Author: Franz Malten Buemann

Jay Acunzo has been creating content on the Internet for a long time. His journey on social media began when, as a sports journalist in 2005, he started a blog while interning and writing for a student paper.When he moved into marketing, his sports blog called “Blog, Don’t Lie” (named after the infamous quote by NBA player Rasheed Wallace) shifted focus to writing about sports writing. He wrote about other creators who were writing about sports, connecting with and celebrating their work. And to find those people, there was no better place than social media.Thanks to his early start on social media and his deep understanding of the relationship between marketing and creativity, Jay brings a unique perspective from which creators and marketers can learn a lot. In this article, we dive into the lessons from Jay Acunzo for the modern creator.Your job isn’t to speak clearly – it’s to create connectionIt’s easy to get sucked into the numbers and metrics and make that the focus of your work as a creator or marketer. Your audience doesn’t have that perspective, and so your content may not perform well because you think the job is to create content. However, the job is to create connection, and the best way to do that is to ensure that your own personal creative fingerprints are all over the work. Infuse your personal perspective, your lived experiences, and your stories, and you become irreplaceable in the eyes of your audience.In other words, share the things you lived through, observed, or remember that led to a meaningful experience or insight. That’s what effective storytellers do. You might be wondering how practical “creating connection” is, but Jay shares a great way to reframe your perspective: “Yes, you can measure things you can buy. Or the things social networks say you should prioritize. But you can also measure the things you have to earn – and marketers don’t do the second one nearly enough.”So you can buy downloads to a podcast, but you have to earn episode completions. You can buy traffic to your website, you have to earn repeat visitors. You can buy emails for your list, you have to earn replies to your email. These are the signals that your work matters and resonates because you created connection with your audience.🖊️Key Takeaway: Focus on making genuine connections with your audience by infusing your personal perspective and experiences into your work.If you’re worried about AI, you’ve got it all wrongThere are two sides to the coin when it comes to the use of AI in content creation and marketing – those who use it to produce their work instead of to unblock or facilitate it.On one side, if they think the job is to create content, will worry about or use AI as a creator replacement. They will let it create whole pieces of content for them, essentially outsourcing their imagination.However, the other side, if they know the job is to create a connection, will use the same tools potentially, but in different ways to unblock their imagination instead of outsourcing it. They’ll use it to enhance what they’re trying to do. They lead, and the tool serves them.And in everyone else’s case, when they think the job is content, they seem to be serving the tool, which makes no sense. In what world does a chef ask the carrot to cook?🖊️Key Takeaway: Rather than outsourcing your creativity to it, use AI to enhance your creativity and unblock your imagination.Resonance > reachNow, typically, when marketers are thinking about growth, they think they have a reach problem when really they have a resonance problem. If you can reach some people, and those people aren’t really excited and going and finding the others for you through word of mouth, then you have a resonance problem, not a reach problem.If your work doesn’t matter, no amount of marketing will change that. And an easy example is that we can all reach some people very easily, very efficiently, if not for free. Are those few people responding in big ways? If not, the average marketer says, “We gotta go reach more people.” But the storyteller, without a marketing hat on, would say, why would we go reach more people who are total strangers? These are the people that like or even trust us, and they’re not excited? Shouldn’t we get them excited?”Start with one thing and make it really good. If it deserves to be spread, it will spread easier. You won’t feel like you have to beg for attention because you’ve learned to resonate.So the first hurdle to get from reach to resonance is: are you creating anything that matters to a few people? If you can’t do that, don’t invest any more time or budget into trying to get in front of more people – focus on getting those few people to care.If you can do that, you don’t need to widen the top of the funnel because every individual who meets you adores you, buys from you, takes action with you, and is excited to share you with the people they know.🖊️Key Takeaway: Ensure your content resonates with a few people before trying to reach a larger audience. Resonating deeply with a small audience is better than being ignored by a large one.Personality should be present in all your contentJay is a storyteller above anything else, and his personal perspective is hardwon. He described his work saying, “I tell stories and try to extract unexpected insights from those stories for people who want to produce quality work. My mission is to help people make what matters to their careers, to their companies, and to their communities.” But he wasn’t always this clear on his positioning. He shared that he started out imitating a lot of his heroes before he was able to define his own voice.“The problem with many creators is that they never try to break out of the sameness and find a distinction in their category. There’s a lot of commodity content, there’s a lot of copycat thinking, and there’s a lot of sameness out there.”A lot of people who want to stand out from that sameness think that their job is to get increasingly loud, outrank, or outhype the competition. But, as he puts it, “I actually think that the job is to resonate deeper, so you need to beg for attention less.”If you’re working on something, even if you’re ticking a checklist, someone should notice if you stopped working on that project because something about your execution made it different and distinct.The idea that you have things in your life that no language learning model (LLM) or AI has been trained on – they can’t access that stuff, so use it. Your perspective and personality – everything that makes you you –  is your unique, unfair advantage.Most people haven’t been using that advantage fully, even before AI burst into popularity. We think we have to be a vessel that creates what “works” for the “audience”. So we hunt down lists of the best hooks for TikTok or the most engaging Twitter Thread format. The problem with that approach is that you start creating generic content without a perspective or point of view and without an experiential differentiator to it, so AI is your replacement. But if you know how to imbue your work with personal perspective and personality, AI becomes your intern. Jay thinks we should look harder at the people who aren’t worried about AI because they are letting their personal perspectives, beliefs and frustrations, and vision for the world and their work lead instead of leaving it to chance that somehow they’ll show up in the work.🖊️Key Takeaway: Your unique perspective and experiences make you irreplaceable in the eyes of your audience, so let your personality shine through your content.Process, Posture, and PracticeWhen you’re thinking about creating content, and you get stumped, go back to your roots. Create the things you wish existed, and go find the others who also want that to exist. To quote Jay, “Pick your audience, pick your future.”Most people approach content creation by thinking, “What do people want?” And then they run into a wall because they have a monolithic idea of “people” and “audience” and “content”. They’re going, “Our “audience”, wants “snackable short-form videos.” Do they? Or will they consume anything you create because there is a personality that shines through the content? A lot of marketers (and creators) think of themselves as having mastered the craft of content. What they’ve mastered, though, is Process, defined by Jay as the workflow, techniques, and tools to guide your work. But there are two other pieces that not enough people consider: Posture and Practice.Posture is how you see yourself and the world. It is the messy bag of humanity that you bring with you to your work, your confidence, your style, your tone, your lived experiences, and your memories.Then there’s Practice, which sees you shipping on a consistent, coherent schedule, not for work or because someone gave you permission, but because it’s Wednesday, and on Wednesday, you ship an article or tweet or post just to get better at it. That’s where you master your craft.Process is something someone hands you – it requires the least amount of effort. And if that’s all you’re good at, soon you won’t be needed because AI is really good at Process. But when you have a Posture and when you’ve worked at it through Practice, and when you use all three in tandem, you become irreplaceable. You develop a perspective, a tone of voice, a style, and people start coming to you, not because of your content, but because it’s you. 🖊️Key Takeaway: Master your craft by focusing on the workflow, techniques, tools, and personal elements you bring to your work, and consistently create content on a schedule (Buffer can help with this last bit) 😉Want to niche down? Develop a premiseWe tend to think about niches in terms of demographics – who your likely audience is, their job title, their sector, their experience level, and so on. Layered onto that are psychographics or thoughts and feelings of your audience. Jay describes this type of niching as a filter that you set up in the way you position yourself and show up in the world that brings the right people all the way to you and repels the wrong people.However, Jay proposes an alternative approach to picking a niche: developing a premise. He defines the premise as “the specific, defensible purpose for your content that is pulled from your personal vision for the audience.” It’s a tipping point from people being loyal to people being super fans because you seem irreplaceable to them. There’s not yet another exploring what you’re exploring.What makes a strong premise? Hrishikesh Hirway started a podcast about music in 2014 called Song Exploder. The category was crowded even back then, but there was a lot of sameness in it. Hrishikesh saw every musician being interviewed with generic questions. He wanted to hear these people talk about something specific: their craft. So Song Exploder asked musicians to take apart a single song and, piece by piece, tell the story of how they made it.You can easily pitch that podcast with a defensible premise: “This is a show about music. Unlike other shows about music, only Song Exploder asks their music guests to take apart a single track and, piece by piece, tell the story of how it’s made.”The formula is easily replicated in what Jay dubs the ‘XY Premise Pitch’:This is a [Project type] about [Topic]. Unlike other [Project types] about [Topic] only we [Unique Proposition].Your XY premise informs everything about your content. It motivates subscribers, shapes culture, and helps sell your ideas by sharing your worldview with the audience. And if you or your audience can’t figure out what it is, you haven’t figured out your niche yet. It’s not easy to come up with something like that, but the best media companies and storytellers know that it’s worth putting in the work to develop a resonance with your audience.One red flag to watch out for as you develop your premise is if you start comparing yourself to others, saying, “Unlike other shows, we *actually* dive deep to get you the real tactics and practitioner language.” Instead, you should say, “Unlike other content that explores these topics, only we [Unique Proposition].”It’s not what you explore but how you explore it. 🖊️Key Takeaway: Differentiate your content by creating a unique and defensible purpose that sets it apart from others in your niche. Use the XY Premise Pitch to clearly communicate the unique proposition of your content.Social media is a landlord, and you need to build your own houseJay asks you to consider, “What are you doing to compel people to want to spend more time with you and connect with you on a level that is not possible on social media?” Social media is a landlord that can change the rules or kick you out at any moment. It prioritizes the loud minority of extreme views or attention-grabbing gimmicks at scale, not giving the platform to people with nuanced and meaningful things to say.It’s also really good at creating interchangeable personalities at scale. So even though some people stand out, they are still fighting to be seen, albeit among a smaller category than everybody else. Wherever you look, you’ll find subgenres coming out of every broader genre built and influenced by social networks. And they all seem replaceable – if one shuts off, you could find another, and it might not be exact, but it’d be pretty close.As creators and marketers, our job is figuring out how to become our audience’s favorite – their preferred pick for a specific purpose. When you’ve piqued their interest on social media, you can bring the truly engaged members of your audience more into this worldview by directing them to your owned platforms. Now you’re left to consider what those owned platforms are.Social media needs to become merely a way to discover you – a window into the deeper, more connective work you’re doing through newsletters, podcasts, memberships, email lists, and things that you can control with greater certainty.🖊️Key Takeaway: Social media should be a window into your deeper work, so focus on moving your audience from social media to your owned platforms.TakeawaysTL;DR? Here are the key takeaways from our interview with Jay Acunzo:Prioritize making genuine connections with your audience. How can you do this? By infusing your personal perspective and experiences into your work.Use AI to enhance your creativity and unblock your imagination not to outsource your creativityTest your ideas with a small audience before seeking a large one. If your content doesn’t resonate with the small but loyal subset of your audience, it won’t work just because you increase the size of your target.Your unique perspective and experiences make you irreplaceable in the eyes of your audience, so let your personality shine through your content.Differentiate your content by creating a unique and defensible purpose that sets it apart from others in your niche. Use the XY Premise Pitch to communicate the unique proposition of your content.Social media should be a window into your owned platforms – prioritize building something that’s yours so you don’t have to worry about social media regardless of its future.Focus on the workflow, techniques, tools, and personal elements you bring to your work, and create consistently.Jay’s parting words are, “Strive to be the personal preferred pick for your audience by developing a strong premise and showcasing your unique perspective.”Power your content creation with Buffer

As customer behavior constantly changes, marketers face an ongoing challenge to keep up with their audiences. Personalization and need fulfillment are essential to the success of any marketing campaign, and failing to understand what your customers want could result in lost revenue for your business.
Marketers must stay in touch with evolving customer behavior and preferences to ensure their campaigns resonate with their customers. In this blog post, we’ll highlight the top challenges marketers face in understanding audiences from HubSpot’s very own 2023 State of Marketing Report to provide data-driven tips for overcoming them.

Challenges Marketers Face in Understanding Audiences
1. Identifying the target audience.
Surveyed marketers reported that their biggest social media challenges are consistently creating engaging content (22%), gaining and keeping followers (22%), and reaching their target audience (21%).
The special thing about these challenges is that the first two are contingent on the third.
Creating engaging content that grows your following is nearly impossible without understanding the target audience. Knowing exactly who you’re making content for is a foundational understanding marketers need.
Marketers can conduct more thorough market research to gather data on their target audience to gain a more concise understanding. They can use this data to create buyer personas and plan content for your ideal customer. These personas should be based on recent data and insights from trustworthy surveys, interviews, and other research methods.
2. Understanding customer behavior.
Another challenge that marketers face is understanding their customers’ behaviors. Understanding where they spend their time online, what they like, and what they don’t like is essential to creating effective marketing campaigns. You want to see how they prefer to view your content, the frequency with which they do it, and what will keep them returning to your business.
To overcome this challenge, marketers can use tools like Google Analytics or heat maps to gather data on customer behavior. They can use this data to analyze their customers’ website actions, track engagement, and identify areas for improvement. Marketers can also use social listening tools like Hootsuite to monitor conversations around their brand on social media.
3. Creating content that resonates with the audience.
Creating content that resonates with the audience is a significant challenge for many marketers. They may struggle to find topics their target audience is interested in or may not know how to write content that speaks to them.
For example, many customers in recent years have been looking for brands that share content that reflects corporate social responsibility on topics like social justice, sustainability, or ethical workplace practices. Current-day consumers, especially Millennials and Gen Z, want to buy from companies that display values and a purpose that resonates with them.
There’s proven potential in sharing values-based content with customers. According to HubSpot’s State of Marketing Report, 16% of marketers plan to get their company talking about values this year for the first time, and 89% of those who already do plan to increase or maintain their investment in this approach.
Marketers can use the data gathered on their target audience to better connect with the customer to create content that speaks to their interests and values. And to make things easier, they can also leverage tools like surveys or customer feedback to see what they want from your marketing content. Once you’ve identified topics your target audience is interested in, create high-quality content such as blog posts, videos, infographics, or ebooks based on the responses.
4. Measuring the success of marketing campaigns.
Measuring the success of marketing campaigns is another challenge faced by marketers. Without tracking the performance of their campaigns, it is impossible to know if they are effectively targeted towards their audience.
Marketers can set specific, measurable, and achievable campaign goals. They can use tools like HubSpot’s Marketing Analytics to track the performance of their campaigns and adjust them as necessary to achieve their goals. By monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) like website traffic, lead conversions, click-through rates, and social media engagement, marketers can measure the success of their campaigns and optimize their strategies accordingly.
5. Keeping up with the latest marketing trends
Finally, keeping up with the latest marketing trends can be tedious for marketers. Digital marketing innovation and news is constantly changing, and marketers must keep up to ensure their campaigns are relevant and useful to the audience they’re trying to reach.
To keep up with these trends, marketers can follow industry blogs and social media accounts to stay informed of the latest developments in their niche. By keeping up-to-date on the latest marketing trends and implementing best practices, marketers can stay ahead of the competition.
Understanding your audience helps you cater to them.
Understanding the audience is critical to the success of any marketing campaign. By overcoming these roadblocks, marketers can create campaigns that resonate with their target audience and potentially drive engagement and conversions. Remember to conduct market research, monitor customer behavior, and stay up-to-date on the latest marketing trends. Marketers can overcome these challenges by following these best practices and achieving marketing success.

Optimizing your content to rank high in search engines can be tedious, especially when there are many factors to consider. Page load times, keywords, content quality, and videos are all things that can affect SEO.

Fortunately, AI SEO tools are available to streamline SEO optimization and boost your website’s rankings.
In this article, we’ll explore the various AI tools available to you, but first, let’s dive into how marketers use AI and the definition of AI SEO.
How Marketers Use AI
What is AI SEO?
15 AI SEO Tools Marketers Should Know

How Marketers Use AI
We surveyed more than 1,350 marketers to learn how they use AI. Here are some statistics we found:

The majority of the marketers we surveyed (48%) reported using generative AI to conduct research.
45% of marketers use generative AI for content creation.
When creating marketing content, most marketers surveyed (22%) said they use AI to generate ideas.
70% of marketers said generative AI is important to their content marketing strategy.

So, what do these statistics tell us? Essentially, AI plays a prominent role in the workflow of many marketers.
If you want to stay competitive as SEO continues to change the marketing landscape, then it’s time to consider how AI can help your brand.
One way to leverage AI is in SEO.

Many AI SEO tools can analyze your website’s performance and provide solutions to areas that need improvement. If you’re looking for AI SEO tools to help your site rank high in SERPs, here are some tools you should consider.

15 AI SEO Tools Marketers Should Know
From content writing to keyword searching to video creation, marketers should check out 20 AI SEO tools.
1. Jasper
Jasper is an AI writing assistant that can create SEO-optimized blog posts, emails, and other written marketing materials. All you have to do is provide the AI with seed words and clarify the tone of voice you desire.
From there, Jasper will analyze the information to create phrases, paragraphs, or full posts. Jasper has more than 50 templates users can choose from as well as other helpful features like:

Auto-save,
Plagiarism checker
Brand voice customization
Multi-user login

2. AlliAI
AlliAI allows users to optimize their website for SERPs in just minutes. A key feature is its Bulk Onpage Optimization, which creates site-wide optimization rules. The feature also deploys code changes down to individual pages.
AllAI also has a live editor that edits and optimizes text, content, and code within your page.
Furthermore, its Self-Optimizer for Traffic ROI automatically generates sitewide page titles with real-time focus keyword A/B testing to efficiently boost organic traffic.
3. Pro Rank Tracker
Getting real-time updates on where your content ranks in SERPs can be challenging. While it’s possible to assess your ranking by manually searching in Google, the process can be time-consuming.
Plus, personalized and localized results can cause you to miscalculate your ranking.
Fortunately, Pro Rank Tracker is an SEO tool that provides daily automatic updates as well as updates on demand. Furthermore, its international tracking feature can track your rankings worldwide and in multiple languages.
4. RankIQ
Created specifically for bloggers and businesses with a blog, RankIQ is an SEO toolset that helps users create SEO-optimized blog posts.
RankIQ provides SEO content briefs identifying topics that Google’s algorithm wants you to cover, allowing you to create a blog outline in minutes.
Its content-optimizing writing assistant even tells you what to add in your post to make it more comprehensive and likely to rank at the top of search engine results. You can even optimize older, underperforming posts in less than 30 minutes.
5. INK
INK is an AI writing tool that learns from your competition so you can write brand content that outranks your competitors. The tool also serves as an SEO assistant by finding the right keywords to enhance and further optimize your content.
Advanced users can also access keyword clustering. Other key features are:

AI Writer, a long-form document editor
SEO Optimizer to score content for SEO
Fully automated keyword search

6. HubSpot AI Tools
Click here to learn more about HubSpot’s AI tools.
HubSpot has various AI tools that help you create optimized content that will rank high in SERPs. For example, our SEO suggestions tools can scan your website and automatically pinpoint opportunities for optimization.
Furthermore, our AI content assistant helps users to toggle between manual and AI content creation to generate copy for blog posts, landing pages, marketing emails, and more.
The content assistant can generate blog ideas, outlines, paragraphs, and email content.
7. NeuronWriter
This AI-powered optimization tool uses natural learning processing (NLP), Google SERPs data, and competition insights to help users create high-ranking, SEO-optimized articles and social media posts.
Key features are:

AI Writer, which generates AI-written content.
Internal Linking, which gives users recommendations for related sites — taking the guesswork out of link building.
Competitor Analysis, which analyzes the high-performing content from your competitor to give insight into what drives their ranking.

8. OutRanking
OutRankning examines data from top-ranking sites and uses the information to find opportunities to help its users rank higher.
Using SERP data, the tool can create an automated draft quickly, allowing users to make edits, fact-check, or re-write wherever they feel it’s necessary.
OutRanking can generate SEO-optimized blog outlines, briefs, titles, and campaigns.
9. Diib
Diib uses SEO and traffic insights to foster business growth. The AI SEO tool provides you with a personalized growth plan that includes customized objectives alerts to help with SEO.
It includes features that help monitor SEO keywords and develop new ones.
It also monitors backlinks and tracks competitor rankings. Even better, Diibs provides a daily health score to stay on top of your website’s health.
10. Surfer SEO
Surfer SEO is an AI tool focusing heavily on SEO strategy to boost organic traffic, visibility, and rankings in SERPs.
One of the tool’s features, Grow Flow, provides weekly SEO insights to identify high-ranking keywords, research niche topics generate content ideas, and find relevant internal links.
You can also use its SEO Audit tool to pinpoint problems in your SEO. Other helpful features include:

Content Editor
Audit
AI Outline Generator

11. PageSpeed Insights
Page speed plays a role in how high your website ranks in SERPs because search engines don’t want to send users to slow-loading platforms. In fact, page speed has played a role in Google’s rankings since 2017.
PageSpeed Insights is a free tool provided by Google for website owners to examine how Google assesses their page speed.
12. Scalenut
Scalenut is an all-in-one SEO marketing tool that includes a keyword planner, SERP analyzer, SEO article writer, and content optimizer. With Scalenut, you can analyze the search volume and relevance of potential keywords using AI.
Its article writer creates a guided workflow to automate outlines and create content based on SERP data. And its editor provides real-time feedback and recommendations to boost the visibility of your posts.
13. Pictory
Videos increase website retention time, which helps sites rank higher in SERPs. If you’re looking for a quicker, more efficient way to incorporate videos into your web content, then Pictory could be your tool.
Pictory is an AI video generator that allows you to easily create and edit high-quality videos. To get started, upload a script for your video, which will serve as the base of your video content.
You can also use Pictory to edit videos based on text, which is especially useful for webinars, podcasts, and Zoom recordings.
Furthermore, Pictory has a feature that automatically captions and summarizes videos.
14. Nitro Pack
As I mentioned earlier, page speed is important in how your content ranks. Similar to Page Speed Insights, Nitro Pack is an AI tool that optimizes your website page loading time.
Nitro Pack includes features such as image optimization, which sizes, compresses, and adapts your images to load faster.
Other features, such as automatic caching and code optimization, are also excellent for improving page load time.
15. Neuraltext
Neuraltext is a keyword research tool, AI copywriter, and content tool. The AI copywriting feature includes over 50 templates, such as Facebook ads, slogan ideas, blog ideas, and more.
Its content features use data from ranked pages on Google to help generate well-researched content.
To use its content features, type in a keyword, and the tool will pull from the top 20 results on Google along with data on suggested keywords, topics, questions, and statistics.
Now that you have a list of AI SEO tools to choose from, you’re ready to find the right one to address any pain points in your SEO strategy.

In the last six months, economic trend surveys we’ve conducted revealed that 37% of marketers are reporting budget cuts – likely due to our changing economy.
As a marketer, knowing where your leadership team might need to cut can help you prepare to pivot to strategies with less resourcing. And, if you lead a team, you’re likely wondering how marketing leaders are navigating this time to my the best decisions for your staff and business in uncertain times.
To help you navigate reducing your marketing budget in 2023, we used tools like Glimpse to survey more than 500 marketing leaders on their top strategies for cutting costs. We also asked them which channels they expect to pull back on first, so you can get an idea of what to expect.

How Marketing Leaders Are Already Pivoting
Our full report, the Marketing Leader’s Playbook, revealed 80% of leaders have already taken steps to plan or prepare for a recession – so let’s dive right in and see what we can learn.

How Marketing Leaders Are Cutting Costs in 2023
Marketing leaders say leaning into earned media, leveraging automation or AI, looking for emerging marketing opportunities, using organic marketing channels, and optimizing your media mix are the top strategies for cutting costs, so let’s take a look at each in more detail below.

1. Tapping Into Earned Media over Paid Media
Tapping into earned media is a great (and free) opportunity to expand your reach when budget cuts are on the horizon.
Traditional examples of earned media include getting your brand spotlighted by a news publication or rated by a review site. Not only is it free, but the fact that it comes from an independent source adds credibility to your brand.
Another powerful earned media asset is content from your very own satisfied customers who might share their pleasant experiences on social media, review sites, or other channels.
Also known as user-generated content, assets created by happy customers are a great way to promote your brand in an authentic and credible way. Sharing and interacting with UGC on your official page will also deepen your connection with your customers and incentivize others to share their stories too!
2. Leveraging Affordable AI and Automation
Let’s have AI (courtesy of OpenGPT) write this section on how AI can help marketers:
“Marketers can use AI to cut costs in several ways. For instance, they can use AI to automate repetitive tasks such as data entry and analysis, which can save time and reduce the need for human labor.
Additionally, AI can be used to optimize marketing campaigns, helping to target the right audience and increase the effectiveness of marketing efforts, which can reduce the amount of money spent on marketing activities.
Furthermore, AI can be used to improve the customer experience, leading to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, which can help to reduce the cost of acquiring new customers.”
Yes. The writing above isn’t perfect. But, it makes the necessary points and just needs a few tweaks to be great.
While AI isn’t ready to write intriguing full-fledged blog posts on its own, and we don’t condone replacing your team with AI, marketers and leaders can leverage automation, like HubSpot’s Content Assistant, to save time and money in a wide range of ways, like:

Using AI for basic web research
Generating post outlines
Creating short meta or social media descriptions

Artificial intelligence could be such a major evolution in today’s economy and workplace, that it’s even the topic of our next research report and series, which will cover The State of AI in business. Bookmark this page to check out our survey’s marketing highlights.
3. Embracing Emerging Marketing Opportunities
From AI to social media, marketing is always evolving, with new apps and features popping up constantly.
These are often free to use and being among the first brands to hop on a new trend presents a massive opportunity.
For example, embracing BeReal, a new social media platform popular among Gen Z, can make a splash with that demographic in a space brands haven’t yet saturated. You can also try out new social media features, like Instagram’s shopping tools, which offer marketers a high ROI as Millennials and Gen Z continue discovering products (and buying them) through social media.
4. Leaning into Organic Social Media Content
Leveraging social media to gain organic, free awareness is a no-brainer in this day and age, especially for the leaders we surveyed. Rather than investing time and money into making paid ads, you can create great content tailored to the interests of your audience and let social algorithms do the targeting for you.
And as we’ll get into later, paid social media content is the first channel marketing leaders plan to cut in a recession, so organic may be more important than ever.
The good news is that you no longer need a professional camera and the perfect setup to win on social media. Nowadays, authenticity and relatability go much further, especially with Gen Z and Millennials.
Brainstorm a few ideas, grab your phone or pop open Canva, and hit the post button. Analyze your results, double down on what works, and watch your audience grow.
5. Optimizing Media Mixes
Optimizing your media mix is all about figuring out what works (and what doesn’t) and shifting your investment accordingly.
Analyze the performance of your marketing channels and amplify the ones giving you the best ROI. At the same time, you can either cut underperforming channels or switch up your strategy.
Speaking of cutting back on underperforming marketing channels, let’s take a look at where marketing leaders expect to see budget cuts if a recession were to happen.
Where Marketing Leaders Could Cut Costs
If our economy worsens, most marketing leaders expect to see budget cuts in their paid social media content, followed by organic social content, print ads, email marketing, and video content.
Since these are among the most popular marketing channels, it’s no surprise that budget cuts will affect them disproportionately, simply due to the fact more marketers use them in the first place.
With all of that said, one thing worth keeping in mind is that the data above doesn’t necessarily mean marketing leaders will get rid of things like social media or email completely: they just might invest in them differently and more conscientiously.

On the other hand, marketing leaders least expect virtual events, podcasts, SMS, and physical ads to see budget cuts in a recession – possibly because these are used least often. Still, around one in five leaders still think these channels would be on the chopping block.
One definitive finding is that blogs are also among the least likely to be cut, despite being the second most popular marketing channel. Based on that, we can assume blogs will see less of a pullback than other equally popular marketing channels like social media, email, and video.
Get Ahead With Key Economic Insights
With one in three marketers saying a recession will have an even bigger impact on their marketing activities than COVID-19, preparation and continuous monitoring will be key to success.
Now that you know how marketing leaders are planning to cut costs, dive into the full survey results by checking out the Marketing Leader’s Playbook.
We’re also regularly surveying marketers on how the recession is impacting them and the strategies they’re using to persevere.
After reading our blog content, learn about the latest trends, innovations, and other ongoing challenges in the marketing space today by downloading our free State of Marketing Report below.  

Finding the right influencer for a brand campaign can feel like dating. You want someone who shares your values, aligns with your goals, and will make a great impression on your friends and family — or followers, in your brand’s case.
The same can be said if you’re an influencer looking for a brand that will take your career to the next level.
Whether you’re a brand or an influencer, this article will help you find the perfect match by showing you the top channels for influencer marketing.
Discover the best social media channels for your next influencer marketing campaign and what platforms to use to find a brand or creator to collaborate with.
Best Channels for Influencers
Influencer Platforms for Creators
10 Best Influencer Platforms

Best Channels for Influencers
Below are the channels marketers leverage the most in influencer marketing and where influencers achieve the highest ROI for the companies they work with.
1. Instagram
According to our survey, 72% of marketers listed Instagram among the social media platforms on which they work with influencers and creators.
Most marketers surveyed (30%) also said Instagram is the platform they get the biggest ROI when working with influencers and creators.
Furthermore, most marketers (32%) said Instagram is the easiest platform to work with influencers.
2. YouTube
58% of our survey’s marketers listed YouTube as a platform they leverage when working with creators and influencers. 20% of marketers said YouTube yields the highest ROI when working with influencers.
When asked which social media platform is the easiest to leverage when working with influencers, 20% of marketers pointed to YouTube. And 18% of marketers plan to use YouTube for influencer marketing.
3. TikTok
61% of marketers listed TikTok among the social media platforms on which they work with influencers and creators. However, only 14% said it results in the biggest ROI when leveraging influencer marketing.
14% also said TikTok is the easiest to work with when collaborating with influencers and creators.
4. Facebook
Finally, 57% of marketers listed Facebook as their platform of choice when working with creators and influencers.
It also ties with YouTube regarding ROI, with 20% of marketers saying it yields the highest ROI when leveraging influencer marketing.
18% of marketers said it’s the easiest platform to work with when collaborating with influencers and creators.

Influencer Platforms for Creators
If you’re an influencer or creator looking for a platform to help you connect with brands, expand your reach, and book paid campaigns — consider joining the platforms below.
1. Mavrck
Mavrck is an influencer marketing platform that connects brands with creators (and vice versa) for collaborations and marketing campaigns. Its influencer index is especially helpful for creators.
Through the influencers index, creators can make a profile on the site and make their accounts searchable. Brands can then reach out directly to the creators and influencers they want to work with.
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2. Activate
Influencers who want control over the campaigns and brands they work with get a lot of use out of Active.
The platform allows creators to scroll through partnership opportunities posted on the site, negotiate their rates, and submit partnership proposals.
Influencers can also filter campaigns based on compensation.
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3. #Paid
On #Paid, influencers can set their rates for their content posts and the custom content they create to be posted by brands. To see campaign opportunities, users must sign up.
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4. Clever
Clever is a full-service influencer marketing agency that connects creators with brands and brand campaigns. The agency works with influencers at every level but focuses primarily on micro-influencers.
Clever’s services include:

Campaign designs
Influencer profile definitions
Influencer selection
Influencer program management
Reporting

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10 Best Influencer Platforms
Whether you’re a content creator, influencer, or brand — the platforms below are best if you want to collaborate and get the most out of your influencer marketing campaign.
1. Shopify Collabs
Shopify Collabs is free for anyone with an existing Shopify plan. The all-in-one tool allows brands to partner with influencers on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Twitch.
Marketers can create their brand’s custom application page, discover the right influencer for their next campaign, and manage affiliate payouts and special offers.
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2. YouTube BrandConnect
As mentioned earlier, YouTube is one of the best social media platforms to leverage when working with influencers and creators.
If you’re trying to find the right influencer for your next YouTube marketing campaign — YouTube BrandConnect is what you need.
With YouTube BrandConnect, companies can reach out to creators with a strong following to create innovative, authentic, and engaging branded content.
Furthermore, YouTube BrandConnect synchs with your Google Ads account and gives access to a suite of influencer marketing tools exclusive to Google.
With these tools, you can monitor your campaigns, find ways to increase engagement, and offer products in real time.
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3. Grin
If you like having a wide range of tools at your disposal, then you’ll enjoy Grin. The platform boasts a plethora of tools that support:

Relationship management
Discovery and recruitment
Content management
Product seeding
Payments

Grin can also integrate with your marketing stack, including email providers and e-commerce solutions.
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4. Aspire
Aspire is an excellent platform if your goal is to build a unique influencer marketing program. The platform’s fully customizable relationship workflows make it easy for marketers to tailor their influencer marketing process to their needs.
Aspire also allows users to find and connect with influencers, brands, and industry experts. Additionally, Aspire has tools and dashboards to help you measure the ROI from your campaign.
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5. Creator.co
Creator.co offers tools for reporting, insights, and campaign execution. With Creator.co, you can search for creators, build your own creator community, and create a seamless onboarding process for the creators you wish to collaborate with.
Creator.co also offers tools such as:

Creator CRM
Campaign management
Paid social and ad permissions
API Integrations
Reporting and insights
Competitor benchmarking

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6. Open Influence
Open Influence calls itself your “campaign co-pilot” that will assist you from campaign ideation to creator selection to performance tracking.
If you want help with production, you’ll want to check out its studio feature. Open Influence’s studio provides video production, pre-production, and post-production tools.
It also offers services for live streaming, aerial videography, and virtual reality.
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7. Klear
Klear offers tools to connect brands and influencers; however, one of its main focuses is analytics. Its influencer analytics tool provides influencer insights, demographic data, trending data, and brand safety audits.
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8. Traackr
Traackr focuses on data-driven influencer marketing. With Traackr, you can find partners, collect addresses, create reports, monitor posts, and share briefs.
If you’re looking to run affiliate and paid programs, Traackr boasts tools to manage links, define attribution models, track conversions, and pay commissions.
And, of course, it allows users to sort and vet influencers for potential collaborations.
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9. Impact.com
If you’re a brand with multiple partnerships, Impact likely has the service you need. Impact helps users manage and optimize all of their partnerships through every stage.
Whether you’re a brand, affiliate, influencer, publisher, or sponsor — Impact is an excellent tool for building relationships and fostering successful collaborations.
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10. Influence.co
Influence.co is a directory and portfolio site where creators can network and showcase their work.
The platform’s pricing model focuses on helping creators promote their brand, which allows small businesses on a budget to use Influence.co for free to find relevant creators.
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If you’re a creator looking for your next paid brand collaboration or sponsorship, you know the platforms to help you find your perfect match.
The same goes for if you’re a brand looking for an influencer that shares your vision and aligns with your goals.
Now, go out there and find the best collaborator for your next big influencer marketing campaign!