Your Go-To Small Business Marketing Guide for 2019 (New Tips and Ideas)

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, an incredible two-thirds of small business owners and entrepreneurs (66%) are personally responsible for three or more areas of their business, including marketing.

From email and social media campaigns to pricing, branding, and strategy, it can be a challenge for many small business owners to excel at marketing while also focusing on growing their business.

That’s where we hope to help!

That’s why we teamed up with Mailchimp, Square, and WooCommerce to bring you a brand-new small business marketing playbook. In this five-part email series, you’ll receive specific and actionable marketing strategies that you can use in the remainder of 2018 and throughout 2019 to grow your business in meaningful ways.

We’ve also put together a special Buffer Podcast episode as a bonus to our the new email series. Whether you’re looking for fresh approach to your marketing strategy or just a few new ideas to try, this episode will help you get where you want to go in 2019.

Let’s dive in!

Your go-to small business marketing guide for 2019 (Podcast)

What follows is a lightly-edited transcript of the Buffer Podcast for your reading pleasure.

Table of Contents

• Part I: High-level small business marketing strategies
• Part II: Social media strategies for small businesses
• Part III: Email marketing strategies for small businesses
• Part IV: Final thoughts for small businesses owners and marketers

Hailley: Hi everyone! I’m Hailley Griffis and this is The Science of Social Media, a podcast by Buffer. Your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and learning.

Brian: Welcome to episode #120, I’m Brian Peters and this week we have a very special episode lined up for you. 2019 is almost here which can only mean one thing… It’s time for small businesses to shine. Whether you’re looking for fresh approach to your marketing strategy or just a few new ideas to try, today’s guide should help you get where you want to go.

Hailley: We’ve heard from so many folks how challenging it can be to keep up with the latest small business marketing strategies and tactics. So this episode is for you all. Hopefully it’ll bring you a ton of success in the new year.

Brian: We are incredibly excited to launch this new campaign.

Working with Mailchimp and Square has been really insightful because they work with small businesses every single day and so everything we talk about in that email series is brand new and highly relevant.

Part I: High-level small business marketing strategies

Hailley: Let’s start high-level and then dive into some more specific marketing strategies.

We’ve dwindled down small business marketing to three essential, high-level strategies. By practicing these 3 things, you’re setting yourself up for long-term success rather than aimlessly trying new tactics for short-term gains.

• Make a commitment to marketing

One of the biggest hurdles for small businesses looking to improve their marketing efforts is simply making a commitment to good marketing. Without that commitment, it’s bound to not meet your expectations.

Brian: In order to make a commitment, we suggest doing the following.

One is to set time aside. Brands like AJ&Smart, for example, that we talked about episode 113, set several hours aside each week to plan out their social media and email schedule for the week. Then, they carve out 3-5 hours for pure content creation so that they can get back to running their business.

Two is to set clear goals. Research shows that you’re 42% more likely to achieve your goals and dreams, simply by writing them down on a regular basis. Write down specific marketing goals that you would like to achieve over the coming month(s) and year.

Hailley: Three, of course, is to stay patient: All good things take time. Try not to fall into the trap of thinking good marketing happens overnight.

Small businesses that play the long game by creating consistently great content are the ones that eventually reap the rewards.

Brian: The next high-level strategy is to:

• Focus your efforts on a few core channels

If you try to do everything with your marketing strategy you end up doing next to nothing. Focus is key when developing new marketing ideas, and exploring opportunities.

Hailley: This goes back to setting time aside, right? If you only have a few hours each week for marketing, you have to be super focused on doing things that will have a big impact.

The key is to experiment often until you find one or two channels that show really good traction and double down on those small business marketing channels until they become ineffective.

Brian: Finally, as a small business, it’s important to:

• Share your authentic story

Creating great marketing content for your small business isn’t only about showing the value of your product or your services to customers. It’s also an incredible way to help people get to know you and your business.

Hailley: Many top brands today thrive by creating and cultivating a personality. They each have an opinion, they stand for something, they’re relatable. In other words, they’re human.

Brian: One of my favorite brands is an outdoor clothing and gear retailer called Huckberry and from the very first welcome email, they use a sort of brand storytelling approach that’s woven into even the smallest of details.

Every word perfectly place to give their readers a sense of what they stand for.

Hailley: We’re good to go on high-level thinking.

Now we’re ready to get into some specific tactics.

Part II: Social media strategies for small businesses

• Embrace Video

First up with social media is to embrace video. Video is absolutely the most effective way to engage with your audience across all social media channels.

Brian: There are stats to prove it, too. Did you know that 4x as many people would prefer to watch a video about a product rather than read about it or that, when making a purchase decision, 4 in 5 millennials look for video content as a form of research.

Whether it’s time or resources, small businesses just aren’t creating a lot of video for social media and other small business marketing channels.

That being said, we’ve got some quick how-tos for easily creating great videos.

Hailley: First, start with what works. Sort your blog or website content in order of most traffic and create videos around those topics using a video creation product like Animoto.

Or, try following your peers and/or competitors with Facebook Pages to Watch and create content based on popular topics.

Or, you might embrace exciting trends such as the emergence of Instagram Stories by creating fun, relatable Stories content that’s easy to put together.

Brian: As for what makes for a great video. Believe it or not there are some scientific factors that people are more likely to interact with.

• Keep your videos between 20-90 seconds for highest engagement.
• Get right to the point. The first 3-5 seconds of a video is key in keeping people watching.

That’s it.

• Boost your top performing content

Hailley: The next takeaway for social media is that we highly recommend jumping on the advertising trend and boost your top performing content.

What’s great about social media for small businesses is that you don’t have to spend a ton of time creating variations of ads to see success with advertising. Your audience is already telling you what they like in the form of organic engagement numbers.

Brian: The way we like to think about it is that organic social media posting (traditional posting) is the perfect testing ground for effective Facebook and Instagram ads. In other words, you’re using organic reach to determine what posts you should put money behind.

Hailley: At Buffer, we’re seen incredible results with video ads on Instagram Stories, for example. One ad, in particular, has driven more than 5,000 clicks to our website for less than $0.10 per click.

All we did was look at our top performing posts, identify that this post was performing abnormally well, and put some ad dollars behind it.

• Understand the science behind great content

Brian: Lastly, when it comes to social media, it all comes down to your content.

At the end of the day, a majority of social media success comes down to your content.

You can have the best product in the world as a small business, but if no one sees or cares about your content, it’s going to be difficult to generate engagement and results on social media.

Hailley: We like to think that quality content is at the intersection of entertaining and educational.

Think about how people use and consume content on social media today. Many times they are on social media to connect with friends and family and watch the occasional brand video. But there’s more content on social platforms than people can consume, so if a post doesn’t look interesting or useful, people simply scroll past it.

Listen to your customers. Keep a close eye on the trends in your industry. Invest in the creative aspect of content such as video and visuals.

Part III: Email marketing strategies for small businesses

Brian: Moving onto something we don’t talk about too much on this show and that’s email marketing.

However, as a small business, email is one of the few remaining marketing channels that you actually own as a small business (meaning you’re not relying on a third party like Facebook to show your content to your audience), making it a critical piece of any marketing strategy.

Hailley: An engaged email list will allow you to share your story, promote your business, and showcase your products, all while turning subscribers into paying customers.

• Grow your email list

With that, we’ll start with growing your email list.

In order to turn visitors to your website into paying customers, you first must have subscribers. To do so, we recommend using branded pop-ups and email signup forms on your website.

Brian: According to research, Mailchimp users have seen their list growth rate increase by an average of 50.8% after adding a pop-up form to their site.

Pop-up pro tip: Set the form to appear immediately – or with a 5 second delay. That’ll help capture the attention of your audiences immediately.

Pop-ups were one of the main reasons we were able to double our email list size in just 30 days.

• Automate your email flows

Hailley: Next, you gotta’ automate those email flows.

As many small businesses owners have experienced first-hand, automating important marketing tasks (such as email and social media) can save several hours per week – and lots of headaches in the process.

Brian: When it comes to automation, we highly recommend focusing on four key email flows:

1. Welcome new subscribers
2. Abandoned cart emails (ecommerce)
3. First-time customers
4. Re-engagement emails

First is to welcome new customers.

This one is key for welcoming folks to your family. Welcome emails are a great way to share fun resources, discounts, top selling products and more.

Then you have your abandoned cart emails for all of the ecommerce businesses out there.

These are important for people who might have left your website early for a variety of reasons.

Hailley: Then, of course, you have your special first-time customers.

You can send them a special thank you and even offer them future discounts or deals on your other line of products.

And finally, customer re-engagement emails.

If it’s been a while since they’ve opened an email or taken a specific action, you can send them one last goodbye to try and re-engage them with your business.

Part IV: Final thoughts for small business owners and marketers

Brian: There you have it. A small business social media and email combination that we are sure will help boost your marketing results.

But before we go, we wanted to leave you with a final thought.

Hailley: We know how hard it can be to run a small business. There’s a never-ending list of things to do and marketing, understandably, tends to get put off for more important tasks.

You’re not alone.

The team here at Buffer is cheering you on this holiday season and into 2019. Remember, focusing on one or two channels like email, Instagram, Facebook, or Google will allows you to see much better results than trying everything at one.

Brian: If I had to choose two marketing channels right now, I’d bet on email and Instagram.

And we’re a social media company so that’s saying a lot!

Email is such an important part of the customer journey and Instagram (including Instagram Stories) is the fastest growing social media channel on the planet.

There really is an incredible amount of potential in both channels.

Hailley: Thank you so much for tuning in to the Science of Social Media today. The show notes for this episode are now available on the Buffer Blog at blog.buffer.com with a complete transcript.

And don’t forget, if you want to signup for our brand new, five-part email series. You’re going to love it!

How to say hello to us

We would all love to say hello to you on social media – especially Twitter!

• Hailley on Twitter and Hailley’s Website
• Brian on Twitter and Brian’s Website

Thanks for listening! Feel free to connect with our team at Buffer on Twitter, Buffer on Facebook, our Podcast homepage, or with the hashtag #bufferpodcast.

Enjoy the show? It’d mean the world to us if you’d be up for giving us a rating and review on iTunes!

—

About The Science of Social Media podcast

The Science of Social Media is your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and inspiration. Every Monday (and sometimes more) we share the most cutting-edge social media marketing tactics from brands and influencers in every industry. If you’re a social media team of one, business owner, marketer, or someone simply interested in social media marketing, you’re sure to find something useful in each and every episode.  It’s our hope that you’ll join our 18,000+ weekly iTunes listeners and rock your social media channels as a result!

The Science of Social Media is proudly made by the Buffer team. Feel free to get in touch with us for any thoughts, ideas, or feedback.

Thank Your Go-To Small Business Marketing Guide for 2019 (New Tips and Ideas) for first publishing this post.

We Analyzed 15,000 Instagram Stories from 200 of the World’s Top Brands (New Stories Research)

An incredible 400 million people around the world use Instagram Stories on a daily basis (with that number rapidly growing by the minute).

Besides being an interesting and fun way to connect with friends and family, stories offer businesses a unique opportunity to capture the direct attention of audiences and potential customers.

But where do you start? And what makes for great stories content? We partnered with Delmondo to answer these questions, and more!

Together we analyzed more than 15,000 Instagram Stories from 200 of the world’s top brands in one of the largest Instagram Stories research studies to date.

Today, we’re excited to share this brand new research with you (spoiler alert: Instagram Stories content is incredibly engaging) as well as proven best-practices on how your business can create content for Instagram Stories that both engages, and converts.

Let’s dive in!

Table of contents

• Key findings from analyzing 15,000 Instagram Stories
  • One to seven stories is the optimal posting length
  • The best time to post to Instagram Stories is outside of work hours
  • More content leads to greater median reach and impressions
• Instagram Stories research benchmarks for specific verticals
  • Average completion rate and stories length
  • Average reach and impressions
  • Average posting frequency per month
• Best practices for posting to Instagram Stories
  • Post your best stories content first
  • Post consistently to stories
  • Calculate your own data

Key findings from analyzing 15,000 Instagram Stories

Delmondo is a Facebook and Instagram Media Solutions Partner and was the first to launch Instagram Stories analytics in the summer of 2017. In doing so, they now have access to some of the most robust Instagram Stories data on the planet, which powers a ton of incredible research studies like this one where they shared findings from more than 5,000 Instagram Stories.

Earlier this month, we approached their team with one (not-so-simple) question:

How are Instagram Stories performing for brands and businesses heading into 2019?

Here’s what we learned…

1. One to seven stories is the optimal posting length

It’s long been debated whether or not posting more leads to better results on social media. Many brands report a positive increase in results when they post more, while others experience the opposite.

Which is exactly why we wanted to know what top brands are experiencing when it comes to optimal posting length. I.e., how many individual stories produce the highest completion rate.

Completion rate is determined by calculating the number of times your stories were watched from the first story frame all the way to the last story frame within the given 24-hour time period.

What we found is that one to seven stories is the optimal posting length:

After seven stories, completion rate drops to below 70 percent.

However, it’s important to note here that this is more of a guide than a hard limit on the best time to post to Instagram Stories. It’s crucial to experiment with various story lengths and use your own data to determine what works for you.

Even if your brand or business posts a longer story length, say 12 to 20 story frames, the results are still phenomenal. There is very little difference in completion rate between 12 and 20 frames as there is between one and seven.

Perhaps more incredibly, top accounts that post 20 or more stories still see a 55 percent or greater completion rate, proving just how engaging stories content can be at any length.

2. The best time to post to Instagram Stories is outside of work hours

One of the most interesting takeaways from our research with Delmondo is around the best time(s) to post to stories. Given the ephemeral nature of stories, brands that work hard to create great Stories content will want to maximize the reach of that content.

And while there are hundreds of different factors that go into the Instagram Stories algorithm, post timing arguably still plays a key role in the success of your content.

We found that there are four distinct spikes in the mornings, afternoons, and evenings. In other words, outside of normal U.S. working hours (all times are Eastern):

Based on the data above, the best times to post to Instagram Stories are:

• 4am – 6am Eastern Time
• 8am – 10am Eastern Time
• 12pm – 2pm Eastern Time
• 8pm – 10pm Eastern Time

One hypothesis for this finding is that people have more time to watch Instagram Stories before work, during their lunch break, and in the evenings after work. Posting during these prime hours will give your stories the extra boost they need.

3. More content leads to greater median reach and impressions

Another reason that Instagram Stories are such a powerful channel for brands and businesses is that the threshold for content consumption appears to be higher.

There is only so much space in the news feed. The more content that people and brands post, the less space there is for everyone else. Because stories disappear after 24 hours, that makes more room, so to speak, for fresh new content to be shown.

The data from our research shows that the more stories top Instagram accounts post, the more median reach and impressions they get. We can definitively say that stories posting length has a positive correlation with reach and impressions metrics.

Correlation between stories length and median reach:

Correlation between stories length and median impressions:

We’re not necessarily suggesting that brands and businesses start to post a ton of stories content just for the sake of posting, but the data shows that you can increases both median reach and median impressions by posting more content on Instagram Stories.

Instagram Stories research benchmarks for specific verticals

In an effort to make this research even more interesting and valuable, we looked at four unique verticals to compare a variety of data points such as completion rates, posting frequency, and more. Those four verticals are, brand accounts, entertainment accounts, media accounts, and sports accounts.

We defined the industry verticals using the following criteria:

• Brand: Consumer related products or service brand
• Entertainment: TV/Movie networks, TV shows, movies, and similar
• Media: Newspapers, news organizations, news websites, publishers
• Sports: Sports or eSports teams, leagues and events

Hopefully the following Instagram Stories research will help shed some light into what the world’s top brands are experiencing in terms of results.

Average completion rate and stories length

First, we looked at how Instagram Stories performed for these four verticals in 2017 vs. 2018:

What’s incredible is that completion rate has risen by 12% for brands and businesses in just over one year. Meanwhile, accounts are posting slightly less stories content on average.

It’s worth reiterating here that all four verticals are seeing a 65% or greater average completion rate with Instagram Stories. Meaning that audiences are sticking around to watch this content at fairly high rates.

Average reach and impressions

Next, we wanted to know how Instagram Stories are performing for these verticals when it comes to reach and impressions (based on overall average follower size):

It’s interesting to note that although average reach rate is 5.82 percent for all verticals, there is a huge swing between sports accounts and media accounts.

Still, in a social media world where average organic reach within the news feed is often less than four percent, a five percent (or greater) average reach rate is welcomed with open arms by many businesses.

Average posting frequency per month

Last, but not least, in addition to understanding how many individual frames per story (story length) are being posted by the world’s top brands on Instagram, we also wanted to know how often they are posting per month.

For this data point, we looked at how many individual days during the month, on average, these verticals posted to Instagram Stories.

Here’s what we found:

Sports accounts are posting the most days per month (13.7), whereas brand accounts are posting the least amount of days per month (8.7).

Overall, we’re not at a point where brands are posting daily to Instagram Stories. However, as the popularity of Instagram Stories grows and businesses continue to see success with the channel, we predict that daily posting will become more of a common thread throughout different verticals.

Best practices for posting to Instagram Stories

Now that we’ve shared the data from more than 15,000 Instagram Stories, we thought it would be useful to provide a few actionable steps on what to do with all of this research.

Here are three key takeaways that your brand or business can get started with today.

1. Post your best stories content first

In their 2018 benchmark study, Delmondo found that, on average, more people exit on the first and last story frame than any other part of your stories.

Meaning, if your first story frame does not immediately capture the attention of your audience, they will quickly exit your stories content in search of something else.

Whether you’re promoting your product, giving your audience a behind-the-scenes look at your business, or simply posting entertaining content, make sure that it hooks your audience in right from the beginning.

Airbnb, for example, slowly reveals content throughout their Instagram Stories in order to encourage users to move onto the next story frame – only revealing the answer on the very last story frame.

Bonus tip: You’ll notice in the graph above that average exits decrease as users move through the story frames. For loyal users that make it all the way to the last story frame, we recommend including some kind of CTA to provide them with a “next step.”

2. Post consistently to stories

Today, Instagram Stories is one of the most engaging social media channels available. Completion rates are well-above 50 percent and more and more users are consuming stories content on a daily basis.

Now is the perfect time for your brand to experiment with Instagram Stories content.

The best part is, your stories don’t have to be complicated.

The Guardian found that for their Instagram Stories, simple static graphics and quick explainer videos outperformed their professionally-produced videos.

The North Face, for example, uses simple photos and text overlays to reinforce their brand using Instagram Stories:

Simplicity means:

1. Using a background image to quickly tell a story
2. Adding short copy to convey your message
3. Decorating with minimal graphics and logos

And you’re done!

3. Calculate your own data

Of course, the research above is only the beginning for brands and businesses looking to improve their Instagram Stories content going into 2019.

In order to make the most out of this channel, it’s important that you accurately calculate your own stories data on a regular basis. Keeping a close eye on the following data points will ensure that you’re continually improving:

• Completion rate
• Reach and impressions
• Exit rates according to story frame
• Stories post timing
• Stories length
• And more!

One example of calculating data in action is when we began to experiment with Instagram Stories ads here at Buffer. Instagram Stories, compared to ads in the Facebook and Instagram news feed, have helped decrease our cost per click (CPC) to the Buffer Podcast landing page by more than 50 percent in some cases.

Other brands like Warby Parker are using Instagram Stories to promote their products in fun and interesting ways and comparing those results to traditional marketing channels such as email and content:

Before we go, a huge shoutout to Delmondo for helping us put together one of the largest Instagram Stories studies to date. If you’d like to learn more about all of the in-depth stories analytics and insights their platform provides, check them out at www.delmondo.co.

Tell them Brian sent you!

Over to you

I’d love to hear from you!

How are you feeling about your Instagram Stories strategy moving forward? Are you excited for the future of stories in general? What experiments do you plan on trying first?

Feel free to drop me a comment or question below about the data in this study or just to say “hello.”

I’m looking forward to chatting about this Instagram Stories research so that we can all learn from each other!

Thank We Analyzed 15,000 Instagram Stories from 200 of the World’s Top Brands (New Stories Research) for first publishing this post.

7 Invaluable Marketing Skills That Help Teams Produce Consistently Great Content

In speaking with thousands of marketers and businesses over the past several years, we’ve learned that marketing has an incredible potential to impact people’s lives.

In fact, the American Marketing Association defines marketing as:

“The activity, set of institutions, skills, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

I love that. We as marketers are benefiting society at large!

But marketing skills and career growth don’t come easy in a field that moves at the speed of light. It seems like every week companies are demanding an evolved skill set out of their employees – giving rise to a new era of marketing roles such as the Full-Stack and T-Shaped Marketer.

Brands that can successfully bring a variety of people, marketing skills, and unique perspectives together have a huge advantage when it comes to providing value.

That’s why we’ve partnered with the incredible marketing team at Asana, a leading work management software, to break down the top 7 invaluable marketing skills that help some of the greatest brand teams on the planet produce consistently great content.

Let’s dive in!

How to listen: iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud | Stitcher | RSS

7 invaluable marketing skills for teams

As Sujan Patel writes on his blog, “the modern marketer has to be familiar with a lot, good at many, and master of a few.”

Having a variety of skills and tools not only provides ultimate flexibility as a team to create a variety of successful marketing campaigns, but it also allows each marketer to shine as an individual.

These 7 high-level marketing skills will help to ensure your team has ultimate flexibility and individuality.

1. Storytelling

There seems to be a general belief that marketing has always been about storytelling – and that marketers have always identified as natural storytellers.

But that may not be the case.

LinkedIn found that just seven years ago the number of marketers listing “storytelling” on their profile as a skill was obsolete. It didn’t exist at all as a respected marketing discipline.

Today, however, between 7 and 8 percent of all marketers on LinkedIn worldwide identify themselves as storytellers based on their profile descriptions and list of skills.

As a marketer, storytelling doesn’t just mean telling your audience what your product or service does or what it has done. Effective storytelling involves a deep understanding of human emotions, motivations, and psychology in order to effectively communicate with them in an authentic and engaging way.

During the writing of this article, Asana CMO Dave King told me: “The best marketers are problem solvers and storytellers. Content creators should ask ‘what problem is this piece solving for my audience.’”

As marketers, there are endless ways to tell a story.

One of my favorite ways to develop a compelling story is to use “The Story Spine” formula created by professional playwright and improvisor Kenn Adams. Over the years, Pixar has won countless awards by using this formula, including 13 Academy Awards, 9 Golden Globes, and 11 Grammys.

Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

I encourage you to practice this formula for your own own brand, products, or services.

Let’s give it a shot with a brand we might all know of: Nike.

• Once upon a time there was a passionate shoemaker that wanted to get his shoes into the hands of runners around the world.
• Every day, he worked on perfecting his shoes so that these runners could perform at an optimum level.
• But one day, this shoemaker realized that supplying shoes to thousands of runners around the world was no easy task.
• Because of that, he worked harder and harder to ensure that he had the supply of products needed to be successful despite what critics said.
• Because of that, his shoes continued to improve and more and more athletes started to wear them in prestigious competitions.
• Until finally, it wasn’t just about running anymore. It became about something bigger – finding your inner champion doing what you love in gear that makes you feel great.

As Ken describes, “The Story Spine is not the story, it’s the spine. It’s nothing but the bare-boned structure upon which the story is built. And, that’s what makes it such a powerful tool.”

It’s up to us as marketers to fill in all the little nuances of the story.

2. Prioritizing

As many marketers know all too well – there is always something to be done.

Being an effective prioritizer is one of those marketing skills that doesn’t get talked about enough, but plays a huge role in the success of your team and content.

Producing consistently great content means saying yes to a handful of awesome content ideas/opportunities and saying no to others.

The Asana marketing team uses a project labeled “Content Opportunities” to which anyone in the company is highly encouraged to contribute ideas. Then, when their marketing team is ready to take action on a piece of content or campaign, they add it to their Editorial Calendar project.

This management of ideas, projects, and initiatives is what allows them to be super focused and productive on a consistent basis.

So how can you develop prioritization as a marketing skill? And how can you prioritize content and campaigns that will perform at a high level?

That’s where the importance of goal-setting comes into play!

At Buffer, we’ve experimented with a variety of goal-setting frameworks such as OKRs, Locke and Latham’s 5 Principles of Goal-Setting, BHAGs, and lots more.

Today, our marketing team is using two types of goal-setting methods depending on the scope. For long-term planning and strategizing, we use a modified Warren Buffett Framework, and for short-term (experimental content), we use a framework called ICE.

The Modified Warren Buffett Framework

My colleague Hailley has long admired the original framework for setting goals from Warren Buffett – a method where you write down 25 things you want to accomplish in your career, and from that, pick the top five as the focus and put the other 20 on an “avoid at all costs” list.

We’ve since adopted a modified version of this goal-setting framework. Here’s a quick overview of how it works (with a real-life example goals from one of our 6-week cycles):

Step 1: Choose 10 goals

Brainstorm a list of 10 goals related to your work on the team that can be accomplished in a certain, predesignated timeframe.

Remember to focus on goals and not tasks. A good way to remember this is that tasks describe how you spend your time, whereas goals are your results.

Ex:

Step 2: Assign a “tag” to each goal

Next, go through and add a tag to each goal with the category that it falls into. The tagging system should be unique for each person.

Come up with your tags, and assign them to each of your 10 goals.

Ex:

Step 3: Pick three goals to focus on (P1s)

This is the most difficult portion of the exercise! Refining the list from 10 to the three that you will focus on during the specified time period.

Pick one goal for each tag that you have on your list.

Ex:

Then, add a P2 and a P3 to prioritize the rest of your goals within the list.

That doesn’t mean you have 10 goals all competing with each other at the same time.

It means that as soon as you complete a P1 in any one of the categories, you then (and only then) move onto your P2 and P3.

ICE Score Framework

“ICE” stands for Impact, Confidence, and Ease.

Below is a description of each element directly from the creators of the ICE Score Framework at GrowthHackers:

• Impact: The possible impact the idea could have on the business if considered a “win
• Confidence: This relates to how confident you are in whether it’ll result in a wi
• Ease: This relates to how many resources, and what kind, are needed to implement the idea

For each idea, give each factor a score from one to ten. The overall score is determined by taking the average of the three scores. You should start with the idea that has the highest score.

For example, let’s say you wanted to run a content partnership experiment with a peer or influencer within your industry (similar to this one!) Your ICE score might look like this:

• Impact: 8
• Confidence: 7
• Ease: 7
• Total: 22

Comparing that to other ICE scores, you can quickly determine which ideas to tackle next and which ones to table for the time being. Over time, you’ll be able to score ideas quickly and efficiently.

3. Collaborating

Why is team collaboration necessary?

Part of the answer, according to research from strategy professor Benjamin Jones at the Kellogg School, is that our individual knowledge base is becoming more and more specialized.

Jones gives a great example of the Wright Brothers and building an airplane:

“In 1903, two people designed and flew an airplane. Today, a Boeing 787 has dozens of specialists working on the engines alone. Then there are the controls, the hydraulics, the airframe itself. There is an incredible range of specialized skills needed.”

There is an ever-growing need for collaboration among specialists (teams) within companies to get a product or service off of the ground.

In our experiences at Buffer and Asana, the most successful marketing teams coordinate on two important levels:

1. Messaging: Ensuring there’s consistency in what is being said across channels (blog, website, social, etc.
2. Distribution: Planning and sequencing content rollout for maximum impact across channels

By combining the right set of marketing skills in both messaging and distribution you are setting your campaigns up for a much higher rate of success.

Messaging

Whether you’re launching a full-on marketing campaign or simply posting a video to Facebook, creating a consistent message across channels is an important part of building your brand.

We’ve found that having effective collaboration tools in place makes all of the difference.

Here’s a quick example of some of the tools and workflows we use in order to help our teams create consistent messaging:

• Kick off a conversation in messaging app, Slack, about the proposed idea or campaign:

• Start a doc in Dropbox Paper with additional details, comments, copy, etc:

• Create a project within Asana and assign tasks to team members across the organization:

These three tools are invaluable for transparent and cross-functional collaboration and communication among teams within your organization. They’re especially important for us at Buffer as a fully remote company!

Distribution

Without a solid distribution plan in place, your messages may never reach their intended audiences. Having the skills to not only create the assets, but efficiently deliver those assets across multiple channels, is an important quality for any marketer.

Here’s a quick look at some of the tools and workflows we use to distribute consistent content:

• WordPress for hosting and creating blog content:

• Discourse for internal distribution, information, and announcements:

• Buffer for social media planning, scheduling, and analytics:

At the core of any great team collaboration is trust. Trust is the willingness and openness to intentionally communicate with teammates on your direct team and across the company.

It’s up to you to make space (physically or virtually) for people to meet and share ideas. Pixar is a perfect example of this in action – they designed their offices so that artists, designers, programmers, and marketers would purposely bump into each other.

4. Visualizing

Humans are, by nature, very visual beings.

In the brain itself, there are hundreds of millions of neurons devoted to visual processing, nearly 30 percent of the entire cortex, as compared with 8 percent for touch and just 3 percent for hearing.

In other words, the most successful marketing teams are not only able to communicate messages in written form, they’re also able to create stunning designs that aid in telling a compelling visual story.

We wrote an article in 2017 titled, “Why Every Marketer Needs to Be a (Part-Time) Designer” and the general theory still remains true, even more so, today in 2018.

The best part is there are tons of free resources our there to get started! Here are some of our favorites:

• Graphic Design Basics: Core Principles for Graphic Design (Skillshare)
• How to Create Better Graphic Design (Udemy)
• The Landing Page Conversion Course (Unbounce)
• Graphic Design 101 (Udemy)
• 11 Simple Design Tips to Enhance Your Social Media Images (Buffer)
• Designing Asana: A Day in the Life of a Product Designer (Asana)

Visual storytelling is one of those marketing skills that often goes overlooked, but plays a massive role in the success of every single piece of content.

5. Experimenting

Have you ever wondered how some marketing teams come up with so many great ideas?

Their secret…

Behind every one successful marketing idea or campaign, there were dozens (if not hundreds) of little failures along the way.

It reminds me a lot of what is known as a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) in product development. A MVP is a product that has the minimum amount of features required to validate if people want it or not.

The same theory holds true for marketing experimentation and testing.

A marketing team that is unafraid of failure and willing to run hundreds of different tests in order to quickly validate ideas will often succeed over a marketing team that puts their eggs (ideas) into one basket (channel/campaign).

The Information, for example, might have hundreds of potential story ideas in Asana at any one time — prioritizing experiments and ideas based on competition, importance, opportunity costs, and lots more.

Although there isn’t a true scientific way of running marketing experiments, this is the formula we’ve come up with at Buffer to systematically test ideas:

We start with setting clear goals and then work backwards from there.

Let’s say we wanted to increase Buffer blog traffic by 10% in one year (goal).

Our marketing team would start by getting together and brainstorming all of the different ways we could accomplish that – SEO, social media, affiliates, etc.

We’d then prioritize ideas based on impact (Warren Buffett Framework / ICE Scores) and begin testing.

Then, we’d constantly measure and analyze results along the way while making incremental improvements.

Approaching experimentation and testing with a growth mindset, similar to developing a product, is a marketing skill that will help take your team to the next level.

6. Analyzing

As marketers, we’re all somewhere on the analytics expertise scale (whether we know it or not!) From the analytics wizards to those of us just starting to dip our toes in data analysis, we all have a base layer to work from.

Our Director of Marketing at Buffer, Kevan Lee, puts it perfectly:

“The great thing about deepening your skills in analytics is that we all have a base layer to work from. We all know how to build intuition. And intuition is just an absorbed history of data. Add to that the ability to ask good questions, and you’re well on your way. (The tools themselves matter far less than you’d think.)”

Asking good questions, when it comes to data and marketing analytics, is an invaluable marketing skill to have on any team.

This graphic from Moz shows just how many BIG questions there are to ask:

At first, asking all of these questions can be a bit intimidating.

What if I don’t know the answers?

That’s okay!

One way we like to think about approaching analytics is this idea of “Crawl, Walk, Run” – It might look something like this if you’re just starting out:

• Crawling: Which channels get the most engagement?
• Walking: Which tactics and/or strategies are contributing to this engagement?
• Running: Which channels, tactics, and strategies should we implement to increase engagement?

Another great way of thinking of analytics is the “Hierarchy of Analytics” model made popular by data wizard Christopher S. Penn:

In the beginning, you might experiment with various analytics platforms and tools in order to get a feel for the basics of marketing analytics. Understanding what data is available, its limitations, and what you can report is a great start.

Then, as you become more skilled and confident with data, you might dive into things like understanding why something happened or what might happen in the future based on your findings.

There are some incredible data analysis tools out there from companies like Google, IBM, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft that can help you do just that!

7. Learning

I like to think that the path to becoming a great marketer is a lifelong journey and never truly complete.

Knowledge, passion, and expertise are intangible qualities that we usually don’t acquire overnight. These are often developed as result of years (even decades) of hard work, mistakes, self-reflection, and personal growth.

Even a virtuoso like Michelangelo was quoted as saying, “I am still learning” late into his career.

At Buffer and Asana, we aim to build our marketing teams around folks who are naturally curious, hungry to learn, passionate, and open to new ideas.

“A love of learning is one of primary skills we look for in marketers because it tells us a couple things: do they love what they do, and are they curious about the world?” explains Kevan Lee. “Those two factors alone can take you quite far!”

Just like food nourishes our bodies, information and continuous learning nourishes our minds.

But where do you start on your learning journey as a marketer?

We’ve found that having a framework in place allows us to identify opportunities for growth. We call it the T-Shaped Marketer Framework:

T-Shaped Marketing at Buffer. Feel free to grab a download of the Sketch file or Canva template we used to build this, if you’d like to customize it for your company.

I encourage you to create one of these templates for yourself. It’s an incredible, eye-opening activity that will provide you with a clear path forward.

Then, we suggest forming habits around the marketing disciplines you’re most excited about:

• If you want to get better at data analysis, try taking a course on Udemy or Skillshare to expand your skills
• If you want to dive into video marketing, experiment with creating a video in Animoto or take a free Adobe Premiere tutorial on YouTube.
• If social media is your passion, we’ve got a ton of great learning resources on our Social Blog, Skillshare, and the Buffer Podcast.
• If you want to improve your organization, workflow, or project management skills, Asana has created a ton of great resources and best practices for work management on their blog.

If you’re curious, inquisitive, genuine, and if your intent is sincere, there will always be people who will support you in your journey.

Experiment and try out new things – some of them might even scare you! Once you gain some momentum, keep it going. That will set you up for a lifetime of success in marketing.

Over to you

Thank you so much for checking out this post!

If you’re interested in learning more about career and marketing skills from some uber-talented professionals in the industry, feel free to check out the Asana blog. It’s packed with some incredible insights.

We’d also love to continue the conversation with you below!

What skills are we missing from this list? What has helped your team create consistently great content? What would you suggest to those looking to hire marketers?

Thank 7 Invaluable Marketing Skills That Help Teams Produce Consistently Great Content for first publishing this post.

Should Small Businesses be on IGTV? (and 3 Quick Ways to Test It Out)

Repurposing your content across channels is a great way to get the most from your social media strategy. However, sometimes, certain channels will perform better than others.

When GQ posted a video about Kylie Jenner and Travis Scott on its YouTube channel (with 2.5 million subscribers), it was watched almost 30 million times. The same video on their Facebook Page (2.8 million fans) was watched 4.7 million times. A snippet of the video on their Instagram account (4.3 million followers) was watched 2.1 million times.

But when GQ posted the same video on IGTV (the video was cropped to fit the vertical format), it only generated 137,000 views.

A mere three percent of their follower count.

GQ isn’t alone. A quick (unscientific) look at a few brands seems to tell the same story:

• Airbnb has 3.3 million followers and their three IGTV videos have 39,000, 77,000, and 22,000 views respectively (about two percent of their follower count).
• Warby Parker has 448,000 followers and most of their IGTV videos get one to five thousand views (about one percent of their follower count).
• HubSpot, 120,000 followers, generates one to three thousand views (about two percent of their followers).

What does this mean for small businesses that are considering IGTV in their social media marketing strategy? Is it not worth your time and effort?

I think it’s too early for small businesses to dismiss IGTV right away. Let me share why.

(Oh, and if you’re not familiar with IGTV, this blog post will give you a quick introduction.)

The rise of vertical mobile videos

The popularity of Snapchat and Instagram Stories has set our expectations for videos on smartphones to be vertical and full-screen. Ninety-six percent of mobile consumption is vertical so even if a video is square, or in the traditional 16:9, horizontal format, very few people will flip their phone to consume the content.

This is the trend that Instagram has betting big on with IGTV. Instagram believes that vertical videos are the future of video. And there are statistics to back this up.

According to data collected by Statista, more than 50 percent of digital videos are now viewed on mobile. And it has been showing a general upward trend since 2013.

A study commissioned by Facebook also found that people are watching Facebook and Instagram mobile videos everywhere — at home, at friends’ home, in public spaces, at work, and during commute.

These statistics are telling us two things. One, videos are going, if they are not already, mobile. And two, people prefer using their phones vertically.

Among all the major social media platforms, IGTV seems to be best positioned to tap onto and accelerate this vertical mobile video trend. It took Instagram less than two years to grow Instagram Stories, another vertical format content, from zero to 400 million daily users. So if you want to ride on their wave of growth, now is the time.

IGTV has a distribution issue but…

When IGTV came out, we knew we had to test it. Ash Read, our managing editor, created a vertical video of his interview with Ryan Carson, CEO and founder of online technology school Treehouse, and shared it on our IGTV channel.

We have about 41,000 followers on Instagram, and the video was watched…

474 times.

What we realized is that distributing your IGTV videos is hard.

It’s not easy for brands to nudge their Instagram followers to their IGTV videos besides using Instagram Stories’ swipe up link feature. Furthermore, IGTV only allows users to search for channels (i.e. Instagram users) and not topics. This reduces the likelihood of someone searching for a topic relevant to our brand and finding our videos.

But it’s really too early to dismiss IGTV as a potential social media channel for your brand.

“It’s a new format. It’s different. We have to wait for people to adopt it and that takes time” Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom told TechCrunch that long-form vertical videos are different from most videos we see today and it’ll take time for people to fully embrace the new format. Even top brands are not deterred by the low viewership at the moment. National Geographic’s director of Instagram Josh Raab told Digiday that “I think it is still too early. We are defining what IGTV is and the role it plays for us, but Instagram is also still developing the role [IGTV] plays on Instagram overall.”

Instagram did an amazing job integrating Instagram Stories into the Instagram app and growing its usage. We see Instagram Stories right at the top of the Instagram app, we can tap on profile photos to view Instagram Stories, we can even see Instagram Stories highlights on profiles. Seeing how Instagram grew Instagram Stories gives me the confidence that they’ll be able to grow IGTV well, too. They have already been testing many ways to showcase IGTV videos within the Instagram app and will likely find a way to smoothly encourage more people to be on IGTV.

Definitely think it’s a user flow issue. If they place IGTV in the Stories feed, it’d instanrk increase viewership

— Jack Appleby (@JuiceboxCA) September 5, 2018

For example, what if IGTV videos are featured in between Instagram Stories? (A interesting suggestion by Jack Appleby, Director of Creative Strategy at Petrol Ad)

While viewership on IGTV is low at the moment and distribution isn’t that great yet, it might just be the perfect time to jump in. This allows you to test different content and gradually improve your content before it gets too crowded with other brands and very polished videos.

How small businesses can get started on IGTV

Should your business be on IGTV?

Well, I believe not every small business (or business) has to be on IGTV. But you’ll never know whether IGTV is great for your business without trying.

As a small business, it’s definitely not easy to find time investing in a new social media channel when you are already managing multiple social media profiles. I understand this and would love to share some ways to quickly experiment with IGTV without too much time and resource investment.

Before we jump into the tactics, I would encourage you to see IGTV as an extension of your Instagram strategy rather than an entirely new standalone social media channel. A follow on IGTV is automatically a follow on Instagram (and vice versa). Your efforts in one can help the other.

1. Re-post your horizontal and square videos

If you are already creating videos for social, this is the easiest way to get started on IGTV — simply re-posting your horizontal and square videos onto your IGTV channel.

Yes, your videos will not make good use of the full screen and your followers will be forced to rotate their phones to watch your horizontal videos. But for a start, I think this could be a great low-investment way to experiment with IGTV, test out different content, and see if your audience on IGTV is interested in watching your videos.

For example, Velon, a professional road cycling organization that aims to bring fans closer to the riders and races, posts race highlights on its IGTV channel. Its videos are made to be viewed horizontally so the team rotated them and posted them on its IGTV channel.

You’ll need to rotate your horizontal video first because IGTV only accepts vertical, 9:16 videos. You can easily rotate your horizontal video using Windows Movie Maker on Windows or QuickTime Player on a Mac.

Thanks to Kovács Máté, you can also resize your horizontal or square videos into vertical videos on your iOS devices using his IGTV Video Resizer.

2. Repurpose and crop your videos vertically

The second way is to rework your horizontal videos and crop them vertically. This requires a bit more work but is likely more manageable than creating vertical videos from scratch.

For example, GoPro cropped its horizontal YouTube video on freediving with Tiger Sharks into a vertical IGTV video.

You could also put a frame around your horizontal and square videos to make them vertical, like what Ben and Jerry’s did with its YouTube video.

If your videos are filmed in a way that is suitable for cropping into vertical videos, you could try using tools like Kapwing and crop.video to help you with the cropping. Otherwise, you could also try creating your videos using video editing tools like Wave.video and Typito, which allow you to easily resize your videos from horizontal to vertical.

3. Point and shoot with a smartphone

What if you are not already producing videos? The third way is to point and shoot with your smartphone — no professional video camera or lighting — just your smartphone.

Great content doesn’t always have to be produced professionally. The Guardian shared with Digiday that their less polished Instagram Stories (static graphics or quick video explainers on news topics) have been more popular than their professionally shot, edited, and produced videos.

The early content on Instagram is also less polished images with filters. Since IGTV is still a very young platform, with a vertical video format that is still less common than the horizontal video format, people might be more forgiving and focus more on the content itself rather than the aesthetic.

ECFIT Boulder, which coaches endurance athletes, shares unedited training tip videos (taken with a smartphone, I presume) on its IGTV channel.

For such instances, you might find it helpful to have a tripod to stabilize your smartphone or even just to hold your smartphone if you are filming yourself alone. There are many affordable options on Amazon.

Here’s another example, from Everlane, an online clothing retailer known for their pricing transparency. Its social media team shares lightly edited vertical videos on their IGTV channel.

Over to you: What do you think?

While you don’t have to be on every new social media channel, especially as a small business with limited resources, I would recommend testing a few videos using the low-investment methods mentioned above. IGTV has only been live for a small number of months so it is not surprising that not many businesses are on there yet — and those that are there, are still figuring things out. This creates a great opportunity for you to test and see if IGTV will work for your business. If it doesn’t seem to be working for you, you can always pause your efforts and rethink your approach.

What do you think? Do you think your business should be on IGTV? Why or why not? 

P.s. Want to learn more about vertical videos? We have a short-series newsletter just for that and would love to have you. Sign up here!

—

Image credit: Statista, the respective IGTV channels

I first learned about the GQ story via Jack Appleby’s tweet and then via Digiday’s article. 

Thank Should Small Businesses be on IGTV? (and 3 Quick Ways to Test It Out) for first publishing this post.