Welcome to Creator Columns, where we bring expert HubSpot Creator voices to the Blogs that inspire and help you grow better. In the early 2000s, communications professor Bob Hornik wanted to see if anti-drug ads worked. At the time, most ads used shock and fear tactics to persuade kids. Bob gathered data on thousands of teenagers. He tracked … Read more
Automattic announced that Matt Mullenweg is terminating 16% of Automattic employees, citing the need to increase productivity and the capacity to invest. The company is currently in a period of growth and profitability, six months after more than 8% of employees resigned. The announcement explains: “We have reached an important crossroads. While our revenue continues … Read more
Consistency is crucial when posting content to ensure your customers remain engaged with your business and its products. To maintain consistency, it’s essential to develop a structured posting schedule aligned with your company’s marketing objectives for optimal results. Our content plan is designed to support this process. But, what exactly does a content plan need? … Read more
Whenever I ask any marketer or copywriting expert about their writing process, I find there’s no specific process they follow and few copywriting templates to guide them. While this is partly due to natural variation in everyone’s creative process, copywriting best practices vary based on your audience, purpose, and format — not to mention year, … Read more
Micro conversions are among the most misunderstood – and underutilized – tools in a PPC marketer’s toolkit. While they don’t represent final goals like sales or leads, they can provide critical signals that improve campaign performance, inform audience strategy, and enable smarter automation. Here’s what marketers need to know to harness micro conversions effectively. What … Read more
To crack down on misinformation in content and enforce quality guidelines, Google came up with the concept of experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, or E-E-A-T (previously E-A-T). This emerged out of their Search Quality Rater Guidelines, which emphasize the importance of providing users with reliable, valuable, and accurate information and a great website experience. If you give users what … Read more
Right now, YouTube marketing has become even more important with all the changes happening in the current digital landscape. What is also important is keeping up with trends and strategies to ensure your marketing stays fresh. As I said in a previous article, “I learned a long time ago that the video sharing site changes … Read more
Garry Tan, President and CEO of Y Combinator, interviewed Tony Xu, co-founder of DoorDash, in a conversation that revealed useful insights on how to research a niche before building a business around it, the wisdom of understanding pain points and why following competitors is not always the best path for long-term success. Building a strong … Read more
Garry Tan, President and CEO of Y Combinator, interviewed Tony Xu, co-founder of DoorDash, in a conversation that revealed useful insights on how to choose a niche, what it takes for an entrepreneur to succeed in a crowded and competitive field, and how DoorDash built long-lasting brand signals that can benefit any business in today’s … Read more
My personal social media is full of four main things: family, friends, food, and UGC. And as I type this, I hear the former saying, “Uh, what is UGC?” For over a decade, I’ve been creating social media content for brands, usually in exchange for complimentary products, ranging from skincare and makeup to spicy snacks … Read more
At the recent Search Central Live NYC event, Danny Sullivan discussed what happens when a site begins publishing vastly different content on a site and how that may affect rankings, introducing the concept of a mini-site as a metaphor for dividing the reputation of a site. He also discussed the concept of negative authorship authority, … Read more
Site migration issues happen. You plan, create a staging site, and then when the site goes live, there’s bound to be something wrong. Quality assurance gets thrust into overdrive the moment that migrations are complete. You sift through thousands of pages, metadata, and more to fix any problems before someone else notices. It’s a lot … Read more
Social media offers a valuable channel for businesses to connect with their prospects and current customers. A whopping 63.9% of the world’s population spends time on social media. Yet, social has also become an increasingly difficult forum to stand out in as more businesses continue to seek to capitalize on the opportunity that awaits. The … Read more
Google’s Danny Sullivan discussed what happens when a website begins publishing content on a topic that’s different from the one in which it had gained a sitewide reputation. His comments were made at Search Central Live NYC, as part of a wide-ranging discussion about site reputation. Danny said that introducing a new topic to a … Read more
The AI model races are heating up. Right on the heels of DeepSeek-R1’s release, the industry is reeling from yet another powerful AI model hitting the market. I test drove the latest iteration of Alibaba’s Qwen models — Qwen 2.5. In this post, I’ll break down what Qwen 2.5 is, how you can use it, … Read more
YouTube has announced three new features in its ‘Inspiration’ suite for creators. These tools use AI to generate fresh ideas that can help keep viewers watching. The new hook generator is the most eye-catching tool, which offers suggestions for engaging video openings. Below, I’ll break down the new features and explain how they can improve … Read more
When actor Tom Holland made the late-night rounds last October to talk about his new company, BERO Brewing, he said that he’d “find myself in these boardrooms” surrounded by experts spouting unfamiliar terms. The once and future Spider-Man told Seth Meyers, “thank God I found acting,” because it took “every bit of acting chops I’ve … Read more
Google’s John Mueller and Danny Sullivan discussed why AI generated content is problematic, citing the newly updated quality rater guideline and sharing examples of how AI can be used in a positive way that has added value. Danny Sullivan, known as Google Search Liaison, spoke about the topic in more detail, providing an example of … Read more
