Netflix Removes a Designated Survivor Episode in Turkey

Netflix has removed an episode of Designated Survivor from its platform in Turkey, in compliance with local law. Turkey’s censor board, the Radio and Television Supreme Council, had objected to the depiction of a fictitious Turkish president.

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Amazon Warns Coronavirus Expenses Could Make It Post First Quarterly Loss in Five Years

Amazon.com on Thursday said it could post its first quarterly loss in five years even as revenue surges because it is spending at least $4 billion in response to the coronavirus pandemic, including plans to test its workforce for COVID-19.

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Jio Unveils JioMeet Video Conferencing Platform to take on Zoom, Google Meet

Jio parent Reliance Industries Limited revealed its plans to launch the JioMeet platform while announcing its quarterly earnings for the fourth quarter on Thursday evening.

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11 Sample Business Plans to Help You Write Your Own

Ask any successful sports coach how they win so many games, and they’ll tell you they have a unique plan for every single game they coach. To have a fighting chance against any of their opponents, they need to prepare a specific game plan tailored to each of their opponents’ strengths and weaknesses. Otherwise, they’ll get crushed.

The same logic applies to business. If you want to build a thriving company that can pull ahead of the competition, you need to prepare yourself for battle before you break into a market. Because companies who can find gaps in your business model will quickly learn how to fill those gaps and solve your customers’ problems better than you can.

The business world moves fast, and it’s full of ambitious companies scrambling to gain the majority of their industry’s market share. So how do you keep up? Writing a viable business plan and following it religiously is one of the most important first steps.

Business plans guide you along the rocky journey of growing a company. Referencing one throughout your voyage will keep you on the path toward success. And if your business plan is compelling enough, it can also convince investors to give you funding.

But how do you actually write a viable and convincing business plan?

Below, let's review the format of a business plan and sample business plans you can use to inspire your own.

Business Plan Format

Before you get started on your business plan, you might be wondering, "Where do I start? How should I format this?"

Typically, a business plan is a document that will detail how a company will achieve its goals.

Most business plans include the following sections:

• Executive summary: This section will include an overview of the company, your unique value proposition, and a team overview.
• Market opportunity: This is where you'll detail the opportunity in the market. Where is the gap in the current industry and how will your product fill that gap?
• Key features and benefits: At some point in your business plan, you'll review the key features and benefits of your products and/or services.
• Pricing and revenue: This is where you'll discuss your cost structure and various revenue streams.
• Target audience: This section will describe who your customer segments are in detail. What is the demographic and psychographic information of your audience?
• Marketing strategy: Here, you'll discuss how you'll acquire new customers with your marketing strategy.
• Competitive landscape: This is where you'll detail who the top competitors are.
• Financials: This is where you'll detail the funding that's required and discuss investment opportunities.

While some business plans might include more or less information, these are the key details you'll want to include.

Keep in mind, that each of these sections will be formatted differently. Some may be in paragraph format, while others will be in charts.

Now that you know what's included and how to format a business plan, let's review some templates.

Sample Business Plan Templates

1. HubSpot's Downloadable Business Plan Template

We created a business plan template for entrepreneurs.

Click here to download the template.

The template is designed as a guide and checklist for starting your own business, so you’ll learn what to include in each section of your business plan and how to do it. There’s also a list for you to check off when you finish each section of your business plan.

Strong game plans help coaches win games and help businesses rocket to the top of their industries. So if you dedicate the time and effort required to write a viable and convincing business plan, you’ll boost your chances of success and even dominance in your market.

2. HubSpot's One-Page Business Plan

The business plan linked above was created here at HubSpot, and is perfect for businesses of any size -- no matter how much strategy they still have to develop. 

Including fields such as Company Description, Required Funding, and Implementation Timeline, this one-page business plan gives businesses a framework for how to build their brand and what tasks to keep track of as they grow. Then, as the business matures, it can expand on its original business plan with a new iteration of the above document.

3. ThoughtCo’s Sample Business Plan

If you want to reference an actual business plan while writing your own, ThoughtCo’s got you covered. They created a fictional company called Acme Management Technology and wrote an entire business plan for them.

Using their sample business plan as a guide while filling out your own will help you catch and include small yet important details in your business plan that you otherwise might not have noticed.

4. BPlan’s Free Business Plan Template

One of the more financially oriented sample business plans in this list, BPlan’s free business plan template dedicates many of its pages to your business’ financial plan and financial statements.

After filling this business plan out, your company will truly understand its financial health and the steps you need to take to maintain or improve it.

5. Harvard Business Review’s “How to Write a Winning Business Plan”

Most sample business plans teach you what to include in your business plan, but this Harvard Business Review article will take your business plan to the next level -- it teaches you the why and how behind writing a business plan.

With the guidance of Stanley Rich and Richard Gumpert, co-authors of Business Plans That Win: Lessons From the MIT Enterprise Forum, you'll learn how to write a convincing business plan that emphasizes the market demand for your product or service and the financial benefits investors can reap from putting money into your venture, rather than trying to sell them on how great your product or service is.

6. HubSpot’s Complete Guide to Starting a Business

If you’re an entrepreneur, you know writing a business plan is one of the most challenging first steps to starting a business. Fortunately, with HubSpot's comprehensive guide to starting a business, you'll learn how to map out all the details of your business by understanding what to include in your business plan and why it’s important to include them. The guide also fleshes out an entire sample business plan for you.

If you need further guidance on starting a business, HubSpot's guide can teach you how to make your business legal, choose and register your business name, fund your business, gives information about small business tax, and provides marketing, sales, and service tips.

7. Panda Doc’s Free Business Plan Template

Panda Doc’s free business plan template is one of the more detailed and fleshed out sample business plans on this list. It describes what you should include in each of its sections, so you don't have to come up with everything from scratch.

Once you fill it out, you’ll fully understand your business’ nitty gritty details and how all of its moving parts should work together to contribute to your business’ success.

8. Small Business Administration Free Business Plan Template

The Small Business Administration offers several free business plan templates that can be used to inspire your own plan. Before you get started, you can decide what type of business plan you need -- a traditional or lean start-up plan.

Then, you can review the format for both of those plans and view examples of what they might look like.

9. Culina Sample Business Plan

Culina's sample business plan is a great template to use if you just want to fill in your information. You can also use this template as a guide while you're gathering important details. After looking at this sample, you'll have a better understanding of the data and research you need to do for your own business plan.

10. Plum Sample Business Plan

This is one of my favorite sample business plans, because you can see how implementing visuals can help tell the story of your brand. The images in this template are cutting edge, which makes sense for an innovative company like Plum. When you create your own business plan, make sure that the pictures and design you use make sense for your branding.

Additionally, the financial charts included are incredibly helpful if you're not sure what financial information to include.

11. LiveShopBuy Sample Business Plan

With this business plan, the focus is the investment opportunity. This is an excellent template to use if you're going to use your business plan as a means to receive funding. The investment opportunity section is placed right up front and is several pages long. Then, the plan goes into more detail about the company synopsis industry analysis.

When you're first getting starting on your business plan, it can be daunting. That's why it's important to make sure you understand the format and information you'll want to include. Then, you can use a template to guide your process.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in November 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Twitter Swings to Loss Despite User Surge in Pandemic

Last month, Twitter dialed back its financial guidance as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, which has dealt a blow to the global economy and advertising, which makes up the bulk of its revenues.

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Facebook Could Address Some US Antitrust Concerns With New Photo Transfer Tool

The tool lets Facebook users transfer data stored on its servers directly to another photo storage service, in this case Google Photos - a feature known as data portability.

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I Need a Vacation From Parenting in Isolation

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Facebook's Photo Transfer Tool Now Available in US and Canada

Facebook’s photo transfer tool is part of its collaboration with other companies in the Data Transfer Project.

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After Weeks of Decline, Sales Metrics Showing Signs of Recovery [COVID-19 Benchmark Data]

The economic impact of COVID-19 is undeniable. Businesses all across the globe are learning how to adapt to these new circumstances and we're all learning how to operate in a "new normal" that's constantly changing.

That's why we'll be publishing week-over-week trend data for core business metrics like website traffic, email send and open rates, sales engagements, close rates and more. We hope to establish useful benchmarks to measure your business against, and serve as an early indicator of when short- or long-term adjustments may be needed in your strategy.

While this post focuses on the highlights of last week, you can explore all the data we're publishing here.

About the Data

• These insights are based on aggregated data from over 70,000 HubSpot customers globally.
• The dataset includes weekly trend data for core business metrics in 2020, focusing on changes occurring during and after March 2020.*
• Charts depict the performance of a given metric against pre-COVID benchmarks, calculated using weekly averages from January 13, 2020, to March 9, 2020. They do not depict week-over-week percentage changes.
• Because the data is sourced from HubSpot's customer base, it reflects benchmarks for companies that have invested in an online presence and use inbound as a key part of their growth strategy.

*The spread of COVID-19 has had a different timeline in different regions, so we are using the World Health Organization's declaration of a global pandemic on March 11, 2020 as our "official" start date.

NOTE: Because the data is aggregated from HubSpot customers' businesses, please keep in mind that individual businesses, including HubSpot's, may differ based on their own markets, customer base, industry, geography, stage, and/or other factors.

What We're Seeing

After several weeks of concerning declines in deals created and deals closed, we are cautiously optimistic about this week's data. While it's certainly too early to call these trends a "rebound," the numbers suggest that companies that had paused "business as usual" in the last seven weeks are beginning to move forward in a new normal.

Last week saw the highest volume of deals closed since the start of the pandemic, even though deals created and closed are still trending below pre-COVID levels. Deal creation increased 8% the week of April 20, compared to the prior week, with increases in every region. Deals closed saw an upward trend as well with a 9% increase the week of April 20.

Buyer engagement reached historic highs last week. Marketing email open rates continue setting new records despite volume of email sends trending far above pre-COVID averages, and the data shows that salespeople are booking more meetings. We saw increases in average contacts added to customer portals as well.

But there's still a major disconnect in how salespeople are prospecting. Thus far, sales teams have struggled to convert buyer interest via email -- send volume is a staggering 67% above pre-COVID averages, and hasn't been accompanied by an equivalent increase in response rates or meetings booked.

However, our deep dive on sales activity suggests that salespeople are starting to book more meetings. With some adjustments to prospecting strategy, we're hopeful that there's opportunity for sales performance to improve.

This week, we're adding two new cuts of data:

1. A deep dive on sales activity, highlighting call volume and meetings booked. Weekly average call volume has maintained an approximate 20% decrease from pre-COVID averages, while the volume of meetings booked has rebounded to a level higher than pre-COVID averages.
2. Country-specific cuts for our core dataset for Australia and Germany. These countries have begun to reopen their economies or have done a good job containing the spread of COVID-19. Over time, we plan to add more countries, and will be watching these granular cuts closely to understand what the early signs of recovery could look like.

There's still work to be done, but last week's movement on these trends is a bright spot. After several weeks of steady declines in these metrics, recent data suggests that buyers are entering a new normal. There's gold in the hills, if sales teams just have the patience to find it -- salespeople would do well to take a breath and rethink their prospecting and outreach now, to ensure they're able to connect with the right buyers at the right time.

How Metrics Changed Last Week

Despite remaining below pre-COVID levels, the volume of created and closed deals is trending in the right direction.

We can't call it a rebound yet, but sales pipeline data from last week revealed the second straight week of growth after sharp declines across all regions and company sizes in March and early April.

Last week, sales teams created 8% more deals than the week of April 13. This is still trending 15% below pre-COVID levels, but last week was the highest volume of deals created since the start of the pandemic.

This increase was seen across all regions with EMEA seeing the largest increase week-over-week (18%) and NORTHAM following suit at 7%. APAC and LATAM each saw a small 2% gain.

All company sizes followed the same trend. Companies with 201 or more employees are leading the pack with the biggest improvement in performance compared to the start of the pandemic.

Deals closed improved 9% week-over-week. While the volume of deals closed is still 22% lower than pre-COVID averages, we're encouraged that this metric has improved two weeks in a row.

APAC, EMEA, and NORTHAM followed the global trend. LATAM was the exception to the rule but largely held steady, closing 32% fewer deals than pre-COVID averages the week of April 20, compared to 31% below pre-COVID benchmarks the week of April 13.

Engagement with marketing content reached record levels

Buyers continue engaging with marketing content at levels equal to or higher than pre-COVID averages. Marketing teams that have invested in providing helpful, relevant content, deserve credit for reaching buyers in an incredibly noisy time.

Consumers are still researching and connecting with businesses at high levels. Website traffic increased last week to 24% higher than pre-COVID averages, the highest volume we've seen all year.

Marketing email volume held steady again, by less than 1% week-over-week, and remains 25% higher than pre-COVID averages. This increase is accompanied by a staggeringly high open rate that is 25% higher than pre-COVID levels, a record for the year.

Engagement with sales outreach is no longer in free fall, but reveals opportunities for improvement.

Sales engagement metrics show slight improvement over the past weeks though they have not recovered to pre-COVID levels. In the coming weeks, sales teams' success will depend on whether they are able to identify and connect with the pool of engaged buyers who have expressed interest in a business' offerings. The data suggests that there's still a significant disconnect between where sales teams are focusing their time, and where buyer interest exists.

Total sales emails increased by 6% the week of April 20, and are trending at 67% above pre-COVID averages -- the highest level this metric has reached all year. However, after five straight weeks of decline, sales open rates increased marginally, an indication that more total buyers are responding to sales teams this week.

Things get really interesting when we zoom in on two additional parts of the sales process -- call prospecting and meetings booked.

Weekly average call volume has maintained a 20% decrease compared to pre-COVID benchmarks. Sales teams are reallocating time they'd ordinarily use to call prospects toward emailing them in order to reach more buyers, a tactic that will not be sustainable as companies attempt to return to pre-COVID performance.

Encouragingly, another metric appears to be genuinely rebounding. The number of meetings booked was trending at around 7% below pre-COVID averages, but last week increased to 10% above pre-COVID averages. Companies that may have frozen new investments while assessing their financial outlook seem to be reentering the market and restarting stalled deals -- a promising sign. We hope to see this increase reflected in the volume of deals created and booked in the coming weeks.

Countries that have begun to reopen are generally seeing positive movement in the core dataset.

Germany has begun a phased reopening of the economy, starting with allowing some small businesses to reopen on April 20. Australia has been widely praised for containing the spread of the virus, and states have begun relaxing isolation rules for some public spaces and social visit. Both these countries may provide a hint of what the early signs of economic recovery look like.

In Germany, marketing email volume kept with global trends, while open rates dipped slightly last week, though both metrics surpass pre-COVID levels. On the sales side, Germany saw a 14% increase in response rate, a 39% increase in deals created, and an 11% increase in closed-won deals the week of April 20. Germany is creating and closing more deals than the global average, with a higher response rate to sales emails as well.

In Australia, marketing engagement held with global trends as well. Sales email response rates increased 28%, deals created increased 15%, and closed-won deals increased 20% the week of April 20. Australia is creating slightly more deals than the global average, holding with global trends for deals closed, and is also seeing a better open rate than the global average.

We'll be watching these countries (and adding additional cuts) closely to track what economic recovery looks like in countries where the impacts of COVID-19 are starting to lessen. We're hopeful we will see continued improvement in these metrics, and are particularly interested in whether they will settle above or below pre-COVID levels in the coming weeks.

What This Means for Businesses

Transition from outside sales to inside sales.

The last few weeks have doubtless been a time of tremendous change for companies that employ an outside sales model. Temporarily adjusting to an inside sales model is virtually a requirement for businesses hoping to maintain or grow.

In times like these, knowing how to build strong relationships remotely is key. Invest in videoconferencing software to have "face-to-face" conversations online, and build trust by starting conversations with educational content instead of a generic pitch.

Ensure the quality of your sales conversations don't suffer by taking essential parts of the sales process online. If you don't already have a CRMWhether it's training your sales teams on cloud communications so they're able call prospects without physical phones, working with your marketing team to digitize educational content that prospects use to research your products, or learning how to conduct demos online, you'll need to create online equivalents for formerly offline processes. And of course, you'll need the right tools to keep your sales team running -- see below for a dedicated analysis of the technology your team needs.

The last piece of the puzzle is integrating sales enablement with your inside sales engine. Build workflows that ensure the right information is reaching your sales team and that they can easily access it, whether it's through a project management platform, team wiki, etc.

Resources to Help

• Learn to run an online demo with this list of do's and don'ts
• Transition your sales process online with this sales kit
• Learn best practices for sales enablement in this certification

Improve prospecting with targeted, creative outreach.

Our data shows that historic numbers of buyers are visiting and engaging with businesses. Yet we haven't seen a corresponding increase in sales volume. Why?

Part of this decline was inevitable. Companies across the world are tightening their belts and cutting down on nonessential investments. But that can't fully explain historic lows in sales engagement.

The answer lies in prospecting -- the root of most good and bad sales outcomes. The huge increase in email prospecting accompanied by decrease in call volume is both troubling and revealing. Instead of maintaining their standard balance of activities, sales professionals are prioritizing the technique that allows them to touch the largest number of prospects in the least amount of time. Not only has this change had the opposite intended effect, it may also hamstring salespeople who find they've burned through their database by blasting irritating emails to prospects who may have been a good fit down the line.

It's time to get back to basics. Buyer interest is at historic highs, and sales teams that take the time to target buyers who have expressed interest in their products will be better at capturing their interest than teams who are merely emailing as many people as possible.

Encourage your sales team to add a human touch to outreach. For example, recording personalized videos to attach to email messages is a way to stand out in crowded inboxes. Leading with relevance and empathy is more important than ever, and incorporating personalization into your outreach process will drive sales teams to slow down and focus on good-fit prospects.

Resources to Help

• Refresh your email outreach with these sales templates
• Start using video in your sales outreach to engage more prospects
• Lead with empathy in sales emails to build rapport and increase response rates

Remove friction from your sales process with the right technology.

Friction is never good. But in an economic downturn, friction can be deadly. Our data shows that record numbers of buyers are turning to company websites and chat to conduct research. There are a number of ways you can remove friction from your sales process to form more connections between these prospects and your sales team.

Automate and digitize interactions that formerly took place in person. Many steps of the sales process that used to happen face-to-face will need to move online. Chatbots are a useful way to automate parts of the qualification process. Invest in self-service resources like prerecorded demos, and ensure your sales team has the right technology to add a human touch to email outreach, and run sales calls online.

Invest in conversational marketing. Conversational marketing offers a real-time way to answer customer questions and automates the lead routing process so your business can serve prospective and existing customers even when your team is out of the office. Additionally, chatbots can help your company meet the increase in inquiries by providing customers with lightning-fast answers, automating lead qualification, and booking meetings on behalf of your sales and service teams.

Enable self-service. Whether it's through chatbots, online meeting booking, eSigning, or self-service meetings links, implementing technology that allows prospects to engage with your business on their schedule will make the process easier on your prospects and more efficient for your team.

Resources to Help

• Equip your team with these essential inside sales technologies
• Streamline your sales process with this guide to frictionless selling (and this course)

Free Software to Get Started

• HubSpot CRM is free and comes with included sales acceleration tools, including free 1:1 video, meetings, and chatbot tools
• Gmail and Google Calendar integrations with HubSpot
• Zoom integration with HubSpot
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator integration with HubSpot

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Microsoft Teams Had a Vulnerability That Allowed Your Account to Be Hijacked With a GIF: Report

Microsoft Teams, just like other video conferencing apps, has seen a growth in users owing to the coronavirus pandemic. Now, a new vulnerability surfaced that could have allowed hackers to take over an entire Teams roster.

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The Top 3 Reasons Consumers Read Blogs in 2020 [New Research]

In 2020, there's no question of whether or not blogs generate leads.

In fact, marketers who prioritize blogging as a marketing strategy report 13-times the ROI of companies that don't.

However, many marketers still worry that blogging's effectiveness could be losing steam.

Fears that "blogging is dead" haven't been eased by research. Recently, when we polled over 300 people to ask them how often they read blogs, roughly 40% said "never." This followed HubSpot's 2020 State of Marketing Report, which revealed that blogging fell from the first to third-most-common content strategy between 2018 and 2020.

But, before you get wrapped up in all the negative data, it's important to remember that blogging is still incredibly valuable to marketers -- but the way you approach blogging matters more than ever. And, while our past survey found that 40% of people never read blogs, it conversely revealed that 60% of consumers read this content regularly.

The truth is, blogging is alive and well. You'll just need to work a tiny bit harder to persuade people to read your content in 2020.

So, what's one way to get into a consumer's head and figure out how to motivate them to read your blog? Performing another survey.

Rather than asking more than 300 people, "Do you read blogs?", I launched a second Lucid survey that more deeply asked, "Why do you most commonly read blog posts?"

In the survey, which asked participants to select the most common reason that they consume blog content, answer options included, "To learn how to do something new," "To be entertained," "To learn more about products or brands," and "To learn about news and trends in my job industry."

With the number of leads that business blogs are known to generate, you might assume that a large chunk of people read blogs to learn about brands or products. But, actually, you might be surprised -- and a little concerned -- by the highest and lowest-ranking reasons for blog readership:

In fact, only four percent of consumers say they read blogs to learn about brands or products.

According to the results of the survey, more people are actually driven to read blogs that teach them how to do something new. While 34% selected this reasoning, 20% said they read blogs to be entertained, while 12% read blogs to learn about news or trends in their job industry.

Additionally, 9% said they're driven to read blogs for all of the reasons given.

Data Source: Luc.id

What exactly do the results above mean?

To win over blog readers, you'll need to create content that provides some type of informative value or entertainment, rather than purely using your blog to discuss your brand or product.

In this blog post, I'll walk you through the top three reasons why the general consumer population is driven to read blogs. I'll also show you how to create blog content that fulfills your reader's needs while still subtly spreading brand awareness.

3 Reasons People Read Blogs

1. People read blogs to learn something new.

By far, the most common reason that people will read a blog post is to learn something new. This result doesn't surprise me at all.

Why? Posts that include guides, step-by-step processes, tutorial videos, or fast-facts often gain a large amount of search traffic. This is because people are looking up instructions for how to do things on Google every day.

Even when posts aren't informing people of how to do something on a granular level, blogs that discuss complex topics such as studies, trends, or topics people are less familiar with can pique a person's curiosity.

Psychologically, people crave new information similarly to how they crave food. As a blogger, you can harness this to create content that both piques curiosity, while discussing topics related to your brand, service, or products.

For example, on the Marketing Blog, we might show our readers how to publish an Instagram Story. By doing this, marketers or social media users who want to learn how to do this could find our content in search or on social media and read it to learn how to create this content.

On a broader scope, our blog might create multiple pieces of content that discuss a trend from multiple angles. For example, when the app TikTok emerged, we wrote a few blog posts to answer common marketer questions like, "What is TikTok?", "How do brands market themselves on TikTok?", or "How do you leverage influencer marketing on TikTok?"

Aside from helping our readers, guide or trend-related blogs allow us to highlight the level of research and knowledge we've gained as marketers. This could also demonstrate to a prospect that HubSpot is a credible company that sells quality products within the marketing industry.

2. People read blogs to be entertained.

While people crave knowledge, they also like to be entertained. Each day, people might read blogs that tell interesting stories, make them laugh, or intrigue them in some other way.

But, as a business blogger, You might be asking yourself, "How can I entertain my readers while still keeping my blog professional?"

The truth is, when you think creatively, there are a number of ways you can entertain your audience while still staying on brand.

For example, you could create a fun infographic or photo post about a viral trend in your industry, While your readers might not be willing to invest in this viral trend, the imagery and information about the trend might entertain them. In one of our posts, we highlighted funny memes that marketers used in their actual campaigns.

Alternatively, you could also create a fun, but informative, video or podcast to go with your blog post. With this added layer of content, you could dive deeper into discussing a viral marketing trend, or interview an industry expert that people in your field follow. While this might not be "entertaining" for people outside of your industry, it might be more interesting than the average blogs people in your field might be reading.

Here's an example of a blog post that combines text and video for a better reader experience:

3. People read blogs to learn about trends related to their job industry.

While people might not be interested in reading blogs that specifically discuss your product or brand, they could be more intrigued by a blog that discusses an industry your product is affiliated with.

While the poll result noted in the introduction came from general consumers with mixed professional backgrounds, it's likely that those in the workforce will read a blog if it educates them or provides them with valuable information about their industry.

One example of a brand that discovered how industry experts read its industry-themed blog is American Scientist. Recently, the science blog conducted a study to learn about what motivated its blog readers to visit its site. They found that the average reader was either highly educated in science and technology or was actively working in STEM fields.

American Scientist also discovered that these readers, who already had some expertise on the topic, weren't interested in general science news. They were actually interested in reading the American Scientist blog for specific "nuggets" of new scientific information, studies, or findings.

From the above study, and what we've learned when developing HubSpot's Marketing, Sales, and Service blogs, industry experts or professionals will read blogs to learn something more specific about their industry. Here's an example of one of our own high-performing blog posts where an industry thought leader discusses the ins and outs of organic growth.

To zone in on your particular industry, experiment with tactics like thought leadership, similarly to the post noted above. You can additionally write about news or trends related to your field. For example, here's a post where we discussed how a third-party cookie phaseout could impact marketers.

Creating Content That Fulfills Multiple Reader Needs

So, how do you create engaging content that pulls in audiences with all different reading motivations while still spreading brand awareness about your product or service? Consider publishing blog posts that combine industry trends, how-tos, and entertainment. After all, nine percent of the survey recipients polled above said they read blogs for all of the reasons on the list I gave.

Here are two examples of how you can create content that fulfills the interests of multiple groups of blog readers.

Teach your readers how to do something in your industry.

At the HubSpot Blog, each of our posts teaches readers about something specific. For example, the post you're currently reading highlights the research we've done about how people read blogs and shows you how to leverage these results.

In other posts, we'll also inform marketers by giving them a step-by-step guide to a marketing tactic or examples of how brands leverage promotional trends. Regardless of what we write about, we're always trying to teach readers something valuable.

When you create content that educates people about strategies related to your industry, it's also easier to subtly discuss your product in a way that doesn't seem shameless of over promotional.

For example, when we're discussing a strategy that HubSpot can help with, we might subtly link readers to a tool or resource we offer that can help them. Here's an example of a HubSpot mention in a post about form building tools:

We also like to include free offers related to our content at the end of each blog post. When we do this, a reader can learn more about the topic we've just taught them about. And, when they fill out a simple form requesting the free resource, they can choose whether or not they'd like to be contacted about one of our products. This allows the reader to feel like they are receiving valuable information without being forced to learn about our products.

Even when you don't specifically acknowledge a product, an industry blog focused on informing readers can show off your company's level of expertise. When your brand is seen as highly knowledgeable about your industry, readers might think that your products were also created by your staff of industry experts.

Entertain industry readers while still informing them.

Even though an industry blog will likely target company employees or leaders, this doesn't mean your content can't be informative and entertaining. For example, you can use videos, GIFs, imagery, or interactive blog assets to add to your content while keeping it interesting for the reader.

For example, you could consider embedding a trivia or personality quiz related to your industry, as we did in this blog post:

On occasion, you could also create a fun, suitable for work posts that your industry readers can relate to. For example, here's a Service Blog post where we highlight GIFs related to working on a customer service floor:

Entertaining blog content on an industry blog can similarly show off your expertise. But, importantly, this content also allows your reader to relate to your brand on a more human level.

Building an Effective Blog Strategy

While it can be great to run with one successful content type, the blogs with the most credibility and quickest growth often have a mix of content that entertains or informs readers, makes them aware of brands or products, or teaches them something new. And, with 9% of consumers in the poll above saying that they'll read blogs for "all" reasons listed, there's a good chance that a mix will intrigue and fulfill the reading needs of multiple different groups.

To learn more about how to drive internet users to your blog, check out this post. For tips on how to be a blogger, check out this post with advice from our own blog team.

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CERT-In Issues Advisory to Inform Citizens About Email Extortion Scam

The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has warned of a new email extortion campaign that scammers have started on the Web to force people to send money by professing to have hacked their systems.

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People Have Gone Full 1800s

By BY MOLLY OSWAKS from NYT Style https://ift.tt/2So9vex

Google 'Task Force' Fights Bad COVID-19 Ads

Google has blocked and removed coronavirus-related marketing pitches in recent months for policy violations including price-gouging and misleading claims, according to ads privacy and safety vice president Scott Spencer.

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Amazon's Foreign Websites Named in US Piracy and Counterfeiting Report

Over the years, the list has included China's largest e-commerce platform, Taobao.com, which is owned and operated by Alibaba, as well as websites operated out of Indonesia, Poland, the Czech Republic, and other countries.

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Oyo Said to Offload More Loss-Making Hotels Amid Pandemic

India's Oyo Hotels and Homes, backed by SoftBank Group, plans to offload more properties around the world, three sources familiar with the matter said, as the coronavirus pandemic prompts it to speed up a retreat from a rapid global expansion.

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Indian DC Fans on Streaming Left in the Dark as Hooq Shuts Down

The Arrowverse is (partly) gone. Well, sort of. The Flash, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow are not available on streaming in India anymore — they were on both Hooq and Disney+ Hotstar, thanks to a tie-up between the two — as Hooq has shut down.

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Tesla Shows Surprise Profit as Musk Urges End to Virus Lock-Down

Tesla reported a surprise first quarter profit Wednesday on higher car production and deliveries as its chief called for an end to "fascist" coronavirus restrictions on people's movements due to the coronavirus pandemic.

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Microsoft Reports Boost in Teams, Xbox Usage in Q1 Thanks Remote Work and Lockdowns

Microsoft on Wednesday beat Wall Street sales and profit expectations, powered by sharp demand for its Teams chat and online meeting app and Xbox gaming services as the world shifted to working and playing from home because of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

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50 Visual Content Marketing Statistics You Should Know in 2020

At the end of every year, we like to read through some of the major reports on inbound marketing, content marketing, social media, and online behavior.

It's amazing how fast things can change in just one or two years, and this year has a breadth of surprising statistics to reflect on.

This year, we've seen the continued importance of visual content emphasized by the changes that occurred across almost every major social network, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. At the same time, videos continued to grow as powerful tools for brands looking to communicate more easily with their readers, and virtual reality (VR) is finding its place as a marketing tool in numerous businesses. 

To help you keep pace with these trends, let's take a look at some visual content marketing statistics that demonstrate the impact visual content has on reach, engagement, and sales. You can jump to the following categories to see statistics related to that category:

• General Visual Content Stats
• Video Marketing Stats
• Emerging Visual Marketing Stats
• Infographic Stats
• Social Media Stats

50 Visual Content Marketing Statistics You Should Know

General Visual Content Statistics

• 70% of companies invest in content marketing, which could include visual marketing strategies. (HubSpot)
• The primary form of media used in content marketing is video. (HubSpot)
• One fourth of marketers are investing in content marketing related to product promotions while just over 20% of investing in branded storytelling specifically. (HubSpot)

Source: HubSpot

• Marketers spend the most time creating content for Facebook and their own company website, respectively. (HubSpot)
• 32% of marketers say visual images are the most important form of content for their business, with blogging in second (27%). (Social Media Examiner)
• 80% of marketers use visual assets in their social media marketing. Video (63%), alone, has also surpassed blogging (60%) in usage as a social media marketing asset. (Social Media Examiner)
• When people hear information, they're likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later. (Brain Rules)
• 11% more B2C marketers than B2B marketers say visual content is the most important type of content today. (Social Media Examiner)

Video Marketing Statistics

• Mobile video usage has increased by nearly 10 million daily viewing minutes in the last two years.  (Kleiner Perkins)
• Cisco projects that global internet traffic from videos will make up 82% of all consumer internet traffic by 2021.  (Cisco)
• 70% of YouTube viewers watch videos for "help with a problem" they're having in their hobby, studies, or job.  (Think With Google)
• Globally, YouTube is consumers' leading source of video content, at 83% (Facebook is second, at 67%).  (HubSpot)
• Video streaming has increased significantly in the last several years. The live-streaming platform, Twitch, saw an increase of more than 13 million average daily streaming hours between 2012 and 2017.  (Kleiner Perkins)
• In a 2018 HubSpot survey, 54% of consumers wanted to see more video content from a brand or business they support.  (HubSpot)

Source: HubSpot Research

Emerging Visual Marketing Trends

• In 2019, 42.9 million people in the US used a VR product, and 68.7 million people used an AR once monthly. (eMarketer)
• Seven in ten media planners want to add AR to their strategies in the future. (Vibrant Media)
• A quarter of VR users believe it has a strong potential for brands and marketers. (GlobalWebIndex)
• 64% of consumers say VR has the most potential in gaming, while 52% recognize its potential in Film and TV. (GlobalWebIndex)
• By 2018, 35% of marketers use live video.  (Social Media Examiner)
• Live videos on Facebook have an engagement rate of 4.3% compared to 2.2% for non-live videos.  (Telescope)
• 90% of all video plays on Twitter take place on mobile devices.  (HubSpot)
• Videos 20 minutes in length or longer account for 55% of total video consumption time on smartphones.  (Goyala)
• 85% of adults consume content on multiple devices at the same time.  (Think With Google)
• According to the Lowes home improvement store, how-to videos that were shown in virtual reality (VR) had a 36% higher recall by viewers compared to people who only viewed the YouTube video.  (HubSpot)
• According to a 2018 survey, 82% of respondents expect people to focus on developing augmented reality (AR) experiences for smartphones.  (Perkins Coie)
• Gaming, education, and healthcare are the top three industries expected to invest the most in VR technology for business growth.  (Perkins Coie)

Source: Perkins Coie LLC

Infographic Stats for Visual Content Marketers

• Infographics are the fourth most used type of content marketing. (HubSpot)
• Infographics have had the biggest increase in usage among B2B marketers in the last four years -- now at 65%.  (Content Marketing Institute)
• People following directions with text and illustrations do 323% better than people following directions without illustrations. Take content marketer Ryan Robinson's guide on how to start a blog as an example, where he teaches readers the process of building a blog through a combination of text, illustrations and infographics.  (Springer)

Source: NeoMam

Social Media Stats for Visual Content Marketers

• In a general survey of over 250 consumers, 70% said they watched Facebook Stories more often than Instagram or Snapchat Stories. (HubSpot)
• Businesses that are on Instagram get up to 37% of their total impressions from Instagram Stories. (Social Bakers)
• Instagram has half the user base of Facebook but a majority of its audience is young adults under 34. (HubSpot)
• By the end of 2020, Instagram's share of Facebook's total ad revenue is expected to grow by 30%. (Recode)
• Of the Instagram Story formats people prefer most, 35% say they engage with short narrative-styled Stories most often, followed by interactive Stories centered around quizzes and polls. (HubSpot)

Data Source: Lucid Software

• 85% of Facebook and Instagram users watch video on the platforms with the sound off. (Digiday)
• In a poll of over 300 consumers, 56% said they "sometimes" watch social media Stories with the sound on, while 29% said they "always" do this. (HubSpot)
• 72% of teenagers use Instagram and nearly as many (69%) use Snapchat. Both have increased by more than 20% since 2015. (Pew Research)
• Tweets with images receive 150% more retweets than tweets without images. (Buffer)

Source: Buffer

• In an analysis of over 1 million articles, BuzzSumo found that articles with an image once every 75-100 words received double the social media shares as articles with fewer images. (Buzzsumo)
• Facebook posts with images see 2.3X more engagement than those without images.  (Buzzsumo)

Source: Buzzsumo

• There are more than 500 million Instagram users active every day. (Instagram Business)
• By 2017, more than 500 million Facebook users are watching videos on Facebook every day.  (Forbes)
• By late 2018, 52% of marketers reported seeing their organic reach on Facebook decline in the last year.  (Social Media Examiner)
• 92% of the videos on Facebook are published as Facebook native videos.  (Quintly)
• Snapchat had 187 million daily active Snapchat users as of 2018.  (Bloomberg)
• 8% more B2C marketers than B2B marketers are interested in learning more about Pinterest as a visual content platform.  (Pew Research)
• Shopify users referred by Pinterest spend an average of $80 compared to the Facebook referral average of $40.  (Jeff Bullas)

Source: Jeff Bullas

• Over 80% of pins are re-pins compared to 1.4% of tweets retweeted. (Jeff Bullas)
• YouTube reaches more 18+-year-olds during prime-time viewing hours than any cable TV network.  (Think With Google)
• Half of YouTube subscribers between the ages of 18 and 34 would drop whatever they were doing to watch a new video from their favorite channel.  (Think With Google) 

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Amazon Said to Turn to Chinese Firm on US Blacklist to Meet Thermal Camera Needs

The Amazon procurement, which has not been previously reported, is legal because the rules control US government contract awards and exports to blacklisted firms, but they do not stop sales to the private sector.

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Hollywood, Snowpiercer, Schitt’s Creek, and More: May 2020 TV Guide to Netflix, Hotstar, and Amazon

Hollywood Netflix, Snowpiercer TV series, Schitt’s Creek season 6, Billions season 5, Paatal Lok, White Lines, Space Force, Central Park — our May 2020 TV guide to Netflix, Disney+ Hotstar, Amazon Prime Video, and Apple TV+.

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TikTok, Gates Pledge $20 Million to Help Africa Tackle COVID-19

The social media platform TikTok and the philanthropic Gates Foundation donated $10 million (roughly Rs. 75 crores) each on Wednesday to the vaccine alliance GAVI to help fund efforts to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa.

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Global Lobbying Groups Call for Delay to India's New Digital Tax

The tax, inserted into budget amendments passed in March, caught the industry off guard as it was not part of the main proposals India's finance ministry had presented in parliament a month earlier.

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Google Meet Is Now Free for Everyone as Google Races to Replace Zoom as Live Video App of Choice

Google has announced that Google Meet will now be available free to everyone with a Google account and not just enterprise and education customers via G Suite, as was previously the case.

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Together Apart? How About Totally Losing It?

By BY JACOB BERNSTEIN from NYT Style https://ift.tt/2zBvcB3

Disney+ Hotstar May 2020 Releases: Star Wars, MasterChef Australia, Billions, and More

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian, The Clone Wars; MasterChef Australia season 12, Billions season 5, Brad Pitt in Ad Astra — the biggest TV shows and movies coming to Disney+ Hotstar in May 2020 in India.

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US Senator Urges Criminal Probe of Amazon.com 'Predatory Data Practices'

The big four tech platforms -- Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook -- are under investigation by the House Judiciary Committee and Justice Department while the Federal Trade Commission is probing Facebook and Amazon. Meanwhile, groups of state attorneys general are looking at Facebook and Google.

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Let’s Bury the Hatchet!

By BY ABBY ELLIN from NYT Style https://ift.tt/35euFkp

Flipkart Ties Up With Meru to Deliver Daily Essentials, Groceries During Lockdown

Flipkart has partnered with Meru to deliver daily essentials and groceries to consumers during the ongoing national lockdown in India.

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Google Makes Sharing Drive, Docs, Sheets Files Easier With Redesign

Google has released a new update for its Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms apps on the Web to make sharing files easier “with specific people without expanding access beyond what’s needed.” The redesign of the sharing interface brings separate dialogue boxes for sharing a file with friends and co-workers, and for copying the link.

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Google Wants to Help You Avoid COVID-19 Related Online Scams

Google has launched a dedicated webpage on its Google Safety website focused on the topic. The webpage lists all best practices and offers tips to avoid COVID-19 related scams.

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Animal Crossing: New Horizons Is Now the Setting for a Talk Show From Rogue One Writer Gary Whitta

Looking for a new late-night talk show? Gary Whitta — best known for co-writing the story to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story — just launched one inside a video game, Animal Talking with Gary Whitta, inside the Nintendo Switch life simulation game Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

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PUBG Now Available for Free on Google Stadia, More Games Announced at Stadia Connect

PUBG has been added to the growing library of Google Stadia games and is available for free to all Stadia users.

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Netflix, T-Series in ‘Final’ Talks to Bring Multiple Movies Directly to Streaming: Report

Netflix is reportedly in final talks with T-Series over a multi-film deal that would bring the latter’s upcoming movies — stuck in limbo with theatres shut due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic — directly to streaming. Amitabh Bachchan’s Jhund, Kiara Advani’s Indoo Ki Jawani, and Anurag Basu’s Ludo are in discussion.

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Zoom: US Authorities Reportedly Warn Zoom May be Vulnerable to Foreign Surveillance

Zoom has grown exponentially over the past few months and this has raised concerns regarding user privacy and security, along with foreign surveillance.

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YouTube Expands Fact-Check Features to US Video Searches During COVID-19 Pandemic

YouTube, the video service of Alphabet's Google, said on Tuesday it would start showing text and links from third-party fact-checkers to US viewers, part of efforts to curb misinformation on the site during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Oscars Allows Streaming Movies to Qualify Due to Coronavirus Disruptions to Movie Theatres

Movies that skip the big screen will be allowed to contend for Oscars this year, the Academy said Tuesday in a significant rule change forced by the coronavirus pandemic.

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Samsung Sees Coronavirus Hit Sales of Smartphones, TVs, Expects Further Fall in Q2

Samsung Electronics said on Wednesday it expected profit to decline in the current quarter due to a coronavirus-related slump in sales of smartphones and TVs, although the chip business would remain solid.

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Google Parent Alphabet Says Ad Sales Steady After Coronavirus Drop, Warns of Difficult Q2

A drop in Google ad sales steadied in April and some consumers returned to using the search engine for shopping in addition to finding novel coronavirus information, parent Alphabet said on Tuesday.

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Content Mapping 101: The Template You Need to Personalize Your Marketing

What is a Content Map?

A content map is a plan to deliver the right content, to the right people, at the right time. Content mapping takes into account the characteristics of the person who will be consuming the content and their lifecycle stage.

Marketers hear it all the time: The content you create needs to be personalized. It needs to be aligned with the wants and needs of your customers (and prospective customers). It needs to resonate with them. It needs to feel like it was created just for them.

On its surface, this sounds like great advice. Personalization, giving people content that they're actually interested in ... it makes perfect sense. But coming up with the actual topics that make for a highly targeted content strategy isn't that easy.

To help you brainstorm and map out content ideas for targeting specific segments of your audience, we've created a new free template resource: Content Mapping Template: Using Buyer Personas & Lifecycle Stages to Create Targeted Content.

I'll talk more about how you can use this template in a bit. But first, let’s take a look at how this whole "content mapping" business works.

And when think you've got this concept down, you'll want to check out HubSpot Academy's free content marketing training resource page to learn how to map a content strategy for your business.

What Is Content Mapping?

When it comes to content, one size rarely fits all. To ensure that your company's content is effective at generating and nurturing leads, you need to deliver the right content, to the right people, at the right time. Content mapping is the process of doing just that.

With content mapping, the goal is to target content according to:

1. The characteristics of the person who will be consuming it (that’s where buyer personas come in).
2. How close that person is to making a purchase (i.e. their lifecycle stage).

Buyer Personas

Buyer personas are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers. They help you understand your customers (and prospective customers) better, and make it easier for you to tailor content to the specific needs, behaviors, and concerns of different groups.

The strongest buyer personas are based on market research as well as on insights you gather from your actual customer base (through surveys, interviews, etc.). Depending on your business, you could have as few as one or two personas, or dozens. If you’re just getting started with personas, don’t go crazy! You can always develop more personas later if needed.

Lifecycle Stages

The buyer persona you target with your content i s just one half of the content mapping equation. In addition to knowing who someone is, you need to know where they are in the buying cycle (i.e. how close they are to making a purchase). This location in the buying cycle is known as a lifecycle stage.

For the purposes of our Content Mapping Template, we’re divvying up the buying cycle into three lifecycle stages: Awareness, Consideration, & Decision.

• Awareness: In the awareness stage, a person has realized and expressed symptoms of a potential problem or opportunity.
• Consideration: In the consideration stage, a person has clearly defined and given a name to their problem or opportunity.
• Decision: In the decision stage, a person has defined their solution strategy, method, or approach.

By combining buyer personas with lifecycle stages, you can really hone in on specific segments of your audience and tailor content to resonate with each of those segments.

How to Use a Content Mapping Template

To help you create a content map for your own team, we've created a downloadable content mapping template. The template includes an introduction to content mapping, a crash course on buyer personas and lifecycle stages, a content mapping template (plus examples), and bonus buyer persona templates.

With the template, you'll learn how to understand buyer personas and lifecycle stages, identify problems and opportunities that your audience needs help with, and brainstorm highly targeted content ideas that incorporate personas and lifecycle stages.

This template is available in both Google Docs and Microsoft Word.

Whether you want to download our content mapping template or create your own, let's dive into the structure of a content mapping template.

In our Content Mapping Template, we created a simple grid system, putting buyer persona (and a key problem or opportunity that persona is struggling with) along the y-axis and lifecycle stage along the x-axis. As you move from left to right, you're effectively moving down the funnel.

Your awareness stage content should target the top of the funnel (TOFU). People in this segment are just becoming aware that they have a problem. At this stage, don't try to beat them over the head with product-focused content. Instead, think of how your content can help people become more informed about the problem in general, and you'll (hopefully) find that they continue moving down your funnel as they search for solutions.

Your consideration stage content, in comparison, can more explicitly mention how your product or service could potentially solve a problem. Keep in mind, however, that at this point in the buying cycle, people are still evaluating their options. So while case studies and demo videos are fine, save your more sales-focused content (estimates, free trials, etc.) for the next stage.

At the decision stage of the game, you can really lean into marketing your products or services. If someone has reached this stage, they've already identified a problem and a solution, and are now getting ready to pull the proverbial trigger.

Not quite convinced that content mapping is worth it? Let's hear from some marketers who are actually doing this stuff ...

Content Mapping Tips From the Pros

"The best part about inbound is that you can give your prospects the information they are asking for before they even ask for it. Buyer personas and lifecycle stages allow you to be one step ahead of the game by mapping out what your prospect's next steps are and delivering them the content from numerous different avenues.

We create buyer personas as part of our onboarding process and everything we do from content offer to daily tweets is centered around that document. We also always ask ourselves, 'Would business owner Bob open this email, click this tweet, download this offer, etc.?'"

- Laura Hogan ( Marketing Manager, OverGo Studio)

"When mapping out content for your site's visitors, it's important to remember that when it comes to purchasing decisions (BOFU conversions, especially for B2B and high-priced items), there are some personas out there who would rather speak to someone on their terms rather than fill out a form for a consultation. Understanding how they are most comfortable when it comes to making decisions can help you understand what points of conversion will be the most relevant and successful for that persona.

Optimizing your site pages (landing and thank you pages, as well), TOFU & MOFU offers, and workflows with direct contact information (phone #, email, etc.) is a great way to ensure that visitors, prospects and leads who may shy away from form submissions still have readily available, alternate means of converting."

- Marc Herschberger ( Inbound Coordinator, Revenue River Marketing)

"Mapping out buyer personas and lifecycle stages is extremely important when creating content. In terms of buyer personas, it's easy to see that a Marketing Director will have different questions, information needs, and interests compared to a CEO. Both of these personas may be searching for your product or service, but they'll be looking for different topics. By creating content that appeals to each audience, you can be more effective in attracting that specific audience.

By the same token, each persona of yours may be in a different stage of the buying process, so it's important to think through and create content that appeals to someone looking for basic, high-level information such as an ebook, as well as specific information like a pricing guide or case study.

One tip I'd suggest for anyone with pretty different personas would be to dedicate an entire section of your site to each audience. That way, when you pull in your audience, all the content is directed toward them.

We actually took this concept and went a step further by creating unique brands for each one of our vertical markets. Each brand has its own section of the website, its own blog content, and its own premium content (downloadable offers). It's really helped us attract and convert visitors at a higher rate because all the content is more relevant to that persona."

- Spencer Powell ( Inbound Marketing Director, Inbound Educators)

"By taking the buyer and buying stage into account when creating content, you can be sure that you're designing content to help move them through the buying process.

In addition to mapping content to the buyer profile and buying stage, we regularly pull topics from the sales process. Then we offer the content in later sales calls. This helps us not only evaluate the relevancy of the content but also the interest of the buyer. We encourage clients to do the same."

- Diona Kidd (Cofounder,Knowmad)

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in March 2014 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

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