I want to let you in on a secret.

The hardest part of writing successful content isn’t the writing itself—it’s knowing what topics to write about. There’s nothing more frustrating than staring at a blank page with no idea where to start.

But don’t worry—your outer muse is here. Today, I’ll guide you through how to generate content ideas that will help you achieve your goals.

By the end of this post, your content calendar will go from sad and empty—

—to brimming with content your audience will love:

Let’s jump right in…

• Document Your Journey
• Solve Problems for Your Audience
• Use Keyword Research
• Discuss Industry Topics
• Speak to Your Customers
• The Challenge: Find 10 Things to Write About Now

1. Document Your Journey

The EASIEST way to find something to write about is to document what you’re working on day-to-day.

But often the biggest blocker to actually doing this is ourselves – we are our own worst enemy. I’ve heard this excuse plenty of times…

“But Ash, my day-to-day is boring…”

Sure, you might not be working on a new theory of relativity, but the work you do will always be interesting to someone. Your most dedicated readership will come from the people that matter most to your business: your customers.

Let’s say you’re a freelance marketer. Your clients—and prospective clients—would absolutely love to get a peek behind the curtain at how you work. And you don’t have to share your secrets, either. Something as simple as your daily routine can be super engaging to others. [*]

You could also share your approach to a new challenge that’s popped up in your work:

Or if you’re a software company you could take your customers behind-the-scenes to show how you work and why you’ve made certain decisions:

The possibilities when it comes to sharing your processes are endless. Almost every part of your day-to-day work can inspire new things to write about.

But to get you started, here are three simple ways to document your journey:

1. Use meeting notes: Check back through your notebook and see what points you have jotted down from your last few meetings. Find 1-2 things that stand out to you and try to center a blog post around them.
2. Share a failure: We learn a lot from failure. Your audience could also learn a lot from where you’ve taken a misstep and how you’ve gotten back on track. Think about some missed opportunities in your business and what you’ve learned from them.
3. Share your biggest win: On the flip side, you could write about your biggest successes. These don’t have to be huge achievements like hitting a million dollars in sales, either. You could write about how you set your morning routine to maximize productivity or how you landed your first customer.

Stories are how we connect to one another, and people love to consume content filled with real-world examples and anecdotes. Plus, you’ve got one constant stream of inspiration: yourself! One of the best and simplest ways to find things to write about is to break down your daily life into a series of blog posts.

2. Solve Problems For Your Audience

When people get stuck, they turn to the internet to find a solution.

Sites like Reddit are full of people asking questions, which means that these platforms are incredible places to find things to write about for your business.

There’s literally a subreddit for everything—in fact, there are over 2 million subreddits. No matter your industry, you’ll be able to find something to write about on Reddit. [*]

Here’s how:

First, locate a relevant subreddit. Let’s say you’re an interior designer. Just head over to the appropriately named r/InteriorDesign:

Next, head up to the search and look for words and phrases that indicate someone is looking for a little help. Things like:

• “How can I”
• “Can someone help”
• “Suggest”

These words and phrases will help you to find problems your audience is experiencing.

Then you’ll see a list of results matching your search criteria:

Sort the posts by ‘Top’ and you can view the most upvoted/commented on posts that match your initial search criteria. From here, you’ll basically have a jampacked list of things to write about:

We can already come up with three content ideas from these results:

1. How to find products that match your existing design style
2. How to successfully work with an interior designer
3. The basics of paint colors

And these three ideas came from one quick search on Reddit. If you scroll a little further and repeat this process across relevant subreddits, you’ll quickly collecct plenty of things to write about.

The great thing about this process is that the topics are already vetted and validated for you – they’ve previously been upvoted on Reddit and generated a lot of discussion. That means you know these subjects will resonate with your target customers before you even start writing.

3. Use Keyword Research

Ever wondered how some businesses manage to land in the #1 spot on Google?

It all starts with keyword research.

Keyword research is the process of uncovering the search terms people use in Google. For example, you might have discovered this post by searching “things to write about” or a similar term.

Keyword research helps you uncover the topics people are already searching for. So before writing a word, you’ll have evidence that there’s demand for your content. Plus, you’ll understand the potential traffic it could generate.

For example, when people search for “powerful words” on Google—

They’ll see this Sumo post first:

The goal of keyword research (and SEO in general) is to help potential customers discover your business via relevant search terms.

So in the case of the example above, ‘powerful words’ are great tools to increase conversions… and Sumo is a tool that helps people to convert website visitors into customers. It’s a perfect fit.

The first step of keyword research is a simple one: brainstorm.

To get started, list a few broad, high-level topics that relate to your business. If we’re sticking with Sumo—a tool for email capture—I might list out topics like:

• Email list
• Lead generation
• Conversion rates

Now, these broad topics are called “short-tail” or “head” keywords in the SEO world. They’re difficult to rank for if you’re just getting started. But what you can do is use short-tail keywords as a base to dig deeper. That way, you can uncover more long-tail keywords (phrases made up of 3-5 words) that might be easier to rank for.

One free tool to help you get rolling with keyword research is LSIGraph.

With LSIGraph, you can enter your high-level keywords into the search field and see a list of related, longer-tail phrases. For example, here’s what we see if we search for email lists in LSI:

Using these results, you can find a bunch of long-tail keywords and ideas for what to write about. (P.S. if you’re in this space, I’d jump at the ‘how to build an email list for free’ phrase.)

Another great tool to generate keyword ideas is AnswerThePublic. AnswerThePublic helps you uncover questions people are asking Google based on a keyword/phrase you enter.

Here are the results from searching ‘email marketing’ in AnswerThePublic:

This is a GOLDMINE. Almost every result here is something you could write about. For example, here are five blog post ideas from these results:

• The 5 Best Email Marketing Software Products
• Will Email Marketing Die? Here’s Why It’ll Still Be Thriving in 2030
• The Complete Guide To Email Marketing: How it Helps Businesses
• Why Email Marketing Is (Still) Important in 2020
• How Email Marketing Can Help SEO

Keyword research works universally across any industry or niche. No matter what topic you’re looking for, these tips will help you find some things to write about.

4. Discuss Industry Topics

No matter what industry you’re in, there’s always something to talk about:

• If you work in construction, it could be the latest building regulations in your state/city.
• If you work in social media marketing, it could be Instagram’s latest feature release.
• If you work in cleaning, it might be reducing plastic waste in your day-to-day work.

Every industry is always evolving and changing. To win new business, it’s wise to present yourself as an industry thought-leader with a finger on the pulse of what’s happening.

At Buffer, we’ve done this by discussing new industry features—

And creating go-to resources for key talking points:

If you follow industry news closely, try to use that info as a way to inspire content ideas. For example, Instagram announced its new “Guides” feature on May 18th, 2020. On May 19th, Later.com immediately published a resource on this new feature:

As your industry evolves, use these changes as inspiration to write. Every time you see some big industry news, try to write five quick headlines of things you could write related to this news.

For example, here are five post ideas based on the Instagram guides launch:

1. Instagram Guides: Everything You Need to Know
2. What Guides Mean for The Future of Instagram
3. From Filters to Guides: A History of Instagram Feature Releases
4. What I Learned From Instagram’s First Guides
5. How Instagram Launched Guides: A Step-by-Step Breakdown

Even if you don’t write any of these posts, it’s good to start flexing your creative muscles. Train yourself to look at news stories and industry changes as potential topics to write about.

5. Speak To Your Customers

Think about the reasons you want to write.

Are you looking to grow your brand? Get your name out there? Build trust and customer relationships? Maybe it all comes down to generating revenue for your business.

To achieve any of these things, you need to put your customers first.

The best way to do this is to step into their shoes by asking them directly about their daily work lives: What’s frustrating them? What are their biggest challenges? Their biggest worries? When do they feel happiest at work? What’s taking up too much of their time?

The answer to each of these questions could spark a number of things to write about.

Your customers are the most important part of your business. Without them, your business doesn’t exist. When it comes to finding things to write about, put your customers at the heart of your strategy and create content that speaks directly to them.

The Challenge: Find 10 Things To Write About Now

The five tips I’ve shared with you today have allowed me to write hundreds of blog posts and keep content calendars filled with interesting, engaging topics. The ultimate result? Helping businesses achieve their goals.

But you won’t find things to write about without taking action. So let’s get the ball rolling right away.

Now that you’ve finished this post, take 15-20 minutes, and come up with 10 things to write about. Here’s your action list:

1. Document your journey: Write down 2 things you’ve done this week that you could write about.
2. Solve problems for your audience: Head to Reddit and find two audience problems you could solve.
3. Use keyword research: Download LSI or AnswerThePublic and enter a keyword related to your business. Pick two ideas to write about.
4. Discuss industry topics: Check out an industry publication, check the most popular posts, and come up with two ideas you could write about based on those top stories.
5. Speak to customers: Open up your support inbox, spend a few minutes reading emails, and write down two ideas based on what you’ve read.

There you have it. Your first ten things to write about.

It’s where most of your traffic will land, and where new visitors will form their first impressions of your business.

And first impressions are everything.

To help you create excellent experiences for EVERY new visitor to your site, we’ve pulled together 16 of the BEST homepages by some of the top online businesses and brands to provide you with some inspiration and key takeaways.

Let’s dive right in.

1. Turbotax

The TurboTax homepage is great because it opens with an irresistible offer that speaks directly to their target customers: “Easily and accurately file your simple tax returns for FREE.”

It’s also great how they make it feel personal with an image of a real CPA (Certified Public Accountant) promising to help you. This helps to build trust with the visitor. The copy also mentions a “line-by-line review” to give visitors confidence that TurboTax will deliver on its promises.

2. Animalz

Animalz is a content marketing agency. Its homepage is one of the best in the business. Here’s why:

• It starts with a clear description of what Animalz does: “The world’s best content marketing happens here.”
• The page then flows nicely as the readers’ eyes follow a hand drawing a line down to some social proof featuring Animalz clients like Google, Wistia, and Appcues.
• The homepage closes with a CTA box to get in touch with the team, shows you who you’ll be talking to, and when you can expect a reply. This is a great way to set expectations.

3. Calendly

The Calendly homepage opens with copy designed for its target customers. Everyone knows the pain of organizing a meeting over email and Calendly addresses this head-on with its hero copy:

“Calendly helps you schedule meetings without the back-and-forth emails”

This tells visitors exactly how its product will help customers. And it follows up this promise by showing how the product works and walking you through how it makes planning meetings painless.

4. Hunter

At some point, all of us have to do some form of cold outreach. Hunter is a tool that helps you to find any email address in seconds.

Its homepage is brilliant because it clearly explains the tool’s value and uses social proof to show how many people and companies use it. Its CTA drives visitors directly toward seeing the value in its product.

By typing a company into the search box CTA, you’re instantly shown results that will help you to connect with anyone. Here’s an example search for Apple:

5. Bonsai

We all have tasks we don’t enjoy. Bonsai’s homepage tells its target customers (freelancers) it will help them spend less time on things they don’t enjoy and have more time for the work they love.

The page clearly lays out the features and how it helps its customers to avoid “headaches” and then identifies the benefits those features enable: Get paid faster, Save time, Protect your business, Get peace of mind.

6. Canva

Canva’s homepage is incredibly simple — this image is the entire page. You don’t have to have a complex homepage with tons of copy and information about your product.

Sometimes less is more. Canva’s homepage shows the product and its versatility (you can design posters, social media content, etc.) and that it can be used on desktop and mobile, all in just one simple screen. No need to scroll.

7. Gumroad

Gumroad is a simple tool for creators to sell their products. Its homepage starts with a clear value proposition and eye-opening social proof: “We have sent over $258m to artists, designers, educators, writers, and more.”

8. Ryan Robinson

Ryan Robinson’s website is a great example of using social proof. His hero copy and mailing list CTA clearly states how Ryan can help your business, and then dives into a masterclass of social proof.

On his homepage, Ryan uses several types of social proof:

• Raw quantity:Under the email capture form, Ryan shares the number of subscribers on his list.
• Where you’ve been featured: Below the site’s hero section, Ryan lists publications that have featured his work.
• Testimonials and quotes: Ryan uses quotes from well-known industry figures to show his experience and build trust with the audience.

9. I Will Teach Yout To Be Rich

I Will Teach You To Be Rich’s homepage focuses on driving visitors to take an “earning potential” quiz. This quiz is a goldmine for I Will Teach You To Be Rich — to take the quiz, every visitor has to enter their email address. This is the top way the company grows its email list.

The page’s main heading shares a question that visitors can uncover the answer to by taking the quiz. It then features some social proof and gives more information on what you’ll get from taking the quiz.

10. Basecamp

Basecamp’s homepage focuses on storytelling. Its main headline tells visitors what the product will help them achieve, and then it tells visitors a short story of life before and after Basecamp.

It also takes a unique approach to product screenshots by using annotations in a handwriting font.

11. IFTTT

IFTTT lets users connect apps and set triggers based on actions. Its homepage makes the product seem incredibly simple and shows visitors how it can work using clear examples.

It also uses plenty of white space and bright contrasting images to attract visitors’ attention and guide them through the page. On Medium, Pratik Hedge explains that white spaces can “help greatly in guiding the users through the page and prioritising the focus area for the user.”^[*]

12. Harvest

Harvest is a time tracking tool and its homepage features a unique, interactive list of user problems, including:

• I wish I knew how much my projects cost me.
• I wish I could track time from my favorite tools.
• I wish I had a better way to schedule projects.

When each statement is selected, Harvest shows visitors how it helps to solve that problem. This is a great way to show people exactly how your product can help them in their day-to-day work.

13. Amy Porterfield

Amy Porterfield’s homepage is one of the best we’ve seen on a personal website. The page opens up in the first person, with Amy telling visitors what she does and how she can help them. The CTA then directs people toward two lead magnets just below the about her section; this is a great way to capture leads.

As visitors scroll, they see social proof from the media outlets that have featured Amy and then a third person professional bio giving more information about Amy’s career and background.

14. ConvertKit

Like the Animalz homepage we featured earlier, ConvertKit takes visitors on a journey to show them how their product works.

The page also wraps up with three CTAs based on visitor needs:

• For beginners, it offers a free guide on email marketing (lead capture).
• If you’re looking to switch tools, it drives you toward the pricing page.
• For visitors interested in advanced features, it asks you to request a demo.

15. Ann Handley

Ann Handley is a renowned writer and marketer — this homepage gets that across loud and clear through the headline copy “Empowering Ridiculously Good Marketing” and the social proof showing some of the brands she has worked with.

If that isn’t enough for you, a little further down the page, Ann shares some of her achievements, including: “Wall Street Journal Best-Selling Author” and “Named 1 of 7 people shaping modern marketing.”

16. Janet Murray

Janet Murray is a marketer and podcaster. This homepage is great because it clearly outlines her specialty “building an engaged online audience” and gives visitors three clear steps to take on her site:

• Listen to the podcast
• Download a free guide
• Join the community

All these steps result in growing Janet’s audience across various mediums (podcast, email, Facebook) and lets visitors choose which option is the best fit for them.

5 Essential components of a great homepage

Okay, so we’ve reviewed some of the BEST homepages we’ve found online.

While selecting these 16 homepages, we viewed hundreds and hundreds of websites, and this process helped us to narrow down five key elements of a great homepage.

1. Clear CTAs

When someone visits your homepage, they are on a journey, and your homepage should help them progress to their destination.

Clear CTAs will help to show what to do next. You don’t want someone to land on your homepage and feel stuck. For example, Buffer features a ‘Get Started Now’ CTA in the hero section of its homepage:

When building your homepage, ensure the user journey is always top of mind and think about where they should be going next.

2. Branding

Every homepage should clearly show your company (or personal) branding. For most readers, this will mean your logo and brand colors. But also think carefully about brand fonts and try to use the same fonts across your website, emails, and social profiles.

A key part of building your brand is making it recognizable. Your homepage should be the best possible example of your brand in action.

3. Social proof

Almost every homepage we’ve discussed today has featured some form of social proof. And that’s not by accident.

Social proof is an incredibly powerful sales and lead generation tool. Here are a few examples of social proof in action:

Mailchimp uses a quote from a customer on its homepage:

But you don’t have to use quotes. For example, Sumo shows the number of sites using its tools:

And Slack uses a combination of customer case studies and logos of well-known customers:

4. Enticing copy

“What’s in it for me?”

When most visitors land on your homepage, they’ll be asking themselves some form of this question (maybe even subconsciously).

The hero copy on your homepage is key to making a connection with every visitor. You should clearly communicate what your website is about and who it’s for as soon as possible on your page.

For example, when you land on Slack’s homepage it clearly tells you exactly what it does: “Slack replaces email inside your company.”

If you want some tips on writing stand-out copy, check out the guide on Psychological Copy Triggers That Compel People To Buy.

5. Engaging images

Alongside your copy, you need engaging images on your homepage to give visitors a sense of what your business is about.

Images help to tell your story and show visitors what they can gain from your product. Even just seeing a picture of the person behind the website (in the case of a personal site) can help to build a connection.

Notice how all the personal websites we’ve featured today have an image of a person looking at us at the top of their homepage. From Ryan Robinson:

To Amy Porterfield:

(Also notice how Amy’s eyes are looking directly at the “Hey there” copy to drive our attention toward it.)

For a product website, think about how your images can convey the value of your product and quickly communicate how it will help your visitors to achieve their goals.

How will you improve your homepage?

Whether you’re looking for inspiration to build a new site, or looking to enhance your current homepage, this guide should have given you plenty to think about.

Remember: A homepage is rarely never fully finished. There’s always something you can A/B test and improve.

Open a new tab, load your website, and think about what you can improve. Focus on:

• Your CTAs (call to actions)
• Branding
• Social proof
• Copy
• Images

I bet you can spot at least three quick improvements you can make. Give it a try now.

What does it mean to have a successful business? The answers lie in the numbers.

Knowing how to quantify your idea of success is an essential part of every strategy. Whether you’re aiming to grow your own sales pipeline or help a client increase their email audience, you need to think carefully about what success looks like to you – because it’s not always clear-cut.

That tends to be because of the way many businesses measure different results interchangeably. For example, we might find ourselves guilty of mixing up key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics, and using them synonymously. (They’re…not the same?)

Thankfully, this is a quick fix.

Today, we’ll dive into KPIs vs metrics to examine their differences, as well as how both measurements can work together to help you grow your business.

Here’s what we’ll go over:

• What is a Metric?
• What is a KPI?
• What’s the Difference Between KPIs and Metrics?
• How KPIs and Metrics Work Together
• How to Measure KPIs and Metrics

Let’s get started.

What is a Metric?

In business-speak: A metric is a quantifiable measure used to track the progress and success of a certain area of your business.

In non-business-speak: A metric lets you know how you’re doing in numbers.

A metric will help you understand the performance of whatever task you’re measuring. For example, a sales team might focus on the number of new prospect conversations it has each week. And that number — e.g. 10 new prospect conversations last week – is a metric.

The metrics that matter may vary across departments within your business. Outside of sales, a marketing team might care about:

• Email open rates: The number of subscribers that open the emails you send them
• New signups: The number of new customers using your business over a given time frame
• Website traffic: How many people visit your website in a given time frame

The finance department might focus more on metrics like:

• Monthly expenses: The amount of money spent to keep the business running each month
• Cash balance: The amount of cash the business has in the bank
• Revenue growth: The percentage at which revenue is growing month-to-month

Metrics are often measured relative to other time periods – they’re pretty hard to quantify on their own. For example, generating 5,000 website visits in April might sound great…unless you had 10,000 in March. Then something’s definitely not right.

Why Metrics Matter

Metrics enable departments to analyze the success of their day-to-day work.

So if I work on SEO at a software company, I can measure my success through a metric like organic search traffic to our marketing website. Or if I work in sales, I could use the number of deals closed per week as my metric for success.

Metrics give each member of your team a sole focus to work towards. They help keep everyone accountable and in the loop on what they need to achieve. Without metrics, teams might lose track of where to expend their efforts.

As a member of the marketing team at Buffer, I owned one metric for the longest time: website traffic. My goal was to grow that metric. By defining that goal early on, I was able to focus my time and energy on work that would move that metric in the right direction.

Examples Of Metrics

Here are 10 examples of metrics business owners and marketers can measure:

Business metrics:

• Sales revenue: All the income from clients/product sales, minus the cost associated with delivering your work (or product)
• Employee happiness: How satisfied each member of your team is with life at work and career growth
• Revenue growth: How much your revenue has gone up (or down), measured month-to-month or year-to-year
• Net profit margin: Monthly revenue minus all business costs
• Customer retention: The percentage of your customers that don’t churn each month

Marketing metrics:

• Website traffic: How many people visit your marketing website each week/month
• Conversion rate: The percentage of website visitors that take a desired action (sign up, start a trial, join your email list, etc.)
• Email open rate: The percentage of your email subscribers that open your emails
• New trial starts: The number of people that start a trial of your product
• Articles published: The number of articles published to your blog each month

What Is A KPI?

A key performance indicator (KPI) is a measure that tells you how well your business is progressing towards one of its most important objectives. However, a KPI is not the objective itself.

Let’s unpack that quickly…

A company objective might be to increase revenue by 15% each month. A KPI will help you to measure whether or not you’re on track to reach that objective. For example, you might set a KPI of 1,000 new product trials per month to help you work towards the overall company objective.

KPIs are a great way to signify what really matters to your business at a given time. KPIs get the whole team pulling in one direction towards a common goal. They help teams and individuals prioritize their workload and direct their efforts towards projects that will impact key objectives.

A KPI will often depend on the performance of multiple people and teams too, whereas metrics tend to be owned by one person or team.

For example, let’s say a software company has a KPI of “increasing new trial starts by 20% in Q2.” In order to achieve this, multiple teams will need to work together:

• Marketing might focus on growing website traffic
• Product might focus on shipping new and valuable features
• Finance might look at creating an offer to entice conversions

All of this work combined will help the business achieve its KPI.

Why KPIs Matter

KPIs are essentially a tool to ensure that the most important objectives are always the top priority across the team. When you know what your KPIs are, you can manage workloads accordingly and ensure everyone is tackling projects that contribute to your key objectives.

By using KPIs, businesses can also uncover weak spots and opportunities for growth. If we keep the focus on the KPI of “increasing new trial starts by 20% in Q2,” measuring the data points and metrics associated with this KPI can help you spot opportunities to improve.

Let’s imagine that your website traffic is growing, but trial starts aren’t increasing. In that case, you might want to look into:

1. The quality of your traffic and what sources lead to the most trials
2. Your website CTAs and copy

By looking at each of these aspects as part of an overall KPI, you can begin to figure out what’s working and what’s not.

Example KPIs

Here are 10 examples of KPIs business owners and marketers can measure:

(Note: a KPI should have a target — usually a percentage or number growth.)

Business KPIs:

• Percentage of month-to-month revenue growth
• Percentage of employee retention year-to-year
• Percentage increase in average order value
• Number of projects completed on time
• Net profit margin increase

Marketing KPIs:

• Number of relevant keywords in the top 5 search engine results
• Number of new leads/prospects monthly
• Percentage reduction in customer acquisition cost from Instagram ads
• Number of press mentions
• Percentage of click-thru rate from homepage to pricing page

You might notice that the example KPIs aren’t too different from the example metrics I shared earlier. Again, this is why the two terms are so easy to mix up.

Which brings us to our next question…

What’s The Difference Between KPIs And Metrics?

Metrics measure the performance of different areas of your business. On the other hand, KPIs measure the performance of the metrics that are most important to your overall business objectives.

With a metric, you’re measuring the impact of day-to-day work in a specific area of your business. For example, an email marketer will measure open rates as a metric. But that metric might not be a key performance indicator.

With a KPI, you’re also looking for some movement or action — in other words, what’s the key thing you want to happen to this metric? (It’s usually an increase or a decrease). A metric is simply a measure of something, whereas a KPI is what you need to happen to that metric to bring you closer to achieving your business objectives.

How KPIs and Metrics Work Together

Okay, so we’ve established that KPIs and metrics are different things. But that doesn’t mean they don’t overlap… and this is where much of the confusion between the two terms occurs.

A number of metrics will impact the overall success of each KPI your business has. By measuring a number of metrics related to each KPI, you’ll start to see what’s contributed to either achieving your KPI or missing the target.

Let’s keep running with the example from above: A software company has a KPI of “increasing new trial starts by 20% in Q2.”

Within this KPI, multiple metrics matter, including:

• Traffic: The number of people arriving on landing/sales pages
• Conversion rate: The number of people who visit your landing/sales pages, and then go on to start trials

How To Measure KPIs and Metrics

Measurement is essential for both KPIs and metrics.

When you’re deciding on which KPIs and metrics you track, make sure you have a single, trustworthy source to gather accurate data from.

In some cases, this might mean manually tracking a category yourself – e.g. the number of blog posts you publish each month. Or if you’re measuring traffic, signups, or conversions, you might be able to use Google Analytics or another analytics service.

Whatever your KPIs and metrics, confirm that you have a way to measure them in place before you commit to them. Once you’ve decided on your business metrics and KPIs, be sure to check out the latest deals on AppSumo to uncover tools that’ll help you automate data analytics, hit your targets and track conversions.

I hope this article has helped clear up the differences between KPIs and metrics for you.

However slight the differences, they can have a big impact on the way your business structures its goals and works towards objectives.

Till next time, Sumo-lings!

I saw a tweet about a freelance social media marketing role, applied, and jumped headfirst into the world of freelance marketing.

Within about 12 months, I was making nearly double what I’d earned in my full-time job. It was one of the best decisions I ever made.

And whatever your situation —

• Looking to retrain or learn new skills
• Keen on becoming your own boss
• Wanting to earn a bit of money on the side of your full-time job

— becoming a freelance marketer can help.

But getting started can feel daunting. You’re worried about:

• Picking up clients
• Paying the bills
• Whether you have the skills to make it work

In this post, we’ll address these concerns and more.

Once you’ve read the 10 steps below, you’ll have a complete roadmap to guide you toward the freelance marketing career you dream of.

1. Work out your niche

Marketing is a large field, covering a wide range of roles:

• Social media marketing
• SEO
• Paid acquisition
• Conversion rate optimization
• Email marketing
• Product marketing

And when businesses look for a freelance marketer, they’re usually looking for a specialist to help them with a particular challenge:

• Needing more traffic (SEO)
• Increasing conversions (copywriter)
• Improving open rates (email specialist)

You can even go deeper with your specialties. For example, if you’re a copywriter, you could specialize in:

• Copywriting for email
• Copywriting for SaaS companies
• Copywriting for ecommerce product pages

The more specific you are, the better you can sell yourself and stand out from any potential competition.

For example, my first niche was social media community management in the sports industry. My first few freelance roles were helping successful social media agencies that had just landed a sporting client and needed someone to plan content and manage that account.

So how do you find your niche?

The simplest way is to look at:

• What you’re great at doing: As a freelancer, you need to generate results, so choosing a niche you’re an expert in is essential
• What you’re passionate about: If you’re building your career around this skill or market sector (for me it was initially sports), you need to be really passionate about that area; otherwise, you’re just building a career you won’t enjoy.

For example:

• An SEO specializing in ecommerce
• An email marker focused on B2B
• A social media marketer in the sports sector
• You might not always find clients that match your goals perfectly, but knowing what you’re aiming for helps you to ensure you’re moving toward your ideal freelance marketing career.

2. Freelance outside of your day job

Once you know your niche, it’s time to start thinking about moving to freelancing.

One of the best ways to get started with freelance marketing is to look for roles you can take on outside of your day job.

This approach has a number of benefits:

• It gives you a chance to learn the ropes of freelancing and decide if it’s something you actually want to do.
• Lets you build up some extra income, so you have a little security before making the jump into full-time freelancing.
• Enables you to start building a portfolio of work to show future potential clients and help you to land new projects.

Most freelance roles aren’t full time, so if you can scrape together a few hours of focus time during evenings or weekends, you have plenty of chances to start freelancing while working a full-time job.

The freelance life isn’t for everyone; starting part time lets you dip your toes in the water before you jump in full time.

3. How to find freelance work

So where do you actually find freelance work?

One of the biggest blockers to going freelance is finding the work opportunities — if you’ve always been employed, it can be quite an adjustment to figure out how to land independent work.

Thankfully, there are numerous ways you can uncover projects and leads. Here are a few:

LinkedIn

Use the LinkedIn job search feature. Type in your desired role in the search bar, such as social media marketer or email marketer. On the results, filter to only show Temporary, Contract and Part-time jobs:

This will show you freelance roles that match your search:

Niche job boards

Almost every niche within marketing — SEO, copywriting, content, etc. — will have its own job board.

For example, as a writer, you could check out the ProBlogger job board to uncover freelance opportunities.

To find these boards for any niche, head to Google and search for keywords related to your field, such as:

• Freelance SEO job board
• Freelance SEO jobs

It might take a little searching, but you’ll be sure to uncover something like ProBlogger’s board for every aspect of marketing.

Use your network

Send out tweets and updates to LinkedIn about looking for freelance work. If you can, reach out to clients you’ve worked with in the past.

Pro Tip: Recruiters and businesses that need freelance support will often tweet about their needs. When I was freelancing, I would spend 15-30 minutes daily searching Twitter for opportunities. Simply search Twitter for “freelance [desired role]” and you might spot some neat projects.

You can also try searches using “hire” or “hiring” to find tweets that contain phrases like “I’m hiring” or “looking to hire”.

This also works really well on LinkedIn. Type your keywords into the search bar and ensure you filter by ‘Content’ once the results show up:

You’ll have to filter through a lot of tweets and LinkedIn posts with this approach, but it can be a worthwhile pursuit. I landed a client I worked with for 2+ years through a Twitter search.

4. Work out your ideal rates

For me, this was one of the most difficult parts of freelancing.

When you’re just starting out, it’s hard to know what to charge — especially if you’re coming from full-time work and a salary.

Typically, freelance work is paid in three ways:

1. Day/hour rate: A set rate of pay for each day or hour you work for the client. These might not be full days (e.g., I spend Monday working for X Company) and could be that you spend eight hours (one day of work time) working for a certain client over three days.
2. Project fee:With this approach, you agree to a set fee with your client to deliver a project (maybe a social media strategy or rewriting a set of marketing emails).
3. Retainer: A retainer is a set amount you’re paid monthly for completing ongoing work (like writing blog posts or managing a social ads account).

But how do you decide what to charge?

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach, unfortunately. But here are a couple of ways to figure out what you should be charging:

• Your desired income: If you want to make $50,000 per year, work out how much you need to charge per day to achieve that. To do this, divide your figure (50,000) by the number of weeks in the year (52). Now you have the amount you need to make per week ($961). Take this number and divide it by the number of working days in the week (5) and you’re left with your day rate of $192.

Note: You probably won’t have work every day and you’ll have added expenses like accounting, marketing, equipment, and software. You could nudge the day rate up by 20-30% to ensure you reach your desired income after expenses and days you’re not fully booked.

• Industry averages: Head to Google and search for what others in your industry are charging for those services. For example, searching “freelance copywriter rates” will help you to find out what others charge. It’s also worth checking Glassdoor to see what other freelancers in your niche bring home. ^[*]

Once you have your day rate, you can work out what you should charge per project or on a retainer based on the number of days you’ll need to complete the work. For example, on a day rate of $250:

• You’d charge $1,500 for a project you estimate will take six days
• You’d set a retainer of $2,000/month for work that’ll take you eight days per month.

In the early days, you’ll probably undervalue yourself — I think everyone does. And it can be daunting to ask for your full-day rate. But don’t get down if you have to negotiate. Some jobs will pay less than your average day rate and others will go much higher.

5. Deliver on time

Delivering on time is a MUST for freelancers. And it’s also the best way to land repeat work.

Simply delivering your work by the deadline will set you apart from many freelancers.

Hitting deadlines shows your clients you value their time and their organization. As a freelancer, you’re often filling in a blank space as part of a larger project —

• Writing copy for a website redesign
• Creating an SEO strategy for a content team
• Developing a content calendar for the social media manager

— and by delivering on time, you’re ensuring the larger project is running on time (and to budget).

When estimating workloads, you’ll get better as you take on more projects. But I tend to think of each project in terms of the number of days it will take me to complete. This helps with both budgeting and setting realistic deadlines.

If you want to take it a step further, you can also use a time tracking tool to ensure your workload estimates are accurate.

To deliver on time, you also need to ensure you’re spending your time productively, which leads nicely onto our next tip.

6. Create healthy routines

Often, freelance work will be remote (meaning you don’t have to commute to an office). This can be great, but it can also create challenges.

When you’re working full time, your routine is largely set for you; when you’re freelancing, your time is your own.

And it can be easy to fall into bad habits.

That one morning of telling yourself, “I’ll just stay in bed a little longer this morning” can quickly turn into pulling all-nighters to meet deadlines because you’ve wasted your mornings.

When you start freelancing full time, you need to carefully plan out your days to ensure you form productive and healthy habits.

If you know you work best in the morning, schedule time for daily deep work sessions as soon as you get to your desk. Likewise, if you’re a night owl, build your schedule around that.

As this post from Double Your Freelancing mentions:

Saying you’ll complete a piece of client work “later” or work on landing new clients “next week” won’t get the actual work done. For every task, create a process and schedule time to do the work.

7. Learn your local tax rules

Not thinking about taxes is one of the biggest mistakes many freelancers make.

As an employee, most of the time your taxes are paid for by your employer and are deducted from your payslip before the money reaches your bank account.

However, as a freelancer, taxes are your responsibility and you need to start thinking about it from day one — you don’t want an unexpected tax bill arriving that you don’t have the money to pay.

As soon as you start freelancing — whether it’s full-time or part-time — learn your local tax laws and make sure you understand:

• How to pay your taxes
• When you need to pay your taxes
• How much of your income you need to put aside to pay taxes

Knowing these things will help ensure you have enough money put aside to cover any taxes you owe and ensure you never get caught out by an unexpected bill.

8. Save for a rainy day

Every freelance marketer will have ups and downs. So it’s essential to think about how you’ll continue to move forward (and pay your bills) if you have a few months without much income.

If you’re freelancing on the side of your 9-5, try putting aside any income you make to form an emergency fund before you make the jump to full-time freelancing. This will enable you to survive a few quiet months.

Once you’re freelancing full time, decide on a percentage of your income to put aside to cover you in slower periods and holidays (as you don’t get paid leave when you’re self-employed).

The way I approached it was to think of my emergency fund as another tax. Every time I’d get paid by a client I would:

• Put aside 20% to cover my yearly tax bill
• Deduct another 20% to put into my emergency fund

You could also decide on a target figure for your emergency fund. Say 6-9 months of expenses, and once you hit that number in savings, you can stop deducting it from your income.

9. Don’t be afraid to outsource some tasks

Remember: You’re a freelance marketer — you’re not a designer, accountant, video editor, data scientist, etc.

It can be easy to fall into the trap of trying to do everything yourself.

For me, getting an accountant was an AMAZING move. I wasn’t sure I could afford it at first, but hiring an expert enabled me to focus only on doing great work and delivering for my clients, and gave me peace of mind that my finances and taxes were in order. This was invaluable.

It can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking you have to do everything. But once you’ve found your feet with freelancing begin to think about tasks you could outsource to give yourself more productive time to increase your income.

10. Expand your knowledge

As you progress through your freelance career, you might want to broaden the scope of your work and begin to expand the services you offer.

One great framework to use for this could be Buffer’s T-Shaped marketer approach. ^[*]

As Buffer’s VP of marketing, Kevan Lee explains:

“Generally speaking, everyone on the Buffer marketing team will have all the base knowledge and marketing foundation skills listed in the diagram; plus, each teammate will have chosen at least one main channel in which they are an expert.”

The below diagram for a content marketer might help:

In the above example, a content marketer will have great knowledge of all things content marketing and SEO. But they know enough of the basics of email marketing to feel comfortable jumping into an email tool and setting up a new campaign.

As you expand your knowledge, think about this framework and which channels you could choose to go deeper on. As an example, you might see the rise of podcasting and decide to level up your knowledge of multimedia.

Are you ready to start freelancing?

As I mentioned, freelancing was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made…

But it was also very challenging.

Hopefully, this guide has given you everything you need to take the first steps in becoming a freelance marketer and building your dream career.

My parting advice would be to take action. If you want to become a freelancer, start at point 1 — Work Out Your Niche — and then jump into point 2 — Freelance Outside of Your Day Job.

These first two steps will set you on your way… and then 3 through 10 will help you to level up your business.

Start today.

“Do giveaways actually work?”

For many people, giveaways are a new and different marketing tactic.

Everyone knows about SEO, online advertising, and social media.

Those marketing channels are familiar… while giveaways are a hidden marketing gem most people don’t know about. 

Here are just a few examples of how giveaways can lead to insane results for you:

• 30% of AppSumo’s revenue for years came from giveaways. This is how AppSumo bootstrapped their business to an 8-figure company. Giveaways were the best ROI in all of the early AppSumo marketing strategies.
• When you’re launching a new product, giveaways can help you get new customers: Ryan Holiday ran a giveaway last month and got 6,144 subs in two weeks.
• Over the past few years, giveaways have helped grow Noah Kagan’s personal email list by 52,919 email subscribers.

Giveaways are one of the BEST ways to grow your business and brand for nothing.

And in this post, I’m going to share three misconceptions about giveaways.

You’ll learn how giveaways can really grow your customer base, email subscribers, followers, and more — backed by data to prove it’s true. 

Let’s get it on…

RUN A GIVEAWAY USING KINGSUMO

Misconception 1: Giveaways result in bad subscribers

It depends. Here are steps you can take to prevent that to happen.

1. Picking the right prizes

Any marketing channel can lead to bad subscribers or customers if you set up the wrong targeting.

Just like targeting your Facebook Ads or Google SEO keyword strategy correctly, targeting is important with giveaways too.

To make an uber-successful giveaway, choose a narrow product your IDEAL customer wants.

For example:

• Noah Kagan’s audience is interested in travel and entrepreneurship, so he created an Ultimate Traveler giveaway that generated 23,127 entries.
• Ryan Holiday ran a book giveaway for 10 copies of his signed book. This generated 6,145 entries — that’s 6,145 people Ryan can also sell to in the future…
• A California surf company is running a giveaway for a new surfboard and accessories. All entrants in this giveaway are super targeted for their niche audience.

Focus your giveaway on your niche or target market — like Facebook ads, when your targeting is too broad, you get bad results.

For example, if you give away an Amazon gift card or iPad, that may be too broad.

But when you focus specifically on what your audience might WANT or NEED, you can build a list of perfect subscribers for your business and drive incredible ROI from giveaways.

2. Keeping a healthy mailing list

Some people think giveaways “destroy” email lists.

Not true.

When you use proper email list cleaning techniques, your reputation won’t be damaged at all.

The team at AppSumo has grown an 8-figure business from giveaways. And so has Sumo.

Here are 3 strategies to keep your list clean:

• ONLY add confirmed entries. Many giveaway tools will tell you if a user is a confirmed entry or not. To confirm an entry, the entrant needs to click the confirmation link in the giveaway confirmation email. In many giveaway backends, you can easily delete anyone who isn’t confirmed — and only add the people who are confirmed.For example, here’s the people we would keep vs. delete from a recent KingSumo giveaway…
• Enable double opt-in. With every email service provider (like MailChimp), you can enable double opt-in. Similar to a giveaway confirmation email, the double opt-in email from your email service provider is an extra measure to make sure people want your emails.If you set up double opt-in and they don’t click to confirm their email address with your email service provider, they’re not added to your list
• Clean inactives. To make sure your email list is super clean and your deliverability never suffers, we recommend removing anyone who hasn’t opened or clicked an email in six months. After six months, old inactive emails can become spam traps. Keep your list clean!

Misconception 2: You need a huge audience to have a successful giveaway

It can be easy to see some of the big names using KingSumo and think, “it’s easy for Noah or Ryan Holiday because they have a big audience.”

It helps… but you can still run an ultra-successful giveaway with a small audience.

For example, a small notebook manufacturer you probably never heard of called imStone ran a giveaway that got 3,370 entrants (aka new email subscribers)!

If you want to run a giveaway but don’t have a big audience, here are 3 FREE things you can do to get entries right now:

1. Start by using KingSumo. KingSumo is our free giveaway tool that enables you to create and promote your giveaway. Once you have your prizes in place, KingSumo will help you get your giveaway up and running in minutes.
2. Share your giveaway across social media platforms. Your own followers are low-hanging fruit for your giveaways. Share your giveaway with your existing audiences on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.Once you’ve shared it with your own audiences, try looking for some additional places to promote your giveaway. For example, Sam Jeffries shared his giveaway in a few Facebook Groups focused on his core audience.
   It’s also worth scanning Reddit and submitting your giveaway on a subreddit like /r/giveaways (or another subreddit that has a lot of your audience)
3. Collaborate with people you admire to give away a package prize — and cross-promote. If you’re running a giveaway with no existing audience, ask other people to give you their products for free if you promise to link them in the giveaway and mention them on social

Many times, this is all they need to help promote your giveaway to their audience!

A recent KingSumo user was able to launch a successful giveaway using this tip… and got in front of thousands of new people because of it.

Here’s the email he sent to potential partners…

To find partners for your giveaway, follow the below steps:

Step 1. Identify potential partners

First, brainstorm businesses that share the same audience as you.

If you’re stuck for ideas, head over to a tool like Moz and search for key terms and phrases related to your business (Moz gives you a few free searches per day).

The results will help you identify potential partners who are talking about your niche.

For example, say you were running a giveaway aimed at developers and engineers. You could search for “cool computer gifts’ and Moz would show you the pages ranking highest for those keywords.

Step 2. Find contact details

Once you have a list of relevant products and companies that you could partner, it’s time to find their email addresses so you can get in touch.

You can Google around or use a tool like Hunter to save time.

All you need to do is enter the company name and Hunter will show you the email addresses of people at that company (you can even search for specific people).

Step 3. Reach out

Now that you have the contact details of everyone on your list of potential partners, it’s time to drop them a message.

Here’s a neat template you can use (this exact template helped Sam Jefferies land partners for his giveaway):

If you have some budget to invest in giveaways, you can boost your entrants even more by using these three additional paid smart strategies:

1. Use retargeting ads to people who have already entered your giveaway and encourage them to invite their friends to the giveaway for more chances to win
2. Keep in regular contact with entrants throughout the duration of your giveaway and remind them when the giveaway ends and how to enhance their chances of winning
   
3. Promote the giveaway on your website using a Smart Bar to spread awareness of the giveaway and encourage entries.

Misconception 3: You need a BIG prize

When some people think about “giveaways” they think BIG.

Like NBA halftime show giveaway BIG…

“Win a new car”

“Win $10,000”

“Win a 5-star, luxury Caribbean holiday all expenses paid”

These prizes might sound great… but they’re often unnecessary.

For example, Noah Kagan recently generated 6,411 email subscribers by giving away a Seth Godin books collection that cost about $80.

When you break the numbers down, this campaign costs just $0.01 per lead!

In other words, it was WAY less expensive than other marketing methods.

Aim to provide prizes that appeal ONLY to your specific niche.

For example, a book company ran a “Walking Dead Super Fan” giveaway and generated 2,236 entrants.

The more your prize appeals to your audience, the more likely your giveaway will spread virally and through word of mouth, too.

Instead of focusing on a BIG prize, think about how you can offer prizes that will:

1. Solve problems for your target audience
2. Help your target audience to learn
3. Encourage your target audience to take the next steps towards their goals

RUN A GIVEAWAY USING KINGSUMO

Bottom-line: Giveaways work to get you more email subscribers and customers.

You can…

1. Get quality subscribers and customers by picking the right prizes and keeping a healthy mailing list
2. Launch to a small list of people and still get tons of potential customers. Share your giveaway across social media and collaborate with people you admire
3. Use a small niche prize to generate TONS of leads for minimal cost — that’s how Noah Kagan generated leads for $0.01! 

Get more advice on how to run an amazing giveaway: “How to Make a Giveaway for Free in Under 5 Minutes.”

A social media contest or giveaway could be the perfect solution for you. Here’s why a giveaway can help:

• Grow your social media following. Get more Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter followers… automatically!
• Increase your email list. More email list subscribers means more potential customers for your product
• Drive more revenue. Get more eyeballs on your products, websites, or services!

And much more…

Don’t just take our word for it, though. Recently, we generated 6,144 emails subscribers with one simple giveaway:

Often, the hesitation for social media influencers and business owners is simple…

“How do I actually run a social media contest or giveaway?”

We’re here to help.

In this post, you’ll learn 4 steps to run a successful social media contest or giveaway.

Plus, we’ll share social media contest examples, creative social media contests, and more to get you going.

Let’s get started…

4 steps to a successful social media contest

1. Set an objective

How will you judge the success of your social media contest? It could be…

• New social media followers
• New product sales
• More email subscribers

There are a ton of reasons you might want to run a giveaway contest. Start by defining the “success” metric so you can stay focused.

If you don’t know what you’re contest objective is, how will you know if it’s been successful?

When it comes to think about the real, tangible value success will bring to your company.

2. Choose a prize that rocks

Psst. Want to know a secret?

…social media contests and giveaways often fail because their prizes suck:

• They’re too generic (“win an iPad!”)
• They don’t excite the audience (“get this FREE lame little pin!”)
• No one cares enough to enter (“here’s this tiny thing you don’t care about!”)

Want your social media contest to smash your targets?

Find a prize (or prizes) that your niche is super excited about.

For example, here are some social media contest statistics that show just how powerful giveaway contests can be…

We were able to get 6,411 entries from a book giveaway that cost about $60!

Imagine if you had 6,411 engaged social followers on your Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. That’s worth $60!

Why did this work? Simple:

1. Our audience is interested in business and marketing
2. Seth Godin’s books are incredibly well resected in this niche
3. Entrants know these books (the prize) will help them toward their goals

What does YOUR audience like?

Here are some prize ideas to get you started:

• Product from your business or niche
• Consulting call (you can share your tips on something you’re good at)
• Books that your followers would like

Sometimes, you can even get products for free!

To REALLY make your giveaway successful, partners can help by providing prizes and promoting your giveaway.

If you promise to tag them or mention them in your promotion, sometimes they’ll reciprocate by emailing their list and sharing with their audience across social media.

To get started, come up with a list of 10-15 potential partners and drop them an email about getting involved.

Here’s an example from Julien Marion who used giveaways to grow an email list:

Often, the most successful social media contests have prizes that appeal to the lifestyle and passions of your audience.

Once you have your prize (or prizes) in the bag, it’s time to get this show on the road…

3. Set up your contest

“How do I actually set up a social media contest?”

You might think this is the hardest step. But, it’s actually really easy…

There’s a free social media contest platform called KingSumo to help you set up your giveaway in minutes.

When creating together your giveaway:

1. Give it a short, snappy title headline
2. Create some high-quality images/visuals to showcase the prize(s)
3. Write a solid description to help people understand why they want to win

Here’s a great contest landing page example:

Pro tip: Keep your giveaway contest length short — don’t keep your entrants waiting to know if they’ve won.

This is SUPER important and overlooked by many giveaways.

There’s no magic contest length, but I’d say you want to be aiming for anything between 1-2 weeks to give you time to promote your contest and get enough entries in.

You could even experiment with “flash” giveaways lasting just a day or two.

Anything longer, and people lose interest or forget.

4. Promote your contest

Now you’re ready to go. Your contest is all set up, but how will you get entries?

Here are a few ways to promote your contest:

1. Offer bonus entries for social shares: This is an awesome way to boost entrants and it’s even baked right into KingSumo, making it super easy to reward people who share your contest with more chances to win.This is also how you grow your social media following! Give bonus entries if people follow you on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter
2. Message your lists: If you already have an email list, a Slack community, or even a bunch of subscribers on Facebook Messenger, send a message out about your contest. Here’s an example message promoting a contest:
3. Promote on social media: Your followers on social media are highly likely to be interested in your giveaway, so sharing it to your social channels is a no-brainer.But if you want to reach new audiences, try sharing in Facebook Groups, using new hashtags on Twitter and Instagram. or even finding relevant subreddits to post. Top tip: always make your posts relevant to each audience, just like Sam Jeffries:

Pro tip: Check each social network for any guidelines on how you can promote giveaways on their channels. For example, “share to win” contests are no longer allowed by Facebook.

Ready to launch an awesome social media contest?

So there we have it, how to launch a social media contest in just 4 simple steps:

1. Set an objective
2. Choose prize(s)
3. Set up your contest
4. Promote your contest

And before we leave, here’s one more bonus tip…

BONUS: Ensure everyone’s a winner

Once your social media contest or giveaway is over, announce the winners as soon as possible.

To make even the non-winners happy, the trick is to provide all entrants with something that makes them feel special. This could be:

• Free download (content upgrade, eBook, or more)
• Discount code
• The chance to be entered into the next giveaway for free

For example, in one of our recent giveaways, everyone who entered received a bunch of discount codes just for entering — this way, no one leaves empty handed.

And it drove a TON of sales!

Ready to launch your own social media contest giveaway?

Take the steps outline in this giveaway, and use the free social media contest platform KingSumo to get started!