The other day at work, my colleague, HubSpot Marketing Director Ryan Bonnici, sent around a link on Slack -- to a website called “Will Robots Take My Job?”

We were thrilled to learn marketing managers had only a 1.4% chance of our jobs being automated or replaced by robots and artificial intelligence. And although I breathed a sigh of relief that writing has only a 3.8% chance of being automated, it made me think about job roles that weren’t so lucky.

When I was just a wee lass and HubSpot was first starting to make a name for itself, inbound marketing was a brand new idea. Marketers were learning that they couldn't just publish a high volume of content -- it also had to be high-quality and optimized in ways that made it as discoverable as possible through search engines.

When was the last time you created something online that went viral?

Whether you're new to content marketing or are a viral content maven, you probably know that it can be nearly impossible to predict which tweet or video or meme might go viral. Often, it feels like virality is just completely random.

In life, there are a few certainties: death, taxes, and Facebook.

This month, we've seen the competition continue to heat up between Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat over how to create the most engaging and marketable disappearing message.

Do you feel like you and your boss are on the same page most days of the week?

If you nodded "yes" emphatically, that's fantastic. But many readers might have a different opinion. In fact, a recent HubSpot survey revealed that while 70% of executives might reflect positively on their team's marketing strategy, only 50% of individual contributors agree.

Learning some things in life is relatively straightforward. Take knitting, for example -- that's typically as simple as procuring some yarn and needles and searching for a how-to video on getting started. Sure, your work might look a little haphazard at first, but the steps are fairly intuitive.

Learning to lead others, on the other hand, isn't so linear.

Every time I try a new recipe for a dish at a party, I try a little sample before I serve it to my guests -- and not just because I'm always hungry (which I am). I do it because I would never want to serve something new to my guests that I can't be sure actually tastes good.

How can I confidently stand there and say to my friends and family, "Go ahead and try it! You'll love it!" when I have no idea what it's really like?

When someone sends me a really great YouTube video, I always want to know who’s behind it. Was it an ad agency? A small or medium business? A B2B tech company? No matter who it was, if I’m impressed, I want to see more from the content creator. So once the video is done, I click the link to visit their profiles.

And from there, if the brand is really on top of its game, I’ll see its channel art -- the horizontal banner displayed across the top of the user’s YouTube channel that, hopefully, shows a combination of good design and brand presence.

Influencer marketing is a trendy topic these days, but it doesn't require a lot of work or a ton of money to harness the power of influencers on your brand's social media channels.

One of the lowest-effort and most organic ways to work with another person or brand to advance your marketing goals is by hosting an Instagram takeover.

In May, agencies got creative with alternative advertising mediums.

While there were still plenty of traditional video and print ads on our radar, some crafty designers and copywriters turned to apps, bottled scents, modeling clay, and even an icy road trip to get their messages across. 

Every marketer faces different challenges. Although we typically share similar goals, some teams are stuck on hiring top talent, while others are having trouble finding the right technology for their needs.

Whatever the case may be, there’s always at least one area that you can stand to improve. In other words, there’s always room to optimize the various components of your strategy and turn your marketing into an even more effective revenue generator.

In 2016, 96% of Google's revenuecame from paid search (or pay-per-click) advertising. Clearly, marketers are taking advantage of AdWords, but what does a great PPC campaign even look like? How do you ensure it drives ROI for your company? How do you even do a Google AdWords campaign?

To help you get started the right way, we're breaking down the basics of how to use paid search below.

Did you know that the average technology user in the United States spends nearly 11 hours per day looking at screens?

Sure, a lot of that time is spent at work on computers and mobile devices, but the rest of it is spent at home. And as it turns out, exposure to screens and other technologies can have adverse health impacts -- especially if it's too close to bedtime.

At most companies, it can feel like marketing and sales are far from being on the same team. According to the 2017 State of Inbound report, fewer than half of marketers would describe their respective companies' Sales and Marketing teams as "generally aligned."

And that's a problem.

We write a lot about artificial intelligence here at HubSpot. You might be excited about it, or slightly concerned that AI will take your job -- and then take over the world.

And while AI is important and interesting, I'm going to ask you to put a pin in that so we can talk about another type of intelligence: emotional intelligence.

According to the latest Radicati report, the total number of business and consumer emails sent and received in 2017 is likely to reach 269 billion. And that number is expected to jump to 319.6 billion by 2021.

Email marketing isn't going anywhere.

The other day, I was airing some grievances to a friend. The whining topic du jour: artificial intelligence, or AI.

“Every time I hear about it, I think, ‘Sure, that’s cool,’” I said. “But sometimes I wish it would slow down -- there’s so much happening there, and so fast.”

“Well, I have bad news for you,” my friend told me. “It's not going away anytime soon.”

These days, the phrase "content is king" still holds true (to an extent). But the rules surrounding content production as well as our understanding of it as marketers has changed. No longer is it about having content in spades, it's all about quality.

Having one great piece of content is always going to be better than 10 second-rate pieces that don't add any value for readers. However, if you can consistently produce great content on a regular basis, that's enough to dominate the online marketing realm.

The inbound movement has always been about one thing: being relevant and truly helpful to your audience.

This approach shouldn't change, but as technology and internal company relationships change, marketers and salespeople must learn how to adapt to better serve their customers.

Marketers and readers agree -- videos and social media make up the next great frontier of content marketing and distribution.

The harder question to answer: How do we quickly and easily make those shareable videos our audiences want to see on social media?

I've seen the inside of hundreds of marketing agencies over more than a decade, including my own.   

Most marketing agencies struggle to generate recurring revenue. Many suffer through the ups and downs of the cash-flow roller-coaster because they never make the switch to recurring-revenue engagements.

“Be useful. Be different. Be consistent.” 

These are the markers DigitasLBi Chief Strategy Officer, Fern Miller, puts down as her starting points for differentiating her agency brand. And this advice comes following her first-hand experience of being the client on her own agency’s brand.

When I get a job interview, there's a lot to prepare. I diligently research the company and my interviewers, pore over Glassdoor interview questions, and print out copies of my resume and portfolio.

When I interview someone else, it’s easier to prepare. I don’t have to put together the perfect outfit, I don’t have to worry about how to find the restroom, and at the end of the day, I don’t have to worry about if I got the job or not.

"Being a B2B marketer is a piece of cake," said no one, ever. "A real walk in the park. Easy-peasy."

No other B2C industry has thrived on Instagram quite like the fashion industry.

Between their carefully curated photos, expertly targeted ads, and decisive adoption of Instagram Stories, fashion and beauty brands have become masters of consumer engagement on the visual content platform. And brands from any industry could learn a thing or two from these inspirational feeds. 

If you've worked among designers, or are one yourself, there's something that's quickly observed: Designers, it seems, are often working with their headphones on.

Much of the time, that's the result of creative work presenting an opportunity to plug in, and tune out distractions. Whether it helps you focus, or you're signaling to colleagues that you don't want to be bothered, or you just think headphones look cool, many creative professionals appreciate a little welcomed background noise.

Each year, bonafide tech geeks and enthusiasts gather or tune in for one of the biggest events of the year: Google I/O, the search giant’s annual developer conference.

It’s a learning opportunity for many, with sessions and talks creating what Google describes as “an immersive experience focused on exploring the next generation of tech.”

Instagram has become the favorite social network of many -- and not just for teens or Millennials. In fact, according to the Pew Research Center, 32% of online adults use Instagram -- up 5% from the previous year. Compare that, for example, to 24% on Twitter.

Plus, folks don't just use Instagram casually -- 35% of them use it several times each day.

But for those who have never used the platform before, or those who just want to take their usage to the next level, Instagram has some lesser-known tricks and features.

Facebook Ads can help you increase your social following and boost the reach of your organic posts. But aren't CPC rates skyrocketing and lead generation ads taking over?

Not so much. To help you distinguish fact from fiction as you start designing your Facebook Ads strategy, we're dubunking 24 common myths about Facebook Ads below. 

If you've spent time in front of a television lately, you're probably familiar with the formula for many women's razor ads: A woman shaves and gets glowing legs that attract positive attention from her male counterpart. You can see the formula at work here, here, and here.

If you roll your eyes when you watch these ads, you're not alone. But this formula has been highly lucrative for more than a century.

We know empathy -- the ability to understand and relate to the emotions of others -- is a core competency of creativity, leadership, and being an all-around happy, successful person.

Consciously approaching situations with an empathic perspective enables us to devise more inventive, impactful solutions to problems, form meaningful relationships, and ultimately, understand ourselves more thoroughly and with more self-acceptance. 

When it launched in 2014, Twitter Analytics marked a solid (if long overdue) move towards greater transparency and measurement abilities for all users. And since then, Twitter has continued to make upgrades to the tool, most recently by creating a standalone analytics app called Engage, and launching analytics for Twitter Moments.

Though users now have more insight into their Twitter account metrics, they might not be using them to their full potential.

Here at HubSpot, we've told fellow marketers about the importance of creating compelling video content to engage your busy audience. And for the most part, video content lives on social media channels -- like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

But we wondered if video content had a place on our blog as well.

A few months ago, I took the stage at Digital Summit Dallas to talk about blog conversion rate optimization (CRO). The session right before mine was led by Unbounce Co-Founder Oli Gardner -- a household name for those of us in the CRO industry. Needless to say, it was a tough act to follow. 

In his session, "Frankenpage: Using A Million Little Pieces of Data to Reverse Engineer the Perfect Landing Page," Oli shared lots of great data-backed tips for landing page optimization. In discussing best practices for conversion forms, he talked about how two-column forms weren't ideal. 

Generate more traffic, more leads, more customers. That's always been the purpose of marketing and sales.

As marketers, capturing buyer attention is everything. Without it, we're just throwing more content, emails, ads, and offers into the abyss. Yet, there has never been a harder time to earn buyer attention.

There are a variety of tests and surveys you can take to learn about your personality traits and assess your strengths and weaknesses as they fit in the workplace. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the DiSC Profile, and the Big Five are a few that come to mind -- we even use DiSC here at HubSpot.

These tests and their subsequent results often hinge upon the different traits and habits of introverts versus extroverts. 

Account-based marketing or inbound marketing? Which one should you use?

Well, maybe that's not the right way to think about it. As it turns out, the two strategies are actually pretty complementary when done well.

Most of us know that social media is an essential part of a brand’s marketing strategy. After all, 92% of marketers say that social media is important to their business. And yet, managing it continues to be a source of frustration for many.

That’s understandable -- there are many moving parts to a successful social media strategy. There’s knowing the right frequency with which to post. There’s the measurement of any ROI on these efforts. And, there’s determining what the heck to post to each channel.

If you're not a total Instagram addict like me, you might go a day or two without checking your app. And when you check your feed, you might notice that some posts from friends were shared mere minutes ago, while others might be a few days old.

So, what gives? Why isn't your Instagram feed chronological anymore?

Like many other social networks, Instagram's algorithm changed.

I will never forget the day I learned that watching cat videos is proven to enhance your mood.

Even to a bonafide dog person, the news was good. In a study conducted at Indiana University Bloomington, participants reported “fewer negative emotions, such as anxiety, annoyance and sadness, after watching cat-related online media than before.”

"Curation" is one of those words that's always conveyed coolness to me. Take, for example, the job of curating art for a gallery, or curating music for a soundtrack. Cool, right? Content curation is just as much fun -- and just as important.

For the uninitiated, content curation consists of finding material relevant to your audience from a variety of sources, and sharing it strategically through your communication channels. For example, writing a roundup blog post of great marketing examples would require you to curate strong samples of content relevant to what you're writing about. And while very cool, it can be tricky. There are many, many social networks, news feeds, emails, and infographics full of such content that can demand your time and attention.

Digital marketing is one of those areas that's become, in a way, all-encompassing. There's social media, there's SEO, and there are the analytics that come with both. And with the rapid pace at which digital marketing evolves, it can be difficult and confusing to prioritize which parts deserve your attention.

That's why the Search Engine Journal launched the 2017 State of Digital Marketing.
To find out where digital marketers focus their time and budgets, and how they set parameters of success, over 200 industry professionals were surveyed, filling roles within SEO, paid search, and content marketing. 

Don Draper wouldn’t know what hit him. Gone are the decadent days of the liquid lunch, three-piece suits, and Madison Avenue dominating the marketing landscape. Modern marketers have to be a jill-of-all-trades, with one foot in the real world, and one in cyberspace.

It's hardly a revelation to say that online video content is phenomenally popular. Millions of words have been written on the subject, and millions more will no doubt follow.

But one of the great things about marketers is that we're always looking for what's next. We know that it's not enough to rest on our laurels, or rely on things that have worked in the past.

If you took the same Introduction to Economics class that I struggled through in college, you might remember this key lesson:

The law of supply and demand states that a low supply and high demand for a product will typically increase its price.

In April 2016, Facebook launched Facebook Live, a live video streaming service that lets anyone broadcast from their mobile devices straight to their Facebook News Feed.

Since its launch, live streaming video has grown in popularity, with 16% of marketers broadcasting it in 2016. Facebook Live is particularly popular -- videos see 3X the engagement of traditional videos shared on the platforms, and millions of users live stream on Facebook around the world.

Everyone wants to be creative, yet many of us are too fearful to pursue our most creative ideas. Why? Our fearful reaction is not a matter of choice -- it’s often a knee-jerk reaction that can be attributed to our biology.

It's one thing to read thought leadership on where a certain industry is going, or to talk about theoretical best practices in a given role or situation. It's another thing entirely to get tactical, practical advice on what to do today about a specific problem -- delivered by someone who's actually been in your shoes.