Category: Marketing Automation

Every year, a new digital platform emerges. In the last year alone, Discord, Twitter Spaces, and Twitch have all become very popular with consumers all around this world.

Now, social media marketers are faced with this issue: Should you curate content for each platform and its audience or should you save some time and cross-post on multiple platforms?
In this article, we’ll discuss the do’s and dont’s of cross posting, the benefits of this strategy, and some tools to help you leverage it.

Who can get the most out of this strategy?

Small brands with a limited marketing budget
New brands that haven’t produced much content
Social media marketers that want to focus on strategy instead of posting

Benefits and Drawbacks of Cross Posting
Cross posting is a time-saving measure that allows you to share your content with a wider audience without having to put in the extra effort.
The main benefit of cross-posting is that it saves you time. Instead of creating separate pieces of content for each social media platform, you can just share the same content on all of them.
This is especially helpful if you’re short on time or if you’re managing multiple social media accounts.
Another benefit of cross-posting is that it allows you to reach a wider audience. By sharing your content on multiple platforms, you’re increasing the chances that people will see it and engage with it.

While cross posting has many benefits, there are also a few drawbacks to consider.
The first is that not all platforms are created equal. What works on one platform might not work on another.
That’s why many marketers prefer to tailor their content to each platform and its specific audience.
Another drawback of cross posting is that if some users follow you on multiple platforms and see the same content, they may get bored and stop paying attention to what you post.
As with every strategy, you have to be flexible in your approach.

Cross Posting Mistakes
Now that you know what cross posting is and how to do it, let’s take a look at some mistakes you should avoid.
One mistake to avoid is reposting the exact same content on every social media platform. Just because you can cross-post everywhere doesn’t mean you should.
Your followers on each platform are likely to be different, so it’s important to customize your content for each audience. More on that in the next section.
Another mistake I often see on social media is brands posting content featuring watermarks from other platforms.
For instance, when you upload a video to TikTok and save it, the brand’s logo will automatically appear on the video. Instagram recently announced that it would deprioritize videos with the TikTok watermark to avoid recycled content from its competitor.
This practice also compromises your video quality while signaling to audiences that you’re focusing on other social platforms.
Here’s an easy solution: Edit and prep your content on a third-party platform like Canva or iMovie then upload to the respective platform to add additional elements like filters, sounds, and captions.
That will not only keep you from getting shadowbanned but also preserve the quality of your content, as it’s only being uploaded once.
Best Cross Posting Practices
When it comes to cross posting, the most important factor is the quality of your content. This might seem obvious, but it’s important. If your content isn’t good, people won’t want to read it or share it, no matter what platform it’s on.

Once you have great content, the next step is to tailor it to each specific platform. Now you might be thinking, “Is the whole point of cross-posting that I don’t have to tailor content to the platform?” The truth is that while cross posting takes the bulk of the work out, you’ll still have to do some customizing.
This means seeing which platforms deserve which approach. For instance, TikTok and Instagram Reels are both short-form video platforms. This offers an easy cross-posting opportunity.
However, posting a TikTok video on Twitter may not work as well since the latter is mostly text-based. As such, maybe Twitter and Facebook could be a better match-up.
On Facebook, you might want to include a photo or video along with your update whereas you could use the copy only for Twitter.
The key is to make your content engaging and interesting based on audience behavior on each platform.
And finally, to make cross posting easy, consider using software. There are a number of options available, let’s cover that next.
Cross Posting Software
Now that we’ve discussed the benefits of cross posting, you may want to look for tools that will facilitate this process.
First, here are key features you’ll want to look out for:

Scheduling – The best cross posting software will allow you to schedule your content in advance so you can set it and forget it.
Customization – As we mentioned before, it’s important to tailor your content for each social media platform. The best cross posting software will allow you to do this with ease.
Analytics – It’s also key to track the performance of your cross-posted content. You’ll need software with advanced analytics so you can see what’s working and what isn’t.

Let’s take a look at some tools that will help you do it.
Hootsuite

Hootsuite is one of the most popular social media management platforms. It allows you to schedule and publish content, track who’s talking about your brand, and measure your performance.
It also has a feature that lets you cross-post content to multiple social media accounts with just a few clicks.
Buffer

Another tool you can use is Buffer.
Like Hootsuite, Buffer lets you schedule and publish content, track your brand mentions, and measure your performance.
It also has a cross-posting feature that makes it easy to share your content.
Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a third option for those looking for a social media management platform. It has all of the features you’d expect, like the ability to schedule and publish content, track your performance, and engage with your audience.
It also has a cross-posting feature that lets you share content on multiple social media platforms.
When done correctly, cross posting can be an effective way to grow your online presence. Just make sure to avoid the mistakes we discussed and use one of the tools we mentioned to make the process easier.

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We meticulously researched the latest customer trends to separate the wheat from the chaff and provide you with a reliable sense of the general direction of eCommerce’s evolution. Here is what we discovered:

 

Customers are going mobile

 

Customers tend to discover more products online than in stores. 55% of them prefer it for convenience, 46% for greater choice, and 45% for the ability to research reviews and products (Bazaarvoice).

46% of consumers prefer their mobile phones for browsing online. Laptops are the top choice for 26% of the consumers, and tablets for only 10%. 

Even more interesting is where they are actually buying: 44% stick with phones, but 28% choose laptops, which is a 2 percentage point increase. Tablet users remain faithful to their devices; the same 10% browse and buy using them. It seems that some shoppers trust computers more when it comes to finalizing the contract. 

The reason might also be the greater convenience of computer shopping. Browsing sites on phones may be uncomfortable for some users. This is probably why App Annie predicted that US shoppers would spend over 900 million hours on mobile shopping apps in Q4 2021. Apps are simply more convenient to navigate than the sites. 

Data from eMarketer supports all these findings and predictions, indicating that mobile commerce will increase 18.8% to $97.15 billion during this holiday season and will reach nearly $4.5 trillion, or 69.9% of total retail eCommerce sales, by 2024.

In our opinion, considering that mobile devices have been almost equally able to service eCommerce as computers for quite some time, the latter are still holding up surprisingly well. The factors stopping customers from going entirely mobile may be greater convenience of computer navigation and the resulting ease of finding things they are looking for. 

Another factor may be the insufficient utilization of mobile-commerce-supporting technologies by eCommerce. However, these technologies exist, and, as we show later, are within eCommerce’s grasp.  

 

Customers expect to find what they are looking for easily

 

The assumption of ease in finding remains a key factor for customers going online but not entirely mobile, according to the results of the CommerceNext report, sponsored by ContentSquare.  

In CommerceNext’s survey, 42% of participants pointed to “Ease of finding what I’m looking for (e.g. specific features, colors, sizes, etc.)” as an answer to the question “What do you look for in a website when shopping online?”

It is worth noting that this answer was the third most commonly chosen, right after no-brainers like “Prices” and “Deals and promotions.”

Navigation is the biggest reason they’ll return again—it’s now as big an asset to a brand as expedient delivery. When asked, “What aspects of the online shopping experience make you want to purchase from a website in the future?” 38% answered, “A website that’s easy to navigate.”

The conclusion we draw from these results is that “navigation” may be understood as synonymous with “ease of finding.”

 

…and trust the reviews

 

36% of the aforementioned survey’s participants pointed to “Product reviews” as an answer to the question “What do you look for in a website when shopping online?”

When asked, “What type of content is most helpful to you when shopping online?” 59% of the respondents answered, “Product reviews/testimonials.” This was the second most chosen answer, after “Detailed product specifications” (68%).

This clearly shows how important social proof is for eCommerce.

 

…but they don’t want their information shared with third parties.

 

Interestingly, 38% of survey participants, when asked, “What do you look for in a website when shopping online?” answered, “Knowing my personal information is secure & not shared with third parties.”

This supports our stand on the future of eCommerce: Customers want personalized offers, but to get them, they want to communicate their personal information and preferences only with the brands of their choosing. 

Exactly like with brick-and-mortar stores, customers want to enter personal, consensual relationships with brands based on the foundation of mutual trust and respect. 

 

There are technologies to deliver!

 

Considering how capable today’s smartphones are, it is surprising that only about half of shoppers use them to browse and buy. As we stated, the problem may just be widely understood CX. Besides eCommerce frontends, many other technologies are able to enhance the customer experience, help customers find what they are looking for, and push them into action in a mobile channel.

 

Mobile Marketing feature

 

This feature uses the customer’s mobile device to deliver 1-to-1 offers anywhere they are with SMS, push notifications, and messaging apps. Integrate MobileApp Marketing Automation to track app usage, build dynamic behavioral segments, and send truly omnichannel campaigns.

 

 

The feature has great potential to push customers into action in a mobile channel.

 

Website Personalization feature

 

With this feature, you can make your website visitors feel at home with real-time personalization, lowering the bounce rate. This enables you to replace general offers with ones tailored specifically to them.

 

 

This feature addresses customers’ desire to “easily find what they are looking for.” Personalized content means showing only preferred products, reducing the need to browse the entire site to find just the right offer.

 

Social Proof feature

 

With Social Proof, you can create a unique, interactive customer experience in the buying process by displaying simple notifications on the product page that show other users’ interest in the product. 

 

 

Customer Preference Center

 

This is one of our latest features and the one with the potential to revolutionize eCommerce. Customer Preference Center is the first tool in the world that enables you to collect, manage, and act on zero-party data!

Zero-party data is data the customer consciously and deliberately shares with the company. It is not deduced from behavior, like first- and third-party data. It provides the most explicitly expressed knowledge about customers, their needs, their preferences, price ranges, offers they want to receive, communication channels, etc. 

It is the most reliable and relevant collection of information about your customers.

 

 

Data gathered via Customer Preference Center enriches the unified customer profile in CDP and is then easily actioned, such as in Automation Rules. 

 

 

This allows you to not only better personalize the website but also to send extremely personalized offers via:

SMSEmailWebPush notifications

Doing so increases your potential to push customers into action in a mobile channel.

 

Last Updated on March 29, 2022 by Rakesh GuptaSalesforce Flow is a fantastic way to automate various business processes. It allows you to create a flow based on certain criteria that you set. Salesforce flow can do many things – Create a record, Update records, Post to Chatter, Send an email, etc.
The post Auto Remove Managed Package License from a Deactivated User! appeared first on Automation Champion.

Big Idea or Enduring Question: How to insert users with Data Loader in Salesforce? There are times when you will have to create users in Salesforce, for example, At the end of project development, create users for UAT testing.  Load users from legacy system to Salesforce. You’ve hired a few
The post Insert Users with Data Loader in Salesforce appeared first on Automation Champion.

In 2021, we geared up for our first hiring push in the Customer Advocacy team  (our customer support team) for quite a while. Due to strategy and personnel changes, we would need to hire five new Advocates throughout the year, which is more than we’d hired in any year since 2016. Between hiring and other personnel changes, we started 2021 with 15 Customer Advocates and ended the year with 19.In preparation, we took a look at our onboarding documentation and process to find holes or improvement areas.When a new team member walks into Buffer, they’re normally greeted by their manager, a role buddy, and a culture buddy (you can learn more about those roles in this post). These three people are pivotal to the experience the team member has across their first 90 days. If there ever was a phone-a-friend during onboarding, these three people would be it!We took a pause before starting these hiring rounds, though.We knew that the first person who came on board would be in a unique position. They’d be the first new team member we’ve onboarded in over a year. In fact, most of our team had worked as a Customer Advocate for four-plus years. While we had oodles and oodles of documentation to explain all the things, nothing can account for the experience and context that each of these 16 team members had stacked up in their brains.Our empathy was speaking, and it said that walking into this well-oiled machine (ahem… as we’d like to think) had the potential to make the already tricky task of switching jobs even more daunting, and perhaps even a bit isolating.Our ideal outcome when staring this challenge in the face was to foster an environment where the new team member could integrate quickly and seamlessly into our close-knit team. What could we do to facilitate that?That’s when we had an idea — what if every team member in Customer Advocacy had a hand in the new team member’s introduction to the company and to their work as a Customer Advocate? What could that do for the new team member, the tenured team members, and the team as a whole?While the team member would still have their manager, role buddy, and culture buddy by their sides, they’d also now have 16 others performing as rocket boosters to their growth along the way.For the first time, we tried this integrative method of onboarding in the Customer Advocacy team here at Buffer in early 2021 with our first new hire of the year, we then used it throughout the year with our four other hires and through this cumulative experience we learned a lot. Not only did this new approach facilitate the new team member’s integration into our close-knit team, but it brought some surprise benefits, as well.Let’s dive into each of the benefits we’ve seen:Benefit #1: Our newest team member had a quicker integration into the teamLet’s imagine two scenarios:In scenario number one, you attend a party where the host says hello and then leaves to attend to other guests.In scenario number two, the host kindly introduces you to a second person, who introduces you to a third, and so on.Our goal was to create an experience like that of the second scenario.Budding co-worker relationships as soon as someone walks in the door allows them to quickly feel like part of the team. Positive Psychology shares, “Dunbar and Dunbar (1998) suggested that when individuals experience social pain in the workplace from feeling isolated, for instance, the region of the brain that is activated is the same as if physical pain had been experienced.”  Ouch!While the manager, role buddy, and culture buddy have always been supportive, those three people are only a fraction of the guests at the party. If I chat through some tricky billing scenarios with Nate and then dig into onboarding tickets with Essence, I now have two more phone-a-friend contacts; my list is growing.This relational comfort trickles into other areas of work and collaboration, too. Creating purpose-driven relationships with more people throughout their first 90 days tends to facilitate a higher likelihood that someone will feel welcome to participate thoughts in syncs (a.k.a. meetings), more forthrightness to ask questions in public forums, and altogether, just more confidence in knowing that their opinion matters.I feel so invested in! The time and energy the team has put into this onboarding is so welcoming, buoying, and confidence-building. And makes me feel so invested! -Lexi, Customer Advocate, five months into her journey at Buffer.Benefit #2: It created a system of reinforced learningWith new teammates feeling more comfortable they have one less psychological burden (that of worrying about how they’ll fit into an existing team), which means that their mental defenses have the potential to drop, allowing them to be more receptive to all of the new information coming their way.In addition to that, providing information in more than one way allows it to be accessible to more learning styles, reinforcing retention.Let’s say that you share a written resource with the team member about a component of their job in their onboarding checklist. Just below the resource, they have a task to schedule a call with Julia to further the conversation. The team member has been able to read the information, and soon they will also hear Julia’s experience with it. Perhaps Julia will also have something to share with the team member visually to reinforce the concept. If it’s something that requires doing, they can walk through a scenario together, as well.We just hit the big four learning styles:VisualAuditoryReading and writingKinesthetic (doing it yourself, learning with movement)Having meaningful conversations with every one of their peers helps new teammates fill their context and relationship-building buckets quicker than they would without the meetings. Also, the wide range of perspectives they will come across is invaluable to their ability to learn in the way they receive information best.I believe we’ve gone beyond just self-learning or learning-by-doing by incorporating these calls into our process. The blended approach to onboarding (being fully async while having the opportunity to experience a variety of approaches from other Advocates) has been a great experience for me. -Ben, Customer Advocate, 90 days into his journey at BufferAs an example, Ben shared:I’ve used Stripe before and thought I had a pretty good understanding of their platform but on my call with Nate, he showed me how to use the Fingerprint feature to track down payments. This is something small, but I was blown away. I really wish I learned this years ago at my previous jobs. -Ben, Customer Advocate, 90 days into his journey at BufferBenefit #3: It furthered the sense of significance for our existing team membersWhile onboarding has never been a one-person job at Buffer, the concept of intentionally including every team member who will work closely with a new teammate into their onboarding really takes the idea of multi-support onboarding to a new level.It’s impactful on morale to know that you’re a part of someone’s onboarding process and making a difference for new team members, our team, and our customers.Being a part of the onboarding experience for new teammates was a great opportunity to share the knowledge I’d gained from my work so far. The best part of it for me was listening to their questions/thoughts that came from a different perspective. It ended up being not just a time to teach but a time to learn as well. -Cheryl Appiah, Customer AdvocateIn fact, no matter how long or short a person has been at Buffer, their hand in onboarding a new Advocate is valued. To showcase that every perspective is significant, two team members we onboarded in September last year were asked to be part of the onboarding for two new team members who started onboarding the following December and January.What a lovely way to pay it forward.Lastly, asking team members to help welcome, onboard, and ultimately train new hires is a passive, but clear way to show how much they are trusted and valued by their leadership. Every team member is significant, and every individual’s unique experience contributes to the richness of our team.We’re not done hereOur process is always evolving, and with each and every new team member we onboard, we learn more and more about how our processes can be stronger or more individualized.What won’t change is the message our onboarding process sends to both our newest team members and or more seasoned ones.For new team members, we will think outside of the box to facilitate the most inclusive onboarding process possible for them. And for existing team members, their experience and creativity are treasured! They are all significant, and the time and effort they spend in contributing to the onboarding process for our newest team members is invaluable.We’d love to hear from you — what do you think about this approach to onboarding? Send us a tweet!

Henry Ford’s quote, “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself,” is one of my personal favorite quotes on teamwork. 
Because it’s true: Teamwork has the incredible power to increase productivity, job satisfaction, and even each person’s individual performance. 
To inspire your team to band together and celebrate collaboration, we’ve gathered some of our favorite quotes on the power of teamwork. Check out the full list of inspirational quotes below,  including some remarks about hard work to keep your collaborative juices flowing.

Quotes About Collaboration

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller
“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.” – Michael Jordan
“Teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.” – Patrick Lencioni
“It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.” – Napolean Hill
“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” – Booker T. Washington
“None of us, including me, ever do great things. But we can all do small things, with great love, and together we can do something wonderful.” – Mother Teresa

Teamwork Quotes to Inspire Collaboration
1. “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller (Click to Tweet!)
2. “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” – Henry Ford (Click to Tweet!)
3. “Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang up.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes (Click to Tweet!)
4. “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” – Isaac Newton (Click to Tweet!)
5. “No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.” – H.E. Luccock (Click to Tweet!)
6. “Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.” – Andrew Carnegie (Click to Tweet!)
7. “It is the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) that those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” – Charles Darwin (Click to Tweet!)
8. “Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.” – Henry Ford (Click to Tweet!)
9. “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.” – Michael Jordan (Click to Tweet!)

10. “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” – Phil Jackson (Click to Tweet!)

 
11. “The best teamwork comes from men who are working independently toward one goal in unison.” – James Cash Penney (Click to Tweet!)
12. “Politeness is the poison of collaboration.” – Edwin Land (Click to Tweet!)
13. “Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.” – Amy Poehler (Click to Tweet!)
14. “Effectively, change is almost impossible without industry-wide collaboration, cooperation, and consensus.” – Simon Mainwaring (Click to Tweet!)
Want more? Read about Fun Corporate Team-Building Activities & Outing Ideas Everyone Will Enjoy.
15. “Teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.” – Patrick Lencioni (Click to Tweet!)
16. “You need to be aware of what others are doing, applaud their efforts, acknowledge their successes, and encourage them in their pursuits. When we all help one another, everybody wins.” – Jim Stovall (Click to Tweet!)
17. “The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.” – Babe Ruth (Click to Tweet!)
18. “There is no such thing as a self-made man. You will reach your goals only with the help of others.” – George Shinn (Click to Tweet!)
19. “It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.” –Napolean Hill (Click to Tweet!)
20. “The whole is other than the sum of the parts.” – Kurt Koffka (Click to Tweet!)
21. “A group becomes a team when each member is sure enough of himself and his contribution to praise the skills of others.” – Norman Shidle (Click to Tweet!)
22. “The ratio of We’s to I’s is the best indicator of the development of a team.” – Lewis B. Ergen (Click to Tweet!)
23. “Individual commitment to a group effort — that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.” – Vince Lombardi (Click to Tweet!)
24. “One piece of log creates a small fire, adequate to warm you up, add just a few more pieces to blast an immense bonfire, large enough to warm up your entire circle of friends; needless to say that individuality counts but teamwork dynamites.” – Jin Kwon (Click to Tweet!)

25. “No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose out to a team.” – Reid Hoffman (Click to Tweet!)

 
26. “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” – Mark Twain (Click to Tweet!)
27. “If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” – Booker T. Washington (Click to Tweet!)
28. “Great things in business are never done by one person; they’re done by a team of people.” – Steve Jobs (Click to Tweet!)
29. “Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.” – Ryunosuke Satoro (Click to Tweet!)
30. “Cooperation is the thorough conviction that nobody can get there unless everybody gets there.” – Virginia Burden (Click to Tweet!)
31. “None of us, including me, ever do great things. But we can all do small things, with great love, and together we can do something wonderful.” – Mother Teresa (Click to Tweet!)
32. “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” – Harry Truman (Click to Tweet!)
33. “It takes two flints to make a fire.” – Louisa May Alcott (Click to Tweet!)
34. “The way to achieve your own success is to be willing to help somebody else get it first.” – Iyanla Vanzant (Click to Tweet!)
35. “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” – African Proverb (Click to Tweet!)
36. “Success is best when it’s shared.” – Howard Schultz (Click to Tweet!)
Need help collaborating effectively? Take a look at 21 Marketing Collaboration Tools to Improve Productivity and Teamwork.
Hard Work Quotes to Inspire Determination
37. “Hard work beats talent if talent doesn’t work hard.” – Tim Notke (Click to Tweet!)
38. “We think, mistakenly, that success is the result of the amount of time we put in at work, instead of the quality of time we put in.” – Ariana Huffington (Click to Tweet!)
39. “When the ideas are coming, I don’t stop until the ideas stop because that train doesn’t come along all the time.” – Dr. Dre (Click to Tweet!)
40. “Someone once told me growth and comfort do not coexist. And I think it’s a really good thing to remember.” – Ginni Rometty (Click to Tweet!)
41. “Hard work keeps the wrinkles out of the mind and spirit.” – Helena Rubinstein (Click to Tweet!)
42. “Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment.” – Mahatma Gandhi (Click to Tweet!)
43. “I’m a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.” – Thomas Jefferson (Click to Tweet!)
44. “Diamonds are nothing more than chunks of coal that stuck to their jobs.” – Malcolm Forbes (Click to Tweet!)
45. “The dictionary is the only place that success comes before work.” – Vince Lombardi Jr. (Click to Tweet!)
I hope these quotes have inspired you to work better with your teams. Remember — teamwork isn’t just about the people, it’s about the tools and processes that will help you minimize redundancies and maximize output. For tools that help you work better, not harder, learn about how HubSpot can help you. 

Oprah. Dave Ramsey. Seth Godin.
Besides being highly successful in business, these people are considered thought-leaders – or experts — in their industry.

Similarly, as a marketer, being an expert in your field is crucial. To do that, you have to drive traffic to your site, nurture and convert leads, and build brand authority and reputation. That’s where thought leadership comes in.
Below, let’s review what thought leadership is and how to use it in your marketing strategy. We’ll also explore the best examples and types of content you can consider creating.
A person or company might use thought leadership as a content marketing strategy because providing value to your audience demonstrates your brand helpfulness. Then, down the road when someone is seeking a product or service like the ones you provide, they’ll turn to you first.
If you’re good at it, you’ll increase awareness among your target audience, generate more leads, improve social proof, and boost engagement online.
For instance, Brian Dean is a thought leader in the SEO space. By regularly posting content related to his expertise, he’s proven his value as a content marketer worth following. More on him later.
But first, how do you incorporate thought leadership into your marketing strategy? Here, we’ll analyze the top thought leadership marketing tips.
Thought Leadership Marketing
Now that we’ve covered what thought leadership is, let’s review some best practices before you get started.
1. Know your audience and continue learning about them.
Knowing your audience is the key to succeeding with any marketing strategy, and thought leadership is no different. It starts with your buyer persona. What motivates or inspires your audience? What are their pain points? What questions are they asking? 
To figure this out, look on social media or conduct customer interviews. Once you know these things, you can begin answering their questions with thought leadership content.
Additionally, it’s important to continuously check-in and reevaluate your buyer personas. Are your customer’s questions changing over time? Do their pain points look the same today as they did when you first began as a company? People evolve, and so will your audience.
2. Be active on social media.
Social media is an effective vehicle to build your brand and authority. First, social media keeps you active and engaged with your community. Second, you can use it to comment on industry news and ensure your brand voice is heard in conversations regarding relevant industry trends.
Plus, you can use social media to promote thought leadership content in an organic way without seeming too promotional.
3. Publish a variety of content — in a variety of places.
Creating thought leadership content doesn’t just mean posting on your blog. It also means being active on social media, guest posting on other sites, and speaking at events or on podcasts.
It’s important to mix it up with owned media versus other media sources. Consider having a combination of written, video, and audio content, like podcasts.
Ultimately, thought leadership content should show up wherever your audience is.
4. Analyze what your competitors are doing.
If your competitors are creating thought leadership content, analyze what they’re doing. How often are they posting? Where are they posting? Don’t be afraid to get inspiration from your competitors.
On the flip side, you can also look and see what your competitors are missing. Perhaps you can fill in gaps in the content they’re putting out.
5. Create valuable content.
In order to truly succeed at thought leadership, you need to create valuable content. Show that you’re an expert in the industry by speaking intelligently on specific issues in the industry. It’s important to dig deep and show off your expertise in one subject area at a time.
For instance, it can be tricky to prove yourself an expert in marketing as a whole (at least in the beginning), but you can have the director of SEO at your company create content for your blog or LinkedIn to demonstrate your brand’s specific expertise in SEO.
6. Be genuine.
We can’t say it enough, but being too promotional doesn’t connect with your audience. In fact, it’ll probably annoy them. You should produce content that is genuine and authentic to your brand.
Additionally, you want to make sure your content makes sense to everyone, offers perspective, and is supported with market-backed research that’ll help inform your audience’s opinions or decisions. Using examples, facts, and quotes will go a long way.
Once you’ve thought about adding thought leadership to your marketing strategy, it’s time to dive into the type of content you’ll want to create.
So, how do you come up with content ideas to talk or write about?
To start, you could do some keyword research to see what people are asking. This goes back to understanding your audience so you can create content that answers their questions.
You’ll also want to keep in mind industry news. Is there anything pressing going on? Are there any issues being discussed in your field? If so, address those and forecast the future of your industry.
Additionally, you can’t go wrong with articles using formats like tips, how-tos, or best practices. You’ll just want to ensure you’re producing long-form, educational content that your audience wants to read.
After you’ve considered the format and type of content you want to produce, it’s time to dive deep into the strategy.
Thought Leadership Strategy
Before you jump into thought leadership, you’ll want to have a strategy and a game plan for how you’re going to move forward.
Here’s a simple step-by-step process you can use as a starting point:
Step 1: Set a SMART goal. SMART goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely goals. Before you begin working on thought leadership, have a goal for what you want to get out of it, whether it’s increased traffic to your site or lead generation.
Step 2: Brainstorm content ideas. Think about your personas. Is your content focused and strategic to what they want to read or watch? What are they searching for and asking on social media? Answer these questions during your brainstorming session.
Step 3: Analyze competitors. To kickstart more brainstorming ideas, answer questions like, “Who is my audience currently going to for answers?” Again, you’ll want to fill in the gaps in their content and talk about what they aren’t.
Step 4: Create and distribute content. Once you’ve decided what content to create, make sure you have a point of view and personality. Your content should be easy to consume and easy to share.
Step 5: Measure results. Track your results in order to see if your thought leadership content has been effective. Use your SMART goals to determine what metrics you’re tracking.
1. Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey, former talk show host and media mogul, spoke at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism commencement ceremony in 2018.

She took some of her time to speak on the role of journalists today. She said, “You will become the new editorial gatekeepers, an ambitious army of truth-seekers who will arm yourselves with the intelligence, with the insight and with the facts necessary to strike down deceit. You’re in a position to keep all of those who now disparage real news — you all are the ones who are going to keep those people in check.”
Throughout the years, Oprah has earned her title as a media expert. Her advice and opinions on the industry are considered thought leadership because of her expertise, which she spent her career cultivating.
2. Dave Ramsey
Dave Ramsey is a personal finance expert. He has a degree in Finance and Real Estate, and is known for counseling people on paying off their debts. Ramsey became a thought leader when he continued to produce content in the industry, including hosting a radio show, writing books, and podcasting.
One of the best examples of his thought leadership content is his podcast, the Ramsey Show. He posts episodes almost every day on topics such as personal finance, leadership, and career growth.”
You can also follow his Twitter where he shares bite-size financial tips and advice. 
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3. Seth Godin
Seth Godin is an entrepreneur turned business mogul. He’s written books addressing marketing, advertising, and leadership. He’s also in the Marketing Hall of Fame, launched by the American Marketing Association of New York. He became a thought leader because of the successful content he delivers, including speaking engagements, books, and his blog.
Let’s do a deep-dive on his blog. Here, he regularly writes about his areas of expertise, including marketing and business. For instance, in this blog post, he writes about the difference between reassurance and encouragement. He says, “Reassurance always runs out. Reassurance implies that the only reason to go forward is because it’s certain to work. Encouragement means that someone sees us, understands us and believes in us. Even (especially) when things don’t turn out as we hoped.”
4. Marie Forleo
Marie Forleo is a life coach, speaker, author, and host of her own YouTube channel She is known for creating and selling online courses, especially in regards to entrepreneurship. She became a thought leader because of her expertise in business coaching.
One example of thought leadership content she’s produced is this video on her YouTube channel:

Here, she speaks on her expertise in content by discussing how to find fresh content ideas every week. She delivers three strategies her viewers can use to generate content ideas for their blog, podcast, or videos.
5. Brian Dean
Brian Dean is an SEO expert. After he created a successful online business, he decided to create a blog – Backlinko — that chronicled the lessons he learned along the way. Essentially, he created a thought leadership site meant to boost his credibility.
He uses long-form content that is educational and valuable to his audience, such as “17 Untapped Ways to Find New Content Ideas.”
Additionally, he also uses social media to share articles and comment on SEO trends.
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6. Sallie L. Krawcheck
Sallie L. Krawcheck, CEO and co-founder of Ellevest, a digital advisor for women, is an expert in finance. Before she started her company, she was the president of Global Wealth and Investment Management at Bank of America.
Throughout her career she’s become a thought leader because she is widely published both on social media and traditional media such as television shows.
One example of thought leadership content she’s created is on LinkedIn. Here, Krawcheck proves her expertise in finance by publishing articles and organic posts about finance. This boosts her company’s value and brand awareness.
Thought leadership is a great strategy that every content marketer should be thinking about, particularly since it allows you to prove expertise in your industry while simultaneously expanding your reach and helping your readers and customers grow.

Back in September 2021, the announcement of Apple’s iOS 15 data privacy changes triggered a mass hysteria among email marketers, with some even proclaiming that email marketing as we know it could come to an end. 
Considering that Apple Mail and Apple mobile devices make up over 35% of the global email provider market share, those fears didn’t seem too far-fetched.
But the question remains – were these fears well-founded or were they false alarms? 
Now that enough time has passed to see the impact of data privacy changes, I surveyed 300 email marketers to understand how iOS 15 and GDPR changes have affected their marketing strategies and the steps they took to adapt.

The Impact of Data Privacy Changes
Change can be scary for all of us, but when that change includes reduced visibility into email analytics, it’s no surprise that email marketers were shaking in their boots when iOS15 was announced.
Surprisingly, my survey shows that the changes, while definitely impactful, were not all bad.
While two-thirds of email marketers surveyed report a moderate-to-significant impact on their email marketing strategy, whether the impact was positive, neutral, or negative, is not as clear-cut as you might assume.

For starters, 47% of email marketers say the impact of data privacy changes was neutral on their email marketing strategy. Admittedly, 29% said the changes had a negative impact, but 24% said the contrary, claiming data privacy changes had a positive impact on their marketing strategy.
How is this possible?
To answer this, let’s break down our survey data on the specific ways data privacy changes affected email marketers, and the strategies they took to adapt. 
This will help us understand how some marketers made the most out of the situation and came out on top, while others weren’t able to keep up.
How Are Data Privacy Changes Affecting Email Marketing Strategies?
In the survey, I found that 65% of email marketers say they’ve been impacted by both Apple’s iOS 15 updates and GDPR. 
I also asked them to share how their email marketing strategy has been affected by each, and interestingly enough, the results were very similar.
Email marketers in both camps were most impacted by the same factors, in the same order:

So what can we take away from this?
For one, these changes have a similar impact whether you are affected by Apple iOS15, GDPR, or both. 
More importantly, data privacy changes clearly have a meaningful impact on certain functions that have been core to email marketers’ jobs. 
With location-based targeting, click-through rates, open rates, and A/B testing taking a hit, many email marketers have no choice but to adapt. So let’s explore how exactly they did that.
4 Ways Email Marketers Are Adapting to Data Privacy Changes
After the initial panic, email marketers began finding creative ways to reach their target audience and measure the impact of their marketing efforts. These are the most popular strategies they used:
1. Prioritizing Different KPIs
At #1, 62% of impacted email marketers started prioritizing different KPIs to measure the effectiveness of their marketing efforts. 
To HubSpotters, this isn’t surprising. In fact, it’s one of the first strategies our own email team used when navigating the changes.
So let’s take a closer look at which KPIs became more and less important in a post-iOS15 and GDPR world.
The KPI hit the hardest by iOS 15 is email open rates. With the update, users can prevent email marketers from seeing when and if they opened a marketing email.
But don’t worry, this just means it’s time to turn to other KPIs like clicks, click-through rates, web traffic, click maps, unsubscribe rates, and audience surveys:
Clicks, Click Rate, and Clickthrough Rate
Ultimately, KPIs like clicks and click-through rates can tell you how engaging your content is. And, aside from those metrics, features like click maps, let you see exactly where people are clicking in your email, offering you a glimpse of what portions of your email are most (and least) engaging.
In a previous blog post, Jordan Pritikin, who leads HubSpot’s Email and Growth Marketing teams, similarly explained, “[Focusing on clicks, click rates, and conversions] is the right course of action. Looking at clicks and conversions is much more closely tied to how your database is engaging with your email programs,” 
Website Traffic and Leads
For email marketers, engagement isn’t their only goal. For example, while HubSpot’s acquisition team might send emails with goals of landing page conversion, our Blog team sends emails filled with blog posts to encourage traffic to our blog. 
That’s why website traffic and even conversions from your marketing emails can be tracked when sending through software like HubSpot. High email traffic indicates your email content is succeeding at getting recipients to visit your site. Meanwhile, high lead counts from emails indicate that you’ve successfully nurtured contacts to a landing page. 
Unsubscribe and Spam Rates 
Spiking unsubscribe rates can indicate that the content you are sending, or the frequency, has caused you to lose more of your audience than usual. On the other hand, a low unsubscribe rate means you are retaining your readers.
Similarly, getting one spam report here and there doesn’t necessarily mean everyone dislikes your content – but seeing a rise in spam rates could mean that subscribers suddenly see no value in your content, find it annoying, or aren’t getting what they signed up for. 
Open Rates (with a Grain of Salt)
As Pritikin wrote, “Open rates will not be going away. They will just be — different.” 
And, while you could say, “We will never look at open rates again,” you could still be doing yourself a disservice by ignoring them completely. At this point, you should continue to monitor your average open rate (and how it changes). This way, you can create a new Open Rate benchmark for your team that’s adjusted to meet new tracking standards. 
While an adjusted open rate benchmark won’t be 100% accurate, it will still tell you when you’ve successfully gotten a large chunk of subscribers to open an email, and when your subject line might need work. It can also be used as backup evidence if you’re using all of your KPIs to determine the success of a new strategy or email campaign. 
Surveys or Feedback Forms
Each time the HubSpot Blog tests a major email experiment or a new type of content in our emails, we try to include a feedback survey where readers can let us know what they thought. Meanwhile, The Hustle and other HubSpot emails offer a rating scale where you can rate your email experience and give feedback. 
While this doesn’t always lead to make-or-break data, surveying, polling, or seeking feedback from your audience can also be a great way to understand their interests and what they want to see more or less of in the future.
2. Gaining User Data From Other Sources
The second most popular strategy is leveraging user data from sources unaffected by data privacy changes, used by 52% of impacted email marketers.
An example of this would be analyzing email data coming from non-Apple users, which can still give you a clear idea of an email’s open rate, among other metrics.
3. Expanding on Messaging Channels
Coming in at #3, 37% of impacted email marketers started leveraging channels other than email marketing, like SMS.
Before you scoff at the idea, consider these facts. 3.8 billion people currently carry a cell phone with them everywhere they go and 48 million opted in to receive marketing messages over text in 2020. 
Still not convinced? Here’s the kicker – SMS has a 98% open rate, while our survey shows that only 3% of marketing emails have an open rate above 50%. Furthermore, 65% of marketing emails have an open rate that falls in the 16-35% range, significantly lower than the open rate of SMS correspondences.
If you’re ready to add SMS to your marketing strategy, you can find 30 SMS templates here. 
But there are plenty of channels marketers can lean on. In our recent media planning survey, we found that while email marketing is the most popular channel marketers leverage, it comes in #3 for ROI, and doesn’t see high engagement.
Paid social media content, however, has the highest ROI and engagement of any marketing channel, followed by organic social media content at #2 for both ROI and engagement. Organic search (SEO) also has comparable ROI and engagement levels when compared to email marketing.

4. Improving Email Deliverability
Lastly, 28% of email marketers responded to privacy changes by focusing on improving email deliverability. 
That means leveraging strategies like maintaining a healthy email list, providing easy unsubscribe options, personalizing emails, using engaging subject lines and preview text, and making sure your emails and mailing list are GDPR compliant.
While this data on how email marketers adapted to privacy changes tells us which strategies are most popular, we also want to know which are most effective. 
The Email Strategy Pivots That Help Most
So let’s compare these strategies by splitting our data by those who say privacy changes had a positive impact on their email marketing strategy vs. those who report a negative impact:

Looking at the data above, we can see that those who say the data privacy changes had a positive impact on their email marketing strategy are:

9% more likely to prioritize different KPIs to measure the effectiveness of email marketing
7% more likely to leverage channels other than email for marketing
21% less likely to focus on improving email deliverability
5% less likely to leverage user data from sources unaffected by data privacy changes.

While the differences between these groups can give you an idea of where to get started, remember that these strategies can all be effective, and every situation is unique. 
For example, if a majority of your customers use Apple mail, it may not be as effective to study email data of the handful of your clients who use Gmail or Outlook. 
Navigating Email Privacy Impacts
All in all, email privacy protection is not even close to “the end of the world” for email marketers. That said, it does and will continue to require some creative pivoting. 
Like any major online marketing strategy, email marketers must learn how to adapt to a changing world that continues to prioritize consumer privacy. And, although privacy features will continue to evolve and pose new challenges for brands, companies that navigate them successfully will still be able to create experiences that feel personalized, memorable, and – importantly – secure for online audiences. 
Ultimately, that’s good for everyone.
Want to learn more about Apple iOS 15’s email privacy protection updates? Get the backstory here, learn how HubSpot’s email team has responded, or this Community thread if you’re a HubSpot user.
Looking to find a tool that offers transparent email data estimates and can help you optimize your messaging for the most engagement possible? Check out HubSpot’s own Email tools

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