Hubspot Digital Marketing Transcripttranscript

Transcript: Creating Quality Blog Content that Your Audience Loves to Read
Video 1: Why blog post structure matters

Hi, I’m Justin with HubSpot Academy.
Think back to the last blog post you read. Did you skim through it as opposed to reading it because
the introduction didn’t keep your attention? Did the content seem to ramble as opposed to getting to
the point in a helpful and practical way? Were you unable to find a helpful next step to continue your
journey?
If you answered “yes” to all of these questions, then chances are the author who wrote the blog post
didn’t pay close enough attention to the structure of their content. And they’re suffering the
consequences: You, along with many others, stopped reading the post.
All effective blog posts have a blueprint. You may not easily see it, but it’s there, and it’s meant to
help you, the reader, through your journey to making a well-informed, confident decision— whatever
that decision may be.
Here are a list of reasons why your blog posts need structure.
To start, it gives you direction. The last thing you want is to stare at a screen frustrated that you don’t
know what to write about.
Next, it will make your content creation time more effective and efficient. Using a template creates
helpful guardrails. Without it, you could easily spend your time creating content that may get cut out
before publishing.
Next, you want readers to easily comprehend what it is you’re trying to tell them. If your content is
too complicated and unengaging, then chances are readers will abandon it and go elsewhere. There’s
thousands of blog posts being published every minute, so it’s safe to say you’re not the only resource
out there competing for attention.
And lastly, you want your readers to remember what you write about and feel excited and inspired to
take the next step in their journey.
So if your goal is to attract your ideal audience, engage them with helpful, useful content, and
ultimately delight them to the point where they become promoters of your brand by sharing your
content with their network, then you need to create content that has structure and tells a story.
Video 2: How to choose a topic and a title for a blog post

Before getting started with a blog post, you need to first determine the direction of the content. Let’s
review an effective way to approach this.
To start, choose a topic to write about.
At a high level, write educational content.
I’m not saying you can’t write about your business when it makes sense, but in order to attract
someone to your blog, you need to answer the questions and problems that they’re searching for
answers to. Put yourself in the
shoes of your buyer personas. What will they be searching for? What do they want to know about?
What will resonate with them? Consider what you know about your buyer personas and their interests
while you're coming up with a topic for your blog post.
And when it comes to a topic, make sure to write about your industry, not yourself.
Remember, you’re trying to attract strangers to your blog who have never heard of your company
before — so they’re not going to find you through search engines if you’re just blogging about
yourself. You have the rest of your website to provide that information.
But don’t just take it from me; let's hear what HubSpot's Product Editor-in-Chief, Beth Dunn, has to
say.
At its core, effective content is relevant and useful to your audience — your reader. It makes your
reader, not your company and its revenue targets or goals, your number one priority. Your writing
should use your audience's language and show that you understand their pain points, challenges, and
goals. It should be produced to help people, not just sell them on your products or services.
Thanks, Beth.
If you’re looking for a place to start with creating content that’ll positively impact your audience, then
ask your co- workers from other teams like sales and services for some ideas. Here are a few
questions that you could ask and they could answer: What are the most frequently asked questions
you hear? What do our prospects and customers need help with? What do you wish people knew
about our industry? What are industry bloggers, social media, and even our competitors talking about?
Before you write anything, you need to pick a topic for your blog post. The topic can be pretty general
to start with. For example, if you provide running shoes, then it might be a good idea to write about
the topic of running. Expand off of this topic — in other words, iterations or different ways of
approaching that topic to help you focus your writing. For example, you might decide to narrow your
topic to "the top ten running shoes for marathons" or "how to create a running routine."
When picking your ideas to write about, do keyword research.
Keywords are the words and phrases typed into search engines. They’re the topics that people are
trying to learn more about. Which keywords do your buyer personas use? Which are associated with
your industry?
Optimizing your blog posts for keywords is not about incorporating as many keywords into your posts
as possible. Nowadays, this actually hurts your search engine optimization because search engines
consider this keyword stuffing.
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. 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 long-tail keyword per blog post. A long-tail keyword is a
very targeted search phrase that contains three or more words. It often contains a head term, which is
a more generic search
term, one or two words in length. The head terms you choose should align with the topics that you
want your business and website to be known for and build authority around. For example, if you want
your business to be known for “content marketing,” then a blog post on “Three Steps to Organizing a
Long-Term Content Marketing Strategy” is a great example of a long-tail keyword in support of this
topic. Or if you want your business to be known for “full-time RVing,” then a blog post on “Full-
Time RVing | The Benefits of Trying Before Buying” is a great example of a long-tail keyword in
support of this topic.
And why should you focus on long-tail keywords for blog post titles? These longer, often question-
based keywords keep your post focused on the specific goals of your audience. Website visitors
searching long-tail terms are more likely to read the whole post and then seek more information from
you. In other words, you'll attract the right type of traffic to your website.
If you’re brainstorming ideas to write about, there’s a good chance you’ll create a long list of ideas for
topics you can cover and posts you can create. This will help create a longer-term blogging strategy,
making a list of topics that support a specific conversion. For example, if you have an ebook or guide
that you want to create and promote, then consider making a list of blog ideas that support this guide’s
content. This way, if someone finds your blog post and finds the content helpful, that increases the
chances of them wanting to click a call-to-action, aka CTA, to access a relevant offer.
If you’re looking for assistance with blog ideas, then check out HubSpot’s blog ideas generator. This
free tool will help jump-start your creative process.
Now, let’s talk about creating a title.
Think about how you read things online. You read the title first, before you commit. It needs to catch
your interest, especially since it’s the first thing that will catch a reader’s attention.
Start by creating a working title for your blog post.
A working title is something to "work" off of as you begin to write your post. Start here to narrow
your topic down and focus on one angle. A broad term, like “social media,” could breed multiple blog
post ideas. A working title, like “top social media channels for live video in 2019” is now long-tail
and specific.
Once you finish the piece, you’ll come back to this title and refine it to be more aligned with the
direction you ended up taking in the post.
For almost every piece of content, come up with at least 5–10 different titles. Make it a rule that you
spend a minimum of five minutes brainstorming titles. And once you make a list, send to a co-worker
to get their opinion.
Also, make the value of the post clear in the title. Your title should help readers and search engines
understand what your post is about. Set the right expectations — what is the reader going to get out of
your blog post? What information is covered? What format is the blog post going to take?
In this example, the blog post title explicitly tells you that you’ll be reading about how to create an
infographic. Not only that, but it sets the expectations that it only takes an hour to do, and there’s also
free templates
included. You know exactly what you’re going to get from this blog post — how it’s valuable to you
and how much information it contains.
When it comes to the art of the perfect blog post title, HubSpot did some research and looked at how
our own titles have performed. Here are the consistent principles that were found:
1. The ideal blog post title length is 60 characters.

2. Headlines between 8 and 12 words are shared most often on Twitter. 3. Headlines between 12 and
14 words are liked most often on Facebook.
HubSpot also found that headlines ending with a bracketed clarification — like the earlier example
with “15 free infographic templates” in brackets at the end of the post — performed 38% better than
titles without that clarification.
If you're having trouble trimming down the length of a title, run it through Moz’s title tag preview
tool to see how the title will appear on a search engine results page. Google typically displays the first
50–60 characters of a title tag. If you keep your titles under 60 characters, you can expect about 90%
of your titles to display properly.
Title too long? That’s okay! Make sure to create a title for your reader first. When you have a lengthy
headline, it's a good idea to put your primary keyword (aka the head term) at the beginning of the title
since it might get cut off toward the end on a search engine results page. In this example, the title got
caught off, but the focus keyword, “data visualization,” is at the front.
And there you have it, a step-by-step approach to choosing effective blog topics with descriptive
titles.
Video 3: How to create and structure a blog post
Once you have a topic and title for your blog post, the next step is to create and structure its content.
Let’s review how to go about this.
To start, choose a format for the post so that both people and search engines can easily read and
understand it.
When writing for your audience, you want to match the attitude of your readers and the subject
matter. Consider if your writing should be serious, fun and personable, uplifting, quirky and
humorous, or authoritative. Readers might not be able to point out that the tone is what’s off-putting
about your content and therefore your brand, but it’s the little things that can leave a big impression.
Your goal should be to create an interesting narrative with each post that your audience can follow.
This all starts with having a solid structure for your post that readers recognize and therefore know
what to expect.
One easy structure to use is the List Formula. Start with an intro, list out the main points of the article,
and then wrap it all up with a strong conclusion.
The How-To Formula is another easy-to-use and logical format. It begins with an introduction, there’s
a section on why this matters to the reader that provides more context, and then you provide details on
how to do something in a list format.
If you start with a formula for the backbone of your article, it’s easier to get started. It will be
overwhelming to write an introduction without knowing where the piece is going to go. Start by
filling in the main points and save writing the introduction and conclusion for after you’ve written the
piece or created a solid architecture for the post.
When writing an intro, make it captivating. If you lose the reader in the first few paragraphs — or
even sentences — of the introduction, they’ll stop reading even before they've given your post a read-
through. Grab their attention, use humor, be empathetic, or grip the reader with an interesting fact or
statistic.
And describe the purpose of the post and explain how it will address a problem the reader may be
having. It should be a follow-up to the title that they found interesting. This will give the reader a
reason to keep reading and give them a connection to how it will help them improve.
If you read the first few lines of this blog post, would you want to keep reading? What about this blog
post? Keep your buyer persona in mind and think about what would entice them to keep on reading.
And what about the rest of your blog post?

The body of your blog post is where your readers will undoubtedly derive the most value. HubSpot
did an analysis and found the ideal blog post length is roughly 2,100 words, but that will vary
depending on your topic. Always solve for the reader first. Make sure you cover your topic in full and
have met the expectations that your blog title promised.
Let’s review some formatting best practices to ensure you’re creating effective blog posts that are
remembered.
Mention your keyword at a normal cadence throughout the body of your post and in the headers when
it makes sense. That means including your keywords in your copy but only in a natural, reader-
friendly way. Don't go overboard, though, at the risk of being penalized for keyword stuffing.
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. Here’s a pro tip to
avoid keyword stuffing: Consider writing the synonyms of your keyword as opposed to keyword
stuffing. For example, digital nomad is a main topic I write about often, but instead of repeating that
term over and over in my content, I change it up with synonyms like “remote worker” or
“telecommuter.”
And while text is one of the most important facets of an effective blog post, your content needs to be
more than just text. You need to pay attention to how you present the content. Which brings me to my
next best practice: Whitespace is your friend.
Whitespace is the empty space on the page. It allows the visitor to focus on the content, not the
clutter. Don’t write long paragraphs that form into huge blocks of text — this will make your
information look dense and hard to read.
As you can see in this example, there’s plenty of whitespace on the side margins of the post, around
the title and first image, and between the paragraphs of text within the post. The space makes the post
more easily digestible — nothing is crammed together, and though the post is long, it doesn’t feel
overwhelming or hard to read.
You can also break up the text in your blog post by using sub-headers and bullets or numbered lists to
highlight your points.
Sub-headers are another on-page SEO element. Sub-headers organize and break up your blog post
into different sections to signal to Google (and your reader) what the post will cover.
Sub-headers should be written with H2 tags or smaller — never H1 tags, which signal a title. Use sub-
headers to split up sections of your blog post. For example, this blog post has a section on creating
ideas on your own. Notice how it offers subheadings within this section as well to continue splitting
up content to make it easier to digest. I did this using an H3 tag.
Bolding important text can also help readers quickly understand the key takeaways from the post.
Though, don’t go overboard with bolding. If the majority of a paragraph is bolded, then it’s possible
you’re reader won’t retain the important information you want them to remember. Here’s a pro tip:
Consider only bolding one sentence per paragraph and possibly just bolding one sentence every few
paragraphs. In this case, less is more.
Once you’ve finished the text portion of your post, don’t forget to make it stand out with the use of
visuals and multimedia elements to break up your text.
Start by using a featured image. A featured image usually sits at the top of a blog post and is another
element to draw readers in to learn more. A featured image is also the image that shows up on social
media when your content is shared. The image should reflect what the story is about, intrigue readers,
or provoke them. It doesn’t need to directly illustrate what your post is about, but they should be
loosely related to your content. While most people enjoy a great cat photo, it may not always be
relevant to your content.
And throughout the body of your blog post, use multimedia content wherever it's possible to break up
the blog post and re-engage your reader. Add images, videos, audio recordings, embedded social
media posts, and so on. HubSpot sometimes includes an audio version of the blog post or includes a
video on the related topic. It changes it up for the reader but also helps them digest the content in a
different way. Changing up the format of your blog post will provide additional value to your reader
while making sure their eyes are focused on what they're reading and seeing. See the difference? The
blog post without any visual looks a lot less interesting and welcoming.
Before moving on, don't forget about mobile. Mobile users consume more than two times the minutes
online compared to desktop users. This means having a blog that's responsive or designed for mobile
has become more and more critical. Make sure to keep mobile in mind as you structure your blog
post. What would the experience be like if someone were to read your blog post on their mobile phone
instead of a desktop computer? Would you format it differently?
And there you have it – the fundamental strategy and best practices for creating and structuring
content that attracts, engages, and delights your ideal audience.
Video 4: How to optimize a blog post

Once you’ve formatted your blog post’s content, you’ll want to optimize it for readers as well as
search engines.
To help search engines understand what you’re trying to communicate, optimize your post
accordingly. You already optimized the title and body of your post, but there’s a list of other
optimizations you should consider as well. Let’s review each.
Let’s start with the URL.

The URL doesn’t have to match the title of the blog exactly. Instead, make it a best practice to shorten
the URL without losing context to what the page is about. For example, notice how the URL of this
blog post is shorter than the title. This way, I can update the content over time without updating the
URL.
Here’s a pro tip: Don’t include numbers in your URL, like year or steps. This way, if you update the
content in the future, you won’t have to update the URL. Updating the URL creates a 301 redirect. A
301 redirect is a permanent redirect from one URL to another. Making updates to URLs hurts your
SEO, and you don’t want that.
Moving on to image alt-text.
Search engines don't just look for images. Rather, they look for images with alt-text. Because search
engines can't "see" images the same way humans can, an image's alt-text tells them what an image is
about – which ultimately helps those images rank in the image section of search engine results.
Consider optimizing your images with different descriptive variations of your long-tail keyword.
Next up is your meta description.
Your meta description is meant to give search engines and readers information about your blog post's
content. The maximum suggested length of a meta description is 150–160 characters. Anything longer
than that will most likely be cut off.
Keep in mind that copy matters a great deal for clickthrough rates because it satisfies certain readers'
intent. The more engaging, the better. In addition to being reader-friendly (compelling and relevant),
your meta description should include the long-tail keyword for which you’re trying to optimize for.
But keep in mind that a search engine may not choose to use your meta description as the descriptive
text in search results. Search engines are funny that way.
And lastly, insert links strategically throughout your post.
As you attract more and more visitors to your blog, that increased traffic means an increased
opportunity to build a relationship, gain trust, and generate more leads and eventually customers.
Let’s review some best practices when it comes to using links effectively in your blog posts. First,
link to external content when it’s helpful or supports a stat or claim you’re making.
It takes a lot of work to attract someone to your site and gain their trust. The last thing you want to do
is send them off your site unless it’s something that supports your content. I’m not saying you
shouldn’t link to content that’s not your own, but just do so thoughtfully and make sure it provides
value.
Here’s a pro tip: When linking to external websites, consider having that content open in a new
window. This way, you’re being helpful without redirecting people off of your site.
Next, link to other helpful blog posts on your site.
If you find yourself typing a sentence or paragraph that can be explained in more detail on another
blog post, then link to it. This helps in two ways: It solves for the reader, allowing and encouraging
them to continue bingeing your content; and it solves for the search engine as it communicates to
them that there’s a cluster of related content on your site. And if search engines deem your cluster of
web content around a specific topic as a credible source, then that can help boost your visibility on the
search engines.
Which brings me to my last point: Link to important content on your site that supports conversions.
When it comes to deciding on where to insert CTAs on your blog posts, here are four places to
consider. Let’s review each.
First, consider inserting a CTA after the first few paragraphs. To avoid looking too pushy too soon,
try including a passive CTA through hyperlinked text as opposed to using an image. It’s important to
include these passive CTAs near the top, as you can’t always count on your visitor reading your entire
post to take the next step. Think about it. Do you read to the end of every blog post that you click on?
Probably not.
HubSpot performs CTA tests all the time. From image and text CTAs to placement of the CTAs,
we’re always looking for ways to improve clickthrough rate. Interestingly enough, we found that text
CTAs near the top of blogs posts produce the highest clickthrough rates— something you might want
to keep in mind and test on your blog posts.
I recommend linking to pillar pages with CTAs at the top of the page as the content is not gated,
meaning you’re not forcing someone to give you their email address just yet in exchange for
something. Instead, you can lead with educational content, which solves for your reader first. Plus,
your pillar pages should support one, if not multiple, conversions so that you can help the reader
through their journey accordingly while gaining their trust along the way.
Next, include an image or text CTA near the most relevant content in the body of the post. The best
time to support a conversion is just after educating someone. For example, Townsend Security, a full-
service data security provider, included an image CTA to a relevant podcast download in this blog
post. Notice how the CTA content is similar to the content it’s paired with.
Next, include an image CTA at the end of each post. If someone reads your post to the end, then you
want to offer them a helpful next step. This is a CTA at the end of the same post that was shown
earlier. The title of the post is “Data Visualization 101: How to Choose the Right Chart or Graph for
Your Data,” and at the bottom, there’s a CTA for an ebook on how to present data people can’t
ignore. When it comes to image CTAs at the end of blog posts, I recommend linking these to a
relevant landing page with a form.
Another option, which brings me to the last CTA placement, is a pop-up CTA that the reader sees as
they scroll down the page. This is a great way to have your CTA stick around so that the reader can’t
just scroll past it.
If you really want to engage your users and have a helpful conversation, then consider offering live
chat or a chatbot. A chatbot is a computer program that automates certain tasks, typically by chatting
with a user through a conversational interface.
Most bots follow a set of rules programmed by a human via a bot-building platform. It's as simple as
ordering a list of if-then statements and writing canned responses, often without needing to know a
line of code. The benefit? A bot will guide you, the visitor, through the various options available and
help you get from point A to point B quickly. Behind the curtain, the bot is leading you through a
series of dependent questions to collect the necessary information to understand your intent, and then
deliver the right content to satisfy your needs.
And that’s it! Now you know how to effectively optimize your blog post’s content. Keep these tips in
mind when optimizing your posts, as it will ensure you’re getting the most out of your business
blogging efforts.
Video 5: What are some effective blog writing tips?

Hi, I’m Jami Oetting with HubSpot’s Marketing team.
Let me start by telling you a little secret: Even for professional writers, writing is hard. It’s not a skill
that’s learned naturally.
Just getting the words down on paper is a great first step. But writing 800 words versus publishing
800 words that will resonate with your readers requires a bit more work. First drafts are sloppy, and
that’s normal. When you start writing, you don’t know what the final piece will look like, and you
may not have a good enough grasp of the information you need to include.
Editing requires you to cut out the unnecessary and irrelevant—anything that doesn’t support your
core idea. It also gives you an opportunity to refine the language to be stronger, more action-oriented,
and impactful. Finally, during the editing process, you ensure that the piece lacks any errors that could
damage your credibility and the trust that you’ve built with the reader. Editing shows your audience
that you care about their reading experience.
As Truman Capote said, “I'm all for the scissors. I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil."
Before you move from the writing to the editing process, remember to take a break from the words.
Work on something else or save the final check for when you can look at the piece with fresh ideas
and a new perspective. An even better alternative is to send it to a team member who can review the
content before it goes live.
Let’s go over ten common grammar and style mistakes you should check for so that your writing hits
all the right marks with your audience.
First, use contractions.
Contractions help you sound more conversational—basically, more human—in your writing, so be
sure to change your do not’s to don’ts and would not’s to wouldn’ts.
Let’s check out an example of how contractions can make your writing sound stiff and wordy. In this
example, we’re talking about landing page best practices:
Don’t confuse viewers with too many options on your landing pages. It’s better to have one call-to-
action that’s compelling. Otherwise, you’ll risk your prospects being confused about what they should
and shouldn’t click.
If we were to spell out the contractions, the sentence, while not incorrect, sounds more robotic and
harsh, when we simply want to provide helpful advice.
Here’s how that same sentence would sound without contractions: Do not confuse viewers with too
many options on your landing pages. It is better to have have one call-to-action that is compelling.
Otherwise, you will risk your prospects being confused about what they should and should not click.
Next, write with simple language.
Using big words makes you appear less credible and confident, according to a study done by the
UCLA Anderson School of Management. Making your writing easier to process and understand
actually makes you seem more intelligent and capable. No one likes to slug through overly complex
writing full of unfamiliar words. Now, simple language doesn’t have to be boring. In fact, it can be
just the opposite.
Consider this sentence:
The proliferation of social and digital channels have created a catalyst whereby a shift in the
production methods by marketers is required to connect with the audience.
That’s a tough one to unpack. While a marketer might understand this sentence, it takes extra effort to
get the point, and for most, that’s when they’ll stop paying attention.
We can relay the same message by simply stating:
The increase in the number of social and digital channels now requires marketers to create content
that’s not only platform-specific but also appeals to the unique audience and their behaviors on that
platform.
Next, use the active voice.
When you use active verbs, the subject of the sentence is performing that action. Passive voice is
when something known or unknown performs the action of the sentence, which makes your writing
seem flat and boring. If people have to trip sentence over sentence, then reading your writing becomes
tiresome.
Next, be clear and concise.
This is the ultimate goal of editing. You have to refine the words until the point of each section, each
paragraph, and each sentence is focused and clear. Clear writing requires you to have empathy for the
reader—the work you produce should leave little chance for confusion or misinterpretation. One way
of doing this is by removing extra words, irrelevant ideas and rants, and obvious details.
You should also use words that are familiar to your readers or provide definitions for those that are
less well- known. This can also mean including an analogy, metaphor, or example to clarify a
complicated topic.
Let’s say you have an on-call virtual nurse service and want to explain the benefits for when someone
is worried about getting sick. Instead of stating this directly, you could say, “Our nurses step in with
health and wellness advice when your mom isn’t answering her phone.”
It immediately gets the point across in a way that’s relatable.
Another way to create clarity in your writing is by putting things in context. It’s one thing to share a
stat on the growing adoption of a social platform, such as Snapchat, but how does this platform’s
growth compare with, say, Facebook or Instagram? This type of information helps to enrich the
meaning of the original fact or idea.
Next, use short sentences and paragraphs.

Break up long, dense sentences and paragraphs to make your content easier to read and comprehend.
Take for example this introduction from a HubSpot blog post.
These five paragraphs could be condensed into two paragraphs, but the breaks create white space
around your writing, giving readers’ eyes a rest. Most importantly, these breaks—along with varying
the sentence structure and length—create rhythm, making your writing more pleasing to read.
Next, cut fluffy words from your writing.
Words such as “very,” “really,” “actually,” “just,” “incredibly,” and “in order to” don’t add anything
to your sentences and can make your phrases sound bloated. You should also be careful of relying on
adverbs—words ending in -ly—to describe action or including too many adjectives in your work.
These mistakes all make for overly long, complex, and weak sentences. Run your writing through a
tool like the Hemingway Editor to see if you can cut words or further simplify your language.
Check out this sentence: Marketers are very anxious to change in order to actually connect with their
customers before the next holiday season.
You can cut this down to: Marketers are anxious to change to connect with their customers before the
holiday season.
Next, adhere to a style guide.
Whether it’s AP Style or the Chicago Manual Style or an internal style guide, use a standard set of
rules to create consistency in all your communications—from your product copy to emails to ebooks
to advertising. Your style guide should instruct anyone who writes on behalf of your company how to
handle punctuation, grammar, voice and tone, industry-specific terms, common mistakes, and any
brand-specific guidelines.
Next, use “you” and “your” in your writing.
This helps you sound more conversational, like you’ve written the content specifically for the reader
and you want to bring them into a discussion.
Many people approach writing like they’re creating something for an “audience”—a vague term that
brings a blurry group of people to mind—when really you should write like your favorite customer or
ideal reader is sitting at their desk or on their couch reading your information. Imagine that you’re
having a conversation or writing a letter to a respected friend. It’s a simple tweak that will prevent you
from sounding like you’re writing an instruction manual.
Here’s an example of what this sounds like:
People wanting to improve their overall health should start the day with a well-balanced breakfast that
could include whole-grain cereal, yogurt, and egg whites. They should make time in their day to get at
least 30 minutes of cardio, and people should do some type of strength training three times per week.
A simple switch to using the second person pronoun, ”you,” shifts your writing to address the reader
directly, making your writing sound more personable.
So let’s see how that sounds with a simple perspective adjustment:
If you want to improve your overall health, try starting the day with a well-balanced breakfast that
could include whole-grain cereal, yogurt, and egg whites. You should also make time for at least 30
minutes of cardio a day, and try to do some type of strength training three times per week.
Next, avoid jargon and use acronyms sparingly.
Jargon plagues the business and marketing world. Words such as ideation, paradigm, uplevel, holistic,
disruptive, game-changing, revolutionary ... I could go on. In addition, remember that not everyone
understands the meaning behind the acronyms you rely on, so always spell them out at least once, and
try to avoid littering your content with three- and four-letter abbreviations. For example, take this
sentence: “The CMO spoke to the CTO about the long-term SEO strategy to improve PPC metrics
such as the CPC and CPL ASAP.”
Did you get that? Probably not. Next, don’t be snarky.

Critical and sarcastic writing has its place, but for most businesses, this type of tone comes off
negatively. Be confident, and showcase your expertise, but above all, be friendly and straightforward.
Sarcasm can make you look petty.
And lastly, use spell check.
Add this to your pre-publishing checklist. It’s always a good idea to double-check for spelling
mistakes. Even small errors can have a negative impact on readers’ perception of your brand.
And there you have it—ten grammar tips to creating effective blog content.
Transcript: Learn How to Create a Successful Video Marketing Strategy
Video 1: Why should you create engaging videos?

Hi, I’m Justin with HubSpot Academy.
In the past 30 days, more video content has been uploaded online than the major U.S. television
networks have created in 30 years.
Let that sink in for a minute.
It’s no secret that video is a powerful force that’s been growing in usage year over year. In 2018, 87%
of online marketers used video. What has changed is how important video has become on every
platform and channel across your entire business.
And these days, video isn’t just for people with big budgets. Years ago, video was almost exclusively
produced by the creative department—not marketing, sales, or service teams. Equipment costs were
high and measuring video success was limited.
Today, all that has changed. Thanks to the rise of technology, video is used more widely as a business
strategy across marketing, sales, and service teams. When done correctly, a video marketing strategy
is an effective way to attract, engage, and delight your audience in a human and helpful way. In fact,
more than 50% of consumers want to see videos from brands — that’s more than any other type of
content.
But creating any old video isn’t enough. You need to create memorable videos that engage your
audience. Here are some reasons why.
To start, video content creates trust. If you build trust with your audience, then they’ll be more willing
to come to you when they’re ready to make a purchasing decision. 90% of customers say video helps
them make buying decisions, and 64% of customers say that seeing a video makes them more likely
to buy. However, to build that trust and close those customers, , your video content needs to have a
purpose and capture the interest of your viewer. Mediocre or low-quality videos just won’t cut it. In
fact, 62% of consumers are more likely to have a negative perception of a brand that published a low-
quality video.
Next, engaging videos that are optimized correctly can improve your search engine optimization in a
few ways. • First, adding a video to your website can increase the chance of a front page Google result
by 53 times.
This is especially helpful if you include a video near the top of your educational website pages. Why?
Because if people take the time to watch your video, then it’ll reduce bounce rate. Your website's
bounce rate is the percentage of people who land on one of your website pages, then leave. They don't
click on anything. They just get to one of your pages, then leave quickly. Having a low bounce rate is
a strong indicator to Google that people find value in your content. And if Google thinks your content
provides value, then that can lead to first page rankings for the topics you want to show up for. For
example, this web page ranks #1 on Google for a list of high-volume terms related to truck camper.
When you click through to the page, you’ll notice there’s a YouTube video embedded at the top that’s
4 minutes and 13 seconds long. In most cases, the majority of people who visit your site — 79% to be
exact — would rather watch a video to learn, than read text on a page. That’s exactly why I included a
video at the top of this

page to engage the visitor with video content first. In case you’re curious, the average time a visitor
spends on this page is five minutes.

• Which brings me to my second point: Not only is YouTube a popular search engine, but YouTube
videos
rank near the top of a search engine result page—another opportunity to claim real estate on a search
engine results page. Google offers more than just listings to website content — there are other options
like image and video search. The best part about these other search options is when Google does offer
them, they’re generally offered near the top of the search engine results page, even before the coveted
#1 website listing. For example, let’s go back to the search engine results page for the search query
“DIY truck camper.” Notice how the video that’s featured at the top of my educational website page
shows up in the video search results, which ranks above the #1 website listing. Anyone who clicks
through to the YouTube video will see there’s a link above the fold in the video’s description, which
connects them to the most relevant page on my website. This way, if the viewer wants more, I’m
offering them that helpful next step.
And while we’re on the topic of YouTube, it’s important to note that it’s the second largest search
engine behind Google. If you want to learn more on how to create a YouTube strategy, then check out
the resources section. I’ve included a link to help you get started.
And lastly, a lot of video content is constantly being published online. In the time that you watched
this video, over 216 hours of video content was uploaded to YouTube. Let’s be honest. Do you really
think the world needs another piece of mediocre content? I don’t think so. Make it a point to focus on
the quality and purpose of each video you create. This way, you’ll stand out from your competitors
and gain your audience's trust. Remember, quality always outweighs quantity when it comes to
creating content, especially video content.
Video 2: How to use video throughout the inbound methodology
Often, companies jump too quickly at the opportunity to create their first video. They think they'll be
left behind if
they don't start doing video, which could actually be true. However, instead of investing in video in all
aspects of
their business, they spend thousands of dollars on a highly produced brand video for their homepage.
After that,
video is no more.
On the other hand, plenty of businesses churn out videos constantly for social media. But since most
simply
replicate fads they've seen without any true intention for their videos past likes and shares, they hardly
consider
their audience's challenges or habits-not exactly the best way to build trust.
Considering the time, money, and resources involved, video marketing can't be an impulsive guessing
game.
Instead, you need to create a video marketing strategy that applies to every stage of the inbound
methodology.
Your goal with video should be to attract your ideal audience, engage them with helpful, useful video
content,
and delight them to the point where they become promoters of your brand by sharing your content
with their
network.
Let's cover the types of videos you can create for each stage of the inbound methodology. Let's start
with the attract stage, which is generally a function of marketing.

Ultimately, the goal of this kind of video is to expand reach and build trust and credibility with your
audience.
••••
The first step of the inbound methodology is to attract - or turn strangers into visitors. Consumers at
this stage
are identifying their challenges and deciding whether or not they should seek out a solution.
Therefore, the
videos you create should empathize with their problems. Use your expertise to create video content
that creates
a meaningful and memorable experience.
Examples of videos in the attract stage include:
Short social videos that show off your brand's personality;
Thought leadership videos that establish you as a source of industry news and insight;
Brand films that share your values and mission;
And educational how-to videos that provide relevant tips for solving your audience's pain points.
For any "attract" video, avoid speaking too much about your product. Instead, focus on your brand
values and
personality. Remember, this video may be the first time someone comes in contact with your brand.
So, make a
positive first impression. If you do, then it's likely the viewer will go looking for more. Finally,
because these
videos can live on a variety of channels, keep in mind the strategies of each platform, especially when
it comes to
social media.
For a breakdown of how to use video across different social media platforms, check out the resources
section of
this lesson.
Now that you've attracted video viewers and website visitors, the next step is to build lasting
relationships with
them by providing insights and solutions that align with their challenges and goals. This brings us to
the engage
stage, which is generally a function of marketing and sales.
Your intention is to help them through their buyer's journey to making a well-informed, confident
purchasing
decision. In simpler terms, "engage" videos are meant to convert your visitors into leads and
ultimately close
them as customers.
"Engage" videos that are meant to convert your website visitors into leads could include:
•••••
A webinar filled with tactical advice;
Product demos sent via email;
Landing page promotional videos;
Case studies;
And in-depth educational how-to videos.
For example, while an "attract" video might provide a quick tip for writing blog post titles, an
"engage" video
could be a more thorough breakdown of how to create a long-term blogging strategy.
When your goal is to close leads into customers with "engage" videos, help your audience visualize
themselves
using your product or service - and seeing success. Yet, as important as this stage is, "close" videos
are often the
most overlooked by marketers and salespeople. But there's a reason 4 times as many customers would
rather
watch a video about a product than read about it. Videos are able to display functionality and leverage
emotions
in ways a product description never could.
"Engage" videos that are meant to close your leads as customers could include:
Testimonials of customers with relatable stories;
In-depth product demos;
Culture videos that sell viewers on your quality of service;
Or even personalized videos that explain exactly how your product or service could help their
business.
This is especially an effective tool for your salespeople who are working with people who aren't the
decision makers. Imagine the impact you can have on your close rate if you recorded a personalized
sales
pitch that your point of contact can share with decision makers. It's the next best thing to actually
being in
the room with them.
••••
So, let's say your "engage" video was great, and a purchase was made. Great! But you're not done yet.
, There's
still a lot video can do to leverage the post-conversion stage of the inbound methodology. This brings
us to the
final stage, delight, which is generally a function of your services, success, or support team.
During the delight stage, your goal is to continue providing remarkable content to users that makes
their
interaction with your product or service as incredible as possible. You want them to tell their network
about their
experience or up-sell on another one of your products or services. Therefore, the goal of this type of
video is to
encourage your customers to embrace your brand and become brand evangelists.
Examples of videos in the "delight" stage include:
A thank you video in an email welcoming them into the community;
An onboarding video to get them set up for success with their new purchase;
Or, and this is a much heftier strategic initiative, building out a library of educational product training
videos to cater to consumers who prefer self-service or want to expand their expertise. For example,
HubSpot offers a marketing software certification course that takes you on a tour of the marketing
product and demonstrates how to use the tools to create and implement a cohesive inbound marketing
strategy. There's even a case study at the end of the course which features an example of what an
inbound marketing strategy looks like in action. Paint a picture of what success looks like for your
audience, then help them transform by teaching them how to do it. Empowering your customers to
become successful users of your products or services creates well-informed, educated evangelists of
your
brand.
•••
And that's it, an overview of how to successfully implement video at every stage of the inbound
methodology.
Before we finish, here's a pro tip to keep in mind: Get creative and test various video types to see
what works
best for you and your business. For example, maybe your audience prefers longer videos in the attract
stage - in
this case, consider creating longer educational videos and embedding them at the top of your website
pages as
an attract stage play. The key here is to experiment and document your findings. This way, as you
grow, you can
focus on growing better, improving your experience, which your audience will appreciate.
If you're looking for a place to start, consider creating at least two videos for the attract, engage, and
delight
stages. Don't forget to include call-to-actions to help lead your audience through their buyer's journey
and into
the role of promoter of your brand. Over time, you can improve based on conversion rates and the
content gaps
you discover.
Video 3: Tips for getting started with video marketing

Getting started with creating video content can be a daunting task, especially if you’ve never created
an effective video before. But remember, the first time is always the hardest. It will get easier. As
Mark Twain once said, “The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is
breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the
first one.”
Now you may be asking yourself, “What are the complex, overwhelming tasks that you need to break
down into manageable tasks to get started with creating video content?” Let’s check in with Wipster,
a video workflow and collaboration platform, on their checklist of tips for getting started with video
marketing.
Know your audience and the type of video is best suited to them.
Start by defining very clearly the persona of your audience: Imagine the person on the other side of
the camera. Who are they? And what do they care about?
When it comes to promoting video on different channels (like, your website, social media, or email
etc.) you want to make sure your content fits with the spirit of the channel as well as how people
behave on that particular channel. Sometimes it helps to think of LindkedIn, Twitter and other social
media as TV channels—HBO versus ESPN versus History channel. Each has a different vibe and
content style.
Create goals for each video.
Videos can have both softer goals like brand awareness as well as clearly defined, concrete business
goals. It helps to create a framework for your goals to keep them top of mind and organized. At
Wipster, we use a goal framework with three categories: 1. brand moment, 2. business moment, and 3.
an entertainment moment.
Goals related to “brand moments” have to do with company milestones, new product features, a new
team member, or other company- related news we’d like our audience to know about. Goals related to
“business moments” address the desired business outcome from the video—and tend to be more
tactical in nature. Goals related to entertainment moments have to do with making the content
entertaining for your audience.
For example, we created a Wipster Portland Office video and defined its goal framework as follows:
 Brand moment: Wipster mission and office expansion in the US

 Business moment: promote roles we’re recruiting and hiring for in Portland
 Entertainment moment: behind the scenes/piece to cam style and humorous look at our quirky
culture
and obsession with LaCroix Determine topics for videos.
Before choosing specific topics for a video series or video blog, it’s much easier to think in
terms of “collections.” Collections are like a miniseries covering a set of topics that are
indirectly related to your business but of interest and relevance to your specific audience.

Come up with a list of questions that can influence what your video is going to be— very similar to
how you approach the content creation process when blogging. The goals are twofold:
 To create an ongoing relationship with your audience and establish credibility.

 Increase the number of people who discover your company through organic search for your
topics on
google.
You can check out a couple of examples of content collections on Wipster’s YouTube page.
Wipster is a video collaboration platform for creative video and marketing teams so our video
series—or “collections” are meant to establish trust and build community with our audience
of video creators and video marketing teams:
The actual titles of your topics should be written based on what people might actually search
for in Google so that people can find your content organically. For example, “Choosing a
microphone for a remote interview” or “how to place video inside of text.” You will pair your
videos with a blog post for maximum impact on your audience—and search rankings.
Own the video process at your business.
The marketing team might ultimately be responsible for video content but who specifically
will own the content calendar and manage the people, goals, and timelines? When it comes to
establishing who you’ll need from your team, the “video process” can be broken down into 3
main categories:
 Project management —which refers to the content plan and schedule as well as different
people involved week to week
 Video Making—which is the actual shooting and editing of footage
 And Sharing— which refers to video sharing and publishing, tracking analytics, and
communicating with
viewers as they react and respond)
If you’re a bigger company, you might have a couple of people or teams involved, and if
you’re a smaller team don’t worry - these responsibilities can all fall under the same person.
Project manage video making and sharing.
You can have the absolute best and most strategic video strategy in the world, but in our
experience, if you don’t have the following pillars—the three “Cs”— in your process, you’ll
struggle to get things off the ground:
 Commitment: You absolutely have to commit for a certain amount of time and a certain
number of pieces of content - don't worry about the audience size or views, the value is in the
video collection as a whole.
 Calendar: Making video routine and part of the schedule is so important! Block everyone’s
calendars for a set amount of time per week to dedicate to the initiative.
 Content: map out key themes and think through how they build on each other and other
events or happenings going on in the organization or industry.
Create a repeatable process.

Let’s review two key categories when it comes to video software and hardware: • Production
• Post-production
Production has to do with all of the items needed to create a script and actually shoot the video: a
phone or video camera, mic, lighting, people or items to film, a location to shoot in, etc. Post-
production refers to what occurs after the initial shooting or recording. This is where collaboration
and review occur as you stitch footage and music and graphics together to tell a story. Once you have
your final, approved version, you can then distribute the video for people to see.
Analyze and measure videos.
When it comes to video, there are three metrics that we care most about: Views, viewing length, and
engagement. And at Wipster, we use the 10,10, 10 rule to measure success.
Audience Views - shoot for 10% - out of all the people who could have watched it, how many did? If
your video will appear in front of a targeted audience of 500 people, did at least 50 watch it?
Viewing Duration: out of that 10%, did they stick with it? Or did they drop off after 10 seconds? This
is important and lets you know whether your target audience is interested in the content itself! And
helps you know what to do/not do in the next one.
Engagement—in the form of likes, comments, or shares. Did at least 10% of people who watched the
video feel inspired to act and engage with you? You can always nudge people during the video to
comment below the video or add overlays to the video with specific calls to action like “start a free
trial”
Final thoughts.
Video marketing is a lot like other forms of marketing: you must put your audience first and curate
video collections that benefit them and also helps you hit your three “moment” goals.
More than anything, the one takeaway we’d love for you to have is that video should be a routine part
of your life now! Simply commit to a daily or weekly video, embrace the feedback and just keep
iterating.
Transcript: Lesson One

Developing a Social Media Strategy
Video 1: Why you need a social media promotion strategy
Creating a promotional plan that takes advantage of social and digital technologies will help
you shape the conversation about your business, build loyalty, and attract new customers and
partners. Social media shouldn’t replace other Inbound promotional methods like email,
events or public relations, but instead, should augment them, offering another set of
marketing channels for you to explore.
There are many benefits to having a social media strategy. It will help you:
Expand your other marketing efforts, so your content has the chance to be seen by a wide
audience, and hopefully, the right audience.
Build brand awareness. Gone are the days when your only way to build that same
awareness was through billboards or magazine and television ads. With social media, you
have the ability to bring your brand content directly to your customers, partners, and
prospects. Now you can be where your audience already is.
Social media is one of the most powerful ways to connect with your audiences. Sprout
Social reports that “When consumers follow a brand on social, 67% of consumers are more
likely to spend more with that brand, and 78% say they will visit that brand’s physical retail
store. This is especially true among millennials: 84% said they were more likely to buy from
a brand they follow on social media compared to a brand they don’t follow on social.”
Social media helps you attract buyers to your products and services, and
it gives you the ability to directly have conversations with those individuals at the time and
place of their choosing.
It sounds like a lot of opportunity, doesn’t it? In fact, social media is, in many ways, the
ultimate way to do inbound marketing. That’s because it’s a one-to-one medium, which
gives you and your company the chance to market in a direct, but very human way.
Jason Hsaio, Co-founder and Chief Video Officer, Animoto

“Well, social media, its impact on marketing, I think, has really been pretty profound. I'll
give maybe two specific examples. One is, when you think about, I will say kind of old
marketing, and I mean, this is still how a lot of us are thinking about marketing. The idea is
that you're waiting for people to get to your website and your website is the Holy Grail, and
you're doing everything you can to lure people to your website. But what's happened with
social media is we don't have to actually sit around and wait for people to come discover us
anymore. What's happening is we actually now have the opportunity to take our message,
take our content, take our information, to where the
conversation is already happening, and that's on social media.
If you think about what else is happening, it's really completely leveled the playing field for
businesses of all sizes. If you think about the fact that Click n Curl, which is a 10-person
beauty company in the Midwest, that a post of theirs can be seen right next to Dior, an
international powerhouse with $100 million marketing budget, that's crazy. In all other past
forms of marketing, something like that has never been the case. So social media has really
kind of changed everything.”
That brings us to one of the most important parts of your social media strategy. It’s also the
same thing that sits at the heart of your inbound marketing strategy: The buyer persona. A
buyer persona helps you determine who your ideal customer is. Understanding who you want
to reach will guide you in a variety of ways, from choosing the right social media platforms
to use, to creating the best mix of content to share, to being able to target advertising to the
right audience.
Make sure you understand all the basic demographics about your buyer persona like age,
gender, income, occupation, interests, motivations, and objections. But if you can, also go a
few steps further and dig into their psychographics — which websites they visit, which online
shops they frequent, and which social sites they like best. Social media gives you the ability
to be more personal and really hone in on the right type of persona for your products and
services, so the more you know, the better you can target social audiences.
There is one other crucial piece of the social media promotion puzzle: Aligning your social
strategy to your business objectives. Having business goals and objectives in place will make
it easier for you to create social media goals that will transform viewers and readers into
buyers. As with your business goals, you want your social media goals to use the S-M-A-R-T
method: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely.
As an example, if your company has a goal of building brand awareness among college
students, one of your social media goals might be to develop videos with content that’s
helpful or funny for college students, and set an advertising goal of reaching 250,000 college
students by the end of the year. Even better, you can set a secondary goal of having the
students interact with the content in some way — commenting on it or sharing it with their
friends — thus increasing brand reach and giving you a direct way to measure if and how
you’re meeting your goal.
Being able to articulate your social media goals and plan the impact your goals will have on
the company’s return on investment, or ROI, is also the key to securing executive buy-in and
budget for your campaigns.
Having your buyer persona and business objectives in mind will be helpful as you traverse
your way through building your social media strategy.
Bruno Cardinali, Head of Marketing North America at Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen
“The components that go into our social media strategy, we basically look at four different
things. The first one is paid social media. So, all the efforts that we're going to put out there
to proactively talk to our audience. So, the second one is a community management. So, it's
really a tracking the conversations and being on top of what's happening out there. Not only
with the brand itself, but also with a pop culture. The third one is organic content. So, all the
content that we are going to put out there, but not necessarily sponsored through a paid
media. Then the last piece, which I think it's a piece that I like the most. It's really our
reactive power from a creative standpoint to really respond as fast as possible to all the
things that are happening in that channel. So how do we spot something and come back with
a creative idea that talks and inserts the brand into that conversation?”
To build your social media strategy, you’ll need to be able to:
 Explain each social media channel and how each one is best used for social media
promotion,
 Understand the impact of social listening and engagement,
 Develop a social content strategy for your social media plan,
 Identify ways that metrics are crucial to understanding the success of your digital
efforts, and finally, how to
 Integrate social media into your other inbound efforts, including your website,
conversations, and blog posts.
There are a lot of moving parts in developing this strategy, but mapping out the
actions you’re going to take will get you one step closer to achieving your business
goals.
Video 2: The Social Media Channels Explained
There are a lot of options when it comes to choosing the right social media platform to
use for your inbound marketing efforts. To help you decide which channels are the
best fit for your social strategy, let’s walk through the basics and benefits of each of
them.
Let’s start with the giant: Facebook.
You may have heard the adage that if Facebook were a country it would be the largest
on earth. That’s because it currently boasts over 2.45 billion users — far more than
the largest country, China,

with 1.4 billion people living within its borders. It’s likely the majority of people you know
are on the social platform. Facebook has faced controversy in recent years with its stance on
political advertisements, on privacy, and the way its algorithm dictates what its users see.
Additionally, Facebook has shifted to show users content that is more specific to family and
friends, deprioritizing memes, brand posts, and many news outlets. Which is why it shouldn’t
be surprising that RivalIQ reported in 2019 that engagement rates across Facebook had
dramatically declined. Organic traffic and engagement on brand posts aren’t what they used
to be, but that doesn’t mean the platform isn’t worth using. Millions of companies still use
Facebook Business Pages to share organic news, events and talk to customers. But there are
two other reasons to care about Facebook--their advertising tools are some of the best to
target your ideal buyer, and their groups are an excellent way to build a captive audience,
which in many ways may prove more fruitful than other ways of reaching your customers.
This means Facebook may still be one of the most important platforms for your social media
strategy.
There are two types of Facebook pages: a personal page and a business page. You might have
heard organic reach is better on a personal page, which is true, but there are several reasons
you should use a Facebook business page for your company instead. First off, Facebook
requires businesses to use business pages and can shut down pages that do not comply with
their policy. Personal pages have a 5,000-person friend limit, whereas business pages can
have millions of followers. Having a business page also gives you access to analytics, called
Insights; the ability to correctly categorize your company for search; add a mission statement;
a product catalog; awards; and give your customers the chance to give reviews.
But the most important reason for you to have a Facebook Business page is for advertising.
Facebook advertising allows you to hyper-target the audiences you care most about,
including your own prospect lists so you can directly deliver content of value. You can also
use Facebook Advertising across their other services — Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and
WhatsApp. Adding a Facebook pixel on your website even helps you retarget those visitors
with ads on Facebook.
On Facebook, you can publish a variety of content including text and photo posts, carousel
photo posts, and video posts. You can even do live Facebook videos and share “Stories,”
microcontent designed to disappear after 24 hours, similar to Snapchat and Instagram Stories.
And finally, of Facebook's nearly two and a half billion users, 400 million belong to a
Facebook Group. Facebook groups help you build community, delight your audience, and
help you reach fans that you wouldn’t normally be able to reach with organic posts. Facebook
is putting more emphasis on Groups these days, and savvy businesses that are using them are
finding that engagement is higher than other parts of Facebook.
Mari Smith, Facebook Marketing Expert

“Facebook groups can be really, really useful for companies if you're looking to start one. I
definitely recommend starting with a clear purpose. Don't just start a group because
someone said you should start a group. It could be a pop-up group. I've seen this be very,
very successful. It might only be open for a week or 30 days. It might be for a specific
challenge or to support a certain event. Certainly, you could have an ongoing group as a
separate group, as a user group, a mastermind, a support group, many different ways you
can use groups. Another great way is a testimony group so that you have existing customers
just raving about the value that they get from your product or service and you can certainly
bring prospects in there as well.”
With over 2 billion users, YouTube is the second largest social network and, interestingly
enough, it’s also the second largest search engine in the world — behind Google, of course.
To give you a sense of its importance, more than 500 hours of video are uploaded to
YouTube every minute and almost 5 billion videos are watched on Youtube every single
day. It’s almost mind boggling to think about! Google reports that 6 out of 10 people prefer
online video platforms to live TV, which means, in many ways, you have the potential to
reach an even bigger audience for a more affordable cost than on television. On mobile,
YouTube reaches more 18-49 year olds in the US than any cable network. This is
important, because television is a very different thing today than it was even a couple years
ago. In fact, by 2025, half of viewers under the age of 32 will not subscribe to a pay-TV
service
When it comes to marketing on the platform, YouTube offers a variety of interesting

possibilities. Remember how I mentioned it was the second largest search engine? That
means not only does it help with SEO, but YouTube also has some of the highest referral
rates of all the social platforms. Also important, the platform has high conversion rates when
it comes to paid advertising. If you offer a complex product or service, having great videos
can help sway prospects into a purchase. Creating video isn’t always easy or free, but the
benefits and the statistics far outweigh the cost of not participating at all.
So, what can you do on YouTube? Not only can you host original content and have channel
subscribers, it’s a great place to syndicate content and to consider advertising, including
interstitial advertising — short clips that appear before a video.
Additionally, over half of YouTube users use the site to learn how to do things they’ve never
done before, which makes it a great place to think about how you can develop interesting,
educational material for your customers.
I mentioned Instagram already, but let’s give it a longer look. It’s owned by Facebook, but
the audiences and purposes are a bit different. With 1 billion people using Instagram every
month, it’s the third largest social media platform and the fastest growing. Instagram is a
photo- and video- based social network, and users follow individuals and brands to be
delighted by interesting visuals. According to the Pew Research Center, the biggest
demographic group are males
between 18 – 24 years old, while 75% of all users are aged between 18 and 24. but even that
is shifting as more and more individuals adopt the platform. While the primary functionality
is sharing photos and videos, the most popular feature is Instagram Stories. Like the Snapchat
platform, Instagram Stories enable the sharing of quick, “instant” photos and videos,
often with fun filters and visual features. Stories disappear after twenty-four hours for
viewers but remain stored in an archive for you to see or repost again. Over 500 million
stories are posted every day and one third (1/3) of the most viewed Instagram Stories are
from businesses.
You’ll want to convert a personal Instagram account to an Instagram business profile to

include a phone number and address in your bio and enable the “shop” button. And to do that,
you’re required to have a Facebook Business page, which you will also need to take
advantage of advertising on this channel.
Instagram is important because it has very deep engagement, especially for brands.Over 90%
of users follow at least one brand account. Instagram images get an average of 23%
more engagement than their Facebook counterparts. That means advertising on Instagram
is going to be even more successful for your business. Sounds like a great reason to use
Instagram, doesn’t it?
Nicole Votolato Montgomery, Associate Professor of Marketing at the McIntire School

of Commerce,
University of Virginia
“Brands also need to think about going where their audience is and not getting wedded to a
particular social channel. The New York Public Library has done a great job of this with
their Insta Novels. They took classic works of literature and created a whole series of
Instagram Stories to make these classic works more accessible to a new audience.”
Let’s move on to Twitter, the popular microblogging network. Twitter is the ultimate by-the-
minute news network. It’s a place where you can see what’s happening in that very moment
around the world, whether it’s someone feeling an earthquake in China or watching a football
game in Boston. Users share messages of up to 280 characters, called “tweets,” which can
include photos, videos, links, and animated .gifs. To give you a sense of the volume of
information shared, there are more than 500 million tweets sent every day.
Twitter is a fantastic place for you to discover what’s trending with your industry, customers,
employees, partners, and prospects. You should be sharing content frequently — more
frequently than on other platforms, in fact — and you should be engaging regularly with your
audience.Twitter reports that 80% of their advertisers’ inbound social customer service
requests happen on Twitter. It’s also a place where people frequently express both pleasure
and dissatisfaction about products and services, making it a channel your business can’t
afford to
ignore. Twitter also owns Periscope, a live streaming video channel. Over 350,000 hours of
live video are streamed on the network every day.
There are several forms of advertising on Twitter, including ads in the news stream, with
trending topics, promoted profiles, and a lot more. But one of the best uses of Twitter is the
organic networking you can do directly with your audience, engaging in conversation that
helps build loyalty and trust.
LinkedIn is the platform most business-to-business, or B2B, marketers are familiar with. It
used to be a network primarily used for recruiting, but these days it’s also becoming a
platform to find the latest news and to stay networked with people all over the world. Now
users can share status updates much in the same way as they do with Facebook, with photo or
video posts that can be shared, liked, and commented on. There are several reasons to use
LinkedIn. It’s a great way to look up individuals you might be meeting with, or to find out
more about a prospect you’re interested in reaching out to. Additionally, it’s a great place to
build thought leadership, to offer value through targeted advertising, to network in groups,
and to share content that will drive links back into your website properties.
Pinterest is a channel many people think of as only for business-to-consumer, or B2C, but
there are a myriad of ways B2B companies can take advantage of the platform. If you aren’t
familiar with Pinterest, it’s essentially a series of shared, often thematic bulletin boards where
users can “pin” images, video, and links that resonate with them. What is unique to Pinterest
is the average life of a pin is over three months, whereas on Twitter, a post’s life is a
matter of minutes and on Facebook, maybe an hour. Pinterest pins build SEO with referral
traffic — referral traffic that can directly turn into leads and sales. As of 2019, 79.5% of
Pinterest users are female, according to Statista. The male audience share has also increased
over time from 14% in 2013 to 20.5% in 2019. Note that women have up to 80% of the
buying power in a household, so it’s an ideal place for many consumer goods companies to
be.
Chad Rogers, Co-Founder and CRO, Lemonlight
“One of the social media platforms that I think is the most overlooked, and one of the highest
trafficked is Pinterest. Pinterest has the fourth most traffic on the web. 98% of the viewers try
to make or build whatever they see online. It is one of the most visual and best platforms to
tell a story. So don't forget about Pinterest.”
How can your company use Pinterest? Create a board with links to your products and
services. Or a board with your blog posts. Or a board demonstrating your company’s thought
leadership and awareness. Your HR team can benefit from a board detailing great things
about working at your company. Consider creating boards for case studies, employee stories,
white papers, or videos. The possibilities are truly endless.
Snapchat is a channel that lost a bit of market share to Instagram when Instagram Stories
launched, essentially copying the Snapchat business model. But with 210 million people, it
still has a strong user base, and it’s investing in areas like augmented reality, which may have
exciting applications. Like Instagram Stories, Snapchat stories disappear after 24 hours.
There are a bevy of filters users can employ to liven up video and images. Today, brands can
advertise with stories more dynamic and longer lasting than personal snaps. The Snapchat
audience skews young, with its largest demographic between the ages of 15-25.
And finally, there’s TikTok. If you feel like the app came out of nowhere, you're not wrong.
It launched in early 2018 and already has 400 million users. The parent company, Chinese
owned Bytedance, acquired Music.ly, an app for lip synching songs, and merged it into
TikTok. The newest player on the social media field fills the gap left behind after Twitter
purchased Vine and incorporated it into their Periscope service, stripping it of the popularity
it had with its 15 second videos, which can be strung together to make viewing of up to 60
seconds possible. TikTok is a fast-paced app. The second you log in, you see a video at the
top of a feed that's algorithmically curated around your interests. If you enjoy the video
you're watching, you can follow, comment, and like the content directly from the video post.
The average user spends 52 minutes per day on TikTok. And brands are starting to get into
the mix with advertising and organic posts. TikTok now offers five advertising tiers aimed at
big brands but if you have amazing content, there is still a lot of organic potential to gain
from the platform.
Samarah Daher, VP Media Operations at Refinery29
“Refinery has been on TikTok for a while. It was one of those channels that we played and
experimented with a bit, and pulled back until we noticed that it was just exploding as a
platform in general. And so then we started leaning into it again. A brand that I admire and
aspire to be like is Chipotle. I think Chipotle came on the scene and really has dominated in
TikTok, creating challenges that really captivate the audience. They had the lid flip
challenge, and then the guacamole dance challenge, and they created these viral moments
literally featuring their brand and their brand ethos.”
Whew! There’s a lot to learn about all of the social media channels! Do you need to be on all
of them? Maybe not, but consider that not everyone gets their news and information in the
same way. You might read online newspapers while I am looking at trending topics on
Twitter. Everyone consumes information differently, in the time and place of their choosing.
You want to be found in as many of those places as possible.
But the good news is that you can start small and focused, then build as your team builds and
your resource pool grows. And don’t be afraid to create profiles and test out the channels!
They can often seem more overwhelming than they are, and once you dip your toe in the
pool, the water gets warmer and warmer.
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Video 3: Building the Foundation for Success - Setting Social Media Goals
Brayton Ducharme, Senior Account Executive, Crayon
“I think when somebody is starting out on their social media strategy, determining what they
need to listen for goes back to setting a list of goals. What are you looking to accomplish?
Are you trying to understand what your customers want? How your customers feel about a
certain topic? Are you looking for content inspiration? Maybe ways to create contests and
get engagement from your customers. It all goes back to what you're looking to accomplish.”
Let’s talk about setting social media KPIs. Once you’ve created a buyer persona and mapped
out some S-M-A-R-T goals, you can do a deeper dive and determine what key performance
indicators, or KPIs, you should be targeting in your social media strategy. A KPI is a
quantifiable measure used to evaluate the success of an organization, employee, or project in
meeting objectives for performance. Knowing what your KPIs are from the start will help
you make crucial decisions on content, advertising, budget, and other resources you may
need.
The main thing to consider is how you can develop actionable goals instead of goals of
merely reporting a high result on a vanity metric . And what’s a vanity metric? Simply put, a
vanity metric is a surface-level metric made up of numbers or statistics that seem great when
viewed in a presentation but don’t correlate to business success. For example, follower count
is probably one of the fluffiest of the various KPIs. Having as many followers as possible
may look impressive, but if they aren’t the right people following you — the ones who will
buy your products and services — then that follower count is essentially only a vanity metric.
Jacqueline Babb, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Aurora University
“Certainly, having followers and likes on social media are great. The real key here is having
the right size. So for example, a national pizza chain is going to have a lot more followers
and fans than a local pizza chain, but that doesn't tell you anything about a metric kind of
beyond that awareness piece. And so the key is to have the right number of followers and
make sure that you're giving them lots of ways to engage, lots of ways to create some user
generated content, lots of ways to share, and lots of ways to engage with the brand and make
a purchase.”
To set the right KPIs, you need to go back to your business goals. If your goal is to increase
sales, vanity metrics such as numbers of likes, shares, retweets, followers, and page views are
not going to be the most important metrics for you to measure.

But, if your goal is awareness, then those metrics may not just be vanity metrics. Followers,
reach, and page views may be more important for you.
Let’s break this down a bit further. There are four categories of social media KPIs, and most
of your targets should fall within those areas.
 ● Reach
 ● Engagement
 ● Return on investment, or ROI
 ● Retention and Loyalty
Let’s start by looking at Reach. These KPIs tend to be the most fluffy and they veer
toward what many think are vanity metrics, but if your business goals are tied to
company awareness and reaching as many qualified users as possible, then these may
be the KPIs you want to measure. .
 ● Follower count: how many individuals follow your social channels.

 ● Impressions: how often your content is viewed.
 ● Mentions: how many times your brand is mentioned across social channels.
 ● Share of voice: how many people are talking about your brand vs. the competition.
Engagement is next. These KPIs demonstrate how engaged your audience is and how
they may be interacting with your content, which is usually a better indicator than
reach when it comes to measuring the success of your campaigns. The following KPIs
measure how people are taking action in relation to your brand:.
 ● Likes or favorites indicate that your viewers appreciate the content. This is a simple
action and often one of the biggest vanity measures but useful to measure to
determine if the content is of interest.
 ● Comments indicate direct engagement with your content.
 ● Sharing and retweets demonstrate that your audience cares enough about the
content that
they want to let others know. This also increases reach and awareness.
 ● Customer ratings and reviews demonstrate strong engagement and opinion. They
are also
one of the biggest indicators to other people that a product or a service is worth
buying.
 ● Inbound website links from social media show that your content is interesting
enough for
your audience to click through to your site.
Measuring social media ROI and garnering leads are goals that many salespeople and
executives will gravitate toward. While often harder to drive, these are the types of
KPIs that can directly affect the business’s bottom line. This means that executives
may be more open to listening to proposals

from your social team when it comes to asking for additional budget or headcount to meet
these business goals. Some of these KPIs include:
 ● Direct sales revenue from social media, such as orders that come in from a coupon
or links into your website that lead to purchase.
 ● Lead conversions from social media campaigns. This may vary from company to
company but could include email signups, downloads of materials like an ebook, or
activations of trial software.
 ● Support costs per customer. If your business goal is to reduce customer support call
costs, for example, you may want to set KPIs for how many calls you can offset by
helping them on your social media channels instead.
 ● Lifetime value. This is the projected revenue a customer will generate in their
lifetime. There are a variety of ways to calculate this number, and how you acquire
the customer — in this case, through social media, especially acquisition plays and
customer touch points — will affect the lifetime value.
Last, but definitely not least, is retention and loyalty. If your business goals are
centered around customer service excellence or on retaining customers, then your
social KPIs should be aligned to reflect this. Consider the following:
 ● Customer reviews and ratings - mentioned previously, these are a fantastic measure
of how your customers think about your brand and products.
 ● Issues resolved demonstrates how well you’re doing (or not doing) taking care of
your customers through social media.
 ● Another metric to consider in tandem is your SLA, or service-level agreement. In
the social space the SLA usually refers to how long time passes between when a
customer reaches out and when there is a response. Note that a response doesn’t
always mean the issue is resolved--that might be another KPI to consider.
 ● Time to resolution: How long it takes for a question that comes in from social
media to receive not just a reply, but a resolution.
 ● Customer satisfaction - it’s often tracked with a net promoter score (often called
NPS), this gives you a sense of whether or not your social customer service efforts are
working.
 ● Sentiment is a tricky metric to measure, but it’s important because sentiment tells
you what people are thinking and feeling about your brand. Is it negative? Perhaps
your KPI should be set to shift that balance to positive.

And lastly, make sure to revisit your KPIs on a six month to yearly basis. Not only does the
world of social media change — and fast — but your business changes, too. If your business
goals change, then your KPIs probably need to be reworked as well.
Now you have the foundation for developing KPIs that will help you prove the value of your
social media efforts.
Video 4: Structuring Your Social Media Team for Now & the Future
It’s not easy to build a social media team, and if you’re a team of one, developing an
impactful social media strategy may even feel more daunting. But you aren’t alone.
A 2018 HubSpot Academy survey found that nearly 62% of respondents do social media on
top of other duties. For those who are dedicated to social media, nearly 37% work on teams
of five or fewer. But even small teams should consider how they plan to scale their team
structure to drive their business goals.
When it comes to structuring a team, as always, start with your business goals, be it sales,
brand awareness, managing reputation, sales prospecting, recruiting, customer service, or
something else. Knowing this up front helps you determine what channels you need, what
content you need, your campaign possibilities, and the staffing you need to consider.
For example, if your company’s goal is to provide stellar customer service, it means that you
would put social goals and metrics behind responding to all customers in a certain timeframe,
which in turn impacts how many channels you think you can manage, how many people you
think you’ll need to respond to, and if you need an internal or external team to help.
If your goal is accelerated sales then you would focus on channels where you can build a
presence that supports advertising, where you can find interesting ways to collect email or
deliver promotional offers. That helps you understand which individuals and agencies you
may need to involve to develop content.
Next you need to consider who your business stakeholders may be. What do they care about?
Their needs may be your needs. Your PR team may want to connect to social media
influencers while your HR team might need your help recruiting via social networks. Having
their buy-in may be what you need to convince executives that additional headcount is
needed.
Next, are you planning for your social media efforts to be international? Do you need to
consider how you’ll manage social networks such as Xing and Sina Weibo? There are
different languages, social network preferences, and legalities that will figure into your
staffing plans.

The biggest challenge that most social media practitioners have is buy-in. Do you have
consensus and buy-in from the decision makers in your company? If not, find an executive
who can champion your ideas.
Then, outline your social media roadblocks. What do you need to really do social well in your
organization? What might get in your way? The most obvious roadblocks for an organization
tend to be lack of time and lack of people.
Once you know all of the above, you can create your social media roadmap. This roadmap is
your future-state plan, or essentially, how you plan to grow your social media program. As
you put it together, you’ll want to show how the various stakeholders in your business will
benefit. Demonstrate how you see social media changing for your company in the next year,
three years, or five years, and the impact it could have on the business.
Once you understand your goals and KPIs, and what you would like the future of your social
media program to look like, you can start thinking about how to build a team to get you there.
There are several options for structuring the team.
First consider the types of roles you need how they map to your goals. If customer service is
a priority, you may need a community manager. If you are developing educational material,
you may want to consider a graphic designer who can develop beautiful infographics, or a
videographer who is great at developing live video.
What if you don’t think you’ll have the means to scale the team in the manner you would
like? The good news is that there are options beyond your internal team. Think about how
agencies may be able to help you meet your needs, particularly if you are a smaller team.
Agencies can be cost- effective when compared to headcount. You might consider using a
social or digital agency for a specialized type of role to extend your team, such as developing
content or managing engagement.
The structure of your team itself and how it works is also important. A few years ago, analyst
firm Altimeter outlined five types of social media team models, and this model still holds up
today.
The Decentralized model is one in which no specific department manages or coordinates

content and strategy. The team shares responsibilities and ideas. A decentralized model tends
to be representative of organizations in the early stages of implementing social.
A centralized team is one that stands alone and manages all activities.
The Hub and Spoke model is common in growing companies, in which one team coordinates
with

other groups within the organization. The majority of companies use this model, including
companies such as Red Cross and Virgin.
The Multiple Hub and Spoke model, or “Dandelion” model, is one in which a main social
media team works with smaller social media teams in different departments or business units.
This is common for companies with international offices, such as IBM, Microsoft, or CNN.
A Holistic model is just like it sounds — everyone is involved. Few companies will end up
using the holistic model. It requires great trust and training for employees. Dell, Zappos,
Accenture are a few organizations who have used this structure.
Once you know which model you want to adopt for your team structure, you can begin to
plan for the future. Design a plan that includes the following:
 First, plan your business and social goals. Plan these goals 1-3 years out, and make
sure to consider your stakeholders’ needs.
 Second, identify your possible social media roles based on those goals, then
 Third, develop a timeline for reaching those goals and building the team.
 With that complete, you need to allocate or advocate for resources,
 And finally, evangelize your plan throughout the organization. When others can see
and believe your vision they will be more inclined to lend their support.
And that’s how you build a social media team. It may seem daunting to think so big if
you are a social department of one, but remember, having a vision for the future of
your team is one of the first steps in building it.
Video 5: Evaluating the best social tools for the job
When it comes to managing your social media strategy, it is often helpful to go

beyond the native social media sites and turn to various tools to make your job easier.
This is true if you are a small team needing to streamline the amount of time and
energy you are spending, or a big team trying to wrangle a massive amount of content
and data.
Let’s walk through the various kinds of social media software, apps, and services that
can help you out. It’s not a small number. In fact, every year, Scott Brinker from
Chief Martec and HubSpot puts together an insane graphic of all the marketing
vendors in the space. The Social Media Marketing

& Monitoring vendor chart is only a small subset of the larger infographic, but as you can
see, there are hundreds of vendors out there. The trick is sorting through them and finding the
one that is right for you.
There are free tools that many small teams may find are entirely adequate for their needs, and
larger, more robust services that provide an ROI on their cost by helping an organization save
time, save money, or improve sales through their social features. Many of these tools do more
than one job, so keep that in mind — a great social listening service may also have the ability
to directly engage and manage your social audience, for example.
First off are the social listening and monitoring tools. These tools can be channel specific or
in some cases can aggregate networks to help you listen and monitor them all in one place.
With these tools you can review comments and mentions, enabling you to follow the
conversation about your brand, watch hashtags, and keep track of influencers, customers, and
prospects. Here are some examples of companies who can help you in this area.
If you do customer service in your social networks, a good listening tool is important.
Another great reason to have a social listening tool is to be able to easily listen to and monitor
your competition.
If acquiring budget is an issues, you can do social listening with free tools such as Google
Alerts, Hashtagify, Social Mention, or Twitter’s Tweetdeck. There are also a variety of paid
social listening tools available, such as the HubSpot social media tools, which are available as
part of HubSpot’s paid offering.
Publishing and community management is another social activity that can be easier if you
have a service or tool to help you manage the task. This includes:
 ● Managing multiple social services in one place (rather than going to each platform)
 ● Scheduling content
 ● Cloning posts for resharing
 ● Managing multiple users who need access and publishing rights
 ● Responding to posts and managing conversations
The services you see here can help you manage, schedule, and publish content.
Why should you use a service? If you need to manage many channels it will be
helpful. Currently, Facebook and Instagram are the only networks that allow you to
natively schedule posts, through Creator Studio, and only with a business account,
otherwise you’ll need to work with a third party.
In recent years, a number of tools like these have come to the rescue of social media
marketers who need to create content for social media. No longer do you have to be a
graphic designer to whip up a social post. Now you can design images and graphics with
inexpensive services like those you see here.
There are a number of services that also allow you access to free or low-cost photos, such as
the ones you see here. If you use HubSpot, you can use the free Shutterstock integration to
find images that will correspond to your posts.
For video, the following vendors have great services that let you create on-the-fly screencasts
that incorporate video or provide marketers with creative templates that allow you to create
video without ever having to turn on a camera.
Finally, there are the analytics tools. Each of the social networks has analytics that are
accessible and free to use. However, if you want to pull all of those metrics into one location,
there isn’t an easy option. But there are some tools that help you get a better sense of it all.
As you saw from the earlier vendor chart, the services and software that I mentioned are by
no means the only options. You’ll need to do a bit of research, but how do you decide
between them?
There are a few things you need to think about, and as I have often said, it all goes back to
your business goals and what you want to measure.
If engaging with your customers is the most important goal you have, then you should focus
on a tool that will enable you to easily find the right people and facilitate ongoing
conversation. You’ll also want the right tool to help you track the effectiveness of your
engagement.
On the flip side of that, let’s say you’re a company that’s just starting out and you want to
really understand the landscape first. You may want to consider a social listening tool to see
how people are talking about your brand or to monitor industry conversations and your
competition.
Most of the tools I mentioned are priced on a monthly or yearly basis and may increase
pricing based on the number of social media channels and the number of employees you want
to use the tool.
Being super focused on your business goals will help you narrow down your needs.
Determine what you want a tool to help you do to achieve those goals, and begin your
research based on that goal criteria.
Social marketing company, Buffer, suggests three tips to help you narrow down your choices
of a social media tool.

1. Write down the 25 most important social media features that you think you might
need.
2. Review the list and circle your top 5 features.
3. Use these two lists to evaluate potential tools.
Once you have identified these features and how they could help you achieve your business
goals, you can home in on a few different options for social tools and services that will help
you meet those goals. Prepare an analysis of what you can do without the tool, and what you
could do if you had the tool to help you do the job. Approaching it in such a fashion can help
you justify costs to decision makers, especially if the price initially seems out of budget.
Video 6 - Developing a Social Media Budget and Garnering Executive Buy-

in
When the world of social media first hit its stride, it was a fantastic — and free — way to
capture the attention of an audience, and to find new prospects and to turn those prospects
into leads and customers. But is anything really ever free? And that’s the case now. Free,
organic reach from social media has greatly dwindled, and social media platforms have put a
number of systems in place to make sure they are monetizing brand efforts to reach a wide
audience and to capture click-throughs. That means you have to think about how you create
more engaging content and how you advertise that content. Which means you’ll need a
budget. But how do you gain the executive buy-in to fund that budget? Let’s dig in.
A budget is best developed after you have your social media plan mapped out. Once you do,
you’ll need to consider the following:
 ● What social content do you think you’ll need to create?

 ● Can you do it in-house or will you need to hire freelancers or an agency?
 ● What is your ideal mix of organic and paid advertising? How much advertising do
you think
you’ll require?
 ● Are you considering paying influencers to help you promote your products?
 ● Do you have the right staffing for your plan?
 ● Which services or tools do you think you need? How much will they cost?
Next, gather industry data and competitive information to back up your plan. As an
example, if you think that advertising is a solution to a business goal, to provide
justification, you could look for data that shows how brands are being affected by
Facebook’s organic reach.
If you’ve been connecting your social media goals to your business goals, then
developing an argument to sway your senior leadership should prove much easier.

That’s because senior leadership in an organization may not think like a marketer does. They
aren’t going to care about click-through rates, sentiment, or how many likes a post might
have. What they will care about is a few core things:
 ● New avenues for revenue

 ● Cost savings and efficiency
 ● Competitive advantage
 ● Protecting brand reputation, and
 ● Customer satisfaction.
Back in a 2009 TED talk, motivational speaker and marketing consultant Simon Sinek
famously shared one of the secrets to this buy-in process that you need to embrace. He
said,
1. People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.
2. The goal is not to sell to people what you have, the goal is to sell to people who
believe what you believe.
Then, Simon gave an example of this, in how Apple markets. They don’t tell you how
awesome their products are. Instead they tell you why you want and need them.
Instead Apple essentially says, “Everything we do, we believe in challenging the

status quo. We believe in thinking differently. The way we challenge the status quo is
by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use, and user friendly. We just
happen to make great computers. Want to buy one?” The Apple tagline for the iPad
Pro, for example, is “Anything you can do, you can do better.” And who wouldn’t
want to do things better?
So, let’s think about this, because it applies not just to products but also to gaining
buy-in for ideas. Senior leaders care about what will make them money or save them
money. And you have a program that will help them do that. Rather than tell them
WHAT you are going to do, tell them WHY your plan is going to help them achieve
their business goals.
Tell them why your plan will make or save them money. Demonstrate projected ROI.
Show them statistics to back up your claim.
For example, let’s say you want to build a world class social media customer service
program. Perhaps you have determined that this program, to run optimally, will take
new headcount, specialized software, and potentially the help of an agency that
performs around-the-clock
moderation. You’ve also calculated the cost, which is significantly higher than the budget
you’ve been given.
Start by looking at what you already know. Let’s say you have found that you can solve a
customer service problem in social media by sharing a link to a pre-made video, or by
answering questions directly on Twitter, and in a fraction of the time that a call into the call
center might require. Calculate the deflection cost and then project that out for a year. If you
can prove that your program might cost $200,000 but will save the company $1 million,
that’s a powerful argument.
But what if you have no idea how much money to spend? We asked Dennis Yu, CTO of
Blitz Metrics.
“Facebook would probably tell you as much money as you have. Our answer is whatever is
the most profitable. But how do you know that until you test, and that's the chicken and the
egg. We would like to start with a dollar a day. If you have nine pieces of content that you put
in that three by three grid, then you're spending up to nine dollars a day as you're testing. If
you find that it works, and it's generating you more profit, you can bootstrap that money into
paying for more advertising, and small businesses know that if I'm making profit off of
something, I'm willing to take that profit and reinvest it, but I'm not willing to willy-nilly put
$10,000 into something sight unseen. So, you start with one dollar a day.”
If you don’t have any program in place yet and you are arguing for the money to start the
project, position it as an experiment or a pilot. Develop a plan that starts with the business
goal, then your hypothesis on why social media can help meet that goal. Demonstrate how
you will test that hypothesis and for what duration. Most importantly, explain how you will
share the results with the leadership team. In this case, you may want to ask for a modified
budget for the experiment to prove value first.
Developing a variety of future scenarios can also be helpful. Create a plan that shows what
you can do with current resources, a plan with some resources, and then your ideal plan.
When you can demonstrate to executives the possibilities of social media to transform their
business, they will be more likely to sit up and listen and to add a line item into the budget for
you and your social program.
Transcript: Introduction to Paid Search Advertising
Video 1: The Advantages of Paid Search Advertising
There are a few platforms out there for search advertising. Google is by far the most used search
engine out there. With 3.5 billion search queries a day, over 70% of the total searches made daily
around the world are done on Google. How does Google compare to Bing and Yahoo? Well, Google
brings in six times more searches every day than Bing and Yahoo. People conducting a search in
Google are looking for something in specific and will click on the first result they believe is going to
be the most helpful to them.
You might be thinking: “I already appear in organic results on Google. Why should I pay to advertise
on Google too?” Advertising on Google is profitable. According to Google, advertisers make $8 for
every $1 they spend on Google Ads. Advertising on Google keeps you competitive. Your competitors
might be bidding on your branded terms, which means your organic results are being pushed down
the page. Advertising on Google appears first in the SERPs. Search ads appear first in the search
engine results pages (SERPs) above organic results.
Paid search advertising gives advertisers the opportunity to capture the attention of their audience
in a more targeted way than with organic search alone.
Video 2: Exploring Keyword Research and Match Type
Search ads allow you to anticipate the wants, needs, and desires of your potential customers and
serve ads to them that are highly contextual. And over time, the analytics of your search ads can
help you analyze and improve those ads to reach even more people. But how does Google know
how to deliver the right ad to the right person? That’s where keywords come into play.
A keyword is one word or phrase that someone uses to describe what they need in search.
Advertising on search platforms takes the targeting capabilities available on social media platforms,
like demographics and location, and layers it with the addition of keywords. When a Google user
types a query into the search field, Google returns a range of results that match the searcher’s
intent. Keywords align with what a searcher wants and will satisfy their query. You select keywords
based on which queries you want to display your ad alongside.
Keyword research is just as important for paid ads as it is for organic search. Your keywords need to
match searcher intent as much as possible. That’s because Google matches your ad with search
queries based on the keywords you selected. Each ad group that you create within your campaign
will target a small set of keywords and Google will display your ad based on those selections.
Let's say Mary is moving to a different house and is looking for a home mover. So she goes into
Google and types "best home movers." By searching "best home movers," she's going to see results
for advertisers that targeted keywords like "moving companies" and "top rated movers.”
How should you select keywords? Keywords typically fall under two categories: brand and non-
brand. A brand keyword is a word or phrase that includes a brand’s name or variations of a brand’s
name.
Some of HubSpot’s brand keywords include: • HubSpot
 HubSpot Free CRM

 HubSpot Marketing Hub
These are all variations of the HubSpot brand and the tools that we offer.
Non-brand keywords include all other relevant keywords that do not include a brand’s name or
variations of a brand’s name.
Some of HubSpot’s non-brand keywords include:
 Inbound marketing
 Sales software
 Customer relationship management
While these keywords are not part of HubSpot’s brand name, they are relevant terms that
allows HubSpot to reach audiences that might be interested in eventually making a
purchase.
How to decide between brand and non-brand keywords? They both have a role to play in
your digital advertising strategy. Brand keywords help you protect your brand from your
competitor’s ads. Not running ad campaigns for brand keywords can leave your business
vulnerable to losing website traffic to the competition who is bidding on your brand. Non-
brand keywords still have a role to play, too. Non-brand keywords allow you to reach new
audiences unfamiliar with your brand. Use brand and non-brand keywords together. This
can have the largest impact in your paid search strategy.
There are a lot of tools out there, but a great and free place to start is with the Moz
Keyword Explorer. To learn more about how to use the Moz Keyword Explorer, check out
the lesson on Creating Topic Clusters and Pillar Pages.
How do search engines deliver content based on keywords? When it comes to when your ad
is displayed, you don’t just want to pick a certain group of keywords and have the ad shown
only when those keywords are entered into the search engine. This is where match type
comes in. Since there are an infinite number of ways that people can actually search for one
term, Google gives you four match types to choose from: exact match, phrase match, and
broad match. Plus, you can also use a broad match modifier and negative keywords to
optimize where your ads are delivered.
Match type gives you a little wiggle room when it comes to your keyword selections. Match
types tell Google whether you want to match a search query exactly, or if your ad should be
shown to anyone with a search query that’s related in some way.
Exact Match Type: A keyword set to exact match will only display your ad if the search term
includes that exact keyword, or a very close variation. The keyword “red men’s tennis
shoes” will not match with searches for “men’s tennis shoes” since the search term doesn’t
include the word “red.” Exact match keywords are surrounded in brackets: [red men’s
tennis shoes]
Phrase Match Type: A keyword set to phrase match will display your ad if the search term
contains the same order of the words, but it can also contain additional words. The keyword
“men’s tennis shoes” will match with the search query “red men’s tennis shoes” but will not
match with “men’s red tennis shoes.” Phrase match keywords are surrounded in quotes:
“men’s tennis shoes”
Broad Match Type: A keyword set to broad match displays your ad when the search term
contains any or some combination or variations of the words in your keyword, in any order.
The keyword “men’s tennis shoes” will match with “red men’s tennis shoes,” “men’s red
tennis shoes,” “women’s tennis shoes,” and so on. Broad match keywords don’t include any
symbols: men’s tennis shoes
Broad Match Modifier: Allows you to select keywords that must be included in the search
query for your ad to be displayed. To deliver an ad to people only searching for tennis shoes
for men, you could modify your broad match keyword to “+men’s tennis shoes.” Keywords
with a broad match modifier use a plus sign: +men’s tennis shoes.
In our men’s tennis shoes example, adding the plus sign in front of the word “men’s” guarantees
that your ad will only be shown to people who include that word in their search query. The general
rules of broad match still apply to the other keywords in the query.
Negative Keywords: Excludes your ads from being shown on searches with that term. Google allows
you to set keywords to a negative match type to help refine our keyword strategy. This allows you to
avoid having your ad displayed when a given search term is entered. If you set the keyword “used”
to negative match, your ad won’t be shown for any searches that contain that word, such as “used
tennis shoes.” Negative keywords include a minus sign: -used
Pro Tip: If you’re just starting out and don’t know exactly how your persona will be searching, move
from a broad match to a narrower approach. This way, you can test which queries yield the best
results. But since this means that your ad will be ranking for many queries, some of which will be
unrelated, you should keep a close eye on your ads and modify them as you can gain new
information.
With the power of intent on your side, running paid search ads can be an effective method for
reaching your target audience at a time when they’re already searching for information to answer a
question or solve a problem.
Video 3: How to Create Remarkable Digital Ads for Paid Search
The core components of a paid search ad include up to three headlines, a display URL, and up to
three descriptions.
The anatomy of a paid search ad. Google gives you 30 characters for each headline and 90
characters for each of your descriptions. Headlines, shown in blue, are separated out by the vertical
pipe ("|"). Display URL, shown in green, can be a customized version of the destination URL.
Description, shown in black, highlight details about your product or service and serve as a CTA.
Pro tip: The organization of your search ad components will vary depending on the device they are
being viewed on. Keep this in mind when writing your copy.
For search ads, Google recommends best practices to follow that fall under two categories: ad copy
and ad experience. Successful marketers need to deliver the right messaging for the right moment.
Better copy and visuals improve the relevance your ad has to your target audience and will drive
more qualified clicks.
To write the best ad copy:
 Include your keywords in your ad.

 Use specific language that matches the way your target audience speaks.
 Include a clear and direct call-to-action.
 Give people answers to their problems rather than posing questions.
To create the best ad experience:
 Include all ad extensions that make sense for your business (Google recommends at
least three).
 Think about how your ad makes sense for users across devices (and create separate
ad campaigns as needed).
 Align your landing page to the copy of your ad.
This search ad for Rover, a dog walking and care company, does a great job of taking
the intent of the people searching for their service into consideration. In this
example, the search ad appears for the search term “dog walking services” when
searching from Cambridge, MA on a cellphone. The ad itself covers all of Google’s
best practices. It includes a variation of the search term “dog walkers” in the ad
copy and it even calls out the location as Cambridge. The ad has multiple ad
extensions which offer even more information about Rover, and the landing page
experience aligns with the intent of the search — it allows you to immediately
search for dog walkers in your location.
While your bid plays a large role in determining whether or not your ad is served for a given
keywords, Google also uses something called “quality score” in making this decision.
Quality score: an algorithm that scores each of your ads for relevancy. It looks at how closely your
keyword relates to your ad and how closely your ad relates to your page content to ensure that
you’re not buying keywords and directing traffic to irrelevant pages. Google’s motivation for
including quality score is to provide an optimal user experience for their searchers. It used to be that
ad placement was determined solely by bids, but then someone could easily bid on “toothbrushes”
when they were really selling lawn mowers. Google introduced quality score to make sure that the
ads they were displaying were always relevant to the search terms, and to keep their advertisers in
check.
Quality score is on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the lowest rating and 10 being the highest. What
this means is that if your competitor bids on a keyword at $5 and has a quality score of 4, and you
bid on that same keyword at only $3 but you have a quality score of 7, Google may give you the top
position for the price you bid because your ad is more relevant. It makes more sense to serve your
ad because its higher relevancy makes it more likely that viewers will click on it, which is better for
Google, its searchers, and its advertisers.
Quality score can also help you determine what keywords are cost-efficient for you to use. Let’s say,
for example, that you have a site about fitness tips and you bid on the keyword “nutrition.” Reasons
for a low quality score: the content on your site is not relevant enough to compete in that space,
and it’s not a cost-efficient channel for you. If you want to set yourself up for a successful paid
search campaign, show Google how well you can align your keywords, ad copy, and the landing page
experience.
As you can see, there’s a lot that goes into the performance of your social media and search ads. By
following Facebook and Google’s best practices when it comes to your own digital ads, you’ll be set
up for success to launch campaigns that stand out from the crowd and resonate with your target
audience.
Video 4: Organizing Your Account Structure
The way that you organize your campaigns, keywords, and copy in Google Ads can dramatically
impact how well your ads perform. You have your keywords, you have the list of keywords that
you’re buying, and then you have the ad that you want to show when somebody types in one of
those keywords.
How do you tie these all together? Your account structure includes two key categories: ad groups
and campaigns. Ad Group: One or more ads that share a common theme. Campaign: A set of related
ad groups that is often used to organize categories of products or services that you offer.
Let’s say that you are the digital marketing manager for an online clothing company called Orange
Apparel. You have two key product lines: shoes and shirts. These product lines become your
campaigns in Google Ads. Within each campaign, you have various ad groups that are specific to
each type of product within each line. Under shoes, you can have “tennis shoes” and “dress shoes”
for example. Under shirts, you can have “athletic shirts.” Within each ad group, you can include
multiple keywords that all related to or variations of the ad group. So for tennis shoes, some
keywords you would include are “shoes for tennis” or “best tennis shoes.” Under dress shoes, you
would include “shoes for work” and under “athletic shirts” you would include the keyword “shirts
for working out” along with all other relevant keywords. This account structure can be expanded out
to as many campaigns, ad groups, and keywords that are relevant for all of the products or services
that you sell.
Use ad groups and campaigns to keep your account structure organized. It’s important that you
structure your account in such a way that your keywords and your ad copy are tightly woven
together. Then, you can use your ad groups and your campaigns to keep them nicely bucketed
together and better organized.
Email Marketing Certification
Transcript: Creating High-Performing Email
VIDEO 1: Why focus on high-performing email?

Hey there, it’s Courtney with HubSpot Academy.
Sending email, checking email, and drafting email has become as much a part of our day-to-day lives as getting
up and going to work. And email is going to continue to play an important role in both our professional and
personal lives.
Take for example, what Loren McDonald, Marketing Evangelist has to say about email:
“In the next five years, however, email will be seen as not just a high ROI channel by itself but rather a
platform that integrates with and makes other channels more successful.”
Email has consistently been described as having a high return on investment. For every dollar you spend on
email it has consistently produced anywhere from a $40-44 return. It had also been found that three-quarters of
companies agree that email offers "excellent" to "good" ROI.
But that ROI is not promised just by pressing send.
As an inbound professional, you know your contacts need to see value in your emails.
Your emails will need to benefit both you and your business. It can be a delicate balance.
This is where high-performing emails come in. You know as inbound professionals that sending the right email
means focusing on the content that you send, the segment of people you send it to, and the time you send it.
With that strategy and mindset in place, you can start to draft and send high-performing emails. High-
performing emails will drive engagement with your contacts. You will set the right goals and then optimize each
part of your email to drive the conversions toward that goal.
High-performing emails are focused on taking the essential parts of an email and making sure they are
optimized to drive your contacts toward your specific goal.
And when all of your emails are focused on this you will be driving that high ROI for your business. Your
emails will be driving engagement and be the vehicle for growth for both your contacts and your business.
The conversations you have with your contacts will guide them through the stages of the inbound methodology,
ideally leading them to become a delighted long-lasting customer.
High-performing emails can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. What does a high-
performing email look like? How do you know if you’ve included or optimized the right features? To use email
as a vehicle for growth, we need to be on the same page.
Let’s do a quick exercise together.

Find a pen and paper, and draw an email template. It’ll most likely look something like this ‘showing email
template’.
Now, for the next few moments, draw in the features of what a high-performing email means to you. This might
be the images you use (or don’t use), where the CTA is, or even the subject line you might use.
This exercise is designed to get your creative mind awake and thinking about how you create high-performing
emails right now. Ok, let’s go!
Professor Courtney Sembler drawing email template.
Great! Now you should have an outline of what a high-performing email might look like for you and your
business.
You can see here on my drawing that I actually started outside of my email template, with a goal. For all emails,
you need to set a goal — an understanding of what you’re trying to achieve is the most important part of
creating high-performing emails.
I then outlined the sections of the email I’ll need to complete. First, the to and from name. Then the subject line.
Up next, the email copy, and finally, adding the footer and image.
Each of these pieces come together to make a high-performing email: the goal of why you are sending it and
then the carefully designed components layered on top of each other.
Taking those essential pieces of any email and optimizing each piece to help drive conversions towards your set
goal.
You might have had something that looks slightly different and that’s okay. There are a lot of ways to send
emails, but this is where you want to set the foundation of an engaging email and thus creating a high-
performing email strategy.
Starting with a goal of why you are sending it and then connect each piece of the email to support that goal.
High-performing emails will help your business achieve a high return on investment as well as help your
contacts see value in the conversations they are having with you.
VIDEO 2: How do you create a high performing email?

How do you create high-performing emails that will engage with your contacts?
Creating high-performing emails comes down to two main themes: first, selecting the right goal for your email
and second, optimizing each part of your email to drive the conversions toward that goal.

Inside each of these themes are best practices and key components to execute on. Let’s break down each of them
and see how you can create high-performing emails that can act as your business’ vehicle for growth.
First let’s discuss selecting the right goal for you email. This is an important one because it sets up the rest of
your email creation for success.
Try and think about the last time you entered a meeting, and there was no centralized goal or agenda. Things
probably seemed unclear and you might have walked away thinking it wasn’t a productive use of your time.
Now imagine sending an email without a goal. You’d be creating the same experience. If someone doesn't know
why you are sending them an email, it won't add value to those contacts or drive the results you want.
That’s why you always want to start with a strong goal before pressing send. It might sound obvious, but we can
all get into the habit of thinking, “Well, this is just what we do every month.”
When setting the goal for your email, you want to consider how to send the right email to the right person at the
right time. In other words, you will need to decide what content you’re sending to what segment of contacts and
at what point of time.
We can break this down further with the five whys: who, what, when, where, and why.
You might use this framework to drill down into other aspects of your marketing, sales, and service goals. And
you’ll also have a larger goal for your email strategy as a whole. You should be able to explain what you’re
trying to accomplish with all the types of emails you are sending. But the five whys will help you narrow down
the goal of a single email you are sending out.
So let’s take a look.
First up is the who. Who are you sending your email to? Relevancy is always key when looking at the who.
Great content for the wrong set of contacts won’t add value, just like the right contacts receiving poor content
won’t either. You need to decide who the right person for this content and your email send is.
Deciding on the right set of contacts means looking at what information will be valuable to what contacts. For
example, you can look at your different contacts of where they are in the buyer's journey to help you target the
right content to the right contacts.
At the core of who you should send to is send emails to lists that want to hear from you.
If you have email lists with low rates of engagement activity, stop sending to them. Every time you send to a list
with low open and engagement rates, it hurts your domain reputation and your chances of connecting with other
potential customers.
Make sure the contacts you are connecting with are receiving value from your emails but also want to hear from
you.
Once you decide on who you are targeting, you can move into the what.

What do you want your contacts to do with this email? Are you asking them to sign up for a webinar, download
content, or subscribe to your blog? The what needs to be clear and quantifiable so you know if your email send
was successful.
Think about defining what using the framework SMART. A smart goal is defined as specific: measurable,
attainable, relevant, and timely.
With a smart goal for your email you will be able to say: my contacts met the goal of my email or they didn’t.
Inside of your email tool you will be able to measuring the success of your email. HubSpot calls this the ‘post-
send’ details page and displays all the information of what occurred during the email send.
Next you need to ask when. This relates back to the who. Because when doesn't just mean the time of day but
when in the buyer's journey are you sending this content to your contacts? When will this content be the most
relevant to them?
Take a look the buyer’s journey here. At the different stages, different types of content and education will be
necessary to further your conversations with your contacts. Understanding when you need to serve up specific
types of content is an important piece of setting goals.
Take for example, when a contact is in the consideration stage. The types of content they will be looking for will
be drastically different than what they would need in the other two stages. In this stage they have defined their
problem and are actively researching different solutions.
You will also need to ask yourself where. Where are your contacts going to be reading this email?. Movable Ink,
a cloud-based software company, found that 48% of emails are opened on a smartphone and 41% of emails are
opened on an iPhone (Movable Ink, 2015).
Which means it’s extremely important for you to keep in mind the type of device your contacts will be viewing
your email on. Even as phones get bigger each day it seems, they’re still smaller than a computer screen, which
means you need to keep size in mind when designing your emails.
Keep your contacts’ location top of mind as you’re creating your emails.
Lastly, ask yourself why. This is your most important question and relates back to the overall theme that we are
discussing here of setting the right goals.
You are asking yourself and team: why have you and your team decided to press send? Here a few questions to
help you answer why.
What is the desired outcome? Is that outcome more for your benefit than for the reader’s? What value does the
reader receive in this email, and finally, how does this email fit it with all the other conversations you are having
with your contacts?

Why is always an important question in inbound marketing. A whole philosophy has been built around asking
why, with author Simon Sinek at the charge. He says that “people don’t buy what you do but why you do it.”
And
if this is true, then deciding why you are sending an email will be a step in the right direction to make sure your
contacts know why you do what you do.
Now that we’ve looked about how to define your goal for your email, let’s take a look at the second theme of
creating high-performing emails: optimizing each part of your email to drive the conversions toward that goal.
Optimizing each part of your email to focus on conversion is the key to creating high-performing emails.
With all the elements aligned and working together your contacts are going to be receiving the most value from
your emails and in turn you will see the most ROI for your email sends.
So what does it mean to optimize each part of your email to drive the conversions toward that goal? It means
looking at two key actions someone takes on your email: the open and the click.
To optimize for a conversion, let’s first define what a conversion is.
We can define conversion as “the completion of a desired action.” Each email you are sending will have a goal
which is the desired action you are hoping your contacts are completing.
Now you will want to make sure each part of your email is guiding your contacts towards that desired action.
To optimize for a conversion, you need to have someone first open your email and then compel them to take
action.
You can think about it like a funnel. Before anyone can click, they have to open your email. If a reader doesn’t
open your email, it’s safe to say they’ll never click on your call-to-action.
Let’s take a look at each of these actions, both the open and the click, and break down how you can use them to
create a high-performing email.
First, someone needs to open your email. There are several things that will affect whether or not someone
decides to open your email, specifically the subject line, the sender name and email, and the preview text.
Each of these should be designed to influence your overall goal and encourage your readers to progress toward
the desired action.
First is your subject line. Your subject line is the door to your email. For someone to come in, they first need to
enter through the subject line. This makes it an important piece of your overall conversion rates. It also provides
you insight into what type of messaging appeals to your personas.
Let’s look at a few best practices for crafting a great subject line.

With subject lines, shorter is better. 41-50 characters is the average character length that will appear on a mobile
device. And given our world today, where most of us are reading emails on our mobile devices, aiming for this
range will be important since a majority of your readers will be taking a look at your email on their mobile
device.
As in most aspects of inbound marketing, you will want to avoid any language that isn’t human or helpful.
Words like “free” or “percent off” will not only trigger spam filters but also don’t make your email sound like
it’s coming from a real person.
Some other things to keep in mind are keeping it straightforward, short, and sweet. Personalize it when it’s
appropriate to have the recipient’s first name, company name, or even location appear. And lastly, try to mix it
up — get creative and run tests on what your contacts like or don’t like by A/B testing your subject lines.
Next, you will need to look at the other information that guides someone into your email, such as the sender
name and email and the preview text.
Great emails build trust. They show you are human and helpful and are going to provide value. This can be
communicated in the name and email you have appear in the from section. Keep it as familiar as possible.
Have the email come from your company not a no-reply email address, and if your contacts have an account
manager or a dedicated communication person at your company, the email should probably come from them.
This will help you keep your emails as a conversation, which at its core is more human.
Next is your preview text. Preview text is the snippet of copy that’s pulled in from the body of your email. It’s
typically displayed underneath the from name and subject line in a subscriber's inbox.
You will use your preview text to continue the theme presented in your subject line, tease out the content of
your email, add a personalized message, and of course show the value of the content inside of your email.
With these in place, you’re setting your email up for a successful open and then you can focus on the value you
are providing inside of your email.
Inside of your email, you are giving your readers valuable content guided toward helping them take a specific
action. Whether that is downloading a piece of educational content, subscribing to a blog, or signing up for an
upcoming live training with you and your business, you need to provide value.
To do this effectively, you will need to write effective email copy. The truth is that you can design the best
email in the world with the most high-resolution pictures, but without great copy, your readers are not going to
find the most value from your email.
There are many ways to write great email copy, but the main themes are: write with clarity, purpose, and your
primary goal in mind.
Your copy is showing your readers why you sent this email. Channel your inner Simon Sinek and show them
why you do what you do and the value they get from it. You are creating a conversation. And while the other
parts of your email can support that, the copy you write will be the core of creating that engaging conversation.
Each business has its own style and brand, and you need to take that into consideration with your email copy,
but there a few best practices that you should follow to keep your email copy conversational and helpful.
The first is write for scanability. The best thing you can do for your reader, and for your metrics, is to do the
work for them. Use short paragraphs, bolding, headlines, and bullet points to display information in a way that
makes it easy to blink once and get the purpose and value of the email.
The second is using the right tone. You will probably have a few different personas who you send emails to, and
you might need to adjust the tone of your email copy depending on the persona or their context.
There’s so little time and space when it comes to email, so every word counts. Seth Godin says this really well,
"Why waste a sentence saying nothing?"
Next, personalize when appropriate. Personalization is discussed a lot with email, and it’s more than just
personalization tokens — it’s about making the content relevant and engaging for the reader. But you also want
to use personalization tokens to amplify your email copy.
Consider adding the contact’s first name, mention their interests, or an action the contact has taken with your
company. All of this provides a personalized experience for your reader.
And lastly, proofread. Take the time to spell check. People lose trust over small things, so don’t let a few
misspelled words be the reason you turn a contact away.
The last piece of your email that you will need to optimize to drive the conversions toward that goal is your call-
to-action.
This might be the most important aspect of your email because it's what gets your reader out of the inbox and
onto the next step.
To make a great CTA, you need to ask yourself three main questions: What do I want the reader to do? Why
should they do it? How will they know to do it?
You’ll want to stick to one CTA to promote the primary goal. I can’t stress this enough. You have one goal for
your email and your CTA should drive the reader toward that goal. Now this doesn't mean that you can’t turn
multiple components of your email into a CTA.
You can link images to your offer, hyperlink appropriate copy, or edit the alt-text of your images.
But all these links should guide your reader toward one desired action that will provide value to them and
benefit you and your business.
There many different ways to design your CTA, and that will depend on your brand’s look and feel. But
remember, if you have one goal for your email then you need one desired action to encourage the reader to take.
With these elements both the open and the click optimized for engagement you will be showing value to your
readers and optimizing for success.
Putting these two themes to work: selecting the right goal for your email and second, optimizing each part of
your email to drive the conversions toward that goal, you will build a strong strategy for creating high-
performing emails.
In the end, when you bring all of this together, you’ll be providing the most value to your contacts who in turn
will help you grow your business.
VIDEO 3: What do high-performing emails look like?

You need a strategy for creating high-performing email if you want to consistently send email your contacts
love. To achieve this, it is also important to keep in mind the key components every high-performing email will
need.
Let’s look at what high-performing emails look like in action and each component your email needs before you
press send.
There are a few ways to look at what every email needs. Let’s look at the key components: your email template,
footer information and CAN-SPAM compliance, and images and design.
The first is the email template you choose to use. Marketers have discussed many times over which email
performs better: HTML or text-based emails.
While there is a lot of discussion around it, and particularly around what B2B vs B2C audiences prefer, the most
important aspect of the debate is regardless of which type of email you are sending, your reader needs to know
what you’re trying to convey. Aim for a clean, straightforward design to display the value you are sending.
That’s where your email template will come in. It sets the foundation of your email for you to design around
providing value to your reader.
You know that not all of your readers will be opening your emails on the same device or with the same email
provider. Having an email template to support you in creating an email will take some of the weight off you and
help you get your content out to your contacts quicker.
Use an email template that is on-brand with the rest of your website, and you should have a few options for the
different types of emails you send: newsletter, blog updates, or promotion of products or services.
For example, take a look at these different types of email templates here. This example comes directly from the
HubSpot Marketplace. Having options with the types of email templates you use will help you create a
consistent experience for your users across all emails you send.
The second component you want to look at is an important one. Every email you send needs to have a footer. In
that footer, you will include information that will help to be compliant with the CAN-SPAM Act.

Every time you press send on a marketing email, you need to be CAN-SPAM compliant. To review, the CAN-
SPAM Act is a law that sets the rules for commercial email, establishes requirements for commercial messages,
gives contacts the right to have you stop emailing them, and spells out tough penalties for violations.
To be compliant with this law, you must have a footer that includes your physical address and unsubscribe links
for your readers to access at any time.
This means in every email you send you need to include company name, company street address, city, state, and
a link to email preferences or unsubscribe all.
Remember that sending great inbound email is all about building trust. Giving your readers the option to
unsubscribe from content they do not want to receive is how you build trust and keep it.
Lastly, you will want to look at the images and design of the rest of your email.
The first is the images you add. Images are a great way to engage your reader and add some flare to your email
sends.
But images are not created equal across email clients. Some email clients will prevent automatic image loading,
which means your images will not appear in your email, so you want to make sure you know what will the
reader will see if the email is image-heavy and the images don’t load.
Keep this in mind, especially if you are building a template that is image-heavy. What will they see if they don’t
see that image? Ask yourself, does my email layout still look visually engaging even without the images? Is
there still a visual hierarchy of some sort that will guide your reader to the desired action?
The biggest suggestion I have when sending in email at all is send that email to yourself and open on a desktop
and your mobile device. Check to see how it feels, proofread it, and see how the images are presenting on the
different screens. Taking the time to check your emails before you send them will go a long way for your
readers and in the end for you.
Lastly is the overall design of your email.
Just like your website pages and landing pages, you can have multiple columns in your emails, which will
appear something like this.
But when sending emails, you want to be as clear as possible. The best way to do this with your layout is using
fewer columns. This will provide you with the most control over how your email renders in email clients as well
creating the visual hierarchy.
Keep in mind that if the design is complex and communicating lots of information then your reader might be
confused about the overall goal or value in the email.
Keep in mind always that your readers are not interacting with your emails in a bubble. They are also reading
your blog posts and interacting with you on social media. Ask yourself if all of that information needs to be

communicated in an email format. Use all of your channels available to vary and communicate your value and
information.
While I think we can agree that email is the best channel to have conversations but, it can’t do everything. Use
all of your channels to your advantage to help your readers grow.
With these key components: your email template, footer information and CAN-SPAM compliance, and images
and design, you will be able to design and send a high-performing email that is engaging and provides value to
your reader.
Remember that your goal with all your emails is to be human and helpful with each send to further the
conversation with your contacts.
Digital Marketing Certification Course
Study Guide
Lesson 1: Digital Marketing Fundamentals Lesson

description:
Digital marketing is vital for your business and brand awareness. It seems like every brand has a
website. And if they don't, they at least have a social media presence or digital ad strategy. Digital
content and marketing is so common that consumers now expect and rely on it as a way to learn about
brands. To be competitive as a business, you'll need to embrace digital marketing. But, because digital
marketing has so many options and strategies associated with it, you can get creative and experiment
with a variety of marketing tactics on a budget. In this lesson, learn how to identify the digital
marketing strategies and tactics that work best for your business and its customers.
Learning modules:
 What is digital marketing?
 A closer look at digital marketing channels
 Implementing a digital marketing strategy
Questions you should know the answer to:

 What is digital marketing?
 What is the difference between digital marketing and inbound marketing?
 What strategies typically make up a digital marketing plan?
 What types of content work best in the awareness, consideration, and decision stages of the
buyer’s
journey?
 What is owned media?

 What is paid media?
 What is earned media?
Study Guide
Lesson 2: Building a Content Creation Framework

Lesson description:
To create quality content in a scalable and efficient manner, you need to have a structure in place.
Learn how to build a content creation framework for your company, including identifying campaigns,
setting timelines, reviewing content, and measuring success, all of which are discussed in greater
detail in this lesson.
Learning modules:
 Why your business needs a framework for creating content
 How to build a content creation framework
 What resources will you need to create meaningful content?

 Why is it important to have a clear and repeatable process?
 Why is it important to have an organized process?
 Why should your content process be agile?
 How do you conceptualize content?
 Why do you need timelines for content creation?
 What is a content creation workflow?
 How should you review and edit your content?
 How should an editor provide feedback on edits?
 What should you use to edit content?
 How often should you update a content promotion process?
 What should you use to host and store your content?
 Why would you use a naming convention formula?
 Why should your content creation framework evolve?
 What roles are included in a content creation team?
 What is the blink test?
 What is a CMS?
 Why do you need one?
 What are examples of analytics platforms?
 What should you use to organize planning and internal communication?
Study Guide
Lesson 3: How to Find the SEO Strategy That Fits Your

Business
Lesson description:
You’ll learn how search engines rank your content, how to measure the state of your current SEO, and
how to figure out an approach to SEO that fits with your business’s needs. This lesson includes a
workbook that helps you evaluate the state of your SEO authority and identify specific areas for
improvement so you can give your website a better chance of ranking.
Learning modules:
 How do search engines rank your content?
 Which SEO approach fits your business?
 How to measure your website’s SEO authority

 How do search engines discover your content?
 How do search engines understand whether or not your content is relevant?
 What do you need to get your content ranking on search engines?
 How do you determine authority?
 How do you measure your website’s authority?
Study Guide
Lesson 4: Improving Website Performance

Lesson description:
In many ways, the performance of your website is the first line of defense when it comes to website
optimization. If your site takes too long to load, users simply are not going to wait around. In this
lesson, you’ll learn why website performance is important, how to increase load speed, how to
optimize the elements of your web page, and how to reduce the workload of your server to build a
website that performs well across all main criteria.
Learning modules:
 The importance of website performance
 Reducing page size and increasing load speed
 Optimizing your web page elements
 Limiting HTTP requests and maximizing page caching

 What does website performance impact?
 How does website performance impact Facebook?
 How fast should an optimized website load?
 What are the components of a website?
 What does minification do?
 How do you optimize web page elements?
 How do you reduce the number of HTTP requests?
 What does JavaScript do?
 How many redirects can you have?
Study Guide
Lesson 5: Creating Blog Content Your Audience Loves

to Read and Share
Lesson description:
Creating quality blog content your audience loves to read and share is easier said than done. In this
lesson, you'll learn why blog post structure matters, how to choose a topic and a title for a blog post,
how to structure a blog post, and you'll finish with some effective blog writing tips.
Learning modules:
 Why blog post structure matters
 How to choose a topic and a title for a blog post
 How to create and structure a blog post
 How to optimize a blog post
 What are some effective blog writing tips?

 Why does blog post structure matter?
 How do you choose a topic and a title for a blog post?
 What is a working title?
 How many characters will Google display for a title tag?
 What is whitespace?
 How often should you bold content in a blog post?
 Where should you insert CTAs in your blog posts?
 What can you do to improve your writing?
Study Guide
Lesson 6: How to Create a Successful Video Marketing

Strategy
Lesson description:
Learning how to create a successful video marketing strategy can be overwhelming and complicated
if you don't have the right mindset. In this lesson, you'll learn why it's important to create engaging
videos and how to use video throughout the inbound methodology. You'll finish with a list of tips you
can use to get started creating effective videos for your business.
Learning modules:
 Why should you create engaging videos?
 How to use video throughout the inbound methodology
 Tips for getting started with video marketing

 How can video increase your search engine optimization footprint?
 How does video reduce bounce rate?
 What types of videos should you create for the attract stage?
 What types of videos should you create for the engage stage?
 What types of videos should you create for the delight stage?
 What’s a list of items you need to start recording videos for your business?
Study Guide
Lesson 7: Developing a Social Media Strategy

Lesson description:
Creating a promotional plan that takes advantage of social and digital technologies will help you
shape the conversation, build loyalty, and attract new customers and partners. Social media shouldn’t
replace other Inbound promotional methods like email, events or public relations, but instead, should
augment them, offering another set of marketing channels for you to explore.
Learning modules:
 Why You Need a Social Media Promotion Strategy
 The Social Media Channels – An Overview
 Building the Foundation for Success - Setting Social Media Goals
 Structuring Your Social Media Team for Now & the Future
 Evaluating the Best Social Tools for the Job
 Developing a budget and garnering executive buy-in
 What are the benefits of having a social media strategy?
 Why does a buyer persona matter in social media?
 What are the steps you need to build a social media strategy?
 What are some reasons that a marketer would want to use one social platform over another?
 What is a vanity metric?
 What are the four categories of KPIs and how do they differ?
 What considerations do you need to make when planning how to structure your social media
team?
 What are the different types of social media team models?
 What components should your social media team plan contain?
 What are the various kinds of social media tools available to marketers?
 What are the three tips that can help you narrow down your choice of a social media tool?
 What marketing tools can you use to delight customers into promoters?
 What considerations do you need to make when building a budget?
 What should you do it if you are arguing for money to start a social media project?
Study Guide
Lesson 8: Introduction to Paid Search Advertising

Lesson description:
When it comes to paid search advertising, Google is by far the most popular option. In this lesson,
you’ll learn how paid advertising on search engines works and how to get started with advertising on
Google. Plus, you’ll learn best practices for creating remarkable digital ads for paid search and see
examples of effective paid search ads in action.
Learning modules:
 The advantages of paid search advertising
 Exploring keyword research and match type
 How to create remarkable digital ads for paid search
 Organizing your account structure

 Where do Google ads show up on search engines?
 What’s a brand keyword?
 What’s a non-brand keyword?
 What is the exact match type?
 What is the phrase match type?
 What is the broad match type?
 What is the broad match modifier?
 What are negative keywords?
 What is quality score?
 What’s the difference between an ad group and a campaign?
Study Guide
Lesson 9: Creating a High-Performing Email

Lesson description:
Sending email, checking email, and drafting email has become as much a part of our day-to-day lives
as getting up and going to work. And email is going to continue to play an important role in both our
professional and personal lives. Creating emails that engage your contacts and help you grow your
business is a key piece of your overall email marketing strategy. In this lesson, you'll learn the
elements of a high-performing email and what you can do to implement them in your business.
Learning modules:
 Understanding the importance of email marketing
 How to build an effective email marketing strategy?
 What does an email marketing strategy look like?

 What is the definition of an email marketing strategy?
 What are the three stages of the inbound methodology?
 What’s the significance of segmentation?
 What’s the power of personalization?
 What’s the impact of data-driven analysis?
 What are the three aspects for a successful email marketing strategy?
Transcript: Building a Content Creation Framework
Video 1: Why does your business need a content creation framework?
Hello! I’m Abi, and I’m the Content Manager here at HubSpot Academy.
A lot of work goes into creating a single piece of content: research, planning, editing, and more.
Then after the content’s done, there’s promotion work, reporting...the list goes on. As a content
professional, you need to publish a lot of content for each of your buyer personas at different stages
of the buyer’s journey.
This can feel laborious or complicated—especially if you're working solo.
But a content creation framework that’s repeatable, organized, and agile can make the content
creation process smoother and more rewarding.
A content creation framework is a structure of processes for publishing content—from the

beginning stages to post- publication.
Are you thinking, “A framework for creating content? But won’t that hurt creativity?” No.
With a framework in place, your team can foster creative ideas in an organized, scalable manner. A
framework strikes that perfect balance between autonomous creativity and long-term content
sustainability.
As an example of a very basic content creation framework, let’s take a look at HubSpot Academy’s
User Blog.
The User Blog aims to educate and inspire HubSpot users to reach their inbound business goals with
the HubSpot software. We have a diverse group of subject matter experts contributing articles. We
also have a variety of editors to make sure the articles are the best they can be before publication.
Then we need to take into consideration the topics we feature, the customers and partners who will
contribute articles, and some ad-hoc content to educate our readers on HubSpot updates and news.
That’s a lot of moving parts! So to keep things organized, we have a framework. Let’s take a look.
This is the User Blog’s editorial calendar. It’s organized in a Google Sheet. I create each month’s
calendar one month in advance so that all writers and editors get plenty of notice before their
deadlines.
The “Publish Date” and “Publish Time” are documented so that editors know what date and time to
schedule their posts for publication.
Then there’s the “Due Date” column. This is the date the writer needs to submit their article by. This
way, each editor gets a full week to review the article. This is especially important since our editors
are either freelance editors with a lot of content to juggle, or they’re volunteer editors here at
HubSpot who have full-time jobs.
The writer is responsible for writing their article and getting it in on time—so their name is
documented in the “Responsible” column.

In the “Blog Post Title” column, writers enter their proposed title or—if they don’t have a title in
mind yet—they enter a quick blurb on what they plan to cover. Then in the “Description” column,
they enter a short sentence or two about what their article will explore.
The next column asks writers to enter a word or two about what HubSpot tools or products their
post highlights. This way, I can make sure writers create articles that will educate and inspire
HubSpot users. Also, the editor will use these words as tags when they edit the blog post.
The “Status” column reflects what stage in the creation process the blog post is in:
 Pending: The slot may be filled by an article, but the writer hasn’t confirmed yet.
 Confirmed: The slot has been filled with an article and confirmed by the writer.
 Submitted: The writer has submitted their article for editing.
 Scheduled: The editor has reviewed the article and scheduled it for publication.
 Published: The article is live.
Lastly, the “Editor” column lists the name of the person who’ll be editing each article. This
way, the writer and editor can communicate before, during, or after the editing process to
make sure everything’s in order for publication.
So that’s one example of what a content creation framework looks like for content in the
short term, planned one month out. You also might want to create a long-term content
creation framework, where you plan content up to a few months to a year in advance.
Why would you want to plan content this far ahead?

Well, you need to serve your audience’s needs and educate them over time depending on
what they’re looking for.
For example: I used to be a technical writer here at HubSpot. Our readers were looking for
information on how to use their HubSpot tools.
On our team, we needed to create content and publish it quickly to align with product
releases. So to make sure we could update our current articles and create new ones on
time, I worked closely with our product team to keep track of all upcoming product changes
and new releases. These were usually planned up to a few months—and sometimes a year
—in advance. So we planned our content to align with those timelines.
We used Trello boards to keep track of how changes were moving through the product
team’s pipeline. When a change was coming closer to launch, the technical writers had time
to collect content for updating and write drafts of new content to educate users about the
releases.
These releases also involved product announcements, blog posts, emails, and other forms of
content to serve a variety of personas. So we all needed to work together and stick to our
long-term content creation framework.
When you’re planning your content for a month or even a year in advance, remain flexible
to account for the changes that will inevitably come up. Sometimes campaigns, timelines,
and personas will need to be adjusted.
Video 2: How to build a content creation framework

So, you want to create your content in a streamlined manner. Let’s jump into the five steps to
building a content creation framework.
1. Conceptualizing content
2. Planning a timeline
3. Creating a workflow
4. Reviewing and editing content
5. Organizing and storing content
When conceptualizing content, the first step is coming up with appropriate ideas for your content
offers.
A content offer is something you create and publish in exchange for personal information like a
name and email address.
Struggling to generate content ideas? Do some online research, like reading blogs related to your
industry or checking out content marketing survey results. Another option is to write down
frequently asked sales questions or important industry knowledge that would be helpful for your
target market to know.
If you’re looking for a list of ways to generate meaningful content ideas, check out the resources
section below.
As you gather ideas, focus on creating content for every stage of the buyer’s journey—awareness,
consideration, and decision.
In the awareness stage, a prospect is experiencing and expressing symptoms of a problem or

opportunity. They’re doing research to more clearly understand, frame, and give a name to their
problem. They’re looking for educational content to help them answer some of their questions and
concerns—think blog posts, ebooks, social content, and how-to webinars.
In the consideration stage, a prospect has clearly defined and given a name to their problem or
opportunity. They’re committed to researching and understanding all available approaches and
methods to solving their problem or opportunity. Create content that positions you as an expert in
your industry. Demo videos, case studies, and FAQ articles are great resources to build relationships
with readers and establish trust between your audience and your brand.
In the decision stage, a prospect has now decided on their solution strategy, method, or approach.
They’re compiling a long list of all available vendors and products in their given solution strategy.
They’re researching to trim down this long list into a short list and ultimately make a final purchase
decision—and that final purchase decision could be YOU. So provide them content such as free
trials, consultations, and articles that provide education on your products or services.
For more detail about the buyer’s journey and creating content for each stage, check out the
resources section below. Now, back to building a content creation framework.
Step two is planning a timeline. When putting together a timeline, keep in mind that you’ll want to
maintain agility while still having time to execute on your initiatives.
When planning content creation over the span of a quarter, try to have at least two or three content
offers you want to create, and organize your content by buyer’s journey stages.

Keep your goals in mind here. Is the focus for this quarter improving volume of leads? Is it increasing
the close/won rate for your sales team? Is it growing blog traffic?
Use your goals to determine what content you need to focus on. From there, map out what content
you need and when it needs to be live. This will give you a sense of the resources you’ll need in-
house to create this content yourself. You can also use your goals to decide if you need some
external help from freelancers.
In addition to planning out your content offers, identify any company-wide initiatives that will need
support from content over the next three months. Examples of additional content are posts on
events that you’ll be attending, rebranding information, and new corporate partnerships.
The third step is creating a workflow. In the context of content creation, a workflow is an intuitive
breakdown of the content creation work. It consists of the sequence of steps a piece of content
moves through from its initial creation to publication.
Your workflow should clearly identify who will do what. It should also identify if outside influencers
or freelancers will be contributing and, if so, in what capacity.
Because there are multiple components involved when creating a piece of content, you’ll want to
get pretty granular with your steps—even if you’re a team of one. This way, as your content grows
over time, you’ll have a clearly defined workflow to use when adding the resources you’ll need to
create more content at a fast pace.
For example, instead of having written, edited, and published as the work stages for an ebook, you
might have something like outline completed, first draft completed, editing completed, design and
formatting completed, final draft completed, and published.
Here’s a pro tip: Think about how you created a piece of content in the past before you had a
content creation framework. Consider what went well, what roadblocks you hit, and what you’ll
need to work into your process to avoid those roadblocks the next time around.
Document your thoughts, and create a workflow based on that. You can always change your
workflow steps as your content evolves.
This brings us to the fourth step: reviewing and editing content. You need a reviewal system in place
so that your content is accurate, well written, and aligned with your brand. Depending on your
team’s setup, this review process could involve working with an in-house or freelance editor and
having an SEO specialist format and update the content.
In the review process, follow these seven best practices:
 Set clear expectations.

 Define roles in the reviewal process.
 Determine a timeline.
 Use a style guide.
 Track edits.
 Manage progress.
 Optimize for search engines.

Let’s dive into each of these in more detail.
Set clear expectations: The reviewer should know what they’re looking for: grammatical errors, fact-
checking, story gaps, wordsmithing, and more.
Define roles in the reviewal process: Each person should know what they need to do and when.
Maybe you have a developmental editor looking at your content’s overall focus and structure before
a copy editor goes in for more detailed edits. Or maybe you have a single editor reviewing
everything. Whatever your team looks like, clearly defining who does what will eliminate chaos and
keep things on track.
Determine a timeline. With so many people involved in publishing content, set due dates and a high-
level timeline so that each person is held accountable for their contribution. In many content
environments, one missed deadline affects everyone’s work. To keep your team agile and conscious
of their deadlines, share a rough timeline with the team, get everyone’s buy-in, and then finalize it.
Use a style guide. Your content needs to be consistently authentic, well written, and aligned with
your company’s brand—even among various writers with different writing styles, skill levels, and
voices. A style guide is that common thread all content reviewers can use so that their edits
establish consistency across a diverse group of writers.
For information on how to create a style guide, check out the resources section below.
Moving on to the next best practice: Track edits. Whether you have one editor or multiple editors,
have your content reviewers make suggestions by tracking changes as opposed to making edits
directly. This way, the content creator knows where to make changes as opposed to figuring out
what was altered.
Next, manage progress. Use some sort of document, like a project management software, to track
progress. This document should reflect the roles, timeline, and deadlines you’ve determined for
your reviewal process. Since you could have a team of people working together on a final product,
tracking the reviewal progress provides transparency across the team and keeps all stakeholders on
the same page. It also allows for agility so that you can remain flexible and adjust deadlines if need
be.
Here’s a pro tip: If you’re looking for a place to start, consider using Trello. It’s free, and—more
importantly—Trello makes collaborating with others easy.
And finally, optimize for search engines. You put a lot of effort into creating your content, so you
want your audience to find it in their web searches. After your content is created, do some spot
edits to search engine optimize your content. This could involve swapping out some words for
keywords or maybe having an SEO specialist optimize specific sections.
So that wraps up reviewal best practices.
The sixth step in building a content creation framework is organizing and storing content. Once your
content is done, store it in a centralized location where your team can access it—like Google Drive
or Dropbox. If you have a content management system, also known as a CMS, then you could
choose to store it there as well.
Organizing your content in a way that’s easy to understand is critical for repurposing, reusing, or
even finding that content down the line.

One way to organize your content is to develop a clear naming system. A sample system could
include content format, buyer’s journey stage, campaign, and year.
For example, let’s say you developed an awareness stage ebook back in 2015 to
support a campaign for a new product launch on rock climbing gear. Your name for this content
offer could be ebook- awareness-rockclimbinggear-2015.
While you can choose a specific naming convention formula for hosting your files, the goal should be
to easily access files when needed.
Keep in mind: Your content creation framework should always be evolving. Your business’s goals will
vary from quarter to quarter and year to year, so your content creation framework should align with
those changes. On top of that, content marketing is always changing. Stay up to date on industry
trends and best practices so that you can incorporate them into your framework.
Video 3: Determining the resources you’ll need for a content creation

framework
To build a framework for scalable and organized content creation, there are two main types of
resources you’ll need: your team and your tools.
Let’s start with your team.

There are five primary types of responsibilities in content creation:
 Content management and strategy

 Writing
 Editing
 Designing
 Distributing
First, let’s cover content management and strategy. This responsibility involves creating a
long-term content plan,
mapping it to the business needs, ensuring the other responsibilities are met, and analyzing
the reports.
This person is the leader of the group and works with everyone involved so that things move
along smoothly to the finish line. Most businesses hire a content marketing manager or
content marketing strategist to fill this role.
The second responsibility is writing. Typically, a content writer or marketer will do the
writing. While many businesses have niche or technical markets, the individuals writing your
content don’t always have to be subject matter experts. Instead, much like a journalist, they
can work with internal and external subject matter experts to create compelling and useful
content. While many companies choose to write their content in-house, some choose to
outsource that work. Writers from companies like Scripted or Upwork can create tailored
content for your marketing campaigns.
And where there’s writing, there’s editing. Once content has been planned and created, it
needs to be edited. Just because a piece of content has been created doesn’t mean it’s
ready to be published. Editing ensures alignment with your business’s messaging, your
target market’s needs, and the goals the content is meant to solve for. An in-house

editor or freelance editor is perfect for this. But if you don’t have an editor, consider having a
teammate with a knack for communication review your content. A fresh set of eyes and a different
perspective can make your content stronger.
Next is designing. Once the content has been written and edited, it needs to be packaged in a way
that’s appealing to readers. Having an attractive, fluid format and design can make all the difference
in getting someone to stay on your site and enjoy consuming your content. Effective design also
plays a huge role in information hierarchy. You need a high- quality design to structure your content
in a way that’s easy for readers to understand and navigate.
Think about it: Can you remember a time when you looked at a website or flyer and decided not to
read it because it didn’t visually make sense?
In marketing, we use the term blink test to refer to the 3 to 5 seconds an average site visitor spends
scanning a website visually and then deciding if they want to spend time looking through it. So make
it easy for your audience to scan your content, pull out a few important details, and then engage
further. A good designer can be the difference between a below average blink test pass rate and
consistently getting people to stay on your site.
Try using tools like Canva to step up your content design. If you’re not able to do this work in-house,
consider a freelancer.
Finally, there’s distributing: A content distributor, also known as a social media coordinator or
specialist, is responsible for bringing the content to market through a strategic promotion plan. They
need to either create or coordinate the creation of promotional content, map it to the available
channels, and schedule it for publication. They’re also the person responsible for analyzing the
results of the campaign.
Depending on your team and business context, you might have one person fill multiple roles. Just
make sure that person isn’t strapped with too much responsibility. Have a checks and balances
system spread amongst multiple teammates. If your team members are already at full capacity, look
into freelancers to pick up the additional work.
Here’s a pro tip: If you’re just getting started with building your team or looking for resources to
help you complete a project, consider hiring a freelancer as your first team member. To learn more
about the advantages of using freelancers as well as how to get started with hiring one, check out
the resources section below.
So that covers your team. Now let’s talk about tools.

To build your content framework, you’ll need 3 main tools:
• CMS
 Analytics tools
 Planning and internal communication tools
A CMS is a tool for creating, editing, and publishing digital content. There are different types
of content systems—such as HubSpot and WordPress—so you’ll need to identify what
works best for your company’s needs. Whichever CMS you use, be sure you have the ability
to edit your website, create and publish content for your blog and landing pages, and
optimize content for search engines.
You’ll also need analytics tools. Use your analytics tools to understand the impact of your
content on your business and identify opportunities for improvement.

Most paid-for CMS tools come with built-in analytics. And any social platforms you use will also have
built-in analytics. But if you're looking for an analytics solution with extra insights, then HubSpot and
Google Analytics are strong choices to consider. In fact, try using both—the two platforms offer
different kinds of insights that, combined, create a complete picture.
To learn about the differences between these two reporting platforms as well as how they work
together, check out the resources section below.
Also, consider adding tracking links to all your promotional activities. This way, you can see what’s
working and what’s not. To build a trackable link using Google’s campaign URL builder tool, check
out the resources section below.
Once you have your CMS and analytics ready to go, you’ll need planning and internal
communication tools. You’ll use these tools so that your team can communicate easily, see any
updates, avoid version or draft control issues, and clearly delineate their responsibilities and
assignments. You could start off with Google Drive or Trello, then transition to something more
robust as your team and content grows.
With these resources in mind, you’re well on your way to building a content creation framework.
And you’re one step closer to making meaningful connections with your audience—at scale.
Transcript: How to Find the SEO Strategy That Fits Your Business
Hi! I’m Matthew Howells-Barby, HubSpot’s Director of Acquisition. Let’s talk about how to find the
approach to SEO that fits YOUR business’s needs.
Video 1: How Search Engines Rank Your Content
How do search engines rank your content? The key to getting your content to rank well in search is
having a clear understanding of how Google finds, analyzes, and ranks your content.
Getting your content to rank highly in search results depends predominantly on two things: One,
improving discovery and relevance by creating lots of high-quality content on the topics you want to
be known for; and two, building authority by getting lots of high-quality backlinks to your website.
Discovery, relevance, and authority – those are the three stages that cover how search engines work
in a nutshell. And each of these three stages correlates with an action the search engine takes:
crawling, indexing, and ranking.
First is the DISCOVERY stage. Search engine bots discover your web page by “crawling” it – which
really just means it discovers your web page and takes note of all of the content within it.
Next is the RELEVANCE stage. Once a search engine bot discovers your content, it decides how
relevant it is to certain search queries by indexing it, based on signals like keywords within the
content.
Next is the AUTHORITY stage. This means building enough credibility through backlinks and other
factors, that search engines consider your site authoritative enough to rank high in the search
results. Authority directly impacts ranking strength.
I find the best way to explain how search engines rank content is using the library metaphor. After
all, isn’t Google just a giant library?
Let’s pretend for a moment that you work in a library. You have a ton of books in a pile in front of
you, and you need to figure out where in the library these books need to be stored.
This is a GREAT way to think about how Google finds, analyzes, and ranks content.
Your first step is to FIND all these books. This is CRAWLING. If a book isn’t in the stack to begin with
or you can’t see it, you won’t be able to put it on a shelf. That’s the discovery stage. In the sense of a
website: Do you have a piece of content, and can the search engines access it?
Your second step is to CATEGORIZE the books. This is INDEXING. The books in your library cover all
sorts of topics: fiction, nonfiction, science, history, and technology. How do you sort them? This is
where you assess the relevance of a book to a topic – by looking at the title, flipping through some
pages, and seeing who the author is and whether they’re known for writing about certain topics.
Search engine bots index content on a website in a similar way. They crawl the content and say,
‘What are the contents of this web page? What do they mean? Then, they bucket them into some
sort of topic and start to create some semantic associations.
Your third step is figuring out which books to feature. What should go on your best-sellers shelf?
Which books should you make easier to find than others? This is RANKING. The way you determine
which books are most easily discoverable for visitors to your library is mostly based on whether the
book comes from credible sources.
So, how do you determine authority? This is a subjective exercise. In the case of books, you look for
credible authors like Dan Brown and H.G. Wells. Those are authoritative sources – we know that
because they’re talked about a lot, referred
to a lot, and they’re cited in other works. Getting cited is like having backlinks to your website –
things that are mentioned in the press and are linked to from other sites regularly. That’s what
builds authority.
These three stages and actions are dependent on one another. If your content isn’t relevant, then it
has little chance of ranking, no matter how authoritative it is. If your website isn’t authoritative,
then it has little chance of ranking, no matter how relevant it is. And if your website can’t be
discovered in the first place, it has no chance of ranking at all.
We hope this helped you understand how search engines discover, index, and rank your content.
Video 2: Which SEO Approach Fits Your Business?
When it comes to SEO, many small-to-mid-sized organizations look to well-known organizations for
clues on where to focus their efforts. They think to themselves, “If that big, successful company over
there is improving their SEO by creating tons of content, then I’LL create tons of content and that
will improve my SEO, too.”
Approaching SEO as a one-size-fits-all solution is one of the most common SEO mistakes we see. The
truth is, if your organization doesn’t have authority built up yet, then you can’t focus solely on
creating content in a vacuum. You need to be spending time on building authority.
Relevance refers to how well a document matches a search query. Authority refers to ranking
strength. Even if you publish a lot of relevant content that search engines find, if those search
engines don’t consider you an authoritative source, then they’re not going to rank your content
highly in the search results. More authority means better ranking strength, which means better
positions in the search results.
Your SEO strategy starts with creating compelling, unique, high-quality content that people might
naturally want to reference and link to. But you also have to TELL people about your content for
anyone to find it and link to it.
A healthy SEO approach balances building relevancy with building authority. That means balancing
creating high-quality, relevant content with building high-quality backlinks. How much time you
focus on one versus the other will depend on how much authority your website has right now.
So, take a moment to think about your own organization. Is your organization well known and
talked about and linked to a lot online? If so, then you probably have pretty good search authority
already. That means, when it comes to SEO, you won’t have to spend AS MUCH time building
authority. Instead, you can focus more on serving up more and more relevant content that can be
discovered by Google. Creating more content will also, in turn, help you acquire more backlinks.
Or, is your organization creating a lot of content but not getting many links? In other words, are you
more like a brand- new author who’s just thrown their book into the pile? Then don’t make the
common mistake of focusing entirely on the relevancy aspect of SEO by just creating lots and lots of
content. It doesn’t matter how many books you publish; unless you’re actually making an effort to
build credibility by getting your books seen and known and talked about, otherwise they’re just
going to gather dust.
If your website doesn’t have authority built up yet, then all the content you’re creating isn’t going to
get ranked as quickly as you may want it to. You don’t get authority and credibility through volume;
you get it largely through high- quality, and more importantly, relevant backlinks. High-quality
content is essential to getting quality backlinks. For example, one piece of content that's better than
anything else on the internet for that topic could get you hundreds of backlinks, whereas a hundred
pieces of poor-quality content might not even earn you a single link.
Make sure you’re balancing your content creation and link-building efforts in a way that reflects
your organization’s SEO needs.
Video 3: How to Measure Your Website’s SEO Authority
Publishing great content on your website is important, but your site needs to have strong authority
to give your content a good shot at ranking in the search results. That begs the question: How do
you accurately MEASURE authority in the first place?
There are a number of different factors that add up to the search authority of your website, but the
most important are around BACKLINKS. Measuring authority boils down to assessing the VOLUME
and QUALITY of the backlinks you have to your website.
To truly measure your website’s authority, you’ll need to analyze your “backlink profile.” What is
your “backlink profile”? Your backlink profile is a list of all the sites currently linking back to your
site, which also takes into account HOW they’re linking to your site, and which pages they’re linking
to.
Your backlink profile shows the number of inbound links to your website, the number of unique
domains that link to your website, and the QUALITY of those links – which depends on things like
how authoritative the web pages that link to your site are.
Analyzing your backlink profile isn’t something you can do manually, but there are tools to help that
don’t cost much and are well worth the price. There are also free versions of these tools that will
give you a pretty good high-level view of your backlink profile.
One tool that you can use is Moz, which can help you uncover backlinks to your site, find link-
building opportunities, and discover links that might be damaging your authority. There are a
number of other paid tools that do similar things, like SEMrush, Majestic, and Ahrefs.
Thinking through and actually measuring your website’s authority and credibility will help you get a
good idea of the state of your current SEO, and what you need to do to have a better chance of
ranking.
Transcript: Improving Website Performance

Video 1: The Importance of Website Performance
People love things that are fast. The delivery speed of your takeout order. How quickly your airplane
gets from point A to point B. And guess what? People love fast websites, too.
What is website performance? Website Performance is the speed at which web pages are downloaded
and displayed in a user’s web browser. Basically, website performance tells you how fast your
website is.
Why is website speed so important? Website performance impacts your rankings in organic search,
visibility on Facebook, and the user experience
Website performance impacts rankings in organic search. There are many factors that search engines
use to rank organic results in the search engine results pages, also known as “SERPs. Factors include
the URL, title and header tags, inbound links, site architecture, and, you guessed it, website speed.
And if you think about it, that makes a lot of sense. Search engines like Google want to offer the best
experience to their users. If a website takes too long to load it will probably see a higher bounce rate.
And this is even more true on mobile. If Google can surface comparable webpages that have a faster
load time, they will – because they’re solving for their users and helping them find answers to their
questions or solve their problems faster.
Website performance impacts visibility on Facebook. Facebook has always taken the load speed of
the content that appears in the Facebook News Feed into consideration. For example, if you’re on a
slow connection, you’ll see more text and image content than videos. Facebook also takes your
website’s performance into consideration in their algorithm, particularly for mobile app users. If your
post links to a slow website, it may not be displayed to people using the Facebook app. This means
that you’re missing out on views, interactions, and traffic from Facebook. Optimizing your website’s
performance could result in an increase in referral traffic from Facebook.
Website performance impacts the user experience. And a poor user experience affects the website
metrics that you care about, like bounce rate and conversion rate. How quickly should a page load?
Best-in-class webpages should become interactive within 5.3 seconds. Any slower and visitors will
abandon your site, reducing conversions and sales. Just 5 seconds. That’s how long it takes to lose
traffic because of slow load times. Will people come back to a slow site? Will people come back to a
slow site? 79% of shoppers who are dissatisfied with site performance say they’re less likely to
purchase from the same site again.
A slow website equals less traffic. This means that you could be losing new visitors and repeat
customers all at the same time. It can be easy to think of website performance as an afterthought of
the development process or as the final step in a project. The problem with this approach is that it
solves for the creative process but not for the end-user.
Website performance isn’t just a technical concern. Website performance affects the accessibility of
your site, the usability of your site, and your web design. Accessibility is the availability of a website
and its contents to all people. How does performance impact accessibility? Well, think about all the
different ways people might

be accessing your site. Some people might use text-to-speech or magnification functionality. Others
might be accessing your site from a slower internet speed. And many will be on a mobile device
using cellular networks. If your website has poor performance, it becomes less accessible to everyone
in a variety of circumstances.
What is usability? Usability is how efficiently and easily visitors can see or examine your website.
How does usability impact performance? This is a pretty easy one to understand. If your website or
its elements take too long to load, it is inherently less usable. Things like the navigation, menus,
content, images, videos, hyperlinks, forms – all those things impact a website’s usability. When you
include these on your website, you need these features to be optimized to perform their best to offer
great usability.
What is website design? Website design is the process of planning, ideating, and organizing content
for the internet. How does website design impact performance? Website design isn’t just how a
website looks – it’s how it works, too. A poorly designed website can lead to performance issues later
down the road. For example, the overall layout of your website pages impacts a site’s hierarchy. And
the fonts that you use impacts how your website performs. Your page may look pretty, but if it
doesn’t perform well it is not a good design.
Think about the website performance metrics that matter to you. Performance impacts metrics
marketers care about, like traffic, conversion rates, and revenue.
Let's take a look at the impact of website performance for Carousell.com. Carousell.com is a
marketplace for buying and selling new and secondhand goods. What did improving website
performance help Carousell.com achieve? Carousell.com reduced their load time by 65% and saw a
63% increase in traffic.
A great website performance example is from the 2011 U.S. Presidential Elections. When former
U.S. President Barack Obama was campaigning for the United States presidential election in 2011,
his campaign staff reduced the page load speed of his campaign website from 5 seconds to 2 seconds.
A 3-second decrease in load speed helped the campaign raise an additional $34 million.
Test your page performance regularly. Make sure you measure, monitor, and refine your website over
time. And be careful about adding so many features to your website that you negatively impact
performance. I’d recommend setting benchmarks for the performance metrics that matter to you. This
is called a performance budget. That way, you know that any feature you add to your website must
not exceed your performance goals. Keeping performance top-of-mind when scoping out new
projects will give you a head start because it will help designers and developers create amazing
experiences that perform well the first day.
Video 2: Increasing Load Speed and Reducing Page Size
The first criteria to look at when optimizing your website is the overall page load speed. Load speed
is the time it takes to fully display the content on a specific page. How fast should a page load? Best-
in-class webpages should become interactive within 5.3 seconds. That’s how long people are willing
to wait before they start clicking the back button and finding a different site that loads faster. Does
your website take longer

to load? If you’re not sure, head on over to Website Grader to find out. It’s listed in the resources
section. But today, websites have grown in complexity
So when diagnosing your website load speed, there are a few other metrics to look at, including “first
contentful paint” and “time to interactive”. First contentful paint (FCP) is the time it takes in seconds
for text or images to be shown to users. Time to interactive (TTI) is when the page responds to user
interactions, such as clicking, within 50ms. FCP and TTI metrics are growing in popularity. Being
able to see content on a website and interact with it is closer to how users feel about site speed than
the actual page load speed of a web site. But improving load speed can help you improve FCP and
TTI metrics as well.
There are many ways to improve your page load speed, including minification and compression. To
understand minification and compression, we’re going to talk about HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
This will not only help you understand how to reduce your page load speed and improve user
experience on your website, but it’ll also help you sound knowledgeable in front of your web
development team.
A natural place to start when looking to increase your webpage’s load speed is to reduce the size of
what’s actually being loaded. This is where minification comes in. Minification is the process of
reducing resource size by removing unnecessary comments and spacing in the source code. These
characters include whitespaces, line breaks, and comments which are useful for us humans but
unnecessary for machines.
Don't worry, minification is not a permanent change to the code. In general, minification creates a
new minified version of your source code. This means you can always continue editing your source
code. You can always unminify to work on it and reminify your code to make it smaller again. We
minify the files of a website containing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code to reduce the file size so
your web browser can read them faster.
To understand minification, you first need to know a handful of things about HTML, CSS, and
JavaScript. They are components of every website that define the structure, style, and behavior of a
webpage. Each of these components work together to create a webpage. HTML provides the basic
structure of sites, which is enhanced and modified by CSS and JavaScript. CSS is used to edit the
presentation, formatting, and layout of a page. JavaScript is used to control the behavior of different
elements.HTML, CSS, and JavaScript can all be minified. Don’t worry, unless you are a technical
marketer and have built your website yourself, minification is usually a job for your web developer.
This might lead you to question what exactly is happening when you minify files. To start, developers
create these files with convenience in mind. They make the code easier for people to read by
including whitespace, comments, and long variable names. But this also creates larger files to transfer
across the internet and more for the web browser to read. That’s where minification comes in. It
essentially removes these extra elements, making it harder for humans to read, but easier (and faster)
for web browsers to read.
Here’s what’s happening when you minify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. HTML minification
removes all unnecessary characters from the HTML. CSS minification removes all the unnecessary
characters and comments from your stylesheet, the file that contains font and layout rules. JavaScript
minification removes all unnecessary characters and comments from the JavaScript.

Wondering what tools you can use for minification? To minify HTML, try out the PageSpeed
Insights Chrome extension. For CSS, try CSS Compressor. For JavaScript, you could use JS
Compress.
The second key way to improve page load speed is compression. Have you ever tried to send a file
over email that was too big and you had to compress it into a ZIP file to make it small enough to
send? Well, that’s compression at work. When a user arrives on your website, a request is made to
your server, which is the computer program that stores, processes, and delivers web pages. This
happens for every single file. The larger these files are, the longer it takes to load.
What exactly is compression? Compression replaces repetitive pieces of code with markers directing
to the first instance of that code. Compression's purpose is to reduce the file size during transfer from
the server to the browser. Once the file arrives, the browser has to decompress it, like when you
download a zipped folder onto your computer and can't just open it. You have to unzip it first. The
same thing happens when the browser receives compressed files, but it's automatically handled by the
browser. Minification removes whitespace, comments, and non-required semicolons. Compression
removes all strings that are repeated.
Let’s take a look at an example on an original CSS file. The strings are easy to read. A developer did
this on purpose. The original CSS file makes the most sense to the people who actually have to write
and edit this code. But this also makes the file size large. Once this file is minified, the file size
shrinks, but it is also a whole lot harder to read. All of the white space and extra symbols that break
up the code have been removed. Now if you take our original CSS file and compress it, let’s see how
it looks. These characters are placemarks for where the duplicate code used to be. But what if you
compress a minified file? This generates the smallest file size of the bunch.
How do you get started with compression? There are a couple solutions out there for compression:
gzip and Brotli. Gzip and Brotli are both open source and free to use. Enabling compression can get
pretty technical and it will depend on the server that you’re using. If you’re using the HubSpot CMS
Hub, your files will be compressed automatically. But you can enable compression on other servers.
For those of you who are self- hosting your website, this is where you’re going to want to work with
your web expert.
Compression is enabled by adding code to a file called .htaccess on the web server. .htaccess files can
be used to alter the configuration of your server to enable or disable additional functionality and
features, including compression. To learn what code needs to be added to your .htaccess file, check
out the guide available in the resources. This walks you through what code needs to be added for a
variety of servers.
Minification and compression are two solutions to reduce your page size.
They perform their best when they work together. By removing extraneous code and marking
duplicate strings, your web page will have smaller file sizes which means a faster load speed.
Video 3: Optimizing Your Web Page Elements
Let’s dive into the specific elements on a webpage that impact page size. What is page size? Page size
(page weight) is the overall size of the block of stored memory that makes up a page. Reduce the
overall size of the

page, increase the load speed. Minification and compression reduce the overall size of your HTML,
CSS, and JavaScript files. But what about the elements that these files actually include?
Here are a few best practices for optimizing the elements on your web page to reduce the page size.
 Use Google Fonts instead of custom fonts.

 Use existing video hosting solutions.
 Compress your images.
 Make your images responsive.
 Use Google Fonts instead of custom fonts.
Fonts add weight to your webpage, and custom fonts add even more. If your website uses
custom fonts and the person who is visiting your website doesn’t have that font installed on
their operating system, then they’ll need to download the web font files along with the rest of
the website.
Using Google Fonts decreases page size. Google Fonts is a collection of fonts that are hosted
by Google and accessible to all web browsers. Google has optimized these fonts to be
delivered to web browsers in the most optimal way. So if someone is using the latest version
of a web browser, they receive the latest version of that font that is optimized for their
browser. This makes downloading Google Fonts fast. Plus, they’re free to use and people
might already have these fonts cached in their browser, meaning that it's ready to use — no
download required.
Are you self-hosting videos on your website?If you are, you might be adding unnecessary
weight to your website. Self-hosting a video essentially means that the video is stored on
your own server. This means that you are using your server’s bandwidth to display the video
and increasing the overall size of your page by doing so.
This problem is easy to fix. Use an existing hosting solution, like YouTube, Vimeo, or
Amazon.
All of these solutions can significantly reduce the weight of your page. Instead of storing
your video content on your own server, you use their servers instead. To display the video on
your webpage, you can embed the video using the code provided by each platform. Plus,
video hosting solutions do a lot of work on their end to ensure a smooth user experience and
optimal viewing quality.
YouTube, Vimeo, and Amazon each have something different to offer. YouTube is by far the
most popular solution for many people getting started with video. Plus it's free. But the
videos do include ads and provide additional recommendations at the end of the video.
Vimeo is an ad-free solution that’ll cost you about the price of two coffees every month.
Vimeo optimizes videos hosted with them to serve smaller files to your website visitors. This
means faster load speeds. Amazon offers more customization but is also more technical.
Depending on the size of your business and your level of technical competency, Amazon can
be a good option.
The problem with unoptimized images is that too many or too large images can also bog
down your page weight. To optimize the size of your images, there are a few solutions, some
more complex than others. At the very minimum, you should be compressing the images that
you place on your website. Image compression groups parts of an image together to reduce
its size without visibly decreasing quality.

Here’s an example of a compressed image. Take a look at these two images. The one on the left is the
original, full-size image. The one on the right is the compressed version. Can you tell the difference?
Probably not. And just look at how much smaller the file size is. That means less time to load.
How can you compress images? A great tool to compress your images is TinyPNG.com.
TinyPNG.com is free, easy to use, and effective. Marketers, I recommend compressing every image
you use on your blog posts, landing pages, and everywhere else on your site.
If you have illustrations on your webpage, like a logo, for example, save them as an SVG file. An
SVG file is a graphic file that uses a two-dimensional vector graphic format designed specifically for
the internet. These file types contain an infinite amount of code behind them, which means that they
can be sized to fit any screen automatically. For any image, not just SVGs, the size of your images
matter because they determine how much space on the screen the image will take up.
So we know that for illustrations saved as an SVG, they can be resized automatically. But what about
the rest of your images? Responsive images are a must. Take out your phone and view your website
from the mobile browser. How do the images look? Are they sized correctly to the screen? Ideally,
your page should never serve images in dimensions that are larger than someone’s screen. You might
need some help from your developer for this one, but all it takes to make your images responsive is a
few lines of code in your HTML or CSS.
How can you create responsive images in CSS? Add a CSS rule that sets all images to fill the width
of the container the image is in. You can also set certain elements of the image to be fixed, like a
max-width. This means that your images will scale down but never scale up. Depending on the type
of images you’re using, this might be helpful.
Think about your web page elements. Who knew that seemingly simple things like text, videos, and
images could have such a big impact on your page speed? By using Google Fonts, a video host, and
responsive images, your on-page elements will be optimized to load their fastest.
Video 4: Reducing HTTP Requests and Maximizing Page Caching
Every element that appears on a webpage needs to come from somewhere. An HTTP request is an
ask for information from the browser, like Chrome or Firefox, to the server, the remote computer that
fulfils that request. The server then delivers everything that needs to be displayed. This includes text,
images, styles, scripts, and everything else that makes a web page a web page. Whereas reducing the
file sizes of your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript impacts your web page’s overall download size,
reducing the number of HTTP requests reduces the frequency at which these downloads need to
happen. Less frequent downloads mean your website can be displayed faster. If you want to create a
high-performing page, aim to have 30 requests max.

We’ll cover four strategies you can use to reduce the number of HTTP requests.
 Combine text resources

 Combine image resources
 Move render-blocking JavaScript
 Reduce redirects
Web pages often have multiple script files. For example, you might be using multiple 3rd
party JavaScript libraries to perform specific functions, like an image slider, analytics
tracking, or animations. The result is many scripts slowing down your webpage. Every file
that you eliminate is one less HTTP request required to load your page.
So how do you combine multiple text files, like JavaScript, on a page? Use an open source
bundler, like Webpack or Parcel, to combine JavaScript files. Getting set up with a bundler
gets technical. If your website is being slowed down by having too many HTTP requests and
you are using multiple text resources, chat with your web developer to combine them.
You can also combine image resources. The same logic applies to your image resources.
Think of all the places across your website that share the same images. One thing that comes
to mind are icons. You might have specific social share icons that match your brand’s style.
You could include each image as its own file. But that increases the number of HTTP
requests.
This is where image sprites come into play.

Image sprites are a group of small images that are included in one physical image instead of
multiple. With the help of CSS background positioning, your web developer can reposition
this single image in a variety of different ways to show only the icon you need. This can
significantly decrease the number of image files that are limiting your load speed. Plus, it
enhances consistency and ensures that all of your icons match across your entire website.
It’s common practice to put JavaScript blocks in your page header. JavaScript enables your
website to behave differently based on criteria that you identify. But the behavior of your
website cannot change if it doesn’t render in the first place. This means that the JavaScript in
the header is essentially blocking the rest of the page from loading as quickly as it could
otherwise.
So how do you fix render-blocking JavaScript? Move your JavaScript files to the bottom of
your page for all non-essential functions. For critical functions, you can place your JavaScript
directly in your HTML. Let’s say that you want to greet users back to your website by using
their name. This is considered a critical JavaScript function because it completely changes
the initial web page experience. To ensure that this JavaScript renders when the page first
loads, you can call out the JavaScript function specifically where it is needed.
Here’s how this would look. Put critical JavaScript functions directly where they are needed
on the page. This means that the JavaScript function “insert text” will load immediately.
Other nonessential functions of your JavaScript file will load after the web page renders.

Redirects also require additional HTTP requests. A redirect is a way to send both people and search
engines to a different URL from the one they originally requested. How many redirects can you have?
The best practice is to limit the number of redirects on your web page to a maximum of one. Too
many redirects will slow down your page.
Redirects are okay, including 303 (Moved Permanently) and 302 (Moved Temporarily). In these
situations, you’re probably not too worried about maximizing the load speed. These pages are already
under maintenance.
But what about the pages you do want to optimize? For example, let’s say you want people searching
your website on mobile to see a version of your website that’s optimized for their phone. Solution #1
is to use a redirect. This increases the number of HTTP requests on your webpage. Solution #2 is to
use a mobile responsive design. This optimizes your site for all devices without any redirects. Avoid
using redirects to solve problems on your website that can be fixed through a more strategic design.
If you use HubSpot's CMS, you don't have to worry about this since your website is automatically
responsive for mobile users. Optimizing your web page for the first render is one thing, but how can
you avoid time- consuming queries in the first place? Well, that’s where caching comes into play.
Caching is the process of saving resources to be reused.
For website optimization, there are two types of caching: server-side caching and client-side caching.
Server- side caching happens when the server saves the result of a single render and serves that same
result when it is requested again. Client-side caching happens when the server tells a web browser to
keep the files it downloads so that it doesn’t have to download them again in the future. Caching
benefits both content consumers and content providers.
The benefits of caching:
 Decrease network costs by reducing requests to your server.

 Improve responsiveness by making your website faster for browsers to retrieve.
 Content will be continuously available even if you experience server outages.
Most elements of a website can be cached, including logos and images, CSS stylesheets,
JavaScript files, media files, and so on. Setting up caching for your website depends on the
CMS that you’re using. For the HubSpot CMS Hub, server and client-side caching works
automatically without any additional plugins required. If you’re using the WordPress CMS,
you can use a plugin called WP Super Cache to cache your pages for you. This plugin
generates static HTML files of your web pages which will be served to the majority of your
users. This is a great turn-key solution for marketers without coding skills. Many of the other
CMSs out there also offer caching functionality too. Check out the advanced settings in your
CMS and look for options to enable page caching on your website.
The role of HTTP requests and caching pages is technical. Be sure to connect with your web
team to make sure that the solutions they are implementing are improving your website's
overall performance, including limiting HTTP requests and maximizing page caching. This
will help you create web pages that render quickly, are lightweight, and follow best practices
for website optimization.
HubSpot Academy Lesson: Digital Marketing Fundamentals

Video: What is Digital Marketing?
Hey there it’s Jorie with HubSpot Academy Digital marketing? Inbound marketing?
You may be thinking, there seems to be a marketing strategy for everything these days. And while
that's true, it's important to understand how these different strategies complement each other and work
together to ensure you effectively reach and delight your customers. What does this mean? Let's
discuss it further.
First, what is digital marketing?
Any kind of marketing that happens on a digital platform

Digital marketing encompasses all marketing efforts that use an electronic device or the internet. It's
most used within marketing channels such as search engines like, Google or Bing, along with social
media, email, and other websites to connect with current or prospective customers.
But notice that emphasis on channels? Keep that in mind, it will be useful later.
Now, digital marketing doesn't include only inbound marketing methods or only outbound marketing
methods. Instead, it encompasses all marketing strategies if they're digital. The main difference is that
outbound tactics aim to put marketing messages in front of as many people as possible in the online
space — regardless of whether it's relevant or welcomed. Examples of this are banner ads at the top of
websites that try to push a product or promotion onto people who aren't necessarily interested or ready
to receive it.
By contrast, inbound marketing is a business methodology that attracts customers by creating valuable
content and experiences tailored to them
What really sets inbound marketing apart is that marketers who employ digital inbound tactics use
online content to attract their target customers to their websites by providing information that's helpful
to them. For example, one of the most powerful inbound digital marketing assets a business can
leverage is a blog.
This allows your website to capitalize on the key terms your ideal customers are searching for. So
when it comes to differentiating Inbound and Digital Marketing, ultimately, inbound marketing is a
methodology that uses digital marketing assets to attract, engage, and delight customers online.
Digital marketing, however, is a term used to describe online marketing tactics of any kind, regardless
of whether they're considered inbound or outbound.
Even though HubSpot Academy doesn't teach or encourage outbound marketing methods, it's
important to understand what they are. After all, focusing on digital marketing in its entirety can bring
additional insights and benefits to finding and reaching customers online.
Remember the importance of marketing channels in the digital marketing definition? Let's discuss that
a little more.
In an ideal world, you would know how and when to reach your customers every time. You would
have a single channel for interacting with, converting, and continuing to delight them.
All of your marketing, sales, and service efforts would also be easily tracked and enhanced as you
created the ideal customer experience within this single channel. But, as anyone who has ever tried to
meet a quota of leads or customers can attest, if you only market in a single channel, you're going to
miss out on a large portion of your target audience.
Because limiting your reach can have consequences. In fact, focusing on a single channel can create a
poor customer experience and prevent you from successfully nurturing your leads.
Making a positive impression on your audience requires the delivery of relevant content when they
need it and how they want it. Creating different strategies for each channel and focusing on how they
work together to impact your customers is key.
Let's look at an example. Say a lead reads a blog post about an issue that your business solves and
signs up for your mailing list. The marketing email they would later receive might showcase a
customer testimonial from someone who overcame that same issue using your product. Later, when
they were scrolling through social media, they'd see an advertisement about how your products or
services continue to solve the issue they initially read about in your blog.
Rather than presenting potential customers with fragmented messages about all the great things you
can do, the products you offer, or the deals that you're running, they're receiving the content that is
most relevant to their needs across a variety of channels.
This approach, whether you want to call it cross-channel marketing or omni-channel marketing,
exemplifies the best of digital marketing in practice today. Why?
Marketing implemented in this way provides a clear brand impression for your leads and makes their
experience as seamless and direct as possible.
Additionally, because there's clear correlation between each marketing channel, it's easier to view
your marketing efforts in a cumulative way, which can help you more clearly calculate and
understand your marketing return on investment. Usually, pulling together such a cohesive and user-
friendly experience means incorporating the following strategies into your marketing efforts:
First, there’s content marketing.
Your content is what populates your website. Your blog and other pieces like eBooks and guides fall
under this category, as well as your graphics, interactive tools, and videos.
When you create content that fits your target audience's needs, answers their questions, and educates
them, your content will naturally attract highly qualified leads when they search online for topics
related to your business.
The next digital marketing strategy is search engine optimization.
Search engine optimization or SEO is the practice of optimizing your website and its content to
increase your chances of appearing in search engine results pages.
The closer to the top of those pages you are, the more organic traffic your website is likely to receive.
The closer to the top of those pages you are, the more organic traffic your website is likely to receive.
This is why SEO is often a top priority for digital marketers who don't want to rely on paid ads.
Because SEO and content marketing directly impact each other, an effective content marketing
strategy always considers best SEO practices.
Then there’s social media marketing.
Social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn allow individuals, organizations, news
distributors, and businesses to follow each other's online activity, engage in virtual conversations, and
share content. A cartoon image of an open laptop computer with oversized hashtag, at, and talking
bubbles hovering near it
Digital marketers tend to use a combination of social media channels to drive traffic to their websites
by promoting their content.
It's also used to communicate and engage with current and prospective customers. And you can’t talk
about social media marketing without native advertising sneaking in.
Native advertising often refers to boosted social media posts on platforms like Twitter, Facebook,
LinkedIn, and Instagram, as well as pay-per-click or PPC, ads like Google search ads.
Wondering the difference between native advertising versus sponsored content?
Native ads and sponsored content are both designed to look like they naturally belong on a web page.
However, a native ad is paid for and created by the advertiser themselves, while an advertiser pays
another brand to produce and distribute sponsored content.
Speaking of advertising, the next digital marketing strategy to consider is Ad Retargeting.
Traditional advertising is considered an outbound tactic. But because digital marketing provides
marketers with data to better target customers, you can use retargeting technologies to deliver ads
directly to individuals who have previously visited your website.
But don't be intrusive.

Remember, it's important to deliver content that provides value to people you hope will become
customers.
Finally, no digital marketing strategy is complete without email marketing.
As the communication channel of choice for most businesspeople and used by most internet users,
email is a powerful tool you can leverage to reach members of your audience directly.
Traditionally, email has developed a bad reputation for being spammy and promotional.
However, by taking an inbound approach to email, you can use email marketing to deliver helpful,
personalized, and targeted content to your prospects that they'll be pleased to receive.
Using a combination of these strategies and channels can ensure you’re always meeting your
customers where they prefer to interact with content they can’t wait to consume.
Now, that can feel like a lot to cover, so let’s close out this video with some key takeaways:
 Digital marketing is any kind of marketing that happens on a digital platform.

 To continue to delight your leads and customers, you need to create relevant content on
the channels they use the most.
 And to effectively implement a digital marketing strategy, you will likely need to
incorporate a mixture of content marketing, SEO, social media marketing, advertising, and
email marketing.
Video: A Closer Look at Digital Marketing Channels
Digital marketing strategies can be used by any business in any industry. Regardless of your
company's products or services, digital marketing involves creating buyer personas to identify
your target audience, determine their needs, and to develop content that's relevant and
valuable to them. However, that doesn't mean all businesses should implement the exact same
digital marketing strategy.
So what does digital marketing look like for B2B businesses?
If your company is business-to-business or (B2B), your digital marketing efforts are likely to focus on
online lead generation, with a goal of connecting your leads with a salesperson.
For that reason, your marketing strategy should aim to attract and convert the highest quality leads for
your business through your website and supporting digital channels. Beyond your website, you should
also focus your marketing efforts on business-related channels, like LinkedIn, where your target
audience is spending their time online.
What does digital marketing look like for B2C businesses?
If your company is business-to-consumer or (B2C), it's likely that the goal of your digital marketing
efforts is to attract potential leads to your website and have them become customers without ever
needing to speak to a salesperson. For that reason, you're probably less likely to focus on 'leads' in
their traditional sense.
Instead, you're more likely to focus on building an accelerated buyer's journey from the moment
someone visits your website, to the moment they make a purchase. This will often mean that the key
features of your product or services are highlighted closer to the beginning of the customer's buyer
journey, than they would be for a B2B business.
For B2C companies, channels like Instagram and Pinterest and can often be more valuable than
business-focused platforms like LinkedIn.
Now, the kind of content you create depends on your audience's needs at different stages in the
buyer's journey. You should start by creating buyer personas to identify what your audience's goals
and challenges are in relation to your business. Your online content should then aim to help your
audience meet those goals and overcome their challenges.
Next, you'll need to think about when your audience is most likely to be ready to consume your
content, depending on the stage of the buyer's journey they're in.
With content mapping, the goal is to target content according to: one, the characteristics of the person
who will be consuming it (that's where buyer personas come in) and two, how close that person is to
making a purchase (i.e., their lifecycle stage).
In terms of the format of your content, there are a lot of different things to try. Here are some options
HubSpot recommends using at each stage of the buyer's journey.
During the awareness stage, it’s effective to use:
Infographics. These are very shareable, meaning they increase your chances of being found through
social media when others share your content.
You can also use short videos. Again, these are also very shareable and can help your brand be seen
by new audiences by hosting them on platforms like YouTube.
During the consideration stage, think about using:
eBooks. eBooks are beneficial for lead generation since they're usually more comprehensive than a
blog post or infographic. Typically, this means that someone is more likely to exchange their contact
information to receive it.
You could also try free samples. A free sample is another example of content or an offer that overlaps
between buyer's journey stages.
Consider this: An individual wants to paint the inside of their home, but they don't know what color.
As they consider which color (the solution), they pick up paint chip cards from their hardware store.
These cards are created by a provider based on their individual solution. When the individual falls in
love with a color, they already know who the provider is that makes it.
And no buyer’s journey would be complete without webinars. As they're a more detailed, interactive
form of video content, webinars are an effective content format, as they're more comprehensive than a
blog post or short video. A webinar can be prerecorded or streamed live, and this opens tons of
possibilities to disseminate information to an audience who wants more visual and auditory content.
Finally, here’s some format recommendations for your decision stage.
First up, case studies. Having detailed case studies on your website can be an effective form of
content for those who are ready to make a purchasing decision. Why? Case studies actively compare
solutions and providers and showcase how your product or service in particular can help your visitors
solve a problem they're experiencing. A good case study will appeal to the emotions and logic of the
persona by providing detailed information and quantitative data on the final solution.
During the decision stage, think about also using testimonials. Particularly if case studies aren't a
good fit for your business, having short testimonials throughout your website can be a great way to
leverage social proof. This might come from a customer's photo on social media showcasing your
product and using a branded hashtag in their caption.
Now, this can feel like a lot of different options. So, let’s look at some examples of companies using
different types of branded content in their digital marketing strategies to reach and delight their
audiences.
GoPro is famous for its unique point-of-view style video footage, all filmed from the company's
fisheye lens. What you might not know is that so much of the video content you see on GoPro's
YouTube channel wasn't made by GoPro — rather, it's created by their loyal customers.
By populating their YouTube channel with user-made video content, GoPro has encouraged their
fanbase to capture their footage and adventures, and then post it online (crediting the GoPro product
for their footage and experience). This ongoing digital marketing campaign has championed the use of
video to spread the word about GoPro's product line, along with creating a community of loyal
customers and fans.
Then there’s Delta Airlines. Delta Airlines is a prolific user of social media, specifically on Twitter.
The brand uses the platform to engage potential passengers in a variety of ways that are both timely
and emotionally stimulating.
For example, in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the company shared personal stories from
Delta employees with their audience on Twitter.
This type of Twitter strategy promotes loyalty, positive brand awareness, and gives prospective and
current customers an idea of what Delta cares about and stands for.
Let’s look at another example. Mastercard bases its brand on the stories and adventures that
cardholders experience.
But what good is a travel-based brand without a travel-based digital marketing campaign to go with
it?
Priceless Cities, Mastercard's travel blog, is a resource that showcases how existing customers use
their different credit cards to help them pay for their trips. This creates a direct connection between
what Mastercard brands itself as and what customers actually perceive. It also allows the company to
better align with the things their customers invest in, as well as the places their customers travel to.
Finally, let’s check in with Red Bull.
Red Bull has become well-known for the sponsorship of extreme sports, not just the energy drink they
sell. Instead of creating digital content related to the energy drink, Red Bull captures its audience with
articles and videos about the latest news in the extreme sports community.
In this way, Red Bull has proved that what you sell isn't always the main or ideal focus for your
content strategy.
In this way, Red Bull has proved that what you sell isn't always the main or ideal focus for your
content strategy. Rather, it can be significantly more valuable to tailor a campaign to the lifestyle your
customers live or want to be associated with. This shows the company not only understands their
target buyer personas but caters their content completely to them.
Now, keep in mind, these are just examples to get the inspirational juices flowing! Depending on your
organization mission and brand, services, and products, what digital marketing will look like for you
in practice could be completely different. You can be as creative as your audience demands.
Video: Implementing Your Digital Marketing Strategy
In practice there are four key steps to implementing a digital marketing strategy at your organization.
They include:
 build your buyer personas

 identify your goals and the digital marketing tools you'll need
 evaluate your existing digital channels and assets, and finally,
 plan your campaigns.
Let’s dive into each of these in a little more detail. First, you need to build your buyer
personas.
For any marketing strategy — digital or not — you need to know who you're marketing to.
The best digital marketing strategies are built upon detailed buyer personas, and your first
step is to create them.
What are buyer personas?

Semi-fictional representations of your ideal customer(s) that can be created by researching,
surveying, and interviewing your business's target audience
Keep in mind, this information should be based upon real data whenever possible.
That's because making assumptions about your audience can cause your marketing strategy to
move in the wrong direction.
To get a full idea of your buyer persona, your research pool should include a mixture of
customers, prospects, and people outside your contacts database who align with your target
audience.
Need some help creating and tracking your buyer personas? Look no further! Here's a couple
recommended tools.
If you’re just starting out, try the Map My Persona tool. Use this interactive webpage to create
professional, customizable buyer personas in minutes with the help of HubSpot’s intuitive
free generator.
If your already experienced with the concept of personas, use the HubSpot Persona Template,
to help you easily organize your research as you create your very own buyer personas.
Finally, keep track of all the great research and brainstorming you’ve done directly in your
HubSpot account using the HubSpot Buyer Persona Tool.
After building your personas, your next step is to identify your goals and the digital marketing
tools you'll need.
Your marketing goals should always have a direct connection to the fundamental goals of
your business.
For example, if your business's goal is to increase online revenue by 20%. To help contribute to that
success, your marketing goal might be to generate 50% more leads through your website than the
previous year.
Looking for tools to set effective marketing goals? Look no further! First up, is the HubSpot
Marketing Plan Template. Use this high-level marketing plan template to outline your annual
marketing strategy, identify top priorities, and more.
Next, try the Inbound Goal Calculator. This editable pdf is used by HubSpot consultants helping
companies set up their inbound strategies. Use it as a template to add tangible numbers to the goals
you set.
Both resources are in the resources tab of this video.

So, you’re well on the way to determining your marketing goals, now it’s time to get critical with
your actual marketing tools. How?
When determining if a marketing tool is right for you, use the following factors to guide your
evaluation process and help you make the best purchase decision:
User Interface: Consider how simple or overwhelming the platform's user interface is designed.
Many, if not all platforms will claim they have an intuitive and easy-to-use platform — but this isn't
always the case.
To determine whether the platform's user interface will be easy for you to learn, ask for a demo.
Features & Native Integrations: Each marketing automation platform will offer different features, so
make sure you're choosing a platform that has the capabilities you need. It's also important to consider
the existing technology you already have.
Customer Support: When starting on a new and unfamiliar system, you'll want to receive the best help
possible. It's important to recognize that technology isn't perfect and that things may break. Having
that extra help to resolve your unique issue can be critical.
Learning Resources: When purchasing a new marketing automation tool, having online resources
available can help you get the most out of your new system. Some platforms have guides, how-to
videos, or even webinars that can help you learn how to use the tool.
Userbase & Reviews: Although choosing the right platform for your e-commerce business depends on
your company's personal needs and goals, you'll want to understand how other users of the tool are
making the most of it. Look for case studies or video testimonials that showcase existing customers
speaking about their experiences.
After identifying your goals and toolset, your next step is to evaluate your existing digital channels
and assets.
When reviewing your existing digital marketing channels and assets to determine what to incorporate
in your strategy, it's helpful to first consider the big picture — this will prevent you from feeling
overwhelmed or confused.
Gather what you have and categorize each vehicle or asset in a spreadsheet. That way you have a clear
understanding of your existing owned, earned, and paid media.
To do this effectively, use the owned, earned, and paid media framework to categorize the digital
"vehicles", assets, or channels you're already using and decide what's a good fit for your strategy.
Those terms may sound familiar, but let’s review each to make sure we’re all on the same page. So,
what is owned media?
Owned media refers to the digital assets your brand or company owns — whether that's your website,
social media profiles, blog content, or imagery. These are the owned channels that your business has
complete control over.
Owned media can also include some off-site content you created that isn't hosted on your website
(e.g., a blog you published on Medium).
Then, what is earned media?
Earned media refers to the exposure you earn through word-of-mouth marketing. Whether that's
content you've distributed on other websites (e.g., guest blog posts), PR work you've been curating, or
the customer experience you've delivered. Earned media is the recognition you receive because of
these efforts.
You can earn media by obtaining mentions in the news and positive reviews, as well as by people
sharing your content through their networks or social media channels.
Finally, what is paid media?
Paid media refers to any vehicle or channel you finance to catch the attention of your buyer personas.
This includes things like Google Ads, paid social media posts, native advertising (e.g., sponsored
posts on other websites), or any other medium through which you pay in exchange for increased
visibility.
Keep in mind, content can be repurposed into different types of media.
Let's say you have an owned piece of content on a landing page that's been created to help you
generate leads. You know you want to incorporate different parts of the framework rather than just
working with owned, earned, or paid media alone.
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To amplify the number of leads the content generates, you try to ensure it’s shareable, so your
audience can distribute it through their social media profiles. In return, this increases traffic to your
landing page. This is the earned media component. To support your content's success, you might post
about the content on your Facebook page and pay to have it seen by more people in your target
audience.
This is how the three parts of the framework can work together — although, it's not necessary for
success.
For instance, if your owned and earned media are already both successful, you might not need to
invest in paid. So, evaluate the best solution to help you meet your goal and then incorporate the
channels that work best for your business into your digital marketing strategy. Now that you know
what's already being used, you can start to think about what to keep and what to cut. Which is where
campaign planning comes in.
Last, but certainly, not least, the last step in creating a digital marketing strategy is to plan your
campaigns.
At the heart of digital marketing is content.
Content helps convert your website visitors into leads and customers while improving your brand's
online presence. And when this content is search engine optimized (SEO), it can boost your search
and organic traffic.
To start, decide what content will help you reach your goals. A great place to start is by performing a
content audit. How? Make a list of your existing owned content and rank each item according to what
has previously performed best in relation to your current goals.
For example, if your goal is lead generation, rank your content according to which pieces generated
the most leads over the last year (such as a blog post, eBook, or site page). The idea here is to figure
out what's currently working and what's not, so you can set yourself up for success when planning
future content.
Next, audit your earned media campaigns.
Evaluating your past earned media against your current goals can help you get an idea of where to
focus your time. Look at where your traffic and leads are coming from (if that's your goal) and rank
each earned media source from most effective to least effective.
You can obtain this information using resources like HubSpot's Analytics Tool.
You may find a particular article you contributed to the industry press drove a lot of qualified traffic
to your website, which boosted conversions. Or you may discover LinkedIn is where you see most
people sharing your content, which increased traffic.
The idea is to build a picture of what types of earned media will help you reach your goals (and which
won't, based on historical data).
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The idea is to build a picture of what types of earned media will help you reach your goals (and what
won't) based on historical data. However, if there's something new you want to experiment with, don't
negate it just because it's never been done before.
Finally, audit your paid media.

This process involves much of the same process: You need to evaluate your existing paid media
across each platform (e.g., Google Ads, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to determine what's most likely to
help you meet your current goals.
Why audit your paid media campaigns?
If you've spent a lot of money on Google Ads and haven't seen the results you'd hoped for, maybe it's
time to refine your approach, or stop it altogether and focus on another platform that seems to be
yielding better results. By the end of the process, you should have a clear idea of which paid media
platforms you want to continue using, and which (if any) you'd like to remove from your strategy.
Once each audit is complete, identify any gaps in the content you have, always keeping your buyer
persona top of mind.
For example, say you run a math tutoring company.
You know through research that a major challenge for your personas is finding effective ways to
study — and you don't currently have content that speaks to that concern — create some. By looking
at your content audit, you might discover that eBooks hosted on a certain type of landing page convert
well (better than webinars, for example).
In the case of this math tutoring company, you might make the decision to add an eBook about "how
to make studying more effective" to your content creation plans.
From there, you can start to develop your content creation plan.
Based on your findings and the gaps you've identified, make a content creation plan outlining the
content that's necessary to help you hit your goals.
A content creation plan should include a title, the content format, the goal, the planned promotional
channels, notes on why you're creating the content, as well as priority level of the content.
Your content creation plan can be a simple spreadsheet.
It should also include budget information if you're planning to outsource the content creation, or a
time estimate if you're producing it yourself.
Now, those four steps certainly pack a punch. With that in mind, let’s close out the video with some
key takeaways.
12
 When implementing a digital marketing strategy, you need to: build your buyer personas,
identify your goals and the digital marketing tools you'll need, evaluate your existing digital
channels and assets, plan your campaigns.
 Your content will likely be a mixture of owned, earned, and paid media. You'll want to make
sure to audit for each before kicking off a new digital marketing campaign.
As always, check out the additional resources of this lesson for templates and resources on
each of these steps.
13

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Transcript: Creating Quality Blog Content that Your Audience Loves to Read

Video 1: Why blog post structure matters

Video 2: How to choose a topic and a title for a blog post

When picking your ideas to write about, do keyword research.

Now, let’s talk about creating a title.

Start by creating a working title for your blog post.

1. The ideal blog post title length is 60 characters.

And what about the rest of your blog post?

Video 4: How to optimize a blog post

Let’s start with the URL.

Moving on to image alt-text.

Next up is your meta description.

And lastly, insert links strategically throughout your post.

Video 5: What are some effective blog writing tips?

First, use contractions.

Next, write with simple language.

Consider this sentence:

We can relay the same message by simply stating:

Next, use the active voice.

It immediately gets the point across in a way that’s relatable.

Next, use short sentences and paragraphs.

Next, cut fluffy words from your writing.

Next, use “you” and “your” in your writing.

Here’s an example of what this sounds like:

So let’s see how that sounds with a simple perspective adjustment:

Next, avoid jargon and use acronyms sparingly.

Did you get that? Probably not. Next, don’t be snarky.

And lastly, use spell check.

Transcript: Learn How to Create a Successful Video Marketing Strategy

Video 1: Why should you create engaging videos?

Let that sink in for a minute.

Transcript: Learn How to Create a Successful Video Marketing Strategy

spends on this page is five minutes.

Video 2: How to use video throughout the inbound methodology

Transcript: Learn How to Create a Successful Video Marketing Strategy

a meaningful and memorable experience.

Examples of videos in the attract stage include:

Short social videos that show off your brand's personality;

Brand films that share your values and mission;

stage, which is generally a function of marketing and sales.

A webinar filled with tactical advice;

Product demos sent via email;

Landing page promotional videos;

could be a more thorough breakdown of how to create a long-term blogging strategy.

in ways a product description never could.

Transcript: Learn How to Create a Successful Video Marketing Strategy

Testimonials of customers with relatable stories;

In-depth product demos;

Culture videos that sell viewers on your quality of service;

the room with them.

Examples of videos in the "delight" stage include:

A thank you video in an email welcoming them into the community;

Transcript: Learn How to Create a Successful Video Marketing Strategy

Video 3: Tips for getting started with video marketing

Create goals for each video.

 Brand moment: Wipster mission and office expansion in the US

and obsession with LaCroix Determine topics for videos.

Transcript: Learn How to Create a Successful Video Marketing Strategy

 To create an ongoing relationship with your audience and establish credibility.

Own the video process at your business.