The Ultimate List of Instagram Stats [2019]

With more than 500 million daily active users, brands are quickly recognizing the need to have a presence on Instagram.

But, as with any social network, the brands that are getting the most out of Instagram are the ones who are smart about what they post, when they post, how often they post, and whom they're targeting.

But how do they know what's a "smart" post for their business?

Download our guide to learn how to use Instagram for business here.

That's where the Instagram data comes in. There's a whole lot of research out there about Instagram -- everything from the demographics of its users and how often brands are posting, to how caption length affects engagement and what the most popular emoji is on Instagram. (See #32.)

Read on to uncover more social media stats that'll help you get ideas and improve your own Instagram posting strategy.

48 Instagram Stats

Click on a category below to jump to the stats for that category:

1. Instagram's Growth
2. Audience & Demographics
3. Brand Adoption
4. Instagram Post Content
5. Instagram Posting Strategy

Instagram's Growth

1. The Instagram community has grown from 90 million monthly active users in January 2013 to 1 billion monthly active users as of June 2018. Tweet this stat! (Source)

Image Credit: Statista

2. Instagram's more than 500 million active users place it well ahead of Twitter (326 million active users) Snapchat (150 million active users), and Pinterest (250 million active users). Tweet this stat! (Source)

3. The proportion of online adults who use Instagram has grown by nearly 400% since Pew Research Center first started tracking social media platform adoption in 2012. Tweet this stat! (Source)

Image Credit: Pew Research Center

4. Instagram's user base is growing far faster than social network usage in general in the U.S. However, Instagram is projected to grow more slowly in the next few years, from 13.1% growth in 2018 to 4% in 2022. Tweet this stat! (Source)

5. Between 2016 and 2020, eMarketer predicts Instagram will add 26.9 million users -- almost double the incremental users expected for Twitter, and far more than any other social platform tracked. Tweet this stat! (Source)

Image Credit: eMarketer

6. In 2019, nearly 25% of Facebook's total ad revenue is expected to come from Instagram. By 2020, Instagram's share of that revenue will grow to 30% globally. Tweet this stat! (Source)

7. Instagram and Snapchat are tied for the second-highest used messaging app (behind Facebook Messenger) for millennials at 47%. Tweet this stat! (Source)

Image Credit: Refuel Agency

8. Other than Instagram's own account, the most-followed Instagram account as of January 2019 is run by professional soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo, followed by celebrities Selena Gomez, Ariana Grande, and Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson. Tweet this stat! (Source)

Image Credit: Statista

Audience & Demographics

9. 72% of teenagers use Instagram and nearly as many (69%) use Snapchat. Both have increased by more than 20% since 2015. Tweet this stat! (Source)

Image Credit: 

Pew Research Center

10. 35% of adult internet users used Instagram in 2018, up from 26% in September 2014. Tweet this stat! (Source)

11. 71% of young adults (ages 18–24) used Instagram in 2018, compared with 37% who did so in 2013. Tweet this stat! (Source)

Image Credit: Pew Research Center

12. In 2018, 60% of Instagram users used the platform daily, including 55% of young adults who visited several times a day. This 60% figure reflects a 9-point increase from 2016, when 51% of Instagram users reported visiting the site on a daily basis. Tweet this stat! (Source)

13. More than one-third of Instagram users have used their mobile devices to buy something online -- 70% more likely than people who are not on Instagram. Tweet this stat! (Source)

14. On average, women make up 56% of Instagram's user base in Latin America. Tweet this stat! (Source)

15. More than 80% of Instagram's user base consists of people living outside of the U.S. Tweet this stat! (Source)

16. As of January 2019, the countries with the most Instagram users are the U.S. (121 million), India (71 million), and Brazil (64 million). Tweet this stat! (Source)

Image Credit: Statista

Brand Adoption

17. Businesses that are on Instagram get up to 37% of their total impressions from Instagram Stories, the ethereal content that users can publish separate from their feed and disappears after 24 hours. Tweet this stat! (Source)

18. Eight of the top 15 most followed brands on Instagram are in the business of retail. Tweet this stat! (Source)

19. Approximately 80% of all Instagram users follow a business on Instagram. Tweet this stat! (Source)

20. In a 2018 study, the higher education industry had the highest engagement rate of any other industry per post on Instagram, at 3.39%. Second was sports teams at 2.28%, and third was nonprofits at 2.14%. Tweet this stat! (Source)

Image Credit: RivalHQ

Instagram Post Content

21. More than 100 million photos and videos are shared on Instagram each day. Tweet this stat! (Source)

22. On Instagram, photos showing faces get 38% more Likes than photos not showing faces. Tweet this stat! (Source)

23. In a study of 8 million Instagram images, images with a single dominant color generate 17% more Likes than images with multiple dominant colors. Tweet this stat! (Source)

Image Credit: Curalate

24. On Instagram, images with a high amount of negative space generate 29% more Likes than those with minimal negative space. Tweet this stat! (Source)

25. On Instagram, images featuring blue as the dominant color generate 24% more Likes than images that are predominantly red. Tweet this stat! (Source)

26. There's little correlation between caption text length and engagement rate on Instagram. Tweet this stat! (Source)

Image Credit: Simply Measured

27. When Instagram first introduced video in June 2013, more than 5 million were shared in the first 24 hours. Tweet this stat! (Source)

28. One in four ads on Instagram is a video. Tweet this stat! (Source)

Image Credit: SensorTower

29. In a study of 100 top brands, the brands' Instagram captions averaged 2.5 hashtags per post. Tweet this stat! (Source)

30. In one study, posts with nine to 12 hashtags received more engagement than posts with any other number of hashtags. Tweet this stat! (Source)

Image Credit: Track Maven

31. Instagram posts that include hashtags between 21 and 24 characters in length perform better than average. Tweet this stat! (Source)

Image Credit: Track Maven

32. Posts tagged with a location see 79% higher engagement than posts not tagged with a location. Tweet this stat! (Source)

33. The red heart is the most frequently shared emoji on Instagram, which is shared 79% more than the next most popular symbol, a smiling face with heart eyes. Tweet this stat! (Source)

Image Credit: Curalate

34. Four of the top five most popular emojis are positive smiley faces (including the laughing-so-hard-I'm-crying icon). If you look at the top 20 emojis, smileys comprise half. Tweet this stat! (Source)

35. The American flag is the only flag emoji to break the top 100, ranking #59. The next most popular flag comes from Italy, ranked #125, followed by the French flag at #160 and the Japanese flag at #166. Tweet this stat! (Source)

36. Pizza is the most popular Instagrammed food, behind sushi and steak. Tweet this stat! (Source)

Instagram Posting Strategy

37. In a study of 55 brands, all brands posted an average of 1.5 times per day. Tweet this stat! (Source)

38. The best time to post on Instagram is Thursday between 5 a.m. and 11 a.m. in your respective time zone.  Tweet this stat! (Source)

39. The most common posting frequency for brands on Instagram is 11–20 times per month, with almost one-third of companies measured falling into that bucket. Tweet this stat! (Source)

40. 90% of the Interbrand 100 companies now have Instagram accounts. Of all 100 companies, 80% post at least one Instagram photo or video per week. Tweet this stat! (Source)

41. Many posts by top brands take more than 19 hours to hit 50% of their total comments, and another 10% of comments coming after 19 days. Tweet this stat! (Source)

42. Many posts continue to receive low-level engagement for days and weeks after posting. Most brand posts continue to receive Likes and comments 18–24 hours after posting, just at a slower clip than the initial fast pace. Tweet this stat! (Source)

43. While Instagram is still by far the best social network for organic engagement, its per-follower interaction rate of 2.2% is barely half what it was in 2014. Tweet this stat! (Source)

Image Credit: Forrester Research

44. In a study of 100 top brands, engagement per post has grown at a rate of 53% year-over-year. Tweet this stat! (Source) 

45. In a study of several thousand brand posts, the average engagement rate is 4.3% and the median is 3.5%. That means that the average post in this sample saw 4.3 activities (a Like or a comment) per 100 followers. Phrased another way, to get 100 Likes and comments on a post, a brand would need approximately 2,325 followers. Tweet this stat! (Source)

46. One brand added 36X its typical number of new followers each day during the 4 days it ran a set of sponsored posts on Instagram, increasing its follower count by 18.15%. Tweet this stat! (Source) 

 

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Be Mine: A Brief History of Valentine's Day Marketing

When I was in grade school, Valentine's Day was one of my favorite holidays. There were cards. There was the possibility that your crush actually liked you back. And, there was the chocolate -- so much chocolate.

Little did I know that the roots of this holiday bore little-to-no resemblance to my childhood experience of it. We were never taught that Valentine's Day actually originated with an arguably gruesome ancient festival, where there was no chocolate or exchange of cute, red-and-pink cards. But love it or hate it, those are the types of things we associate with the holiday today. After all, there's a reason roughly 114 million Valentine's Day cards are exchanged each year -- it's what's become expected of us.

So how the heck did we get from an ancient Roman festival to a holiday that compels many of us to spend no less than $147 on celebrating it? That story, it turns out, is thousands of years old -- but we'll try to condense it.

How Valentine's Day Began and Evolved

Ancient Rome

Source: Christie's

The roots of Valentine's Day are cited by some sources to lie in the ancient Roman festival Lupercalia, largely because it took place annually on February 15 -- the day after what is today the observed date of Valentine's Day -- and involved some very primitive forms of courtship and matchmaking. But it was also ancient Rome that saw the famous execution of a St. Valentine on February 14, around 278 A.D. According to legend, he wrote a letter on the night before his execution to his jailer's daughter, whom he had befriended, and signed it, "From Your Valentine."

Over two centuries later, Pope Gelasius ordered that Lupercalia be replaced with the February 14 observation of St. Valentine's Day. That set the tone, some believe, for the day's forthcoming tradition of exchanging "love messages," perhaps in remembrance of St. Valentine's farewell letter.

The Romans are also credited with constructing the idea of Cupid -- a god of love often depicted with arrows that, as the legend goes, inflict love upon those who are hit by them. The Roman version of Cupid was adapted from Eros, a god of passion and fertility in Greek mythology. It seems that no one is quite sure when cupid became associated with Valentine's Day, but the fact that both have origins in ancient Roman culture suggests that there may have been some very early overlap between the two.

Shakespeare (and Chaucer) in Love

Source: Internet Archive

When NPR's Arnie Seipel set out to explore the history of Valentine's Day, he found that it first became romanticized by classic authors like William Shakespeare in the late 16th century, and Geoffrey Chaucer in the 1300s.

Chaucer

Dartmouth English professor Peter Travis cites Chaucer's epic poem The Parliament of Fowls, which was one of the first literary references to St. Valentine's Day, or "Seynt Valentynes day," as Chaucer spelled it. One such mention is made, Travis explains, alongside the line, "Now welcom somer, with thy sonne sonne, That hast this wintres weders over-shake." In other words, when we celebrate love in the coldest depths of winter -- in February, for instance -- it's so heartwarming that it makes summer feel less far away.

Shakespeare

Some literary historians credit Shakespeare for the permeation of love into popular culture with his composition of "Sonnet 18" -- said to be written between 1593-1601 -- a.k.a., "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" It's unclear when or how this particular work became associated with Valentine's Day, but like Chaucer, Shakespeare compares love to the seasons.

"While summer days may fade and fall into" colder months, writes Shakespeare analyst Lee Jamieson, "his love is eternal."

Of course, Saint Valentine's day is alluded to outright in Hamlet -- written between 1599-1601 -- when the character Ophelia recites a song about a young lady's experience with the holiday, which includes lyrics like, "Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's day," and, "To be your Valentine."

The 17th Century and Beyond

Source: American Antiquarian Society

By the 1700s, it's said that Valentine's Day made its way from Europe to the United States, which aligns with the establishment of the North American colonies between 1607-1770. It became traditional, according to HISTORY.com, "for friends and lovers of all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes." That was more common in England, however, where the Industrial Revolution began earlier and eventually included the production of "fancy valentines [that] were extremely expensive to import."

It's said that one American woman, Esther Howland, was so intrigued when she received her first English valentine greeting in 1847, that she became infatuated with the idea of manufacturing them in the U.S. She was an early entrepreneur, and instinctively believed that there could be an American market for these formal, English-style greetings. After procuring materials like high-quality paper and lace from her father, a stationer, she created what many credit as the earliest American Valentine's Day greeting cards.

Today, Howland is still honored with the nickname "Mother of the American Valentine," with many citing her work as the start of a multi-million-dollar industry. But it didn't happen overnight -- let's take a look at how her work paved the way.

A Brief Timeline of Valentine's Day Marketing

1714

Charles II of Sweden begins communicating with flowers, by assigning a different message to each type. This tradition allegedly assigned love and romance to the red rose, setting the stage for this flower to be exchanged during the later, commercialized era of Valentine's Day. However, it remains unclear if a specific brand is responsible for first marketing flowers as part of Valentine's Day gift-giving.

1822

Source: The Chocolate Journalist

In England, where Valentine's Day had by now already been celebrated with the exchange of gifts and cards for many years, the Cadbury chocolate company sells the first heart-shaped box of chocolates.

1849

In Massachusetts, Howland produces a dozen sample Valentine's Day cards and sends them off with her brother to distribute during a sales trip for their father's company -- S.A. Howland & Sons -- hoping to earn $200. Instead, he returns with 25X that amount, indicating a much higher-than-expected demand.

1850

The first print advertisement for Howland's cards appears in the Worcester Spy.

1866

Source: Evan Amos

Conversation candies are developed, when Daniel Chase -- brother of New England Confectionery Company (NECCO) founder Oliver Chase -- uses vegetable dye to print words onto confections.

1870

Howland incorporates her booming card business as the New England Valentine Company, operating out of her home via an assembly line that was largely comprised of her friends.

1879

Source: Viintage

The New England Valentine Company moves operations from Howland's home to a Main Street factory in Worcester, Massachusetts. That same year, the company publishes the Valentine Verse Book, which contained 131 "verses" that people could cut out and paste inside of cards that came without a greeting -- or those with a greeting that the buyer didn't like.

1880 - 1881

Howland sells the New England Valentine Company to the George C. Whitney Company.

1888

Source: Worcester Historical Museum

Whitney has acquired at least 10 competitors, including Berlin and Jones, which had become New York City's "largest manufacturer of Valentines." Ten years later, the company moves to large-scale headquarters on Worcester's Union Street.

1894

The Hershey Chocolate Company is founded, bringing what was previously "a European luxury product" to the U.S.

1902

Conversation candies become heart-shaped.

1906

Source: Vintage Recycling

American Greetings is founded, eventually becoming one of Whitney's chief competitors.

1907

The Hershey Chocolate Company introduces Kisses candy.

1910

Source: Period Paper

That January, a massive fire destroys much of Whitney's headquarters. However, most of the Valentine's Day products had already been shipped for the season, having little impact on that particular holiday.

That same year, Hallmark is founded. Meanwhile, 1910 also saw the creation of Florists' Telegraph Delivery -- today known as FTD -- which pioneered the remote ordering and delivery of flowers, providing a way to send them to far-away loved ones.

1913

Hallmark produces its first Valentine's Day card.

1948

Source: Vintage Ads

The De Beers diamond company launches its "A Diamond is Forever" campaign, sending the message that gifting high-end jewelry can be used as an expression of love.

1986

Hershey's begins packaging Kisses candies in pink and red foil specifically for Valentine's Day.

2005

Source: Wayback Machine

Valentine's Day begins to go digital. On February 14, 2005, YouTube -- which originated as an online dating site -- makes its debut. Co-founder Steve Chen still credits its invention as the brainchild of "three guys on Valentine's Day that had nothing to do."

2013

Source: Uber

Ride sharing company Uber rolls out "Romance On Demand," allowing users to send flowers on Valentine's Day via the app. This initiative would continue to progress, with on-demand skywriting becoming available the following year.

2016

Well aren't you accurate today, @netflix #HappyValentinesDay pic.twitter.com/pUK05gQ8Rs

— Tiffany Bukowski (@TheTiffy) February 14, 2016

NetBase, a social media analytics platform, releases a Valentine's Day Sentiment Analysis, measuring how people engage with and discuss the holiday on social media. In total, it measured nine million mentions of Valentine's Day, with the vast majority of them mentioning a specific brand -- Netflix. The top hashtag was #happyvalentinesday.

Be Ours

Like so many other holidays, Valentine's Day has experienced a transition into pop culture that has shaped the way it's perceived, discussed, and celebrated. Sure, it's often accused of being nothing more than a money-making marketing holiday -- just look at these numbers compiled by HISTORY.com. But next time you hear someone label Valentine's Day as "Hallmark holiday," you'll have a wealth of historical information to respond with.

From our hearts to yours, Happy Valentine's Day. We'll be keeping an eye on its continued evolution.

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51 YouTube Stats Every Video Marketer Should Know in 2019

In 2005, when I was 10 years old, a kid from my neighborhood was bear hugging a fallen tree trunk that bridged across our creek and yelled, “I better not see this on YouTube!”

That was the first time I’d ever heard of YouTube. And it definitely wasn’t the last time I’d hear about it. YouTube has experienced explosive growth since it was founded in an office garage in 2005. Just one year after its inception, it was attracting more than 65,000 new video uploads and 100 million video views per day. A couple of months later, the high-growth startup was acquired for over $1 billion by a titan in the tech industry -- Google.

Since then, YouTube has opened up avenues for brands to advertise on their videos and, in turn, let content creators earn a living just by making videos. This potential for monetization has incentivized content creators to craft the most engaging videos possible and host them on the platform, which has enabled YouTube to become the second most trafficked website and the second largest search engine in the world.

As a video marketer, you already know how crucial building a YouTube presence is for boosting your videos’ and brand’s visibility. But if you just started your brand’s YouTube channel or need some help convincing your boss to double down on your YouTube efforts, we’ve got you covered.

Check out these 51 stats about the platform’s mobile usage, its demographics, subscriber growth, general usage, and history that can help you build your YouTube following or persuade your boss to focus more of your efforts on the video platform.

51 YouTube Stats Every Video Marketer Should Know in 2019

How many videos are on YouTube?

1. Since 400 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute (and a lot of those videos violate YouTube’s guidelines and subsequently get taken down) it’s impossible to determine the exact number of videos hosted on the platform. However, over one billion hours of videos are watched on YouTube every day.

What is the most-watched video on YouTube?

2. “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi featuring Daddy Yankee is the most-watched video on YouTube. It has received over 5.96 billion views in a little over two years.

How many people use YouTube?

3. YouTube has over 1.9 billion monthly active logged-in users.

YouTube Mobile Stats

4. On mobile devices alone, YouTube reaches more adults aged 18-49 during prime time than any cable network does in an average week.

5. 75% of adults report watching YouTube on their mobile devices.

6. More than 70% of YouTube watch time is generated from mobile devices.

7. YouTube mobile ads are 84% more likely to hold attention than TV ads.

8. Over 50,000 years of product review videos have been watched on mobile devices over the past two years.

9. In 2018, YouTube was the most popular IOS app.

YouTube Demographics Stats

10. Over 90% of 18-44 year old American internet users watch videos on YouTube.

11. Over half of American internet users who are aged 75 and over watch videos on YouTube.

12. Over 50% of YouTube’s audience is female.

13. 59% of Generation Z (16-24-year-olds) have increased their YouTube usage since last year.

14. 46% of millennials (25-34-year-olds) have increased their YouTube usage since last year.

15. 70% of millennial YouTube users watched a YouTube video to learn how to do something new or learn about something they’re interested in.

16. 15.8% of YouTube users are from the United States.

17. YouTube attracts the most visitors from the United States, India, Japan, Russia, and China.

18. YouTube is available in more than 91 countries.

19. YouTube is available in 80 different languages.

YouTube Subscriber Growth Stats

20. The number of channels with more than 1 million subscribers increased by more than 75% since 2017.

21. The number of YouTubers who earn six figures per year has increased by more than 40% since 2017.

22. The number of YouTubers who earn five figures per year has increased by more than 50% since 2017.

23. The top ten YouTubers earned 42% more revenue in 2018 compared to 2017.

24. PewDiePie is the most popular YouTube channel, with 85 million subscribers.

25. The most popular branded YouTube channel is LEGO, which has over 7.1 million subscribers and has received over 8.7 billion views.

YouTube Usage Stats

26. YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine.

27. YouTube is the second most trafficked website behind Google.

28. YouTube users collectively watch over 46,000 years of content each year.

29. 68% of YouTube users watched a video to help them make a purchase decision.

30. 80% of YouTube users who watched a video to help them make a purchase decision said they watched the video at the beginning of the shopping process.

31. 95% of the most popular YouTube videos are music videos.

32. 47% of on-demand music streaming was listened to on YouTube.

33. There are twice as many small- and medium-sized businesses advertising on YouTube since 2016.

34. Four times as many people prefer watching video on YouTube rather than on social media platforms.

35. YouTube users watch more than 180 million hours of content on TV screens every day.

36. YouTube users are three times more likely to prefer watching a YouTube tutorial video compared to reading the product’s instructions.

37. “Relaxing” and “feeling entertained” are the top two reasons viewers watch YouTube.

38. Relaxation videos like soap cutting and slime playing experienced a 70% increase in watch time in 2018.

39. Comedy, music, entertainment/pop culture, and “how to” are the four most popular content categories on YouTube.

YouTube History Stats

40. “YouTube.com” was activated on February 14, 2005.

41. “Me at the zoo” was the first video uploaded to YouTube on April 25, 2005.

42. Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion on October 9, 2006.

43. YouTube launched InVideo ads in December 2007.

44. YouTube streamed the United States presidential debates for the first time in 2012.

45. The youngest YouTuber is Ryan ToysReview, who is a 7-year old boy who makes $11 million a year and has 18.2 million subscribers.

46. “Gangnam Style”’s surge in popularity broke the video’s view counter.

47. YouTube provides a free space in Los Angeles where YouTubers with over 10,000 subscribers can learn, connect, and create videos with each other.

48. The first YouTube video that reached one million views was a 2005 Nike ad that featured football star, Ronaldinho.

49. The YouTube video that received the most views in 24 hours is Ariana Grande’s “Thank U, Next” music video, which attracted 55.4 million views in a single day.

50. The most liked video on YouTube is the music video for the song “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi featuring Daddy Yankee. It has received over 31.96 million likes and boasts an 89.25% like percentage.

51. YouTube’s own YouTube Rewind 2018 video is the most disliked video on the platform. It has received over 16 million dislikes and owns an 86.53% dislike percentage.

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How to Run a Structured Interview (Questions Included)

Imagine this -- a hiring manager is choosing between two candidates of similar expertise, so she invites them both into the office for an in-person interview. However, she's given power to choose which questions she asks each one.

She notices the first candidate went to school at her alma mater, so she decides to gear her initial questions towards that commonality to build rapport. On the other hand, she will begin the other interview with a basic, "Tell me about yourself" question.

Seem fair? Probably not.

If an interview is unstructured, it doesn't mean the hiring manager didn't prepare questions ahead of time. However, an unstructured interview allows employees to ask different questions to each candidate -- which could become an opportunity for employees to judge candidates based on who they get along well with, as opposed to whether the candidate is qualified for the role.

Structured interviews help you minimize biases or personality preferences that could otherwise affect a hiring manager's decision to move forward with a candidate.

A structured interview is a process established by HR in which all candidates are asked the same predetermined questions in the same order. Your team will then rate each candidate using a standardized scoring system.

Structured interviews have demonstrated a high degree of reliability, validity, and legal defensibility compared to unstructured interviews. Additionally, a structured interview makes it easier to provide interview feedback to a candidate.

To implement a structured or semi-structured interview at your company, keep reading.

Structured Interview Questions

To create structured interview questions, you must first craft a detailed job description with all the necessary components of the role, as well as any "nice-to-haves". Once you have a job description, use it as a guide to write a list of hard and soft skills you're looking for in a candidate.

Next, you'll want to create a list of role-specific questions. For instance, you might consider asking:

1. Give me an example of a time you had to [important job skill].
2. What do you think will be your biggest challenge with this role?
3. What most excites you about this role?
4. Tell me how you would handle [specific job challenge].

These questions will vary depending upon the role. You'll also want to gauge the candidate's interest in your company in general, as well as her work ethic.

Here are a few general structured interview questions:

1. Can you tell me a little about yourself?
2. What do you know about the company?
3. What are your greatest professional strengths? Alternatively, what are your weaknesses?
4. What is your greatest professional achievement?
5. Where do you see yourself in five years?

Lastly, there are structured interview questions you might want to ask to get a better sense for someone's leadership skills, willingness to learn, or ability to handle herself under pressure.

Take a look at the following structured interview questions, divided by category, for further inspiration.

To rate leadership ability

1. You indicated on your resume that leadership is one of your strengths. Describe an experience in which you used your leadership abilities.
2. Tell me about a time when you delegated a project to others effectively.
3. 3. Tell me about a time you took the lead in a team project. What was the project outcome?
4. 4. Can you recall a time where you had to give negative feedback to a colleague. How did you express this feedback?

To rate dependability

1. If your manager asked you to complete a task you thought impossible at first, what would you do?
2. Tell me about a time when you had multiple important projects to finish and how you prioritize them.

To rate willingness to learn

1. Tell me about a time you failed at a project. How did you try to avoid failure? What did that experience teach you?
2. Tell me about a time you had to learn something you weren't familiar with very quickly.
3. Which other companies in [your industry] do you admire? Why?

Semi-structured Interview

A structured interview has plenty of benefits -- but, of course, it also has its drawbacks.

A structured interview leaves little room for building rapport. When a candidate answers a question, you're simply instructed to move to the next question, even if the following question has little relevance to the candidate's unique response.

If you feel a structured interview is too rigid for your workplace, but still want to use general guidelines to ensure fairness in your recruitment process, you might consider a semi-structured interview as an alternative.

A semi-structured interview still requires your HR team to create a list of open-ended questions, and subsequently train interviewers to ensure they ask role-specific questions and use a standardized rating system to determine a candidate's fit.

However, a semi-structured interview also provides more opportunity for the interviewer to tailor the conversation naturally, either by excluding questions they feel are redundant, or asking follow-up questions when they feel it's necessary.

Ultimately, a semi-structured interview requires your team to follow a predetermined set of questions, but allows the interview itself to feel more conversational by nature. The interviewer has the power to change the wording of the question, or the order of the questions, which could enable the interviewer to dive deeper or ask follow-up questions depending on the candidate's responses.

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A 7-Step Process to Make Marketing Videos That Work

Do you need to work with experts or employees to create marketing videos? Looking for a proven process that results in great content? In this article, you’ll learn how to guide experts to deliver talking points you can use in your marketing videos. Explain the Process to Your Interview Subject While you may think what […]

The post A 7-Step Process to Make Marketing Videos That Work appeared first on Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner.

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Everything You Need to Know About the Principles and Types of Design

 Furniture. Clothing. Software. Posters. Maps. Experience. Buildings. Websites.

These are all things that can be designed. Heck, design has so many different meanings and application you wonder if the term can be defined at all.

Answer: It can. Design has a variety of definitions, but in its simplest form, it can be defined as both a verb and a noun: It can refer to the act of creating a composition or or to the composition itself.

Design is about creating feasible, functional solutions to a variety of problems, and always happens with a particular goal in mind. — Amanda Chong, HubSpot designer

As ambiguous as it seems, design can be defined … particularly when it comes to how it applies to marketing. That’s why we compiled this guide — to help you better understand design and it’s principles and types. Bookmark this guide for future reference, and use the chapter links to jump ahead to any section that interests you.

Design has many different connotations depending on its application. It’s is an incredibly fluid industry. In short, design can be whatever you want it to be — as long as you don’t forget some of its predefined tenets. These are known as the principles of design.

There are many additional terms related to these principles: movement rhythm, symmetry, and white space. These design concepts fall under and/or are based on the above tenets and therefore aren’t considered standalone principles.

Let’s break down each principle of design and their associated design concepts.

Balance

Balance is how objects in a composition are arranged and what visual weight they carry. Balance can be achieved using the following methods.

• Symmetry (Formal balance): When objects are arranged evenly around a vertical or horizontal axis. Objects are arranged around a central point (or a radius) is known as radial symmetry.
• Asymmetry (Informal balance): When objects are arranged unevenly around a vertical or horizontal axis. Typically, there’s one dominant side or element in an asymmetrical composition.

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Contrast

Contrast refers to how elements in a composition differ. This principle is often paired with the principle of similarity, which is how composition elements resemble each other. Contrast can be established using design elements like space, form, size, color, and texture.

White space is also an important element of contrast. Often called negative space, which space refers to the empty parts of a composition. White space can help organize the elements in a composition and emphasize the most important ones. It also creates an aura of luxury and minimalism.

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Dominance

Dominance refers to the varying degrees of emphasis within a composition. Emphasis is typically achieved using elements like size, font choice, and certain color combinations (that may create contrast). There are three main stages of dominance in design.

• Dominant — The object of primary emphasis. It’s given the most visual weight and is typically found in the foreground of a composition.
• Sub-dominant — The object(s) of secondary emphasis typically found in the middle ground.
• Subordinate — The object(s) of tertiary emphasis typically found in the background.

Fun fact: The visual center is where we naturally focus on a piece of visual design. It’s slightly above and to the right of the actual center of a composition and is often referred to as “museum height”.

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Movement

Movement is the visual path a viewer follows when viewing a composition. With proper movement, a composition can create a narrative and provide a high-quality user experience (UX). Movement can be established using design elements like lines, shapes, and colors.

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Proportion or Scale

Proportion refers to the visual weight and size of a composition’s elements and how they relate to each other. This principle is also known as scale.

The relative size of one object to another can help create a focal point or movement along the composition. Also, varying sizes of objects can help communicate the importance and dominance of one element over another.

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Unity

Visual unity has been said to be the main goal of design, although that opinion differs among designers and certain design communities. Unity, or harmony, refers to the relationship between the individual parts and the whole of a composition. When a composition’s elements are in agreement, there exists unity; when the elements aren’t in agreement, a composition is said to have variety.

The following design principles are associated with unity.

• Alignment — When objects are lined up on a certain axis or cadence
• Continuation — When a line or pattern extends
• Perspective — When there’s a distance between elements
• Proximity — When objects are placed close together
• Repetition — When objects are copied multiple times
• Rhythm — When objects recur with a slight change or interruption 

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While the principles of design are considered universal, they look a little different as applied to different design communities and practices. Below, we’ve reviewed the top seven types of design in marketing.

Types of Design in Marketing

• Graphic Design
• Branding and Logo Design
• UI and UX Design
• Web (Front-End) Design
• Multimedia Design
• Environmental Design

Let’s break down each type of design and how they apply to the marketing industry.

Graphic Design

Graphic design is probably what you picture when you think of design in the marketing field: social media images, email marketing headers, infographics, postcards, and much more.

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Since visual content is a highly valuable and engaging marketing medium, companies rely on graphic designers to create assets that represent their brand and communicate with their audience.

Need templates to help you create content for any online channel? Download our free library of over 195 visual marketing design templates.

Branding and Logo Design

Branding and logo design is a subset of graphic design. It includes the visual elements of a brand and brand identity, such as logos, typography, color palettes, style guides, and more.

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Branding and logo designers create assets that represent a brand, illustrate the brand’s mission, vision, and values, and promote brand awareness for the company.

Learn the fundamental concepts of graphic design and how to use them to create high-quality graphics by taking the HubSpot Academy Graphic Design Essentials course.

UI and UX Design

User interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design focus on improving how website, app, and software users interact with and experience a product.

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While some roles combine UI and UX design, the two practices are quite different. UI designers are responsible for creating a visually-pleasing, on-brand experience for users through web page design, app design, and theme design on sites like WordPress and Shopify.

UX designers, on the other hand, are responsible for making sure a product actually solves a problem through usability testing, user flows, and digital prototypes.

Web (Front-End) Design

Web design applies to the front-end (public-facing) side of a website. Front-end designers are like UI designers equipped with coding knowledge — they design static UI mockups for a website and then translate them into HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code. (But don’t confuse this practice with front-end web development.)

Web designers create assets that produce an attractive and fully-functional website, such as splash pages, navigational elements, sitemaps and pages, scrolling and clicking features, and content management systems.

Multimedia Design

Multimedia (or motion graphic) design is designing graphics for a variety of media, particularly video and animation. Because of its time and cost requirements, this type of design has historically been reserved for those in TV and film. But with advancements in technology and a recent rise in video content marketing, motion graphic design has become more accessible than ever.

 

 

Multimedia designers are responsible for creating moveable assets that communicate and delight with an audience, like moveable logos, GIFs, animated videos, tutorial videos, and animated websites.

Environmental Design

Environmental design, also known as environmental graphic design, is intended to improve a person’s experience by furthering the purpose of an environment, whether that’s to be memorable, exciting, informative, motivational, or easily navigable. The practice merges interior design, architecture, graphic design, landscape design, and industrial design.

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Environmental designers create assets that connect people to their environment, such as, murals, office design and branding, store interiors, event space design, and signage and interactive advertising.

Marketing Design Tips

We’ve covered the basics of the most common types of design in marketing: graphic, branding, UI and UX, and web, multimedia, and environmental. Now, we're going to dive into some tips for the top four.

Note: Keep an eye out for the principles of design we discussed above … they’ll make an appearance in this section, too.

Graphic Design Tips

1. Start with the purpose

What type of content are you designing … a social media ad, email template header, or ebook? These are three different pieces of content with three wildly different purposes and goals. Before you create your piece of graphic design, jot down the purpose of the content. This can help keep your design goals aligned with your content goals as you create your piece of art.

2. Apply your style guide

When deciding on what design elements to include, consider your company’s branding style guide. (We’ll get into how and why to create a style guide next.) This guide will immediately show you what colors, fonts, and other design elements to use when designing your content. From there, you can make small tweaks depending on what type of content you’re creating.

3. Create order with lines and alignment

Lines and alignment in your graphic design can create movement and order. Align the text in your graphic to guide your viewer as they read, or incorporate horizontal lines to section off your text and imagery. Similar to how you format long blog posts in small paragraphs, lines and alignment make pieces of graphic design easier to digest.

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4. Pepper in some icons and illustrations

Colors, text, and images make for gorgeous graphics, but don’t limit your elements to those three. Icons and illustrations can also spice up an otherwise text or image-heavy piece of content. Icons might also be able to illustrate concepts that photos can’t, and they serve as creative bullet points for long lists.

Spruce up your graphic design today with our 135 free icons to use in your marketing graphics.

Branding and Logo Design Tips

1. Design the aesthetic of your personality

How do you visually present the personality of your brand and company? If your brand was a person, what would he or she be like? Your branding design should reflect the answers to these questions.

Before starting your design, make a list of adjectives that describe your brand, company, and culture. This will help you choose color combinations, images, fonts, and other design elements and bring out the key points of your personality. Also, using your brand adjectives as guidance, build a collection of images, graphics, color samples, and similar logos that represent the “mood” of your brand — a.k.a. a mood board.

2. Get a little funky

Your logo and brand assets don’t have to be a straightforward representation of what your company does. Heck, HubSpot’s logo has really nothing to do with marketing, sales, or service software. Yet, it represents our company perfectly while being memorable and distinctive.

As you design your brand’s visual identity, don’t be afraid to get a little funky and incorporate some unique design aspects. Doing so may help your brand stand out from the rest.

3. Keep it simple

Your branding should communicate your aesthetic in a less than a second. Impressions are made in the blink of an eye, and your logo and brand identity is no exception. Consumers will decide if they like, dislike, are impressed by, or want nothing to do with your brand in a split second, so keep your design simple and to the point.

4. Prioritize consistency

This is perhaps the most important tip when it comes to branding and logo design: Be consistent. You can spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars developing a gorgeous visual identity for your brand — but if it’s not reflected on every piece of print and digital content, all your resources have gone to waste.

Consistency applies on a couple different axes — horizontally along your content elements, i.e. in your fonts, spacing, and color combinations, and vertically across your content outlets, i.e. between your social media, email, website, and print materials. Create a style guide to encourage everyone to adhere to your new branding. Here’s HubSpot’s Style Guide as an example.

Learn the key elements you need to create a strong brand by downloading The Essential Guide to Branding Your Company here.

UI and UX Design Tips

Note: UI and UX design are considered two different types of design, but because they’re so similar, we’ve collected a few tips that can apply to both practices.

1. Adapt a user’s perspective

Whether you’re designing the interface or the experience of an app, website, or online tool, always adapt the perspective of a user. Why would someone use your site? What would they hope to achieve? What might their challenges be? It’s important to research your user base and better understand how they’d approach or your site or application. Consider doing first-hand user research through a focus group or by talking to current customers.

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2. Anticipate mistakes

Regardless of much you talk to users, there will always be a handful (or more) of people who’ll stumble through your website or application. Anticipate these mistakes by incorporating fool-proof mechanisms, such as not letting someone submit a web form if they’ve skipped a box or having a user confirm they’d like to exit in case they accidentally clicked off the screen. These mechanisms can help prevent mistakes before they happen and let your users know you’ve got their backs.

3. Don’t neglect standards and trends

Designers love paving a new path and “reinventing the wheel” with their designs. While this can create something unique and memorable for the user, it may also confuse them if you’ve gone too far. Consider sticking with known design patterns, standards, and trends, such as a navigation bar the top right corner or contact information along the bottom of the page. This can help your users already subconsciously know how to navigate your site without explanation.

4. Be mobile-friendly friendly

Responsive design is a non-negotiable for websites and applications, but is your design mobile-friendly friendly? Consider the spacing of your buttons, the size of the text, and any other navigational or organizational elements that might be inconvenient in a responsive design. Also, look at how your site may change when viewed on a desktop, tablet, and various types of smartphones.

Web (Front-End) Design Tips

1. Consider the fold

On a website, the fold is considered the bottom of the screen — where your page would “fold” if it were a physical item, like a newspaper. The most important information on a websites should always be placed “above the fold” (like in newspapers) so a visitor doesn’t have to scroll down to see it.

2. Leverage white space to draw focus

In the case of web design, less is often more. With lots of information to share with visitors, it can be tempting to clutter it all above the fold so folks see it right away. But less cluttered websites are easier to read, navigate, and digest. Keep your visitors on your website by putting plenty of white space around your content; it’ll be easier for them to focus on reading and understanding your content.

3. Use color to guide action

Color psychology plays a big role in marketing. Without us even knowing it, certain colors can encourage us to do certain things, such as click a button or continue on to the next page of a web form. Use colors to guide the same types of action on your website. Make all of your CTAs a bold color to help them stand out.

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4. Avoid generic stock images

There are lots of ways to use images in your marketing, but the one method to avoid is using generic stock images. Generic, cheesy stock images make a brand seem lazy and disengaged with their buyer persona. The images on your website should be a representation of your audience, and if you can’t capture your actual audience, you should work hard to find stock images that do. Tip: One great way to collect audience images is by running a user-generated content (UGC) campaign.

Download our free guide to growth-driven web design for even more web design tips.

Time to Design

Design comes in all shapes and sizes … literally. From websites to print graphics to office space design, it plays a major role in marketing our businesses and brands. Even if you don’t consider yourself a designer, we encourage you to become more familiar with the elements and types of design. You never know when you may have to consult on a project or whip up a design of your own.

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