The Social Media Content Calendar Every Marketer Needs [Free Template]

We have a 9 a.m. meeting? Yikes! Hold on -- let me just click around the internet like a maniac to find something for the morning tweet.

Sound familiar? Scrambling for social content is not a new phenomenon. We have meetings. We run late. Things come up. And it's really hard to get any meaningful amount of work done when you have the next social media update looming over your head every 30, 60, 90 minutes. It all moves so fast that you might periodically feel a case of the vapors coming on, which is why pre-scheduled social media content should be your new best friend.

Why The Customers Who Don’t Convert Are Immensely Important

I love Warby Parker, but I’ll never buy a pair because I have 20/20 vision. My boss reads the Buffer blog daily, but she’s never used the tool a day in her life. We’re brand fans, part of an enormous audience of advocates you may be missing out on. While brand fans like us may […]

How You Can Build an Email Marketing List as Quickly as Possible

According to a 2014 survey of 1,000 web-based businesses, email marketing has the highest ROI of any marketing channel. Surveyed companies attributed an average of 23% of total sales to this single channel, and these results are hardly isolated. Anywhere you look nowadays, you’ll see that email marketing is more profitable than ever. The question […]

12 Pinnable Pinterest Pins That Teach You How to Use Pinterest

I’m learning to cook, design tattoos, and budget better than ever – and it’s all thanks to Pinterest. Why? Pinterest’s brilliant user experience makes it so simple to browse through photos and bookmark products, gift ideas, or articles (and much more) that you want to come back to later.

Which Social Networks Should You Focus On? Here Are 6 Ways to Find Out

It’s very easy for social media marketers to get caught up in the latest "in" thing. Snapchat! Meerkat! Periscope! As each new social network pops up, many people feel the pressure to be on every single one.

However, social media is only an effective inbound marketing tactic if you're doing the right things in the right places.

When Is the Best Time to Be Creative? [Infographic]

When do you do your best work?

For me, it's realllllly early in the morning. I used to get up at 4 a.m., grab a steaming cup of coffee, and just start writing. At that time of day, words flowed so easily that I could finish a 1,500-word post in an hour. Later in the day, that same post would've taken me twice as long.

But that's not the case for everyone.

9 Highly Reputable Resources for Compelling Marketing Stats

If you’re in the business of content marketing, there is a 100% chance you need marketing statistics.

Statistics lend authority and weight to your blogs, ebooks, and social media posts. Using accurate data in your original content is powerful way to communicate that you’ve done your research. However, not all statistics are worth citing. Your research could have a negative effect on your online reputation if you fail to verify the source, accuracy, or recency of the statistic.

How Celebrities Market Themselves: Inside Jordin Sparks' Rebranding Campaign

Musical artists don't become famous just because their music is good. (Just watch Katy Perry's lip-sync malfunction at the NRJ Music Awards and you'll see my point.) Believe it or not, pop stars have to market themselves just like we have to market our businesses.

And often, artists will hire entire marketing teams to do this, especially those trying to build their brand or rebrand entirely.

A Detailed Guide to Photo & Image Sizes on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube & More [Infographic]

When you're designing cover photos, graphics, and other social media assets, sometimes knowing the bare bones image dimensions isn't enough.

What if you wanted to place text or an arrow on your Facebook cover photo without it getting covered by the profile photo? And what about the shared link thumbnails on Facebook or in-stream photos on Twitter ... how big should those be?

Ecommerce Sites Must Be Responsive; But That’s Just the Beginning of Their Mobile Future

In July 2014, a study analyzing the SEO of the top 500 retailers for Internet Retailer's Mobile 500 guide found that the mobile adoption rates across those top 500 retailers were as follows: 59% use dedicated mobile sites, 15% use dynamic serving, 14% had no mobile presence, just 9% were responsive. In all, that's less than 50 of the top 500 retailers using responsive, and that is still about a 3x increase from 2013 adoption rates.

SEO for Images: Why We’re Trying to Rank for the Term 'CEO'

This post originally appeared on HubSpot's Agency Post. To read more content like this, subscribe to Agency Post.

Image-based search is becoming more and more common. Pinterest and Instagram have conditioned people to use and trust this form of discovery, and oftentimes, I find it produces even more relevant results than text-based search. With images, you can quickly determine the quality, while text search results require you to scan the headline, description, and the URL to make a decision about the page's relevance.

How to Actually Get Found in Search in 2015 [Infographic]

SEO is constantly evolving, leaving marketers to either keep pace with the updates or run the risk of falling behind.

While this is stressful in and of itself, these constantly changing tides lead to a ton of questions when it comes time to actually optimize a web page. Do social signals carry any weight? Should I still invest in pay-per-click advertising? How much does mobile really matter?

The Critical Role of Sales Development in Inbound Marketing

It sounds so promising. Create compelling content (consistently). Share and promote the content. Prospects engage, download stuff and become qualified leads.

Those leads are passed on to the sales team, who instantaneously reach out and are immediately welcomed into the prospect’s world. The meeting quickly turns into a bona fide sales opportunity. Proposals are requested, immediately acted upon and sales are made.

Periscope or Meerkat? The Marketer's Guide to Live Video Streaming [Free Ebook]

The live video streaming app Meerkat was the talk of the town after its appearance at SXSW in March 2015 -- but its popularity was shortlived. Just a few weeks later, Twitter released Periscope, a similar live video streaming app. Although Meerkat kicked mobile video streaming off with a bang, you'll see in this Google Trends graph of each app’s interest over time that Periscope might be winning the race:

Marijuana Marketing: Can the Blossoming Cannabis Industry Overcome 'Stoner' Stereotypes?

Marijuana smokers. Pot heads. Stoners. They’re a bunch of dirty hippies, right?

And boy are they lazy! These “pot smokers" live in their moms' basements. No job. No routine. Ok, maybe they have a routine, but that routine consists of getting stoned, giggling, eating Funyuns, and doing it all over again.

That, my friends, is the “stoner" stigma; the stereotype that people who use marijuana are dirty, lazy, stupid, or otherwise unsavory.

How Great Startups Build Brands With The Right Words

Your marketing message is often the very first communication between you and a potential customer, which is why it’s so important to nail your first impression. It only takes 50 milliseconds for users to make a judgment about you and your product. It’s your chance to define who you are and what you do. For […]

10 Ways to Reach Customers Who Don’t Know They Need You

Event planner, lawyer, daycare owner, tow truck driver. Regardless of our chosen professions, it’s fair to say that we all want to build our businesses’ customer bases. It’s how we thrive. So it’s only natural for us to want to market our products or services to everyone, in hopes of capturing a larger audience, and thus making more money.

7 Tips to Help SaaS Companies Get More Customers and Greater Market Share

The tips in this video could save your SaaS company from financial destruction. Watch the video below to get enlightened! Want To Learn More? Steli Efti of Close.io wrote an in-depth article on this subject a while back. Click here to read the article. What’d You Think? Did those tips resonate with you? Do you […]

Should You Delete Your Business Facebook Page?

A business Facebook page is considered one of the must-haves of online marketing. Why in the world would someone not have a Facebook page? Facebook is the world’s largest online network. There are more than 1.35 billion users. Everyday, these users share 4.75 billion pieces of content. Clearly, Facebook is a happening place. But recently […]

550+ Royalty-Free Stock Photos You Can Download Now

Let me tell you a quick, cautionary tale about copyright law and using photos and images online. A couple years ago, a popular stock photography vendor claimed copyright infringement on an image we used in one of our ebooks.

Embarrassed, I quickly investigated.

As it turned out, another internet user had purchased the offending image from that same stock photography service and uploaded it to a photo-sharing website under a Creative Commons license. So while on the surface it looked safe for the taking, it was in fact falsely promoted as a royalty-free image ... and we were in the wrong. Scary story, right?

Why Your Marketing Content is an Asset, Not a Cost

Basic accounting rules require marketing costs to be listed as expenses on a company’s P&L. However, today’s marketers and smart executives consider marketing an investment in driving revenue rather than a cost. This is where an overall mind shift is needed. Marketing needs to be considered an investment, and your content an asset.

How Desktop Applications Like Backblaze Can Use KISSmetrics

Backblaze provides unlimited data backup for $5 per month. Competing against some of the larger incumbents like Carbonite, they’ve carved out a nice wedge of the market for themselves by keeping their value proposition and product simple and effective. How can a company like Backblaze use KISSmetrics? We have a variety of reports they can […]

Want Improve Your Relationship With Finance? Here Are 3 Simple Things You Can Do

Sometimes, when it comes to budget, marketers and their colleagues in the finance can find themselves on different pages. If you've ever asked to move budget from one budget to another, or requested more money to support an idea that wasn't part of the yearly planning process, then you know what I mean. The back-and-forth can be frustrating for Marketing and Finance alike.

If this sounds a little like the relationship you have with your finance department, then you're not alone.

Creating Content That Sells: 9 Top Lessons From a Conversion Copywriter

From her own witty introduction in her AMA on Inbound.org, Joanna Wiebe makes it clear that she has a lock on copywriting. And she's not just any copywriter. Joanna's a “conversion copywriter” (a phrase my copywriter friends may want to adopt for their LinkedIn profiles), meaning she writes content that drives conversions and sells products. And she has a lot to say about how to make your words count -- in dollars and sense.

7 Mistakes That Will Make People Unfollow You on Twitter

The Twitter crowd is fickle. They’re going to unfollow you if you violate any of their preconceived notions of what you should (or shouldn’t) be doing on Twitter. If someone unfollows you, then heck. Their loss, right? Well, in a sense, yes. It’s not the end of the world if you lose a few followers. […]

New Research Reveals the Personality Traits of Top-Performing Sales Reps

This post originally appeared on HubSpot's Sales Blog. To read more content like this, subscribe to Sales.

Salespeople can make or break an organization. Do you have the next big idea? Great. But if you don’t have someone on your team who can sell it, your idea might be dead in the water.

The Must-Have Elements of a Great Support Portal

Most businesses work hard to ensure their products look great on their website, but very few expend the same effort to set up a comprehensive support portal. This is mostly because businesses are more focused on acquiring customers than retaining them. However, it’s not just marketing content that generates revenue. Great product documentation can go […]

How Often Should Companies Blog? [New Benchmark Data]

"Blog early, blog often."

In the inbound world, these are words to live by. After all, blogs help businesses attract new website visitors and convert them into leads. Each time you publish an original blog post, you're creating a new opportunity to get found in search engines, get shared on social media, get linked to by other sites, and get a new person to interact with your company.

Prose, Bullet Points and Journalism: How to Write Product Page Descriptions that Sell

The web has inadvertently made authors out of us all as we post on forums, send emails, share information, write white papers, guides and various web content. Most of us, however, are not authors by profession and so consequently the quality of writing on the web varies greatly.

13 Quick Tips to Improve Your Web Design Skills

Designing your company website can be a challenging proposition. You’ve got to juggle the expectations of many stakeholders, and you can often hit obstacles that prevent new ideas from emerging.

I was the design manager for a large company website for nearly six years, and during that time, I found myself losing perspective of what our target audiences really needed. Call it “tunnel vision.” When you work on the same website, it often helps to take a step back and think through new approaches. That’s the purpose of this blog post.

8 Offline Social Skills You Should Carry Into Your Social Media Efforts

It’s obvious that your social media presence and your in-person presence are two very different things. When you engage online, you can curate your posts, time your interactions, edit your photos, and create the experience that you want. Even though the online you and the offline you are different, there is still a lot of […]

5 Reasons Why Your Web Design RFP Is All Wrong (and Why It’s Hurting Your Business)

So it’s finally time. You’ve decided your business needs a new website. There are probably a variety of reasons why (it’s outdated, it’s not mobile friendly, it doesn’t represent your brand, etc.)—but where to start? Well, many businesses will write a website RFP (request for proposal) and then send that RFP out to multiple agencies hoping they’ll respond.

But here’s the thing, some of the best agencies out there hate responding to RFPs because they’re time consuming and creatively constraining. That’s a problem because as a business, you want the best agencies to respond to your RFP so you can get the best website possible.

5 Powerful Reasons Why SaaS Designers Need to Know SEO

Today, there are strong signs that digital designers for SaaS providers need to learn, or be taught, SEO logic and give it due consideration when designing websites. What are the signs? Well, for one thing, SaaS is an increasingly competitive space. While your product may be terrific, if it’s not getting seen in organic search, […]

5 Strategies for Building Your Business From Angie's List's Founder

This mega-publisher of consumer reviews says she herself doesn't run away from the bad ones.

4 Lessons From the Most Purposeful Ads of 2014-2015

Advertising used to be about smoke and mirrors. The smoke was sometimes literal ("Sophisticated women smoke Virginia Slims!") and the mirrors reflected who we were and/or wanted to be ("True Americans buy Ford").

But today, “BEST IN THE WEST” billboards are no longer effective becayse consumers’ expectations have changed. Every purchase is mere clicks away; there are increasingly few strangleholds on distribution, proprietary sales territories, patented common goods, price or quality differentials.

Making Cents of Inbound Marketing: An Interview With HubSpot's CFO

One of the toughest challenges CMOs face is getting buy-in on new programs and initiatives from the rest of the executive team -- especially from the CFO. A lot of CMOs feel like they’re begging for money each month. And if the money ends up going to something that doesn’t quite pan out, their budget is on the chopping block.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. There are many ways CMOs can improve their relationship with their CFOs, and the best way to get started is to figure out how your CFO thinks.

How to Create an Infographic in Under an Hour [10 Free Infographic Templates]

Wouldn't it be great if creating infographics was just as simple as writing regular ole text-based blog posts? Unfortunately, the reality is that making visual content like this usually takes a lot more time, effort, and let's face it -- skill -- than the written word. Usually.

But considering the popularity and effectiveness of visual content in marketing today, you can't just afford to throw in the towel. That's why we decided to take all the pain and suffering out of infographic creation. Seriously -- don't throw in the towel just yet. You, too, can create professional-looking, high-quality infographics ... quickly! And I'm going to prove it. First things first ...

3 Steps to Winning Customers from Big Box Retailers With Long-Tail Keyword Phrases

SEO can be tough. It is no miracle worker –– at least not overnight. Focusing hours of hard work on keywords and metadata likely isn’t any small business owner’s idea of money or time well-spent. Yet, the ROI from doing so has a long tail that seriously impacts your bottom line.

In fact, not spending time on SEO can mean failure for your ecommerce business. After all, if no one can find you, you don’t exist! And on the internet, that means if Google isn’t ranking you well, you might as well not even be selling online.

The Do’s and Don’ts for Sending Email at Work

**Sets alarm for 6am, checks email, goes to bed**

**Wakes up to sound of alarm, turns off alarm, checks email**

Does this routine sound familiar? I can’t be the only one that is nearly attached at the hip to my phone, checking email constantly. Email has been arguably the #1 form of communication for business since the early 2000’s. With email being a key piece in the way we communicate, there are certain “do’s” and “don’ts” we should be following while emailing at work: