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Instagram Questions: 16 Ways to Boost Story Engagement

Instagram Marketing
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Instagram Questions: 16 Ways to Boost Story Engagement Instagram is a powerful channel for businesses to reach a larger audience — in fact, approximately 80% of the platform's one billion users follow at least one business on Instagram. If your brand is on Instagram, you need to be communicating and engaging with your audience, and Instagram Questions can help you do just that. Introduced in 2018, Questions Sticker found within Instagram stories is a feature that makes it easier than ever to engage with, and receive feedback from, your followers. Here, we're going to explore 15 creative ways to use Instagram's Questions Sticker to engage with your followers. But first, let's review how to use it. Table of Contents: How to Use Instagram’s Questions Sticker Instagram Story Questions Ideas How to Use Instagram's Questions Sticker 1. Go to your Stories feature, and either upload a photo or take one (I took one within the Stories feature of my pizza box). Then, click the square smiley face in the top right of your screen. 2. Click the "Questions" module. 3. The default for the Questions Sticker is "Ask me a question" but you can click the text to type a customized question — for instance, I typed "I love this pizza place! What's everyone's favorite pizza toppings?" Once you're done, add filters or any other features you'd like to include. When you're ready to post, click "Send...

Podcast Equipment You Need to Take Your Show from Good to Great in 2022

How to Podcast
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Podcast Equipment You Need to Take Your Show from Good to Great in 2022 Want to start podcasting, but feel intimidated by the podcast equipment you’ll need? Don’t be! Professional-sounding podcast equipment is more accessible than ever.  With 26% of adults listening to podcasts weekly, the production quality of your show is important. In order to build a successful podcast, you need the right tools and services at your disposal. Let's review the top podcast tools and services to make your production more efficient and professional. Below, we'll break down the tools and services into four categories: podcast recording equipment, podcast recording software, podcast editing software, and podcast hosting sites. Podcast Equipment To take your podcast show from good to great this year, you need to have the right equipment. 1. USB or XLR Microphone The first thing you need to record your podcast is a microphone. The two most popular options are USB microphones and XLR microphones.  USB microphones can connect directly to your computer via a USB cable. They are easy to use and require minimal setup.  If you’re looking to have a bit more control over your audio, you can opt for an XLR microphone and cable for higher sound quality. A popular podcasting microphone that allows for both USB and XLR connection is the Audiotechnica ATR2100 microphone. The RODE PodMic is a cost-effective XLR microphone that gives studio-quality sound. 2. Audio Interface For those...

5 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Launching a Digital Advocacy Campaign

Nonprofit Marketing
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5 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Launching a Digital Advocacy Campaign Digital advocacy efforts are vital for enabling nonprofit organizations to cut through the noise and win campaigns. Without digital advocacy, it can be difficult to measure the success of your campaigns — or even know if you're winning, at all. In fact, 94% of advocacy campaigners believe the opposing side is winning, and 86% believe they should embrace more impactful tactics. It is time we step up our digital advocacy efforts. Whether you're a seasoned campaigner looking to go back to basics or are completely new to digital organizing and don't know where to start — you're in the right place. Here, let's explore five questions you'll want to ask when starting a digital advocacy campaign. 5 Questions to Ask for a Successful Digital Advocacy Campaign 1. What is your goal? Before starting any digital campaign, it's important to understand what you're trying to achieve.  Think about what you want to accomplish. Do you want to turn the tides on a policy decision currently on the table? Do you want to help de-stigmatize an issue in your community? Do you want to mobilize your supporters to publicly support your issue ahead of an upcoming election? Marshall Ganz is a scholar at Harvard and activist who has studied powerful movements and what led to their success. Through his research he found a framework for setting goals. Ganz determined that effective campaign goals should: Be measurable and tangible to improve...

Should You Pay a PR Firm? [+PR Tactics You Can Manage In-House]

Public Relations
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Should You Pay a PR Firm? It's a question almost every fast-growing company runs into: should we hire a PR firm or build an in-house team? And if you wrestle with this question long enough, it quickly spirals into an endless back-and-forth ("on the other hand…"). The truth is, depending on your specific goals, resources, and budget, one path may make more sense than the other. We've rounded up some helpful advice from PR pros at HubSpot to help you make the right call. Let's dive into the key benefits and drawbacks of hiring an agency, explore how to make the right decision for your business, and cover five PR tasks you can manage in-house. Reasons to Hire a PR Firm 1. You know what you want. Hiring a firm without knowing what you want is like driving to a new destination without a map. Chances are, you'll get lost — quickly. "Hiring a PR firm can be a significant investment, so before doing so, you need to be clear about your goals and what you're hoping to achieve through PR," advises Ellie Flanagan, Manager of Product & Corporate Communications at HubSpot. Your goals are your compass. They influence your budget, timeline, and even the tactics you want to employ. Just as importantly, they give you a clear picture of what you need from an agency. 2. You're ready to "feed the PR machine." PR is not a "set it and forget it" activity — even if you...

Calculating Correlation in Excel: Your How-To Guide

Excel
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Calculating Correlation in Excel: Your How-To Guide Microsoft Excel lets you do more than simply create spreadsheets — you can also use the software to calculate key functions, such as the relationship between two variables. Known as the correlation coefficient, this metric is useful for measuring the impact of one operation on another to inform business operations. Not confident in your Excel skills? No problem. Here’s how to calculate — and understand — the correlation coefficient in Excel. A correlation coefficient of +1 indicates a “perfect positive correlation”, which means that as variable X increases, variable Y increases at the same rate. A correlation value of -1, meanwhile, is a “perfect negative correlation”, which means that as variable X increases, variable Y decreases at the same rate. Correlation analysis may also return results anywhere between -1 and +1, which indicates that variables change at similar but not identical rates. Correlation values can help businesses evaluate the impact of specific actions on other actions. For example, companies may find that as spending on social media marketing increases, so does customer engagement, indicating that more spending might make sense. Or they may find that specific advertising campaigns result in a correlated decrease of customer engagement, in turn suggesting the need for a reevaluation of current efforts. The discovery that variables do not correlate can also be valuable; while common sense might suggest that a new function or feature in your product would correlate with increased engagement, it might have no...

A Quick Guide to Nonprofit Website Redesigns [+Best Practices]

Nonprofit Marketing
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A Quick Guide to Nonprofit Website Redesigns It's hard to overstate the importance of having a quality website for nonprofit organizations. All of an organization's outreach, marketing, and ads need to drive an audience to take action like donating, finding out about services, or signing up for information. An effective website allows these actions to happen quickly and seamlessly, making the path to conversion for any of these actions feel effortless. On the other hand, subpar websites actually distract audiences from the goals you want them to accomplish, confusing visitors with navigation that obscures the most relevant information or overloading them with too many calls-to-action. As digital marketing experts, we have a basic process we use as a guide when we start new nonprofit website projects, ensuring that the end product is clear, easy-to-use, and ultimately, effective. Let's dive in. The 6 Phases of a Successful Nonprofit Website Project 1. Discovery During the discovery phase, your project team will define its goals and understand existing strengths, opportunities for growth, and audiences. Identify Your Goals The first step in building a better website is recognizing that you need one, and determining goals for redesign efforts. Sometimes you can look at data to determine if your current site is meeting your expectations. Understand Audiences Tools such as Google Analytics can help you determine which actions or content are getting more or less traction with audiences to optimize accordingly. Implementing audience surveys can also provide insight into what parts of your website...

How to Highlight Duplicates in Google Sheets [Step-by-Step]

Google Sheets
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How to Highlight Duplicates in Google Sheets Duplicate data is the bane of spreadsheet solutions, especially at scale. Given the volume and variety of data now entered by teams, it’s possible that duplicate data in tools like Google Sheets may be relevant and necessary, or it could be a frustrating distraction from the primary purpose of spreadsheet efforts. The potential problem raises a good question: How do you highlight duplicates in Google Sheets? We’ve got you covered with a step-by-step look at how to highlight duplicates in Google Sheets, complete with images to make sure you’re on the right track when it comes to de-duplicating your data. Highlighting Duplicate Data in Google Sheets Google Sheets is a free, cloud-based alternative to proprietary spreadsheet programs and — no surprise, since it’s Google we’re dealing with — offers a host of great features to help streamline data entry, formatting, and calculations. Google Sheets has all the familiar functions: File, Edit, View, Format, Data, Tools, etc. and makes it easy to quickly enter your data, add formulas for calculations, and discover key relationships. What Sheets doesn’t have, however, is an easy way to find and highlight duplicates. While other spreadsheet tools, such as Excel, have built-in conditional formatting tools that can pinpoint duplicate data in your sheet, Google’s solution requires a little more manual effort. Step-by-Step: How to Highlight Duplicates in Google Sheets (With Pictures) So how do you automatically highlight duplicates in Google Sheets? While there’s no built-in...

The Top Video Marketing Tactics Brands are Investing In [+Which Are Losing Steam]

Video Marketing, Youtube Marketing
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The Top Video Marketing Tactics Brands are Investing In Video marketing is becoming more and more integral to a brand's success. If you're a marketer trying to craft the best video marketing strategy for your brand, it helps to know the top video marketing tactics brands are investing their time and money in. Fortunately, the HubSpot Blog recently surveyed over 500 marketers across the globe about their video marketing tactics, what seems to be working, and which tactics are worth reconsidering. Most Used Video Marketing Tactics Here is a breakdown of the kinds of videos and platforms marketers are continuing to leverage and why: Short-Form Video In our survey, we found short-form video leads in usage with it being leveraged by 58% of marketers. Short-form videos also lead on ROI, engagement, and lead generation. Nearly half (46%) of marketers will plan to use short-form videos for the first time in 2022 and 36% will invest in short-form videos more than any other format. These numbers aren't surprising when you consider short-form videos are more likely to go viral, according to 47% of video marketers. Long-Form Video Long-form videos come in second when it comes to usage with 37% of marketers leveraging the format. This format also places second in terms of ROI, lead generation, and engagement. According to our survey, 36% of marketers plan to leverage long-form videos for the first time in 2022, and 18% will invest in the format more than any other kind...