The formula? Purchase a stake in a business with potential, then deploy your considerable content marketing skills.
If you know about Mint Mobile, it’s probably because of Ryan Reynolds. The upstart wireless brand, for which Reynolds serves as the personality in the company’s TV and social media ads (and whose advertising agency, Maximum Effort, created those ads), was just sold to T-Mobile in a deal valued at up to $1.35 billion.
T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert touted the benefits of Mint’s “marketing formula,” saying, “Over the long-term, we’ll also benefit from applying the marketing formula Mint has become famous for across more parts of T-Mobile.”
If you’re keeping score, according to The Wall Street Journal Reynolds owns approximately 25 percent of Mint Mobile, which makes his share worth a cool $300 million.
That’s not the first time Reynolds has cashed in on his marketing skills. In 2018, he purchased a stake and used a similar marketing strategy to promote Aviation Gin, a company purchased two years later by beverage giant Diageo for over $600 million.
While Reynolds’s share of Aviation Gin isn’t public knowledge, even if Reynolds “only” took a 10 percent stake, that’s $60 million for a couple of years’ worth of developing and delivering extremely creative — and clearly effective — ad campaigns.
And then there’s Wrexham AFC. In late 2020, Reynolds and Rob McElhenney paid two million pounds to purchase a fifth-division Welsh soccer team that for 15 years had failed to earn promotion. Their marketing chops, best exemplified by the Hulu documentary Welcome to Wrexham, brought global attention, increased the club’s social presence by nearly 1,000 percent, boosted merchandise sales (a major percentage of which come from overseas), and caused the team to average the highest home match attendance in its division.
Add it all up, and Reynolds isn’t just a gifted marketer. He’s clearly also a savvy investor.
Or maybe the two go hand in hand. As Dharmesh Shah, the co-founder of HubSpot, says:
Although it is still possible to blast the world with your message and offering, and try to interrupt your way into people’s lives with your marketing, that’s the most expensive way to do it. The cheaper and better way is to tell a story or share something helpful and useful: that’s the power of content marketing.
For Reynolds, that means replacing spectacle — big budgets, lots of special effects, etc. — with character. Small budgets, tight timelines, simple sets, timely premises.
Something like this:
Or like this (note Wrexham and Aviation Gin make brief appearances):
The marketing budget for the first Deadpool was relatively bare bones, so Reynolds focused on creating content that audiences would not only consume but would also be eager to share. Inside jokes, offbeat humor, clever trailers — the marketing for Deadpool substituted personality for spectacle, and creativity for massive spending.
Unsurprisingly, since HubSpot is now a $19 billion-plus company, Reynolds’s marketing approach dovetails nicely with Dharmesh’s perspective on inbound marketing.
And so should yours.
1. You absolutely must market.
You may be tempted to ignore marketing, especially when you’re consumed with developing a product people will love. Still: Without marketing, who will ever know your product exists? Great marketing helps you find people to love what you do.
If you don’t plan to invest in marketing, don’t invest in building a business.
2. Your marketing should service a need.
No one wakes up thinking, “Gee, I hope I get spammed today.” As Shah says, 95 percent of people don’t like being interrupted, and the other 5 percent hate being interrupted.
The best marketing is based on doing what you do best: helping customers. The best marketing is based on creating content that is useful for potential customers. That’s the essence of inbound marketing: helpful, informative, etc. content that draws people to you.
Even if “helpful” just means “entertaining,” since we could all use a little more fun in our lives. (Think the people who share Aviation Gin or Mint Mobile ads do so because they think their connections are seeking a new gin brand or wireless provider? Yeah, no.)
3. But don’t try to spend your way to customer awareness.
You won’t win by shouting louder, placing bigger ads, or buying a bigger booth at the trade show. You can’t buy attention; you can only rent it. Advertising is always temporary — when you stop paying the “rent,” you stop getting any attention.
Besides, well-heeled competitors have more money and can spend money way more stupidly. So let them.
As a startup, your goal is to use marketing tools and strategies that create leverage. You need to receive disproportionate, long-term return on your marketing investments.
That’s the only way you will survive, and later thrive.
4. Don’t think of yourself as an owner or a marketer. You’re both.
In the early years, everyone in the company should be selling. Everyone in the company should also be marketing.
Especially you.
No one cares more passionately about your brand. No one wants to help, and inform, and teach other people — while creating content that builds your brand and reach — more than you.
Communities have been all around us for a very long time. They’ve psychologically impacted how we look at things and make decisions.
Whether it’s family, friends, or a community based on shared hobbies, they all have one thing in ’s common — they’re either based on a shared interest or a pain point.
Internet communities replicate the same values found in real-world communities.
There Is No “I” in Success, Only “We” — The Rise of Brand Communities.
Since the global pandemic, more and more people are turning to online communities to connect, network, and exchange information. And this includes brand communities as well.
58% of the top B2B SaaS companies in the world — yes, the world — have a widely active community around their product. That’s 58 out of the 100 companies surveyed by PeerSignal. Do you know why? Because these communities work on one principle — Invite, Include, Inspire.
But, What Even is a Brand Community? According to PeerSignal, a brand community is
“a place where helpful interactions happen between people united by common interests and administered by a business with a stake in those interests.”
Powered by Users, Fuelled by Fans — Why Brand Communities Matter
The essence of what a brand creates is affiliation and identity. And as we all know, marketing is all about attracting an engaged audience interested in what you have to say and what you’re selling.
A more advanced and improved approach to doing the same is creating a community around your business.
But why?
Community-led growth has been a long time coming. Users in the fragmented SaaS market feel overwhelmed by their options and turn to influencers for help selecting tools. At the same time, the number of platforms for communication and sharing has grown.
There are more channels than ever to connect with your audience. And for your audience to connect with you.
In such a scenario, a brand community provides a familiar environment for your product users and potential customers to come together, share experiences, ask questions, and solve queries.
You could start a community on your website, Slack, LinkedIn groups, Facebook groups, Reddit, or any other channel your audience frequents.
When moderated well, a brand community will also gift you your biggest supporters and advocates, apart from your brilliant product, of course. Notion, Slack, Zapier, Ahrefs, etc., are some of the best examples of community-led business growth in the last 20 years or so.
If you’re scaling and aiming to hit a sustainable growth rate, investing in a brand community can pay off big time.
From Users to Fans to Advocates — The Compounding Returns of Building a Community
Here are 5 reasons to consider community-led marketing if you haven’t already.
Drive organic leads and shape product-market fit.
27.3% of customers rely on online communities in making purchase decisions. With a community-led marketing approach, you tap into this market. This way, not only do you increase brand engagement, but you also establish yourself as a market leader with sound industry knowledge.
You can educate and give guidance about product use. This helps you focus and customize information on relevant features and details for improved product understanding.
Initiate ‘word-of-mouth’ advocacy by letting your customers talk about you candidly.
Get a solid market share and top-of-mind brand recall. As people begin to talk about you and like your brand, you get more organic leads and brand visibility.
And Here’s What Not to Do:
Don’t rush the process. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
How Hubspot Unlocked Growth With a Community — A Visionary Tale
Let’s take the example of HubSpot — A cloud-based CRM platform for people in marketing, sales, and customer services. And how it grew its user base solely with inbound marketing and a community of advocates.
They host a community on their website, where audiences can connect with peers and access a library of educational resources. From online courses to webinars about inbound marketing, customer services, and sales, they covered it all.
These community groups are global, and they also have study groups for members to have conversations and clarify doubts. But their main strength is the Community Champions and Leaderboards.
They pick a member who has contributed quality solutions to queries posted on the community and give them a special feature. It encourages other members to participate in the community actively and know that their efforts won’t go unnoticed.
The HubSpot Academy was a resounding success as well. And supported the business in quickly broadening its user base. If you’ve come across their very popular course on Content Marketing, you know what I’m talking about.
Community-led growth gives customers a platform to thoroughly explore the product, whereas product-led growth may be what smoothly leads users through the product journey. If anything, the two growth tactics work best when combined.
I love how Pramod Rao, Co-founder of Threado, tackled the question of product-led vs community-led marketing strategy,
“When done properly, community and product-led growth together have the potential for becoming the bible for the next generation of startups. There’s too much emphasis on “one or the other” but not enough on how well they complement each other.”
As we’ve established above, there is no “I” in success. Only “us” and “we.”
Google Privacy Sandbox will change web browsing in the future by replacing cookies. Here’s a timeline for this initiative and what it all means.
Google generates hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue every year selling ads across the internet. It’s able to do so against information about you and me that’s been collected from a variety of sources – including tracking technologies like cookies. But, through its Privacy Sandbox initiative, the company wants to find new ways of collecting users’ interests without tapping into their personal information. We detail how the program has made strides while struggling with controversy all along the way.
What are cookies and why should you care?
Marketers want web surfers to click on their ads and buy what they promote. To ensure a higher likelihood of success, they gather as much information on any given user as possible through tracking technologies such as cookies.
When you visit a website, it may ask you to accept cookies that track your activity on the domain to provide continuity in your experience. If you have an account with the site and have ticked that “Remember me” box, a cookie helps it do that. These tracking cookies can also come from third parties such as affiliated marketers. By being present across millions of sites, ad networks are able to collect data about your browsing habits and even your demographic information in order to present ads you might be inclined to click on.
Privacy advocates have had longstanding concerns about cookies and other tracking technologies like tracking pixels. They note that the amounts of data these trackers generate can be used to build profiles of users, a practice called “fingerprinting”.
Enter the GDPR
Those concerns were just some of the motivations that led the European Union to update its policies about the movement of online data, eventually resulting in the adoption of the General Data Protection Regulation in 2016. The GDPR mandated that website owners be transparent about how they use trackers and allow visitors the option to turn off non-essential ones like those for marketing. The EU began enforcing the regulation in 2018.
What is Google Privacy Sandbox?
While simultaneously navigating the GDPR, Google has been battling antitrust rulings and has likely figured that disruption to its lucrative ads business. It, therefore, needs to shape the conversation moving forward and play a role – if not the leading one – in creating new standards not just for how much tracking happens but also what types of data gets netted.
In August 2019, the company debuted Privacy Sandbox with a subdued pair of corporate blog posts outlining its goals for limiting tracking activities in two major parts of the business: The ad selection process and the delivery of conversion metrics to the client. It also wanted to cut down on fraudulent behaviours from bad-faith ad buyers and redesign the separate but just-as-complex advertising regime with Android apps.
Google already had APIs in the works to address these issues and was looking for industry stakeholders to give input as well as proposals. From the outset, advocate groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation were cool to some of the solutions the ads giant had to offer, saying that its measures didn’t go far enough or were just outright flawed.
FLoC was meant to replace cookies as a way for marketers to gather intelligence about the users’ interests. With FLoC, the idea is that a user, signified through a token stored locally with the web browser, would be cycled through various “cohorts” of several thousand people featuring roughly similar browsing histories. Websites log visits from the user via their cohort token. When marketers want to sell an ad to a site visitor, they ask for the cohort number the user is in and receive interests reflected by the cohort as a whole – theoretically removing fine-level details a requesting party can pick up about any given user.
The EFF called out FLoC for having the potential to brand thousands of people at a time with a profile of behaviours and have that tied to personal information via an account login. As Google tried to adapt its way through doubts on FLoC’s efficacy, regulators in Europe were already signalling their worry about the program’s compliance with the GDPR (via Android Police).
The British government was so concerned about Google’s plans to replace cookies with FLoC that the Competition and Markets Authority compelled it to allow oversight and make other commitments regarding its plans for Privacy Sandbox. Ironically enough, the company had already pushed the timeline for integrating FLoC into Chrome multiple times before it ended up killing that idea in January 2022.
Google
New plan: Topics
As part of its suite of APIs for addressing Privacy Sandbox’s goals, it seems that Google’s replacement for FLoC (which was supposed to replace cookies) is Topics, and it’s undergoing testing on Chrome for desktop and laptop devices and Android devices as of press time.
Critics haven’t been as loud of late – though that isn’t to say they’ve been quiet – about Topics nor the other APIs in Privacy Sandbox. In addition, Google has been reporting quarterly to the CMA about changes to its various APIs. You can see the company’s pledges as well as how the regulator is gauging them in the report for Q1 2023 here.
When does Google plan to deprecate cookies?
Google currently plans to implement the Privacy Sandbox APIs with all Chrome users starting in July 2023. In the first quarter of 2024, the company will deprecate third-party cookies for one percent of Chrome’s user base. The wider population will then experience a phase-out beginning in the third quarter of that year.
Want to try the Privacy Sandbox APIs?
If you want to try the Privacy Sandbox APIs for yourself, follow these steps:
On the desktop version of Chrome, enter chrome://settings/privacySandbox into the address and switch the toggle on the page to participate in the beta trial.
On Android, hop into Chrome, enter the app’s settings, select “Privacy and security,” and then find the toggle in the “Privacy Sandbox” item.
We should note the APIs being rolled out only concern online ad processes via Chrome. Changes to advertising within Android app environments – which are a can of worms in and of themselves (and Ron Amadeo of Ars Technica argues they are pretty much ineffective) – do not have a timeline for release.
Acquiring new customers is the cornerstone of business growth, and crafting the right acquisition strategy plays an important role in achieving that goal. However, there are several reasons why these strategies may fail, from poor communication between sales and marketing teams to poor positioning and messaging.
With the right approach, you can win more customers and drive sustainable growth for your business. Below are the most common mistakes businesses make when developing their acquisition strategy and steps you can take to improve your organization’s approach.
Siloed Sales And Marketing Teams
One of the most common reasons why customer acquisition initiatives fail is because there’s a disconnect between sales and marketing. If they aren’t sharing data, it’s difficult to create an effective strategy. I’ll give you an example.
Let’s say your marketing team spends months creating targeted content for a specific persona. They invest time and money in ads, promote content on social media and drive lots of traffic to the company’s website. But when those leads convert, your sales team immediately disqualifies them.
It can be a huge problem, but the solution is very simple. Make sure these departments communicate and agree on what a “qualified” lead means so there are no unmet expectations. Also, implement a system where leads are automatically sent from marketing to sales so that nothing falls through the cracks.
Sales’ Focus On Existing Clients
Another reason why customer acquisition strategies fail is that sales teams are too focused on existing clients. It makes sense because existing clients are low-hanging fruit. They already know who you are, they already trust you, and they’re more likely to buy from you again. So why bother trying to acquire new customers?
The problem with this line of thinking is that it ignores the fact that many clients will eventually leave. It’s just a matter of time. That’s why it’s important to have a constant stream of new customers coming in the door: so that you’re never left high and dry.
How can you fix this problem? Set quotas for your sales team and create incentives for bringing in new business. Be sure to give them all the resources they need to succeed, such as access to a customer relationship management (CRM) tool or lead generation software.
Poor Positioning And Mixed Messages
If your company has expanded its products or services over time, it’s possible that your positioning and messaging are now confusing. This can make it hard for potential customers to understand what you do and why they should buy from you.
Imagine you’re a digital marketing agency that started out by offering SEO. You’ve since expanded into content marketing, paid advertising, email marketing, social media management, web design and video production—essentially, anything that fits into the “digital marketing” category.
Now when potential customers come to your website, they have no idea what you specialize in. Unclear positioning makes a company look like a jack-of-all-trades. Someone looking for SEO services will now go and hire another SEO agency that has one specific offer.
Fixing this problem is all about getting back to basics and making sure your positioning and messaging are clear and concise. Define who your ideal customer is and what problem you’re solving for them. Everything else should fall into place around that core message.
How To Improve Your Customer Acquisition Strategy
Not feeling particularly optimistic about your company’s acquisition strategy? You’re not alone. Most businesses struggle to keep up with customers’ ever-changing needs. Fortunately, there are some simple ways to improve your approach. Take the following steps:
Step 1: Make It Flexible
Your customer acquisition strategy has to be flexible, especially if you are accounting for future growth. Without the ability to adapt and change with your business, acquisition strategies just won’t cut it. Make sure that there’s enough flexibility built into your plan so that you can adapt as needed—whether it’s due to big successes or major industry disruption.
Step 2: Make It Sustainable
Good acquisition strategy can be sustained in the long term—and all too often this isn’t taken into account when businesses are making decisions. Before picking any particular path forward, ask yourself if you’ll be able to do it in five or even 10 years. Lasting success boils down to finding something that works now and keeps working in the future.
Step 3: Make It Targeted
A lot of businesses make the mistake of trying to appeal to everyone with their acquisition strategy, but this is rarely effective. Instead, it’s much better to focus on a specific target audience and tailor your plans accordingly. When you know who you’re trying to reach, you can create an acquisition strategy that’s much more likely to be successful.
Step 4: Make It Diversified
Another common mistake businesses make is putting all their eggs in one basket. This can be very risky because if something happens to that one channel, your entire acquisition strategy could come crashing down. To protect yourself against this, make sure your efforts are diversified and include multiple channels.
Improving your customer acquisition strategy doesn’t have to be complicated. With the right amount of research and effort, you can build effective strategies that will help you reach your goals and grow your business into something bigger.
Feature Image Credit: Hinterhaus Productions 2016
By Samuel Thimothy,
VP at OneIMS.com, an inbound marketing agency, and co-founder of Clickx.io, the digital marketing intelligence platform.
Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invitation-only, fee-based organization comprised of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs 45 and younger. YEC members represent nearly every industry, generate billions of dollars in revenue each year and have created tens of thousands of jobs. Learn more at yec.co. Questions about an article? Email [email protected].
Are you a small business owner looking for ways to use inbound marketing to stand out from the competition and grow your small business? Inbound marketing or organic marketing is a great way to build brand recognition and grow your small business. It is also a more cost-effective and time-efficient approach than traditional marketing methods.
In this blog post, we will discuss 7 ways to use inbound marketing to grow your small business.
Inbound marketing is all about creating content that draws people in. It involves creating content that is relevant to your target audience and providing them with valuable information. It is also important to be creative and think outside the box.
You need to create content that will grab people’s attention and make them want to learn more about your business. With the right strategy, you can use inbound marketing to reach more people and grow your small business.
What is inbound marketing?
As a small business owner, you may be wondering what inbound or organic marketing is and how it can help your business. Inbound marketing is a type of marketing that focuses on attracting customers organically through digital channels such as search engines, social media, and blogs.
Unlike outbound marketing, which involves interrupting potential customers with ads, inbound marketing uses content to draw customers in and build trust.
Once you have a customer’s attention, you can then slowly nurture them through the sales funnel until they become a paying customer.
Inbound marketing is an extremely effective way to market your small business, and it’s a great way to build long-term relationships with your customers. Keep reading to learn more about inbound marketing and how you can use it to grow your small business!
Are you a small business owner who wants to learn more about inbound marketing? If so, you’re in the right place! In this blog post, we’ll share seven ways you can use inbound marketing to grow your small business.
1. Create SEO-Friendly Content 2. Create Targeted Landing Pages 3. Use Email Marketing 4. Use Social Media 5. Use Lead Magnets 6. Use Retargeting 7. Use Analytical Tools
Create SEO-Friendly Content
SEO-friendly content is content that is optimized to reach and rank high in search engine results. In order to improve your website’s visibility in search engine results, you need to create SEO-friendly content. This means creating content that is optimized for search engine algorithms and contains relevant keywords.
This type of content can help you improve your website’s ranking and drive more organic traffic to your website. When you create content, you should always aim to use keywords strategically and create content that is easy to read and understand.
Try to create content that answers questions potential customers may be searching for and focus on providing useful information. On top of optimizing content for search engines, you should also focus on creating content that resonates with your target audience.
Don’t just focus on the technical aspects of SEO; focus on creating content that your customers will actually want to read and engage with. This type of content will not only help you reach customers, but it will also help you build trust with them.
Bonus Tip 1:
When you create a valuable piece of content, it’s always possible to reuse that information for additional purposes. You can turn a white paper into a series of articles and then turn those articles into short videos.
The possibilities for what you can do with your content are limited only by your own creativity and imagination.
Create Targeted Landing Pages
A landing page is a page on your website created specifically for a marketing campaign or offer. Landing pages should be used strategically to capture customer information and to convert visitors into leads.
When creating a landing page, you should be sure to include a form where customers can provide their contact information. You should also consider personalizing the page with the customer’s name or other relevant information.
Doing this can help increase conversions by making the customer feel like they’re receiving a personalized experience. You should also focus on ensuring your landing page is well designed and easy to navigate.
Make sure your form is prominently displayed and your call-to-action (CTA) is clear and concise. With a good landing page, you can effectively capture leads and convert them into paying customers.
Use Email Marketing
Email marketing is a great way to communicate with potential customers and keep them informed about your products and services. You can send out regular emails to your subscribers to keep them up-to-date on your latest offers and promotions.
This type of marketing can help you build relationships with your customers and generate leads for your business. By building an email list, you can send targeted emails to customers and provide them with useful information.
When it comes to email marketing, you should always make sure to provide value. Don’t just send out emails for the sake of sending them; focus on creating content that your customers will actually find useful and engaging.
You should also focus on segmenting your list and creating content that caters to the specific needs and interests of each segment. This will help you create emails that customers actually want to read.
Use Social Media
Social media is an extremely effective way to reach potential customers and build relationships with them and is a powerful tool for inbound marketing. With social media you can share content, engage with your customers, and build relationships with them.
You can also use social media to promote your products and services and increase your brand awareness. You should create profiles on all the major social media platforms and post content regularly.
When creating content for social media, you should focus on providing a mix of entertaining and informative content. Creating entertaining content can help you engage with customers, while creating informative content can help you educate them about your brand and build trust.
You should also consider using advertising to reach potential customers on social media. Utilizing the targeting features of social media ads can help you reach the right people and garner more engagement.
Use Lead Magnets
Lead magnets are pieces of content that you use to attract potential customers and convert them into leads. These pieces of content could be ebooks, whitepapers, checklists, or webinars.
Lead magnets should be used strategically to target potential customers who are at different stages of the sales funnel. For example, you could use an ebook to target potential customers who are still in the awareness stage, and a webinar to target potential customers who are already in the consideration stage.
Providing potential customers with useful content that they can use will not only help you capture their information, but it will also help you build trust with them.
Use Retargeting
Retargeting is an effective way to re-engage with potential customers who haven’t yet converted into leads. When a potential customer visits your website, a retargeting pixel is placed on their browser so you can serve them with targeted ads.
Retargeting ads can help you stay top of mind with potential customers and encourage them to convert. When creating retargeting ads, you should consider the particular actions the customer has taken on your website and then create ads that are tailored to their interests.
Doing this will help you personalize the customer’s experience and increase the chances of conversion.
Use Analytical Tools
Analytics is an important part of inbound marketing. You can use analytics to track your website’s performance and see which content is performing well and which content needs improvement.
This type of data can help you make more informed decisions about your inbound marketing strategy. Analytical tools such as Google Analytics and HubSpot can help you measure the effectiveness of your inbound marketing campaigns.
These tools can track how many visitors are coming to your website, where they’re coming from, what pages they’re visiting, and more. Having access to these analytical tools can help you identify which campaigns are working and which aren’t so you can make adjustments accordingly.
On top of this, these tools can also provide insight into how customers are interacting with your website and where they’re dropping off in the sales funnel. This can help you figure out where adjustments need to be made in order to improve conversion rates.
A Few Ideas to Get Started
Social media has in the recent past become one of the most significant platforms for promoting businesses. This is because of the high traffic on social media sites at a given time. You should never run out of ideas to use on social media that can take your business to the next level.
1. Use humorous, famous and inspirational quotes while posting on social media platforms.
Social media users are highly attracted to quotes by famous personalities. Users are highly likely to be attracted to social media posts that contain famous or hilarious quotes.
Therefore, in the process of reading such quotes, social media users get to read the promotional information attached to the quotes and hence goods or services are promoted in the process.
2. Use creative fill-in-the-blanks posts for promotional purposes.
Naturally, people like to have their anxiety provoked and social media users are not left out. fill-in-the-blanks posts are posts that leave readers wondering what would happen if they got involved with whatever promotional idea is passed across in a social media post.
If I had one million dollars I would……… This is a good example of fill-in-the-blanks.
3. Offer your friends and followers bonus rewards for sharing your content.
On a number of cases, marketers and promoters on social media have devised incredible measures of encouraging users to share their content on their own timelines and pages.
This includes offering rewards for every share. Rewards act like incentives and motivational tools for social media users to share your content on their social media pages and timelines.
Bonus Tip 2
Share useful resources generated by others on your social networks.
In order to show your passion for sharing useful information with your audience, do not hesitate to share other people’s information that you might find useful.
Such information is useful at all times despite its origin. This is an implication that social media users will not mind the origin of a given post so long as they find it useful in one way or another.
Inbound marketing strategies offers us numerous tools to ease our approach to marketing
From the simple approach of creating low-cost polls to the engaging videos for potential customers or even in-depth interviews with industry leaders., the social media has been a buzz of activity when it comes to methods of marketing through the platform(s).
Suffice it to say, social media has provided limitless avenues that can be effectively used by small businesses to market themselves and their services.
Conclusion
Inbound marketing is a powerful tool for small business owners. By following these seven steps, you can build brand awareness, generate leads, and grow your business.
Inbound marketing is a great way for small business owners to reach their target audience and generate leads. By using organic marketing, building brand awareness, creating content, posting SEO-friendly content, using email marketing, and using social media and analytics, you can increase your visibility and generate more leads for your business.
Today, social media sites are no longer just an ingenious way for people to meet, connect and share. It is now also one of the most powerful advertising tools which businesses can use to connect to their targeted market niche.
However, it is noteworthy that social media marketing is like a double-edged sword it is something that needs to be wielded correctly. In the hands of a skilled marketer like Inker Street Digital Marketing, it is an effective sales tool. But in the hands of an amateur, it can turn success into demise.
If you’re looking to grow your business, let us get your organic inbound marketing started to reach more customers and increase your sales. We will start implementing the strategies above today to increase brand awareness and generate more leads for your business.
Inbound marketing is an incredibly effective way to reach potential customers and convert them into leads and paying customers. By following the tips outlined in this blog post, you can begin utilizing inbound marketing to grow your small business. Good luck!
Here are some Questions to gauge your Inbound Marketing readiness.
What are the most effective inbound marketing strategies that you have used in your business?
What challenges have you faced when it comes to leveraging organic marketing?
Do you think this type of marketing is a more cost-effective way of engaging with customers than traditional marketing methods?
How have you seen inbound or organic marketing change the way customers interact with your business?
What tips or advice would you give to other small business owners looking to leverage inbound marketing?
If you had to choose one inbound or organic marketing strategy to focus on, what would it be?
In what ways do you think inbound marketing could be improved?
What do you think is the biggest benefit to using inbound or organic marketing?
What do you think is the biggest challenge to using inbound or organic marketing?
What advice would you give to companies that are just starting out with this type of marketing?
Anxiety among consumers and advertisers is challenging the satellite radio company as it gets into new digital formats, including streaming features and podcasting, Jennifer Witz told an investors conference.
Amid a weaker advertising market, SiriusXM CEO Jennifer Witz pointed to positive signs that include an auto sales recovery and a podcast market adapting to anxiety among brand marketers to forecast an ad sales recovery into the close of 2023.
But U.S. ad sales have softened for the satellite radio giant this year as more audio platforms compete for fewer ad dollars amid anxiety for consumers and brand marketers. “It’s choppy. It’s definitely choppy out there. I watch it every week. And it’s a tough environment,” Witz told the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Communications Conference during a session that was webcast Monday.
Besides the flagship subscription entertainment service SiriusXM, Witz runs the ad-supported Pandora streaming platform and is looking to lead the ad-driven podcast business by bringing top marketing brands to that growing audio content market.
“Some brands are sitting on the sidelines until they see whether the strength of the consumer is really there,” Witz reported while pointing to increased ad sales demand for the travel and restaurants sectors. But other brands and ad categories face headwinds, including direct response and direct-to-consumer advertising platforms as promotional tools.
To make podcasts more appealing to brand marketers, SiriusXM is enabling digital advertisers to reach specific shows or an entire audience demographic within its podcast network. Audio advertising driven by new digital formats has also become a growing focus at SiriusXM as it shifts to a streaming model on top of its satellite radio broadcasts, while also rolling out its exclusive 360L technology to combine satellite and streaming features.
Witz said car drivers are increasingly looking to the convenience of audio streaming services to curate their out-of-home listening, rather than have subscribers just turn the ignition and flip the dashboard radio dial to see what strikes their fancy. Here products like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto represent new competition for SiriusXM.
“They’ve (streaming platforms) set a different expectation. There should be a guided experience to find the content you love,” she added of 360L technology offering curated audio recommendations based on listening history and selected favorites for drivers available right after the engine is turned on and a journey is about to get underway.
New streaming features aim to have drivers use SiriusXM outside the car. “As we build out this platform, we’ll be able to connect people to the out-of-car listening experience much more seamlessly,” Witz predicted.
That said, the SiriusXM chief insisted her company had a loyal subscriber base that has long used rival audio listening products in cars dating back to the iPod and early iPhones. “We would expect our customers to do that. We view ourselves as a complementary, but very differentiated service. So in the face of growth in algorithms and automation and AI, we’re pretty unique,” Witz told the investors conference.
Feature Image Credit: Jennifer Witz Cindy Ord/Getty Images
Do you have a knack for writing that you want to harness into a really cool business model that earns substantial cash? A newsletter side hustle might be just the thing to put those writing skills to the test and move beyond basic email marketing.
You can encourage subscribers and scale your income off of minimal time invested.
If you have been thinking about what you could do to earn a little (or a lot of) extra cash, here is what you need to know about this growing trend and business model.
Let’s dive right in!
Why Do You Need to Start a Newsletter Side Hustle?
Before we can get into the nuts and bolts of starting a newsletter side hustle, let’s take a quick minute to define what the business model is. A paid newsletter is one where you create exclusive content for your audience in exchange for a monthly subscription fee.
You only need to write the newsletter once, but you can send it to an infinite number of your subscribers.
Paid newsletters don’t require you to run paid ads within the content, though this can improve your overall income even further. Unlike social media and other forms of advertising, you have complete control over what you write about and how many people see it.
So why start a newsletter side hustle?
The easy answer here is that you invest a certain number of hours in creating content on a weekly or monthly basis. No matter how many subscribers you have, you spend the same time investment. It makes for some seriously scalable income that will line your pockets – if you’re able to create content that people care enough about.
Tips for Creating Paid Newsletters
With that out of the way, it’s time to turn our attention to how you can create a paid newsletter in just a few simple steps.
1. Define Your Niche
Similar to starting a blog or a personal website, you need to know what you want to write about. You should pick a niche that you know a lot about or covers something you are passionate about.
For some people, this might be personal finance, while for others, it could be writing tips or productivity hacks.
If you need a little help finding your niche, it is very similar to finding a topic you are excited about when it comes to blogging. See our full guide on how to find a blog niche here.
2. Creating Exclusive Content for Paid Subscribers
With some email marketing, you might send out reminder emails each time you post a new blog article. While this type of marketing is important, you need something exclusive for an audience that is paying to hear from you.
Your target audience wants relevant content, and they want it for a reasonable fee.
What kind of content could you put together for premium subscribers?
Take a look at some of the possibilities found here:
Interviews with industry experts or exclusive podcast content
Worksheets, habit trackers, and other tools to help them grow
Video updates about a project that you’re working on
Access to a private Discord server or Slack channel
Ask me anything sessions
Events just for subscribers
Early access to new product sales
3. Setting a Schedule and Expectations
One of the first things you’ll need to do to make more money with your newsletter side hustle is to determine your schedule. How often will you release new content to your audience, and when can they expect it?
When someone is paying for access to you, they want to know what they can reasonably expect to get in exchange.
You should know how often you’ll send out a new edition, what day you’ll send it out, and even what time your audience can expect to receive it. Many people will wait anxiously by their email inbox, waiting for your deliverable. Make sure you don’t disappoint them by missing a promised arrival.
4. Create a Simple Landing Page
Landing pages are important for finding an audience for your paid newsletter and connecting with your target audience. This is where people will find you, and it isn’t as simple as just setting up a YouTube channel.
You’ll need to write persuasive copy that tells people exactly why they want to subscribe to your newsletter. Why should they trust you, and what will they actually receive?
This is also a great place to display reviews and testimonials from your existing audience. Any form of social proof that you can offer puts you one step closer to cashing in on the free money that your audience will give you in exchange for your written content.
As a bonus, you might take out paid ads to direct people to this page. It gets you more eyeballs on your paid content and makes you more visible in the search engines. It may not be as great as finding free subscribers, but it’s a great way to jumpstart your newsletter.
5. Focus on Building Your Email Marketing List
When it comes to a paid newsletter, some people might want a taste of what they’ll be getting before they part with their credit card information. Your email marketing list is a great way to reach more people and start to earn more money.
If you can build your email marketing list, you will have a captive audience already warmed up to you, your brand, and what you have to offer. They are one step closer to actually paying for your exclusive newsletter subscriptions.
6. Tracking Metrics for Success
It isn’t enough to simply send out an email marketing blast and hope people will sign up for your latest big business idea. You also have to keep tabs on the performance metrics of your newsletter.
Here are just a few of the things that you will want to track:
Conversions from your landing page to subscribers
Growth of your email subscribers list
Delivery rates
Return on investment
Referral traffic
Pricing Your Newsletter Side Hustle Properly
If you want to earn a source of recurring revenue by producing high-quality content, you need to ensure that you are pricing it appropriately. It sounds like a simple idea, but you need to be mindful of how you price your paid newsletter.
How much are people willing to spend on this type of content that isn’t available any other way?
First, you need to consider how long it takes you to create content and how often you will release it. A newsletter that only comes out once a month will go for a lower rate than one sent out twice weekly.
In other words, you need to know how often email subscribers are expecting to hear from you.
Second, you should factor in the costs associated with reaching your target audience. That might mean paid ads and the cost of your platform. It also means creating a living wage for yourself and the time you invested.
According to Convertkit, the average price of a paid newsletter is $11 a month. You may want to keep that in mind as you think about your pricing.
Why You Should Have a Free Version Too
Of course, not everyone is going to spring for the paid version of your newsletter right away. You should also put out a free version that gives people a taste of what you have to offer. This warms them up to your style and content.
If creating two different newsletters is too much work for you, you can also provide your audience with free content via a YouTube channel or a blog.
Once they get a glimpse at how beneficial your content is, they are more likely to part with their money for your paid subscription. Provide as much value as you can with a newsletter idea, and you’re more likely to see your email marketing pay off in the form of subscribers.
The question is: how do you make money with a free newsletter?
How to Generate Revenue with a Free Option
If you’re going to send out a newsletter, you should make sure that there is an opportunity for you to earn free money. This can happen in a couple of different ways: affiliate marketing and sponsored content.
Affiliate Marketing for Free Newsletters
Affiliate marketing is a legit way to promote goods and services for another brand. For example, let’s say that you run a personal finance newsletter. You might refer people to a high-yield savings account. The bank might then give you a small sum for each customer that opens an account.
You can do this with just about any item on the market.
Even Amazon has an affiliate program that allows you to tap into their massive storefront and earn real money for items you sell to your audience. Tap into their purchase history to see what types of items are more likely to go over well with your customers.
Sponsored Content
Sponsored content is another way to make money with your email marketing. Building relationships with other brands will open the door to sponsored content. You can send a few emails with designated sections about services that your audience needs: checking accounts, savings accounts, and investment opportunities (in keeping with our personal finance example).
Partner with brands offering these items and other stuff your audience truly wants or needs.
Of course, you can also use sponsored sections for your own products. You can alternate sponsored content with other brands and those offered by your own small business such as a digital product that your audience can download.
This type of content is an excellent side project that gives you a great opportunity to make money.
Tools for Creating Paid Newsletters
How do you start to create a premium version of your soon-to-be award-winning newsletter? You need your first subscribers; these platforms can help you get started quickly and easily.
Substack
Perhaps the most well-known option for an in-depth email newsletter is Substack. They allow you to create email newsletters quickly and easily, even if your email list is currently on another platform.
They can help you format and juggle both a paid and a free newsletter so that you can keep all your operations under one platform. Focus more on the writing and less on the tech side of things.
Better yet, you get to keep more money in your pocket. Unlike some other large organizations, Substack only takes a 10 percent cut of the profits, making this a great way to earn extra money in your spare time.
Convertkit
Many small businesses trust Convertkit for their email marketing. And you can also use it to create paid email newsletters that make money for your own brand. It’ll take care of everything for you except the writing.
Some of their users say that they start earning upwards of a thousand dollars within a single year of using the platform.
Transaction fees are kept low for these email newsletters, starting at just 3.5 percent and $0.30 per transaction.
Most people know of Kajabi for their online course creation, but they can help with email newsletters as well as other types of digital products. If you want to make money with a luxury travel newsletter idea or something else, Kajabi is an all-in-one platform that is simple to use.
They handle recurring revenue so you can focus more on the small business side of things instead of the tech side of your email newsletters.
Pricing starts at $149 per month for access to their robust platform. But be sure to check out our comparison of Kajabi vs Kartra to learn more about the platform!
Newsletter Side Hustle Success Stories
Sometimes, success stories can give you great ideas for how you can make money with a new venture. Here are some successful ways that newsletter content creators have leveraged this tool to increase their income:
Final Thoughts: Is a Newsletter Side Hustle Right for You?
A newsletter side hustle can be a great way to make money apart from the more traditional avenue of creating digital products. If you can convince subscribers to sign up for recurring access to your content, there are tons of ways that you can make money from your marketing efforts.
Whether you decide to launch a free version or a paid version, these tips will help you make more money doing the writing you love on topics you’re interested in!
Ashley is an experienced freelance writer with an enthusiasm for finding creative ways to earn money online. She uses her passion for words to share what she has learned with the world.
She spends most of her time blogging for a multitude of websites and consuming everything she can get her hands on in relation to personal finance and side hustles.
In December, Elon Musk, then only two months into his tenure as owner and CEO of Twitter, put out a poll asking whether he should resign as CEO of the company. When a 57.5 percent majority encouraged him to resign, Musk tweeted, “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software and servers teams.”
Ten days ago, Musk announced that he had indeed found someone foolish enough to helm the floundering social media company: Linda Yaccarino. Taking a CEO seat was a step up for Yaccarino, who previously led global advertising at NBCUniversal, and it enlarged the tiny pool of women leading tech companies.
But although Yaccarino is widely regarded in the ad industry as highly competent, people who study workplace gender dynamics see her as the latest victim of a pernicious pattern known as the glass cliff, in which women are more likely to be promoted into top jobs at organizations in crisis. That makes women leaders appear less likely to succeed, because they are drafted when times are toughest.
“In some ways I have yet to see a better definition of the glass cliff than the challenge Elon has set out here,” says Christy Glass, a sociologist at Utah State University who has studied the phenomenon. “This just seems to be the perfect storm of a situation at Twitter.”
Past examples of the glass cliff in tech include the appointment of Google executive Marissa Mayer as Yahoo CEO in 2012, when the company was rapidly losing ground to Google and Facebook. She eventually negotiated a $4.5 billion sale to Verizon and stepped down. Investor Ellen Pao was appointed CEO of Reddit in 2014 to clean up the platform but resigned in 2015 after backlash from users.
Musk’s acquisition of Twitter created textbook glass cliff conditions, sending the platform into a downward spiral. The company made 90 percent of its revenue through advertising in 2021 but has seen advertisers flee and revenue dip.
Shortly after purchasing the company in October 2022, the entrepreneur began a campaign of layoffs that included firing much of the company’s content moderation and policy staff. At the same time, he offered an “amnesty” to previously banned users, including neo-Nazis. In December, just two months after Musk’s acquisition, Twitter’s earnings had fallen by 40 percent, according to The Wall Street Journal. Musk’s plan to build a subscription business stream by charging for a service called Twitter Blue has netted little revenue.
Those challenges would be daunting for any CEO. But Alexander Haslam, professor of social and organizational psychology at the University of Queensland in Australia, who co-coined the term “glass cliff,” says that while many organizations contain capable women leaders there’s often a preference for the patriarchal status quo—until things come to a breaking point. When a company is in trouble and wants to send a clear signal it is making substantial changes, choosing a radically different leader is an easy option.
“You need to communicate as vividly and clearly as possible that you’re on some different trajectory. And the stronger the break from the past, the clearer the signalling,” Haslam says. “For that reason women or members of other minority groups are often preferentially appointed under these circumstances.”
Yaccarino’s background in advertising, Twitter’s primary source of revenue, certainly makes her a logical choice to try to salvage the company’s crumbling business. But experts who spoke to WIRED say that one reason women step into risky glass cliff roles is that they generally have few other chances to take leadership positions, despite being highly qualified.
“For a lot of executive women, sometimes their first opportunity to step into a role that’s really that powerful is to do a turnaround of an entire division or company,” says Coco Brown, CEO of the Athena Alliance, a networking organization for women executives in business.
That can make turning down a precarious glass cliff role difficult, even when the risks are evident. According to Glass of Utah State University, though women are more likely to be appointed in times of crisis they are also more likely to be blamed for the crisis itself and, later, replaced by a white male CEO in what researchers have dubbed the saviour effect.
“Very rarely are women CEOs given a second chance,” Glass says. “It’s a double whammy for women CEOs: These crisis appointments may be the only opportunities they have, and by virtue of stepping into them they put their future leadership careers in jeopardy.”
But, Glass says, many times women are often best suited to help right the ship. Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors, famously brought the company back from the brink of failure after the 2008 financial crash. Anne Mulachy took over as CEO of Xerox as it was flailing, making it profitable, before stepping down in 2009.
Yaccarino’s chances of success, says Sandra Quince CEO at Paradigm for Parity, an organization addressing the gender gap in businesses, will partly depend on how much time and freedom she’s given to turn the ship around. The support of the board and Musk’s willingness to truly let go of the reins could be crucial.
Musk has said that with Yaccarino in as CEO he will become executive chair of Twitter’s board as well as the company’s CTO. He’s also CEO of Tesla and of SpaceX, where president and COO Gwynne Shotwell is responsible for day-to-day operations.
“She’s going to need the board to be supportive of her vision that she has for the organization,” Quince says. “She’s going to need someone to run air cover for her. In times like this, where you’re trying to figure it out, no one is perfect, and mistakes can be made.”
It may be tempting to see Yaccarino’s appointment as the cynical last gasp of a failing company. But Brown of the Athena Alliance says Yaccarino’s bravery should be applauded, whether or not Twitter turns out to be salvageable.
“We shouldn’t be saying that has been set up to fail publicly but that she has decided that this is her shot to try something a bit heroic,” says Brown. “By most people’s accounts, she is going to fail. But wouldn’t it be cool if she pulls it out?” If Yaccarino manages that, it might be the most surprising twist of all in the spiralling tale of Musk’s takeover.
Google Photos comes pre-installed on most Android devices and Chromebooks, but it’s not the safest way to manage your photos.
Although Google takes many steps to secure its services, there is always a chance of vulnerability and risk—and third parties are not always the threat. It can at times be Google itself that capitalizes on your photos or fails to keep them private.
1. Targeted Advertisements
The continuous monitoring of your online activity and behaviour on your devices is what leads to targeted advertising. The algorithm collects and analyses your information to display things you might like or find interesting. According to a report by Statista, Google generated $224.47 billion in revenue in 2022 from targeted ads provided through Google Ads.
Although Google claims it does not have access to your photos and videos kept in Google Photos, users have frequently felt they are being watched. For instance, someone may have taken a picture of a table at a store and then saved it on Google Photos. The next day, the person saw three Facebook ads for tables from the same or different shops.
The ads are now more likely tailored to their exact needs, increasing the chances that they will choose one of the shops to purchase the table.
Such ads help Google’s advertising campaigns succeed, but targeted ads might also violate customers’ privacy. If Google has access to your photos and videos, it could easily expose your interests to third-party marketing and tracking companies.
2. Google’s Privacy Policy
Google is one of the biggest companies in the world, but it has earned much of its money by collecting and utilizing user data. Google has been fined several times for failing to follow user privacy laws.
Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, has stated that the company doesn’t use data from apps where you keep personal information, including Gmail, Drive, Calendar, and Photos, for advertising purposes. According to Google’s privacy policy, it does not sell your personal information to other companies.
However, a law firm sued Google in 2020 on behalf of individual customers, claiming that the company continues to gather data even when users tell it not to use the Web & App Activity setting. So, does Google’s privacy policy make false promises?
Many customers have claimed that Google doesn’t provide clear and comprehensive information about its data use policies. Additionally, Google is subject to government data requests and surveillance. If Google has access to your images and videos, it might be required to provide them to the government upon request.
All of this raises customers’ privacy concerns, particularly because unauthorized parties may misuse, handle, or access personal data on Google’s products.
3. Vulnerability to Hackers
For hackers, having access to your Google account is like winning the lottery since it gives them access to all the services offered by Google, including Google Photos. If you use a weak password or reuse passwords, hackers can easily hack into your account—that’s why we recommend using a password generator.
Once the attacker has access to your Google Photos, they can download every media there and use it however they like. If it contains sensitive content, the hacker may use the images as blackmail to threaten you and demand a large sum of money.
According to Dhaka Tribune in early 2023, a delivery man blackmailed several women by hacking their Google Photos and threatening to post their private photos online in India.
Hackers can even threaten to share your photos on adult websites or apply artificial intelligence (AI) tools like Deepswap on your images as a kind of blackmail.
Your information cannot be sold to celebrity gossip websites, but it can be sold on the black market to other hackers. The hackers can then scam people by using your pictures. For instance, they might create illegitimate dating profiles using your images and request money transfers to their bank accounts. To stay safe, it’s helpful to know how to spot fake dating profiles.
4. Glitches
Every application will inevitably have bugs, and Google Photos is no exception. However, some bugs can be harmful to your privacy. A privacy incident involving Google in 2019 was brought on by one such bug, referred to as a “technical issue” in Google Takeout.
Jon Oberheide of Duo Security shared a screenshot on Twitter containing an email from Google. The email revealed that between November 21 and November 25, the problem led to some users’ private videos being shared with other users.
Google did not publicly address the problem or provide information regarding the number of videos shared or users impacted. The affected users quietly received the email message
5. Phishing and malware
Google Photos allows image link sharing, which means that you can allow anyone with the link to access the photos or albums. The link could fall into the hands of a hacker, who could easily add pictures with hidden malware to the album. When you click or download the infected image, the malware will be installed on your device.
The malware that has been installed gives the hacker access to your device. Now, a hacker has the ability to steal or delete data, disrupt the system’s core functions, and monitor your activity. Some malware gives attackers access to your browsing history, credit card information, and passwords. As a result, in addition to your Google account, they can also get into your other accounts.
Attackers can even send you a link to a Google Photos album. When you click on it, you will be taken to another website where you are asked to log in to your Google account. If you log in, the hacker will obtain your credentials and access your Google account, including your Gmail, Google Drive, Google Keep, and other private apps.
Should You Use Google Photos?
Keeping your main Google account safe can help you reduce the security risks associated with using Google Photos, but concerns about confidentiality could be an issue. Google denies collecting users’ personal data, including videos and photos, but many are worried, given its reputation for data collection.
You might want to choose a more private alternative to Google Photos for peace of mind. Various secure cloud storage platforms can keep your media safe, including Sync, MEGA, Nextcloud Photos, and more.
LinkedIn remains one of the most essential platforms to establish a professional online presence and showcase your skills and accomplishments. With over 930 million users (and counting), LinkedIn remains the go-to platform for recruiters, hiring managers, and professionals looking for potential candidates.
“Your LinkedIn profile is your digital brand,” says Lianne Zhang, a director of talent at Milestone Technologies. “I can’t tell you the number of times where we had two equally qualified candidates and the one with the stronger LinkedIn profile got the job.”
In the personal branding workshops I regularly host, I often get questions about what recruiters and hiring managers prefer candidates include (and exclude) on their LinkedIn profiles. Since I’m not a recruiter myself, I solicited and compiled guidance from over 100 experienced recruiters and hiring managers around the world to find out exactly how to craft a LinkedIn profile that stands out to recruiters.
While I haven’t featured quotes from all 100 of them in this single article, the guidance that emerged from their collective views in response to the most frequently asked questions I receive about each LinkedIn section follows.
1. Photos: Upload Professional Images
At the photo studio a model is posing for a photograph. getty
What are the characteristics of a good headshot? Does customizing your background banner photo make a difference?
Two primary photos create the initial personal branding people see when visiting your profile: your profile photo and your background banner photo. Make sure to use a professional profile photo.
First, upload a current picture of yourself. You should absolutely include your face on your profile. The lack of a profile photo tends to create a negative impression with recruiters. “The absence of a photo on LinkedIn in some cases can cause distrust for a particular account,” says Oleksandra Syzonets, a recruiter at Reply.io. She says that when a headshot is missing, some employers may question if a real person is behind a profile.
Emma Lindberg, recruiting manager at IT staffing agency Advantis Global agrees that headshots make a big difference to recruiters trying to differentiate between real and fake accounts. “Real accounts are likely to have their background images personalized without stock photos,” Lindberg says.
Second, the photo should be an actual headshot. “Avoid using full-body shots or a photo that looks like a selfie or includes a cluttered or busy background,” says Stacey Mallory, managing director at Altis Recruitment. The photo should ideally not be cropped from another photo because it rarely conveys the same level of professionalism as a solo headshot from the shoulders up.
Third, your headshot should feel professional. “There’s a delicate balance [between] having a profile picture that represents your character or personality while still maintaining some professionalism,” says Trent Cotton, senior global director of talent acquisition at Hatchworks. While you may want to have your personality come through, the picture should still be business focused according to Maciej Kubiak, Head of People at PhotoAiD. “LinkedIn is not Facebook, so the profile picture needs to be business-related,” Kubiak states.
Lindberg does concede that those in the arts, design, or fashion can potentially break away from the typical ‘business professional’ standards of wearing neutral groomed hair, makeup, and formal clothing. “However, across all industries, a clear, well-lit photo is the minimum standard of a good headshot,” she says.
Finally, the image should be high quality. Mallory suggests always using a professional headshot that offers a clear, well-lit view of your face. “Anything that looks amateur or DIY can be a turn-off for recruiters.” These days, you can take a high-quality picture with most phone cameras in a bright room against a neutral background.
“The most important thing is to have a flattering, professional picture,” says Arno Markus, a former recruiter and founder of iCareerSolutions. “This doesn’t mean you need to go out and get a studio headshot, but you want to make sure that the photo is recent, well-lit, and shows you at your best.”
Customizing your background photo is helpful, but not mandatory. Behind your round profile photo sits the rectangular banner image area that appears as a plain grey box by default, but can also be customized. Most recruiters I connected with stated that customizing your background image can be helpful but not absolutely required.
“Having any photo, whether it is a background or a headshot, is a form of self-branding. First impressions are 100% real, and those two images are the first thing people see when they visit someone’s profile,” says Piotr Sosnowski, head of HR at hiJunior. “A background photo is not a must. Some of our best employees didn’t have one during their recruitment process, but it definitely helps recruiters understand what type of person you are.”
According to other recruiters though, while customizing your LinkedIn background image doesn’t hurt, it may not necessarily help either. “Background images don’t really make too much of a difference when you’re being sourced by a recruiter since they are most likely viewing your profile from the LinkedIn Recruiter view, which does not show the background image,” says Weronika Pajdak, talent acquisition manager at Mighty.
2. Headline: Highlight Unique Skills
microphone for audio record or Podcast concept, single microphone on soft blue background with copy … [+]. getty
What’s your view on candidates saying “Ex-[company name]”? What should candidates include in a headline?
Your headline is one of the first parts of your profile someone will see, so it deserves some extra attention. “When we run a search on our LinkedIn Recruiter account, the first thing that shows up underneath your name is your headline,” says Pajdak. “More importantly, it’s the only part of your profile in that search view that doesn’t get cut off by a See All button. It’s literally a recruiter’s first introduction to your experience and a great place to make yourself stand out,” she says.
Selectively Articulate Your Unique Value
Use the 220 characters available in your headline statement to specifically and selectively highlight the title, skills, or areas of expertise for which you want to be known. Margaret Buj, a senior talent partner at Mixmax, shared a few useful frameworks to optimize your headline for keyword searches:
1. Role | Specific achievement
B2B Inside Sales Rep | $2.4MM generated in 2020
Digital Ads Manager | 5 Years Experience Managing 7-figure ad budgets
2. Role | Years of experience in industry | Fun fact
Human Resources Manager | 10+ Years of People Experience |Disneyland Annual Passholder
3. Role | Helping ___ (type of company) do ___ (result)
Social Media Manager | Helping software start-ups manage and grow their social media to drive more sales
4. Role | specializing in _____, _____ and _____
Content Marketing Strategist specializing in press releases, blog content, and social media
The vast majority of recruiters don’t prefer the use of Ex-Company. “I’d advise against using ‘ex-[Company]’ in the headline because a recruiter will be reviewing the candidate’s whole profile anyway,” says Mallory. “Use your Headline to list your job title, skills or areas of expertise rather than using an ambiguous line.” Nathan Deily, chief people officer at nth Venture agrees. “Ex-Company does a candidate no favors in my book. Any recruiter or hiring manager who’s paying attention will see that the candidate worked those places without them bragging about it in a headline,” Deily says.
Note, a small minority of recruiters felt there could be some upside to mentioning your former organization in the headline. “Having a well-known company name in the headline gives me the impression that the candidate has already been vigorously screened and may be very capable of delivering quality projects,” says Lindberg. Although she doesn’t prefer to see “Ex-Company” in a headline, Sosnowski states some recruiters and hiring managers will hire someone who worked at a well-known company rather than someone with similar skills from a lesser-known company.
Nima Mirpourian, a former recruiter and CEO of Will Be Live says candidates should ultimately focus on crafting a headline that highlights their unique skills, experiences, and accomplishments. “Stating you worked for a well-known company does not provide any specific information about your experience or skills,” Mirpourian says.
3. About: Summarize Your Unique Value
Pile of business document files. getty
How long should this be? What’s the ideal scope of info captured? Err on the side of brevity. Most recruiters prefer candidates to get straight to the point about their professional ambitions, personal brand, and unique skillset in no more than two paragraphs. Mallory believes the About section on LinkedIn is one of the most important. “It’s a career synopsis or professional summary of a resume. In one succinct paragraph, candidates should summarize the types of industries they’ve worked in, areas of expertise, projects they are proud of, and key deliverables.” Mallory states this section also offers a glimpse into a candidate’s writing style.
Selectively Highlight Non-Work Interests
While the About section should be primarily focused on your professional life, selectively highlighting personal interests can help humanize your profile. “Your summary doesn’t need to be entirely focused on your work,” says Kimberley Tyler-Smith, VP of strategy and growth at Resume Worded. “A couple of details about your interests and activities outside of the office will help you seem more relatable and personable,” she says.
End With An Invitation
Markus also recommends including a clear call-to-action at the end of your summary. “Let people know what you’re looking for and how they can get in touch with you,” he recommends. For example, the call-to-action could be an invitation to contact you, visit your website, or check out a certain resource of yours.
4. Featured Content: Highlight Key Accomplishments
One woman looking at white frames in an art gallery. getty
How much do recruiters pay attention to your Featured section?
LinkedIn gives you the option to manually populate your Featured Section with posts, a newsletter, articles, links, or media. Most recruiters recommend utilizing this area to draw attention to specific aspects of your skills and expertise you feel are most relevant to those working in areas you’re trying to target. “Use the Featured section to showcase your achievements. Include links, articles and case studies of your work,” says Mallory.
Reinforce Your Personal Brand
Selectively highlight articles, presentations, conference talks, or projects that build credibility around the skills you claim to possess. From a branding standpoint, using eye-catching visuals can increase the chances of this section grabbing a recruiter’s attention. You should also ensure you keep this section up to date, removing outdated or irrelevant content, which can also signal you’ve made the effort to keep your profile current.
5. Activity: Signal You’re Professional Engaged
close up of hands of business person working on computer, man using internet and social media. getty
What impact does one’s Activity feed have on your perceptions of a candidate?
Your Activity section provides a running feed of what you’ve shared, published, and commented on. Being active on LinkedIn can also demonstrate to recruiters that the candidate is actively seeking ways to grow their professional network and skills according to Steven Waudby, senior recruiter at Delta Hire. “Sharing insightful articles, congratulating your network on professional achievements, and updating one’s network on their professional journey shows that the candidate is engaged and motivated to advance their professional career,” Waudby states.
Engage Regularly With Your Network
Most recruiters agree a candidate who’s active on LinkedIn creates a more positive impression compared to those with more static profiles. “Seeing a candidate who is active on LinkedIn – posting, commenting, sharing, connecting with others on the platforms shows a high level of engagement within their networks,” says Jonathan Reynolds, CEO of Titus Talent Strategies.
Share Useful Commentary
Your commentary can also give a recruiter a glimpse into your professional approach, values, or personality. “A post advocating for diversity and inclusivity could reveal a commitment to social justice and equality. A comment praising a colleague for their accomplishments could demonstrate a collaborative and supportive attitude,” says Mirpourian.
Thoughtful activity can even make a difference when deciding between two candidates. “Intelligent and well-written posts, shares or commentary could be a differentiator in a tight decision between two otherwise well-qualified candidates,” says Deily.
6. Experience: Include More Detail
Cropped view of business woman hands working, typing on laptop computer and making notes in notebook … [+]. getty
What level of detail is best? Just role & company? Summary of responsibilities? Bulleted list of accomplishments? All of the above? Do you prefer more or less detail?
You can certainly find LinkedIn “experts” who recommend simply including your role titles and company names. I’ve crossed paths with plenty of career coaches who claim a “less is more” approach to the LinkedIn Experience section is more appropriate for an online medium. However, recruiters who weighed in on this article overwhelmingly prefer seeing more detail about your professional experiences.
Include Accomplishments
Detailing out your accomplishments can help recruiters immediately assess your viability as a candidate without having to go through the extra step of requesting your resume. “Your Linkedin profile should be able to act as your resume,” says Brianna Rooney, founder and CEO of TalentPerch.
Your experience section should be treated almost like a resume says Lindberg. “If the resume is not available on the candidate profile, I prefer more detail. Having the roles and companies listed, summaries of responsibilities, and bulleted accomplishments are important.” Lindberg also states that when working for a smaller or lesser-known company, candidates should also include a few sentences about what the company does, which can save recruiters time in having to research that company.
The Experience section should mirror the candidate’s resume, highlighting their skills and experience in as much detail as possible says Mallory. “Since a LinkedIn profile is sometimes the recruiter’s only source of information about a candidate, the more detail they provide in the Experience section, the better because it makes it easier to determine their suitability for the role at a glance. If the recruiter can’t easily see what they’re looking for, they might move on to other candidates,” says Mallory.
Use Bullet Points
A job title and company name are not enough for a recruiter to draw meaningful conclusions about your qualifications. “I’d recommend having a few bullet points listed, ideally tangible achievements,” Buj says. Yes, you can use bullet points, just as you would in a resume, when detailing accomplishments.
“A candidate should list out bullets describing their responsibilities and any measurable achievements from their time at that position,” says Waudby. “Recruiters want to know quantifiable metrics in addition to the soft skills that helped you achieve success and grow your professional development.”
Bullets are indeed an effective format for the Experience section according to Reynolds. “Long paragraphs are hard to read so keep it in bullet formatting and make sure to tie it back to your headline,” says Reynolds.
Buj also recommends starting (rather than ending) bullet points with a quantifiable result. She shared this example: “Instead of saying: ‘Promoted to my current position where I excelled in sales, increasing them by 12% in the first year,’ say ‘Increased sales by 12% in the first year following my promotion.” Leading with quantified results enables someone scanning through your accomplishments to quickly understand your measurable impact.
7. Education
Closeup of a 2022 Graduation Tassel at a graduation ceremony. getty
Does it matter if dates attended are included? The verdict on whether to include dates on your Education section is a bit split.
Including Dates Can Introduce Age Biases
The dates of your schooling may have no impact on how a recruiter perceives you, but it does introduce some risk around age discrimination. “I don’t recommend including education dates on your LinkedIn profile because it can trigger unconscious bias related to age,” says Molly McIlvaine, executive recruiter at Hanover Search.
“As someone in HR, I’m concerned that this might create an occasion for discrimination,” says Jennifer Miller, head of people and coaching for Lingo Live. “As candidates hit the category where they’re in a protected class (i.e., ages 40+), including these dates may put them at risk for discrimination.”
But Excluding Dates Can Also Raise Questions
Other recruiters stated that including dates is actually helpful to recruiters trying to make sense of how your education fits into your broader professional narrative. According to Mirpourian, leaving out dates in the Education section can raise questions and appear misleading. “Potential employers may wonder if you are trying to hide gaps in your education or work history. By including dates, you can provide a clear and transparent history of your academic achievements.”
Waudby agrees that Education dates are important to include because they help to illustrate a complete timeline of your career. “At the very least, candidates should include the year they completed their education so that recruiters are able to better gauge the timeline of their professional development,” he says.
You could also take an in-between approach, keeping dates in if you are a recent graduate, but removing them after a certain period. Mallory states, “If the education or past roles took place more than 15 years ago, I don’t recommend including the dates.”
8. Licenses & Certifications
A close up of a gold seal adorned with a blue ribbon is attached to the corner of a certificate of … [+]. getty
How much does this section matter? What types of certifications are worth mentioning?
Mention Relevant, Prerequisite Licenses Only
Including licenses and certifications on your LinkedIn profile is a good way to showcase your professional credentials and highlight your skills and expertise according to Danielle Bedford, senior manager at Coople. “While there is no hard and fast rule about which licenses and certifications should be included on a LinkedIn profile, as a general rule of thumb, only list those relevant to your current occupation or industry,” says Bedford.
McIlvaine agrees that industry recognized certifications are extremely important to detail on your LinkedIn profile. “Particularly in finance, CFA CFA-1%, CFP, or Series 7 are some important requirements we search for, particularly regulatory ones.”
Signal Professional Commitment
“Not everyone wants to add the letters after their name but adding certifications to your profile shows dedication to continued development,” says Reynolds. “Certifications are a great way to showcase additional knowledge and professional achievements to your profile.”
A certification can signal how much importance a candidate places on continuous learning and skills development says Rooney. “This means this person makes a conscious effort to better themselves and this makes them an excellent addition to your team.”
9. Recommendations
Businessman Signing An Official Document. getty
How much does this section matter? Which recommendations carry more weight?
While recruiters are aware that solicited recommendations may contain some positive bias, most agree they can help support your candidacy. “Recruiters are aware that a lot of people trade recommendations, and achievements and skills can be blown out of proportion,” says Sosnowski. However, he states that recommendations do more good than bad because they provide social proof to support the claims a candidate makes in the other profile sections.
Markus agrees written recommendations generally help. “If other people are vouching for your skills and experience, then recruiters will be more likely to take you seriously as a candidate,” he says.
Source Recommendations Through Direct Relationships
Waudby states recommendations from current or past managers carry the most weight when trying to showcase your skills and experiences. He also suggests managers get recommendations from direct reports who can speak to their leadership abilities. “If a candidate has sufficient, relevant recent recommendations, it may even decrease due diligence time and the need for multiple reference checks,” says Waudby.
Use Keywords To Increase Visibility
Having a robust recommendation section on LinkedIn can enhance an individual’s profile’s visibility and searchability. “Recommendations that contain relevant keywords and phrases that can improve an individual’s search engine optimization (SEO) and increase their chances of appearing in relevant search results,” says Mirpourian.
Pace Yourself
Having too many recommendations suddenly appear on your profile, especially before a job change, may be less effective according to Himanshu Jain, managing director of recruitment company ReachExt K.K. “Avoid too many recommendations during a short period of time or several recommendations just before any job change,” Jain says. Instead, consider drip-feeding these out periodically over time to demonstrate a steady track record of positive work relationships across various roles and organizations.
10. Endorsements
Close-up Of Business Man Hand Pressing Rubber Stamp On Document. getty
Does this section matter at all to recruiters?
Endorsements Carry Little Weight
In short, no, endorsements don’t count for much on one’s LinkedIn profile. While a very small handful of recruiters say endorsements can feed into a candidate’s overall personal brand, the vast majority feel endorsements are not necessarily related to a candidate’s actual skills. “These have very little weight since people can endorse you who don’t even know you,” says Charlie Saffro, president of CS Recruiting. For this reason, Mallory also agrees the Endorsements section “carries very little weight when our recruiters are assessing candidates.”
Get Recommendations, Not Endorsements
Eva Chung of Advantis Medical Staffing explains that endorsements aren’t meaningful because they’re not linked with any concrete details or measurable outcomes. “Looking at the Experience and Recommendations section is more valuable for me as a recruiter to understand where they applied these skills,” Chung says.
Optimizing Your LinkedIn Profile Helps You Stand Out
Confident male entrepreneur. getty
Your digital persona is part of your personal and professional brand. It often creates that important first impression when someone looks you up online, so taking some extra time to shape your professional narrative is absolutely worth the investment. “Your LinkedIn profile is your personal presentation to the professional world. Don’t miss this opportunity to present yourself properly,” says Syzonets.
Following this guidance from recruiters on how to optimize your profile can help you stand out as a candidate, remain top-of-mind for relevant roles, and increase your chances of landing your dream job in a competitive job market.
Joseph Liu helps people bravely pursue more meaningful careers during professional transitions, applying principles from his 10 years of international brand management experiences. Based in London, he’s a professional speaker, personal branding consultant, and host of the Career Relaunch® podcast, featuring personal stories of career reinvention with listeners in 170+ countries.
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