Twitter Expanding Character Count and Vimeo Acquires Livestream

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Social Media Marketing Talk Show, a news show for marketers who want to stay on the leading edge of social media. On this week’s Social Media Marketing Talk Show with Michael Stelzner, we explore Twitter expanding to 280 characters with Madalyn Sklar, Vimeo acquiring Livestream with Luria Petrucci, [...]

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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

September 30, 2017 at 12:00PM http://bit.ly/2xr5jis
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YouTube Remarketing: How to Retarget People on YouTube

Want your YouTube ads to convert? Looking for effective ways to build remarketing audiences for your ads? To explore tactics for remarketing with YouTube, I interview Brett Curry. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It’s designed to help busy marketers, business owners, [...]

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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

September 29, 2017 at 12:00PM http://bit.ly/2xPMBmG
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Your Content Strategy Needs More Consistency

If I told you that content creation is a vital part of every company’s marketing strategy, your response would probably be a sarcastic “Well, duh. Thanks for that cutting-edge insight, John.”

That’s because most of us know how important content is to our inbound marketing and our brands — both our respective company brands, as well as our personal brands as a thought leader. We understand that content is important, but it doesn’t seem like we always agree on how much content we need, or how to create it well enough to consistently engage our audience.

But how you address that might depend on what your goals are for your content and who your audience is. But there’s one rule that holds true no matter what: Content consistency is key.

Why Focus on Consistency?

If you’re not consistent, you’re not taking advantage of all the opportunities you have to connect with your audience. Creating a few pieces of content here and there might help someone understand a topic better, but they won’t help you hit all of those touch points between your brand and your audience -- and they won’t help you build a meaningful relationship with it. To do that, you need to be a consistent content creator. It’s that simple.

What’s not so simple is breaking down the nuances within your audience and your processes to deliver not just any old content consistently, but content that meets its needs in a way that attracts it to your brand.

Think of it this way: Picture your favorite actor. This person is probably in a few of your favorite movies, consistently delivering amazing performances, and you might find yourself interested in the projects he or she stars in, simply because you know and love his or her previous work. That’s powerful.

With consistent, engaging content, you can hit touch points on your audience members’ online journeys, build connections with them, and position your brand to be top-of-mind when they think of their most trusted and liked resources. (This approach to branding and relationship-building is one I go into in much more depth in my business book, Top of Mind.)

But if you want to get started creating effective content consistently now, here are five essential tips.

How to Create a Strategy That Works

1) Document an actionable content strategy.

While 89% of B2B organizations are actually utilizing content marketing, only 37% have put together a documented strategy around that content’s creation and distribution.

Creating this kind of strategy is similar to setting goals for yourself: You’re more likely to achieve them if you write them down and break them into actionable steps to hold yourself accountable than if you decide to wing it and hope for the best. The same applies to content -- you need to write down what you want to achieve and how you want to get there.

That last part -- how you want to get there -- is particularly important. You can spend all the time in the world documenting your strategy, but if it isn’t set up to make consistent execution feasible, it won’t help you very much. So set goals, like your overall mission, audience personas, content mix, and promotion tactics. Then, make them actionable by laying the foundation for your process that makes consistency simpler right in your document.

2) Make use of a knowledge bank.

One of the biggest challenges inherent in creating loads of content is keeping track of it all, and organizing all the insights you’ve learned about your customers and your industry -- and leveraging them to create more than just one piece of content.

Enter the knowledge bank, which allows you to store and organize key information about your company, your content, and your customers. It makes creating multiple pieces and types of content that speak directly to your audience’s wants and needs much easier -- not to mention, it helps with consistency, because the more seamless the process of creating, finding, and managing your content, the easier it will be to do so in a quicker and more consistent manner.

3) Build the best team you can find.

With an actionable strategy in place and a system for leveraging your company’s expertise, it’s time to start actually creating content — and for that, you’ll need a talented team.

Sure, you could possibly write and promote all your content yourself -- if you really wanted to that -- but it’s difficult to scale this way. You’re busy with dozens of other tasks on your plate, so you’ll likely end up sacrificing either quality, or consistency.

That's where a great content marketing team and a network of freelance writers come into play. My team at Influence & Co. has found a lot of success with this process, which starts with a thought leader’s expertise, a freelancer’s skills at turning that insight into a written piece, and our team’s ability to strategize, edit, publish, and promote that content. When every person focuses on his or her strengths, your content will shine, and you’ll find yourself publishing more consistently than if you tried to do it all yourself.

4) Get comfortable with your editorial calendar.

An editorial calendar can do so much more than set the schedule for your upcoming posts -- it can also be a place to brainstorm ideas, plan your social media campaigns, and organize everything you’ve got coming down the pike.

That can help streamline the entire content process because everything is in one place, allowing you to see where you have gaps, and where you have excess content. Once you settle into your schedule and process, you can get even more efficient, giving yourself more time to focus on creating content, rather than organizing it.

A content calendar can also help track your successes and shortcomings, so you can make more informed decisions in the future. If, for example, you find that content posted at a certain time of day -- or a particular day of the week -- tends to outperform the rest, you can make changes accordingly. That way, you’re consistently on schedule and maximizing your impact.

5) Make distribution a priority, not an afterthought.

Each of these steps will help you create content consistently, but you can’t stop there. If you’re not also distributing and amplifying your content consistently and strategically, then all you’ve really accomplished is improving your content production -- not your content marketing.

Don’t wait until an article is published, for example, before you start thinking about how you’ll use it as a tool to connect with your audience. Your content distribution plan should take as much priority as your content development process -- content that you sit on or passively distribute won’t accomplish much.

Content creation can be a chore -- if you don’t know where to start when it comes to developing or distributing your work. But it’s an essential component of your company’s marketing strategy. Consistent content is key to keeping your audience engaged, your brand top-of-mind, and your content investment worthwhile. With these five simple tactics, your path to consistency will become much clearer.

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How to Create and Use Instagram Collections

Do you save Instagram posts? Looking for a way to organize your saved posts? In this article, you’ll learn how to create private Instagram collections to organize saved posts you want to refer to later. Why Instagram Collections? When you save Instagram posts you want to refer to later on, they’re added to a private [...]

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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

September 28, 2017 at 12:00PM http://bit.ly/2k8IoWf
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How to Get More Done by Doing Less

Productivity is generally thought of in terms of, “How do I get more done?”

If we’re lucky, we work in teams and environments where that perspective is at least softened by combining it with a measure of efficiency or impact, but even then we don’t fully escape the rat-race-like pursuit of more.

In fact, we usually answer “How are you?” with “I’ve been very busy.” And we wear our 80-hour work weeks like a badge of honor.

Speaking on his upcoming book, The Calm Company, Basecamp cofounder Jason Fried digs into the dangers of this troubling trend:

“Long hours, excessive busyness, and lack of sleep have become a badge of honor for many people these days. Sustained exhaustion is not a badge of honor, it’s a mark of stupidity. Companies that force their crew into this bargain are cooking up dumb at their employee's expense.”

This was similar to the mindspace that I too occupied when I stumbled into mindfulness and meditation 18 months ago.

At the time, I had been working on my own startups for about nine hours a day, and even though I had the flexibility to work in any way that I wanted, I was in the mindset of doing more, working longer hours. I was chasing my own tail, and a proposal to sit still to meditate for 15 minutes a day, provoked a simple reaction: “Who has time for that?”

But through the evolution and expansion of my mindfulness practices since then, I’ve come to learn that an action geared towards less (like sitting, breathing, and not thinking) has the surprising effect of creating some more (calm, clarity and space).

If you've heard or read anything on meditation and mindfulness, that shouldn't sound too unfamiliar. But in this article I’d like to reveal a couple of tactics where I optimized for less, only to get an exponential more on the other side. These tactics span different areas of my life, and each has their individual, contextual goals -- but they are all intertwined and focused ultimately on my experience as I pursue various projects, goals and dreams in life.

I literally stumbled into mindfulness and meditation via a prompt from my therapist who had intervened as my monkey mind was running havoc and jeopardizing most good things in my life. I still work towards mindfulness today because I have experienced significant changes in my life and work as a result of my practice.

So here's how I have managed to gain more in my life as a result of pursuing less in some situations.

Plan Slower Mornings

Waking early in the mornings has always been one of the easier things for me to do. In fact, I used to believe that I personally needed very little sleep -- until I learned about the real effects of sleep debt over time.

In the past, I would use an early morning start as a way to get a headstart on the day ahead. I can remember during my time at WooThemes, I was at the office before 7am on most days. The rest of the team only arrived from 9am onwards, and most of our remote team would only sign on much later. Those first two hours were glorious though: I could just hack away at my to-do list for two hours straight without anyone or any notifications interrupting my flow.

And then I had kids.

For any parent reading this, you’ll know that babies and toddlers operate on their own schedule, which means that none of my mornings were as predictable or within my control as before. Initially, I completely resisted this change and tried to stick to my previously focused and productive morning routine. I also tried various iterations to this routine, from waking up even earlier to trying to get work done while giving Adii junior his morning bottle.

Suffice to say, by trying to multitask, I wasn’t being a great dad and I wasn’t doing great work either -- everyone was getting a compromised result.

Fast-forward to today, and my morning routine looks something like this: I wake up at 5am on weekdays. I immediately get a cup coffee and breakfast (the same every morning to avoid having to make a decision). The next hour or so I spend reading, and I then meditate for 15 to 20 minutes. Then from about 6am onwards, I get my two boys ready for school. This means on most mornings I only get to my desk (and work) at 8am.

With the benefit of hindsight and comparison, I can now see how singular and rushed my old morning routine was. Because my goal was to get to work as quickly and efficiently as possible, it meant that any friction or obstacles along the way had a major negative impact on my experience. And a crappy morning would eventually turn into an even crappier day on most occasions.

These days, by the time I get to work I have a sense of space and calm. No rush to do anything specific. No existential fear about not answering yesterday’s emails quickly enough.

Instead I find that I’m more aware of the whole day and week’s landscape, which has helped me prioritize the things I need to work on (versus the things I can delegate or allow to drop off my radar).

Curiously I have also found that the first hour or so in the morning has not become less productive at all, and I still often manage to do some of my best work in that time (especially when I manage to also prioritize the most important task for the day during this time). For example, it's currently just after 9am as I’m writing this article, and I find the words flowing easily.

In the past, I used to run out of steam later in the day due to being so rushed. This inevitably meant that I either felt that I hadn’t accomplished enough on that day, or that I would try working until late in the evening to make up for lost time. We should however all agree that our brains do get tired, and if we continue to push ourselves beyond the point of exhaustion, we end up merely sitting in front of our computers, not getting anything done.

Disconnect from Interruptions

Software makers use often use gamification, notifications, and a combination of instant gratification and FOMO to keep us as engaged with their products as possible.

I'd never given much thought to how the programs and apps I use on a daily basis impact my productivity -- until I read Cal Newport’s book “Deep Work: Rules for focused success in a distracted world” earlier this year and was introduced to the concept of attention residue.

To explain what attention residue is and how it impacts us, Newport references a 2009 paper titled Why Is It So Hard to Do My Work?” from Sophie Leroy, a business school professor at the University of Minnesota. As Leroy explains in the paper:

“People need to stop thinking about one task in order to fully transition their attention and perform well on another. Yet, results indicate it is difficult for people to transition their attention away from an unfinished task and their subsequent task performance suffers.”

I finished the book in a single sitting, and it prompted me to really investigate my work behaviors. I would like to tell you here that it has helped me to do more deep work, yet I don’t think I have a consistent workflow to do deep work often enough (even though, my awareness of pursuing deep work is more developed).

The book did however prompt me to do something more radical: I almost entirely switched off my phone without entirely switching it off. My iPhone is now permanently on silent, and has the “Do Not Disturb” feature switched on at all times.

I also disabled all notifications -- badges on my icons, popup notifications or notifications on my lock screen. The only notifications that makes it to my lock screen are from WhatsApp, which I only use for family and close friends. And yes -- I also disabled Slack notifications, which is the primary communication tool we use for Conversio, a team of 14 remote team members.

This has turned my phone into less of an attention-demanding force. I don’t get interrupted or distracted as often as I used to. This helped me read 22 books in about ten weeks because I picked up a book when I was bored instead of fiddling on my phone.

I also started writing more, which helped me get more thoughts out of my mind. And most importantly, limiting my phone time has without a doubt helped me sleep better (I have always struggled to fall asleep because I struggle to switch off my thinking mind).

The flipside of this is also true: whenever I now pick up my phone, I can pay attention to the possible interactions that it presents. If an old friend sent me a message on Facebook, I can invest in replying purposefully instead of both reading and replying in a fleeting moment (when the notification of the message popped up).

I don’t have any scientific evidence to determine how these decisions have impacted my attention residue. What I do know is that by allowing less external sources to demand my attention, I have been more purposeful to prioritise the most important things to me -- in a way that also brings more clarity to my life.

Change Your Reading Habits

Consider for a moment that much of your daily communication consists of reading emails, Slack messages, texts, tweets, or comments on your latest Instagram photo.

A big part of our communication is in written form, which means that we need to read in order to respond and interact. Beyond that you are likely reading articles (blog posts) like these, short rants your dad has posted on Facebook, or a firehose of 140 character opinions on Twitter.

Even if you aren't reading books everyday, you are reading a lot.

A couple of months ago, I hit a wall. I was consuming a lot of content, but not much of it really resonated with me. To link this back to my previous point about distractions, there was a particularly relevant quote from Cal Newport’s book that best represented my reading habits at the time:

“It’s amazing how overly accessible people are. There’s a lot of communication in my life that’s not enriching, it’s impoverishing.”

So I made a simple change: I de-prioritized most shorter-form content, and started dedicating my reading time to full-length books. Mostly classic fiction -- nothing that had a direct tie back to work.

I have now read 40 books this year already. I’ve worked my way through older classics from authors like Viktor Frankl, Kurt Vonnegut, Truman Capote, Herman Hesse, Marcus Aurelius, and Alain de Botton. By consuming less modern day content, I give my mind a much needed break from the usual written content I consume online.

Tackle a Big Non-Work Goal

On New Year’s day 2016, I set one goal: I wanted to complete my first marathon (and do it under four hours.)

When I started my training a month later, I also stumbled into mindfulness. The combination of these two things soon had an unexpected impact on the way I led our company.

Since my primary goal was not about work, it meant that the first priority each week was planning my daily runs. Work started to fill the spaces around these more rigid blocks. As a result, I starting giving myself more mental space from my work than ever before. Even catching up on work in the evening -- a usual habit of mine -- wasn’t an option after a three-hour long run -- I was just too tired to work.

Working less wasn't part of my plan or intention, but it had a profound impact on our journey at Conversio. For the first time in my entrepreneurial journey, it felt like I wasn’t tumbling up and down constantly on the proverbial rollercoaster anymore. And since I felt more grounded in my day-to-day, my leadership style started to reflect this attitude. As a result, the team was doing great work in a stable, safe environment.

The results in 2016 spoke for itself: we 3x’ed our revenue, reached profitability and celebrated with a major rebrand and product update. This was clearly a consequence of the team feeling more stable.

I then stepped into 2017 with the aim of applying all of my ambition towards really growing our business. I started pushing and pulling wherever I saw a gap. I started conversations that proposed new ideas that questioned previous decisions, and recommend brand new directions.

During the first quarter of 2017, I was focused on the wrong things, which made my behaviour erratic and meant that I lumped a lot of stress on our team. The team was confused, felt less secure, and wasn't collaborating at our previous levels.

As these things go, the team eventually managed to pierce my stubborn drive forward and I received the message: things were not as great as they were before.

Pretty much as soon as I started unraveling my own motivations underpinning my behaviour (primarily, seeking more and faster growth), the team got back to a calmer, more efficient collaborative flow once again. We once again found alignment on both our core values, as well as shared goals, which meant we were making progress again. For the first four months of the year, our revenue only increased by 8% and in the four months since we’re up 24%. (Naturally the change in our growth rate was a result of many different things, but this change was at the core of many of those.)

The only shift here was in my own focus. When I was narrowly focused on work and had no other person goals I was striving for, it created an unbalanced approach that was neither helpful nor healthy for our progress.

When I was working towards a goal outside of work that was just for myself, it gave me more clarity in our mission and helped me be a better leader.

Embrace Not Having All the Answers Right Now

I have an annoying tendency to feel like I need to answer every question in a group setting, simply because I'm the leader.

In many situations, this isn't an inherently bad attitude to have. Afterall, I am the leader, and in many situations I have the context, knowledge and experience to give a valuable answer.

But there's a downside. Many times individual team members will just ask me directly for the answer, which means not involving the team and possibly excluding different perspectives and opinions. Once I've addressed a question, I sometimes shut the conversation down because my answer is deemed as authoritative or final (even when that is not the intention). That's not great for inclusion and collaboration.

In recent months, I have been trying to avoid being the first to answer questions in meetings. Not only has this alleviated some of the demands on my time, but more importantly it means that the team is coming to more collaborative, creative answers on their own.

Get More Done By Doing Less

The truth -- even for startups -- is that most of the time it doesn’t really matter whether you finish something today or tomorrow, reach a goal this week or next month, or grow by 5% instead of 10%.

Yes, there are some exceptions to this. But for everything else, you can probably pursue the less obvious choice and route, while not compromising on your goal at all. In fact, you might be surprised that doing less actually helps you exceed your goals and expectations.

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Finding the Best Search Terms for Your Business: 10 Tools and Tips

Despite the ever-present advice that long-tail keywords are king, many businesses still struggle to strategically use them to get content to the top of organic and paid search results.

The truth is, tackling these long-tail keywords feels hard when you know you're up against the giants. I know. I worked with many startups before I joined HubSpot, and scouring Google Keyword Planner every day for keywords to fuel my blog posts drove me close to insanity.

But -- it worked. When I skipped the keyword research, convinced that my blog post was just THAT epic, THAT viral … I was wrong. I was chasing an immeasurable goal (virality) with an unaccountable metric (my gut). That kind of strategy is really only a luxury restricted to those with pre-existing ample website traffic, sizable social media following, copious brand advocates, and a list of high-profile customers.

So if you're one of those companies without those luxuries, listen up. I'm going to show you how to uncover new keywords to target and assess if you're already targeting high-value phrases.

How to Find New Keywords

If you want to generate more organic traffic, it’s necessary to find the sweet spot between easy-to-target keywords and keywords relevant to your business.

A great (and familiar) place to start is to simply type some phrases into Google’s search bar, and watch how it pre-populates the rest of what you are typing.

Google’s search bar algorithm is built around a searcher’s intent. Beware, though: What is suggested is not just based on popularity or relevance, but it's also personalized to the searcher. This exercise is simply to get you started with some ideas for keywords to target, and is by no means sufficient step on its own to do comprehensive keyword research.

That's where the following tools come in handy -- they'll help you flesh out your keyword research. (And if you need a place to keep track of all of your research, download our free on-page SEO template.)

Below, we'll dive into the following search term and keyword research tools:

• Moz Keyword Explorer
• Google AdWords Keyword Planner Tool
• Google Trends
• Wordtracker’s Free Basic Keyword Demand
• keywordtool.io
• Keyword.io
• Infinite Suggest

Top Keyword Research Tools to Try

1) Moz Keyword Explorer

This keyword explorer is one of the best free SEO Tools available, providing an all-in-one tool to both discover and prioritize the search terms you'll want to target.

2) Google AdWords Keyword Planner Tool

Like many of the other tools on here, the Google AdWords Keyword Planner provides a great way to discover new keyword ideas, especially for paid search campaigns. Criteria can be based on your product or service, as well as your target customers. 

3) Google Trends

Google Trends, if nothing else, an incredibly cool resource for trending search data. Not only does it provide information on search trends, but it also provides great visualizations that represent the data in a highly consumable way. You can also narrow the information by location.

4) Wordtracker’s Free Basic Keyword Demand

One of the best things about Wordtracker is that it helps users conduct keyword research across a variety of platforms. In addition to Google, for example, it helps marketers discover search term data for YouTube and Amazon, as well.

5) keywordtool.io

Keywordtool.io is, as the name depicts, a keyword research tool. What’s awesome about this tool is that it includes not only Google.com, but also all Google localized search languages, as well as YouTube, Bing, and the App Store. Sweet! Type in the ideas you recorded from the previous step, and expand your list.

As you go, make sure to remove keywords you know deep down cannot be relevant to your website. This will save you time and money in the long run, and result in a far better experience for the web searcher. Trickery is a fool’s game!

6) Keyword.io

Keyword.io has the disadvantage of only using Google data, but it's handy in that it not only does keywords, but also looks at Google Trends information and lists the pages you have to beat for that keyword.

7) Infinite Suggest

You’ll need to have a long long list of keywords in order to boil it down to the golden nuggets. This tool will help you generate lots of terms (as it claims, “infinite”), and it's up to you to pick out the best ones.

How to Evaluate Your Existing Search Terms and Keywords

Not only do you need to explore new keywords for your future content, but you also need to pay attention to your current keywords. When deciding on prioritizing your phrases and pages you must consider three things:

1. How many extra clicks will I get if I move up in Google’s results?
2. How much money will I make if I move up?
3. How strong is the page I’m trying to outrank?

To find out how to answer these questions, we spoke with Dan Petrovic, one of Australia’s best-known name in SEO and the director of DEJAN marketing. Here's what he recommends:

1) How many extra clicks will I get on a keyword or phrase if I move up in Google’s results?

Export your keywords and work out your CTR averages.

This exercise is about predicting how many extra clicks an increase in rank would bring for a particular keyword. You may have seen clickthrough rate (CTR) studies such as this one in the past, but they’re anecdotal at best because every website is different.

We recommend you start by defining averages specific to your own website before working out click scenarios in different ranking positions. Once you know what your averages are for search queries, CTR, and position, you can start creating ranking scenarios for each keyword (e.g., if I move from position 10 to position 9 I will receive 12 extra clicks based on site CTR averages?). Be mindful though: If a keyword over- or under-performs compared to the site CTR average, you may need to adjust the expectation for its growth accordingly.

Here is how you can export your keywords and uncover these key metrics:

1) Log in to Google’s Search Console, navigate to the "Search Analytics" page under the "Search Traffic" header, and select the widest date range available on your website. This is typically 90 days.

2) If your website targets a specific geographic region, ensure you’ve got it selected before you export data:

3) It’s also wise to filter out any branded terms from the export. Branded terms tend to have very high CTR, which is not useful when calculating averages for non-branded keywords:

4) At the end of the report, click "Download" and select CSV. Now you have a file that contains:

1. Queries
2. Clicks
3. CTR
4. Position

Once you have these averages in hand, you can calculate which phrases will result in sufficiently more clicks for the effort put into moving up the rankings for that keyphrase.

2) How much money will I make if I move up in the rankings?

Add conversion rate and value to your CTR calculation.

The data gleaned from your keyword export can be enriched with your company's financial information, such as the average value of a conversion and the average conversion rate. That way, you can project how much of a bottom-line impact your rankings changes could have (e.g. if an order value is $200 and conversion rate is 3%, how much more money will I get if I get 100 extra clicks from moving to a top spot in Google?).

You can now prioritize the keywords that drive the highest potential revenue on your website.

3) How strong is the page I’m trying to outrank?

Find results above you and look up their strength metrics.

Finally, once you have growth potentials calculated, it’s recommended that you balance them out with a difficulty metric. I personally use Flow Metrics from Majestic, but you can also use Moz’s Page Authority or similar values. These providers provide API access, too, so you can automate your research as well.

Advanced users can also map all keywords to their corresponding URLs, sum up potential scores from all keywords that lead to a URL, and end up with a list of priority pages to work on.

I use this exact methodology for my own research, and if you’re curious as to how it works, you can check it out.

Always Be Keyword-ing

Getting your keyword strategy right is the recipe for a long-term return on investment in digital marketing. Unlike other types of promotions, organic traffic is the gift that keeps on giving. Even when you're not actively publishing new promotions, you're still receiving traffic to your website.

To properly use keywords in your marketing, don't just pepper them across meta descriptions, image alt tags, and H1s -- apply them appropriately across your marketing campaigns and overall content strategy. Your marketing software should make implementing and tracking this easy. (HubSpot customers, you can use the HubSpot software to easily brainstorm, implement, and track your keyword strategy across all the content on your website.)

Remember: SEO is about serving the searcher with the best possible result. There are people out there searching for your very business, and you need to get in front of them. As your authority grows based on less-searched long-tail keywords, you’ll be able to tackle the giants as good as anyone.

Want even more tips? Check out the video below. 

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Gestalt Psychology and Why It's Essential for Good Design [Video]

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3 Ways to Measure Your YouTube Performance

Are you creating YouTube videos? Wondering how to analyze the impact of your video content? In this article, you’ll discover how to measure the performance of YouTube videos. #1: Assess Video Watch Behavior YouTube provides powerful analytics data that lets you evaluate how your videos are performing and how you might improve your content in [...]

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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

September 27, 2017 at 12:00PM http://bit.ly/2foONXK
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8 Experiential Marketing Campaigns That Will Give You Serious Event Envy

Work events are really hit or miss. Let’s be honest: How many times have you found yourself anxiously fidgeting with a paper napkin in the corner of a stuffy networking happy hour?

That’s why I was not only relieved, but also surprised and delighted, when I attended a holiday party that featured a live, interactive version of an arcade game.

An entire room had been curated to look like a video game setting, and people were dressed up as characters from it. There was a giant, real-life scoreboard, boppy electronic music, and best of all, there was no tedious small talk.

It wasn’t just another tired work event ... it was an experience. And in our line of work, that sort of thing has a name: experiential marketing.

While a surprising number of people haven’t heard of the concept, it’s kind of a big deal -- there’s an entire three-day summit dedicated to it, and 65% of brands that use it say that it positively correlates with sales.

But what is it, exactly? And how has it been used effectively? We found eight of the coolest experiential marketing campaigns that really break down how it works, and how those lessons can be applied to marketers everywhere.

What Is Experiential Marketing?

To understand experiential marketing, just look to its name. It's a type of strategy that engages an audience with a real-life invitation to engage with -- or experience -- a brand and what it makes or represents. It's participatory, hands-on, and tangible.

It might sound a bit like event marketing, which makes sense -- experiential campaigns do tend to be event-centric. But there are also times when they have nothing to do with a specific event, as you’ll see from the examples we picked.

And when they are event-centric, they’re less dedicated to the type of event -- like a concert, festival, conference, etc. -- and focus more on interaction a specific brand. (If you already have an event in the works, you might want to check out this guide to adding experiential elements to it.)

These campaigns can take an integrated approach. The primary purpose is to experience a brand in a tangible, offline way, but you’ll still want an online dialogue around it. When you consider that 49% of folks create mobile video at branded events -- 39% of which is shared on Twitter -- it makes sense to incorporate a digital element. A branded hashtag, for example, can get people talking about the experience.

8 of the Coolest Experiential Marketing Campaigns We’ve Seen

1) Refinery29: 29Rooms

For about three years now, lifestyle brand Refinery29 has hosted the 29Rooms event: What it calls "an interactive funhouse of style, culture, & technology." As the name suggests, it consists of 29 individually branded and curated rooms -- and attendees can experience something different in each one. The rooms are designed and created with brand partners, who range from personalities like artists and musicians, to consumer-facing companies like Dunkin' Donuts, Dyson, and Cadillac.

Each year, 29Rooms has a different theme, with this year's being "Turn It Into Art." Attendees, it seems, are encouraged to enter each room and use the surroundings to create something -- one room, for instance, invites participants to put on punching gloves and hit punching bags that each produce a different sound when contacted to create a symphony of sorts. A truly hands-on experience, indeed. 

Takeaways for marketers:

• Go nuts, but keep it on-brand. An experience should be memorable, but relevant to the people attending.
• Partner with creators like artists and musicians to create experiences, especially if they are recognizeable within the region where you're trying to build or augment an audience.

2) Lean Cuisine: #WeighThis

One night, when I was watching “The Bachelorette” (it’s okay -- I judge myself, too) I started tallying how many commercials told women to change something about themselves. The result: I lost count after about two minutes.

That’s why it’s so refreshing to see brands like Lean Cuisine, whose marketing used to center solely on weight loss, stray from diet-centric messaging. And its #WeighThis campaign is a great example of just that.

As part of the campaign, Lean Cuisine curated a gallery of "scales" in New York's Grand Central Station, and invited women to "weigh in." But here's the catch: The scales were actually small boards where women could write down how they really wanted to be weighed. And rather than focusing on their weight in pounds -- or anything pertaining to body image -- the women opted to be measured by things like being back in college at 55, caring for 200 homeless children each day, or being the sole provider to four sons.

What’s particularly cool about this experience is that none of the participants actually interact with a Lean Cuisine product. No one was interrupted, asked to sample something, or stopped to answer questions. In fact, no one was really asked to do anything -- the display itself was enough to make people stop, observe, and then voluntarily interact.

Lean Cuisine figured out what message it wanted to send: “Sure, we make stuff that fits into a healthy lifestyle. But don’t forget about your accomplishments. That matters more than the number on the scale.” But instead of blatantly advertising that, it created an interactive experience around the message.

Still, the experience was clearly branded, to make sure people associated it with Lean Cuisine. The company’s Twitter handle and a branded hashtag were featured on the display in large text, which made it easy for people to share the experience on social media. And that definitely paid off -- the entire #WeighThis campaign led to over 204 million total impressions.

Takeaways for marketers:

• Don’t interrupt -- especially if you’re trying to grab someone’s attention in New York City, like Lean Cuisine was. If you create an experience that provides value to the people who pass by it, they’re more likely to participate.
• Figure out the message you really want to your brand to send -- that may or may not be directly tied to an actual product, and it might be something that your brand hasn’t said before. Then, build an experience around it.

3) Google: “Building a Better Bay Area”

Corporate philanthropy is definitely on the rise. Between 2012-2014, 56% of companies increased charitable giving, and Google is no exception. But when the search engine giant gave away $5.5 million to Bay Area nonprofits, it let the public decide where that money would go -- in an unconventional, interactive way.

Google allowed people to cast their votes online, but they also wanted to involve the Bay Area community in a tangible way. So they installed large, interactive posters -- in places like bus shelters, food trucks, and restaurants -- that locals could use to vote for a cause.

Source: 72andSunny

In the video below, the narrator notes that this experience reaches “people when they had the time to make a difference." That’s a big thing about experiential marketing: It allows people to interact with a brand when they have the time. Maybe that’s why 72% percent of consumers say they positively view brands that provide great experiences.

And that concept works in this experience because it takes advantage of a “you’re-already-there” mentality. In San Francisco, finding people waiting for the bus or going to food trucks is pretty much a given. So while they were “already there,” Google set up a few opportunities:

1. To learn about and vote for local nonprofits
2. To interact with the brand in a way that doesn’t require using its products
3. To indirectly learn about Google’s community outreach

With the help of the online voting integration -- and a branded hashtag: #GoogleImpactChallenge -- the campaign ended up generating 400,000 votes over the course of about three and a half weeks.

Takeaways for marketers:

• Create a branded hashtag that participants can use to share the experience on social media. Then, make sure you’ve integrated an online element that allows people to participate when they learn about it this way.
• Keep it local! It’s always nice when a large corporation gives some love to its community -- in fact, 72% of folks say they would tell friends and family about a business’s efforts like these.
• Remember the “you’re already there” approach. Find out where your audience is already hanging out and engage them there, instead of trying to get them to take action where they don’t usually spend their time.

4) Misereor: Charity Donation Billboard

When was the last time you used cash to pay for something?

Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Tough to remember, right? We’re kind of a species of “mindless swipers” -- globally, an estimated 357 billion non-cash transactions are made each year. And knowing how often we whip out our cards, German relief NGO Misereor decided to put our bad habit to good use with its charitable giving billboard.

It was what they called a “social swipe”: Set up in airports, these digital posters would display images of some problems that Misereor works to resolve -- hunger was depicted with a loaf of bread, for example.

But the screen was equipped with a card reader, and when someone went to swipe a card -- for a small fee of 2€ -- the image moved to make it look like the card was cutting a slice of bread.

Even cooler? On the user’s bank statement, there would be a thank-you note from Misereor, with a link to turn their one-time 2€ donation into a monthly one.

Needless to say, this experience required a lot of coordination -- with banks, airports, and a mobile payment platform. Because of that, the experience couldn’t just be a one-time occurrence. The people who interacted with it were later reminded of it during a pretty common occurrence: receiving a bank statement.

Takeaways for marketers:

• Visually represent the impact of participating in the experience. People interacting with this display were shown exactly where their money was going -- like slicing bread for a hungry family. (Infographics work nicely here, too -- check out our templates.)
• Partner with another brand to create an even better experience. In this instance, Misereor worked with Stripe.com for the payment technology, and with financial institutions to get a branded message on users’ bank statements. (And stay tuned -- we’ll talk more about the value of co-branding here later.)
• Don’t be afraid to nurture your leads. Even if you don’t use something like a branded hashtag to integrate the experience with an online element, find a way to remind someone that they participated.

5) Guinness: Guinness Class

One of my favorite types of marketing is the “aspirational” kind -- or as the Harvard Business Review defines it, marketing for brands that “fall into the upper-right quadrant.” Think: luxury cars, haute couture, and private jets. Things we aspire to own.

It’s that last one -- private jets -- that set apart the Guinness Class experience. For a few weeks, ambassadors dressed in Guinness-branded flight attendant uniforms entered bars across the U.K., where they surprised unsuspecting customers with a chance to win all kinds of prizes.

In order to participate, bar-goers had to order a pint of Guinness. After doing that, they would shake a prize-generating mobile tablet that displayed what they won. They could win everything from passport cases to keychains, but one player per night would get the ultimate prize: A free trip to Dublin -- via private jet, of course -- with four mates.

What we like about this experience was its ability to associate Guinness with something aspirational, like traveling by private jet. And according to Nick Britton, marketing manager for Guinness Western Europe, that held the brand up as one that doesn’t “settle for the ordinary.”

That’s important -- and can be tricky -- for a brand that’s nearly 257 years old: to maintain its authenticity, while also adapting to a changing landscape and audience. But Guinness didn’t have to change anything about its actual products in this case. Instead, it created an experience that addressed changing consumer preferences -- for example, the fact that 78% of millennials would rather spend money on a memorable experience or event than buy desirable things.

Takeaways for marketers:

• Think about the things your target audience might aspire to, and that you’d like to associate with your brand. Then, build an experience around that.
• If you do require a product purchase in order to participate in the experience, make it convenient. In this case, people had to buy a pint of Guinness to win a prize, but they were already in a bar that served it.

6) GE: Healthymagination

Think experiential marketing is just for B2C brands? Think again -- 67% of B2B marketers say that events make for one of the most effective strategies they use.

That’s why it made sense for GE to invite industry professionals to experience its Healthymagination initiative. The point of the campaign was to promote global healthcare solutions, especially in developing parts of the world.

Source: agencyEA

To help people see the impact of this initiative, GE worked with agencyEA to create “movie sets” that represented different healthcare environments where Healthymagination work took place: a rural African clinic, an urban clinic, and an emergency room. The idea was that doctors would share their stories -- live, in front of 700 attendees -- that illustrated how GE’s healthcare technology played a major role in each setting.

When people measure the success of experiential marketing, one thing they measure is how much of a dialogue it prompted. And that makes sense -- 71% of participants share these experiences. In GE’s case, the point ofHealthymagination was to get people talking about a pretty important, but uncomfortable issue: Access to healthcare in impoverished parts of the world.

But when you create a way for people to become physically immersed in the issue, it also allows them to acknowledge a topic that isn’t always easy to talk about. And that can have quite an impact -- this particular campaign, in fact, won a Business Marketing Association Tower Award.

But fear not: That concept also works for not-so-serious, but equally uncomfortable discussion topics. Just look at how well it worked for Charmin.

Takeaways for marketers:

• Experiential marketing does work for B2B brands. Think about who you’re selling to, and create an engagement that would not only attract that audience, but also present an opportunity for them to experience your product or service first-hand.
• Get uncomfortable. If your business centers around something that’s difficult or “taboo” to talk about, creating an experience around it can prompt a conversation. But make sure you keep it respectful -- don’t make people so uncomfortable that they have nothing good to say about your brand.

7) Facebook: Facebook IQ Live

Facebook -- who also owns Instagram -- has always understood how much data it has on how people use these platforms. For that reason, it created the Facebook IQ Live experience.

For this experience, that data was used to curate live scenes that depicted the data. Among them was the IQ Mart: A “retail” setting that represented the online shopper’s conversion path when using social media for buying decisions. There was also a quintessential Instagram cafe, chock full of millennial-esque photo opportunities and people snapping them -- latte art and all.

The campaign wasn’t just memorable. It also proved to be really helpful -- 93% of attendees (and there were over 1500 of them) said that the experience provided them with valuable insights on how to use Facebook for business.

But what makes those insights so valuable? Momentum Worldwide, the agency behind Facebook IQ Live, puts it perfectly: “When we understand what matters to people ... we can be what matters to them." In other words, we can shape our messaging around the things that are important to our target audiences.

And by creating this experience, Facebook was able to accomplish that for its own brand. In creating this experience, it also created a positive brand perception for a few audiences -- including, for example, the people who might have been unsure of how to use the platform for business.

Takeaways for marketers:

• Build an experience for people who aren’t sure about how they would use your product or service. Find ways for them to interact with your brand in a way that creatively spells out how it can benefit them.
• Bring your data to life. We love numbers, but creating a live installment that illustrates them can help people understand exactly what they mean. And since 65% of people think that live events help them understand a product, this setting is a great place to do it.

8) Zappos: “Google Cupcake Ambush”

To help promote its new photo app, Google took to the streets of Austin, Texas, with a cupcake truck in tow. But people didn’t pay for the cupcakes with dollars -- instead, the only accepted currency was a photo taken with said app.

And really, what’s better than a free-ish cupcake? We’ll tell you what: A free-ish watch or pair of shoes.

That was the answer from Zappos, anyway. That’s why the brand playfully “ambushed” Google’s food truck experience with one of its own: A box-on-feet -- strategically placed right next to Google’s setup, of course -- that, when fed a cupcake, would dispense a container with one of the aforementioned goodies.

In order to reap the rewards of the Zappos box, people had to have a cupcake. So while only one brand came away from the experience with an epic sugar high, both got plenty of exposure. And since 74% of consumers say a branded experience makes them more likely to buy the products being promoted, Google and Zappos both stood to gain new customers from this crowd.

But what we really like about this example is how much it shows the value of experiential co-branding. Because Google and Zappos pursue two different lines of business, they weren’t sabotaging each other, but rather they were promoting each other (which is what happens when you pick the right co-marketer).

Takeaways for marketers:

• Use experiential marketing as a co-branding opportunity:
• • Pick a partner with an audience that would be interested in your brand, but might otherwise be difficult to reach.
  • Make sure your partner would benefit from your audience, too -- you want the experience to be a win-win-win: for you, your co-brand, and the consumer.
• When you do pick a marketing partner, build an experience that requires an “exchange” of each brand’s product or service. That way, the audience is more likely to interact with both of you.

Clearly, taking some very calculated risks worked out pretty well for these brands. So when it comes to creating an experience with your brand, don’t be afraid to think outside of the box -- and don’t be afraid to work together on it with someone else.

Invest some time into thinking about the ways people could interact with you, even if it seems a little nutty. If it’s aligned with what you do and executed thoughtfully, people will be talking -- in the best way possible.

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How to Create a Facebook Public Figure Page and Why You Should

Want to create a Facebook presence that’s separate from your personal profile? Have you considered creating a public figure Facebook page? In this article, you’ll discover why you should consider a Facebook public figure page and how to set one up. Why a Public Figure Facebook Page? Your personal brand is your most valuable asset. [...]

This post How to Create a Facebook Public Figure Page and Why You Should first appeared on .
- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

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Are Micro-Influencers Or Macro-Influencers More Effective? [Infographic]

Chances are, if you spend time on Instagram, you've come across influencer posts on the platform.

You know the kind I'm talking about -- featuring a product or service, usually with the hashtag #sponsored or #ad in the caption.

These influencers typically have hundreds of thousands of followers -- or, in the case of people like Kendall Jenner and David Beckham -- millions of followers. These macro-influencers undoubtedly have tremendous reach on Instagram to get brands in front of the eyes of their fans -- but in some cases, less is actually more.

Micro-influencer marketing has also taken hold on Instagram, where users with smaller numbers of more engaged users are activated to promote brands on a smaller scale. These influencers cost less to work with, but the jury's still out on if their impact is lesser, too.

Mediakix, an influencer marketing agency, analyzed hundreds of Instagram posts from top brands to try to uncover, once and for all, if bigger is truly better. Check out the infographic below to dig into their findings.

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18 Personal Websites to Inspire Your Own

List of Blogging Websites

• HubSpot.com
• Wordpress.com
• Squarespace.com
• Medium.com
• Wix.com
• Typepad.com
• Tumblr.com

Ah, the job search.

Some refer to it as a full-time job in itself. Others compare it to dating. And several cats over at BuzzFeed think it just plain sucks.

But it doesn't have to be that way. 

When you’re applying for a job, you’re typically asked to submit a resume and cover letter, or maybe your LinkedIn profile. But there are better ways to stand out from your competition, and building a personal website is one of them.

Why You Need a Personal Website

Here's the thing about resumes and cover letters: No matter how unique you try to make your own, for the most part, they tend to read dry. And there's a good reason for it: It's supposed to be a single, no-frills page that documents your work experience. And while being concise is good, there's very little opportunity to convey your uniqueness, or for your personality to shine through at all for that matter.

While a resume is a sole, largely unchanging document, a personal website can be customized and updated according to what you're working on, or what you want to emphasize. It's both fluid and current. 

Overall, a personal website can serve different goals, but perhaps what it does best is provide you with an opportunity to tell your story. And with 53% of employers reporting that the resume alone did not provide enough information to determine if the candidate would be a good fit, that storytelling element can really help to improve your odds.

If you're thinking about creating a personal website of your very own, check out the examples below that hit the nail on the head.

18 of the Best Personal Websites We've Ever Seen

Resumes

Whether you create a single-page site or a larger portfolio, the web resume serves as a more personalized option for sharing information and demonstrating your technological skills -- and it can be used by all types of job seekers.

Even if you have very little work experience, you can leverage a website to build a better picture of your capabilities and yourself as a candidate, while leaning on your traditional resume to provide the basic background information.

1) Gary Sheng

Unlike a standard resume document, Sheng's website makes it easy for him to include logos and clickable links that allow his software engineering and web development skills to shine.

We love that visitors can choose to scroll down his page to view all of the website’s categories (“About Me,” “My Passion,” etc.), or jump to a specific page using the top navigation.

The "My System" section reads like a company mission statement, and this personal touch helps humanize his work and make him more memorable.

2) Raf Derolez

Derolez’s web resume is modern, cool, and informative. It shows off his personality, branding, and developing skills in a way that’s still very simple and clear. Not to mention, his use of unique fonts and geometric overlays ascribes personality to his name in an eye-catching way.

Want to get in touch with Derolez? Simply click the CTA located at the bottom of the page to open up an email that's pre-addressed directly to him. Or select one of the social media links to connect with him on platforms like Twitter -- where the look and feel of the visual assets happens to seamlessly align with the branding of his website. Well played, Derolez.

3) Brandon Johnson

Johnson’s incredible resume must be seen to be believed. Beautiful images of planets help to complement his planetary science background, and animations make his resume more of an experience than a document.

In terms of design, the textured, multi-layered background adds greater depth to the two-dimensional page in a way that evokes feelings of space and the planetary systems, which Johnson's work focuses on.

4) Quinton Harris

Harris' resume uses photos to tell his personal story -- and it reads kind of like a cool, digital scrapbook. It covers all the bases of a resume -- and then some -- by discussing his educational background, work experience, and skills in a highly visual way.

Not to mention, the copy is fantastic. It's clear that Harris took the time to carefully choose the right words to describe each step of his personal and professional journey. For example, the section on storytelling reads:

NYC, my new home, is filled with the necessary secrets to not only propel my craft forward, but my identity as an artist. With every lens snapped and every pixel laid, I am becoming me.

Finally, at the final navigational point (note the scrolling circles on the left-hand side of the page), users are redirected to quintonharris.com, where he goes on to tell his story in more detail.

5) Sean Halpin

Halpin’s resume is short, sweet, and to the point, which is authentic to his voice and personal branding outlined on the site. The white space allows his designs and copy to pop and command the reader's attention, which helps to improve readability -- especially on mobile devices:

Best Practices for Resume Websites

1. Code your resume so it can be crawled by search engines.
2. Offer a button to download your resume in PDF so the hiring manager can add it to your file.
3. Keep branding consistent between the website and document versions: Use similar fonts, colors, and images so you’re easy to recognize.
4. Be creative and authentic to yourself. Think about the colors, images, and media you want to be a part of your story that you couldn’t include in a document resume.

Portfolios

Building an online portfolio is a highly useful personal branding and marketing tool if your work experience and skill set call for content creation. In fact, photographers, graphic designers, illustrators, writers, and content marketers can all use web portfolios to show off their skills in a more user-friendly way than a resume or hard copy portfolio.

6) Tony D'Orio

It's important to keep the design of your visual portfolio simple to let images capture visitors' attention, and D'Orio accomplishes this by featuring bold photographs front-and-center on his website. His logo and navigation menu are clear and don't distract from his work. And he makes it easy for potential customers to download his work free of charge.

Want to give it a try? Click on the hamburger menu in the top left corner, then select + Create a PDF to select as many images as you'd like to download.

Once you open the PDF, you'll notice that it comes fully equipped with D'Orio's business card as the cover ... just in case you need it.

7) Gari Cruze

Cruze is a copywriter. But by turning his website into a portfolio featuring images from different campaigns he’s worked on, he makes visitors want to keep clicking to learn more about him. Also, there's a great CTA at the top of the page that leads visitors to his latest blog post.

His site’s humorous copy -- specifically in the “17 Random Things” and “Oh Yes, They’re Talking” sections -- serves to show off his skills, while making himself more memorable as well. These pages also include his contact information on the right-hand side, making it easy to reach out and connect at any point:

8) Melanie Daveid

Daveid’s website is a great example of “less is more.”

This developer’s portfolio features clear, well-branded imagery of campaigns and apps that Daveid worked on, and she shows off her coding skills when you click through to see the specifics of her work.

While it might seem overly minimal to only include three examples of her work, Daveid did her portfolio a service by including her best, most noteworthy campaigns. At the end of the day, it's better to have fewer examples of excellence in your portfolio than many examples of mediocrity.

9) The Beast is Back

Christopher Lee's portfolio is busy and colorful in a way that works. When you read more about Lee on his easily navigable site, you realize that such a fun and vibrant homepage is perfect for an illustrator and toy designer.

His web portfolio highlights eye-catching designs with recognizable brands, such as Target and Mario, along with links to purchase his work. This is another gallery-style portfolio with pops of color that make it fun and give it personality, thus making it more memorable. 

Best Practices for Portfolio Websites

1. Use mainly visuals. Even if you're showcasing your written work, using logos or other branding is more eye-catching for your visitors.
2. Don't be afraid to be yourself. Your personality, style, and sense of humor could be what sets you apart from other sites!
3. Organization is key. If your portfolio is full of photos, logos, and other images, make sure it's easy for visitors to navigate to where they can contact you.
4. Brand yourself. Choose a logo or icon to make your information easily identifiable.

Blogs

Consistently publishing on a blog is a great way to attract attention on social media and search engines -- and drive traffic to your site. Blogging is a smart way to give your work a personality, chronicle your experiences, and stretch your writing muscles. You might write a personal blog if you're a writer by trade, but virtually anyone can benefit from adding a blog to their site and providing useful content for their audience.

10) Everywhereist

This blog looks a bit busier, but its consistent branding helps visitors easily navigate the site. The travel blog uses globe iconography to move visitors around the site, making it easy to explore sections beyond the blog.

It also features a "Best Of" section that allows new visitors to learn about what the blog covers to get acclimated. The color scheme is warm, neutral, and free of excess clutter that could distract from the content.

11) fifty coffees

fifty coffees chronicles the author's series of coffee meetings in search of her next job opportunity, and it does a great job of using photography and visuals to assist in the telling of her lengthy stories.

The best part? Each post ends with numbered takeaways from her meetings for ease of reading comprehension. The high-quality photography used to complement the stories is like icing on the cake.

12) Minimalist Baker

I'm not highlighting Dana's food blog just because the food looks delicious and I'm hungry. Her blog uses a simple white background to let her food photography pop, unique branding to make her memorable, and mini-bio to personalize her website.

13) Kendra Schaefer

Kendra's blog is chock-full of information about her life, background, and professional experience, but she avoids overwhelming visitors by using a light background and organizing her blog's modules to minimize clutter. She also shares links to additional writing samples, which bolsters her writing authority and credibility.

Best Practices for Blogs

1. Keep your site simple and clutter-free to avoid additional distractions beyond blog posts.
2. Publish often. Company blogs that publish more than 16 posts per months get nearly 3.5X the web traffic of blogs that published less than four posts per month.
3. Experiment with different blog styles, such as lists, interviews, graphics, and bullets.
4. Employ visuals to break up text and add context to your discussion.

Demos

Another cool way to promote yourself and your skills is to create a personal website that doubles as a demonstration of your coding, design, illustration, or developer skills. These sites can be interactive and animated in a way that provides information about you and also shows hiring managers why they should work with you. This is a great website option for technical and artistic content creators such as developers, animators, UX designers, website content managers, and illustrators.

14) Albino Tonnina

Tonnina is showcasing advanced and complicated web development skills, but the images and icons he uses are still clear and easy to understand. He also offers a simple option to view his resume at the beginning of his site, for those who don't want to scroll through the animation.

15) Bobby Kane

 

Kane's site is aesthetically beautiful. And thanks to the cool background photo and minimalist site design, his experience really stands out. He further shows off his design and coding skills at the very bottom of his site, where he demonstrates his ability to code background design changes. This small touch makes his demo more interactive and will make visitors stop and think, "that's cool!"

Want to check it out? Pull down the arrow at the top of his site to refresh the background.

16) Robby Leonardi

Leonardi's incredible demo website uses animation and web development skills to turn his portfolio and resume into a video game for site visitors. The whimsical branding and unique way of sharing information ensure that his site is memorable to visitors.

17) Samuel Reed

Reed uses his page as a start-to-finish demo of how to code a website. His website starts as a blank white page and ends as a fully interactive site that visitors can watch him code themselves. The cool factor makes this website memorable, and it makes his skills extremely marketable.

18) Devon Stank

Stank's demo site does a great job of showing that he has the web design chops and it takes it a step further by telling visitors all about him, his agency, and his passions. It's the perfect balance of a demo and a mini-resume.

Plus, we love the video summary. It's a consumable summary that at once captures Stank's personality and credentials.

Best Practices for Demo Websites

1. Brand yourself and use consistent logos and colors to identify your name and your skills amongst the bevy of visuals.
2. Don't overwhelm your visitors with too many visuals at once -- especially if your demo is animated. Be sure to keep imagery easy to understand so visitors aren't bombarded when they visit your site.

http://bit.ly/2xA5hGx