The holidays seem so far off, but trust me: they are approaching full speed. For ecommerce companies, the holidays are a black train in the night –– but one for which you’ve already bought a ticket and are excited about the destination. You know it is coming, you know it will be on time, but the anticipation, the necessary preparation –– well, those are a bit less exciting than the benefits of the trip itself.
Marketers, entrepreneurs, best-selling authors, co-founders, strategists, thought leaders, investors, and bloggers … oh my.
While their roles and responsibilities may vary, the one thing all of this year’s INBOUND speakers have in common is their ability to inspire. The INBOUND15 lineup is riddled with the kind of people you could benefit from simply sharing an elevator with. From BuzzFeed Founder and CEO Jonah Peretti to best-selling author, speaker, and entrepreneur Seth Godin, there’s absolutely no shortage of experience and expertise.
Businesses pump out content at a staggering rate these days — and as that volume increases, more inconsistencies are bound to creep in. Whether due to lack of clarity about the style in which you’d like to write or disjointed communication across the multitude of content creators in your organization, failure to decide upon and document accepted editorial guidelines is a recipe for inconsistent messaging.
That’s why at some point, most companies accept that they’ll need to develop a writing style guide: a document that indicates the basic rules of writing we’ll all agree to follow (like whether I should’ve capitalized the “a” after the colon in this sentence).
Last week, Facebook made a big announcement: the release of their new Instant Articles feature. It allows publishers to create and distribute mixed-media articles in a self-contained Facebook “capsule,” while promising mobile app users a more visually interesting reading experience that loads significantly faster that articles have previously.
In response, my HubSpot colleague Kipp Bodnar wrote a blog post concluding that Instant Articles is bad for marketers. But I think he’s missing the point.
The concept of growth is a little different when you’re a marketing executive for a professional sports team.
For Adam Grossman, SVP of marketing and brand development for the Boston Red Sox, success is often dictated by two things that he can’t actually control: the team’s wins and losses. But he still has to do his job and fill seats, sell merchandise, and drive revenue for the organization.
Today, succeeding in inbound marketing means putting content at the heart of your communications strategy.
This is no secret, of course. Content marketing is now a well-established technique and the space has become pretty competitive. So, the question is, how do you invest wisely in content marketing to improve your capabilities so that you can compete and stand out from the noise?
There’s no better time to revamp your reading list than the beginning of the summer. The question is … what should you read?
With so many business books out there to choose from, sifting through all those online descriptions and reviews could take up an entire summer in and of itself. We figured you’d rather spend that time actually, you know, reading.
As customers, we really only expect the most basic level of service. We find a product, pay for it, and it shows up at our house a few days later. Transaction complete, right?
When we do experience the minimum requirements, consumers are happy enough. We’re willing to leave great reviews based on minimal interaction. With so many meh experiences getting good attention, why would any ecommerce retailer want to go above and beyond?
What’s the best length for landing page forms? Would a shorter form increase submissions while retaining quality, or are longer forms better?
These exact questions have been at the center of a hotly contested debate that’s been raging on since 2009. In fact, the popular website WhichTestWon that catalogs A/B tests, has 40+ tests on forms alone.
You know what one of my biggest design pet peeves is? When I’m trying to design something, but there’s an unwanted background on the image I’m using. Either I want to remove the photo background altogether, or I prefer a transparent background so the image assumes the look of any other background I put behind it.
Take the image on the left above, which is from our free, downloadable collection of holiday stock photos. That image would be so much more useful to my call-to-action, SlideShare presentation, blog post, or ebook if I could just remove that pesky background so it looked like the image on the right.
