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Blogging is a marketing technique that allows brands to meet their buyers during the discovery or awareness stage of their buying journey. This type of content can be created in many styles and distributed in many ways, making it a great tool for businesses of any type.

Although hiring a skilled content writer is one of the most efficient ways to create high-quality blog content for your site, many small businesses don’t have the marketing budgets to hire these specialists.

Luckily, with a little knowledge and practice, it’s possible to take a DIY approach to build a successful blog from the ground up. You have to start somewhere, right?

In this comprehensive guide, we’re going to cover how to write a blog post that people actually want to read.

We’ll start by covering the basics of blogging before we dive into the step-by-step process of writing a blog post. To wrap up, we’ll provide tips and tricks for writing blog posts to keep your readers’ attention.

Are you on the edge of your seat?

Let’s dive in.

The basics of blogging

Blogging is a form of content marketing. In other words, a brand creates content that it believes to be relevant and interesting to its audience with the goal of it being discovered organically.

Blog posts are similar to news articles but broken down into lists or sections for greater readability. Some popular blog posts include listicles, reviews, comparisons, and how-tos.

Although plenty of emerging resources can help you improve the content creation process, it’s still a great idea to understand the mechanics of blogging to take the output from these tools and polish them into engaging, readable articles.

For example, GrowthBar, an AI copywriting tool, can help you create long-form SEO content that Google loves five times faster than a human writer. These tools save time, but the human touch is valuable for ensuring readability and engagement.

Pro tip – Before you start blogging, make sure you find a good name to brand your blog. A good business name generator can be a great place to get some ideas flowing.

Don’t worry. We’ll teach you everything you need to know.

How to write a blog post

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s dive into the nitty-gritty of how to write a blog post.

1. Choose a topic

The first step to writing a compelling blog post is choosing a topic your audience is interested in.

If you’re unsure where to start, it’s a good idea to check out your competitor’s blogs to see what topics they’re covering.

One great hack for streamlining your blog writing process is to keep a running list of topics to cover that you can add to as ideas pop up. That way, you always have something to work with, even if inspiration is lacking.

2. Find the right keywords

Google and other search engines are a great way to distribute blog content to get your brand in front of a larger group of people.

If you want to tap into search engine optimization (SEO) to distribute your content, you’ll need to choose keywords to target in your article.

Finding keywords is easy with the help of a dedicated tool.

Ahrefs, Moz, SEMrush, and Google Keyword Planner are among the most popular options. These tools tell you how much search volume there is and how competitive the search engine results page (SERP) is for a specific keyword.

You’ll want to choose a keyword that’s getting at least some search volume. Some people exclusively target words that are getting thousands of searches per month. However, don’t be afraid of a lower volume if you find a niche keyword that’d resonate with your audience.

Typically, you’ll want to choose one primary keyword to focus on and a few secondary keywords.

3. Create an outline

Next, you’ll create an outline for your blog post. This step is very important because it’ll help you create an article that’s well-structured and effectively organized.

You don’t have to follow MLA or any format you learned in school, but you should keep the general structure of separating topics in a hierarchy that’ll yield an article with a sensible flow.

4. Research the topic

Now, it’s time to fill in your outline with research.

• Pull your information from reputable sources and industry thought leaders.
• Find statistics to quantify your claims, and refer to studies where necessary.
• Keep track of your sources so you can link to them in your article.

While conducting research is crucial, personal experience and expertise reign supreme. When you are confident that you have the correct method for doing something, utilize that understanding to supplement your outline.

For example, if you own a cleaning company that sells car cleaning products such as steering wheel cleaner or leather cleaner and have been using these products for years, you can simply pour the information from your brain.

Piece of cake!

5. Write the post

After researching and jotting down ideas, you can move into the writing phase. It’s as straightforward as it sounds. Turn your ideas and notes into legible sentences and paragraphs.

Assuming your outline flows well, you can keep your top points as your headings and subheadings in your blog post. You can tweak them to make them blog-appropriate, but leaning into that structure can be helpful.

To maintain readability, keeping your sentences and paragraphs somewhat short is important. Large blocks of text and run-on sentences are two surefire ways to lose your readers’ attention.

6. Edit the post

Once the post is complete, it’s time to edit. Read through your work to look for typos and grammatical errors.

It’s also a good idea to use tools like Grammarly and Hemingway App to help pick up mistakes you may have missed.

One tip that can significantly enhance your writing quality is hiring an editor. A professional editor can not only catch grammar and spelling errors but also provide valuable insights into the readability and flow of your writing.

Either way, editing can make a huge difference in whether people actually want to read your blog posts.

Tips for writing engaging blog posts

Now that you’re more familiar with the blog writing process, let’s review a few helpful tips to ensure your blog post is engaging.

Use a catchy title

Creating a catchy title is key to getting people to read your blog post. The title should be compelling and informative.

However, it’s worth noting that “catchy” doesn’t equal “misleading,” so it’s important to avoid using clickbait in your title. Make sure your article delivers everything the title promises, and don’t set false expectations.

Curate for the target audience

Ensuring your blog content is relevant and interesting to your target audience is key. You wouldn’t buy delicious bacon if you were a vegetarian. Consequently, your readers won’t read a blog post that isn’t interesting to them.

That’s why it’s important to define your target audience correctly before writing. You should get to know your audience well so you know exactly what content they are looking for.

For example, users of the platform Salarship mainly use it to find job opportunities, but they also actively read the Salarship blog. This is because the articles are informative and contain insights that are valuable to the reader. They make them feel that they aren’t alone in their professional challenges.

Your blog posts can provide a sense of community to your target audience.

Keep things interesting (but accurate)

One secret to keeping your audience interested is to write about something your audience already cares about.

If your goal is to write about a specific topic, remember that you must first create interest in that topic or find something that your audience has expressed interest in.

Let’s say, for example, your website is in the fashion niche, and a famous designer presented a new collection of linen suits on the catwalk this week. You can take this opportunity to talk about reasons to buy linen suits in your new article while linens are relevant.

On the other hand, if you’re writing in the medical niche, you should cover any topic with the utmost precision and empathy — including sensitive topics like sexually transmitted diseases or Viagra use.

When you use a mix of hot topics and real and raw content, your readers are more likely to trust you and start reading your blog posts for practical purposes.

Use graphics

Although the text is the star of the show with this medium, it’s important to use graphics to break up the text and improve its readability. This could include images, charts, graphs, videos, and gifs.

If you have the bandwidth and resources, you should try your best to create custom graphics for your blog. However, you can also find stock images on sites like Pexels, Shutterstock, and Unsplash.

You can also find images on Google, but it’s important to filter your results to those eligible for commercial use.

Final thoughts

With so many great tools available at your fingertips, writing a blog post is easier than ever.

And publishing high-quality blog content is great for improving your brand’s discoverability and connecting with your target audience.

So now that you know how to write a blog post, are you ready to start writing?

Featured Image by Amelia Bartlett on Unsplash

The post How to Write Blog Posts That People Actually Want to Read appeared first on noupe.

Email marketers eventually learn that periodic email validation is a must. Many find out the need to validate email addresses after experiencing a frustrating storm of email bounces. However, email validation is not just about avoiding email bounces. There are a lot of benefits to email validation. Let’s see what else you can gain.

Unexpected email validation benefit: it saves on costs 

At first, the baffled email marketer wonders, “What have I done to get so many bounces?” But they find out it wasn’t what they were doing but rather what they weren’t doing. They weren’t practicing email hygiene, which foremost means regular email validation. Email validation is an expense, but it frequently saves money.

How? Email services charge based on the number of emails on your list. If you’re sending emails to invalid or useless emails, you’re actually throwing money down the drain. With as many as one in four emails going bad in a 12-month period, trimming back your email list is a great way to cut costs.

Email validation can boost your metrics and ROI

You’ll likely boost every metric marketers use when you validate your list. For example, clickthrough rates (CTR), open rates, and ROI frequently climb because you’re purging ineffective contacts. In addition, some email marketers notice a morale boost when they see how much better their emails perform. It’s like they’re getting the real numbers.

You can’t make a sale to a dead-end email address. When you regularly validate emails, the quality of your list is enhanced. Better lists always lead to better results.

When you validate your email list, you reduce spam complaints

Ideally, your emails and everything you do should be miles away from anything that spammers do. Unsurprisingly, engaging in spam-like behaviors (like using spammy subject lines) can get you considered a spammer. It’s the adage: if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck.

A similar thing to avoid is the email users known as abuse or known complainers. These people love to mark the emails they get as spam. You could have done nothing wrong, but they still want to hit the spam button.

Any email validation service worth its salt will be able to root out the pesky people associated with these types of email addresses. It can’t be stressed enough: spam complaints harm your list health and results. It only takes a couple to give you worry about landing in the spam folder. Email validation will help you stay on top of them.

Email verification builds customer loyalty and name recognition

Do you subscribe to any emails from which you haven’t bought anything yet? Many people get an email from a specific brand and continue to get those brand emails even though they don’t make a purchase. It’s still good for you as a sender as it helps your reputation.

Email validation ensures that if someone subscribes to your emails and keeps opening them, they will still appear in the inbox. You can’t put a price on having a direct line to people who expressed an interest in your company. They may eventually make a big purchase or recommend you to someone who will.

If you validate your email list, you’re unlikely to get blacklisted

Email blacklists are no joke. Anti-spam organizations, in cooperation with internet service providers (ISPs), maintain lists of IPs believed to be spammers. The lists are collected and maintained in order to block spammers. Spam is such a pervasive problem, and blacklists go a long way toward keeping junk from showing up in your inbox. 

So what’s the problem? Legitimate email senders sometimes end up on blacklists. A spam trap ends up on their list. It could be that it seeped in through a contact form that is not protected.  Sometimes abandoned email addresses become spam traps and will wind up on your email list.

If you regularly check your email list, you should be able to find those blacklists and save yourself a lot of trouble. Ending up on a blacklist is a hassle you’re better off avoiding. Wouldn’t it be better not to be added to a blacklist in the first place? 

You can verify emails in real time

Your readers are only human. They will make a typo! They transpose a letter or put one letter twice when they key in their email address. If that address gets added to your email list, it will result in bounces. However, there are even worse problems. Sometimes bots will infest an email list using those forms. You know you don’t want that, but you may think the email validator will catch it the next time you upload your list.

One of the benefits of a complete email validation service is that you can stop typos or harmful data from the beginning.  You can connect an email validation API on all of your forms to block harmful data from ending up on your list in the first place. 

Let’s say someone wants to take advantage of your freebie, such as an ebook or audio download. The supposed customer wants the gift but doesn’t want to give their actual email address. Instead, they use a disposable or temporary email address because they aren’t interested in your business. Unfortunately, those disposables bounce, sometimes in just a couple of hours. An email validation API would prompt them to enter a valid email address at the source. Same thing with typos because it checks the email in real time.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure

Regularly checking your email list puts you in a more powerful position. You’ll always know where you stand and can keep any poor email data at bay. In addition, it’s better to be aware of what your list health looks like than to be unpleasantly taken aback.

There have been plenty of accounts of email marketers who neglect regular email validation and find out their email providers have banned them. Something like that is shocking and certainly interrupts your email plans, but you can avoid it. You can have peace of mind by regularly setting up email checking. 

Email validation has many benefits. Most of all, it’s knowing that your efforts and resources will not be wasted.

Featured Image by Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán on Pexels

The post The Unexpected Benefits of Email Validation appeared first on noupe.

The rise in the popularity of video content isn’t set to decline anytime soon, and with 2.6 billion YouTube users around the world, content creators are reaching limits with videos that written content could never accomplish. But how can you reach more global audiences with your videos? The answer isn’t as simple as creating great content. In fact, the success of your videos relies heavily on whether they’re optimized for a global audience!

Although English is considered one of the most widely-spoken languages on earth, only 1.35 billion out of the estimated 8 billion people on earth are English-speaking. That means that if you produce your videos in just the English language, you’re missing out on the opportunity to target millions of viewers worldwide.

You might think that video script translation is the quick solution here. But optimizing your video to engage global viewers revolves around more than just language. You also need to consider viewers with hearing disabilities.

This post explores the fundamentals of optimizing your videos for a global audience to make them accessible to anyone.

Why Video Content is the Best Way to Reach a Global Audience

More people watch videos today than ever before. And there’s no sign of the trend declining any time soon. In 2020, more than 80% of global internet usage was driven by video content. On YouTube alone, 1.2 billion videos are watched every single day. The effectiveness of video has been shown to increase consumer trust, increase conversion rates, and keep audiences engaged for longer. 

Videos are one of the best ways organizations can maintain consistent global branding, even if they target multiple languages across multiple channels. Pairing video and written content can be a great way to improve the ROI of global campaigns that target specific local markets. 

How to Optimize Your Videos for a Global Audience 

Step 1: Perform In-Depth Research

To start creating videos that engage a global audience, you must determine where the majority of your viewers are based. Most YouTube users are generally based in Latin America and Asia, which rules out the idea of only using English content when creating video ads. Once you’ve researched the demographics of your target audience, it’s time to focus on cultural preferences across multiple channels, which have a massive impact on the type of audience you’ll have to cater to with your content.

After establishing which cultures you’ll cater to, creating content with a specific persona is important. This will help you create content that aligns with your viewers’ expectations. When you deeply understand who’s listening to you, you’ll have a much better opportunity to discuss the type of content they’re willing to listen to.

Step 2: Focus on Titles, Descriptions, and Captions

Audio-visual content intended for the international market must be delivered in a way that sparks global interest. This doesn’t necessarily only relate to the kind of content you produce but revolves around improving the accessibility of your content with video metadata as well.

You’ll need to optimize your video titles, descriptions, and captions according to the preferences of the local audience. For example, if more than 35% of your viewers are native Spanish speakers, it’s important to translate your original audio content into the Spanish language.

Using translated captions is a great way to improve the accessibility of your audio-visual content, as it ensures that you’re also catering to individuals that cannot listen to the audio of the video. It’s preferable to use professional language service providers when it comes to translating your captions, as machine translation often neglects to capture cultural nuances that are deeply engrained in language.

Step 3: Consider Subtitles

Adding subtitles to your videos is a great way to reach more global audiences if you’re sharing videos outside of YouTube, where auto-captioning isn’t standard practice. Subtitles can be very handy to help viewers understand you better and ensure that viewers that cannot listen to the audio still understand the content of your video. Since subtitles force viewers to engage with the video, it might help drive engagement with your videos as well.

Step 4: Time the Length Perfectly

A major aspect of creating high-impact videos is their length. The perfect video length is important to the product’s effectiveness in reaching a global audience. If your video is intended for international audiences, be brief enough to keep people interested. Dragging the video out for too long can have a negative effect and might lead to increased bounce rates. To maximize viewership, it’s important to do proper market research and balance out the timing to ensure you’re producing videos that are just long enough to deliver a meaningful message. 

Step 5: Create Localized Videos to Reach Specific Audiences

Localized video clips can address specific problems people face in specialized regions. Developing local video campaigns is important. You can start by creating a simple video that engages the audience. After this, you can develop a series of short films tailored to specific countries or cultural areas. A good example of localized videos is the content created by the National Institute for Health. Their videos are intended for American English speakers. However, the voice-out and the scripting are all Spanish to demonstrate that NIH has resources available for the languages their target audience understands best.

Ready to Reach More Global Audience Members with Your Videos?

Optimizing your videos to reach more global audience members isn’t rocket science, but there are some basic principles that you must keep in mind to appeal to and engage viewers across the world. When you translate your videos and their text elements, you’re giving your video the best shot at reaching as many viewers as possible, but translation is not the end-all and be-all of building a global reach.

By implementing certain tactics to make your videos easily accessible through search engines and localizing your keywords, titles, and captions, you’ll be catering to a global market and expanding your reach with ease.

Featured Image by Sam McGhee on Unsplash

The post How to Reach More Global Audiences with Your Videos appeared first on noupe.

Exhaustive, sometimes bizarre notes… wireframes… mind-bending blends of art and science. Is it a GitHub repository? No, it’s the life of a Renaissance genius. With the right lessons, we can all write some da Vinci code.

Web development is a pretty big tent. It encompasses color, mathematics, accessibility, typography, photography, copywriting, ethics, and the list goes on and on. The web is a near-infinite world which — for all its relentless innovation and disruption — inherits many of its most beautiful qualities from old ways.

It is in that spirit that we’ll be looking at the Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci, the latest in a rather eclectic lineup of old maestros I’ve had the pleasure of writing about:

• “What Newspapers Can Teach Us About Web Design”
• “What Saul Bass Can Teach Us About Web Design”
• “What Vitruvius Can Teach Us About Web Design”

Perhaps more than any other person in history, da Vinci showed the kind of magic that can happen in the overlap between art and science, where much of web development lives. His methods and outlooks are as applicable today as they were in Renaissance Italy.

Document Your Thoughts, Ideas, And Work

Da Vinci was a fastidious writer, producing tens of thousands of pages of notes and sketches during his life. Their content ranged from mundane to genius, and that was part of their value. One day it’s a shopping list, another it’s flying machines. There was no filter, no preciousness, only expression and exploration.

This exhaustive documentation was valuable for a number of reasons. They were of benefit to him as an outlet for his thoughts, ambitions, and experiences and as points of reference for long-term projects. Getting his thoughts down allowed them to be tested and iterated on.

The benefits of such extensive documentation were not limited to da Vinci himself. Writing his ideas down also allowed them to survive him for the benefit of countless millions since. Centuries on his notebooks continue to surprise, delight and educate.

Da Vinci’s zeal for writing and sketching lends itself to web development. First is the powerful — sometimes downright mysterious — creative freedom of jotting down what’s going on inside your head. Sometimes you start writing down idea A and suddenly find yourself at solution X.

Not everything we do has to be perfect. Anyone expecting to arrive directly at the final product is going to be disappointed or have a pretty shoddy final product. Writing and sketching give you the license to be playful, maybe even a little bit audacious. Many timeless ideas are born on notebook paper.

There is a sense sometimes that the code we write is akin to sand sculptures — pretty but temporary. This doesn’t have to be the case. Even if the final form of websites continues to change, the thinking behind that evolution is invaluable. How did we get here, and why?

Documenting your pull requests to survive when you’re dead may be a bit strong, but your successors at old jobs will be grateful for the insight and guidance.

• “The Power Of Pen And Paper Sketching” by Tracy Osborn
• “Playfulness In Code: Supercharge Your Learning By Having Fun” by Jhey Tompkins

Web devs and designers ought to document their own journey, be it through PR descriptions or an actual notebook of their own:

• Flesh out ideas,
• Jot down idle thoughts,
• Doodle page layouts.

May future generations be delighted and awed by your pull request descriptions. May the feature ideas in your GitHub issues be as aspirational as da Vinci’s flying machines.

The best ideas in the world are of no practical use for as long as they’re stuck in one’s head.

Obsess Over Geometry

As most famously demonstrated by the Vitruvian Man, da Vinci was a lifelong student of geometry, shape, and proportion. He was fascinated by the recurrence of various shapes in nature, as well as by the workings of proportion and perspective. He understood their value to paintings and architecture alike.

Da Vinci took great pains to understand these invisible frameworks and replicate them in his work. Although he is more often remembered for his fine art, everything he did was underpinned by a fascination with science and mathematics.

These are essential tools for any web developer. Pages look similarly off-kilter if they are not assembled around invisible guidelines. Grids are the most common example of this, but areas like typography and responsive design are similarly rooted in questions of size, proportion, ratio, and shape.

Showing a da Vinci-like interest in the rules behind these subjects is the difference between a website being pleasing to the eye and being a complete disaster. If you’re unsure where to start, then it’s safe to say Smashing has you covered:

• “Building Better UI Designs With Layout Grids” by Nick Babich
• “Document Object Model (DOM) Geometry: A Beginner’s Introduction And Guide” by Pearl Akban
• Rachel Andrew’s Understanding CSS Grid series
  • “Creating a Grid Container”
  • “Grid Lines”
  • “Grid Template Areas”
• “Symmetry: A Balancing Act In Two (Or More) Parts” by Maggie Macnab
• “Applying Divine Proportion To Your Web Designs” by Vitaly Friedman
• “The Shapes of CSS” by Chris Coyier
• “What Vitruvius Can Teach Us About Web Design” by me

From nature to painting to architecture to web design, applied geometry can create a sense of the sublime.

Think Right-To-Left

In his notebooks, da Vinci typically wrote right to left in ‘mirror script’. He only wrote the ‘normal’ way when he intended it to be read by other people.

Why did he write that way? He was left-handed and wasn’t classically schooled. It prevented him from smudging the ink. It made his ideas harder to steal. Whatever the combination, it’s clearly what he felt most comfortable with.

Da Vinci’s mirror script shows the value of embracing ways of working that suit you. Da Vinci didn’t have to justify his methods to anyone else. And neither do you.

Trust what feels natural and customize the way you work to fit. Personalize your IDE, choose fonts and colors that you like, and write and draw however comes naturally — be that with a tablet or in a leatherbound journal.

• “Falling In Love With The Web: Inspiring Websites And Tools” by Cosima Mielke
• “Useful UX Guidelines, Tools And Resources” by Cosima Mielke
• “Top Front-End Tools Of 2022” by Louis Lazaris
• “Boosting Productivity For Designers With Efficient Tools” by Ashish Bogawat
• “Useful Figma Plugins and Tools” by Janet John
• “Everything Developers Must Know About Figma” by Chrinstine Vallaure

Norms being what they are doesn’t necessarily mean that’s how they should be. You will feel better about yourself, and who knows, maybe making space for your methods will allow unexpected ideas to appear.

Find Good Patrons (Or Failing That, Good Employers)

Da Vinci was picky about the work he did and the patrons he found. He lived in places that gave space to his flamboyance and creativity. Florence valued the arts, so it valued da Vinci as well as peers like Michelangelo.

When he moved to Milan, he delighted the courts with his theatrics, eloquence, and stagecraft. On the other end of the spectrum, da Vinci also spent a couple of years in the service of Cesare Borgia, a man so conniving, violent, and altogether horrible that he was a major inspiration for Machiavelli’s book The Prince. Still, it gave him the opportunity to apply himself in new areas like mapping.

Time inside the belly of the beast can be educational in its own way. However, it’s telling that da Vinci only spent a few years in Borgia’s service before slipping back into the less murderous company.

Although patrons are all well and good, we, in the world of web development, usually have to settle for employers. We owe it to ourselves — if at all possible — to find spaces for our creativity, to find outlets for our passions, or at the very least, not feel like a cog in some colossal evil machine.

Have enough pride in your work to channel it into projects you care about. Even da Vinci needed a good working culture. Find your Florence, and if you can’t, do what you can to make where you are a little more like it.

Iterate, Iterate, Iterate

It may be of some comfort to know that Leonardo da Vinci was, at times, a breathtaking procrastinator. He would take years to complete works, and that’s if he finished them at all.

Da Vinci worked on many of his paintings for years, including the Mona Lisa, which he took with him on his travels until the day he died.

Da Vinci’s creations were the result of countless experiments, tangents, and iterations. The final products are what looms large in the public consciousness today, but each was but the final step of long, often difficult journeys.

One particularly pertinent example of this process in action is Leonardo’s Horse, an equestrian monument da Vinci was commissioned to design and build in 1482 by the Duke of Milan Ludovico il Moro. A decades-long frenzy of research ensued, ranging from horse anatomy to concocting entirely new bronze casting techniques.

The project was not completed in da Vinci’s lifetime, but his work made it possible for the effort to be renewed when his extensive notes resurfaced in the 20th century. In 1999, a cool 517 years after he was commissioned, da Vinci’s horse was finally unveiled in Milan.

For all his brilliance, da Vinci was also an exemplar of the power of slow, steady progress — even procrastination. Yes, sometimes inspiration strikes, but more often, we find it at the end of a long, laborious journey. As Steven Pressfield puts it in The War of Art, “The Muse favors working stiffs.”

In the world of web design, the idea of something being ‘finished’ is pretty quaint. There will always be dependencies to update, tweaks to make, and new devices to accommodate. This is a good thing. It is true to nature. It’s exciting. In how many fields can one rebuild something they’ve made? Architects don’t have that luxury. Even painters can only change so much before they have to start again.

The ethereal nature of the web and its technologies lends itself to a da Vinci-esque approach to iteration. Build it, then build it again better. And again. And again.

Do not get too attached to what it is now. It is valuable, yes, but ultimately a stepping stone to what is to come. It is not about throwing away your work but evolving it.

• Guarding Against Disposable Design

Seldom is a work truly finished. There are always more perfections to be made.

“Art is never finished, only abandoned.”
— Leonardo da Vinci

Feed Your Inner Polymath

Leonardo da Vinci was too multifaceted to be tied down with one label. He was a writer, painter, sculptor, architect, inventor, scientist, philosopher, and the list goes on and on.

“He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards a ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.”
— Leonardo da Vinci

His knowledge of each field improved his proficiency in others. Anatomical studies led to more realistic illustrations. His studies of light helped him to create more lifelike paintings.

This, in part, stemmed from his atypical education. By avoiding the classical syllabus, he was able to explore on his own terms, blurring the lines between different subjects. His understanding of the world was fluid and holistic.

Web developers operate within a similarly vast and beautiful constellation of interconnected disciplines. The really good stuff happens when we tie them together.

“Technology alone is not enough — it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.”
— Steve Jobs

Play with new languages, old languages, frameworks, and libraries. Browse Smashing Magazine categories that you’re a novice in. Go down those rabbit holes. Pull on those threads. As da Vinci said of art, so too is true of the web: it can never be finished, only abandoned.

Further Reading

• Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson, a superb biography
• Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull, Amy Wallace
• “Where to View Leonardo da Vinci’s Notebooks Online for Free”, Margherita Cole
• “Marrying Tech and Art”, Steve Johnson
• Various da Vinci artworks at the Art Renewal Center

Gone are the days when employees spent their entire careers working for the same company. While ‘jobs for life’ have obvious upsides, an increasing number of workers are discovering the benefits of well-timed job hopping.

It’s not hard to see why many Gen Z and millennial employees have decided the time is now to vote with their feet and move to a job providing a better work-life balance or an enhanced salary or benefits package. 2022 saw over 135,000 tech industry layoffs, with no sign of abatement moving into 2023. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic created the perfect storm of conditions for the Great Resignation, as many workers began reassessing their priorities in the face of an uncertain future.

Purposeful job-hopping may appear to fly in the face of everything you’ve heard about showing tenacity and commitment with longer tenures. However, the conditions created by the pandemic have forced many employers to work harder to attract talent, often leading to significant financial rewards for job switchers. In fact, ADP’s 2021 Workplace Vitality Report found that job switchers enjoyed an average yearly wage growth of 5.83%, compared to just 3.08% for people remaining in their existing roles.

Thanks to the growing normalization of job hopping, there’s a strong case for using strategic switches to your advantage. However, understanding when job hopping can help your career — and when it can be harmful — is essential.

The benefits of job hopping

Well-planned, intentional job hopping can give you the range of experience you need to progress along your chosen career path more quickly. Having multiple roles under your belt could benefit your career in the following ways:

Developing skills and job knowledge

No two jobs are the same, even within a niche industry. The broader your job history, the more opportunities you have to learn new skills, processes, and methods that could give you the edge when it’s time for your next career move. Experiencing working with different colleagues and client groups can also help you develop the soft skills many employers value, such as communication, adaptability, and teamwork.

Varied work experience can also hone your ability to recognize good employment opportunities. Working for multiple companies allows you to evaluate workplace standards in your industry and appreciate both good and poor practices. Therefore, you’ll be more likely to identify employers offering the best benefits, compensation, and conditions while weeding out companies that don’t meet the mark.

Career advancement

If you’ve ever been missold the dream of fast progression by an employer, you’ll already know that getting promoted within your existing company isn’t always a given. Depending on retention within your company, you could be waiting years for a senior colleague to move on before you can advance. Job hopping can help prevent a stagnating career by taking advantage of more senior vacancies at other companies instead of waiting around for opportunities in your current job.

Exposure to new industries

Working across multiple industries can be particularly advantageous for young or recently-qualified employees. It allows you to gain valuable experience in different sectors while finding the career path that best suits your preferences and aspirations. As a candidate with a diverse employment history, you can offer employers a fresh perspective while bringing valuable transferable skills to your new workplace.

Increased earning potential

The ADP workforce report demonstrates how lucrative a job move can be in the right circumstances, and the current hot job market allows jobseekers to benefit from increased competition for the best talent. You may find a new company is happy to offer you a better salary and benefits package than you could negotiate with your existing employer.

While the outlook for job hoppers is rosy in most professions, it’s essential to consider the climate in your particular industry. For example, a career move could be an excellent option if you work in resources or manufacturing, with job switchers enjoying 11.81% wage growth in 2021 compared to 6.06% for job holders. However, leisure and hospitality workers were generally better off staying put. Wages in this industry showed negative growth, with job holders taking a smaller hit than those changing employers.

Experiencing different workplace cultures and methodologies

Exposure to a range of cultures and management styles can be attractive to potential employers, provided your time at each company was long enough to give you a thorough grounding in its methodologies. A diverse job history can make you a more well-rounded employee compared to experiencing just one way of doing things during a single, longer tenure.

Experience with multiple working styles and practices can also make you a valuable knowledge source to a new employer, especially if you have experience working for an industry leader and then switch to a smaller company or start-up. Your industry insights could help your new employer discover new, more effective ways of operating and even save them a significant amount on consultancy fees.

When does job hopping go too far?

Fortunately, there’s now significantly less stigma attached to reasonable job hopping, and many employers expect applications from candidates with broad experience. So, when does job hopping turn into a red flag?

There’s no hard-and-fast rule about how often you can change jobs without harming your prospects, and what’s acceptable will vary from employer to employer. However, multiple tenures lasting less than a year could indicate a lack of commitment, leaving employers questioning how soon you’ll quit. Furthermore, spending at least a year at each company allows you to grow into the role and acquire new skills and knowledge — in other words, you need depth as well as breadth.

Another factor to consider is the number of short tenures on your resume. Many employers are fine with an applicant having one or two year-long stints on their resume, but may be spooked by applicants with exclusively brief tenures.

Perhaps the simplest way to establish what’s normal (and what isn’t) is to look at average employment lengths. According to research by CareerBuilder, Gen Z workers (aged 24 or younger) stay in each job for two years and three months on average. Millennials (aged 25 to 40) typically stick around for an extra six months, with an average employment length of two years and nine months.

How to explain job hopping in an interview

While job hopping shouldn’t be a barrier for many roles, some hiring managers still prefer candidates that show commitment to one company. If you sense that a potential employer has a negative view of job hopping, there are a few ways to positively frame your changes in employment to help you succeed in an interview.

First, provide context for why you left your old job and explain how you managed the transition to minimize any impact on the company so hiring managers know that you won’t leave them high and dry. 

Then, communicate how you can help a prospective employer meet their goals and express why you want to work for them specifically so they know you’re committed. Focus on the aspects of the company and role that excite you and offer examples of how your previous experience makes you the best candidate.

Finally, when asked about short-term goals, emphasize your intention to grow in the role. Hiring managers are much more interested in a candidate that’s worth the effort to train, so let them know where you see yourself in the role down the road. 

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