The 11 Best Job Search Sites for Your Industry & Goals

We all know the usual suspects: Craigslist. Monster. Career Builder. Newspapers (half-kidding on that one).

Or perhaps you're more of a networking kind of person when looking or hiring for a job: frequenting marketing events to get some face time with heavy hitters who might want you to join their teams. Marketers -- or anyone -- looking for work have probably spent time in all of these places at one time or another.

But like ... what else? Those can't be the only ways to find a new job. Or, if you're looking to hire someone, to find your next great team addition. To paraphrase every infomercial ever, there's gotta be a better way.

There is. The "better way" to hire and get hired is to get found in the places candidates and employers are looking for you. Kind of like inbound marketing -- what a coincidence ...

Below, you'll find 11 places you might not have thought of, but often prove to be excellent marketing venues for finding job openings and the candidates to fill them.

Best Job Sites

1. Mashable Jobs
2. American Marketing Association (AMA)
3. LinkedIn Jobs
4. Twitter
5. Job.com
6. Talent Zoo
7. Mediabistro
8. Behance
9. ProBlogger
10. AngelList
11. Your Own Web Properties

1. Mashable Jobs

Perfect for: Jobs sorted by employer

Mashable isn't just a mashup of news content you need to know about today. Amid the entertainment, culture, tech, science, and social good sections, this bright-blue media outlet also happens to be a job site.

If you're job hunting, there are several ways to browse current job openings from the dashboard shown above. To start, you can simply type keywords related to your job into the blue search bar. You can also search by employer (if you have your heart set on that one company you've always wanted to work for). If you're an employer trying to expand a job opening's reach, click that big pink rectangle in the top-righthand corner of the page.

Mashable's job site is dedicated to jobs in social media, marketing, technology, and business. And they post for companies that are, well, kind of a big deal -- like Yelp, Viacom, and Digitas.

2. American Marketing Association (AMA)

Perfect for: Marketing jobs

The AMA is a well-known and respected marketing association that publishes content and hosts networking and teaching events that keep members up to date on what's going on in the world of marketing. The positions there range across many sub-specialties in marketing and across many different industries. Those looking to recruit candidates can also post jobs at a discounted rate if they're an AMA member.

Another added benefit of the AMA jobs board? It also offers educational resources like resume writing tips, information about reference checking, and how to use social networking in your job or recruitment search.

3. LinkedIn Jobs

Perfect for: Jobs & candidates sorted by industry

Speaking of social networking ... you didn't think we'd neglect the holy grail of social recruiting and job hunting, did you? LinkedIn is unbelievable if you're looking for a marketing job. Seriously, I can't state it enough. It. Is. Awesome.

LinkedIn Jobs lets you search for jobs by industry and location, plus it suggests jobs you might be interested in based on the information in your LinkedIn profile, such as where you're located and the experience you already have.

What's great about applying for jobs through LinkedIn is that your resume's already done -- if you've completed your LinkedIn profile, that is. Let me explain what some of the greatest features are so you can leverage them now if you aren't already:

Online Resume

If you haven't already, fill out your LinkedIn profile as completely as you possibly can. They make it foolproof, too, including a progress bar that tells you how complete your profile is, what more you can do to beef it up, and why doing those things will benefit you.

Sanctioned Stalking

Don't feel bad about stalking -- it's business stalking. For instance, LinkedIn has a groovy feature that lets you see who has been viewing your LinkedIn profile (provided your privacy settings are set so others can see when you're viewing their profile).

Want to see exactly who's been viewing your LinkedIn profile? LinkedIn Premium shows you exactly who might be interested in you as a professional. Whether they're recruiters, HR managers, or work for a company you've been eyeing, this visibility enables you to reach out to them proactively.

Networking Events

If you're one of those people who prefers face-to-face networking, you can also leverage a tool called LinkedIn Events. This allows you to see who on LinkedIn is attending industry events -- if your hopeful future boss is going, it might be a good idea for you to show up, too.

Groups and Company Pages

If you're vying for a specific company, follow that company on their LinkedIn Company Page. Not only will you be able to get a feel for what the people that work there are like and what their employee turnover and promotions looks like (just go to the 'Insights' tab), you might see new jobs pop up, too!

Or if you're not looking to join one company in particular, consider joining some inbound marketing groups to establish your name as a thought leader -- and get to know people who are hiring, or know people who are hiring. We recommend a little group called Inbound Marketers - For Marketing Professionals.

4. Twitter

Perfect for: Jobs & candidates sorted by industry

Career opportunities for marketers don't end with LinkedIn. Believe it or not, Twitter is also a great way to find jobs (and people to fill them). And because most people won't think to head to Twitter when they're job hunting, it's a way to stand out from other applicants. There's a few tactics you can use here:

• Follow specific jobs Twitter accounts. Do a quick search for "inbound marketing jobs" or "marketing jobs" and you'll come across tons of Twitter accounts whose sole job is to tweet out open roles in our fine industry.
• Follow specific jobs hashtags. You know what else you might find when you conduct that search? Hashtags associated with those jobs. Hashtags like #marketingjobs or #jobsearch are good places to periodically check in for recent opportunities.
• Follow the companies you want to work for, and the people who work there. Look for job postings that come from them, particularly if these companies have a referral bonus. At HubSpot, for instance, many employees take it upon themselves to tweet out new jobs because, if they bring in a new hire (even from Twitter), there's a nice referral bonus at the end of the tunnel.

5. Job.com

Perfect for: Jobs & candidates sorted by qualifications

You've never seen something like job.com, I can assure you. This intriguing recruitment site uses blockchain technology to match candidates with employers based on the attributes both parties are endorsing.

Although it caters to professionals in every industry, job.com is a perfect fit for writers, optimizers, and analysts who leave no stone unturned when advertising themselves to a new employer or candidate. In other words, if you love optimizing your resume or job listing with specific language that appeals to professionals like you, you might want to give this site a try.

6. Talent Zoo

Perfect for: Marketing & advertising jobs

Doesn't this job site sound like a recruiter's dream? Talent Zoo does indeed have a zoo of talent -- and job listings in need of that talent -- specifically for marketers, advertisers, designers, and even web developers. In addition to a place to upload a resume for repeat use, the site has a slew of articles offering career advice to help employers and applicants put their best foot forward when reaching out (and, ultimately, working together).

Talent Zoo also takes a playful approach to its user experience -- you need not look further than its search button, "Bring It, Daddy-O!" If you or your company culture is just as casual, posting to this site can ensure both parties would be a fit for each other on a social level.

7. Mediabistro

Perfect for: Marketing jobs & freelance candidates

Mediabistro has been around for a long while, and although it's changed a lot as the internet has grown, it's remained committed to an audience of marketers, content creators, and media professionals since day one. The site organizes its job listings across five navigation buttons to give you a sense of what opportunities to expect:

• Writing Jobs
• Editor Jobs
• Marketing Jobs
• Creative Jobs
• All Jobs

Not shy about its commitment to contract workers, Mediabistro also reserves a section of its website for freelance -- accessible from the top navigation bar. There, you'll see a database of freelancers across each of the industries listed above where you can find a professional that's perfect for the work you need done. Are you a freelancer, yourself? Become a Mediabistro member and create a profile.

8. Behance

Perfect for: Design & creative jobs / Networking

You might associate Behance with downloadable design templates, creative tools, and collections of artwork. But where would Behance be if it didn't also help find employment for the people who seek inspiration on its website? For that, there's Behance's job list, which surfaces job listings across dozens of industries that depend on creative professionals.

What really sets this job site apart from other creative recruitment platforms is its company profiles. Inside each job listing is a project page for the company that posted the job. The employer can list current projects they're working on, who's following them, and even their most active team members. It's a great way to get to know companies and candidates as individuals so they don't become just another application.

9. ProBlogger

Perfect for: Writing jobs

This job site tells you precisely what it is in its name. Want to be a professional blogger or find writers to create content for you? ProBlogger makes it easy for companies and candidates to find each other for various content marketing initiatives. Jobs are clearly sorted by contract, freelance, full-time, and part-time.

10. AngelList

Perfect for: Jobs at startups

It can be hard for startups to attract awesome talent on big recruitment sites like Indeed or even LinkedIn, especially when they're competing against big brands for exposure. But there are millions of skilled professionals who want to work for startups but just can't find them. That's where AngelList comes in.

AngelList is a job site exclusively for startups and those who want to work for them to find each other. Growing companies like DuckDuckGo, a search engine; Asana, a productivity tool; and Hinge, a dating app, all find top-tier talent on this job site. 

11. Your Own Web Properties

Perfect for: Personal branding

Why wait for someone else to post a job listing? Take matters into your own hands. Marketers can be notoriously bad at marketing themselves, but if you're really good at marketing, why not use your skill to your own advantage?

If you want a new job, help yourself get found all on your own. Think of your job hunt as its own marketing campaign. In fact, we've had plenty of our own inbound marketing hires execute full-fledged inbound marketing campaigns to get the attention of recruiters, hiring managers, and even recruiters here at HubSpot.

So, if you're not maintaining an online portfolio or a website that showcases you in all your [marketing] glory, hop to it. I can tell you firsthand that every new potential marketing hire that crosses my desk gets promptly Googled. What am I looking for? An active, up-to-date online presence that demonstrates their knowledge. That could mean they're blogging for their current company, their own online portfolio, frequent activity on sites like LinkedIn and Quora, even a healthy Twitter following. All of these are indications that they "get it."

No matter how hard a time you're having finding a new gig on third-party sites, remember that you always have you to fall back on.

Click here for more job sites that are particularly helpful for recruiters, and sign up below to learn how to become your own best professional advocate.

http://bit.ly/2SvmNHk

5 Reasons to Get Excited About the HubSpot Platform in 2019

 This time last year, we put a stake in the ground by announcing that HubSpot was building a centralized platform.

We believe the world has changed. We see businesses using more kinds of software, not less, that all needs to work together. To help our customers grow better in this environment, HubSpot is evolving from an “all-in-one” suite into an “all-on-one” platform.

Delivering remarkable end-to-end customer experiences is a team sport. Our goal in becoming a lovable platform is to make it easy to complement HubSpot with a rich landscape of apps built by other companies, or custom apps built uniquely for your business by an agency or your own developers.

We want to make it easy for our customers to orchestrate all of this.

In collaboration with our growing collection of platform partners, we made great progress in that mission over the past year. Here are our platform highlights from 2018:

1. We listed 94 new apps in our directory, growing our platform partner ecosystem by 70%.

Good platforms are flywheels: More customers attract more developers, who build more apps, which attract more customers, and so on. Customers get an ever wider set of capabilities, while developers get an ever wider audience they can distribute their apps to.

That flywheel is starting to accelerate on our platform, and it’s inspiring to see the wide variety of innovative companies who are bringing new integrated apps to our customers.

We welcomed 94 new official apps into our ecosystem in 2018, bringing our integrations count to over 200 across 17 categories, that help grow our customers’ businesses.

One of the categories that grew the most in 2018 was Calling. Just within that category, you can find 21 different apps for video conferencing, integrating with cloud-based phone systems and call centers, inbound and outbound SMS, voice-powered chatbots, AI-driven analysis of phone calls, and more.

In 2018, the top 20 most popular non-native apps in our ecosystem by total number of installs were:

1. Zapier -- integrations automation
2. Mailchimp -- email and marketing automation
3. Slack -- collaboration hub for work
4. WordPress -- free content management system
5. SurveyMonkey -- survey collection
6. Eventbrite -- event management and ticketing
7. Salesforce -- CRM
8. Databox -- mobile analytics
9. GoToWebinar -- video conferencing
10. MagneticOne Mobile -- business card sync
11. Automate.io -- integrations automation
12. Hotjar -- heat mapping
13. UberConference -- video conferencing
14. Zendesk -- support ticketing and customer service software
15. Shopify -- ecommerce platform
16. Typeform -- online form and survey-building
17. PandaDoc -- docusigning
18. Unbounce -- landing page building
19. Import2 Wizard -- seamless data sync
20. PieSync -- integrations automation

As you might expect, many of these were our earliest partners, and it’s great to see their continued success. But we were also excited to see new partners quickly gain traction. The 10 fastest-growing new apps in our ecosystem last year were:

1. Import2 Wizard -- seamless data sync
2. Typeform -- online form and survey-building
3. Slack -- collaboration hub for work
4. Zoho Analytics -- informative sales reports and dashboards
5. GetSiteControl -- online form and survey-building
6. CircleLoop -- advanced calling
7. OrgChartHub -- organizational chart building
8. Map My Customers -- mapping and data visualization
9. Jira -- project management
10. Skyvia -- cloud application and database sync

Many more exciting apps are in the pipeline now and will be launching over the course of 2019.

We also built a number of native integrations last year, including Zoom, Slack, Shopify, Stripe, Youtube, and Workplace by Facebook.

We deliberately invest in a small number of native integrations relative to our ecosystem’s size. This allows us to focus our developers’ time on the handful of companies that we know will be the most valuable for our customers. For instance, we were launch partners for some of Slack’s new APIs, enabling a deep integration between our two products. We were a launch partner for Workplace by Facebook. And we built a groovy new YouTube integration for actionable video metrics.

Whenever we build an integration ourselves, we look for ways to enable other partners in our ecosystem to build off those same extension points. For instance, when we built our Shopify integration, we also created the Ecommerce Bridge API, which enables companies to sync and manipulate ecommerce data using HubSpot functionality. One of our integration partners, Unific, enables customers to connect their Magento, Shopify, Bigcommerce, or WooCommerce store to HubSpot using this API. We also recently added a tight integration with Zoom and are working to make it possible for other video conferencing providers to plug into HubSpot in the same way.

2. We added 95 new API endpoints and hosted our first annual platform partner day.

Our product teams have been enthusiastically opening more APIs and UI extension points to enable developers to build and integrate more kinds of apps on our platform.

Last year, we added 95 new API endpoints (for a total of 355), creating programmatic access to tickets, products, line items, CRM pipelines, GDPR compliance features, and more. We launched an Ecommerce Bridge API and Analytics API to facilitate deeper integrations with a wide range of partners in ecommerce and analytics categories. And we unveiled a new Workflow Extensions model that lets partners create branded, native-like actions for customers within workflows across our Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, and Service Hub products.

Last spring, we also hosted our first annual Platform Partner Day at our headquarters in Cambridge. Over 60 of our top integration partners joined us to meet with our engineering and marketing teams, learn about upcoming product releases, and discuss how we can jointly create better apps and integrations for our shared customers.

We’re now gearing up for our second annual Platform Partner Day this spring with exciting new developments to share and even greater opportunities to collaborate.

Traveling back to Seattle from inaugural @HubSpot Connect partner day. Enthused, empowered and excited to be part of program and part of @INBOUND. Looking forward to working with @HubSpotAgencies and customers. Thanks @albiedrzycki @ChristineIanni and co for a great program. pic.twitter.com/Y0hYEGuwwm

— Barney Brown (@BrownBarney) May 10, 2018

3. Customers adopted integrations at a record pace.

There’s a positive correlation between the number of apps a customer connects to HubSpot and their growth on our platform. It makes sense: The more our customers invest in a unified experience for their customers, the more they can accomplish.

App adoption across our customer base in 2018 was record-breaking. The vast majority of our customers now have at least one other app integrated with HubSpot, and the average number of apps per customer jumped by more than more than 50% year-over-year. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of additional app installs.

We’re energized by this number, which indicates that customers are seeing benefits from our platform. But it’s also exciting for our platform partners who are seeing greater adoption among our customer base.

4. We connected our platform partners, agencies, and startups.

Some of the most valuable opportunities we can offer platform partners are connections with programs and communities across HubSpot.

For instance, our global network of thousands of agencies and consultants helps businesses leverage our software to grow better. Increasingly, these providers are adding our platform partners’ products to the solutions they’re delivering to clients. This gives their clients more capabilities, expands their own service offerings, and lays the foundation for a powerful go-to-market channel.

We’re seeing our agency partners leverage our platform in powerful and innovative ways. For example, Nextiny, a Platinum agency partner has curated a “tech stack” of apps from HubSpot’s platform ecosystem that they regularly deploy together for clients. Nextiny used this stack to overachieve on key business goals for their client, Jeeves Florida Rentals, and their success landed them a 2018 Impact Award for Integrations Innovation.

To facilitate these types of relationships, we launched the Apps for Agency Services program last spring. It provides a structured way for platform partners who qualify to help agencies sell and service their software, including sales enablement tools and a free subscription for their own internal use.

HubSpot for Startups is another thriving program partners with over 1,500 accelerators, incubators, and VC firms (like Y Combinator and Sequoia Capital) to provide startups with educational resources, event programs, and startup-friendly discounts on our software.

Last year, we enabled platform partners to provide special discounts to qualified startups to help them build relationships with new ventures.

To further build momentum between our platform partners and startup community, our platform marketing team researched the most commonly used apps for startups in our ecosystem and curated collections of apps for startups and free apps (including those with a freemium offering) in our directory.

We were inspired by all the successful connections between platform partners, agencies, and startups that happened last year. We're committed to facilitating even more of them in the year ahead.

5. We launched HubSpot Ventures and announced co-investment from Amazon Web Services (AWS) in programs to grow our ecosystem.

In addition to expanding our platform’s APIs and extensibility and creating new app distribution opportunities for partners, we also made a couple of big announcements about growing the ecosystem itself.

In December, we launched HubSpot Ventures, a new $30 million fund to invest in startups that align with our mission to help millions of organizations grow better. Some of the previous investments that we have made include Blissfully, Grow, Lorem, Privy and Terminus.

At the same time, we announced a three-year commitment with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to help startups grow better. All AWS Activate members have access to HubSpot for Startups and AWS now offers Activate memberships and credits to participants in HubSpot for Startups too. AWS will also support HubSpot’s platform partner program by co-investing to build an ecosystem for HubSpot partners, including content tailored to developers.

And, in the spirit of investing in our platform partners, we also extended HubSpot for Startups discounts to all certified platform partners who aren’t yet HubSpot customers but want to make the switch.

Onward and Upward in 2019

We’ve got big plans for our platform ecosystem in the year ahead. For customers, we’re eager to bring you more apps and integrations that will expand your business’s digital superpowers. To see the latest ones, check out the new and noteworthy category in our directory.

For partners, we’re dedicated to creating more opportunities for you to build your business on our platform. Last year, our entire executive team went on a field trip to learn from some of the best platform companies in the Bay Area. Our overarching takeaway was this credo: A platform should be measured by the success of its ecosystem. In 2018, we added three key hires to our team who are specifically tasked with helping our ecosystem succeed. Samantha Ceppos, our director of global partner and platform marketing, scales our ecosystem and ensures our partners are always looped in to changes and updates. Elizabeth Ruscitto, our director of developer relations, is leading the charge in improving our developer documentation, tools, and support. You can access our latest resources and sign up for a developer portal for free here. Hugh Durkin, our director of platform partner success, is focused on shaping our platform partner program to help partners grow their businesses within our ecosystem.

Are you interested in joining us as an app platform partner? Learn more about the program here.

We’re eager to grow better together.

 

http://bit.ly/2WMtkwo

How a Minority of Business Bloggers Outperform the Majority [New Data]

When Orbit Media Studios decided to research how business bloggers go about doing their thing in 2014, it wasn’t intended to be a one-and-done project. The mission was -- and still is -- to track how business blogging evolves.

Why? Because successful inbound marketers thrive when they master content marketing and, of course, blogging is an all-important cornerstone for most strategies.

After establishing some essential benchmarks regarding how bloggers create, format, and measure their posts in years one and two of the study, Orbit Media began probing the 1000+ bloggers that participated in the survey to learn which tactics contributed most to achieving their desired results.

For the past three years, Orbit's been focused on correlating blogging tactics with results. As trends emerge, the story continues to get more intriguing with each passing year.

In late 2018, the father of the study, research master Andy Crestodina, put considerable effort into reporting how those that saw their efforts reap strong results differed from the pack.

The results of the survey, along with Andy’s comprehensive analysis and 25 graphs to depict the data, are presented in full here. However, this year -- year five of research -- me, Andy, and the data-crunchers at Orbit also set out to create a side-by-side-comparison of how the average bloggers’ tactics differ from the top 20%.

Spoiler alert -- the conclusion is the more you put into business blogging, the more you get out of it.

Take a look at how above average bloggers get above average results.

http://bit.ly/2RKh4sC

The Ultimate Guide to Google Shopping in 2019

Online shopping — we all do it. Heck, it’s arguably the greatest thing since sliced bread. (Did you know you can shop online for that, too? Crazy.)

But, have you ever been looking for a product and wanted to shop among a variety of brands and labels? This can be a pretty clunky process if you’re hopping between ecommerce websites.

This is where online shopping marketplaces come in handy. Think: Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and — you guessed it — Google Shopping. While Google Shopping isn’t technically an online marketplace (it’s more of an ad platform, but more on that later), it provides shoppers the same opportunity to browse a variety of products based on their search query.

Google Shopping also benefits retailers because, when a shopper clicks on a product link, they’re sent back to the retailer’s site to make the purchase.

If you’re not advertising your products on Google Shopping, you’re missing out, my friend. We compiled this guide to help you better understand Google Shopping and get started with your first Shopping campaign. Keep reading to get started, or use the chapter links to jump ahead.

When it was released in 2002, Google Shopping was called Froogle. The service simply indexed product data based on certain search terms. In 2012, the service shifted to a paid advertising model where retailers had to pay to be featured in the Google Shopping search results.

From that point forward, Google Shopping became a “branch” of Google AdWords — yet another way for retailers and e-commerce businesses to advertise their physical products on Google. But unlike text-based Google ads that show up based on keywords, Google uses product data uploaded by merchants to display Google Shopping ads.

Why use Google Shopping?

Why use Google Shopping? In short, it works. Here’s my personal anecdote about Google Shopping.

I’m currently in the process of moving apartments here in Chicago, and my boyfriend and I are looking for a sleeper sofa — preferably a sectional — for our new apartment. I’m not loyal to a specific furniture or home goods brand, so I’ve been looking for ways to easily search for a new sofa across multiple retailers.

Enter: Google Shopping. When I Google “sleeper sectional sofa,” it pulls up lots of websites … along with the sponsored Google Shopping results. Bingo.

 

By clicking on See sleeper sectional or on the Shopping tab below the search query box, I can access a variety of sofas from different retailers. Google Shopping also allows me to filter the results by price point, size, fabric, and more.

So, I’m a fan of Google Shopping. I haven’t made a purchase yet, but I do anticipate that I’ll find our ideal sofa by using this service.

Here are a few other reasons to use Google Shopping:

• Google Shopping adds a visual touch to an otherwise text-heavy searching and shopping experience.
• Google Shopping allows you to show up multiple times in Google SERPs — as a website result, a text-only PPC result, and a Shopping result.
• Google Shopping is proven to have 30% higher conversion rates than text ads.

How to Add Products to Google Shopping

1. Set up a Google Merchant Center account
2. Optimize your product imagery
3. Collect and input your product feed data
4. Link your Google AdWords account
5. Create a Google Shopping campaign
6. Place bids on your Shopping campaign
7. Target and schedule your Shopping campaign
8. Build ad groups

Let’s talk about how to get your products listed on Google Shopping. Below, we’ll walk through the steps required to manually set up your account. Tip: If you have a lot of products, this process might be easier to outsource to a Google Shopping data feed tool.

 

1. Set up a Google Merchant Center account

To get your products featured in Google Shopping results, you must sign up for a Google Merchant Center account.

Google Merchant Center is simple to set up, is easy to navigate, and essentially serves as your home base for your products and product information. (You’ll manage your future Google Shopping campaigns through Google Ads, but more on that later.)

Read our guide to Google Merchant Center to learn more about creating and managing your account.

 

2. Optimize your product imagery

Google Shopping uses uploaded product feeds to index search results, but it pulls the featured images from the respective retail sites. Because of that, it’s important to optimize your product imagery and listings on your own website before you market them on Google Shopping.

Google Shopping is a highly visual experience. Your product photos are arguably the most important part of your listing, and they may be how shoppers choose which product to click and buy. Google knows this and — in the interest of providing a great shopping experience for consumers — will actually deny Google Shopping campaigns if the images are low-quality.

(If you think you can cut corners here, think again. Google does frequent quality checks and doesn’t hesitate to suspend Google Shopping accounts. Bad product imagery doesn’t just hurt sales, it can prevent them altogether.)

If you want your products to be featured on Google Shopping, we recommend following Google’s image guidelines from the start:

• Use a solid white, gray, or light-colored background
• Use clear, even lighting
• Show the product clearly being sold. (Rear views and close-ups can be used as additional images, but not as the main image.)
• Show the product at the correct scale and not too big or too small. (Your product should take up between 75% and 90% of the full image.)
• Avoid blur, noise, excessive .jpeg additions, or other image tweaks like pixelation, fringing, and fading out.

Other best practices include showing apparel products on-body, using shadows to add depth, providing multiple angles of your product, and featuring real people using it. These product image specifications are also good to master if you sell your products on other marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, or Etsy.

 

3. Collect and input your product data feed

With your images optimized, it’s time to create your product data feed. Your product feed tells Google all about your products. This data is essential because it helps Google find and display your products when people search for certain product terms or attributes.

To set up your product feed, go to your Google Merchant Center account. Click Products > Feeds, and then click the blue “+” icon.

First, enter your country and language. This data determines which demographic(s) will see your products, so it’s important.

Next, name your product feed and choose how you’ll input your product information.

 

If you choose Google Sheets, you can either upload your own spreadsheet or use a template provided by Google Merchant Center. This step also allows you to create an upload schedule depending on how often you update your inventory.

 

This spreadsheet is used to assemble the product attributes that Google will use to index and display your products. Below is a brief list of some required product attributes that Google uses to create your Google Shopping ads (plus a cheeky sofa example).

id — Your product’s unique identifier. Use the SKU if possible. Example: S123

title — Your product’s title. Should match the product landing page. Add any specifics that shoppers may search for, such as size, color, or style. Example: Allie’s Super Comfy Sleeper Sectional Sofa, Grey

description — An accurate description of your product. Should match the product landing page. Only include information about the product. Example: This sleeper sectional sofa was made especially for Allie’s new apartment. Made from 100% cloud-based material, this sofa is perfect for snuggling her dog, binging on Cheez-its, and watching too much Netflix. It also has a pull-out bed for when her mom comes to visit.

link — The URL of your product’s landing page. Should start with http or https. Example: http://bit.ly/2Gcz2Tg

image_link — The URL of your product’s main image. Should start with http or https. Example: http://bit.ly/2DbQCmr

availability — Your product’s availability. Match the availability from the product landing page. Example: In stock

price — Your product’s price. Match the price from the product landing page and the currency from the country in which the product is predominately sold. Example: $500.00

google_product_category — The Google-defined product category for your product. Include the single most relevant category. Example: Sectional > Sleeper

brand — Your product’s brand name. Provide the name generally recognized by customers. Example: Allie's

You can find the full list of Google’s Product data specification here. We recommend you read it as we couldn’t fit the entire list of required and optional attributes in this blog post. 

If you choose to use the template provided by Google Merchant Center, the spreadsheet will already reflect the product attributes as column headers.

If you choose to create your own spreadsheet, input your chosen product attributes as the column headers. Fill out the respective data with each product as its own row. If an attribute doesn't apply to a product, leave that cell blank. When complete, simply upload the document to Google Merchant Center.

Voila! From that point forward, you can access your product feed on your Google Merchant Center account under Products > Feeds > Primary feeds.

 

4. Link your Google AdWords account

When you search for a product on Google, the Google Shopping results you see are actually advertisements.

That’s right — in order to get your products on Google Shopping, you have to pay. While Google Merchant Center is how Google gets your product information, Google AdWords is how consumers see your products … through Shopping campaigns, which we’ll get to next.

To get your products in front of shoppers via Google Shopping, you’ll have to link your Google AdWords account.

Log into your Google Merchant Center account. In the top right-hand corner, you’ll find three vertical dots. Click those to expand the menu, and then click Account linking.

 

If you don’t have a Google AdWords account, you can create one from this screen. Otherwise, click Link account to enter your Google AdWords customer ID. Once you’re finished, your AdWords account should be linked.

 

 

5. Create a Google Shopping campaign

Once your Google AdWords account is linked, you’ll be able to create a Google Shopping campaign and advertise your products. There are a couple different ways to get started.

One way to create a Google Shopping campaign is through your Google Merchant Center account. After you link your Google AdWords account via the Account linking page, you should be able to access it from the same place. From there, you can simply click Create Shopping Campaign.

Next, insert the campaign name, country of sale, and daily budget. Once you click Create, you’ll be prompted to continue managing your campaign through Google AdWords.

The other way to create a Google Shopping campaign is through Google AdWords. Log into your Google AdWords account. Open the Campaigns tab on the left-hand side menu, click the blue “+” icon, and choose New campaign.

 

First, choose a campaign goal. A Shopping campaign can have a goal of Sales, Leads, or Website traffic. (You can see the Shopping designation if you hover over the goal.)

Sales campaigns drive sales online or in person. Leads campaigns gather leads and other conversions by encouraging shoppers to complete an action. Website traffic campaigns bring the right people to your website. Google tailors each campaign to align with your goal, so be sure to choose whichever one is best for your business.

After you choose a campaign goal, designate the campaign type as Shopping. Make sure your Google Merchant Center account is displayed (so Google AdWords knows where to pull your product data from) and indicate your country of sale.

Lastly, choose a campaign subtype. Note: Smart Shopping campaigns require conversion tracking so AdWords can track when your ads lead to sales on your website.

For explanatory purposes, let’s choose a Standard Shopping campaign.

The next screen contains all your Google Shopping campaign settings. First, enter a campaign name, and click Additional settings if you want to set an inventory filter, enable local inventory ads, or change your campaign URL options.

 

6. Place bids on your Shopping campaign

Next, under your Google Shopping settings, you’ll be asked to select your bidding strategy and set your campaign budget.

Bidding is how you pay for people to see, click on, and interact with your ads. According to Google, “a sufficient bid and high-quality product data will earn your ad a higher rank.”

(Tip: Google has a pretty cool Bid Simulator Tool that’ll show you how bid changes might affect your ad performance. Also, GoDataFeed wrote an awesome guide to Google Shopping bidding strategies that may be helpful, too.)

 

First, select your bid strategy. Manual CPC (cost-per-click) means you set your own maximum CPC for your ads. You can also set an automated bid strategy. Target ROAS (return on ad spend) and Enhanced CPC both require conversion tracking as Google uses your ad’s conversion rates to set the most efficient bid for your products.

With "Maximize clicks", Google Ads automatically sets your bids to get as many clicks as possible within your budget. You can set a Maximum CPC bid limit to cap your spend on each ad.

Next, choose your campaign budget. This is the amount of money you want to spend on average each day … but the amount isn’t capped daily. Instead, Google manages your budget monthly: in a month, you won’t spend more than your daily budget times the number of days in each month.

For example, let’s say I set my campaign budget to $100 for the month of February. Google sees that I’m willing to spend $100 x 28 days = $2,800 in February. As it places bids on my ads, Google might spend over $100 in a day, but it’ll never spend more than $2,800 in the month.

You can also set a delivery method for your budget: Standard spends your budget evenly over time, and Accelerated spends it quicker.

Lastly, if you are running more than one campaign, you can set a campaign priority so Google knows which bid will be used.

Read more about the fundamentals of PPC advertising in our ultimate guide.

 

7. Target and schedule your Shopping campaign

The last section of the Google Shopping campaign settings is all about targeting and scheduling your campaign. This part is important because it dictates who will see your product ads and when.

The first two settings — Networks and Devices — shouldn’t change. They’re basically just telling you where your product ads will show up.

Next, select the locations that your ad will target. Make sure you only choose locations where you’re located and/or can ship to. Under Location options, you can change the Target and Exclude settings, although we recommend Google’s default choices. These options ensure that you’re marketing to the very best people: those located in your target location and those who are searching for (a.k.a. interested in) those locations, too. (The same goes for your excluded locations.)

Finally, set the start and end dates of your Shopping campaign. Your ad will continue to run unless you set an end date, so don’t forget that section.

 

8. Build ad groups

After you complete your Google Shopping campaign settings, you’ll be prompted to build ad groups for your campaign. Ad groups determine what type of ads you’ll run and how you’ll organize bidding for those ads.

There are two types of ad groups you can run: Product Shopping ads and Showcase Shopping ads. Product Shopping ads promote a single product. Showcase Shopping ads are a new format and allow you to advertise multiple products as part of a product or lifestyle ad that represents your brand or business.

If you choose a Product Shopping ad group, enter your ad group name and set a maximum CPC bid.

 

This creates one big ad group for all your products. If you wish to filter your products further, you can create separate ad groups for different categories.

If you choose a Showcase Shopping ad group, enter your ad group name and set a maximum CPE (cost per engagement) bid. (Engagement occurs when someone expands your Showcase Shopping ad and clicks on spends at least 10 seconds within the ad.) Lastly, choose what products to advertise as part of the Showcase Shopping ad.

Once you click Save, your campaign is submitted. Congratulations on completing your first Google Shopping campaign … we hope to see your products in Google Shopping results! 🎉

Conclusion

Google Shopping is a welcome change from an otherwise text-heavy online shopping experience. It’s almost like a digital mall — shoppers can enter, search for what they want, and see many different brands and types of products on one screen. For that reason, many people (including myself) prefer marketplaces over shopping for products on a standalone ecommerce site.

If your physical products aren’t being advertised in the Google Shopping results, consider adding this tool to your marketing repertoire. Not only will it boost your website traffic, but it’ll also give you leads and sales you otherwise might not have collected. Use this guide to get your Google Shopping campaign up and running, and you’ll see how it can greatly benefit your ecommerce strategy.

http://bit.ly/2Gcz3GO

How The Flesch Reading Ease Test Can Help You Write Clear and Concise Copy

After writing The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway famously said his novel was “the best I can write ever for all of my life.” To a certain extent, he was right. The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953 and was specifically cited when Hemingway won the Nobel Prize in Literature the following year. Sadly, he never published a major work of fiction again.

Many critics hold The Old Man and the Sea in the same regard as William Faulkner’s short story The Bear and Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby-Dick. But unlike Faulkner and Melville, whose flowery, meandering prose is almost too poetic to follow, Hemingway crafted his iconic novel in a crisp, economical fashion -- writing it at a fourth-grade reading level.

It might be shocking that one of the 20th century’s most influential writers wrote for nine-year-olds, but that’s exactly why so much of his work is considered classic American literature.

The best writing zips you across the page. If your eyes can fall down the piece and you can easily grasp the material, you’ll lose yourself in the story. But, on the surface, readability seems like a subjective measure. How can you objectively gauge it?

Interestingly enough, in 1975, J. Peter Kincaid developed the Flesch-Kincaid readability formula, which helped the U.S. Army measure the reading difficulty of technical manuals and is now used to make sure insurance companies write their policies at a ninth-grade reading level or below, in most American states.

To truly grasp the benefits of examining your content using the Flesch reading ease test, let’s go over what it is, the formula it follows, and how you can use it to craft clear and concise copy.

Flesch Reading Ease

The Flesch reading ease test is a formula that measures the readability of your writing. The higher your score, the more digestible it is. The lower your score, the more difficult it is to read.

Flesch Reading Score Formula

To calculate your writing’s readability, the Flesh reading ease test follows this formula:

206.835 - 1.015*(total words/total sentences) - 84.6*(total syllables/total words)

After calculating your score, check out the following table to match it with a corresponding reading level:

Score	Reading Level
100.00 - 90.00	5th Grade
90.00 - 80.00	6th Grade
80.00 - 70.00	7th Grade
70.00 - 60.00	8th & 9th Grade
60.00 - 50.00	10th to 12th Grade
50.00 - 30.00	College
30.00 - 0.00	College Graduate

However, no one has time to calculate an entire piece’s syllables, words, and sentences. Fortunately, the Hemingway App can calculate its readability for you.

Although it doesn’t follow the Flesch reading ease test formula to grade your writing’s readability, The Hemingway App follows a similar formula -- the Automated Readability Index. The Automated Readability Index will grade your writing by reading level, so if your piece receives a score of “8”, you write at an 8th-grade level. According to The Hemingway App, most people read at a 10th grade level, so try to aim for a readability score of 10 when writing content.

If you want to grip an audience, write like Hemingway.

In the content marketing industry, it’s not enough to acquire people’s attention anymore -- you must hold it. But to truly engage an audience and emotionally resonate with them, showing off your intelligence and writing like an academic will only confuse your readers and disengage them from your content. Instead, write clear and concise pieces like Hemingway did. Because even though he wrote at a fourth-grade reading level, his writing style captured the imagination of the entire world.

http://bit.ly/2GdcIJg

How to Improve Your Pinterest Reach: 4 Tips

Has your Pinterest traffic dropped off? Wondering how to encourage more pinners to interact with your content? In this article, you’ll discover four tips to develop pins and boards that spark engagement from your audience on Pinterest. Pinterest Can Work for Your Business Many businesses struggle with how to successfully establish themselves on Pinterest, especially […]

The post How to Improve Your Pinterest Reach: 4 Tips appeared first on Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner.

February 06, 2019 at 12:00PM http://bit.ly/2MPVgLz
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How to Create an Email Newsletter [Checklist]

When starting an email newsletter, you're juggling a lot of balls in the air at once.

You have to worry about proofreading the copy, creating compelling calls-to-action, designing the email to work for multiple inboxes and devices, avoiding any spam triggers, and brainstorming clickable subject lines -- all while staying within the confines of email law (yes, there is such a thing).

Oh, and if you mess any of your email up, there's no undoing it once you send it to your subscribers.

If you want to make sure you won't miss any steps when making a newsletter, keep reading. Inspired by a blog post from former leader of HubSpot Academy, Mark Kilens, we pulled together a completely updated and comprehensive checklist for anyone looking to send an email newsletter.

If you're sending newsletters, bookmark the following steps in your browser, or print it out and hang it up next to you. You don't want to miss out on these crucial steps.

How to Create an Email Newsletter

Here are 12 steps to create the best email newsletter for your business or personal goals.

Step 1: Figure out your newsletter's goal.

Before you start drafting a single word, make sure you're fully aware of the newsletter's goal and how it fits into your larger content strategy. (Have one in place? Go ahead, skip to the next section.)

Is your newsletter supposed to help you generate leads? Get more email contacts? Send traffic to your website? Figure out your goal and let the rest of your decisions flow from it.

Keep in mind your goal should be something beyond "how many people opened it." Instead, it should be more closely tied to your overall business goals. Your email's open rate can give you an indication of the newsletter's performance, but it shouldn't be the only number you care about each month. Here are some email marketing metrics to consider.

Step 2: Gather your content.

Once you have a goal for your newsletter, you'll find content for it. Depending on how early you set your newsletter's goal and how often you plan on sending this newsletter, you could be able to actively or passively find content in the time between two email sends. Active means you're going on the hunt for content that'll solve a specific goal. Passive means that you'll randomly stumble on it when browsing for other content, but realize it could fit in nicely.

When I put together newsletters, I tended to do a lot of active searching ... but I could've saved myself a lot of time if I were passive. Since I knew a newsletter needed to be sent each month, bookmarking links throughout the month would've been a great timesaver. Instead, I usually spent several hours clicking the "Back" button on my blog, hunting for content.

However you like to gather content is up to you, but great places to look for content are your company's blog, social media accounts, lead-generation content, internal newsletters, and training documents.

Step 3: Design your template.

Make sure you've got an idea of how your newsletter will look before writing copy. That way, you'll know exactly how much space you have to promote a piece of content -- there's few things more frustrating than trying to squeeze copy into too tight a space.

Your template doesn't have to be flashy or anything -- even newsletters with minimal text and color formatting will look great. The design just needs to make it easy for your recipients to read, scan, and click elements of the email. This means it should be mobile-friendly, too. According to data from Litmus, most people (46%) opened their email on a mobile device in 2018 -- nearly 30% higher than email opens on desktop.

If you want to get some inspiration for great email newsletter design, check out this post. I'd also recommend looking into pre-made templates if you're not familiar with designing emails -- it can save you a lot of heartache down the road. If you're a HubSpot customer, you'll have a bunch of pre-made templates in the email tool.

Step 4: Set your email newsletter size.

Unfortunately, email newsletters don't size themselves when you send them to subscribers. But because everyone opens their email on their device and email service of choice, how are you supposed to know what size or resolution they should be?

Most providers will default your email newsletter size to 600px wide, with email body padding another 30px wide on all sides. And when this happens, the content inside your newsletter might not survive the adjustment. Therefore, it's important to ensure your newsletter design fits inside that universal 600px width.

What about height? Ultimately, your email can be as high (or, rather, as long) as you want it to be without the email client distorting its design. However, people are much less likely to click through to your website if the email goes on forever -- and email clients with sensitive spam filters might take notice as well. As a general rule, try not to make your email recipients scroll for more than a second before reaching the end of it.

Step 5: Add in your body content.

Next up: filling in the template with words and pictures. This will be the meat of your email newsletter, so spend time perfecting it. Most people keep the copy short and sweet to encourage clickthroughs, though some notable newsletter take the opposite approach. This post can help you with email newsletter copy if you need it. Be sure to add in some images if they can help support your copy.

Don't forget to edit your email thoroughly -- maybe even send it on to one of your teammates for a once-over. Remember, once you send the thing, you can't fix those embarrassing typos like you can with web content.

Step 6: Add in personalization tokens and smart content.

The best email newsletters I get feel like they've been written personally for me -- like a friend actually took the time to put together a newsletter with things only I would like. I open them, I click on them, I share them ... pretty much every time.

If you want your newsletters to feel that personal, you should do three things:

1. Segment your emails and choose content that group of people will love.
2. Add in personalization tokens. If your marketing software supports personalization, this is a really easy thing to implement that could have big results for your conversion rates. That being said, only add in a few personalization tokens -- you don't want to creep out your email recipients. ;)
3. Also add in smart content. This is content that shows one thing to one part of your audience and one thing to another. An example would be a Smart CTA -- your leads would see a CTA for talking to your sales reps and your customers would see one about getting tickets to a customer-only event. Neither audience would want to see the other audience's CTA, so smart content will show only the right CTA to the right person.

Step 7: Choose your subject line and sender name.

Your audience may like different things, but we've found that having a sender name from a real person increased opens and clickthroughs. Try running an A/B test to see if it works for you, too. Whatever you choose, make sure it's something recognizable so recipients aren't confused as to why they're receiving your email.

Subject lines are a little trickier. Lots of things can help you put together a click-worthy subject line, including brevity and an immediately actionable value proposition. That being said, some really great marketing emails have been sent with the subject "Hey." Use the subject line best practices as a jumping-off point, then run your own A/B tests to see what your audience loves.

Step 8: Support your newsletter content with alt text and plain text.

At this point, you'll have the email pretty much ready to go. While going through the steps above, I'm guessing you forgot two absolutely crucial things (I know I forget them almost every time I make an email): the alt text and plain text.

Alt text is the text that appears when a picture isn't loaded. Since not all email providers load images properly, you have to make sure the alt text is there so your recipients know what they're looking at. If you're including a CTA that's an image, your conversion rates will definitely suffer without alt text.

Some email clients also won't display HTML properly, which is why you need to make sure your emails look great in plain text. Make sure the links are easy to click and that it's clear what the email is about without the photos.

Step 9: Make sure you're legally compliant.

Before you hit "Send," be sure that your emails are all good from a legal perspective. The two biggest laws you need to worry about? CAN-SPAM and GDPR.

• CAN-SPAM requires that you have a footer in your email with your address and an easy way to unsubscribe from your emails if they don't want to receive them anymore.
• GDPR is a similar but more comprehensive privacy law that passed in Europe in 2018, requiring (among other things) that email marketers only send newsletters to those people who have manually opted in to receive them. In other words, wherever on your website you collect email subscribers, you cannot automatically check the "opt-in" box for them if these recipients live in Europe. They must deliberately check this box themselves.

Step 10: Test different browsers and email providers.

Email providers don't all read email code the same way -- what looks fine on Gmail in Chrome will look terrible in Outlook, for example. So you need to test out emails in the most popular browsers and email providers.

If you have HubSpot, you can test emails for different providers in the tool. If you don't, check out Litmus, or create a bunch of fake email accounts and test everything manually.

Step 11: Send your email.

The moment of truth! Having made sure all your email recipients have subscribed to receive this email, and your email has all the branding and legal compliance it's worthy of, it's time to click send. Then, wait for the data to roll in.

Step 12: Analyze and iterate.

Fast-forward a few days: The data's in. How did your newsletter do? What do you do next?

Check to see how your email newsletter performed on the goals you set back in step one. See which parts of your email got the most clicks, and which parts of the newsletter contributed most to your goal. If you have closed-loop analytics, measuring this all will be pretty easy.

Once you have that data, you have a direction to go in for your next email newsletter send. Whether your next send is in a day, a week, a month, or a quarter, you'll have insights to make the next newsletter even better.

What other tips do you have for creating successful email newsletters? For more inspiration, check out these awesome newsletter examples.

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