, or leave it to the marketer in charge of the platform.

Over to You

Social media has always and will continue to evolve and impact how we communicate, drive social movements, and connect worldwide. Every evolution brings new opportunities for marketers and consumers alike.

Putting your marketing strategy into play is different than creating that strategy. To bring it to life, you have to employ the right channels, techniques, and tactics.

Of course, marketing a brand online has become much more nuanced and complex, with many techniques at your disposal.

To help you learn about the most effective marketing techniques around today, we’ve rounded up the best ones to add to your digital marketing toolbox.

Table of Contents

Best Marketing Techniques

Branding and Awareness Techniques

Audience Engagement Techniques

Techniques for Driving Traffic

Conversion and Nurturing Techniques

Branding and Awareness Techniques

1. Brand Storytelling

Purpose: Capture Attention

In the neuroscience field, researchers have proven that storytelling is the best way to capture people’s attention, bake information into their memories, and resonate emotionally with them.

Put differently, the human brain is programmed to crave, seek out, and respond to well-crafted narratives — and that’ll never change.

If you have an About page on your website that functions only to say what you do and who you do it for, crafting a compelling narrative is a great way to uplevel that page and resonate with your readers.

For maximum effectiveness, consider following a storytelling framework such as Simon Sinek’s Find Your Why methodology, Donald Miller’s Storybrand, or the classic Hero’s Journey.

And storytelling doesn’t just have to live on your About page.

Just like your favorite Netflix show, you can craft a series on YouTube to entice your viewers to subscribe to your updates. This can get your audience more excited for your show’s newest season than they currently are for the latest season of Stranger Things.

Before you green light another slew of listicles, how-to posts, and ultimate guides, remember how powerful storytelling is and consider crafting a story chock-full of conflict, surprise, and emotion that your viewers will relate to your brand, regardless of the channel you’re targeting them on.

2. Digital PR

Purpose: Reach New Audiences

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As of April 2023, people spend an average of six hours and 35 minutes per day on social media. Needless to say, people spend more time on social media than ever before.

In response, public relations professionals are pivoting their strategy from solely focusing on placing their stories in news outlets’ publications to concentrating on driving traffic to their websites and social media profiles too.

In order to successfully pitch your stories to journalists and news outlets nowadays, you need to account for the content that performs well on their social media profiles and their publication. So before you pitch your story, make sure it’s relevant and interesting to the news outlet’s social audience.

3. The Surround Sound Method

An ad’s effectiveness increases the more times it’s been seen by a prospect. It’s also pretty safe to say that any marketing asset’s effectiveness increases the more it’s seen.

This is a fact previously alluded to in this post anytime the word “touchpoints” comes up.

The surround-sound methodology takes this idea and amplifies it by challenging the notion that your owned channels and assets are not enough to create true brand awareness. You should also appear everywhere else someone goes to consider products. For example:

• Review websites
• The social timelines of prominent influencers
• Featured in the media they consume (articles, videos, podcasts)

According to Alex Birkett, Senior Growth Marketing Manager at HubSpot, if you can “get lots of people to talk about you favorably, preferably around the same time,” you can generate quite a bit of brand awareness.

4. Brand Extensions

Purpose: Expand Into Tangential Markets for Increased Awareness

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Big companies often extend their brand to develop new products in industries that they don’t have any market share in. These initiatives are called brand extensions, and they allow companies to leverage their brand awareness and equity to create more revenue streams. For example, Reese’s entering the cereal market with their peanut butter and chocolate “Reese’s Puffs” product.

Historically, the most successful brand extensions are the ones that closely tie to the company’s flagship product or core brand, like Gerber’s baby clothes and Dole’s frozen fruit bars.

By entering tangential markets that can preserve your brand’s unique associations and perceived quality, you can develop new products that consumers intuitively understand the benefits of, even though they’ve never seen them on a shelf.

On the flip side, a company can also exploit its brand and, in turn, damage it. If they develop a product in a market that isn’t closely tied to their flagship product or core brand, audiences might attach undesirable associations to a brand, weaken its existing associations, and hurt its established products’ perceived quality.

Audience Engagement Techniques

5. Podcasting

Purpose: Leverage Audio Content and Reach New Audiences

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The popularity of podcasts has grown rapidly year after year. The number of global podcast listeners is expected to grow to 464.7 million in 2023, according to eMarketer.

Needless to say, the demand for audio content has exploded, but that doesn’t mean people will listen to your branded podcast just because it’s a podcast. In reality, they’ll only listen to it if it can hold their attention and, ultimately, entertain them.

Here’s where the technique part comes in: Many podcasts rely on a host/guest model. This model is wildly successful because hosts can tap into the audience that the guest brings in and vice versa. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement so long as both sides promote effectively. That’s why it’s important to choose guests wisely and make it easy for them to promote the show and episode they appear in.

With each guest that comes on, the podcast audience grows, and so does the engagement.

6. Video Marketing

Purpose: Leverage Video Content and Reach New Audiences

Video has overtaken blogs and infographics as the number one form of media used in content strategy (HubSpot). There’s a couple reasons for this:

1. It’s flexible. You can create video for YouTube, embed it on your blog, share it on social media, and more.
2. It’s a different kind of organic play. Google shows videos in the SERPs (search engine results pages). YouTube is also a search engine in its own right and is the second most visited site after Google itself (Alexa).
3. The engagement is rewarding. Video consumption continues to rise, outpacing television, and it’s more effective at conveying information (Biteable).

So not only are consumers looking for audio content; they’re looking for video content as well. And savvy marketers are getting ROI in the form of engagement and repurpose-ability.

7. Community Building

Purpose: Improve Long-Term Engagement and Build Authority

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Speaking of engagement, the last thing you want to do is create a piece of content and then hear crickets when you promote it. One of the best ways to increase engagement and brand awareness is by building relationships with prospects, users, customers, and other individuals in the industry.

Many brands are creating digital communities on social media, online boards, and their own hosted networks/forums. In fact, a staggering 90% of social media marketers say building an active online community is critical to success in 2023.

With community management, you’re building relationships, giving back, and establishing yourself as an authority in the industry. It can be as simple as answering questions on Quora or cultivating a hashtag on Twitter, or it can be as complex as creating a whole support network for your product.

Either way, you’re improving the affinity your prospects and customers have with your brand.

If done correctly, your community may even expand beyond your brand and become a beneficial resource for everyone within it. For example, Women in Tech SEO, founded by Areej AbuAli, is a community focused on accelerating the careers of women in the SEO industry. The organization has a network with a discussion component, ongoing meetups, a newsletter, and more.

8. Contextual Marketing

Purpose: Improve Website Engagement With Personalized Content

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Contextual marketing is the practice of serving up personalized website content to visitors according to their stage of the buyer’s journey. The idea is that if you can cut through the noise and serve your website visitors the content that matters the most to them, you’ll be far more successful at capturing their attention.

We can all agree that improving the experience for prospects can lead to increased effectiveness, but what does contextual marketing look like in practice?

For example, you might use dynamic CTAs that only show them offers that are relevant to them. This cuts down on the amount of useless information they’re taking in on your website and decreases banner blindness… in part because the banners they do see are helpful and relevant.

It might also mean using smart forms so that you don’t keep asking for the same information from website visitors who have cause to fill out multiple forms on your site.

Then, you might segment your database so that your leads receive email campaigns that are directly relevant to their needs based on content that they’ve already consumed on your website.

All of this resulting in a personalized, tailored journey without the pressure of going to a salesperson for it.

Techniques for Driving Traffic

9. Blog Title Optimization

Purpose: Increase Traffic to Existing Assets By Improving Click-Through Rate

When you write a blog post, do you use the first title you came up with or do you write a few?

People will not get to the rest of your content until they choose to click on the headline. That’s why it’s so important to have grabby titles that resonate with your audience and compel them to click.

By increasing the effectiveness of your titles, you can increase click-through rate (and, in effect, traffic). One way to do this is by using tools like this headline analyzer to see what you can do to improve your headline.

Better yet, you can always analyze your existing blog posts to see which headlines aren’t doing enough heavy lifting. By improving the click-through rate, you’ll be able to get more traffic from that asset without a heavy editorial lift.

10. The Pillar-Cluster Model

Purpose: Drive Traffic By Establishing Topic Authority

Since people heavily rely on Google to provide accurate and relevant answers for most of their questions today, Google needs to understand the intent and context behind every single search.

To do this, Google has evolved to recognize topical connections across users’ queries, look back at similar queries that users have searched for in the past, and surface the content that best answers them. As a result, Google will deliver content that they deem the most authoritative on the topic.

To help Google recognize your content as a trusted authority on marketing, sales, and customer service topics, consider implementing the pillar-cluster model on your blog.

Essentially, the pillar-cluster model is a topic-based based content strategy. This means that you generate and organize ideas for your blog by topic.

By creating a single pillar page (an ultimate guide, for instance) that provides a high-level overview of a topic and hyperlinks to cluster pages (subtopic blog posts) that delve into the topic’s subtopics, you can signal to Google that your pillar page is an authority on the topic.

Hyperlinking all of the cluster pages to the pillar page also spreads domain authority across the cluster, so your cluster pages get an organic boost if your pillar page ranks higher, and your cluster pages can even help your pillar page rank higher if they start ranking for the specific keywords they’re targeting.

11. Historical Optimization

Purpose: Drive Traffic By Improving Existing Assets

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In 2015, HubSpot made a revolutionary discovery about our organic monthly blog traffic — the overwhelming majority of it came from posts published prior to that month. In fact, 76% of monthly blog views came from these old posts.

Today, the groundbreaking revelation rings louder than ever — 89% of our monthly blog views currently come from posts that were published at least six months prior, and we’ve developed an entire strategy dedicated to refreshing and republishing these historical pieces of content.

These types of blog posts are called “updates,” and they comprise 35-40% of HubSpot’s editorial calendar. By refreshing posts with new information and effectively republishing them as new blog posts, HubSpot can build upon its existing organic value that these posts have accumulated through backlinks and user engagement and double or even triple their traffic.

This process also helps HubSpot optimize our blog for efficiency, decreasing the amount of new content we have to create while increasing our organic traffic and conversions.

12. Retargeting

Purpose: Recapture Lost Traffic

A lot of content marketing techniques involve attracting new audiences rather than improving the effectiveness of the audiences you’ve already acquired. That’s why retargeting earns a place on this list as a vastly underutilized tactic.

I’ll explain retargeting with a scenario: A prospect comes to an ecommerce site and checks out a product. They decide it’s not time to buy, and they leave.

Retargeting allows you to remind them of their initial interest by showing them ads for the product on other sites (e.g. banner ads or Facebook ads). In effect, your ads “follow them around” the internet, increasing the likelihood that they come back to make that purchase.

13. The Skyscraper Backlinking Method

Purpose: Obtain Links for Increased Traffic and Improved SEO Signals

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Earning high-quality inbound links from websites and pages with high authority scores is crucial for boosting your domain authority. But, unfortunately, “If you write it, they will link to it,” is not a viable SEO technique.

One method for earning high-quality links is by performing email outreach to ask other websites that have the same or higher domain or page authority score than you to link to your top content. You should also make sure your content is relevant to the referring website’s content.

More specifically, you can use Backlinko’s skyscraper method. The skyscraper method is an SEO strategy where you find content that ranks well for keywords you want to rank for and then create content that’s better than the top-ranking posts. Then, you use SEO tools to find all the sites that have linked to your competitor’s content and ask the most relevant sites to replace your competitor’s link with a link to your improved content.

Conversion and Nurturing Techniques

14. A/B Testing for CTAs

Purpose: Improve Conversion Rate on Existing Assets by Testing Variables

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Since opt-ins are key for growing your email subscriber list, you’ll want to closely monitor the performance of your CTAs (buttons that send people to your forms) and improve on the ones that aren’t working out.

Every company has a different set of customers, so there’s no one-size-fits-all formula for designing the most optimal CTAs. To figure out which CTA design or copy will produce the best results for your company, you must experiment.

A/B testing allows you to do that experimentation between two CTAs synchronously, eliminating variables and giving you the best insight into which version performs better.

For example, you can run an experiment to test a variable such as color. Let’s say you have a red CTA and a blue CTA. A/B testing allows you to identify which ones produce better results.

To conduct an A/B test, you can use HubSpot’s A/B testing kit. With this kit, you’ll get guidelines for A/B testing, learn what variables to test, and gain access to a simple significance calculator to track your results.

A/B testing shouldn’t be confused with multivariate testing, though, which allows you to simultaneously test many variables.

15. Value-Add Emails

Purpose: Improve Engagement and Earn Goodwill During Nurturing Process

Email is more of a channel than a tactic, but let’s start with why the channel is an important one. Did you know that Americans spend 172 minutes daily checking their personal emails, and 149 minutes checking their work emails?

On top of that, 59% of consumers say that marketing emails have influenced their purchases.

Since it takes a multiple touchpoints to gain the attention of prospects, persuading people to subscribe to your emails and, in turn, constantly consume your content will generate more leads and revenue for your business.

This is where the tactic part comes in. The last thing you want to do is clutter up their inbox with yet another sales email. Instead, consider emails that actually provide value along their paths to purchase.

Take the email above from HubSpot Agency Partner Yokel Local, for example. It doesn’t matter if the recipient of the email is actively considering Yokel Local’s services; they still provide value that keeps their subscribers opening emails.

Growing an engaged, loyal subscriber base also speaks volumes about the quality of your content and its emotional resonance. If your prospects actively engage with your email content, it’s a clear sign that they actually value it. This contributes to their impression of your brand and serves as the touchpoints along their paths to purchase.

16. Audience Segmentation

Purpose: Create a More Personalized Experience to Improve Nurturing

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In a world overflowing with digital noise, creating irrelevant or unwarranted content won’t catch anyone’s attention.

To email the right person the right content at the right time, consider leveraging audience segmentation, which separates your subscriber database into specific, accessible groups of people based on personal attributes like their demographics, psychographics, and behavioral information.

This technique allows you to increase the value of your emails (see the technique above) by ensuring that they’re more relevant to your subscribers. In other words, rather than creating messaging designed to appeal to everyone, you’ll be able to get much more specific with your messaging because you’ll have a narrower target audience.

To properly implement audience segmentation techniques into your email marketing strategy, you’ll need a CRM and marketing platform. For example, HubSpot allows you to gather information about your customers and segment contacts into lists based on that information. This makes it easy to target the right customers in your database with messaging specific to them.

17. Marketing Automation

Purpose: Enhance Efficiency of Email Campaigns

Automation is the process of using technology to eliminate manual actions and trigger repetitive or programmable functionality in an automatic way. Marketing automation applies this principle to your CRM and email marketing activities, allowing you free up time and get your message out at scale.

Instead of sending one-off emails, you can use marketing automation to initiate a sequence of emails and actions, all without you hitting the send button. Best of all, you can apply it to any of the following (and more):

• Lead nurturing campaigns
• Auto-responder sequences
• Re-engagement campaigns
• Event reminders
• Client onboarding sequences
• Up-sell campaigns

This will allow you to increase your organization’s touchpoints with a lead without tanking your productivity. To do so, you’ll first need to invest in marketing automation software.

18. Lead Scoring

Lead scoring is an automation-based technique that rates (or “scores”) your leads based on certain attributes. The idea behind it is that you’ll be able to better identify leads that are closer to a purchasing decision so that you can prioritize those leads for your marketing and sales efforts.

Some marketing automation software can perform lead scoring using AI machine learning, but many allow you to manually designate the attributes that make a marketing or sales qualified lead. Once a lead meets the criteria, they will have a higher score (and thus higher priority for more direct marketing and sales conversations).

In addition, the act of defining the criteria for lead scoring can lead to a better relationship between your marketing and sales teams. With a clear definition, your marketing team will be better focused on generating leads that meet those criteria, and your sales team will be happy with more qualified leads.

Innovation Is Key

Whether you’re developing a new marketing plan or improving on an old one, it’s important to consider new marketing techniques.

While your marketing strategy may be sound, relying on past tried-and-true methods may not be enough. As time goes on, old techniques lose competitive advantage and become table stakes. New methods will help you implement your strategic goals in new, exciting ways.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in May 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Starting a YouTube channel is a lot of work. Not only do you have to spend time scripting, producing, and editing videos, but you also have to find a topic you’re passionate about and ensure it resonates with people.

To help inspire you, we found 30 popular YouTube categories that you can start a channel about. Read on to learn why viewers love to engage with these types of YouTube videos and start ideating your YouTube channel today.

How To Come Up With a YouTube Channel Idea

There are over 51 million YouTube channels as of 2023, so you may think all the good YouTube channel ideas are already taken, but don’t be discouraged — you can still develop an excellent channel today.

First, you need to hone in on your channel’s niche. Your niche will be the topic or category your channel focuses on. Is your channel meant to support your existing business?

Or are you creating content around a passion, hobby, interest, or expertise?

Avoid having too broad a niche so your audience understands your channel‘s purpose and the kind of content they’ll see. A narrow niche also means less competition, which can grow your channel faster.

Marc Hans, senior professor at HubSpot Academy, suggests considering your end-user.

“Focus on your end-user as a role, an occupation, title, or industry,” he says. “And consider your value and expertise. For example, if you are creating a channel for aspiring marketers, what value can you share based on your experience?”

He also says to create value in your channel’s title and imaging.

“For instance, ‘Marc’s Marketing Channel’ is vague, but ‘Tips for Aspiring Marketers from a World Class Marketer’ is more compelling and direct,” Hans says.

You don’t want your channel to be too narrow to the point where you cannot create much content within your niche over time. Your niche should be broad enough to encompass different subtopics.

Subtopics are important because, according to Hans, every content you post may not appeal to every person within your audience — and that’s okay!

“If you have a YouTube channel about marketing, your audience may consist of CMOs, aspiring marketers, digital marketers, social media managers, etc.,” he says. “You should strive to give each persona something at least once every three posts.”

For instance, Frugal Aesthetic is a channel focusing on fashion. The channel covers fashion history, recommendations, reviews, commentary, and style tips.

The topic is broad enough to create different kinds of videos under the same umbrella. Still, the niche channel is unique thanks to the host’s memes, dry humor, and off-the-cuff dialogue to execute his videos.

How to Start a YouTube Channel

Once you‘ve chosen your niche, it’s time to research competitors, which would be the channels creating similar content. For example, let’s say your YouTube channel focuses on reviewing and analyzing comics.

To find other channels with the same topic, go to the YouTube search bar, type “comic book reviews,” and see what channels pop up.

You can also visit online forums like Reddit to see what channels your target audience is watching.

Next, you‘ll want to develop a name, logo, and style consistent with your channel’s brand. Let‘s revisit Frugal Aesthetics. The channel’s tone is compatible with its brand.

Like I said, the host discusses fashion using memes and his signature dry humor. The videos are also very minimalist, with the host speaking in front of a white background and images that emphasize the topic.

The same font and style of memes are used in every video and thumbnail. Also, notice each thumbnail uses roughly the same color palette — red, white, and black.

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You want your channel to be easily recognizable, so think about the images, colors, fonts, and aesthetics you want in every video.

YouTube Channel Tools

I spoke to HubSpot Academy experts to get their input on some excellent tools YouTubers should use when creating their content.

Many suggested Canva, saying it’s “a game-changer for creating engaging thumbnail images and channel artwork.” Even better, most of its features are free to use.

If you want to track your videos’ performance, HubSpot Academy recommends the HubSpot Social Tool, which can gather data and centralize it for YouTube, making it easy to create and share reports and dashboards.

Finally, the academy suggests the YouTube Studio mobile app for measuring performance and keeping your data in one place.

YouTube Channel Ideas

• Comedy Sketches
• Web Series
• Music
• Album Reviews
• Tutorials
• Software Tutorials
• Photography
• Video Editing
• Self Help
• Cleaning and Organization
• Minimalism
• Style
• Cooking
• Baking
• Fitness Training
• Home Workouts
• Yoga
• Strength Training
• Dance
• Travel
• Product Reviews
• Movie Reviews
• Show Reviews
• Gaming
• Game Playthroughs
• Information Based Gaming
• Channel Ideas For Beginners

1. Comedy Sketches

When you’re amid a two-hour YouTube binge fest, you can probably blame the endless amount of funny videos that flood the platform. Some of the most successful YouTubers create comedy sketches.

For instance, Jenna Marbles, a blogger turned YouTube sensation with over 19 million subscribers, and Jimmy Tatro, a college kid who made hilarious videos for fun, turned YouTube into a career.

Jenna and Jimmy built their YouTube followings with low-production videos, but they also completely nailed the humor and storytelling in most of their videos.

Building a successful comedy channel with a low budget is possible if you can write a funny script.

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2. Web Series

The human brain is wired to respond to well-crafted narratives. Neuroscience proves that storytelling is the best way to capture people’s attention, bake information into their memories, and forge close, personal bonds.

We’re programmed to crave and seek out great stories — that’ll never change.

If you can structure your YouTube channel like a television season and weave your videos into a narrative-driven series, you can get viewers hooked on your content — just like your favorite Netflix show.

3. Music

Covers of songs are some of the most entertaining videos on YouTube. People love listening to aspiring artists’ twists on their favorite songs.

So, if you can sing or play instruments, consider covering your favorite trending or hit songs and upload them to YouTube.

You can also post yourself playing your original music. Artists can earn around $6 per 1,000 impressions.

On average, 30-40% of views count as impressions, so if your video gets up to 100,000 views, you’d have about 40,000 impressions and generate around $130 after YouTube takes its cut.

Maybe you could even get discovered and become the next Justin Bieber or Tori Kelly.

4. Album Reviews

This trendy channel idea is full of endless possibilities as new music is made daily.

Famous YouTuber Anthony Fantano has consistently reviewed prominent and underground albums over various music genres for the past decade and earned a cult following for sharing his opinions.

While his videos have reached millions, they are relatively easy to record. If you have an ear for music, you’d be surprised to find just how many people would like to hear what you have to say.

5. Tutorials

Whether they’re guitar lessons, beauty lessons, or how-to videos about making popsicle stick houses for your hamster, people love learning how to enjoy their lives more.

If you can cover topics that people are passionate about and teach them how to get better at these things, they’ll be able to live better lives.

This will grow your channel’s brand loyalty and sentiment, retaining your viewers’ attention and attracting their friends’ attention through word-of-mouth marketing.

Pro-Tip: Hans says it’s crucial to get to the point of your videos quickly, especially for tutorial and how-to videos.

“The days of long hyped-up intros are gone,” he says. “No one wants a flashy introduction video with catchy theme music. You need to capture your audience’s attention in 3 seconds and tell them why they should watch your video in less than 10 seconds, or they will just move on.”

6. Software Tutorials

You don’t have to be a software engineer to make software tutorials, but having a good grasp on how to use them can make for some good YouTube tutorials.

The software can encompass subjects like application and system software; YouTube viewers could learn how to use theirs or install newer versions accurately.

7. Photography

Photography is considered an art form that takes many different forms. Photos can capture a landscape, family portraits, or creative editorial content.

YouTube is a great website to share tutorials on bringing the best pictures for different purposes and equipment.

Likewise, you don’t need expensive cameras or software to create great images, as some photography videos teach people how to take incredible iPhone photos.

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8. Video Editing

There are dozens of editing software available to users, but many may be overlooked as videographers may need to learn how to use them to their full capability.

If you know how to use Premiere Pro or other quality software, posting a tutorial could engage your viewers to experiment with their content in ways they haven’t thought of before.

9. Self Help

Another way you can grow your channel’s brand loyalty and sentiment is by helping people solve their problems.

Whether it’s about their career or personal life, you can give people advice about common issues that you’ve experienced or that they ask about.

But ensure you have extensive knowledge, education, or personal experience surrounding these topics. Otherwise, people will think you’re a quack and lose your trust.

10. Cleaning and Organization

Usually marketed toward large family households, even single-living people can enjoy the benefits of cleaning tips and reorganization to make a home more attractive. Making videos tackling challenging to-clean messes or untidy clothing bins can motivate viewers to do the same.

11. Minimalism

The world dealt with immense change last year, and among those changes were increased periods spent at home.

The rise of decluttering and minimalism skyrocketed as people strived to make their houses more enjoyable, and filming your minimalist tips could help people in their journeys.

Corey Jones shares minimalism tips from home decorating, wardrobe, and even down to the equipment he uses to film his content.

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12. Style

Everyone wants to look good. You can build a dedicated YouTube following by evaluating new clothing, updating people on recent trends and styles, and teaching them how always to look their best.

If your YouTube channel is popular, you can also attract sponsors who will pay you to review their clothing and offer deals to your audience.

13. Cooking

Humans’ love for cooking is primal. We need food to survive, so it makes sense that people are always trying to master certain dishes and learn about new ones.

To help them do this, guide them through your recipes, delve into the techniques you use, and show them what their food should look like at each stage of your recipe. This will help them make the best dish possible.

Don’t be afraid to add humor to your cooking when sharing your techniques, like Joshua Weissman.

14. Baking

Another part of YouTube that has significantly gained popularity is baking videos. As people scrambled to look for ways to use their free time in 2020, many found ways to make baked goods an enjoyable pastime.

You don’t have to be a professional chef to share a recipe you’ve adapted, and chances are, if it’s simple or quick, people will be more inclined to tune in because they can see themselves trying it out.

15. Fitness Training

Personal trainers are expensive. Fortunately, though, you don’t need one to stay in shape. People resort to free personal trainers or YouTube yoga instructors to remain active.

If you have a lot of expertise in weight lifting, yoga, or other fitness methods, consider creating workout videos for specific goals, like losing weight, gaining muscle, or improving cardiovascular health.

16. Home Workouts

For many people, going to a gym may leave them feeling nervous because they don’t know how to use the equipment or don’t know what a fitness routine includes. Making home workout videos makes fitness more accessible and feasible for the everyday viewer.

17. Yoga

Another form of fitness to explore is guided yoga videos. Yoga is a beautiful way to actively engage your body and mind actively, and sharing your expertise on properly doing it will benefit viewers.

By demonstrating how to do different versions of yoga like Ashtanga or Hatha, you’re helping people to calm and stay fit during their busy lives.

18. Strength Training

Strength training videos are great for people of all backgrounds looking to build muscle and learn how to do it correctly. If you have a solid routine others may want to learn and follow, sharing it on YouTube would be a good idea.

19. Dance

Whether you’re a professional dancer or just somebody who likes to move, making dance videos to your favorite songs can make great entertainment.

Choreographed numbers or freestyle moving to the latest charting hits can keep your content relevant and inspire others to dance along. Or get even more creative like the Kukuwa Fitness channel and embrace your cultural heritage, dancing to African beats.

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20. Travel

Humans are biologically driven to investigate the world rather than respond to it. That’s why people love exploring so much.

But before they shell out thousands of dollars to travel someplace they saw on Instagram, people like to do a little research first.

If you have the funds to travel, consider recording your adventures in destination cityscapes or landscapes.

Your viewers can get an inside look at the location, helping them decide to take a vacation they’ll never forget or save money on a trip they’d regret.

Reviews

The category of review videos is incredibly expansive. Review category videos can cover different forms of media, items, and experiences of your choosing.

21. Product Reviews

With websites like Amazon selling millions of different products, creating product reviews would be an excellent way to help consumers pick the right products.

YouTubers can demonstrate the functionality, versatility, and overall satisfaction with any product they find.

While most websites have sections for written reviews, many prefer watching and listening to a trustworthy consumer like themselves for advice on which product they should choose.

22. Movie Reviews

If you just watched the latest action movie or a smaller indie film, you can take your thoughts to YouTube and be among the first to share your viewing experience.

Movie review videos allow viewers to see if it’s worth the money to buy a movie that’s been buzzing through social media through YouTubers they can trust.

23. Show Reviews

Like movie reviews, with the prevalence of streaming services and their constant new series releases, reviewing seasons of highly favored television is a good route on YouTube.

24. Gaming

Some people still think that video games are just for children, but the reality is that it’s projected to become a $256.97 billion industry by 2025. With fans of all ages, genders, and backgrounds, it’s no wonder why YouTube is full of gaming-related videos.

25. Game Playthroughs

If you’re already an avid gamer, why not record your game playthroughs? Whether it’s a classic franchise or the newest storyboard, chances are that someone is on YouTube looking for a playthrough.

These videos help gamers decide whether they should purchase a game themselves, get past a challenging quest, or just enjoy it like any other web series.

Don’t be intimidated by the most popular gamers because smaller channels like Narcissa Wright have a steady stream of subscribers tuning into her playthroughs weekly.

26. Information Based Gaming

Much like those who enjoy watching playthroughs, many gamers go to YouTube for gaming guides.

People stuck in a difficult quest or unsure how to reach achievement know they can go to YouTube for visual instructional videos to help them beat the games they enjoy.

If these channel ideas seem intimidating, don’t feel discouraged! Keep reading if you are just starting and want to make simplistic and fun videos.

YouTube Channel Ideas for Beginners

1. ‘Favorites’ Video

People who use YouTube daily are all consumers of some form. Beginning your channel with something as simple as showing off your favorite games, collectibles, or more could help viewers choose what they invest their money into.

These videos are perfect for small channels as there is more trust in the YouTuber honestly sharing versus making sponsored content for brands.

2. Trending News Discussion

If there’s news in pop culture or world events, making a channel solely for news commentary can increase if done consistently. D’Angelo Wallace became a famous YouTuber in under three years for sharing his interpretation of headlining news or cultural happenings.

If you have a camera and a good microphone, beginning a channel on trending news discussion could be a good start.

3. Reaction Videos

you’re watching the latest sporting program or the grand finale of a suspenseful television series; chances are you’re not the only viewer brimming with excitement.

This video category is popular because viewers want to connect or feel like they’re sharing the experience with someone else. So, if you’re looking for an easy way to start a channel, look into filming your initial reaction to a media you enjoy.

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4. Food Reviews

Foodies can share all their favorite restaurant orders with a broad audience on YouTube.

People are always looking for the best food in town, and starting a channel with honest reviews of places worth visiting can help you get views and support the businesses you love to gain new customers.

Get started on your YouTube journey now.

Hans says a common mistake YouTube content creators make is waiting for perfection.

“Just get started,” he says. “Your first videos will be very different from your videos a year from now. Fall in love with the process of creating, learning, and iterating — and you can’t go wrong!”

I remember my first internship — more specifically, its dress code, which left me googling, “What does business casual mean?” Then, I took a shopping trip for blouses, comfortable slacks, and sensible flats to replace my sneakers.

During the tech boom in 1990, many tech companies opted for more laid-back, innovative workwear. This led to the origin of what’s known as “business casual attire.” Soon, other industries and businesses followed, acknowledging the importance of employee comfort over the traditional formality of office wear.

But what exactly is business casual attire? Though the term is mostly ambiguously defined, there are some commonly accepted guidelines across the board. In this blog post, I set out to deconstruct “business casual” to help you understand and dress accordingly.

Table of Contents

• What is business casual attire?
• Best Practices for Dressing Business Casual
• How to Dress Business Casual

What is business casual attire?

Business casual (or smart casual) strikes a balance between formal and informal.

It’s less formal than traditional business wear but maintains the level of professionalism suitable for a workplace. Business casual outfits combine comfort with elements of both professional and casual attire.

For example, I could pair a pleated skirt with a short-sleeved blouse for my jaunt to the office. If the air conditioner was blasting, I might grab a cardigan or colored blazer to stay warm.

The look is class, yet comfortable. If you saw the outfit on Pinterest, you’d picture a cozy office in the background.

A business casual approach to dressing not only provides employees with more comfort and flexibility but also allows them to express their personal preferences and style. The more relaxed you are at work, the better your performance will be.

A recent study by Adzuna, which analyzed over 27 million job postings across various industries, suggests that workplaces are becoming more casual.

A significant 56.8% of job ads specified a “casual” dress code, while 42.4% of job ads followed a “business casual” dress code.

Though business casual office wear is on the rise, outfits differ from city to city. For example, 68% of job postings in the Los Angeles area mention a casual dress code. In this scenario, jeans, a work-appropriate t-shirt, and comfortable sneakers may be in vogue.

Now, let’s turn to the D.C. metropolitan area. Over 70% of job postings require business casual attire. It’s time to buy slacks and button-ups if you don’t have them already.

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While interpretations of “business casual” may vary across industries and professions, here are some best practices that are universally agreed upon.

11 Best Practices for Dressing Business Casual

1. Wear your size.

The difference between a frumpy blouse and an outfit that looks modern is often tailoring. Even a simple blazer will look better if it properly fits the wearer.

Choose clothing that fits you well and flatters your body shape. Avoid wearing excessively loose or tight-fitting clothes.

2. Footwear matters.

Shoes play an important role in completing your look. Select shoes that compliment your ensemble — high heels, espadrilles, loafers, or classic sneakers.

Leave open-toe shoes such as sandals or flip-flops for the beach.

Personally, I like a pair of comfortable flats, Mary Janes, or plain sneakers in a neutral tone. Whether I’m walking the hallways or grabbing lunch, I always feel comfortable.

Pro tip: Do you have a walking-intensive commute? Consider leaving a pair of dress shoes in the office, so you can swap into your work wear once you get to your desk.

3. Accessorize appropriately.

A good accessory can make an outfit.

However, when it comes to jewelry, less is more. If you have one statement piece, like earrings or a necklace, consider keeping the rest of your accessories simple.

Don’t let them overpower your outfit.

A watch can also be a helpful accessory with a clear function. If you like to keep track of the time, a watch allows you to do so without pulling out your phone.

4. Keep it neat.

On laundry day, it’s tempting to let your clothes sit in the dryer.

However, pulling them out can be the difference between wearing a wrinkle-free outfit and looking rumpled. Ensure your clothes are ironed, clean, and free from tears or holes. Make sure all seams are finished.

Ironing is one of my least favorite chores. Instead, I use a steamer or look for options that don’t require ironing. You don’t need to take hours to look presentable; you just need the right wardrobe.

5. Consider the occasion.

Before a party, I often find myself texting a friend to ask what I should wear. I may even ask for a picture of their outfit, just to confirm that I’m dressed for success.

Work events are no different.

You’ll want to dress appropriately for any meetings, conferences, speaking events, or presentations on your agenda. It never hurts to seek advice from a colleague or a work friend to gut-check your outfit.

6. Layer up.

At one of my office jobs, the building cranked up the heat in the winter and blasted the AC in the summer.

Knowing exactly what the temperature would be inside was unpredictable. The temperature outside the building was at least 10 degrees different than the temperature inside.

To prepare, I always had a sweater at my desk, a blazer, and a pair of flats that didn’t need socks. I could then throw on more clothes if our office was too cold or change into cooler shoes during the warm months.

In the hot summer months, be prepared for outdoor heat and indoor air conditioning by wearing easily removable layers to adjust your comfort level.

7. Overdressing is better than underdressing.

During my first job interview, I walked through the door in a full suit. However, my interviewer was dressed more casually, wearing slacks and a button-up.

Once I had the job, I found out that dressing more formally made me look more prepared than other applicants who arrived in jeans.

The point of this short anecdote? When in doubt, err on the side of formal. Blazers and jackets are always a nice addition.

8. Dress modestly.

When scrolling TikTok, I’ll see an outfit of the day video. Here, users show off what they plan on wearing to the office.

The best outfits are tailored and paired with tasteful accessories. They may be sleeveless or have knee-length dresses. The most confusing outfits are crop tops and mini-skirts, especially for business casual workplaces.

Avoid wearing clothes that reveal too much skin. Backless, low-cut tops or crop tops are a huge no.

9. Avoid athleisure.

You won’t wear office attire to the gym, so don’t wear your gym attire in the office.

We all love to be comfortable, but athleisure isn’t appropriate for the business casual office. Instead, invest in a pair of slacks that are comfortable and stretch.

You can even look for a pair of business-casual plants that feel like yoga pants when you wear them.

10. Avoid graphic designs.

I can definitely wear HubSpot swag during a day in the office. However, if I’m going to a business casual event, I’ll opt for smaller or embroidered logos.

Large graphic designs can be distracting. Further, not every message on a graphic tee shirt is appropriate for the office. Steer clear of provocative prints or clothing with inappropriate logos or text.

11. Create a capsule wardrobe.

Getting dressed in the morning doesn’t have to be a lengthy process.

This is especially true if you have a capsule wardrobe, or a closet of basic workwear that you can mix and match. That may include slacks that match with a variety of shirts.

I have a wide range of skirts in different colors that I can pair with different plain tops. This allows me to express my personality, keep my wardrobe visually interesting, and still stay business casual.

Plus, getting dressed in the morning takes minutes — no contemplation required.

Pro tip: Familiarize yourself with your company’s dress code policy and consult with your HR department regarding what’s appropriate and what’s not.

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Getting Business Casual Right

The Masculine Guide to Business Casual Dressing

No matter your gender, you may want to achieve a masculine look that fits with your office’s business casual dress code. Here are some options of what to wear that can help you stock your closet.

Blazers

Blazers are a timeless classic for all genders. Opt for professional colors like black, gray, blue, and other dark shades to add a business touch to your outfit.

In most business casual settings, you can wear a fitted tee shirt or sweater so long as you put a blazer on top.

Keeping one formal blazer at the office can come in handy for presentations and impromptu meetings.

Looking to add some more color to your outfit? You can add a blazer in one of your favorite shades to create variety in your wardrobe.

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Shirts

Long-sleeved, button-down collared shirts are the perfect choice. Choose tasteful patterns like checks, stripes, or microprints. You may go for polo shirts, but that depends on your company culture and occasion.

Pick either classic darks or light neutral colors. Avoid bright or flashy colors and loud patterns.

The best part? You don’t need a tie in a business casual setting.

Pants

Nice trousers, slacks, or pressed khakis are a safe choice. Pants should be cotton or linen. Although wool is fine, silk and rayon are no-no’s.

Choose dark or neutral-toned colors that compliment your shirt. Again, avoid bright colors and loud patterns. And remember to wear a belt.

The length of your pants should reach to the top of your shoe or a little longer — but not so much that they’re bunching at your feet.

Shoes

In the business casual office, formal dress shoes are always safe. You can also opt for loafers or ankle boots in leather or suede if you’re super in-vogue.

Even if you love sailing in your free time, no boat shoes. Avoid athletic socks.

Some offices include classic, plain sneakers in their dress codes. Be sure to ask your HR department or manager before you wear sneakers to work.

Accessories

Accessories are a great way to personalize your outfit. Always wear a belt. Wristwatches are a nice touch. You don’t have to wear cufflinks (phew!)

If you love suspenders, you can add them to your outfit. If you like socks with patterns, that can help you personalize the look.

Just remember, with accessories, less is more. Don’t experiment with every bell and whistle. Once you find your personal style, you can include a set rotation of your favorite accessories.

Outerwear

Your outerwear should match the seasons in your area. While we always recommend having a backup blazer in the office, you’ll also want to have a v-neck sweater, a nice jacket, or a peacoat for the winter.

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How is this different from business formal?

Business formal requires a full suit every day. Your blazer and slacks must be made out of the same material and have the same shade.

You’re also limited to neutral, dark colors. You’ll often find matching black, dark gray, or dark blue suits paired with light-colored shirts. A tie is also required every day.

Business casual wear can incorporate more variety. You can wear lighter-colored blazers and pants. There’s an opportunity to experiment with prints and a wider range of colors. For business casual, these guys have it down.

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Feminine Business Casual Dressing

Perhaps you’re going for a more feminine look for your office wear. No matter your gender, we recommend using the following guidelines when building your business casual wardrobe.

Tops

With my own wardrobe, I have a number of clean, plain shirts that I can wear to the office. They vary by season.

I have short-sleeve blouses, turtlenecks, sweaters, and sleeveless tops that I can wear during any season. I also have blazers and cardigans to mix and match.

Neutral or solid-colored blouses, plain shirts, sweaters, turtlenecks, vests, blazers, dressy tops, or sleeveless shirts with collars are universally safe choices. It’s standard to wear a monotone shirt.

Patterns are acceptable if they aren’t outrageous. Tuck your shirt in or leave it untucked, depending on your style. Add a belt if it compliments your outfit. Try to keep logos to a minimum.

Pants

When it comes to pants, you can take two approaches. You can find something in a solid color that you can pair with different tops. This allows your blouse to pop with color or experiment with patterns.

Conversely, you can find bottoms with a pattern, like tasteful plaid or houndstooth, to pair with a plain top.

Dress pants, khakis, trousers, or corduroy pants are the way to go. Neutral colors and dark tones are preferred.

Skirts and Dresses

My favorite skirts are pleated and end at the ankles. Meanwhile, I have dresses of various lengths below the knee. I know all of these options are business casual safe choices, which makes getting ready in the morning easy.

Knee-length or longer lengths are professional choices for the office. No sundresses or skintight dresses.

You can experiment with colors and accessories while maintaining a professional look. Adding a blazer, cardigan, or belt can give your outfit a business casual look.

Study the example below — while the second outfit is more relaxed and for a party, add some tops, and you look professional.

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Shoes

Closed-toed flats or small heels are the best option. Leather shoes, formal open-toed shoes, and heels are okay too — but absolutely no sandals, flip-flops, rarely sneakers, or casual boots.

My personal favorite business casual shoes? Boots and Oxfords. I can wear something that looks office-appropriate with and without heels.

Accessories

When I get ready in the morning, I have my favorite jewelry on my nightstand, ready to go. On most days, that’s a simple tear-drop-shaped gold earring.

Sometimes, I’ll add a neutral necklace and bracelet to complete the look.

Light jewelry, belts, and simple purses add a professional touch to any outfit.

Outerwear

Whether it’s cold in the office or outside, you’ll want to have business casual outerwear. A nice sweater, jacket, trench coat, or peacoat is appropriate. No athletic jackets or sweatshirts.

Consider a quarter zip or vest on those crisp fall days that don’t require a full jacket.

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How is this different from business formal?

Business casual allows for a more relaxed style, with options like separates, tasteful blouses, and slightly shorter skirts. You can also wear a wider range of shoes, like flats and oxfords. No pantyhose or tights are required.

Business formal is more conservative, requiring tailored suits or dresses and closed-toe heels.

For business casual attire, the woman below knows what’s up.

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Jeans or no jeans?

The decision to wear jeans in the office hinges entirely on your company’s policy and guidelines. If allowed, pick dark-toned, straight-fit jeans paired with a polo or dress shirt. Avoid ripped, baggy, or faded jeans to avoid looking too casual.

Ready to dress business casual?

When it comes to dressing for work, it’s all about striking the perfect balance between formal and casual.

You’ll also want to look for options that make you feel comfortable. You’re still going to the office, so err on the side of caution to appear polished and professional.

Embrace your personal style, feel confident, and dress in a way that makes you feel great in your own skin.

Creators and users on the app formerly known as Twitter can now earn money thanks to a new program rollout.

X’s new ad revenue-sharing feature is the latest change to come to the platform after the social media site was acquired by Elon Musk and rebranded as X.

To access the program, users must subscribe to X Premium, previously known as Twitter Blue. So, is X‘s take on creator pay worth paying for X Premium? How much are creators earning with the new ad revenue-sharing program?

Let’s dive in.

What is X’s Ad Revenue-Sharing program?

What do creators think of X’s Ad Revenue Sharing Program?

Should creators subscribe to X Premium?

What is X’s Ad Revenue-Sharing program?

X‘s ad revenue-sharing feature allows users to share in the earnings generated by ads displayed in the replies of the user’s content.

For instance, if I post content on X and there is an ad in the replies of my post, I can get a cut of the money earned through the organic impressions of that ad placement so long as I’m a subscriber.

“The ad money will otherwise be kept by X if you are not an X Premium (Blue) subscriber,” he said.

X’s Help Center says users can also opt to purchase a subscription to Verified Organizations to be eligible.

Users must also have at least 5 million organic impressions on their cumulative posts within the last three months, and they need at least 500 followers.

Once eligible, users must open an account with Stripe, the site’s payment processor, to receive their payouts.

What do creators think of X’s Ad Revenue Sharing Program?

Payouts for X content creators started rolling out in August, and reactions I saw from creators ranged from pleasantly surprised to optimistic.

Robert Freund is a lawyer with over 8,300 followers on X and received about $291 as his first payout from the platform.

Freund joked, “They say making your first $291.8136984 is the hardest.”

In a message to Mashable, Freund said the payout was a pleasant surprise considering the size of his audience, though it won’t “meaningfully supplement” his income.

Freund also doesn’t expect to receive as large a payout in the future since he believes most of the earnings are from a “uniquely viral” tweet that received 19 million impressions in July.

Ben, a gaming news content creator, received his payout of £129 (equal to $152.55).

“Wild payout from Twitter/X!” Ben said in a post. “I’m extremely thankful to everyone who allows me to pursue this job in the Rockstar community. I’ve learned so much over the last four years. This first payout is incredible.”

Content creator Okami Games says his first X payout is “nothing to write home about but definitely a nice surprise.”

“Glad they’re finally letting creators earn directly on the platform now,” he said. “Thank you all for the support!”

Roberto Blake is a YouTuber who received a little over $307 as his first X payout. Blake says he easily sees his earnings surpassing $ 1,000 monthly on the platform with some experimentation.

When asked by another user about subscribing to X and his payout, Blake responded, “$8 [per month] to make $370 is a fantastic ROI for something I do anyway.”

However, some creators disagree.

Content creator Chris Dillon says, “You shouldn’t have to pay to get paid.”

Dillon also says the ad revenue-sharing program hurts the creator landscape on the platform.

“Now, everyone doesn’t post for the sake of posting for creativity, but they do it for engagement,” he explains. “So, they try to farm engagement to earn money on X, which kills the creative side of being a creator.”

According to Dillon, the program‘s design doesn’t always benefit creators. In other words, only some on the platform identify as content creators but can get paid by simply subscribing to X Premium and meeting other requirements.

“Anybody can post, but not everyone is a creator — and that’s the issue,” he says. “People are getting paid, but those people aren’t always creators. And we need to put money in creators’ pockets.”

Should creators subscribe to X Premium?

In addition to paid opportunities, X Premium also offers subscribers the following perks:

• The ability to edit posts
• Prioritized rankings in conversations and search results
• The ability to write longer posts
• Two-factor authentication
• The ability to hide their blue checkmark
• And much more

But, with all these features and a chance to get paid, is it worth subscribing to premium as a creator?

Goofywise, a content creator and streamer, says it depends on the creative.

“It honestly depends on your goals as a content creator,” he explains. “I have seen creators who made X a huge priority over the years not get Premium and still have great numbers … I don’t think it is mandatory.”

As many of the creators I mentioned above stated, the payouts from X may not be enough to live off of; however, it can be a simple and effective way to generate another stream of revenue.

So, if having multiple income streams is important to you as a content creator, I see no reason to avoid Premium. But it’s not a must-have for every creator or influencer.

For instance, I am a podcaster, blogger, and YouTuber in my spare time, and my choice not to pay for X has not hindered my content creation journey.

My content lives off the app in the form of YouTube videos, my blog posts on WordPress, and my podcast on platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcast.

In my experience, so long as I keep creating content consistently, I will always gain subscribers on those platforms, which matters to me.

I use X to connect with my followers and keep up with trending topics, things I can always do on that app for free.

In school, I learned the basics of good writing — keep it short, concise, and grammatically correct. 

By that definition, AI-written content should be good, right? Yet, when I play around with tools like ChatGPT, I notice a few red flags. 

Sure, it’s grammatically correct, but it gives off serious “corporate speak” vibes. It follows a logical sequence, but it often goes on lengthy tangents. And while its responses may be accurate, it often lacks a unique perspective.

This isn’t to suggest AI-written content is inherently bad. But if you plan to leverage AI for content creation, it’s important to know where it falls short, and how to fix it.

4 Signs It Was Written by AI

1. It isn’t skimmable.

As a writer, it’s nice to imagine that people hang on to every word I write. The reality, however, is far different.

Gone are the days of leisurely reading the newspaper at the breakfast table. In the digital age, people want information, and they want it quickly. 

But if you’ve ever tinkered with an AI-writing tool, you may notice it hasn’t mastered the art of brevity. For example, when I ask ChatGPT to write an intro for an article on how to write better headlines, it generates the following:

This intro isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s a tad wordy and far too long. Now compare it to a blog post from Neil Patel on the same topic:

See the difference?

Patel starts with an engaging question, immediately piquing our curiosity. He also writes in short, one or two-sentence paragraphs. Both these strategies make content easier to skim and absorb.

2. It’s missing expertise.

Which article would you rather read: “How to Go Viral on TikTok” or “How To Go Viral on TikTok, From 3 Creators Who’ve Done It”?

I’m willing to bet the latter. That’s the power of expertise — it instantly elevates any piece of content with real-world experience.

The problem? AI doesn’t have any experience. 

As Kaitlin Milliken, HubSpot Blog’s Program Manager & Content Editor, puts it, “AI chatbots repackage information that we’ve heard a million times before. If you’re looking for a fresh perspective, you’ll want to reach out to a human expert.”

She adds, “Experts have access to the latest trends and more recent data than AI. Plus, they can pull from their real-world experience. If there’s a unique way to solve a problem or approach a situation, nothing compares to hearing from people who have lived through it.”

Besides being an expert (or consulting one), you can weave expertise into your content in other ways.

For instance, here at HubSpot, many of our articles include real-world examples, original data, and “pro tips.” These elements not only enhance the credibility of our content but also pack more value for the reader.

3. It’s outdated.

When I asked ChatGPT to write an article about BeReal, a popular photo-sharing app that launched in late 2021, here was its response:

This isn’t just a ChatGPT problem; all AI chatbots have knowledge cut-offs. If you use AI to write about topics outside its scope, you risk generating outdated or irrelevant content. 

Plus, when you consider that only 45% of professionals believe they would be able to tell if ChatGPT gave them wrong information, it creates plenty of room for error.

For Clint Fontanella, HubSpot Blog Manager, one workaround is to use AI to summarize research, not seek it out. 

He told me, “When you want AI to write about data that is outside its database, my recommendation is to copy content from an existing online source and ask it to summarize and rewrite in the style of your choosing.”

As for Milliken, she adds a fact-checking step into her editing process. In her own words: “Before you publish anything written with AI, fact-checking is essential. If AI references a certain business or person, be sure to double-check and see if they still exist. ChatGPT can get these details wrong.”

4. It sounds generic or bland.

“The first time I ask AI to write anything for me, it usually gives me the most corporate, templated response you can think of. Something that’s super neutral and sounds like a robot wrote it,” Fontanella told me.

This is relatable for many AI users, myself included. For example, when I ask ChatGPT to “sound more engaging,” it often writes in its signature corporate-y style, but with double the exclamation points.

For Fontanella, the key is tinkering with different styling prompts until you land on an output you like (e.g., “Sound more lighthearted” or “Write in the tone of a HubSpot writer”). However, as he also points out, this isn’t always a perfect solution. You still need to do some editorial heavy lifting before taking your content across the finish line.

This could mean adding humor, injecting personal anecdotes, referencing pop culture, forming a unique opinion, or adopting a certain perspective. In this way, you’re using AI as a foundation to build upon.

In Fontanella’s own words: “In general, AI can’t write a piece that’s on par with our standard of content. However, it can definitely write a few good sentences here and there that can be the foundation of your argument or paragraph. I highly recommend cherry-picking sentences from paragraphs that you like and then rewriting the paragraph around that sentence.”

Back to You

AI offers an entirely new way to create content, but it isn’t without its limitations. This doesn’t mean you should stay clear of these tools. However, it’s best to leverage them as writing assistants, not as actual writers.

As a writing assistant, AI can propose new ideas and angles, collect and summarize information, rephrase content, and generate basic outlines, which you can then elevate with your creativity, expertise, and perspective.