The Ultimate Guide to Advertising in 2018

When you hear the word “advertising,” what comes to mind?

Do you think of banner ads on your favorite website? Super Bowl commercials? How about billboards along the highway or posters in the subway stations?

While most of us have a pretty good idea of what advertising looks like, it’s a little harder to nail down exactly what it means — and how to do it well.

From the printing press to pop-up ads, advertising has certainly changed with the times. There’s no doubt about it. Despite this, though, the need for advertising hasn’t changed, and neither have the techniques and best practices that make for quality advertising. That’s what we’ll cover in this guide.

Whether on a billboard or the back of a restaurant menu, advertising can go to work for your company in a variety of ways. Here are a few:

• Raise awareness for your brand
• Drive potential customers to your business
• Promote sales for both new and existing products
• Introduce a new product or service to the market
• Differentiate your product from your competitors’

Just like its purpose, advertising can also be executed in various ways. Radio commercials, billboards, branded t-shirts, and social media endorsements all count as advertising. Here are the different formats and channels that advertisers have been using for years:

• Print advertising and posters
• Newspapers and magazines
• Outdoor ads and billboards
• Public transit ads
• Sponsorship of TV shows and events
• Radio
• Sponsored web content
• TV commercials
• Online pop-ups and search engines ads
• Social media ads

Advertising is a simple concept but can look like many different things. Below, we’ll cover how to advertise on these mediums.

Marketing includes a number of different channels:

• Social media
• Email communications
• Public relations
• SMS communications
• Search engine optimization
• Paid advertising

In short, advertising is just one part of marketing.

A company’s overarching marketing strategy will typically include an advertising plan. The advertising zooms in on the specific process of creating and publishing the persuasive messages to get customers to take action.

A Brief History of Advertising

Advertising is one of the oldest segments of business, save for currency and trade. Once products and services arose, so did the need to make them known.

The oldest confirmed piece of advertising dates back to 3,000 B.C. Technically, it was a print ad from ancient Egypt promoting the capture and return of an escaped slave. Incidentally, the ad also mentioned the slave owner’s shop — a rug business — which inherently advertised his storefront, too. The slave was never caught, but the rug owner did discover a brand new method of bringing in traffic: advertising.

Let’s fast-forward about 4,000 years. Here’s a brief look at the past 500 years of advertising:

1472: The first poster advertisement is placed on church doors in London.

1650: The first newspaper ad — a reward for 12 stolen horses — is published. (What’s with the reward-based advertisements?)

1704: The Boston News-Letter prompts its readers to place ads in its paper.

1870: The Powers style of ad copy is born. This style packed a punch — it was short, to-the-point, truthful, and convincing. Powers said the focus should be on why the consumer should buy your product or service — a message that still resonates for good reason today.

1880: Postcards become one of the hottest new ways to reach customers.

1893: Retailer Sears, Roebuck, & Co. joins the mail-order bandwagon by issuing their own catalog.

 

1902: Unilever creates the “longest client-agency relationship in advertising history” when it hires J. Walter Thompson Company to advertise its Lifebuoy Soap.

1902: Mellins Food advertises its brand on 25 airship flights, becoming the first brand to take this approach.

1904: The Campbell’s Kids are created, piloting the change in advertisement focus from a single ad to an entire campaign.

1922: Radio ads are born, and businesses purchase 10 mins for $100. Two years later brands would increase their investment by sponsoring an entire radio show, a concept that would eventually become known as “sponsored content.”

1925: Advertisers start to appeal to emotions, focusing on what pleasure customers would receive from their product or service. This old Ford ad exemplifies this perfectly.

1975: VCRs are introduced, and consumers begin to record shows and, therefore, skip advertisements.

1990: Computers become more popular and accessible at home, with over 5 million homes connected to the internet.

1994: The first email spam campaign launches. Banner ads are also introduced.

1995: Search engines like Yahoo! and Alta Vista are born. Ask Jeeves and Google would follow in 1997 and 1998, respectively.

2005: YouTube and Facebook (for college students only) launch.

2008: Brands start to realize the importance of having an online presence for their potential customers. Procter and Gamble pilot the concept of the content hub with BeingGirl.com.

2012: Online videos reach 169.3 million viewers.

2013: Sites like Pinterest and Instagram join the social network scene.

History teaches us that advertising is an ever-changing concept, just like shopping habits and how and where consumers spend their time. Whereas almost 140 years ago, postcards were the newest form of advertising, brands today are building chatbots for Facebook Messenger and integrating artificial intelligence into their marketing and sales platforms.

Things in the advertising world move fast.

The Modern Era: How to Advertise Online

As of today, there are almost 4 billion people using the internet. This number is up 300% from 2005. Point being, internet usage is skyrocketing, and it’s not stopping.

If you’re not advertising online, you’re behind the curve, my friend. Not only does the internet offer you direct access to more than half the global population — including more than half of your target audience — but it also provides so many different channels on which to advertise.

Marketers now have the flexibility to reach their target audiences on multiple fronts, in multiple ways, for multiple budgets.

Here are the most common ways to advertise online:

Paid Search Advertising

Whether Google, Yahoo, or Bing, all search engines have their own paid advertising. This is referred to as pay-per-click, or PPC, and involves bidding on keywords and placing ads at the top or sides of search results.

When someone performs a query using one of those search engines, advertisers have the ability to display ads above organic search results. That’s what makes PPC so powerful — it gives your advertisements prime real estate in front of people already searching for relevant topics.

Here’s an example in Google:

The top four listings in the red box are advertisements. The lower portion, in the blue box, are organic search results that come up as a result of search engine optimization.

For more information on PPC, read our guide here.

Social Media Advertising

Social media platforms know how valuable their content is, and that’s why they offer the option to sponsor or boost posts. Social ads put your message in front of your target audience and encourages them to engage, click-through, and buy. More and more, social media sites are prioritizing ad space over organic content because, well, it brings in more revenue.

If you’re a budding business or new brand, consider running some social media advertisements. These will not only advertise your products and services but also promote your social media pages and grow your following.

Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter each have their own version of ads like these.

Here’s how they appear on their respective feeds:

Facebook:

Instagram:

LinkedIn:

Twitter:

For more information on social media advertising, visit our guide here.

Native Ads and Sponsored Content

Sponsored content has been around since 1922, when brands would sponsor entire radio shows. Today, sponsored content refers more to native ads and blog or article content subsidized by brands.

Have you ever read a Buzzfeed article that heavily referenced or recommended a certain product or service? It was likely sponsored by a certain brand.

Check out this article, 10 Reasons To Put Away Your Phone On Your Next Trip, promoted by agoda, a hotel or destination booking site. Does it blatantly promote agoda’s services? No. It’s primary purpose is to entertain and inform, although agoda is referenced a few times throughout the content.

At the top, the byline reflects agoda’s sponsorship, just before the content starts. And, as you scroll down the page, another ad sits within the content.

Sponsored content is a great way to promote your brand in content your audience is already familiar with.

Banner and Display Ads

Banner and display ads are an extension of search ads and follow a similar PPC model. But instead of a text-based ad, consumers see a more visual advertisement.

Banner ads are typically the horizontal boxes on top of a web page, whereas display ads are smaller in nature and shown on the side (like in the screenshot above).

For more information on creating banner ads, check out our guide here.

Whether you opt for traditional print ads in magazines or subway stations or choose online promotion on social media or search engines, there are a few rules that make for great advertising. Below are some advertising best practices to apply to all your ads.

Advertising Best Practices

There are a lot of best practices, tips, and tricks when it comes to advertising. It’s an art that’s been perfected over the years, and with the rise of modern advertising and new media, best practices continue to manifest.

In this section, though, we’re going to cover five famous advertising concepts that still work today — regardless of what advertising method or medium you’re using.

When used correctly, these advertising techniques will do wonders for your brand and products.

Appeal to Emotions

While you may not consider the ASPCA a business, their unforgettable Sarah McLachlan commercial is the perfect example of using emotional appeal to entice people to take action.

For most of us, the images in that commercial are hard to watch — we may even turn away. But since it tugs at our heartstrings, we’re more likely to donate to animals in need after seeing the horrors they’re going through.

Studies show that people rely on emotions, rather than information, to make brand decisions. Emotional responses to ads influence a person’s intent to buy more than the actual ad content.

Whether you try to evoke happiness, sadness, fear, or anger, appealing to emotions can help your target audience feel your message — not simply read or hear it.

Create Positive Associations

When consumers associate your product with a feeling of happiness, state of achievement, or accomplished goal, they’re more likely to take notice, remember your product or service, and make a purchase.

Actually, you’ve probably been on the receiving end of this before without even realizing it. Have you ever seen your favorite celebrity or Instagram influencer posing with a product or brand and found that you wanted to be, do, or look the same? Companies create this subconscious connection in advertising hoping that you associate your positive feelings with the product or service they’re promoting.

Catchy songs like “Nationwide is on your side" is an example of helping people associate friendliness with the Nationwide brand. Coca-Cola has a brand advertising campaign that associates their product with friends, family, and fun. When you consider what refreshments to serve at a party or bring on a picnic, Coca-Cola wants you to think of them.

As you create your advertisements, consider what feelings, desires, or goals with which you want your brand to be associated. Weave these feelings or goals into your advertisements through stories or videos. Look for influencers who align with your brand’s core values and demeanor and include them to promote positive association.

Establish a Bandwagon Effect

People want to fit in. It’s human nature. Neither you nor I are immune to it.

And it’s this base human desire that makes the bandwagon effect so effective. People don’t want to be left out. They find value in their peers’ opinions, and they certainly don’t want to be the only ones not using the latest and greatest product.

Brands like Maybelline understand this concept well and use it to their advertising advantage. One tube of their top-selling mascara is purchased every two seconds, a statistic that establishes social proof and further supports their claim of “America’s Favorite Mascara.”

Use customer testimonials, survey data, or shareable content to advertise your brand as one worth following or buying into. Take another approach by promoting a discount for sharing your brand with a friend or family member — so your audience will do the selling for you. Either way, use your advertising to create an inclusive environment people will want to join.

Focus on Benefits Over Features

Features and benefits are two very different things. Features are the details of the product or service you’re selling, such as the measurements of a couch or the ingredients of a protein bar. Benefits, on the other hand, explain why a person should buy a couch or protein bar from you and how their life would, well, benefit from such a purchase.

Advertising should focus on the benefit your product or service brings, not explain what you’re physically selling.

Consider how Southwest Airlines advertises. Instead of explaining, line by line, what a Business Select ticket offers, Southwest paints a picture of what life would be like if you made a purchase. In this advertisement, they focus on the benefits.

Rather than wasting precious ad space on your product specifications or service details, talk about the ways a purchase might positively impact your customers. If you do it right, your creative, benefit-packed advertisement would then inspire them to research the features on their own.

Use Storytelling

Not unlike our desire to fit in is our penchant for a good story. Storytelling helps paint a bigger picture of a brand or company, not simply promote a single product or service. Also, when stories resonate with someone, it’s far easier to motivate him or her to take action.

Storytelling is the one technique you should try to infuse in all your advertising. In fact, if you haven’t started crafting your brand’s overall story, you should definitely do so. Research shows that stories that illustrate a brand as “necessary, believable, and integral” are the most effective for engaging and influencing consumers.

Dove employs storytelling in its campaign partnership with Operation Homefront. The videos feature real stories of military men and their families being reunited. The advertisements don’t directly promote Dove products but instead tell the Dove brand story (and pull on a few heartstrings, too).

Determining your brand story will help you learn how to best discuss your brand in all marketing efforts, not just advertising.

Next, let’s take a look at some of the most memorable ad campaigns, a few of which put these best practices in action.

Five Memorable Ad Campaigns

The best advertisements are the best teachers. Whether it’s the copywriting, design, medium, or target audience, well-executed campaigns can always teach you something new about advertising or positioning. (Consider Westinghouse Electric's "We Can Do It" ad…)

Here are five campaigns that left a noticeable mark on advertising history:

Nike: Just Do It

In the late 1980s, Nike launched their “Just Do It” campaign.

At the time, Reebok was outselling Nike, and Nike needed to act fast to compete against the sneaker conglomerate.

But it wasn’t just the three-word phrase that earned global attention. Their new ad campaign also focused on real people wearing and working out in their products, as opposed to simply featuring clothes and sneakers themselves.

This powerful combination of people plus product helped Nike go from $800 million in 1988 to $9.2 billion just 10 years later.

The Absolut Vodka Bottle

Did you know Absolut’s “Bottles in the Wild” ad series is the longest uninterrupted campaign in history? The campaign was Absolut’s attempt to grow their name internationally, especially throughout the United States. It featured the Absolut bottle in different cities and countries worldwide.

It launched in 1985 and ran until 2000 — lasting an impressive 25 years.

Absolut’s campaign helped grow the company from a tiny slice of the vodka market share (2.5%) to over half the U.S. imported market share.

To this day, the Absolut brand is the fourth largest spirit company, thanks to their focus on the overall story, not just the product itself.

Miller Lite

The folks at Miller Lite used differentiation to reach their goal: to get “real men” to willingly drink light beers. With their “Great Taste, Less Filling” campaign, they maintained a leading position in the light beer market for several decades after this first campaign aired.

Volkswagen

Though Volkswagen has officially discontinued its production of Beetles, its iconic “Think Small” campaign will be forever ingrained in advertising history.

Doyle Dane & Bernbach (DDB) advertising agency knew it had to change the mind of consumers if it wanted to compete with industry leaders. So, VW admitted that though the Beetle was, in fact, tiny, it was still a force to be reckoned with and worth a purchase.

Authenticity and honesty went a long way in this seemingly small campaign.

Dos Equis

With its edgy, cool, and sophisticated aesthetic, it’s no surprise “The Most Interesting Man in the World” campaign put Dos Equis on the map.

This campaign created a positive association between the Dos Equis beer and the feeling of sophistication and poise. Sales quickly jumped by 22% after the campaign launched.

Even more impressive was how Dos Equis found success in a time when craft beers grabbed a foothold in the market and imported beer took a 4% hit. This campaign was major component of that success.

To learn how to grab the attention of your audience, learn from the professionals. These campaigns are a great example of how brands have used real stories, real people, and real talk to grow their businesses.

Over to You

Equipped with a dense, dynamic history, advertising is an incredible tool to add to your marketing tool box.

Between print ads, radio sponsorship, TV commercials, and social media promotion, the opportunities to advertise and promote your brand are endless.

To best connect and engage with your audience, speak your customer’s language, appeal to their emotions, and tap into their desire to be a part of a community, create a clear and authentic brand story to illustrate how your brand aligns with their values.

By applying these tried and true practices to your advertising, you’ll build a magnetic brand that attracts customers, establishes a following, and generates revenue.

Do this and your brand will grow into a household name that stands the test of time — just like advertising itself.

from Marketing https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/advertising

27 Companies With Really Catchy Slogans & Brand Taglines

Keep it simple, stupid.

We don't mean to offend you -- this is just an example of a great slogan that also bears the truth of the power of succinctness in advertising.

It's incredibly difficult to be succinct, and it's especially difficult to express a complex emotional concept in just a couple of words -- which is exactly what slogans and taglines do.

That's why we have a lot of respect for the brands that have done it right. The ones that have figured out how to convey their value proposition to their buyer persona in just one, short sentence -- and a quippy one, at that.

So if you're looking to get a little slogan inspiration of your own, take a look at some of our favorite company slogans and taglines from both past and present. But before we get into specific examples, let's quickly go over what a slogan is, how it differs from a tagline, and what makes these branded one-liners stand out.

What Is a Slogan?

In business, a slogan is "a catchphrase or small group of words that are combined in a special way to identify a product or company," according to Entrepreneur.com's small business encyclopedia.

In many ways, they're like mini-mission statements.

Companies have slogans for the same reason they have logos: advertising. While logos are visual representations of a brand, slogans are audible representations of a brand. Both formats grab consumers' attention more readily than the name a company or product might. Plus, they're simpler to understand and remember.

The goal? To leave a key brand message in consumers' minds so that, if they remember nothing else from an advertisement, they'll remember the slogan.

What Makes a Great Slogan?

According to HowStuffWorks, a great slogan has most or all of the following characteristics:

It's memorable.

Is the slogan quickly recognizable? Will people only have to spend a second or two thinking about it? A brief but strong few words can go a long way in advertisements, videos, posters, business cards, swag, and other places.

It includes a key benefit.

Ever heard the marketing advice, "Sell the sizzle, not the steak"? It means sell the benefits, not the features -- which applies perfectly to slogans. A great slogan makes a company or product's benefits clear to the audience.

It differentiates the brand.

Does your light beer have the fullest flavor? Or maybe the fewest calories? What is it about your product or brand that sets it apart from competitors? (Check out our essential branding guide here.)

It imparts positive feelings about the brand.

The best taglines use words that are positive and upbeat. For example, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups' slogan, "Two great tastes that taste great together," gives the audience good feelings about Reese's, whereas a slogan like Lea & Perrins', "Steak sauce only a cow could hate," uses negative words. The former leaves a better impression on the audience.

Now that we've covered what a slogan is and what makes one great, here are examples of some of the best brand slogans of all time. (Note: We've updated this post with several ideas folks previously shared with us in the comments.)

Slogan vs. Tagline

Although both "slogan" and "tagline" tend to be used interchangeably, they actually serve two different purposes. 

As we mentioned in Entrepreneur.com's definition above, a slogan identifies a product or company. So does a tagline, for that matter. Where these terms differ is in how they position a company in its industry.

• A slogan encompasses a company's mission, what it stands for, and even how it's helping customers in the individual campaigns the company might run. Slogans can therefore be longer than taglines, as you'll see in the list below.
• A tagline is a catchy quip that evokes an image of your brand in the minds of your customers. Taglines enable people to make lighthearted associations with your business: "When I see [tagline], I think [company]." You'll see taglines more often next to the company's logo on official advertisements.

Taglines are more often next to the company's logo on official advertisements, and are dedicated more specifically to brand awareness than slogans. Slogans carry a brand's values and promises as the company grows and evolves, and can be promoted under an overarching company tagline.

Your organization doesn't have to develop both a slogan and a tagline -- it might succeed with just a solid, recognizable tagline. But as you develop new products and identify new types of customers, you might find your brand launching a campaign that is primed for its own slogan.

Catchy Business Slogans and Taglines

1. "Shave Time. Shave Money."
2. "There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard."
3. "Melts in Your Mouth, Not in Your Hands"
4. "A Diamond Is Forever"
5. "Tastes So Good, Cats Ask for It By Name"
6. "Can You Hear Me Now? Good."
7. "Semper Fi"
8. "It Does Exactly What It Says on the Tin."
9. "We Help the World Grow the Food It Needs"
10. "We Power Transactions That Drive Commerce"
11. "There Is No Finish Line"
12. "Just Do It."
13. "Think Different."
14. "Because You're Worth It."
15. "Got Milk?"
16. "Designed for Driving Pleasure."
17. "Every Little Helps"
18. "The Quicker Picker Upper"
19. "Betcha Can't Eat Just One."
20. "Advancement Through Technology"
21. "America Runs on Dunkin'"
22. "I'm Lovin' It"
23. "All the News That's Fit to Print"
24. "Imagination at Work."
25. "Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm is There"
26. "Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's Maybelline."
27. "The Few. The Proud. The Marines"

Slogans

1. Dollar Shave Club: "Shave Time. Shave Money."

The folks at Dollar Shave Club have made their way onto quite a few of our lists here on the blog, and it's safe to say that when it comes to marketing and advertising, this brand's team knows what it's doing. And its slogan -- "Shave Time. Shave Money." -- is an excellent reflection of their expertise.

This little quip cleverly incorporates two of the service's benefits: cost and convenience. It's punny, to the point, and it perfectly represents the overall tone of the brand.

Source: TheStephenHarvey.com

2. MasterCard: "There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard."

MasterCard's two-sentence slogan was created in 1997 as a part of an award-winning advertising campaign that ran in 98 countries and in 46 languages. The very first iteration of the campaign was a TV commercial that aired in 1997: "A dad takes his son to a baseball game and pays for a hot dog and a drink, but the conversation between the two is priceless," writes Avi Dan for Forbes.

"In a sense, 'Priceless' became a viral, social campaign years before there was a social media," Dan writes. Today, "Priceless" is widely considered MasterCard's tagline -- borne out of the longer mission-focused slogan stated above.

One key to this campaign's success? Each commercial elicits an emotional response from the audience. That first TV commercial might remind you of sports games you went to with your dad, for example. Each advertisement attempted to trigger a different memory or feeling. "You have to create a cultural phenomenon and then constantly nurture it to keep it fresh," MasterCard CMO Raja Rajamannar told Dan. And nostalgia marketing like that can be a powerful tool.

3. M&M: "Melts in Your Mouth, Not in Your Hands"

Here's one brand that didn't need much time before realizing its core value proposition. At the end of the day, chocolate is chocolate. How can one piece of chocolate truly stand out from another? By bringing in the convenience factor, of course.

This particular example highlights the importance of finding something that makes your brand different from the others -- in this case, the hard shell that keeps chocolate from melting all over you.

4. De Beers: "A Diamond Is Forever"

Diamonds aren't worth much inherently. In fact, a diamond is worth at least 50% less than you paid for it the moment you left the jewelry store. So how did they become the symbol of wealth, power, and romance they are in America today? It was all because of a brilliant, multifaceted marketing strategy designed and executed by ad agency N.W. Ayer in the early 1900s for their client, De Beers.

The four, iconic words "A Diamond is Forever" have appeared in every single De Beers advertisement since 1948, and AdAge named it the best slogan of the century in 1999. It perfectly captures the sentiment De Beers was going for: that a diamond, like your relationship, is eternal. It also helped discourage people from ever reselling their diamonds. (Mass re-selling would disrupt the market and reveal the alarmingly low intrinsic value of the stones themselves.) Brilliant.

Source: Sydney Merritt

5. Meow Mix: "Tastes So Good, Cats Ask for It by Name"

Meow meow meow meow ... who remembers this catchy tune sung by cats, for cats, in Meow Mix's television commercials? The brand released a simple but telling slogan: "Tastes So Good, Cats Ask For It By Name."

This slogan plays off the fact that every time a cat meows, s/he is actually asking for Meow Mix. It was not only clever, but it also successfully planted Meow Mix as a standout brand in a cluttered market.

Source: Walgreens

6. Verizon: "Can You Hear Me Now? Good."

Here's another brand that took its time coming up with something that truly resonated with its audience. This slogan was created in 2002 under the umbrella of the tagline, "We never stop working for you."

While Verizon was founded in 1983, it continued to battle against various phone companies like AT&T and T-Mobile, still two of its strongest competitors. But what makes Verizon stand out? No matter where you are, you have service. You may not have the greatest texting options, or the best cellphone options, but you will always have service.

Source: MS Lumia Blog

7. The U.S. Marine Corps: "Semper Fi" 

Semper Fi, short for "Semper Fidelis," is Latin for "always faithful" or "always loyal." The saying has long been the official motto of the U.S. Marine Corps and is used to represent them in public appearances and the Marines' official seal. 

What makes "Semper Fi" a great slogan for the Marines? It reveals the Marines' defining characteristic in the armed forces -- faithfulness and loyalty. It's also a memorable proverb that explains why this organization can be counted on by the public.

8. Ronseal: "It Does Exactly What It Says on the Tin."

Ronseal is a wood stain and dye manufacturer from the United Kingdom, and its 20-year-old slogan is perfect for the humble message the company is known for.

Ronseal's slogan doesn't really go above and beyond. It doesn't make lofty promises to its customers. It simply endorses a functional product. So why is this slogan so catchy? Because its lack of volume actually speaks volumes to its audience. Too many companies try to break through the noise of their competitors by being so loud and ambitious, they forget what they stood for in the first place. Ronseal saw true value in basic reliability, and founded a slogan that allowed the company to stay right where its customers like it.

9. The Mosaic Company: "We Help the World Grow the Food It Needs"

The Mosaic Company's slogan also happens to be its mission statement, which guarantees that this fertilizer maker's brand strategy aligns with the company's main interests.

Something all slogans should strive to do is look past the needs of the company, or even its users, and describe how the product or service helps the community. In this way, "We Help the World Grow the Food It Needs" is a heavy slogan that expresses not just what The Mosaic Company wants for its customers, but also what it wants for the public.

Source: The Mosaic Company

10. Pitney Bowes: "We Power Transactions That Drive Commerce"

Pitney Bowes, the mailing and shipping software provider, has a slogan that follows a similar theme as The Mosaic Company in the section above: It's focused not on the end user, but on the industry.

Pitney Bowes' slogan shows us that its products don't just help businesses track and deliver merchandise -- they make the entire ecommerce community more efficient. It's a good strategy, considering the alternative. How lame would the company's slogan be if it were "We Power Transactions That Serve Our Clients' Bottom Line"?  

11. Nike: "There Is No Finish Line"

This isn't the slogan that Nike is best known for (keep reading -- the one you're thinking of is actually Nike's tagline). But, in keeping with the purpose of a slogan, the company has used this thoughtful line to represent several individual campaigns that position Nike as the athlete's partner in the ongoing process of getting better at their sport.

"There Is No Finish Line" currently headlines the Nike+ Run Club, and began in 1977 as a print ad designed by John Brown & Partners. The slogan essentially means there will always be another hill to climb, another game to play, another workout to finish, and another race to run. It's a unique message in a world of sports that's normally interested in helping you succeed, rather than reminding you to keep going. But that's what  Nike is all about: the next challenge, and the one after that, and the one after that.

"There Is No Finish Line" most recently made an appearance in Nike's #Breaking2 project of 2017. In this project, the company hosted some of its professional distance runners in an attempt to break the two-hour marathon. See the video on the campaign below.

Taglines

12. Nike: "Just Do It."

Now, for the more well-known Nike message. "Just Do It" hovers over every product and event Nike creates or sponsors, and that's exactly what makes it the company's official tagline.

It didn't take long for Nike's message to resonate. The brand became more than just athletic apparel -- it began to embody a state of mind. It encourages you to think that you don't have to be an athlete to be in shape or tackle an obstacle. If you want to do it, just do it. That's all it takes.

But it's unlikely Kennedy + Weiden, the agency behind this tagline, knew from the start that Nike would brand itself in this way. In fact, Nike's product used to cater almost exclusively to marathon runners, which are among the most hardcore athletes out there. The "Just Do It" campaign widened the funnel, and it's proof positive that some brands need to take their time coming up with a tagline that reflects their message and resonates with their target audience

Source: brandchannel

13. Apple: "Think Different."

This tagline was first released in the Apple commercial called "Here's to the Crazy Ones, Think Different" -- a tribute to all the time-honored visionaries who challenged the status quo and changed the world. The phrase itself is a bold nod to IBM's campaign "Think IBM," which was used at the time to advertise its ThinkPad.

Soon after, the tagline "Think Different" accompanied Apple advertisements all over the place, even though Apple hadn't released any significant new products at the time. All of a sudden, people began to realize that Apple wasn't just any old computer; it was so powerful and so simple to use that it made the average computer user feel innovative and tech-savvy.

According to Forbes, Apple's stock price tripled within a year of the commercial's release. Although the tagline has been since retired, many Apple users still feel a sense of entitlement for being among those who "think different."

Source: Blue Fin Group

14. L'Oréal: "Because You're Worth It."

Who doesn't want to feel like they're worth it? The folks at L'Oréal worked with the theory that women wear makeup in order to make themselves appear "beautiful" so they feel desirable, wanted, and worth it. The tagline isn't about the product -- it's about the image the product can get you. This message allowed L'Oréal to push its brand further than just utility so as to give the entire concept of makeup a much more powerful message.

Source: Farah Khan

15. California Milk Processor Board: "Got Milk?"

While most people are familiar with the "Got Milk?" campaign, not everyone remembers that it was launched by the California Milk Processor Board (CMPB). What's interesting about this campaign is that it was initially launched to combat the rapid increase in fast food and soft beverages: The CMPB wanted people to revert to milk as their drink of choice in order to sustain a healthier life. The campaign was meant to bring some life to a "boring" product, ad executives told TIME Magazine.

The simple words "Got Milk?" scribbled above celebrities, animals, and children with milk mustaches, which ran from 2003 until 2014 -- making this campaign one of the longest-lasting ever. The CMPB wasn't determined to make its brand known with this one -- it was determined to infiltrate the idea of drinking milk across the nation. And these two simple words sure as heck did.

Source: Broward Palm Beach News Times

16. BMW: "Designed for Driving Pleasure."

BMW sells cars all over the world, but in North America, it was known for a long time by its tagline, "The Ultimate Driving Machine." This phrase was created in the 1970s by a relatively unknown ad agency named Ammirati & Puris and was, according to BMW's blog, directed at Baby Boomers who were "out of college, making money and ready to spend their hard earned dollars. What better way to reflect your success than on a premium automobile?"

The newer tagline, "Designed for Driving Pleasure," is intended to reinforce the message that its cars' biggest selling point is that they are performance vehicles that are thrilling to drive. That message is an emotional one, and one that consumers can buy into to pay the high price point.

Source: Brandingmag

17. Tesco: "Every Little Helps"

"Every little helps" is the kind of catchy tagline that can make sense in many different contexts -- and it's flexible enough to fit in with any one of Tesco's messages. It can refer to value, quality, service, and even environmental responsibility -- which the company practices by addressing the impacts of their operations and supply chain.

It's also, as Naresh Ramchandani wrote for The Guardian, "perhaps the most ingeniously modest" slogan or tagline ever written. Tesco markets itself as a brand for the people, and a flexible, modest far-reaching slogan like this one reflects that beautifully.

Source: The Drum

18. Bounty: "The Quicker Picker Upper"

Bounty paper towels, made by Procter & Gamble, has used its catchy tagline "The Quicker Picker Upper" for almost 50 years now. If it sounds like one of those sing-songy play on words you learned as a kid, that's because it is one: The tagline uses what's called consonance -- a poetic device characterized by the repetition of the same consonant two or more times in short succession (think: "pitter patter").

Over the years, Bounty has moved away from this tagline in full, replacing "Quicker" with other adjectives, depending on the brand's current marketing campaign -- like "The Quilted Picker Upper" and "The Clean Picker Upper." At the same time, the brand's main web address went from quickerpickerupper.com to bountytowels.com. But although the brand is branching out into other campaigns, they've kept the theme of their original, catchy tagline.

Source: Bounty

19. Lay's: "Betcha Can't Eat Just One."

Seriously, who here has ever had just one chip? While this tagline might stand true for other snack companies, Lay's was clever to pick up on it straight away. The company tapped into our truly human incapability to ignore crispy, salty goodness when it's staring us in the face. Carbs, what a tangled web you weave.

But seriously, notice how the emphasis isn't on the taste of the product. There are plenty of other delicious chips out there. But what Lay's was able to bring forth with its tagline is that totally human, uncontrollable nature of snacking until the cows come home.

Source: Amazon

20. Audi: "Vorsprung durch technik" ("Advancement Through Technology")

"Vorsprung durch technik" has been Audi's main German tagline everywhere in the world since 1971 (except for the United States, where the slogan is "Truth in Engineering"). While the phrase has been translated in several ways, the online dictionary LEO translates "Vorsprung" as "advance" or "lead" as in "distance, amount by which someone is ahead in a competition." Audi roughly translates it as: "Advancement through technology."

The first-generation Audio 80 (B1 series) was launched a year after the tagline in 1972, and the new car was a brilliant reflection of that tagline with many impressive new technical features. It was throughout the 1970s that the Audi brand established itself as an innovative car manufacturer, such as with the five-cylinder engine (1976), turbocharging (1979), and the quattro four-wheel drive (1980). This is still reflective of the Audi brand today.

Source: Cars and Coffee Chat

21. Dunkin' Donuts: "America Runs on Dunkin'"

In April 2006, Dunkin' Donuts launched the most significant repositioning effort in the company's history by unveiling a brand new, multi-million dollar advertising campaign under the tagline "America Runs on Dunkin." The campaign revolves around Dunkin' Donuts coffee keeping busy Americans fueled while they are on the go.

"The new campaign is a fun and often quirky celebration of life, showing Americans embracing their work, their play and everything in between -- accompanied every step of the way by Dunkin' Donuts," read the official press release from the campaign's official launch.

Ten years later, what the folks at Dunkin Donuts' realized they were missing was their celebration of and honoring their actual customers. That's why, in 2016, they launched the "Keep On" campaign, which they call their modern interpretation of the ten-year tagline.

"It's the idea that we're your partner in crime, or we're like your wingman, your buddy in your daily struggle and we give you the positive energy through both food and beverage but also emotionally, we believe in you and we believe in the consumer," said Chris D'Amico, SVP and Group Creative Director at Hill Holiday.

Source: Lane Printing & Advertising

(Fun fact: Dunkin' Donuts is testing out rebranding -- and renaming itself. One store in Pasadena, California will be called, simply, Dunkin'.)

22. McDonald's: "I'm Lovin' It"

The "I'm Lovin' It" campaign was launched way back in 2003 and still stands strong today. This is a great example of a tagline that resonates with the brand's target audience. McDonald's food might not be your healthiest choice, but being healthy isn't the benefit McDonald's is promising -- it's that you'll love the taste and the convenience.

(Fun fact: The jingle's infamous hook -- "ba da ba ba ba" -- was originally sung by Justin Timberlake.)

Source: McDonald's

23. The New York Times: "All the News That's Fit to Print"

This one is my personal favorite. The tagline was created in the late 1890s as a movement of opposition against other news publications printing lurid journalism. The New York Times didn't stand for sensationalism. Instead, it focused on important facts and stories that would educate its audience. It literally deemed its content all the real "news fit to print."

This helped the paper become more than just a news outlet, but a company that paved the way for credible news. The company didn't force a tagline upon people when it first was founded, but rather, it created one in a time where it was needed most.

Source: 4th St8 Blog

24. General Electric: "Imagination at Work."

You may remember General Electric's former tagline, "We Bring Good Things to Life," which was initiated in 1979. Although this tagline was well-known and well-received, the new tagline -- "Imagination at Work" -- shows how a company's internal culture can revolutionize how they see their own brand.

"'Imagination at Work' began as an internal theme at GE," recalled Tim McCleary, GE's manager of corporate identity. When Jeff Immelt became CEO of GE in 2001, he announced that his goal was to reconnect with GE's roots as a company defined by innovation.

This culture and theme resulted in a rebranding with the new tagline "Imagination at Work," which embodies the idea that imagination inspires the human initiative to thrive at what we do.

25. State Farm: "Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm is There"

The insurance company State Farm has a number of taglines, including "Get to a better State" and "No one serves you better than State Farm." Recently, the company updated its tagline to "We're here to help life go right."

But State Farm's most famous tagline is the jingle, "Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there," which you're likely familiar with if you live in the United States and watch television.

These words emphasize State Farm's "community-first" value proposition -- which sets it apart from the huge, bureaucratic feel of most insurance companies. And it quickly establishes a close relationship with the consumer.

Often, customers need insurance when they least expect it -- and in those situations, State Farm is responding in friendly, neighborly language.

Source: StateFarm

26. Maybelline: "Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's Maybelline."

Can you sing this jingle in your head? Maybelline's former tagline, created in the 1990s, is one of the most famous in the world. It makes you think of glossy magazine pages featuring strong, beautiful women with long lashes staring straight down the lens. It's that confidence that Maybelline's makeup brand is all about -- specifically, the transformation into a confident woman through makeup.

Maybelline changed its tagline to "Make IT Happen" in February 2016, inspiring women to "express their beauty in their own way." Despite this change, the former tagline remains powerful and ubiquitous, especially among the many generations that grew up with it.

Source: FunnyJunk

27. The U.S. Marine Corps: "The Few. The Proud. The Marines."

While "Semper Fi" is one the the U.S. Marine Corps' most coveted slogans (or, more officially, mottos), it has had a handful of top-notch recruiting taglines over the decades as well. These include "First to fight" starting in World War I, to "We're looking for a few good men" from the 1980s. 

However, we'd argue that "The Few. The Proud. The Marines." is among the best organization taglines out there.

This tagline "underscores the high caliber of those who join and serve their country as Marines," said Maj. Gen. Richard T. Tryon, former commanding general of Marine Corps Recruiting Command. In 2007, it even earned a spot on Madison Avenue's Advertising Walk of Fame.

Source: Marines.com

Want more? Read Quiz: Can You Guess the Brands Behind These 16 Slogans?

from Marketing https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/brand-slogans-and-taglines

13 Blogging Mistakes Most Beginner Bloggers Make

Sometimes, when I tell people that I blog for a living, they roll their eyes. "That's so easy," they say. "You get a paycheck for sitting on the internet all day and writing. A monkey could do your job!"

That's when I roll my eyes. See, people are quick to deem blogging as a no-brainer job. But when they actually sit down to write their first couple of posts, it hits them: This is way harder than I thought. Like any person starting a new job, they mess things up.

That's okay -- it happens to pretty much every new blogger. Luckily, it's pretty easy to avoid these roadblocks if you know they're coming.

So for all of you beginner bloggers out there who are looking to get up-to-speed quickly, keep on reading. Below are 12 common mistakes most beginners make and some tips on how to avoid them.

Blogging for Beginners

1. Create blog posts that serve your larger company goals.
2. Write like you talk.
3. Show your personality; don't tell it.
4. Make your point again and again.
5. Start with a very specific working title.
6. Use a specific post type, create an outline, and use headers.
7. Use data and research to back up the claims you make in your posts.
8. When drawing from others' ideas, cite them.
9. Take 30 minutes to edit your post.
10. At a certain point, just publish it.
11. Blog consistently with the help of an editorial calendar.
12. Focus on the long-term benefits of organic traffic.
13. Add a subscription CTA to your blog and set up an email newsletter.

Mistake 1: You think of ideas that only interest you.

As much as you might read and re-read your blog posts after you publish them, you're not the only reader, or the intended reader.

When you start blogging, ideas will come to you at random times -- in the shower, on a run, while on the phone with your mom. While the ideas may come at random moments, the ideas themselves should never be random. Just because it's a good idea in general -- or something that interests you personally -- doesn't mean it's a good idea for your company.

Solution: Create blog posts that serve your larger company goals.

The reason you're blogging is to solve problems for your audience and, ultimately, to grow your business. So, all of your blog post ideas should help serve those growth goals. They should have natural tie-ins to issues in your industry and address specific questions and concerns your prospects have.

Need help figuring out what those goals are and how to address them? Chat with your manager about the larger company goals, and then schedule a meeting with someone on the sales team to hear what questions they get asked most often. After both meetings, you should know which goals you need to achieve and have some ideas on how to achieve them.

Mistake 2: Your writing is too stiff.

Writing a blog post is much different than writing a term paper. But when bloggers first start out, they usually only have experience with the latter. The problem? The style of writing from a term paper is not the style of writing people enjoy reading.

Let's be honest: Most of the people who see your post aren't going to read the whole thing. If you want to keep them interested, you have to compel them to keep reading by writing in a style that's effortless to read.

Solution: Write like you talk.

It's okay to be more conversational in your writing -- in fact, we encourage it. The more approachable your writing is, the more people will enjoy reading it. People want to feel like they're doing business with real people, not robots.

So loosen up your writing. Throw in contractions. Get rid of the jargon. Make a pun or two. That's how real people talk -- and that's what real people like to read.

Mistake 3: You think people care about you as a writer.

It sounds harsh, but it's the truth: When people first start out blogging, they think that their audience will be inherently interested in their stories and their interests ... but that's not the case. It's no knock against them as a person -- it's just that when you're new, no one is interested in you and your experiences. People care way more about what you can teach them.

Solution: Show your personality; don't tell it.

Even though people don't really care that it's you that's writing the post, you can infuse parts of your personality in your writing to make them feel more comfortable with you. How you do that is entirely up to you. Some people like to crack jokes, some like to make pop culture references, and others have a way with vivid descriptions.

HubSpot's Director of Content Corey Wainwright is particularly good at this. Here's an example from the introduction of one of her posts:

To infuse personality into your own writing, try looking for ways to relate to your readers on the topic you're writing about -- then write in the first person as if you're hanging out with them and chatting about it. Make your tone personal, approachable, and engaging, just like you would in a face-to-face conversation.

Mistake 4: You digress.

Although you are encouraged to let your own personality shine through in your writing, don't abuse the privilege. It's one thing to be yourself in the topic you're covering, but it's another thing to bring up too many personal experiences that derail your original topic.

Don't digress into these personal anecdotes and analogies too much -- your readers aren't sitting in front of you, which means you can't guarantee that you have their undivided attention. They can (and will) bounce from your article if they lose patience. 

Solution: Make your point again and again.

To prevent your writing from losing its audience, restate your point in every section of the article. The best blog posts commit to an overarching message and then deliver it gradually, expressing it multiple times in small ways from beginning to end.

If you're writing about how much water a potted plant needs, for example, don't spend three paragraphs telling a story of how you came home to a dead fern after returning from a two-week vacation. This story offers real evidence of your point, but what is your point? Certain plants can't go without water for more than 14 days. That's one possible point, and it should be stated upfront.

Mistake 5: Your topics are too broad.

When people start blogging, they generally want to write on really big topics like:

• "How to Do Social Media Marketing"
• "Business Best Practices"
• "How to Make Money on the Internet"

Topics like these are far too broad. Because there are so many details and nuances in these topics, it's really hard to do a good job answering them. Plus, more specific topics tend to attract smaller, more targeted audiences, which tend to be higher quality and more likely to convert into leads and customers.

So, to get the most short-term and long-term benefits of blogging, you'll need to get way more specific.

Solution: Start with a very specific working title.

Nailing really specific blog topics is crucial to knocking your first few posts out of the park. Let us help you brainstorm with our Blog Ideas Generator. This tool allows you to enter basic terms you know you want to cover, and then produces five sample blog titles that work for business blogs.

Keep in mind that a working title isn't final -- it's just a concrete angle you can use to keep your writing on track. Once you nail this stage of the ideation process, it's much easier to write your blog posts.

Mistake 6: Your writing is a brain dump.

Sometimes when I get a great idea I'm excited about, it's really tempting to just sit down and let it flow out of me. But what I get is usually a sub-par blog post.

Why? The stream-of-consciousness style of writing isn't really a good style for blog posts. Most people are going to scan your blog posts, not read them, so it needs to be organized really well for that to happen.

Solution: Use a specific post type, create an outline, and use headers.

The first thing you should do is choose what type of blog post you're going to write. Is it a how-to post? A list-based post? A curated collection post? A SlideShare presentation? For help on this, download our free templates for creating five different types of blog posts. Once you have a template down, it'll be easier to write your outline.

Writing an outline makes a big difference. If you put in the time up front to organize your thoughts and create a logical flow in your post, the rest becomes easy -- you're basically just filling in the blanks.

To write a blog post outline, first come up with a list of the top takeaways you want your readers to get from your post. Then, break up those takeaways into larger section headers. When you put in a section header every few paragraphs, your blog post becomes easier and more enjoyable to read. (And plus, header text with keywords is good for SEO.) When you finally get to writing, all you'll have to do is fill in those sections.

Mistake 7: You don't use data as evidence.

Let's say I'm writing a blog post about why businesses should consider using Instagram for marketing. When I'm making that argument, which is more convincing?

1. "It seems like more people are using Instagram nowadays."
2. "Instagram’s user base is growing far faster than social network usage in general in the U.S. Instagram will grow 15.1% this year, compared to just 3.1% growth for the social network sector as a whole."

The second, of course. Arguments and claims are much more compelling when rooted in data and research. As marketers, we don’t just have to convince people to be on our side about an issue -- we need to convince them to take action. Data-driven content catches people's attention in a way that fluffy arguments do not.

Solution: Use data and research to back up the claims you make in your posts.

In any good story, you’ll offer a main argument, establish proof, and then end with a takeaway for the audience. You can use data in blog posts to introduce your main argument and show why it's relevant to your readers, or as proof of it throughout the body of the post.

Some great places to find compelling data include:

• HubSpot Research
• Pew Research Center
• MarketingSherpa
• HubSpot's State of Inbound report

Mistake 8: Your content borders on plagiarism.

Plagiarism didn't work in school, and it certainly doesn't work on your company's blog. But for some reason, many beginner bloggers think they can get away with the old copy-and-paste technique.

You can't. Editors and readers can usually tell when something's been copied from somewhere else. Your voice suddenly doesn't sound like you, or maybe there are a few words in there that are incorrectly used. It just sounds ... off.

Plus, if you get caught stealing other people's content, you could get your site penalized by Google -- which could be a big blow to your company blog's organic growth.

Solution: When drawing from others' ideas, cite them.

Instead, take a few minutes to understand how to cite other people's content in your blog posts. It's not super complicated, but it's an essential thing to learn when you're first starting out.

Mistake 9: You think you're done once the writing's done.

Most people make the mistake of not editing their writing. It sounded so fluid in their head when they were writing that it must be great to read ... right?

Nope -- it still needs editing. And maybe a lot of it.

Solution: Take 30 minutes to edit your post.

Everyone needs to edit their writing -- even the most experienced writers. Most times, our first drafts aren't all that great. So take the time you need to shape up your post. Fix typos, run-on sentences, and accidental its/it's mistakes. Make sure your story flows just as well as it did in your outline.

To help you remember all the little things to check before publishing, check out our checklist for editing and proofreading a blog post.

Mistake 10: You try to make every post perfect.

I hate to break it to you, but your blog post is never going to be perfect. Ever.

There will always be more things you can do to make your posts better. More images. Better phrasing. Wittier jokes. The best writers I know, know when to stop obsessing and just hit "publish."

Solution: At a certain point, just publish it.

There's a point at which there are diminishing returns for getting closer to "perfect" -- and you're really never going to reach "perfect" anyway. So while you don't want to publish a post filled with factual inaccuracies and grammatical errors, it's not the end of the world if a typo slips through. It most likely won't affect how many views and leads it brings in.

Plus, if you (or your readers) find the mistake, all of you have to do is update the post. No biggie. So give yourself a break once and a while -- perfect is the enemy of done.

Mistake 11: You don't blog consistently.

By now, you've probably heard that the more often you blog, the more traffic you'll get to your website -- and the more subscribers and leads you'll generate from your posts. But as important as volume is, it's actually more important that you're blogging consistently when you're just getting started. If you publish five posts in one week and then only one or two in the next few weeks, it'll be hard to form a consistent habit. And inconsistency could really confuse your subscribers.

Instead, it's the companies that make a commitment to regularly publishing quality content to their blogs that tend to reap the biggest rewards in terms of website traffic and leads -- and those results continue to pay out over time.

To help establish consistency, you'll need a more concrete planning strategy.

Solution: Blog consistently with the help of an editorial calendar.

Use it to get into the habit of planning your blog post topics ahead of time, publishing consistently, and even scheduling posts in advance if you're finding yourself having a particularly productive week.

Here at HubSpot, we typically use good ol' Google Calendar as our blog editorial calendar, which you can learn how to set up step-by-step here. Or, you can click here to download our free editorial calendar templates for Excel, Google Sheets, and Google Calendar, along with instructions on how to set them up.

Mistake 12: You concentrate your analytics on immediate traffic.

Both beginner bloggers and advanced bloggers are guilty of this blogging mistake. If you concentrate your analysis on immediate traffic (traffic from email subscribers, RSS feeds, and social shares), then it's going to be hard to prove the enduring value of your blog. After all, the half-life for those sources is very brief -- usually a day or two.

When marketers who are just starting their business blogs see that their blog posts aren't generating any new traffic after a few days, many of them get frustrated. They think their blog is failing, and they end up abandoning it prematurely.

Solution: Focus on the long-term benefits of organic traffic.

Instead of focusing on the sudden decay of short-term traffic, focus instead on the cumulative potential of organic traffic. Over time, given enough time, the traffic from day three and beyond of a single blog post will eclipse that big spike on days one and two thanks to being found on search engine results pages through organic search. You just have to give it a while.

To help drive this long-term traffic, make sure you're writing blog posts that have durable relevance on a consistent basis. These posts are called "evergreen" blog posts: They're relevant year after year with little or no upkeep, valuable, and high quality.

Over time, as you write more evergreen content and build search authority, those posts will end up being responsible for a large percentage of your blog traffic. It all starts with a slight shift in perspective from daily traffic to cumulative traffic so you can reframe the way you view your blog and its ROI entirely.

Mistake 13: You aren't growing subscribers.

Once you start blogging, it's easy to forget that blogging isn't just about getting new visitors to your blog. One of the biggest benefits of blogging is that it helps you steadily grow an email list of subscribers you can share your new content with. Each time you publish a new blog post, your subscribers will give you that initial surge of traffic -- which, in turn, will propel those posts' long-term success.

The key to getting significant business results (traffic, leads, and eventually customers) all starts with growing subscribers.

Solution: Add a subscription CTA to your blog and set up an email newsletter.

First, use your email marketing tool to set up a welcome email for new subscribers, as well as a regular email that pulls in your most recent blog posts. (HubSpot customers: You can use HubSpot's email tool to easily set up these regular email sends, as well as set up a welcome email for new subscribers.)

Next, add subscription CTAs to your blog (and elsewhere, like the footer of your website) to make it easy for people to opt in. These CTAs should be simple, one-field email opt-in forms near the top of your blog, above the fold. As for where to put these CTAs, we typically place our blog CTAs at the bottom of our blog posts or add a slide-in, which you can learn how to do using a free tool called Leadin here.

You can also create a dedicated landing page for subscribers that you can direct people to via other channels such as social media, other pages on your website, PPC, or email. (For a list of more simple ways to attract subscribers, read this blog post; for more advanced ideas, read this one.)

Don't worry if you read through this list and are now thinking to yourself, Well this is awkward ... I've made literally every single one of these mistakes. Remember: I used the word "common" to describe these mistakes for a reason. The more you blog, the better you'll get at it -- and you'll reap the benefits in terms of traffic and leads in the process.

We hope you'll use this list of mistakes as fuel for the fire to step up your blogging game. After all, the benefits of keeping up a healthy business blog will be well worth the time and effort.

from Marketing https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/beginner-blogger-mistakes

We Analyzed 5,860,631,392 Articles From 64 Countries. Here’s What Facebook Loves!

Facebook reach has continually declined over time.

Nowadays everyone tells me there is no point in even sharing content on Facebook.

But you know what? You can still generate traffic from Facebook.

Yes, traffic has declined. Even so, in the last 31 days, I’ve generated 20,420 visits from Facebook.

That’s not too shabby considering I’m only publishing 4 articles a month. That’s an average of 5,105 visitors per article from Facebook.

And because I’ve been building the ultimate SEO tool, I’ve been gathering social sharing data on over 9 billion URLs.

But a large portion of the URLs in our database aren’t articles. So, for this analysis, we looked at 5,860,631,392 articles.

Before I dive into what we have learned, there are few things you ought to know about the data:

1. Technically we have gathered social sharing data on 11,721,262,784 articles. For each URL we gather data on the HTTP and the HTTPS version to get an accurate count as more sites have transitioned to HTTPS over time.
2. We only looked at articles. A lot of URLs such as nike.com have over a million Facebook shares, but they aren’t articles.
3. We looked at articles in multiple languages as English isn’t the main language everyone speaks in the world.
4. When I say “social shares”, that includes reactions, comments, and shares from Facebook.
5. We excluded scraper sites. A lot of the articles shared on Facebook are scraper sites. They barely have any shares and it skews the data.
6. In total, the 5,860,631,392 articles came from 163,968,722 domains.
7. Our list of articles started with Google search results. Because we have data on 507,348,976 search engine results from 64 different countries, we were then able to find the sites that you read on a regular basis, which then helped us crawl and find more articles that you may read.

Let’s dive into the learnings.

What type of content generates the most Facebook likes overtime?

There’s been countless articles published showing that list posts and infographics generate the most social shares.

And that makes sense because who doesn’t love a visual piece of content such as an infographic?

But what if you want social shares over time?

By looking at how many social shares each article generates on a monthly basis, we were able to see the growth rate and the types of article that generate the most social shares over time.

Here’s the share growth rate over time per article type:

If you want a quick boost in Facebook traffic, consider creating infographics.

But if you want more consistent Facebook traffic each and every month, focus on “how to” articles. They don’t do as well right off the bat, but over time they produce more consistent Facebook traffic.

The reason for this is that infographics are harder to rank on Google because they don’t contain a lot of text.

By creating content like “how to” articles that tend to get searched frequently, you can get consistent traffic to your articles which will cause more social shares.

How long (or short) should your headlines be?

Do Facebook users prefer short or long headlines? If you had to take a guess, what would you think?

Most people think the shorter the better…

Let’s look at the data:

Users prefer headlines that are roughly 7, 8 or 9 words.

You can’t really explain what an article is about in 4 words. By having your headline long enough, it will allow you to be more descriptive.

Don’t focus on making your headlines as short as possible, focus on making them descriptive.

How do images impact shares?

You already know people love images. If they didn’t, Facebook wouldn’t be as popular.

But the question is, how many images do you really need per article to get the maximum number of social shares?

In general, the more images the better.

The one thing to note is that a lot of the articles that had over 7 images weren’t really articles per say.

A lot of them were articles that have a clear objective of getting you to browse through an image gallery, such as someone showing off stunning images of the Milky Way or image galleries of silly cats.

When writing content, consider including images to describe your message. The more the better.

How long should your lists be?

Based on our data, most people prefer writing list-based articles with the number 10. In other words, their lists only have 10 items.

When we looked at the average share count based on list size, it was clear that lists that were 10 items long won.

But there is a problem: the data is skewed because everyone focuses on smaller lists.

When we started to look at the median share count per list size, the data got interesting.

The more detailed the list, the better.

If you ever decide to write a list-based post that is over 100 items, there is a good chance people will share it assuming it is super detailed.

Shortlists have been beaten to death for years. That’s why longer ones that leverage the skyscraper technique perform better these days.

How long should your articles be?

Should you write short articles or long ones? And how sort or long should they be?

This question has been asked and discussed in marketing circles for years.

The data shows, the longer the better.

If you were to write 10,000-word blog posts that are super actionable, you would generate more social shares than if you wrote 2,000-word blog posts.

I know I’ve mentioned in the past that writing super long content is like throwing money out the window. And it is especially true when it comes to Google traffic.

So for a nice balance, I would still stick with the advice I gave in that article, which is to write roughly 2,000-word blog posts. Then expand upon it over time. And every time you expand upon the article, you can share it again on Facebook.

If you don’t care about Google and you only want to focus on Facebook, then just go for that 10,000-word article.

You’ll also notice that 1,000-word articles generate more shares than 2,000-word articles.

We were curious why this was so we dug into the data a bit more and found that articles that contained less than 1,000 words in many cases contained more images than 2,000-word articles.

In addition to that, many of the shorter articles were also news based.

And speaking of news…

Is it better to write news-based content or evergreen content?

Over time, evergreen content gets more traffic. It’s not just because of Facebook, it’s that they rank better in Google and get more consistent traffic over the years.

No one is Googling about what happened in the news a year ago.

None-the-less, let’s look at the first hour of when an article is published.

News based articles win in the short run. I already discussed above how “how to” articles will get you the most consistent search traffic over time, but if you want a quick hit, consider covering news related topics.

Do emotions affect social sharing?

I used to love writing articles that pushed fear because they generated a lot of traffic for me. But the issue with doing this is that I used to get emails from people asking me if I was depressed or needed help.

I’ve always been fine, but many of you told me how you don’t like when I push fear in my articles. So, I naturally stopped.

And although fear is an effective way to generate more social shares, it isn’t the most powerful emotion (at least when it comes to Facebook).

People love content with laughter, awe, and joy. Or at least, that’s what people prefer sharing, as opposed to fear.

You can clearly see by the image above that people prefer laughter roughly 3 times more than they prefer fear.

When should you post your content?

Writing an amazing article isn’t enough. If you write content on a bad day and release it during a time when no one is online, then you won’t go viral on Facebook.

People prefer sharing content on Tuesday over any other day.

If you are going to write only one article a week, release it on Tuesday. If you are writing multiple articles a week, focus on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday as they are the most popular days.

And as for the time of day…

You tend to share content between 11 am and 1 pm.

That’s right before you are about to leave for your lunch break and it’s right when you come back. A lot of people get tired during the middle of the day and they need a break.

That’s why you will see many people within your office on Facebook during the afternoon.

If you miss the 1 pm publishing window, you can always shoot for the 6 pm slot. The share count goes back up around the time people are finishing up with work.

Conclusion

Yes, it is hard to get traffic from Facebook. They do limit your reach compared to 4 or 5 years ago because they don’t want you driving people from Facebook off to your website. That and they want you to boost posts to increase your reach (and their revenue).

The longer people stay on Facebook the more money they make. That’s why they love video content.

But that doesn’t mean you still can’t do well. If you follow the data above it will give you the best shot of getting the most traffic from Facebook.

What do you think about the data and stats? Are you going to follow it?

The post We Analyzed 5,860,631,392 Articles From 64 Countries. Here’s What Facebook Loves! appeared first on Neil Patel.

from Blog – Neil Patel https://neilpatel.com/blog/facebook-shares/