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What are Instagram Guides? [+ How to Create One]

Instagram Marketing
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What are Instagram Guides? If you're on Spotify, chances are you've curated a playlist with all your favorite songs — and rearranged them in a specific order. But did you know you can do something similar on Instagram? Enter the Instagram Guide — a tool that allows you to curate your favorite Instagram posts, Reels, or Lives in one location, which you can share with your community. For marketers, it's a great way to revive old content, promote products, and introduce your brand. Let's take a closer look at Instagram Guides, how you can leverage them in your marketing strategy, and how to make one in six steps. What is an Instagram Guide? In short, an Instagram Guide is a collection of posts, Reels, or Lives — either from your own feed or from others. Image Source All guides revolve around a single topic, story, or idea. For instance, you could create a gift guide, product round-up, or exercise routine — but more on that later. Once you create a guide, it will live under a public tab in your profile that users can visit anytime. You can also share it to your Instagram Story for more visibility. There are three types of guides on Instagram — places, products, and posts. Places is for sharing travel-related or location-specific content. For instance, you could share your road trip itinerary or your favorite coffee shops in X location.Example: The Most Instagrammable Places in Phoenix. Products...

Partnering with Kanarys to Support the Future of Diversity, Equity and Belonging

Company News
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Partnering with Kanarys to Support the Future of Diversity, Equity and Belonging HubSpot’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) best practices has played an essential role in our success and we know that it can for all companies in the HubSpot community. We’re seeking to help our customers achieve their best performance through adopting these practices too. Our commitment to DEI helped us foster a culture that prizes a range of ideas from people with an array of experiences and backgrounds. We invested innumerable people hours, hired professionals, and sought world-class expertise to identify the DEI best practices, implement them and measure their success. Although there’s no finish line for this work, that massive effort has supported our company’s growth trajectory through talent acquisition, employee retention, and workplace culture. We recognize that not all companies have the resources to make an equivalent investment, but all companies in the HubSpot community can make DEI a sustained advantage. We asked, shouldn’t it be easier for companies to identify and adopt DEI best practices and measure their success? This increasingly common challenge faced by companies of all sizes is why HubSpot Ventures is excited to announce our investment in and partnership with Kanarys, a DEI technology company focused on providing the tools that organizations need to create long-term systemic change around DEI. Kanarys utilizes human resource information systems integrations and artificial intelligence (AI) powered assessments to gather the data organizations need to meet DEI challenges head-on. Knowing where to start is...

The HubSpot Blog’s 2022 Content & Media Strategy Report [Data]

Content Planning
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The HubSpot Blog’s 2022 Content & Media Strategy Report Benjamin Franklin once said “Failing to plan is planning to fail,” and when it comes to content and media, truer words have never been spoken. Until 2020, that is. But, although 2020 saw some of the most unprecedented global events, 2021 continued to put content and media teams to the test. In fact, 99% of content planners, strategists, or marketers who have ever pivoted their strategy say some of their pivots happened in 2021. Unsurprisingly, the #1 reason they gave for this was the global pandemic. To make matters more complicated, 39% of those who pivoted in 2021 changed their content plan a whopping three times throughout the year. Despite all that turbulence, 62% of media planners say their content performed better than their goals in 2021. And, if anything, 2020 and 2021 taught marketing teams how important content planning and re-planning is. To get a sense of how marketers planned or pivoted their way through such an unpredictable year and how they will approach media planning in 2022, we surveyed 600+ media planners to gather data on their goals, strategies, the tools they use, and how they met the unique challenges of 2021. Curious about some strategies and insights specifically? Click below to jump to the section you'd like to read first. The Top Goals of Marketing Media and Content Planners Content and Media Planning Strategies Which Channels Marketers Use In Their...

The Ultimate Guide to Building a Website Redesign Strategy

Content Management System, Website Redesign
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The Ultimate Guide to Building a Website Redesign Strategy So, you want to start a website redesign. Maybe you just finished a brand overhaul or your product was recently updated. Whatever your reason, a redesign can be a huge success — or not. It can also be a long and tedious undertaking, which is why every redesign needs to start with a clear vision and/or problem to solve. The better you are at defining that vision at the very beginning, the more successful your redesign will be — and the smoother the entire process will be as well. Whether you’re working with an agency, redesigning your site in-house, or proposing a redesign to company stakeholders, this guide has tips to help you strategize your website redesign and ensure it turns out to be a huge success — not a flop. Many organizations opt to redesign their website to welcome more traffic as their business grows. Others invest in a website redesign as part of a larger rebranding initiative. Regardless of why your company is interested in a website redesign plan, the project itself is a massive undertaking, not to mention an important one to get right considering the critical role your website plays in your marketing and brand image. In fact, new research has found that 50% of consumers think website design is crucial to a business’s overall brand. To many visitors, the website you publish is just as important as the products you sell....

How to Build Your Brand With Instagram: 11 Tried-and-True Strategies

Instagram Marketing
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How to Build Your Brand With Instagram: 11 Tried-and-True Strategies Instagram has demonstrated tremendous growth, with its community reaching over 2 billion monthly users in 2021. Despite its impressive reach, many business owners are still overlooking its marketing potential. As a result, they're leaving high levels of engagement, brand awareness, and even profit on the table. But why? In just 12 months, we used Instagram to gain 400,000 followers for Foundr -- which translated to over 70,000 email subscribers. At the end of that period, we were averaging 30,000 call-to-action clicks per month from Instagram, and converting 30% of the users who landed on our website from our Instagram page into email subscribers. We've seen it work, now it's time for you to get in on the action. In this article, we’ll show you how to build your brand with Instagram. (If you're looking for more marketing tools and resources for your new business, check out our comprehensive guide on how to start a business.) 1. Build an Instagram strategy. We listed this as the first step because it is the most crucial step in building a brand on Instagram. If you lack a clear strategy, you’ll end up with low-performing content and a scattered feed as you struggle to brainstorm new ideas. To build your Instagram strategy, you’ll need to do four things: Determine your goals. Narrow down your target audience. Research your competition. Develop your...

How to Use the If Function in Google Sheets

Google Sheets
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How to Use the If Function in Google Sheets One of the most valuable functions in Google Sheets is the "IF" functions. Imagine you want to be able to quickly scan your spreadsheet and answer some key questions. This function will help you do that. Let’s jump into how it works and see some real-life examples. What does the if function do in Google Sheets? In Google Sheets, the if function allows you to check a condition and return a specific value if it’s TRUE. For instance, say you have three columns in a spreadsheet: channel, target, and profit. You want to know which channels hit a profit higher than the target. You can use the IF function to do so – the formula logic would look like this: If the target is higher than the profit, it will return "YES." If not, it will return a "NO." You can then track that data in another column titled "Goal Met." How to Use If Function in Google Sheets When using the if function in Google Sheets, you must use the following syntax: IF(logical_expression, value_if_true,value_if_false) Let’s break down what each one means: Logical expression refers to the condition you’re checking in the function. Value if true is the value the function will return if the logical expression is true. Value if false is the value the function will return if the logical expression is false. To do this, you’ll need to use the following logical...

How to Share Your Strengths and Weaknesses During A Job Interview

Leadership
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How to Share Your Strengths and Weaknesses During A Job Interview You’re sitting across from a hiring manager, or even worse, a group of people interviewing you for a role, and the dreaded question comes up… "What are your weaknesses?" You spend what seems like an eternity battling inside your own head, "Do I tell them I’m occasionally late or that I take things too personally?" before settling on a response that makes you groan: "I just care too much and I work too hard." While that question isn’t likely to be left off the interview checklist anytime soon, you know it’s likely coming and can spend some time in self-reflection before your next interview, so you can answer it truthfully and respectfully. Its sister question, "What are your strengths" is coming as well, so it’s best to be prepared ahead of time. What are strengths and weaknesses? Strengths are a set of skills or character traits you possess that assist you in carrying out your duties in a productive and efficient manner and make you an excellent candidate for a job. Weaknesses are characteristics or shortcomings that when left unchecked, may hamper your ability to do your job well. It can be difficult to toot your own horn during an interview. Even more challenging, is finding a balance between being honest about some of your shortcomings, without turning the hiring manager off to the idea of hiring you. Take some time before each interview (and ideally before you...

Brand Strategy 101: 7 Important Elements of a Company Branding Plan

Brand Building
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Brand Strategy 101: 7 Important Elements of a Company Branding Plan Just as an architect draws out a building plan before they start building, you need to develop a brand strategy for your business. Strategic branding helps you set yourself apart from your competition and build customer loyalty. In this article, you’ll learn all about the branding methods and essential elements of a branding strategy you need to grow a brand that’ll stand the test of time. (We'll get into that more in a bit.) A well-defined and executed brand strategy affects all aspects of a business and is directly connected to consumer needs, emotions, and competitive environments. First, let's clear up the biggest misconception about brand strategy: Your brand is not solely your product, your logo, your website, or your name. Your brand is all of that and more — it's the stuff that feels intangible. Your brand is that hard-to-pin-down feeling that separates powerhouse brands from forgettable brands. To objectively understand a subjective matter that many marketers consider more of an art and less of a science, we've broken down seven essential components of a comprehensive brand strategy that will help keep your company relevant for decades. The elements of a brand strategy include: 1. Purpose While understanding what your business promises is necessary when defining your brand positioning, knowing why you wake up every day and go to work carries more weight. In other...

11 Website Page Load Time Statistics You Need [+ How to Increase Conversion Rate]

Website Performance
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11 Website Page Load Time Statistics You Need You may have heard the old saying "patience is a virtue," meaning waiting for something without getting discouraged is a great quality to have. However, for most of us, that "virtue" goes out the window when we encounter slow page load time. The faster your website's load time is, the happier your visitors will be. In other words — when you optimize your web page's load time, you can expect to see improvements in user experience (UX), conversion rates, and ultimately, sales revenue. You may be questioning whether or not simply shaving a few milliseconds off of your website's page load time really has such a major impact on customer experience and business growth. The truth is, yes, the longer it takes for your website’s page to load, the more likely you are to lose your audience. Read on for everything you need to know about website load time and how it can impact your customers’ experience with your company. Short on time and need to get straight to the skimmable stats? Click here. What is website load time? Website load time — or web page load time — refers to how long it takes for a website, or web page, to fully load and appear on screen. This includes all content on the page such as text, images, and videos. Simply, it's how fast all content on a web page loads. Page speed can depend on a number...