Category Archives: B2B

For the past 7 years, Twitter has averaged 500 million tweets daily.

Since I’m really good at math, (and totally without typing 7 x 365 into the search bar) I immediately knew that 7 years equated to 2,555 days.

Doing more incredibly brilliant, unassisted math, 500M daily tweets across 2,555 days equals 12,775,000,000 tweets. 

12.7B tweets is a lot of information. It’s a whole heckuva lot more impressions.

But does that even matter?

The Influence of Impressions

Marketers are known for trying to discover hidden value in every sandbox in which they play, sifting through tons of nothing in the hopes that something might be there. Thanks to its mostly open API, Twitter is the platform that’s analyzed most often. 

Every time a tweet is seen by a user, the company marks it as an impression. This not only includes the times it appears in someone’s timeline but also the times it has appeared in search or as a result of someone liking the Tweet.

Being the most bountiful source of data on the platform, impressions are often highlighted in every report and analysis as a means of calling attention to just how much opportunity lies in wait.

For 15 years, my colleagues and I, at large, have been parsing through the Social space hoping to find the diamonds in rough, evaluating threads, conversations, and one-off thoughts.

So here’s the question: How much tangible business value can you achieve from this data?

While there certainly are opportunities waiting to be unearthed, more often than not, this information is nothing but a whole bunch of hot air. 

Talk is Cheap

For what it’s worth, impressions aren’t bad. They simply don’t equate to tangible business results. 

Impressions are a substrate; a potentially fertile ground that could eventually yield a new audience who may have interest in a given topic, solution, product, etc. But on its own, impressions are merely a pile of dirt, equally full of promise and full of nothing. This kind of data is very useful to have when you’re crafting a content strategy; it gives you a sense of how large the market might be and how many future prospects or customers you may have the chance to talk with.

But impressions offer little beyond these soft brushes of interest. How much of the information shared within those tweets mean anything? How many would mean anything of substance to my employer? To our customers? Prospects? And most importantly: how many of these ideas or tweets would be something they might pay for?

With the 12.7B tweets I could have possibly seen since 2014, that’s a lot of sifting, even with the help of Twitter’s Advanced Search or a third-party listening tool. Even then, how many could honestly be relevant? (More on this later.)

Actions Are Priceless

In short, what people do is more reliable than what they say they’ll do. 

Using steady, present, and foreseeable buyer behavior is comforting to businesses for obvious reasons. Just as we shared in our 2021 Content Consumption Report, predictability is not only very attractive to businesses, it’s also essential, quite frankly. In order to anticipate the needs of your customers, you need to understand what they’re doing–and first-party data affords you that luxury.

First-party data is better than much of the information that is shared across the Marketing world. Sure, there is still plenty of information we don’t have visibility into, even with our massive content platform. But even if a third-party, survey-based report is making waves across social media, it still can’t beat having access to direct, first-party behavior data; it simply outperforms everything else. 

Yes, there is 100% a place in the world for subjective survey-based reports. What good would our data be without opinions and analysis layered on top of it? 

As we introduced in February of 2021, Intent Discovery allows Marketers to better understand what a buyer’s true intentions are, helping them identify their challenges, priorities, and purchase timeline. This data is sourced directly from the folks who are voluntarily sharing their information in exchange for content. What separates this data from its survey siblings is that instead of collecting answers from pedestrian participants, you’re digging deeper into why they’re interested. Try getting that from an impression.

For B2B organizations trying to inform your content marketing strategy with the latest and greatest, using data that is composed of concrete, verifiable actions representing the true business interests and trends of the B2B community.

Hard, Actionable Data

NetLine’s fortunate that the pendulum is swinging back this way, but it’s merely a happy accident; we didn’t plan it this way, we’re just lucky.

As we move into a cookieless world, first-party data becomes more and more necessary. While getting fully-permissioned consent is now in vogue, it wasn’t always the burgeoning beauty of the digital realm. 

For years, digital leaders preached about the benefits of using third-party sites like Facebook to bolster your business’s following while also warning about the pitfalls of building on rented land. Now we’re seeing just how true all of this is. 

It may have taken some time for everyone to come to their senses, but the path forward is clear: first-party is the bedrock upon which all great marketing plans are built. 

One Last Thing

But before we close this out, let’s quickly revisit relevancy. Relevancy is subjective; one man’s drivel is another man’s opportunity. 

All of this is to say that things only matter when they matter to us. As soon as something is contextually relevant to you, it’s going to be on your radar. So, yes, all of the things I wrote about impressions are true…but like all things in life, it’s not an absolute. After all, first-party data only matters if people see the content that gets them to voluntarily share their personal information. 

In writing this blog, I found myself reminded of a scene from No Country for Old Men where the bad guy, Anton Chigurh, played masterfully by Javier Bardem, extols the paradox of a quarter. (Though I love the entire clip, I have it queued up at the beginning of the coin toss.) 

Nonsense and consequence, all in one. Somehow, both truths exist in concert.

The same can be said of digital marketing: You never know when a moment of significance will find you. All we can do is be prepared and be ready to seize the opportunities in front of us.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a 7% rate of job growth is expected for marketing managers from 2019 to 2029.

To help stand out from your competition in the hiring process as well as feel entirely confident in your ability to perform in your social media role, you may want to take a social media course.

In this blog post, we’ll cover some of the best social media marketing courses that are available today.

Best Social Media Marketing Courses

1. Social Media Certification

Price: Free

Platform: HubSpot Academy

HubSpot’s Social Media Certification course is a robust program designed to help you attract customers and partners, and build brand loyalty. Because social media is the key to inbound marketing, this course ties in the two concepts seamlessly.

The course is flexible enough so that you can work on it on your time. It covers essential topics such as measuring ROI, extending reach, social media content creation, and social listening. You might also select to take specific lessons within the HubSpot Academy course — for instance, this one on Social Media Advertising.

Notable Takeaway: Learn how to create an inbound social media marketing strategy.

2. Fundamentals of Digital Marketing

Price: Free

Platform: Google Digital Garage

Google’s social media certification has over 300,000 students and provides courses in social media, mobile marketing, SEO, and web optimization.

The courses explain paid and organic search and teach you how to develop search-engine-optimized web pages.

Learning how to optimize pages for search on a popular search engine (for free) sounds like a win-win. At the completion of the course, you’ll receive a digital certificate you can add to your LinkedIn profile and resume.

Notable Takeaway: Better understand SEO and its relationship with digital marketing.

3. Social Ads 101

Price: Free

Platform: Wordstream

WordStream offers the necessary educational resources to develop a strong understanding of social media advertisements. This includes social media ads on a variety of platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, Tik Tok, and LinkedIn.

There’s also information about why and how to advertise on social media as well as education around best practices while advertising across these platforms.

Lastly, you’ll learn about social media ad metrics and social shopping — this way, you can effectively track measure your success as well as target your audience when and where they’re ready to make a purchase.

Notable Feature: Learn about social ads on the major platforms including Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, Tik Tok, and LinkedIn.

4. Social Media Training for Beginners

Price: Free

Platform: Constant Contact

Constant Contact is a great educational resource for beginners and those who are new to the world of social media marketing.

There are step-by-step instructions on how to create and maintain your social media presence across every major platform. This includes Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google My Business, YouTube, and Snapchat.

Notable Feature: Learn everything you need to get started in social media marketing.

5. Online Social Media Marketing Classes

Price: Free or paid (depending on the social media course)

Platform: Skillshare

On Skillshare, you can pick classes that suit your interests and save classes to refer to later. There’s a variety of business topics you can take classes on.

As for social media marketing specifically, you can filter social media marketing classes by the time that they take to complete, whether they’re free or premium, whether or not the topic is trending, and more.

Notable Takeaway: Select the specific social media marketing topic and lesson time that best suits your need.

6. Acadium Digital Marketing Course

Price: Free

Platform: Acadium

Acadium is an apprenticeship and mentorship program — there are a number of lessons within the Digital Marketing Course that you can take before, after, or during your apprenticeship.

The courses offered cover an array of digital marketing topics including but not limited to social media marketing, paid advertising, email marketing, SEO, and content marketing.

Notable Takeaway: Get a full understanding of digital marketing while working an apprenticeship in which you can develop real-world experience.

7. Social Media 101 Training

Price: $97

Platform: Boot Camp Digital

Digital Marketing 101 by Boot Camp Digital is an impactful, video-led training that takes you on a deep dive into the basics of digital marketing and using it for social media. This is beginner-level training and can be completed in six hours.

Boot Camp’s clientele includes Nike, NASA, GE, and Georgia-Pacific, and the platform gives buyers unlimited access once purchased. It provides a digital marketing template, ROI information, benchmarking, and a bonus-free digital tools course.

Notable Takeaway: Learn about digital marketing and work through a comprehensive section on social media marketing and strategy.

8. Fundamentals of Digital Marketing, Social Media, and E-Commerce

Price: $585

Platform: Wharton, University of Pennsylvania

Wharton’s course is considered an intermediate dive into the intersection of digital marketing, social media marketing, and ecommerce. It’s a self-paced, six-week class that demands three hours of your time each week.

This course is structured specifically for marketing professionals, small business owners, and consumers who want to know social media techniques. You’ll learn how to produce marketing campaigns that are effective for your business.

Notable Takeaway: Marketing course designed for professionals.

9. The Strategy of Content Marketing

Price: Enroll for free

Platform: University of California, Davis

In this online class offered by the University of California, Davis, you’ll learn how to create a content marketing strategy and develop an understanding of the ecosystem surrounding that strategy. Ample time will also be spent working on strategic writing and framing.

The different types of content marketing will be reviewed along with how they’re integral to social media marketing.There are five weeks worth of material paired with videos, exercises, readings, and quizzes.

Notable Takeaway: Learn about the power of integrating your content marketing and social media marketing strategies.

10. Social Media Marketing Masterclass

Price: $149.99

Platform: Udemy

Rather than a complete level one course in social media, this offering, by Udemy is a Masterclass on the subject, uniquely centered around ethical digital marketing techniques.

You’ll learn how to set up a powerful marketing strategy and a schedule that aligns with accomplishing business goals.

You’ll also dive into how social media marketing integrates with your business, email marketing, and building an online community. This course can be completed in 20 hours, and gives you a certificate of completion at its end.

Notable Takeaway: Learn how to build a social media marketing strategy and schedule for your unique business.

Find Your Ideal Social Media Marketing Course

Social media marketing can be extremely powerful when done right — and understanding how to apply the most effective and up-to-date strategies will help you stand out from other social media marketers and strategists so you can propel your career.

So, identity the right course for your experience level, budget, and goals — then get started learning.

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

“Curation” is one of those words that’s always conveyed coolness to me.

Take, for example, curating an art gallery, or curating music for a soundtrack. Cool, right? Content curation can be just as cool – and just as important.

Where do you get started on content curation?

In this blog post, you’ll find an explanation of what it is, how it can serve your brand and a series of tools you can use at every experience level.

What is content curation?

Content curation consists of finding material relevant to your audience from a variety of sources and sharing it strategically through your communication channels.

Say you’re a marketing agency. You could write a blog post with a roundup of top product demos and add some context on why you picked them. That list of demos would be curated by you based on what you believe your audience will find most valuable.

So, now that we’ve answered, “What is curated content? ” Let’s get into the benefits of this approach.

Benefits of Content Curation

One of the biggest benefits of content curation is that it adds value to your audience.

There’s so much information out there today and most consumers don’t have the time (or the desire) to sift through hours of content. That’s where you come in.

You can figure out what matters most to them, find the content they care the most about and present it to them in a perfect bow. Who wouldn’t want that?

Think about your favorite music station, whether it’s on the radio or a streaming platform like Spotify or Pandora. While you could listen to hours of music and create your own playlists, it’s even better when someone does it for you and delivers all the hits you love most.

That develops into trust. Even if the curator drops a song you haven’t heard before, you give it a chance knowing there’s a good chance you’ll end up liking it.

The same goes for content curation. As you deliver great content, your audience starts to trust you and see you as a thought leader.

Furthermore, content curation is a great strategy for those weeks when you’re low on original content.

It’s easier to gather content from other sources than start from scratch. So when in doubt, curate content that other experts in your industry have covered.

What makes a successful content curator?

1. Content curation should be personal.

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The beauty of news roundup NextDraft is the personal touch and context that its chief curator, Dave Pell, gives to each story.

I don’t just want a bunch of browsable links – I want to know why I should read this stuff, and how it pertains to me. That personalized context creates a type of bond between curator and reader that link aggregators doesn’t humanize quite as much.

2. Content curation should build value.

No matter which industry your customers are in, all of them want to stay informed but also save time.

Just like you, they have demands and can’t possibly keep up with all the latest news in their industry – but they want to. Solving this problem through content curation presents a huge opportunity for brands to build a relationship with their audience.

If you can deliver a curated experience that saves your customers time in getting the information they need, you’ve taken a major step on the path of building trust and loyalty.

3. Content curation should offset promotional content.

Customers can grow tired of brands ceaselessly promoting their own wares, which is why brands must think beyond products or features.

The relationship customers have with brands today transcends the product itself. After all, that’s part of the foundation of inbound marketing. While a product may initially attract you to a specific brand, it’s likely something else – like great content or remarkable service – that keeps you around.

4. Content curation shouldn’t take all day.

Once you’ve decided to curate content, the hard part begins gathering content. While bookmarking and reading lists may work in the beginning, those are not sustainable options.

Instead, there are curation tools specifically designed to help you gather, sift through, and curate content. Here’s our list below, categorized by level of expertise.

For Beginning Curators

If you occasionally share a relevant post with your customers, you’re already curating content. To build this into a scalable strategy, here are free curation tools to help you start getting in the habit of curating content, without being overwhelmed by complex tools, subscription fees, or convoluted dashboards.

1. Flipboard

Flipboard is a mobile and desktop app that allows you to create mini-magazines with links to your favorite news stories, blog posts, and websites.

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After creating these magazines, you can open them up to the public so consumers can follow your content and share them on social media networks.

You can also include your own blog posts and links in your magazine, making it an opportunity for readers to learn more about your business.

To start using Flipboard, all you need to do is download the app and create an account. You can also look through the magazines of other users and share their stories in your own mini “publication with a quick tap.

Here’s a quick demo that walks you through how to use the app:

2. Pocket

Pocket is a great place to get into the habit of accruing content to save and read later.

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Instead of a laundry list of bookmarks or countless emails you’ve sent to yourself with links, it stores all your chosen images, articles, and videos in one place for reference.

You can group articles with tags, and the site’s built-in search functionality makes finding those articles easy. Plus, it integrates with over 500 other apps, like Evernote, easy easy synching.

And as a bonus, Pocket tweets out their @PocketHits for the most-saved articles on their platform – a must-follow if you’re active on Twitter.

3. Elink.io

Collecting content from various websites and sharing them in a way that is presentable and context is key to successful content curation.

Elink.io takes the pain out of content curation and allows anyone to save links on the go and turn them into beautiful, shareable content.

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You can convert your links into a web page and embed them on a website or send them as a newsletter. They have a whopping 30+ responsive templates that you can customize to your liking. With over 80,000 users worldwide, elink is one of the best tools when it comes to fast and beautiful content curation.

4. Twitter Lists

Twitter can be hard to keep up with if you don’t organize the accounts you follow. That’s where Twitter Lists come in handy: curated groups of Twitter users that you can categorize and follow separately from the rest of your feed.

Say you curate marketing content, you could create a Twitter list for email marketing, another for blogging, and so on. Even better, you can make it public so that other Twitter users can access your lists as well.

Furthermore, if you create a Pocket account (mentioned above), you can easily save articles from Twitter directly into your account.

Click here to learn how to start your first Twitter list.

5. Newsletters

Whatever industry you’re in, stay on the lookout for newsletter subscriptions. And if a good one doesn’t exist in your industry, that’s the perfect opportunity to create one.

But before you start your own newsletter, learn from what other outlets are doing. Here are a few that are doing a great job in original content curation:

• The Hustle – Every day, The Hustle brings business and tech news right to your inbox. The team expertly breaks down top news in a witty, sharp tone that its audience enjoys – plus links to read the original content.
• The Daily Carnage – Want to stay updated on all things marketing? Carney’s got you covered. Their daily newsletter includes snippets of news in the marketing world along with a longer section that provides context for an external article they link to.
• The Daily Skimm – What this newsletter excels at is the tone and the brand voice. The team behind The Skimm knows exactly that its readers want the TLDR version of top news stories in a digestible way. Their newsletter does just that and that’s why it resonates so well with readers.

• Quartz Daily Brief: Quartz has figured out how to make a text-heavy newsletter a stalwart in the news business with its Daily Brief. The beauty of the newsletter, because it’s text-based, is the cross-platform functionality. Without heavy images, the Daily Brief loads quickly on phones, tablets, and desktops, making it easy to read on any device.
• Internet Brunch: Digital agency Big Spaceship created Internet Brunch to help folks “find the best news, GIFs, and trends from across the Internet.” From holidays to current events, to celebrity birthdays, this roundup is sure to cover the important stuff that helps readers stay in the loop.

For Intermediate Content Curators

Here are some great sources for when you’ve got the basics covered and you’re looking for something a little more comprehensive.

6. Scoop.it

I like to think of Scoop.it as a nexus of content curation and social media, with a Pinterest-like user interface.

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Start with a topic of interest, and Scoop.it will generate the most relevant articles to view and share as well as suggest relevant topics

Why we recommend Scoop.it:

• Their smart engine can monitor the topics you’re most interested in and identify related content you may like.
• Easy integration with WordPress.
• Content creation for multiple channels, including websites, emails, and social media

Pricing: $0 to $79/month, with customized pricing available for enterprise accounts.

7. Feedly

If you’re stepping up your content curation game, Feedly should be at the top of your list. This tool is a news aggregator powered by artificial intelligence, one the brand has named Leo. Image Source

When you add a few of your favorite sources to Feedly, you can aggregate and browse these feeds in one place from your desktop and mobile devices.

This tool is best for filtering the content you’re interested in. Feedly leverages Leo to identify the content you care most about and filter out the ones you don’t.

Pricing: $6 to $12 a month, with a customizable plan available for enterprise accounts.

8. Sniply

You might be wondering why Sniply, a conversion platform, is on this list.

Well, this tool actually goes hand-in-hand with content curation.

Let’s say you have a monthly newsletter in which you include links to articles pertaining to your industry. With a tool like Sniply, you can place a call-to-action (CTA) on the page you’re linking to. This way, you can redirect users back to your content and help them convert.

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It’s also a custom link shortener, so you can create branded links that are short enough to share on Twitter and the like.

Pricing: $29 – $299/month

7. Quuu

Want to focus your content curation on social media? Consider Quuu. Image Source

Quuu integrates with most major social media scheduling tools, including HubSpot, and allows you to discover and share content.

Why we recommend Quuu:

• It auto-categorizes your content, making it easier to sift through later.
• It offers reader-mode to make your experience free of distractions.
• The integrated scheduling dashboard makes it easy to share the content you discover.

Pricing: $0 to $15.83/month

9. UpContent

Are you looking for a one-stop shop for your content curation? UpContent’s got you covered.

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UpContent’s top features include:

• Content recommendations backed by machine learning algorithms.
• Approval workflows to ensure articles meant brands’ guidelines.
• Integration with top web hosting, social media scheduling, and email marketing software.

Pricing: $15 to $265/month

For Advanced Content Curators

Now we’re getting into some serious, enterprise-level curation software. These solutions are ideal for companies looking for a proven platform capable of supporting a team of users, editors, and content curators.

Enterprise-level curation requires advanced algorithms to find identify relevant content, a centralized publishing platform, and customizable publishing options.

10. Curata

The power of Curata lies in its ability to recommend and help you discover relevant content relevant to their respective audiences without manual labor.

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Users can fine-tune, customize, and categorize content sources for review, and then distribute them – all from one central platform.

You can then use Curata’s publishing and promotion tools to repurpose curated content across your blog, social media accounts, newsletter, and automated marketing platforms.

Pricing: Not available

Which Tool Is Right For You?

Before you select the best tools for your business, it’s important to understand the role content curation will play in your marketing operations and the size of your team.

If you’re a one-person marketing department, for example, the beginner and intermediate options should suffice for your needs. As your business and team grow, content curation may play a larger role and require more powerful software.

At that point, some of the advanced tools will help save time curating and ensure everyone is on the same page. Regardless of your team or business size, content curation should become a part of your content marketing strategy.

Great curators build trust with their audiences and become an indispensable resource, as they distribute content their audiences care most about.

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

Welcome to Breaking the Blueprint — a new blog series that dives into the unique business challenges and opportunities of Black business owners and entrepreneurs. Learn how they’ve grown or scaled their businesses, explored entrepreneurial ventures within their companies, or created side hustles, and how their stories can inspire and inform your own success.

Since the early 2000s, social media has impacted every aspect of people’s lives, including business. Entrepreneurs from all over the world have and continue to use social media as a tool to launch their brand, connect with people, and garner new customers.

Social media quickly replaced flyers as a form of marketing, and now business owners are investing their time into marketing strategies to reach 4.2 billion social media users worldwide.

Additionally, a Forbes article stated that 84% of respondents who completed a CMO Survey report using social media for brand building. One might even argue that social media is just as critical as a company’s website.

Social media has served as a staple in the Black community to connect in creative and hilarious ways through pictures, videos, words, and more. In fact, we’re so connected that it can take only a few minutes for people, services, or products to go viral on major social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, or Snapchat.

These sites have also helped Black-owned businesses gain visibility and engage with users in free, innovative ways.

I spoke with three social media experts who shared a list of strategies, resources, and success stories Black business owners can use to increase their following and expand their audiences. Let’s dive in.

6 Social Media Strategies for Black Business Owners

1. Build a community by creating engaging content.

Social media manager coach and content strategist Bolaji Ajibare believes creating engaging content is one of the main strategies Black-owned businesses should leverage.

Ajibare, who is popularly called TheSocialMediaOga, says that business owners should create material that allows them to interact with their followers. Entrepreneurs can grow their community by asking their audience what kind of information they’d like to see on their page to serve them properly.

Ajibare says it’s a good idea for users to incorporate various information to appeal to followers — including promotional, inspirational, and educational content, to display balanced material on their page.

Content and design strategist Alicia Noelle further emphasizes that business owners should post creative content that influences people to interact with them. Creating polls and responding to followers in the comments section are a couple of ways that business owners can communicate with their followers. Noelle says these efforts are the critical difference from simply gaining followers.

“I think that that’s what small businesses are going to have to realize as they change their marketing tactics in 2021, and beyond — that people are no longer going to buy from you because it looks pretty,” Noelle said. “They want to feel like they belong in your community, and you have to create that atmosphere for them.”

Social media expert and CEO of Thames Media Solutions, Michelle Thames, shared similar sentiments. Thames states that people forget that humans are on the other side of social media, and they still want to feel like they’re a part of a community.

“You have to nurture your audience by giving them tools and the resources,” she said. 

Thames adds, “Whether you have a product-based business or a service-based business, you have to solve [your audience’s] problem and let them know why they need to come to you.”

Noelle and Thames mentioned natural hair care line Mielle Organics as an example of a Black-owned business that has successfully curated a community around their social media pages.

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Social media influencers promote their line, and the company also offers promotions and giveaways. Mielle Organics features customers who use their products on their social pages, as well.

2. Write captions that resonate with your followers. 

Noelle recommends that business owners develop prompts for their captions to complement their graphics or videos before they post.

According to the content and design strategist, every caption needs to tell a story that resonates or connects with a business’s audience. The text should be more than two sentences and should also include a call-to-action encouraging followers to subscribe to the company’s email list, sign up for discounts, or buy an item.

Noelle used Breanna Aponte as an example of an entrepreneur who writes good captions. She says that Aponte tells stories with her posts that resonate with her followers. Even though her posts may be unrelated to her business, she can still sell her social media services because of her authenticity.

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Noelle suggests that business owners create captions that put followers in a different mindset and influence them to want to read what they have to say.

Business owners can share a behind-the-scenes look of their brand on their IG Stories, Twitter Fleets, or Facebook Stories.

Mattie James is an example of an entrepreneur who uses her Stories feature effectively as an influencer. James posts consistent content highlighting her family, daily routine, links to brand promotions, and more.

The Stories feature for all platforms is also a great way for entrepreneurs to promote what they have to offer and communicate with followers who respond to their posts via DM.

Thames recommends that businesses should spend 30 minutes to an hour each day engaging with customers and followers to prove that they’re a trusted, reliable source. This effort also makes followers feel like business owners care.

3. Create videos and reels.

Using videos and Instagram Reels is critical for businesses to maintain engagement and attract new followers.

“If you’re looking to do videos, Reels are going to help you get in front of more people because Instagram prioritizes their new features. Reels is a new feature, and they want to make sure that users use it,” Thames said.

Thames revealed she gained roughly 1,200 followers in 30 days using Instagram Reels, and she doesn’t even post every day. She emphasized that business owners’ Reels need to either be entertaining or educational. They should also be short, quick, and to the point, since people often have short attention spans on social media, proving why the feature is so popular.

She incorporated Instagram Reels into her clients’ social media strategy by encouraging them to make posts three to four times a week. She also mentions that entrepreneurs should be using IG Video and TikTok.

Marketing strategists Candace Junée and Ashley France are two entrepreneurs who use videos and IG Reels very well.

4. Post multiple times a week.

No matter if it’s a photo, Reel, story, or video, business owners should post on their page multiple times a week to not only secure sales, but to stay relevant.

Noelle identifies this strategy as the rapid-fire strategy for social media. She suggests business owners who sell products to post a minimum of once a day, but ideally two to three times a day by creating content using the other aforementioned strategies.  

If it is a service-based business, Noelle recommends businesses to post at least three times a week since solopreneurs usually lead this type of company, which can make this effort a daunting task. This strategy can also work for product-based businesses if they’re unable to post multiple times a day.

Mahdi Woodard is a marketing and branding guru who does a great job posting frequently on his page. Woodard posts simple but highly effective content to keep his followers engaged. He uses inspirational quotes and videos to promote his brand.

5. Leverage hashtags.

Hashtags are frequently used on platforms such Instagram and TikTok. Entrepreneurs use hashtags to attract potential followers and customers because it’s an easy way to be found, especially when they use niche and location-based hashtags.

Users tend to use hashtags a lot on Instagram and TikTok. Hashtagged words or phrases are one of the best free marketing tools if used correctly.

For instance, I found all three social media experts by using the #socialmediaexperts hashtag on Instagram for this blog post.

6. Use templates.

Bolaji says templates can be a beneficial tool for entrepreneurs because it makes your content layout look clean and consistent. It also makes life easier for business owners because they can use templates to publish their material quickly and efficiently.

Millennial money expert and founder of My Fab Finance, Tonya Rapley, uses templates on her Instagram page. Her page has a consistent color scheme which makes her page look cohesive and appealing.

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Every strategy mentioned above is guaranteed to help businesses grow, but Bolaji admits that sometimes business owners can’t use the same approach that got them to 1,000 followers to get 10,000. Even if they’re using all of these strategies, business owners have to stay up-to-speed and learn what method works best for them at various levels of their success.

7 Social Media Tools Black-Owned Businesses Can Use

The strategies listed above are beneficial, but business owners can’t produce quality content for followers if they don’t have the effective tools to make the process easier. Social media tools are essential for business owners to cater to their customers’ needs and provide excellent customer service through proper planning.

Take a look at the tools the social media experts suggested Black-owned businesses use, below.

1. Canva

Canva is a platform used for graphic design. Users can use the tool to create social media graphics, templates, documents, and other visual content.

Price:

Free Version: $0.00

Pro Version: $9.99/month or $119.99/year

Enterprise Version: $30.00/month per person

2. Flodesk

Flodesk is an email marketing service provider that’s built for creators to design and send automated marketing emails to help grow their following.

Price:

$38/month

$418/year

3. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media management platform that has a social network integration feature that gives users the ability to share content onTwitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinetrest and YouTube.

Price:

Professional: $49/month

Team: $129/month

Business: $599/month

4. Later

Later is an all-in-one social marketing platform that allows businesses to plan, analyze, and publish content for the top social networks.

Price:

Free Version: $0/month

Starter: $12.50/month

Growth: $20.83/month

Advance: $33.33/month

5. Planoly

Created as the first visual planner for Instagram, Planoly plans, schedules, and measures content across social networks such as Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

Price:

Free Version: $0

Solo: $7 billed annually or $9 month to month

Duo; $15 billed annually or $19 month to month

Custom: $23 billed annually or $29 month to month

6. Pixistock

Pixistock is a Black-owned visual content creation service that offers photos and graphics for websites and social media feeds.

Price:

Member Pricing

• 1-5 photos: $35 each
• 6-9 photos: $30 each
• 10-19 photos: $28 each
• 20-29 photos: $25 each
• 30-49 photos: $20 each
• 50+ photos: $18 each

Non-Member Pricing

• 1-5 photos: $45 each
• 6-9 photos: $40 each
• 10-19 photos: $38 each
• 20-29 photos: $35 each
• 30-49 photos: $30 each
• 50+ photos: $28 each

7. Airtable

Airtable is a low-code, cloud collaborative platform that allows users to build software tools that fit their needs. Users can customize their workflow and collaborate with other creators and creatives.

Price:

Free Version: $0

Plus: $12/month or $10 per seat/month billed annually

Pro: $24/month or $20 per seat/month billed annually

Although it takes commitment and time, social media provides Black entrepreneurs and creatives a space where their voices can be heard. I hope these suggestions will help Black-owned businesses share their talent — whether it be a service or a product — with the world.

To a prospect seeking out a new service provider, the process can be a little overwhelming. It’s easy to wonder: Who are the real people behind all the smoke and mirrors?

Adding a “Meet the Team” page or section to your website is an easy, effective way to give your business an accessible face. As one of your most important pages, it gives prospects an idea of who exactly they’ll be working with, and shows potential employees that you’re proud of the people on your team.

For some inspiration, see how these companies introduce visitors to their most important creative assets: their people.

Cool ‘Meet the Team’ Pages

1. Yokel Local

Yokel Local is a HubSpot Agency Partner that positions itself as an extension of its clients’ marketing teams. For that reason, this agency showcases its staff to highlight the humans behind the brand.

What’s pleasing about this particular page is the simplicity: The grid design provides a modern feel, and clicking on a face opens a box with more information about the team member, including their bio, credentials, and social profiles.

Why this works: Yokel Local doesn’t go overboard with its “Meet the Team” page, and it doesn’t need to — everything potential clients need to know is presented in a clean grid format. This way, it’s clear who’s behind the agency.

2. Philly Reps

As a contrast to more elaborate designs we’ll see later in this list, Philly Reps is another agency that takes a cleaner, more minimal approach to its team page. Members are presented in grayscale images that take up the majority of screen space for a nice consistent look and feel.

Below images are brief descriptions of each member. Notice how Philly Reps has made each description roughly the same length to maintain balance and alignment between grid elements. Most won’t notice this detail, but it results in a page with maximum readability.

Why this works: Large grayscale headshots of team members bring character and personality to the brand while maintaining visual consistency.

3. Digital Marmalade

Since most employee bios read a lot like a list of stats (“10 years in the industry … 4 years at the company … Managed 80 website redesign projects … “) the folks at Digital Marmalade decided to have a little fun with the format.

Each employee at the London-based marketing agency has a trading card-style profile detailing their actual marketing accomplishments and personal facts, as well as their fictional superhero abilities. It’s a quirky twist that gives visitors a colorful snapshot of the agency’s team, highlighting both their impressive experience and friendly culture.

Why this works: Digital Marmalade balances its show of technical proficiency and fun with employee stats that list both skills and “superpowers.” Additionally, headshots are all similar in composition and background.

4. CloudHorizon

CloudHorizon is a mobile product development company. On its about page, it says, “Some of the more rewarding projects we have had the honour to be involved in, started with simple ideas and grew profitable businesses from the ground up.”

With this in mind, CloudHorizon’s “Meet our team” section is a great way to illustrate that idea. When you hover over an image of a team member, their thumbnail flips to reveal a photo from their childhood with a small caption of what they wanted to be when they grew up.

Why this works: This clever idea highlights both the diversity of backgrounds that the CloudHorizon team brings, as well as the uniqueness of each member. It also provides a sense of friendly nostalgia to new visitors.

5. Bolden

Bolden’s team bios are more conventional than some of the others on this list, but what they lack in invention they make up for in style.

Hovering over each team member’s picture produces a darker alternative almost like an image negative, revealing the employee’s name along with an outfit change. This is a great example of a minimal, accessible “Meet the Team” page that manages to look cool and introduce the faces behind the agency without going over the top.

Why this works: Bolden implements a subtle but unique and effective hover effect for its team member cards for some extra visual flair. As a digital design agency, these small moments show capability.

6. Rock Kitchen Harris

Rock Kitchen Harris, a full-service agency, decided to skip the photos altogether and showcase the cartoon versions of their employees instead.

Each employee at the English agency had a custom caricature drawn up, and every single one has a different personality. While some employees opted for representations reminiscent of LinkedIn profile pictures, others got a little creative with it, dressing their cartoon selves up as Ewoks and other characters. Employees can also be easily filtered by specialty.

Why this works: The choice to make renderings of each employee brings a lot of character and personality to this agency’s website. Plus, it gives the chance for employees to have a bit of extra fun as well.

7. FCINQ

FCINQ, a creative studio, introduces us to their team with a collage of colorful bubbles.

Hovering over an employee’s circle produces a zoomed-in effect, and clicking expands their headshot with their name and social profiles. The splashy setup is a stylish alternative to the expected rows of team photos and names.

Why this works: FCINQ’s team section is a nice departure from the standard grid layout while staying intuitive and informative.

8. Zulu Alpha Kilo

This Canadian agency presents its founding team with refreshing comedic flair. While many agency leaders choose to represent themselves with stoic business portraits, the three leaders of Zulu Alpha Kilo opted for playful photos and cheeky bios.

Here’s an excerpt from the bio of Marcus Alpha — the agency’s “Ultra Chief Creative Director Officer”:

Marcus has a reputation for pushing his creative teams further than any other creative director. He makes them work late nights, weekends and through holidays in pursuit of that one truly breakthrough creative idea. And when they’ve finally cracked it after weeks of grueling and thankless work, Marcus will triumphantly stand in front of the client and present it as an idea he had in the shower that morning instead.

Why this works: Zulu Alpha Kilo leverages humor with its portraits and text content to draw potential clients in search of a partner on the quirky side.

9. Stink Studios

We love this expertly color-coordinated slideshow of team members from Stink Studios. This creative agency has offices in five major cities around the world — including New York, Paris, and Berlin — but having a personable “Meet the Team” section helps give their business an accessible edge. They don’t call themselves “a global company with a local feel” for nothing.

Why this works: The broken grid layout of this website’s team page is colorful, inviting, clean, and a touch playful as well.

10. CRUX

The video pros at the agency CRUX have crafted a truly captivating website that makes excellent use of their medium. The entire website is presented as a “video” inside an editing program; visitors can “play” the video by scrolling or via the timeline at the bottom of the screen.

When you reach the “About” section, each team member drifts into focus alongside a humorous description. This website is unlike anything we’ve seen before and establishes this team as unique, ambitious thinkers and creators.

Why this works: CRUX takes a one-of-a-kind approach to its team page (and its entire website) that cleverly combines visual features of a website with those of a video editing program.

11. Drexler

As one of the more artsy entries in this list, this “Meet the Team” section from Drexler is proof that you don’t need a whole page devoted to introducing your employees — just a section can do the trick.

This simple but polished team member marquee appears down the homepage and plays with scrolling to reveal each team member’s portrait. The “hands-on” portrait aesthetic is certainly unique as well, creating a homepage that only this group could think up.

Why this works: Drexler utilizes scrolling to present team photos in a scanning pattern, complete with peculiar but captivating portraits.

12. Matchstic

As a branding agency, Matchstic knows the importance of identity, creativity, and individuality. Not only does its “Who We Are” section provide that identity by highlighting the human element of their brand, but it also shows their creative side. When you hover over each thumbnail, a goofy illustration is overlaid onto the photo.

In addition, the custom cursor, which only shows up on the About page, is a strong callback to the Matchstic brand, implying a kinetic energy that starts with the lighting of a match.

Why this works: Matchstic applies a cartoon-style hover effect to its employee portraits, implying fun, imagination, and creativity behind the otherwise straightforward profiles. The custom cursor is an extra, delightful touch.

13. Atlassian

Atlassian, a company behind many of the software solutions used in businesses worldwide, highlights photos of their team on their “people” page, interacting at the office and hard at work.

Below, they showcase their leadership team with colorful headshots that break out of colorful background boxes, similar to Matchstic. When you hover over, vector graphics appear relating to the individual’s unique role.

In addition, a popup appears on click with social icons and a bio. What’s particularly interesting is the option to download their headshot, some extra utility for media professionals.

Why this works: Atlassian’s people page is both professional and quirky, with useful features like bios, social media links, and an option to download headshots.

14. Heart Creative

Heart Creative presents its team members on its “about us” page, and hovering the cursor over portraits reveals some extra character behind each employee. Given the agency specializes in culinary endeavors, these alternate photos are usually food-related.

For some added navigational ease, users can sort cards by team. Selecting an option from the dropdown will show the relevant members. You have the option to visit each individual’s LinkedIn profile as well.

Why this works: Heart Creative lends a touch of fun to its “Meet the Team” section by displaying alternative portraits on mouseover. Each team member shows off what they love, which puts some extra personality behind the brand.

15. LiveChat

LiveChat, an AI customer service and chatbot solution, approached their team page in a completely different way. Instead of just listing out each team member’s roles and experience, they created a photo for each team member that illustrates who they are in a conceptual, fun, and metaphorical way. Given the size of the company, this was quite the endeavor.

LiveChat’s approach is extremely effective for showcasing the uniqueness of their team, and it compels the website visitor to take the team to look at each picture and read each bio. This results in longer time on page, an important engagement metric.

Why this works: The LiveChat team page places enormous emphasis on each member’s personality and interests. It’s clear that LiveChat values everyone and knows the real strength of any business is the people.

16. Etsy

Many large companies forgo the traditional “Meet the Team” page because there are so many team members that it doesn’t make sense to display them all. At Etsy, though, they acknowledge all the people that make the popular online marketplace possible with a tiled “people board” that scrolls for days.

Why this works: While impractical to provide bios of every team member, Etsy compromises with a collage of team portraits as a testament to the strength behind the company.

17. UWG

Digital content specialists UWG have created a stunning team page that’s as much about personality as it is about personnel. Team members are shown in lively portraits against solid backgrounds. Most images are squares, but the page occasionally breaks this pattern for some visual variety. For more information about a team member, you can click a portrait to open a modal.

Why this works: This team page is simple, yet bold and effective. Each portrait is packed with personality, and together the images form a vibrant collage. It’s the kind of “Meet the Team” page that makes you actually want to meet the team.

18. The Correspondent

The Correspondent is an organization that offers news without fear-mongering or financial gain. In true journalistic style, the site features each team member in a beautifully rendered cartoon style, providing an artistic feel to the page.

Clicking on each thumbnail leads the website visitor to a place where they can subscribe to that particular writer and view a feed of their pieces. Best of all, the individual’s mission is displayed across the top and contact information in the sidebar.

Why this works: Sketch renderings of every team member lend to the publication aesthetic of The Correspondent. Readers can easily find a particular writer’s stories as well by clicking a card.

19. Bluleadz

What better way to convey the personality of your team than to display their favorite gifs on mouse hover? That’s what digital marketing agency Bluleadz does. You can almost imagine these folks in the scenarios their gifs represent.

Another useful feature of this “Meet the Crew” page is the ability to filter Bluleadz employees by function. Each button at the bottom corresponds to a team and brings up the individuals who “make the magic happen” in that area of the business.

Why this works: Yet another way to add personality to a team page, Blueleadz includes a favorite gif for each team member. It’s fun, entertaining, and potentially converting.

20. Media Junction

Bold blocky pops of color? Yes, please. HubSpot Elite Agency Partner Media Junction displays their team thumbnails on solid backgrounds with vector shadows. Each photo is a little silly, and many of them bring their furry friends into the picture with them.

In addition, their leadership team’s thumbnails are clickable so that you can read more about them and even send them a message for more information.

Why this works: Media Junction is afraid to show its playful side on the team page — images are colorful, inviting, and animated for a dash of style that keeps users on the page.

“Meet the Team” Page Best Practices

So, what can we learn from these exceptional examples? Here are some tips and design best practices that you can take away and apply to your own team page:

High-Quality Images

Most visitors will expect your team page to feature photos of your employees. Make sure these photos are high-quality and visually consistent (including dimensions). From there, you can add as much personality as you want. Or, you could try an illustrated alternative, as we saw in some examples above.

Employee Descriptions

At the very least, each member profile should include a photo, name, and job title. For more details, you might choose to add a short bio of each employee that outlines their role, experience, accomplishments, and interests. This is especially fitting for agencies that collaborate extensively and in-person with clients — you’ll want to build trust, and bios are a great way to get there.

Social Links

In addition to your employees’ names, titles, and bios, you might also choose to link to their social media profiles on your team page. While not necessary, this can help potential clients reach out to members through another preferred channel.

A LinkedIn profile link is likely enough, as you can be confident that employees will keep their posts professional on the site. However, link to other profiles (e.g., Twitter, Instagram) with caution, as you can’t be sure their conduct on these sites is company-appropriate.

Personality

Yes, simply saying “personality” may seem like a cop-out answer. We’re being intentionally vague here because each company will have its own approach to adding some extra character to their “Meet the Team” page. Depending on your brand, this might mean incorporating fun portraits, humorous descriptions, or eye-catching effects.

As we’ve seen, the best team pages inject personality in a way that aligns with their branding. Some pages lean formal but sneak in some fun elements, some are clearly aiming for humor, and others play it more serious. In all cases, the pages maintain a professional feel, even those that are funny.

You don’t need to go overboard here, but adding a little something extra can show your company is willing to go above and beyond for the best customer experience. It also helps your business stand out in the minds of users who might be wading through dozens of competing sites.

Show Off Your Team in Style

“Meet the Team” pages resonate because people like to buy from real people. The best practice is to determine what your brand stands for, then create a “Meet the Team” and About page that conveys that in the strongest possible way. Whether that’s going for an elaborate, eye-catching page or a simpler grid display, visitors will appreciate being able to put a face to your brand.

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

Running a successful website means staying alert for errors like broken pages or slow performance. However, sometimes there are problems that you just can’t avoid, and 404 errors are one of them.

A 404 occurs when a user requests a page on your website that doesn’t exist, thus throwing a 404 error page prompting users to return to the right place. No matter how many resources you put into ensuring your website never goes down … there’s always a chance that users could end up here.

It’s inconvenient, but a fact of life. And the reaction of visitors when they land on a nonexistent page can range from “taking it in stride” to “totally losing their minds.”

While there’s nothing you can do about the latter, you can make things a little less of a pain by having a creative error 404 message. This can do wonders to make your website visitors crack a smile in an otherwise frustrating situation.

To get your website design juices flowing, this post will showcase some of our favorite website error pages. Hopefully, you’ll be able to take away a few ideas to snazz up your own 404 message.

What is a 404 Error?

A 404 error is a standard HTTP error message code that means the website you were trying to reach couldn’t be found on the server. It’s a client-side error, meaning either the webpage was removed or moved and the URL wasn’t changed accordingly, or the person just typed in the URL incorrectly.

For the most part, you can configure your server to create a customized 404 error page. (If you’re a HubSpot customer, click here to learn how to customize your 404 page in HubSpot.)

Some customized 404 error pages include a hero image, witty description, site map, search form, or basic contact information.

The Best 404 Web Page Examples

Over the years, websites have found different ways to inform visitors of a 404 error and channel them back to the right place, some simply, some creatively, and some hilariously. Let’s start by looking at some creative 404 pages, then check out some funny examples that are sure to delight anyone who comes across them.

Page Not Found: TK Creative 404 Error Pages

1. Pipcorn

While a 404 page can easily stick out from a website, Pipcorn’s error page aligns perfectly with the rest of the site’s branding. There’s a nice animated background, a friendly text prompt directing visitors to search the website (complete with a clever pun), and a piece of popcorn used as the “0” in “404.”

2. Spotify

Music streaming giant Spotify has covered its bases with a clever 404 page. With a witty pun off Kanye West’s album “808s and Heartbreak” and a record animation, the website briefly entertains and then sends visitors back to the page they came from.

3. Genially

One simple way to ease the tension on your 404 page is to add a quick “Oops!” message — it helps your site feel more personable as you guide users back to the right place. In the case of Genially’s site, the page also includes a nifty illustration paired with some playful copy.

4. Adobe

As you would expect, Adobe’s 404 error page is both useful and visually pleasing. It lists out popular links that visitors might want alongside some cool digital artwork serving as a visual metaphor for a broken or lost page. Honestly, websites should use visual metaphors more often.

5. Clorox

The 404 page for Clorox cleaning products rotates between three lighthearted photos to signal to visitors that they’ve made a misstep. It’s a smart use of branding to add a brief delight moment while helping out lost users.

6. Duma Collective

Other times, you might not need a witty blurb — just tell visitors that there’s no page at the address and let them move on. Entertainment consulting agency Duma Collective does just this with its error page, though it’s complemented by a background image for some minor flair.

7. Chillhouse

Speaking of flair, self-care brand Chillhouse has put in the extra work to reroute its visitors in style. The 404 page is branded appropriately and even takes visitors on a little journey through a few image stills before they go back to the homepage.

8. Bitly

If you enter an incorrect Bitly link, you’ll be taken to Bitly’s 404 page. We assume this happens a fair amount, which is why the 404 page gets straight to the point. It explains what might have gone wrong and prompts users to visit the Bitly homepage if that’s what they’re after.

9. Ikea

Ikea’s 404 page is similarly minimalist but still manages to sneak some smart branding in there. This example shows that your error pages don’t need to be elaborate to get the point across, but there’s nothing wrong with injecting some fun either.

10. Moxie Design Co.

Sure, “blew up the Internet” might be a bit hyperbolic, but it tells visitors that Moxie Design Co. doesn’t take itself too seriously with small slip-ups like this one. Also, a search bar is conveniently placed at the bottom to send you on your way.

11. McKissack & McKissack

Ah, the classic “we lost the page” trick. Again, an easy way to present a 404 without alienating your audience. If you’re an agency like McKissack & McKissack that manages many client interactions, clear and concise copy is essential for all of your site’s pages, including error pages.

12. CSS Tricks

Ever ripped away a website’s wrapping to see what’s underneath? That’s the concept that CSS Tricks was going for in their 404 error page. This is both witty and reminiscent of what the website is all about: smart use of page styling.

13. Good Old Games

For other websites, you unwrap the front end and there’s … just the vast emptiness of space. This page is a clever reference to GOG Galaxy, which is Good Old Games’ native video game client. Thankfully, a little video game character is there to give visitors a place to report an error if they want.

14. Canva

For something a little different, check out Canva’s 404 page. It includes not just an error message, but a nifty tile puzzle visitors can play for some brief entertainment. There’s no harm in letting your visitors slack off for a couple of minutes, right?

15. Innotech

Similar to Canva’s approach, Innotech features a Pong-esque game on its 404 page to provide some brief entertainment. Chances are you’ll remember a website like this. Plus, the fun detour complements a truly impressive website — seriously, when you’re done playing, head to the home page and take it all in.

16. Myriad

Video agency Myriad has opted for a quirky, on-brand 404 page design that mimics the classic SMPTE color bars that appear on old tapes and TVs. It’s a funny throwback to older technologies while representing the more modern problem of a nonexistent web page.

17. KonMari

Known for her popular cleaning and organization methods and brand, Marie Kondo has brought a similar feel to her website’s 404 page. The copy briefly and humorously harkens back to her tidying philosophy — a small but well-branded detail that fans will recognize.

18. BrandCrowd

Not only is the illustration on this error page detailed and engaging — the copy is clever, too. We love the reference to the Semisonic song “Closing Time”: “You can click anywhere else, but you can’t click here.”

19. Hot Dot Productions

Hot Dot’s error page stays true to its tagline, “the intersection of new technologies and design.” The page is animated by hundreds of tiny dots that change direction in response to where you move your cursor. It’s mesmerizing and a great showcase of the agency’s design capabilities.

20. OrangeCoat

If you’re going to give an error message, why not entertain the user for a few seconds while you help them out? Following a friendly greeting, OrangeCoat offers a flowchart that actually helps users figure out why they reached an error page in the first place.

21. Ervin & Smith

This 404 page does more than redirect users back to active pages. Instead, Ervin & Smith’s 404 page invites you to scroll down and learn why you need a digital marketing agency, and why to choose Ervin & Smith in particular, capped off with a contact form. True to its mission, this agency shows that any page can be a conversion opportunity.

22. DayCloud Studios

… or, your 404 can just be a place to waste time for a minute, as can be seen on the website for DayCloud Studios. Moving the cursor around the screen reveals a 404 message illuminated by lasers shooting from a cat’s eyes. Because why not?

23. Headspace

Another instance of a website smartly incorporating its brand messaging into a 404 page — guided meditation app Headspace makes the effort to calm users, encouraging us to take a deep breath, then return to the main site.

24. Wildwood Bakery

Some websites thus far have integrated clever branded copy in their pages, while others have hosted full-blown online games on theirs. But, there’s nothing wrong with a brief push back in the right direction. Wildwood Bakery’s exquisite site keeps things short and sweet (literally).

 

Page Not Found: TK Funny 404 Error Pages

25. Astuteo

Design agency Astuteo’s 404 page is a perfect balance of elegant visuals, humor, and helpfulness. The minimal layout gives users the information they need alongside another amusing visual metaphor, a sinking cargo ship and a fleeing figure.

26. LEGO

There’s few words needed on LEGO’s 404 error page — the character’s expression makes everything clear. Plus, fans of the LEGO movie franchise will enjoy the fun reference in the copy.

27. Magnt

In this funny error message, Magnt pokes fun at the fact that, yes, they could have broken something — or, you just can’t type. The visual serves as a quick way to quickly illustrate their point.

28. IconFinder

IconFinder’s error page is simple but delightful. The company’s mascot wearing a robe and appearing weary is a relatable nod to lost visitors. No worries though, since the site lists some of its links to visit down below.

29. Sweet Dreams

Apparently, the team at sleep aid company Sweet Dreams took too many of its products according to the website’s 404 page. Not only is this page humorous — it also blends well with the rest of the site’s front-end aesthetic and messaging for a cohesive feel.

30. GitHub

The line “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for” refers to Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Jedi mind trick on Stormtroopers in Star Wars Episode IV, and it’s become a well-known phrase used to tell someone they’re pursuing the wrong course of action. GitHub plays on this famous line in their 404 error message.

31. Patagonia

Patagonia’s custom 404 page captures the brand’s vibe perfectly, complete with a boomerang video of a frisbee twirler, a clever pun combining “404” and “aloha,” and links to its product pages. It’s a friendly and funny way to greet visitors who wound up in the wrong place.

32. Cloud Sigma

Check it out: Cloud Sigma’s letting us in on some behind-the-scenes action. Their 404 error page pretends to be a “junior developer’s homepage” — that junior developer being, well, a cat.

33. AMC Theatres

You might have been to an AMC movie theater before, but you’ve hopefully never seen their website’s 404 page. The website makes use of a quick, funny, and relevant one-liner before it sends you back to the right place.

34. Bruno

It’s no coincidence that creative agencies are great at coming up with cool 404 pages. Here’s another one from the creatives at Bruno that plays off the 2000 cult comedy classic Dude, Where’s My Car? No, it has nothing to do with the company or website, but it’s sure to get a chuckle.

35. NPR

At first, NPR’s error page seems like nothing special. But keep reading and you’ll see how they cleverly link to some of their great stories about lost people, places, and things, like a piece on Amelia Earhart and one on Waldo. This might just make lost users feel a little less alone.

36. Medium

Medium takes a similar approach to NPR’s 404 page, recommending articles about getting lost and losing things. Check these articles out if you have time — they’re quite good reads.

37. HomeStarRunner

HomeStarRunner.com, home to a Flash-animated cartoon series, has had a series of hilarious 404 error pages over the years. The most recent features characters from the cartoon series in a scene that could’ve come straight out of one of their episodes. If you turn the sound on when you load the page, you’ll hear their character Strong Bad — known for yelling phrases out loud — saying, “404’d!”

38. Blizzard Entertainment

Here’s a simple idea that ends up looking slick: Blizzard Entertainment’s 404 page features an animated character lost in an actual blizzard and some humor that World of Warcraft fans will appreciate.

39. Hello Big Idea

A quick trip around marketing and social media experts Hello Big Idea’s website will tell you what you need to know about its bold and blunt style of copy. And, of course, its 404 error page is no exception.

40. HubSpot

It happens to us, too! This is the message we put up to tell our site visitors that there are some website issues. Our goal was to stay true to HubSpot’s brand voice by being as lovable, empathetic, and helpful as possible.

Turn a 404 Error Page Into a Delight Moment

Nobody wants to land on a 404 page — they’re annoying and unexpected. However, you can’t really avoid them, so it’s always a good idea to have a 404 page to fall back on for your website.

And, from a user experience perspective, your 404 page should be a small speed bump, not a brick wall. The right design can be the difference between a frustrated bounce and a possible conversion, so why not make it fun?

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in December 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

You can apply marketing strategies all day, but if they aren’t effective, those efforts don’t matter in the long-term.

Measuring marketing effectiveness is crucial to improving your go-to strategies over time. Are your methods hitting KPIs? Are they helping your clients reach short- and long-term milestones? Use each campaign to learn and grow.

By measuring marketing effectiveness, you can better ensure high ROI or return on marketing investment, ROMI.

Measuring Marketing Effectiveness

How do you measure marketing effectiveness? Sure, you can look at traffic or sales metrics, but it goes further than that.

Ultimately, the KPIs you choose to measure can vary by company and strategy. But there are some metrics to pay attention to when measuring marketing effectiveness.

First, when you consider revenue, look into how much of the revenue is a direct result of the marketing efforts. This can help provide clear, high-level insight into how successful the marketing efforts are for the company.

Next, consider pipeline ROI or pipeline growth. Do you continue to generate more and more new leads via your marketing efforts? If not, your marketing effectiveness might be falling flat.

Conversion rates are also a strong KPI to review. Keep in mind that impressions, views and even clicks don’t necessarily translate to a successful marketing strategy. If users are clicking but not following through with a purchase, why aren’t they converting? Conversion rates can offer a better look at the success of your marketing.

When considering long-term effectiveness, look at retention rates. Are customers sticking around with your company for the long haul, or are they making a few purchases and leaving? Don’t forget to continue marketing to ongoing customers while also reaching new audiences.

Marketing Effectiveness Metrics

The types of metrics you consider can also vary by medium. Marketing efforts used to center on tangible but harder to measure media, like billboards, magazines, or television.

Today, digital marketing is front-and-center, and with it comes a wide array of things to measure to determine effectiveness. Here are three top marketing segments and metrics to consider for each.

1. Social Media Marketing Effectiveness

Social media marketing is newer to the scene, but it can be huge for company revenue and lead generation. Measuring marketing effectiveness on social media is pretty straightforward.

It’s easy to track the number of inquiries or leads through gated content on social media, and engagement can also be tracked through reposts/shares, comments, and follower count.

Conversion rate plays a role here too. If your account has a high follower count but comparatively low engagement rates, you can start investigating where to tailor your social marketing strategy for improved engagement, leads and revenue.

2. Content Marketing Effectiveness

Content marketing is vast, with options to market through a website, videos, articles, courses, and other digital content. The goal is not to say, “Hey, purchase my product and engage with my brand!” but rather to provide valuable, informational content for customers.

Because there are so many methods for content marketing, measuring effectiveness can vary widely depending on the source at hand. You might check conversion rates from your website to your paid online course, or you might consider engagement with your informational video or webinar.

3. Email Marketing Effectiveness

Email marketing is thriving. There are a number of metrics to consider when measuring email marketing effectiveness. First, you can review delivery, open, and click-through rates.

High delivery rates means your emails are reaching inboxes, but don’t depend solely on this metric. Open rates are important, as a low open rate can reveal that you need to focus on writing shorter, more intriguing subject lines.

Of these three, click-through rates are arguably the most important. Are potential customers clicking on links in the email, or are they opening it and then deleting the email? Click-through rates offer a higher chance of converting to revenue. Conversion rate is, again, important here and can help gauge marketing effectiveness for emails, content, social and traditional marketing methods.

How To Present Marketing Effectiveness

So you know how to measure marketing effectiveness, but how do you best share this information with external stakeholders? An insightful marketing report can show clients exactly how impactful last quarter’s marketing campaign was on business.

These metrics can also be used in requesting a higher marketing budget or determining strategies for the future.

Here’s how to prepare your presentation, from the data to include and how to organize it to truly show marketing effectiveness.

Data to Include

Typically, a marketing report will review quarterly campaigns. First, you want to include the goals of the marketing strategy for that quarter to measure the actual results against the expected outcomes. Include all methods of marketing, such as content, social and/or email, and their accompanying KPIs.

Also, include market research to identify the target audience within the report and ensure external stakeholders know why your strategy addresses this specific audience through these specific methods.

The aforementioned KPIs like conversion rates, social engagement, revenue as it relates to marketing campaigns, click-through rates for emails, and customer retention rates can all be included in the report for external stakeholders.

Organizing the Presentation

The presentation should be a sensible roadmap, starting with the goals and expected outcomes and leading through the metrics measured for each type of marketing. Goals can include traffic numbers, revenue, customer satisfaction, or lead generation.

Organize metrics by social, email, content, and any other inbound or outbound marketing types you pursued over the quarter. You can also note specific goals and results for each type of marketing.

Don’t forget to include explanations. Share what is doing well, and why; also outline what is underperforming, why, and how you plan to tackle that next quarter.

KPIs to Prove Effectiveness

Again, KPIs are crucial to share with external stakeholders, as they will clearly showcase marketing effectiveness.

For content marketing, show lead generation, conversion rates, bounce rates, and even SEO-related metrics like page rank on the search engine results page (SERP).

Email marketing should outline delivery, open and click-through rates. You can also analyze bounce rate, both emails that bounced back from unavailable email addresses and from your website’s pages that include email signups. Additional email marketing KPIs to consider are the number of emails sent, new subscribers for the quarter and unsubscribes per email sent.

Social media insights can also focus on lead generation and engagement rates. As social continues to develop, some revenue rates will be gauged directly from social, as platforms add shopping functions.

Measure Marketing Effectiveness To Inform Goals

You might spend weeks pouring energy into an email marketing campaign that just doesn’t generate the leads you had expected while leads are pouring in through social despite a lack of focused efforts there.

Without reviewing and analyzing your marketing strategies, it’s hard to know where to best channel your time, creative energy, and budget to continue boosting your pipeline and revenues.

Marketing effectiveness uses key metrics to identify high and low points of your marketing strategies, so you can share this information with external stakeholders and better inform future strategies and goals.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is incredibly important for marketers. When you optimize your web pages — including your blog posts — you’re making your website more visible to people who are using search engines (like Google) to find your product or service.But does your blog content really help your business organically rank on search engines?

In this article, you’ll find the answer to this question and more. Get ready for an in-depth exploration into the world of blog SEO, the factors that affect it, and tips to start optimizing your blog site for the search engines.

Although it’s clear blog content does contribute to your SEO, Google’s many algorithm updates can make publishing the right kind of blog content tricky if you don’t know where to start. Some blog ranking factors have stood the test of time while others are considered “old-school.” Here are a few of the top-ranking factors that can, directly and indirectly, affect blog SEO.

Pro tip: As a rule of thumb, take time to understand what each of these factors does, but don’t try to implement them all at once. They each serve a specific purpose and should be used to meet a specific SEO goal for your blog. Listen to HubSpot’s Matt Barby and Victor Pan take on this topic in this podcast episode.

Factors That Affect Blog SEO

1. Dwell Time

Although dwell time is an indirect ranking factor for Google, it’s a critical factor in the user experience — and we know that user experience is king when it comes to SEO. Dwell time is the length of a time a reader spends on a page on your blog site. From the moment a visitor clicks on your site in the SERP, to the moment they exit the page is considered dwell time. This metric indirectly tells search engines like Google how valuable your content is to the reader. It makes sense that the longer they spend on the page, the more relevant it is to them.

However, there’s a reason this metric is an indirect indicator for SEO — it’s completely subjective. The search engine algorithms don’t know your content strategy. Your blog could be focused on short-form content that takes just a minute or two to read. You might also include pertinent information at the beginning of your blog posts to give the best reader experience, which means less time spent on the page. So yes, dwell time can affect SEO, but don’t manipulate your content to change this metric if it doesn’t make sense for your content strategy.

2. Page Speed

We mentioned earlier that visual elements on your blog can affect page speed, but that isn’t the only thing that can move this needle. Unnecessary code and overuse of plugins can also contribute to a sluggish blog site. Removing junk code can help your pages load faster, thus improving page speed. If you’re not sure how to find and remove junk code, check out HTML-Cleaner. It’s an easy-to-use tool that doesn’t require coding knowledge. It simply shows you the unnecessary code and lets you remove it with the click of a button.

I also recommend taking an inventory of your blog site plugins. Decide which ones you need to keep your blog running day-to-day and which ones were installed as a fix for a temporary issue. Plugins that affect the front-end of your site are a threat to page speed, and odds are, you can uninstall more of these plugins than you think to increase your overall site speed.

3. Mobile Responsiveness

More than half of Google’s search traffic in the United States comes from mobile devices. On an individual level, your blog site might follow that same trend. There’s no way around it — optimizing your blog site for mobile is a factor that will affect your SEO metrics. But what exactly does it mean to optimize a website for mobile? The industry rule-of-thumb is to keep things simple. Most pre-made site themes these days are already mobile-friendly, so all you’ll need to do is tweak a CTA button here and enlarge a font size there. Then, keep an eye on how your site is performing on mobile by taking a look at your Google Analytics dashboard and running a mobile site speed test regularly.

4. Index Date

Search engines aim to provide the most relevant and accurate information available. A factor search engines use when determining what’s relevant and accurate is the date a search engine indexes the content. Indexing means a search engine finds content and adds it to its index. Later, the page can be retrieved and displayed in the SERP when a user searches for keywords related to the indexed page.

You might be wondering: Is the date the content was indexed the same as the date it was published?

The answer: yes and no. If a blog post is published for the first time, it’s likely that say, a Google crawler, will index that post the same day you publish it. But content can be backdated for several legitimate reasons, too, like archiving information or updating a sentence or two.

One way to positively affect this SEO factor is to implement a historical optimization strategy. This strategy works well on blogs that have been established for a few years and have a fair amount of content already. By updating these older posts with new perspectives and data, you’ll be able to significantly impact your blog SEO without creating a lot of net new content. Site crawlers will reindex the page — taking into account the updated content — and give it another opportunity to compete in the SERP. It’s truly a win-win.

5. Recent Data

Recent data, another indirect ranking factor of SEO, should be included in blog posts. Recent data gives visitors relevant and accurate information which makes for a positive reader experience. When you include a link to a credible site that has original, up-to-date data, you’re telling the search engine that this site is helpful and relevant to your readers (which is a plus for that other site). You’re also telling the search engine that this type of data is in some way related to the content you publish. Over time, your readers will come to appreciate the content which can be confirmed using other metrics like increased time on page or lower bounce rate.

Sign up here to take our free Content Marketing Certification course and learn about content creation, strategy, and promotion.

How to Optimize Blog Content for Search Engines

1. Identify the target audience for your blog.

No matter what industry your blog targets, you’ll want to identify and speak to the primary audience that will be reading your content. Understanding who your audience is and what you want them to do when they click on your article will help guide your blog strategy.

Buyer personas are an effective way to target readers using their buying behaviors, demographics, and psychographics. Without this insight, you could be producing grammatically correct and accurate content that few people will click on because it doesn’t speak to them on a personal level.

2. Conduct keyword research.

Now that you’ve selected your target audience and prepared a buyer persona, it’s time to find out what content your readers want to consume. Keyword research can be a heavy task to take on if you don’t begin with a strategy. Therefore, I recommend starting with the topics your blog will cover, then expand or contract your scope from there. For an in-depth tutorial, check out our how-to guide on keyword research.

3. Add visuals.

Search engines like Google value visuals for certain keywords. Images and videos are among the most common visual elements that appear on the search engine results page. In order to achieve a coveted spot in an image pack or a video snippet, you’ll want to design creative graphics, use original photos and videos, and add descriptive alt text to every visual element within your blog post.

Alt text is a major factor that determines whether or not your image or video appears in the SERP and how highly it appears. Alt text is also important for screen readers so that visually impaired individuals have a positive experience consuming content on your blog site.

4. Write a catchy title.

The title of your blog post is the first element a reader will see when they come across your article, and it heavily influences whether they’ll click or keep scrolling. A catchy title uses data, asks a question, or leads with curiosity to pique the reader’s interest.

According to Coscheduler’s Headline Analyzer, the elements of a catchy title include power, emotional, uncommon, and common words. In the right proportions, these types of words in a blog title will grab your readers’ attention and keep them on the page.

Here’s an example of a catchy title with a Coschedule Headline Analyzer Score of 87:

The Perfect Dress Has 3 Elements According to This Popular Fashion Expert

• Highlighted in yellow are common words. They’re familiar to the reader and don’t stray too far from other titles that may appear in the SERP.

• “Expert” is an emotional word, according to Coschedule. In this example, the word expert builds trust with the reader and tells them that this article has an authoritative point of view.

• Purple words are power words — this means they capture the readers’ attention and get them curious about the topic.

• Another element in this title is the number three. This signals to the reader that they’ll learn a specific amount of facts about the perfect dress.

5. Include an enticing CTA.

What’s a blog post without a call to action? The purpose of a CTA is to lead your reader to the next step in their journey through your blog. The key to a great CTA is that it’s relevant to the topic of your existing blog post and flows naturally with the rest of the content. Whether you’re selling a product, offering a newsletter subscription, or wanting the reader to consume more of your content, you’ll need an enticing CTA on every blog post you publish.

CTAs come in all types of formats, so get creative and experiment with them. Buttons, hyperlinks, and widgets are some of the most common CTAs, and they all have different purposes. For instance, you should add a bold, visible CTA like a button if you want the reader to make a purchase. On the other hand, you can easily get a reader to check out another blog post by providing a hyperlink to it in the conclusion of the current article.

6. Focus on the reader’s experience.

Any great writer or SEO will tell you that the reader experience is the most important part of a blog post. The reader experience includes several factors like readability, formatting, and page speed. That means you’ll want to write content that’s clear, comprehensive of your topic, and accurate according to the latest data and trends. Organizing the content using headings and subheadings is important as well because it helps the reader scan the content quickly to find the information they need. Finally, on-page elements like images and videos have an impact on page speed. Keep image file sizes low (250 KB is a good starting point) and limit the number of videos you embed on a single page. By focusing on what the reader wants to know and organizing the post to achieve that goal, you’ll be on your way to publishing an article optimized for the search engine.

Now, let’s take a look at these blog SEO tips that you can take advantage of to enhance your content’s searchability.

Note: This list doesn’t cover every SEO rule under the sun. Rather, the following tips are the on-page factors to get you started with an SEO strategy for your blog.

1. Use 1–2 long-tail keywords.

Optimizing your blog posts for keywords is not about incorporating as many keywords into your posts as possible. Nowadays, this actually hurts your SEO because search engines consider this keyword stuffing (i.e., including keywords as much as possible with the sole purpose of ranking highly in organic search).

It also doesn’t make for a good reader experience — a ranking factor that search engines now prioritize to ensure you’re answering the intent of your visitors. Therefore, you should use keywords in your content in a way that doesn’t feel unnatural or forced.

A good rule of thumb is to focus on one or two long-tail keywords per blog post. While you can use more than one keyword in a single post, keep the focus of the post narrow enough to allow you to spend time optimizing for just one or two keywords.

You may be wondering: Why long-tail keywords?

These longer, often question-based keywords keep your post focused on the specific goals of your audience. For example, the long-tail keyword “how to write a blog post” is much more impactful in terms of SEO than the short keyword “blog post”.

Website visitors searching long-tail keywords are more likely to read the whole post and then seek more information from you. In other words, they’ll help you generate the right type of traffic — visitors who convert.

2. Use keywords strategically throughout the blog post.

Now that you’ve got one or two keywords, it’s time to incorporate them in your blog post. But where is the best place to include these terms so you rank high in search results?

There are four essential places where you should try to include your keywords: title tag, headers & body, URL, and meta description.

Title Tag

The title (i.e., headline) of your blog post will be a search engine’s and reader’s first step in determining the relevancy of your content. So, including a keyword here is vital. Google calls this the “title tag” in a search result.

Be sure to include your keyword within the first 60 characters of your title, which is just about where Google cuts titles off on the SERP. Technically, Google measures by pixel width, not character count, and it recently increased the pixel width for organic search results from approximately 500 pixels to 600 pixels, which translates to around 60 characters.

Long title tag? When you have a lengthy headline, it’s a good idea to get your keyword in the beginning since it might get cut off in SERPs toward the end, which can take a toll on your post’s perceived relevance.

In the example below, we had a long title that went over 65 characters, so we placed the keyword near the front.

Headers & Body

Mention your keyword at a normal cadence throughout the body of your post and in the headers. That means including your keywords in your copy, but only in a natural, reader-friendly way. Don’t go overboard at the risk of being penalized for keyword stuffing.

Before you start writing a new blog post, you’ll probably think about how to incorporate your keywords into your post. That’s a smart idea, but it shouldn’t be your only focus, nor even your primary focus.

Whenever you create content, your primary focus should be on what matters to your audience, not how many times you can include a keyword or keyword phrase in that content. Focus on being helpful and answering whatever question your customer might’ve asked to arrive on your post. Do that, and you’ll naturally optimize for important keywords, anyway.

URL

Search engines also look at your URL to figure out what your post is about, and it’s one of the first things it’ll crawl on a page. You have a huge opportunity to optimize your URLs on every post you publish, as every post lives on its unique URL — so make sure you include your one to two keywords in it.

In the example below, we created the URL using the long-tail keyword for which we were trying to rank: “email marketing examples.”

Meta Description

Your meta description is meant to give search engines and readers information about your blog post’s content. Meaning, you must use your long-tail term so Google and your audience are clear on your post’s content.

At the same time, keep in mind the copy matters a great deal for click-through rates because it satisfies certain readers’ intent — the more engaging, the better.

3. Optimize for mobile devices.

We learned earlier that more people use search engines from their mobile phones than from a computer.

And for all those valuable queries being searched on mobile devices, Google displays the mobile-friendly results first. This is yet another example of Google heavily favoring mobile-friendly websites — which has been true ever since the company updated its Penguin algorithm in April 2015.

(HubSpot customers: Breathe easy. All content created on HubSpot’s platform is automatically responsive to mobile devices.)

So, how do you make your blog mobile-friendly? By using responsive design. Websites that are responsive to mobile allow blog pages to have just one URL instead of two — one for desktop and one for mobile, respectively. This helps your post’s SEO because any inbound links that come back to your site won’t be divided between the separate URLs.

As a result, you’ll centralize the SEO power you gain from these links, helping Google more easily recognize your post’s value and rank it accordingly.

Pro tip: What search engines value is constantly changing. Be sure you’re keeping on top of these changes by subscribing to Google’s official blog.

4. Optimize the meta description.

To review, a meta description is additional text that appears in SERPs that lets readers know what the link is about. The meta description gives searchers the information they need to determine whether or not your content is what they’re looking for and ultimately helps them decide if they’ll click or not.

The maximum length of this meta description is greater than it once was — now around 300 characters — suggesting it wants to give readers more insight into what each result will give them.

So, in addition to being reader-friendly (compelling and relevant), your meta description should include the long-tail keyword for which you are trying to rank.

In the following example, I searched for “email newsletter examples.”

The term is bolded in the meta description, helping readers make the connection between the intent of their search term and this result. You’ll also see the term “E-Newsletter” bolded, indicating that Google knows there’s a semantic connection between “email newsletter” and “E-Newsletter.”

Note: Nowadays, it’s not guaranteed that your meta description is always pulled into SERPs as it once was. As you can see in the above image, Google pulls in other parts of your blog post that includes the keywords searched, presumably to give searchers optimal context around how the result matches their specific query.

Let me show you another example. Below are two different search queries delivering two different snippets of text on Google SERPs. The first is a result of the query “no index no follow,” and pulls in the original meta description:

The second is a result of the query “noindex nofollow,” and pulls in the first instance of these specific keywords coming up in the body of the blog post:

While there’s not much you can do to influence what text gets pulled in, you should continue to optimize this metadata, as well as your post, so search engines display the best content from the article. By creating reader-friendly content with natural keyword inclusion, you’ll make it easier for Google to prove your post’s relevancy in SERPs for you.

5. Include image alt text.

Blog posts shouldn’t only contain text — they should also include images that help explain and support your content. However, search engines don’t simply look for images. Rather, they look for images with image alt text.

You may be wondering why this is. Since search engines can’t “see” images the same way humans can, an image’s alt text tells the search engine what an image is about. This ultimately helps those images rank in the search engine’s images results page.

Image alt text also makes for a better user experience (UX). It displays inside the image container when an image can’t be found or displayed. Technically, alt text is an attribute that can be added to an image tag in HTML.

Here’s what a complete image tag might look like:

When you incorporate image alt text, an image’s name in your blog may go from something like, “IMG23940” to something accurate and descriptive such as “puppies playing in a basket.”

Image alt text should be descriptive in a helpful way — meaning, it should provide the search engine with context to index the image if it’s in a blog article related to a similar topic.

To provide more context, here’s a list of things to be sure you keep in mind when creating alt text for your blog’s images:

• Describe the image
• Leave out “image of… “— start with the image description instead
• Be specific in your description
• Keep it under 125 characters
• Use your keywords (but avoid keyword stuffing)

HubSpot customers: The SEO Panel will recognize whether or not you have optimized your images. Though these elements are not as important as some other optimizations, they’re still necessary (not to mention, easy to add).

6. Limit topic tags.

Topic tags can help organize your blog content, but if you overuse them, they can actually be harmful. If you have too many similar tags, you may get penalized by search engines for having duplicate content.

Think of it this way, when you create a topic tag (which is simple if you’re a HubSpot user, as seen here), you also create a new site page where the content from those topic tags will appear. If you use too many similar tags for the same content, it appears to search engines as if you’re showing the content multiple times throughout your website. For example, topic tags like “blogging,” “blog,” and “blog posts” are too similar to one another to be used on the same post.

If you’re worried that your current blog posts have too many similar tags, take some time to clean them up. Choose about 15–25 topic tags that you think are important to your blog and that aren’t too similar to one another. Then only tag your posts with those keywords. That way, you won’t have to worry about duplicate content.

Here at HubSpot, we use a Search Insights Report to map specific MSV-driven keyword ideas to a content topic each quarter. The process helps us target a handful of posts in a set number of topics throughout the year for a systematic approach to SEO and content creation.

7. Include user-friendly URL structures.

Before you publish your blog post, take a careful look at its URL structure. Is it long, filled with stop-words, or unrelated to the post’s topic? If so, you might want to rewrite it before it goes live.

The URL structure of your web pages (which are different from the specific URLs of your posts) should make it easy for your visitors to understand the structure of your website and the content they’re about to see. Search engines favor web page URLs that make it easier for them and website visitors to understand the content on the page.

This differentiation is baked into the HubSpot blogs’ respective URL structures. If I decided to go to the Marketing section from this main page, I would be taken to the URL http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing.

If we want to read the Sales section, all we have to do is change where it says “marketing” in the URL to “sales”:

http://blog.hubspot.com/sales.

This URL structure helps me understand that “/marketing” and “/sales” are smaller sections — called subdirectories — within the larger blog.

What if there’s a specific article we want to read, such as “How to Do Keyword Research: A Beginner’s Guide”? Its URL structure — http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-do-keyword-research-ht — denotes that it’s an article from the Marketing section of the blog.

In this way, URL structure acts as a categorization system for readers, letting them know where they are on the website and how to access new site pages. Search engines appreciate this, as it makes it easier for them to identify exactly what information searchers will access on different parts of your blog or website.

Pro tip: Don’t change your blog post URL after it’s been published — that’s the easiest way to press the metaphorical “reset” button on your SEO efforts for that post. If your URL is less descriptive than you’d like or it no longer follows your brand or style guidelines, your best bet is to leave it as is. Instead, change the title of the post using the guidelines we covered earlier.

8. Link to related blog posts.

You may have heard that backlinks influence how high your blog site can rank in the SERP, and that’s true — backlinks show how trustworthy your site is based on how many other relevant sites link back to yours. But backlinks aren’t the end-all-be-all to link building. Linking to and from your own blog posts can have a positive impact on how well your blog site ranks, too.

Inbound links to your content help show search engines the validity or relevancy of your content. The same goes for linking internally to other pages on your website. If you’ve written about a topic that’s mentioned in your blog post on another blog post, ebook, or web page, it’s a best practice to link to that page.

(You might’ve noticed that I’ve been doing that from time to time throughout this blog post when I think it’s helpful for our readers.) Not only will internal linking help keep visitors on your website, but it also surfaces your other relevant and authoritative pages to search engines.

For example, if your blog is about fashion, you might cover fabrics as a topic. Adding a hyperlink from a blog post about cotton to a post about the proper way to mix fabrics can help both of those posts become more visible to readers who search these keywords. The search engines will also have one more entry point to the post about cotton when you hyperlink it in the post about mixing fabrics. This means the post about cotton fabric, and any updates you make to it will be recognized by site crawlers faster. It could even see a boost in the SERP as a result.

HubSpot customers: The SEO Panel automatically suggests linking to other internal resources on your website.

You can think of this as solving for your SEO while also helping your visitors get more information from your content.

9. Review metrics regularly.

Google’s free Search Console contains a section called the Search Analytics Report. This report helps you analyze clicks from Google Search — it’s useful to determine which keywords people are using to find your blog content. You can also learn how to use Google Search Console by reading this blog post written by my colleague Matthew Barby, and by checking out Google’s official support page.

If you’re interested in optimizing your best-performing older blog posts for traffic and leads like we’ve been doing since 2015, this tool can help identify low-hanging fruit.

Remember, many content marketers struggle with optimizing their blog posts for search. The truth is, your blog posts won’t start ranking immediately. It takes time to build up search authority.

But, when you publish blog posts frequently and consistently optimize them for search while maintaining an intent-based reader experience, you’ll reap the rewards in the form of traffic and leads long-term.

10. Organize by topic cluster.

The way most blogs are currently structured (including our own blogs, until very recently), bloggers and SEOs have worked to create individual blog posts that rank for specific keywords.

This makes things unorganized and difficult for blog visitors to find the exact information they need. It also results in your URLs competing against one another in search engine rankings when you produce multiple blog posts about similar topics.

Here’s what our blog architecture used to look like using this old playbook:

Now, in order to rank in search and best answer the new types of queries searchers are submitting, the solution is the topic cluster model.

For this model to work, choose the broad topics for which you want to rank. Then, create content based on specific keywords related to that topic that all link to each other to establish broader search engine authority.

This is what our blog infrastructure looks like now, with the topic cluster model. Specific topics are surrounded by blog posts related to the greater topic, connected to other URLs in the cluster via hyperlinks:

This model uses a more deliberate site architecture to organize and link URLs together to help more pages on your site rank in Google — and to help searchers find information on your site more easily. This architecture consists of three components — pillar content, cluster content, and hyperlinks:

We know this is a fairly new concept, so for more details, check out our research on the topic, take our SEO training or watch the video below.

11. Publish evergreen content.

When planning and writing your blog articles, ensure it’s evergreen content. Meaning, the content is about topics that will remain relevant and valuable over a long period of time (with only minor changes or updates). Let’s look at a few reasons why evergreen content is so important:

• It’ll help you rank over time, not just in the near future.
• It contributes to steady amounts of traffic coming to your blog (and website) long after it’s been published.
• It’ll help you generate leads over time as a result of the traffic it continually generates.

All blog content — whether it’s a long-form article, how-to guide, FAQ, tutorial, and so on — should be evergreen. Even the images you use in these posts should be evergreen. Check out this blog post for some examples of and ideas for evergreen content on your blog.

12. Update existing content.

To improve your SEO, you may assume you need to create new blog content. Although that’s partially true, you should also focus a great deal of your time and energy on your existing blog content. Specifically, repurposing and updating your current content, as well as removing your outdated content.

This is because it takes a lot longer for a completely new piece of content to settle on the search engine results page (SERP) and gain authority, whereas you could update a piece of content and reap the benefits fairly immediately in comparison.

Not only will your updated content rank on the SERP faster, improving your number of visitors and leads, it also takes a lot less time and fewer resources to update an existing piece of content rather than create a brand new article.

Additionally, updating and repurposing some of your most successful pieces of content extends its lifespan so you can achieve the best results over a longer period of time (especially if it’s evergreen content).

The final step entails removing your outdated content that’s no longer relevant to your audience. Although your goal is to ensure your content is evergreen, some of it is bound to become outdated over time. This includes statistics, product information (if you have any listed in your blogs — as your products and business evolve), or information that changes across your industry over time.

Create Blog Content Your Readers (and Search Engines) Will Love

We don’t expect you to incorporate each of these SEO best practices into your content strategy right away. But, as your website grows, so should your goals on search engines. Once you identify the goals and intent of your ideal readers, you’ll be on track to deliver relevant content that will climb the ranks of the SERP.

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

Enterprise data modeling is nothing new. This tactic has been around for years, but it is still relevant to modern businesses today.

It can feel like an abstract, complex concept at times, but it is an important part of data governance, which helps manage and secure a company’s data assets.

In today’s world, data security is important, as is boosting productivity and efficiency with up-to-date applications and digital processes.

Enterprise data modeling can help ensure company apps and data are standardized, secure and in-line with the business mission.

What is an Enterprise Data Model?

Simply put, an enterprise data model is a visual representation, or graph, of an enterprise business’ data. It focuses on high-level, more abstract components as it tries to define and standardize an entire enterprise business’ data.

That means enterprise data modeling can be a massive task, but it will be important to help reduce duplicates, inaccuracies, and errors in a business’ data.

Why Do You Need an Enterprise Data Model?

There are numerous reasons why you might need an enterprise data model. Let’s dive into four, now. 

1. Improve Data Quality

Even small companies handle a lot of data on a daily basis. Over time, this data can quickly become irrelevant. Errors can slip in unnoticed, as can redundancies. The more issues in the data, the less accurate it becomes. When companies revisit data to inform decisions, data riddled with errors and redundancies can impact company sales and growth. By taking an overarching, comprehensive look at the data and defining it via enterprise data modeling, these issues can be addressed appropriately.

2. Defining All Data

Enterprise data modeling is a massive task, but that’s because it addresses all of an enterprise business’ data. A company can clean up data and align applications, so everything is cohesive and running smoothly, with an enterprise data model.

3. Managing Data

Similarly, managing data is easier when it is all addressed and defined in one graph. The enterprise data model will be more high-level, so deeper dives and more intensive data modeling will be needed to define the specifics. But overall, a company can better manage all the data assets it has when they are all placed in one data model.

4. Data Governance

Businesses rely heavily on technology, as do consumers. The more we move online, the more regulations that need to be in place to maintain privacy and security. Businesses that do not protect consumer data will find themselves in hot water. An enterprise data model can help identify a business’ data, better manage it, and ensure the business is complying with data and privacy laws.

Benefits of an Enterprise Data Model

The benefits of an enterprise data model are similar to the reasons a business needs it.

First, if a company wants to ensure high-quality data, it must remove redundancies and errors, and also apply any business-specific rules regarding the data. This can all be done through the extensive enterprise data modeling process.

An enterprise data model can also help a business be more cohesive and standardized in its processes by aligning the various applications and technologies the company uses daily.

Finally, a huge benefit to enterprise data modeling is its ability to help a business align its data with data governance. For example, GDPR, or General Data Protection Regulation, addresses how companies use customer data and gives more privacy and data control to the consumer.

When this regulation was implemented, companies needed to ensure that they were properly handling data. This regulation is still in effect, so newer businesses also must comply. Not complying with government data policies can lead to legal implications, which is what makes an enterprise data model so invaluable.

How to Create an Enterprise Data Model

The enterprise data model consists of a few smaller models. Starting with the enterprise subject area model, you’ll move through each of the following steps to create the enterprise data model.

1. Enterprise Subject Area Model

The ESAM is a high-level model that defines the main subject areas of a business as well as the relationships among these subject areas. For example, this could include Accounts, IT, Billing, Finance, Sales.

2. Enterprise Conceptual Model

Next, each ESAM is broken down further into enterprise conceptual models, which consist of major business concepts and how these concepts are related.

3. Enterprise Entity Model

Finally, the enterprise entity model includes the main interests for each business concept and details their relationships with one another.

Enterprise Data Model Example

The enterprise data model can be visualized as a pyramid. The entire pyramid is the enterprise data model, which, let’s say, is a retail store with a brick-and-mortar location and an online shop.

The top of the pyramid is the enterprise subject area model, with 10-20 business subjects defined. Those could include Stores, Staff, Warehouses, Products, Payments, and Customers, to name a few. Arrows would show how these subjects relate to one another.

Below that, the middle of the pyramid is a slightly more fleshed out enterprise conceptual model, which defines eight-15 main business concepts per subject area model. For example, Products could be broken down by ID and type, or Payments could be broken down by credit cards, debit cards, and cash.

Finally, the base of the pyramid is the enterprise entity model, which would identify the main areas of interest for each conceptual model.

Enterprise Data Model Tools

Now that you have a better understanding of enterprise data modeling, you might be ready to dive into this project. These data model tools will help make this process less taxing on your team.

1. Lucidchart

Teams can work together on Lucidchart to create collaborative diagrams and data models. It meets international privacy and security standards, making it a safe option.

Drag-and-drop components allow team members to build data models with ease, and each person can select portions of the diagram and leave feedback comments. You can test it out for free, and prices range depending on business size.

2. Erwin Data Modeler

The Erwin Data Modeler is specifically tailored to visualizing and standardizing enterprise data assets.

All data, whether from a data warehouse or in the cloud, can be handled in one interface, and automated models can help reduce redundancies and errors to improve data quality. Pricing varies by business needs, but you can explore this modeling tool with a free trial before committing.

3. Diagrams.net

Diagrams.net (formerly draw.io) is a free data modeling tool that allows you to make flowcharts and graphs for your enterprise data. Drag-and-drop features make it easy to place shapes, lines and arrows exactly where you’d like on the gridded, blank diagram.

You can also draw free-hand shapes. Newly added in February 21, diagrams.net also offers data governance options, and you can store all data models on your enterprise-level storage platforms, like Dropbox or Google Drive.

4. ER/Studio

Ideal for enterprise businesses, ER/Studio handles company data with ease. This enterprise data modeling software allows for forward or reverse engineering, source and target mapping, naming standards and more. You can model data from various sources and define and enforce standards within this tool. This is a paid tool, and prices vary depending on needs; you can also request a demo.

5. Ab Initio

Another popular tool for enterprise businesses, Ab Initio incorporates self-service and automation into your data models to improve efficiency. Users can model and catalog data securely, complying with data governance. The tool will even generate automated operational data quality rules for data processing. Licensing rates vary.

Improve Data Management With an Enterprise Data Model

Sure, enterprise data models can be intimidating. But they are more important than ever in our data-driven world. Enterprise data modeling can help standardize data assets for a business and better manage and secure these assets.

Most importantly, an enterprise data model can help a company avoid legal troubles by complying with data governance. By using one of many tools for data modeling, this arduous but crucial task can be made simpler and more collaborative.

Troubleshooting an HTTP 500 internal server error is like solving a mystery.

You don’t know what exactly happened or why it happened — all you know is that something’s wrong and you need to fix it.

To guide you through the hassle of troubleshooting the dreaded HTTP 500 internal server error, let’s go over what it exactly means and its most common causes and solutions.

Here’s what your 500 error page might look like in your browser:

How to Fix a 500 Internal Server Error

Unlike other server-side errors like a 502 code or a 503 code, a 500 internal server error is it doesn’t immediately tell you what the problem is, nor does it tell you how to fix it. If the error persists for too long on your site, it could even negatively impact your SEO.

So, let’s dive into a few potential causes of the error. Then, we’ll present some solutions so you can try to fix the issue.

Potential Causes of a 500 Internal Server Error

A 500 internal server error is, as the name implies, a general problem with the website’s server. More than likely, this means there’s an issue or temporary glitch with the website’s programming.

Some potential causes of a 500 internal server error include:

• Corrupted or broken .htaccess file
• A permissions error
• Faulty third-party plugins or themes
• The PHP memory limit being exceeded

Fortunately, there are a few effective solutions for fixing most of these problems.

If You’re Trying to Load a Page with a 500 Internal Server Error:

1. Refresh the page.

This might seem obvious, but if it’s a temporary loading issue, you might find success if you refresh the page. Before trying anything else in this list, reload the page and see what happens.

2. Come back later.

Since the error is on the server side, I’m willing to bet the website owners are working as quickly as possible to resolve the issue. Give it a few minutes or up to an hour or so, and then reload the URL and see if the development team has fixed the issue.

3. Delete your browser’s cookies.

If clearing the browser history doesn’t work, you might try deleting your browser’s cookies. If the cookies are associated with the error-prone webpage, deleting the cookies might help reload the page.

4. Paste your URL into the website “Down for Everyone or Just Me.”

Head to downforeveryoneorjustme.com and paste in the URL where you’re seeing the internal server error. You’ll either be told that the website is only down for you, or that the website is down for everyone.

If it’s a problem with your server, this should help assuage any concerns that it’s an issue with your own computer.

If the 500 Internal Server Error is on Your Own Website:

1. Deactivate a plugin or theme.

Newly activated software, add-ons, or third-party scripts might be conflicting with your current server configuration. To determine this, try (carefully) deactivating or uninstalling your software add-ons one at a time to identify what exactly is causing the internal server error.

If you run a WordPress website, this is easy to do with plugins. From your dashboard, choose Plugins > Installed Plugins, then deactivate the first plugin. If the error resolves, you know this plugin is part of the issue. Reactivate the first plugin, then repeat this deactivate-reactivate process one at a time for all plugins to determine which ones are causing your error.

You might find that having fewer active plugins on your site helps things run more smoothly.

Alternatively, if you just upgraded your software, your current plugins or themes might not be compatible with the new upgrade. Deactivating plugins or themes one at a time until the error disappears is the best way to find the root cause of your problem.

2. Use a plugin like WP Debugging to identify the issue.

If your site is powered by WordPress and you’re comfortable with WordPress debugging processes, consider installing a plugin to help you identify the issue with your server.

The debug plugin WP Debugging, for instance, helps you figure out exactly what’s wrong with your site, which will result in a speedier fix.

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3. Ensure your PHP setup is configured correctly.

If the issue is related to a PHP timeout, consider creating timeout rules or error handling in your script to resolve the issue. Here’s a full list of php.ini directives to configure your PHP setup.

Additionally, wrong permissions on a file or folder that has a script, like a PHP or CGI script, won’t allow the script to run. Check your permissions and make sure you set them correctly on your server.

4. Check the code for your site’s .htaccess file.

Incorrect coding or improper structure with your .htaccess file could be the reason you’re seeing the 500 internal error. The .htaccess file helps you manage how long resources should be stored in a browser’s cache. Try editing the file if you’re seeing a 500 internal server error.

To locate your .htaccess file, access your website files through a file manager like cPanel or via FTP/SFTP. The file will probably be located in your public_html directory. There’s a good chance your server will hide this file from view by default and you’ll need to toggle hidden files on to see it.

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Coding errors in .htaccess and custom scripts can also cause an HTTP 500 internal server error.

5. Ensure your new software is installed correctly.

Finally, check to see if your recently installed or upgraded software actually failed to install or upgrade. To refresh your software, check the vendor’s website for instructions.

Last Resort: Ask a Server Administrator for Help

If troubleshooting popular software problems or debugging server-side scripts doesn’t fix your HTTP 500 internal server error, you should read about the most common causes for this type of issue in your server’s documentation — an HTTP 500 internal server error can occur in different operating systems for a multitude of reasons.

You can also ask your service provider to access your error logs and find evidence for the root cause of your problem.

Internal server errors are irritating because they’re unhelpful — it’s basically the web server’s way of saying, “Eh, I’m not sure.” Hopefully, one of the above steps will resolve the problem so you can get back to life as usual.

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