Here at HubSpot, there’s one thing we love above all else: Dogs.
A smush-faced pug? Instant heart warmer. Majestic golden retriever? More like new best friend. It’s no wonder our "bring your dog to work" policy at our Cambridge headquarters is an employee favorite.
In the beginning of March, we asked our Vine community to join us in a month-long celebration of Women's History Month using #WCWProj2016. To kick things off, we chose to honor Sally Ride, first American woman in space, in our call-to-action Vine.
We also posted two Vines created by some of our favorite female stop motion animators. The first one came from Mighty Oak, an all-female studio based in Brooklyn. The second one came from Meagan Cignoli, the founder of a female-led studio called Visual Country in lower Manhattan. Read more...
This week's hijacking of an EgyptAir flight by a man wearing a fake belt of explosives could have been a tragedy, but the worst, thankfully, was averted.
That means, especially in Egypt, it's time to joke about it. The Egyptian tradition of "nokat," or jokes, in the face of "mossiba," or catastrophe, is a treasured part of the national character.
That's why Egyptians — and many others — have been sharing a darkly hilarious post from one of the passengers on the EgyptAir flight recounting the reactions of his fellow passengers when they thought the worst was coming.
The best story, if we could choose, is the one the man who valiantly defended the frozen Egyptian chicken he had smuggled onboard. Read more...
Off days. We all have them from time to time.
Maybe you didn't sleep well the night before, or perhaps you're working on a project that isn't particularly exciting. Or maybe there's no viable explanation at all, and you're just straight up not feelin' it that day.
Traditional monetization channels are getting tougher and tougher for publishers to tap into. The reason? Consumer behavior is fundamentally changing, and now more than ever before, attention spans are scatterbrained.
When planning giveaways, discounts, coupons, promotional events, and any other special pricing for your ecommerce company, you’re probably already counting your profits in your head. Then, you run across a blog like this one that says ecommerce promotions just don’t work. What are you supposed to believe?
As the hub of your business presence on a (nearly) 1.6 billion-person social network, your Facebook Page has the potential to be a valuable marketing asset. From educating prospective customers to sharing company updates and educational resources with your existing customers, you can use your Facebook Page to target nearly every stage of your marketing funnel.
You know what an "average" speech looks like. You've seen tens, maybe hundreds of them in your lifetime. Chances are, you've given a few of them yourself. They're good, and they're useful, but they're not awe-inspiring.
You might also know what an amazing speech looks like -- one that's engrossing, captivating, and inspires action.
It all led up to this: The Final Four is Saturday, the national championship is Monday night, and by Tuesday morning, another March Madness will be in the books.
But we before we look ahead, let's look backTwitter gave Mashable an early look at some of the most popular moments of the 2016 NCAA Tournament so far. From buzzer-beating shots to Final Four fans, they're a fun way to relive a pair of action-packed weekends.
Twitter (the company) says these were the four most-viewed video tweets by the @marchmadness account on Twitter (the social network) during the tournament so far. Read more...
Last fall, my teammate, Pamela Vaughan, and I made a terrifying and exciting decision. We were on a big mission to reduce our graymail, and we decided to do something drastic.
We created a workflow that initially unsubscribed 250,000 people from our emails -- which was roughly half of our list -- and would continue to unsubscribe unengaged people over time. Plus, we completely eliminated the option to receive instant notification emails from us.
Whether you tend to see the glass half full or half empty, there's plenty of research that suggests optimistic people experience a number of physical, social, and emotional benefits.
For positive folks, it's easy to tune out negative news, embrace life, and welcome new social connections. But for those who find themselves leaning towards a more pessimistic demeanor, it can be tough to silence that inherent level of negativity and skepticism.
LONDON — British bargain shop B&M Bargains has said it will urge a supplier to remove a slogan after sets of "novelty" weighing scales were branded pro-anorexic on Facebook.
The scales — which contain the slogan "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels" — were spotted by Rachel May Shevlin, who posted a photo of the offending product and called on people to complain.
Her post gained more than 5,000 likes and 2,000 shares, prompting B&M Bargains to respond to mounting pressure.
"How lovely to see the phrase I said to my teenage/young adult self that also led to me calling myself a 'fat, disgusting waste of oxygen' often before self-harming just because I had dinner, sold in their shops ON FRICKIN SCALES so other impressionable young minds can suffer the same self hatred," wrote Shevlin on Facebook. Read more...
As someone who dabbles in Photoshop, I often get odd requests from coworkers asking if I can take person A and insert them into situation B. Usually, it's for an internal slide deck, or a Wiki post, or for a Slack-related practical joke.
And while there are usually a bajillion more important things I could be doing when these requests come in, I nearly always say yes -- with the caveat that I'll spend a maximum of 15–20 minutes working on it.
Pinterest is making moves to keep more people and brands on the site. The company introduced on Tuesday a new feature called How-to Pins, allowing companies to create and share pins with DIY instructions.
The feature, which is a new take on its existing Rich Pins feature for brands, populates step-by-step instructions right within a pin across various categories, including food, fitness, home projects and beauty.
However, regular users can’t make How-to Pins themselves and can only repost ones made by Pinterest’s brand partners
To launch the How-to Pin effort, Pinterest worked with more than 25 brands and organizations to provide how-to content for the site, such as Home Depot, Cosmopolitan, Delish and more. Read more...
Let's get right down to it: The key to successful SEO is concentrating on long-tail keywords.
Although these keywords get less traffic than more generic terms, they're associated with more qualified traffic and users that are typically further down their path of intent.
Pens, t-shirts, water bottles, baseball caps, lanyards ... so many lanyards.
Welcome to the wonderful world of swag, where -- in a tremendous display of humanity's technological prowess -- we prove that we can stamp a logo or catchphrase on just about anything.
"I wish I were more stressed."
I'd guess that you've never heard anyone utter that phrase. Almost everyone is on the hunt for ways to avoid or better manage the amount of pressure they experience.
But what if I told you that introducing a little stress into your routine might make you more productive?
President Obama — he's just like us.
POTUS spent Monday reading to thousands of children gathered at the White House for its annual Easter Egg Roll. He read Where the Wild Things Are, and he even made some terrifying gestures with his hands and face to bring the story alive.
He also wore "that J.Crew gingham shirt."
You know, the same shirt every other average bro owns in his closet. It's "Classic fit. Two-ply cotton. Button-down collar. Machine wash. Import," as J.Crew's site describes it.
To prove this point, we defer to the popular Instagram handle That J.Crew Gingham Shirt, which has documented this growing pandemic of "gingbros" with its eagle-eyed account. Read more...
I, like most people, have some experience with Microsoft Excel -- but not as much as I wish I did. For the most part, I've used it to brainstorm ideas, budget vacations, and make simple traffic and leads calculations.
But thanks to my limited Excel skills, I'm subjecting myself to the tedium of updating my spreadsheets manually.
This post originally appeared on HubSpot's Sales Blog. To read more content like this, subscribe to Sales.
In the words of Grace Hopper: "You manage things. You lead people."
The difference between managing and leading might seem fuzzy to managers, but it's crystal clear to their direct reports.
Once upon a time, I worked as a freelancer. It was enlightening, thrilling at times, but also extremely tough.
And it wasn't until later on in my career that I realized just how much marketers depend on contractors. Freelance designers, web developers, copywriters, video editors, SEO specialists, PR consultants, or translators -- all of these folks play a vital role on the extended team of many marketers.
Microsoft AI chatbot Tay, launched last week as an experiment to learn how millennials talk, quickly became an embarrassment for the company as it posted racist and offensive tweets and was subsequently pulled offline.
On Friday, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Research Peter Lee published an apology and an explanation for Tay's misbehavior, saying the company is "deeply sorry for the unintended offensive and hurtful tweets from Tay."
SEE ALSO: Microsoft's Twitter bot turned from average teen to Jew-hating Trump supporter in 12 hours
Microsoft already runs a similar project in China — a chatbot called XiaoIce, which is used by more than 40 million people. But that success did not translate well in the U.S.
Read more...
People in the UK, Lebanon and the U.S. are a little confused about Facebook's Safety Check settings.
After an explosion at Gulshan-e-Iqbal park in Lahore, Pakistan, Facebook activated its Safety Check software, which enables people to locate family members in areas affected by disasters.
The explosion has at least 44 dead and 91 injured, though local reports put the numbers much higher.
Shortly after the explosion, social media was buzzing with people who were nowhere near Pakistan being asked to contact their loved ones via Facebook. Read more...
The U.S. has officially celebrated women's history since 1911 — first as a day, then as a week and finally a month beginning in 1987.
The purpose of Women's History Month is to recognize the many contributions that women have made to society, as well as their individual accomplishments, throughout the month of March. But this celebration has historically left some people out: black women.
"Black women have traditionally been written out of history unless it is in the context of victimization," says Dr. Aimee Meredith Cox, a cultural anthropologist, author and professor at Fordham University. As a result, black women's accomplishments and contributions have not received the same recognition as white women's during Women's History Month. Read more...
This post originally appeared on HubSpot's Sales Blog. To read more content like this, subscribe to Sales.
So you landed the interview. Congratulations! You’re one step closer to your dream job. But before you drop the mic, let’s make sure you’re ready to nail that interview.
This post originally appeared on HubSpot's Agency Post. To read more content like this, subscribe to Agency Post.
There’s a common mistake both young professionals and expert contributors fall victim to when coming up with ideas. It’s known as the Einstellung effect -- when a person defaults to a known solution rather than a novel or optimal way of solving a problem.
How many times have you been sick of unwanted, annoying photo posts from friends that clog your social media feed?
And how many times has that driven you to unfollow, or even deactivate your account, only to realize that unfollowing is no foolproof measure of filtering trash, and deactivating means you miss out on the good stuff too — sending you crawling back to the big bad mess of posts and updates?
Photos on Facebook have been known to generate 39% more likes than text posts or even videos, and account for 93% of the most engaging posts.
So, if there’s no escaping pictures, is there a way to escape the rubbish ones at least? Read more...
Let's face reality: It's hard, if not impossible, to feel motivated all the time.
Some days you just want to put your feet up, eat buffalo chicken nachos, and watch Netflix -- and not even good Netflix, but some crappy movie that you're only watching because you've given up on being productive and are complicit in filling your brain with dim-witted, mind-numbing entertainment.
As a marketer, you probably spend a lot of time thinking about how to promote and distribute the content your team creates -- which includes social media outreach. After all, you know that by tapping into the right social networks and key influencers at the right times, you can expose your content to a wider audience.
But what constitutes the "right" social networks, the "right" times to post, and the "right" key influencers?
