70 Fun (Not Cheesy) Ice Breaker Games & Activities Your Team Will Enjoy in 2023

Asking “How is everyone?” at the beginning of every meeting isn’t always the best ice breaker to encourage team bonding. Sometimes, having a fun ice breaker game or activity can aid in that connection.

The best ice breakers have the power to strengthen coworker bonds, stimulate better brainstorming sessions, and create an atmosphere of inclusivity. To get the most value out of your team bonding moments, we’ve compiled a list of the best ice breaker activities and games for the workplace.

Next time you get together with your team, use one of these games instead of asking “How is everyone,” and you’re sure to hear some better, more insightful responses than “I’m good.”

Looking for a specific type of ice breaker? Jump to:

Zoom Icebreakers
Ice Breakers for Meetings
Quick Ice Breakers
Fun Ice Breaker Games
Large Team Ice Breakers
Ice Breaker Games for Small Groups
Virtual Icebreakers for Dispersed Teams
Would You Rather Ice Breakers

Zoom Icebreakers

1. Paint a Picture, Build a Story

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Best For: Virtual Fun

In this ice breaker, playoff your teammates’ artistry and create a scenario of their masterpieces. Gartic Phone gives you a short time frame to sketch photos based on other players’ prompts — and can result in some hilarious artwork.

The more nonsensical the prompt, the funnier the drawings become. You’ll also get brownie points if you save and share some of the funniest drawings and share them with the team on Slack afterward.

Instructions

Go to https://garticphone.com.
Enter a nickname and choose a character avatar.
Click Start.
Click the Invite button and share the link with your colleagues.
When the game starts, everyone will be prompted to write a fun sentence.
Everyone will receive someone else’s sentence and have the opportunity to draw it.
Everyone will receive someone else’s drawing and then guess what the original sentence was.
Enjoy the hilarious results!

2. Guess That Drawing

Best For: Virtual Fun

Drawasaurus is one of my favorite online drawing games to play with colleagues. Players get to choose from three random prompts to quickly interpret and draw their vision. Other players can score more points for identifying the word the fastest and take turns going until the timer goes out.

Instructions

Go to https://www.drawasaurus.org.
Enter a nickname (don’t worry; this won’t automatically start a game).
Click + Create a Room.
Set the room as Private, choose a room name, set a simple password, and choose the number of max players.
Share the link from the URL bar with your colleagues.
The game will start once everyone designates themselves as Ready to Play.
One by one, everyone will choose one word to draw, and the others will get to guess the word.
The person who guesses correctly the quickest earns the most points. Enjoy!

3. Alphabet Brainstorm

Best For: Virtual Fun

Thinking off the top of your head is a lot harder said than done in Scattergories. The host of the game can choose from topics as broad as foods and countries or as weird as “Things Granny would say.”

Each round, the game will highlight a random letter of the alphabet and let players come up with any noun or phrase that starts with said letter. The best part — players can dispute answers amongst each other to take the win. This is a perfect icebreaker for your overly competitive colleagues.

Instructions

Go to https://scattergoriesonline.net/new-game.xhtml.
Choose the categories you’d like for the game, such as “Animals,” “Long words”, and “Things with tails.”
Click Create new game.
Choose the game letters (most will be pre-chosen), the number of players, and the number of rounds.
Choose when a round ends (we recommend giving everyone 30 to 60 seconds).
Under “Who can join,” click Invited friends.
Click Create new game.
Copy the link and share it with your colleagues.
Everyone will have an allotted time to fill out several categories with words that start with a single letter.
Play all the rounds and see which one of your colleagues has the most expanded vocabulary!

4. Show and Tell

Best For: Team Bonding

A rather straightforward ice breaker, team members can share an object they love over Zoom. Whether it’s a prized-collectible or an item that sparks nostalgia, there’s plenty of stories waiting to be told.

Instructions

Let your team know ahead of time that you’ll be doing a show and tell.
At the start of the meeting, give everyone 5 minutes to find the item that they’d like to show (Option: Have them turn their camera off).
Start with a random team member or yourself.
Have everyone popcorn to someone after they show their item, or go alphabetically.
Enjoy seeing the eclectic items in your team members’ homes!

5. Bucket List

Best For: Team Bonding

Outside of the workplace, your teammates are people with aspirations and goals you wouldn’t know about from the average coffee chat. Have team members share some bucket list items they want to achieve in the future.

Not only can these be inspirational, but they also open the floor for team members to encourage one another to pursue their dreams, too. It’s a particularly uplifting team-bonding activity that will bring your team even closer together.

Instructions

Start with a random team member or yourself.
You or your teammate will share one bucket list item.
Have everyone popcorn to someone after their turn, or go alphabetically.
Enjoy!

6. Share the Love

Best For: Team Building

While dispersed teams may not have the chance to share a handshake or hug, you can still share the love amongst each other in this icebreaker. Say something lovely with another team member, and it could be anything you want as long as it’s respectful and in good judgment.

For each person that receives a kind message, they will be the next one to share a message to a member of the group who hasn’t received one — ensuring everyone gets an equal amount of praise. Shout them out for their helpfulness in a project, for the energy they bring to the team, or for their lovely smile.

Instructions

Let your team know ahead of time that you’ll be doing this activity.
We recommend pre-pairing teammates in a spreadsheet so everyone can come prepared with something to say.
Start with a random team member or yourself.
Have everyone popcorn to someone else after their turn, or go alphabetically.
Enjoy!

7. Arts and Crafts

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Best For: Virtual Fun

Making something with your team can be a great opportunity to learn something new and keep decorative mementos in your space. Have everyone follow the same instructions to make a craft like simple origami, a drawing, or painting by a designated instructor in the Zoom call or YouTube tutorial.

Instructions

Have everyone fill out an interest form for the event.
Set a date and have folks RSVP so that you can more accurately calculate the price per person in the next step.
Hire a Zoom arts and craft instructor from a business such as The Art Studio NY or KraftyLab. Alternatively, have a team member volunteer to teach, or find a YouTube video, which will be free.
We recommend taking 30-60 minutes to complete this activity.
At the end, have everyone show their work.
Have fun!

8. What Do We Have in Common?

Best For: Team Bonding

This icebreaker is best suited for new hires who may feel more reserved as they virtually meet the team.

Find common ground and get the conversation going with your team members. Have a manager or team leader start the conversation by sharing something they have an interest in, like popular TV, music, foods, or whatever they love to get everyone thinking. Popcorn it over to the most enthusiastic team member with that same interest and have them share a new one.

Typical icebreaker questions can get people to say a sentence or two about the subject, but if you’re passionate about it, you’ll see more personality come out from the most unexpected colleagues in the call.

Instructions

Start with a random team member or yourself.
You or your teammate will share an interest, such as a TV show or hobby.
Someone with that same interest should either drop a note in the chat or raise their hand.
Their turn will begin, and they will share a new interest.
Enjoy!

9. Name That Tune

Best For: Virtual Fun

Music brings people together, and you’d be surprised to learn how many of your coworkers are raving about the top trending song on TikTok or Spotify.

Take turns whistling, tapping, or even playing an instrument (if you gave one) to the tune of a popular song and have your teammates guess the name. Figure out who’s a fan of the classics by clapping and stomping to the rhythm of “We Will Rock You” by Queen, or do whatever it takes to help your colleagues recognize your favorite tunes.

Instructions

Start with a random team member or yourself.
You or your teammate will hum, whistle, sing, or tap the rhythm of your favorite song.
Team members should drop their guess in the chat.
The correct guesser gets the turn. If no one guesses correctly, popcorn your turn to someone else.
Enjoy!

10. Themed Meetings

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Best For: Virtual Fun

Hosting themed meetings is the best icebreaker for the holiday season. Share a laugh and snap photos of you and your colleagues dressed up as elves with Zoom backgrounds at the North Pole, or in your spookiest costumes for Halloween.

Make sure your theme is chosen in good judgment. As some holidays have cultural ties, keep this icebreaker for more commercial holidays.

Instructions

Let your team know ahead of time that you’ll be doing this activity.
Share either what costume you’re wearing or something special about your ensemble (such as, “I’ve had this ugly sweater since 1999”).
Have everyone popcorn to someone after their turn, or go alphabetically.
Enjoy!

12. Guess the Childhood Photo

Best For: Team Bonding

In need of a wholesome icebreaker? In your next Zoom meeting, tell everyone to send the leader a cute (or hilarious) photo from their childhood and randomly throw them all into one slideshow.

When it’s complete, the leader will then share their screen and have the group guess which team member is in each photo. Try not to blush too hard when they get to yours.

Instructions

Let your team know ahead of time that you’ll be doing this activity.
Share the presentation a week prior to the meeting so team members can add their childhood photos.
At the start of the meeting, share your screen.
Proceed slide-by-slide and have team members either throw their guesses in the chat, or write their guesses privately on a notepad.
At the end, have everyone share which slide belonged to them.
Enjoy!

13. Zoom Photo Ops

Best For: Team Building

In this icebreaker, you’ll first want to ask everyone involved if they’re comfortable having their photos taken before the meeting begins (I know I’d like a heads up in case I was wearing an old band shirt instead of my usual business casual outfits.)

You can try to get everyone to make silly or scary faces, or even try to mimic the Brady Bunch title sequence. There are plenty of poses or facial expressions to capture, especially if you’ve got a kooky team to work with.

Instructions

Let your team know ahead of time that you’ll be doing this activity.
At the start of the meeting, give instructions for the pose team members should take (Silly? Spooky? There are many options!).
Take a screenshot of the Zoom window.
Share the photo via your team messaging app and pin it for posterity.
Enjoy the memories!

14. Hobby Webinar

Best For: Virtual Fun

During weekly video chats, you can designate one coworker to teach the team how to engage in a hobby they’re good at — something you don’t need to be in-person to do.

This could range from showing how to do quick origami, do a magic trick, or even giving a pointer or two on couponing from your coworker who always keeps an eye out for the latest deals.

Instructions

Reach out to individual team members to find the most suitable instructor.
Alternatively, create a running spreadsheet with team members’ names and their hobbies.
Manually choose an instructor for the upcoming meeting, or pick a name randomly using a tool like this one.
If supplies are needed, let your team know ahead of time.
Have the instructor lead the meeting from the start, ideally with a time limit on the activity.
Enjoy!

Ice Breakers for Meetings

15. One Word

Best For: In-Person Team Building

The One Word ice breaker allows you to provide initial context into a meeting’s topic, and get everyone in the right mindset for discussion.

For instance, let’s say you’re leading a meeting on culture. Tell the groups to describe work culture, or your office culture in particular, in one word. Once they’ve shared with their groups, you can invite them to share their word with the entire room.

This game encourages everyone to think about a certain topic in smaller groups ahead of time, which could increase participation during the meeting.

Instructions

Divide meeting participants into smaller groups.
Tell them to think for a minute or two on the meeting’s topic.
Have every one share with their group one word that describes the topic, then allow them to popcorn their turn.
Enjoy the diverse responses!

16. Pop Quiz

Best For: Team Building

To successfully loosen everyone up and get them in the right mindset for a meeting, you might consider putting a short Pop Quiz on the board.

If your goal is simply to encourage team bonding, your quiz can be more fun — like, “Match the lyrics with this 80’s song.” However, you might also use the Pop Quiz as an opportunity to introduce participants to the meeting’s theme.

If you’re discussing company changes, for instance, maybe you’ll start by quizzing team members on company history facts (e.g. “What year was this company founded?”).

Instructions

We recommend not letting your team members know about this activity ahead of time.
If you’re on Zoom, post the question on the chat or share it via your screen. If the meeting is in-person, write it on the board.
Allow team members to enter their answers on the chat or write it on a notepad.
Whoever gets it right may get a small prize or bragging rights.
Have fun!

17. Birth Map

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Best For: In-Person Team Bonding

This activity is short, but delightfully telling — you’ll find out where your team members were born without needing to ask and having everyone take a turn. You’ll create a physical map where your teammates can place a pin on their birthplace. As the map fills up with pins, people will learn about how diverse their teammates might be.

Instructions

Place a map and a set of pins at the front of a large conference room before a big meeting.
As people walk in, ask them to place a pin where they were born or raised.
Allow some time at the end of the meeting for your colleagues to walk up and look more closely at the map.
Save the map or take a picture.
Enjoy the team keepsake!

18. Movie Pitch

Best For: In-Person or Virtual Fun

Perfect for larger groups and movie fanatics, this icebreaker is as crazy as you make it. Divide players into quads and give them 10 minutes to devise the plot of the next award-winning film. You can give them constraints by designating genres like horror, action, comedy, thriller, and more.

If your organization is meeting to brainstorm ideas for specific projects, go ahead and incorporate the topic into their movie pitch prompts to get the creative juices flowing.

Instructions

Divide team members into groups.
Have every group come up with a plot for the next blockbuster.
Each group should get a turn to share, and they might even act out parts of the plot.
Have fun!

19. Stretch Break

Best For: Team Wellness

Maybe the week has been busy for you and your team, or it’s going on your fourth meeting of the day. If this is the case, have everyone take a breather and stretch before the next big meeting begins.

Someone can either lead by example, showcasing some arm and back stretches, or just let everyone freestyle. You’d be surprised how a little movement can wake up and help people get work done.

Instructions

Designate a team member ahead of time to lead the stretches (or lead them yourself).
Take 5-10 minutes to go through a round of stretches.
Enjoy the much-needed break!

20. Rose, Thorn, Bud

Best For: Team Building

In meetings, it can be hard to communicate or understand everyone’s perspective on a project unless everyone has the floor to say what’s on their mind. With the Rose, Thorn, Bud icebreaker, team members can quickly convey what’s on their mind by sharing three bits of information:

Rose: A recent positive happening like a personal highlight or win

Thorn: A challenge or roadblock they need support on

Bud: An idea for the future they’d like to share, or excitement for events in motion

Instructions

Ensure you have the right team size for this activity. Less than 10 people would work best.
Start with a random team member or yourself.
Have everyone popcorn to someone else after their turn, or go alphabetically.
Enjoy!

21. Frivolous Debate

Best For: In-Person or Virtual Fun

There’s nothing like some lighthearted banter to get everyone warmed up before a meeting.

For this icebreaker, everyone will debate a silly topic and chime in with an equally silly answer and reasoning. Make a statement like, “Cats are better than dogs,” and, “Summer is better than winter,” or let chaos ensue by declaring that pineapple belongs on pizza (because it does).

Instructions

Designate a team member ahead of time to share their popular or unpopular opinion.
Have everyone chime in one-by-one on whether they agree or disagree.
Every team member should popcorn their turn, or you can go alphabetically.
Have fun finding out who agrees with you (and who does not)!

Quick Ice Breakers

22. Would You Rather

Best For: Team Bonding

A classic game played at summer camps everywhere, “Would You Rather” is an excellent, quick ice breaker for the workplace. Next time you’re settling into a meeting or team bonding outing, take turns going around the table and asking each person a “Would You Rather” question.

Here are a few “Would You Rather” questions to get you started:

Would you rather only have summer or winter for the rest of your life?
Would you rather go on a hike or see a movie?
Would you rather never use social media sites and apps again or never watch another movie or TV show?
Would you rather have a horrible short-term memory or a horrible long-term memory?

Instructions

Designate a team member ahead of time to share their “Would You Rather” question.
Have everyone chime in one-by-one with their answer.
Every team member should popcorn their turn, or you can proceed alphabetically.
Enjoy!

23. Accomplishments Before 18

Best For: Team Bonding

Accomplishments Before 18 is an engaging and unique way to encourage team members to share fun or interesting stories with one another. Before a meeting, simply go around the room, and ask each person to share one accomplishment they had before they turned 18.

Undoubtedly you’ll get some of lesser importance, like “I bought a skateboard,” but you never know what hidden skills you might discover in your colleagues.

Instructions

Start with a random team member or yourself.
Have everyone chime in one-by-one with their answer.
Every team member should popcorn their turn, or you can proceed alphabetically.
Enjoy!

24. Two Truths and a Lie

Best For: Team Bonding

One of the more classic ice breakers in the list, Two Truths and a Lie can be used anywhere from family parties to company events.

For instance, I might say, “I once auditioned for the TV show Zoom. I have three brothers. I ziplined in Switzerland once.” Coworkers can take turns guessing which is the lie. (FYI, I have two brothers, not three, so that’s the lie. Unfortunately, I auditioned for Zoom.)

Two Truths and a Lie is a fun and engaging game, and more importantly, it can help your team learn facts about one another, so they can begin forming deeper bonds.

Instructions

Ask each person to brainstorm three “facts” about themselves — two of the facts will be true, and one will be a lie.
Have team members guess which is the lie.
Whoever guesses correctly gets bragging rights.
Enjoy!

25. The Handshake

Best For: In-Person Fun

One of the first ways you get to greet somebody in the workplace is with a handshake.

This ice breaker lets individuals ease up and have a little fun without a hassle. It’s simple — everyone will create a fun, creative handshake.

If you have more time on your hands, have the pairs split up after showing off their super cool shake and make even more creative ones with new partners. It’s hard to play these games without sharing a laugh, which is something we all could use in the workday.

Instructions

Divide the group into pairs of two.
Have them make the most creative handshake they can in a couple of minutes.
If desired, have everyone rotate partners.
Have fun!

26. Bad Joke Contest

Best For: In-Person or Virtual Fun

This icebreaker won’t take your team time at all to complete if you give them a heads up to prepare. In the Bad Joke Contest, you’ll have everyone recite the corniest joke they can muster and have everyone vote on who was the most cringeworthy.

Beware, some coworkers have impressively bad dad jokes saved up for these moments, so the competition will be fierce.

Instructions

Let your team know ahead of time that you’ll be doing this activity.
Start with a random team member or yourself.
Have everyone popcorn to someone after they tell their joke, or go alphabetically.
Have everyone vote on the corniest joke either via Zoom poll or by keeping tabs on a notepad.
Don’t forget to laugh — or cringe!

The list continues below — read on to find fun icebreaker games, ice breakers for large teams, and more.

27. Tall Tales

This icebreaker game will have everyone thinking on their feet. In Tall Tales, each player will make up three sentences to add to a running story. The third sentence has to have a plot twist starting with, “Suddenly…” before rotating to the next.

Every player will have a chance to put their own spin on the budding story, and can even try to throw the next participant for a loop with a crazy situation.

28. Say Your Name Backwards

This game is pretty straightforward, or straight backward.

Every player will write their name on a slip of paper backward, fold it, and place it into a bowl. Once all the slips are collected, someone will draw one out of the bowl and read to the rest of the players what’s on the slip. Whoever can guess their coworker’s name correctly gains a point, and whoever has the most points at the end wins.

29. Jenga

Jenga is considered a classic game for a reason, and because it’s easy to play and put away. Have your team take turns pulling woodblocks out of your Jenga tower and share a laugh when it all comes toppling down.

30. Frown King or Queen

Make it a competition to see which of your team members has the gnarliest frown, and bestow upon them the title of Frown King or Queen. Bonus points if you actually go out of your way to make a paper crown.

You’d be surprised how hard it is to maintain a frown when surrounded by your favorite colleagues, not to mention how funny they’ll look during the game.

31. The Envelope Please!

In this icebreaker game, have everyone write 10 facts about themselves on paper and place them each into their own envelopes. The envelopes are to be shuffled and chosen once at a time by the leader to read aloud to the rest of the group.

The rest of the players will then guess the identity of the envelope in hand — but they must be confident in their answer as each player only has one chance to guess per envelope.

32. Random Talent Show

A talent show is one thing, but a random talent show is another. Have your coworkers take turns showing their cool party (or office) tricks. And let’s face it, you’ve been trying to find the right opportunity to show someone you could lick your elbow for a while now.

33. Celebrity Impressions

For this icebreaker game, the leader will tape a label to each player’s back with a celebrity or household name. Once that’s complete, every player will then ask each other yes or no questions about the traits, recent news, or talents of their celebrity label.

If a player can identify their own celebrity correctly, they can remove the label from their backs and continue mingling if they wish.

34. Quick Portrait Gallery

You don’t have to be Picasso to have take part in this icebreaker. The instructions are simple, every group member will be randomly assigned a different person to draw in a couple minutes. It’s a fun way to bond and share a giggle here and there over everyone’s work of art.

35. Sound Ball

Sound Ball is an imaginative icebreaker that gives everyone a chance to get moving and energized.

In this icebreaker, the leader holds an imaginary ball in their hand and “throws” it to other players, making whatever sound they think it would with that gesture. Whoever “catches” the ball next must repeat the sound made, then throw the ball to another person making their own unique sound. It sounds crazy, but it’s easy to get into the flow of it.

36. Beatboxing

This is probably one of the silliest icebreakers in this list, but it’s definitely worth trying for the fun of it all. Have one team member start making a noise you’d hear in a song like percussion and have others gradually add to the beat.

Who knows, if the beat sounds good enough you all could consider making an acapella group.

Large Team Ice Breakers

37. Charades

Charades is a game fit for large teams, both in-person and remote.

In this icebreaker, players need to communicate with team members to identify a noun of a certain category. Have everyone divide into two teams, and have one player at a time pantomime (act out) the subject for their own respective teammates. Whichever team gets the most points, wins.

38. Red Light, Green Light

I bet anyone who watched Squid Games in 2021 is familiar with this game, and if you haven’t, the rules are simple (and the stakes are much, much lower.)

The players in this icebreaker game will line up on one side of a room and a designated leader will be instructed to say either, “Red Light,” or, “Green Light”. Players in line are to try and walk to the other side of the room when the leader says, “Green Light”, but once the leader says, “Red Light”, everyone must freeze or be kicked out of the game.

39. Guess Who

Similar to Charades, Guess Who is a great icebreaker where you can mimic famous people — or even your coworkers.

Have someone write down well-known names on sheets of paper and then hand them off one at a time to a team member. They’ll have to act out the behaviors, facial expressions, or even the iconic “I’m flying” scene from Titanic.

40. Icebreaker Bingo

Icebreaker Bingo is a great way to bond with large teams because it can include as many people as you want.

You can use a free icebreaker bingo generator and personalize each of the squares on a subject you’re all discussing for the day, or for anything everyone can feel included.

41. Hot Take

For this icebreaker, everyone can take turns in sharing their hot takes and either bond with their coworkers who agree or debate their naysayers.

Of course, you want the topics to be fun and lighthearted, so keep them to topics that aren’t controversial and opt for statements like, “Cheese isn’t all that great.” if you’re a madman.

42. “Most Likely To ___”

Remember those high school superlatives? This is like that but a little less embarrassing. Have coworkers read through a list of “Most likely To” titles and assign them to one another. During the game, everyone can chime in or give reasons as to why someone deserves the title, and the group consensus will be the final decision.

It’s important to note that no two people will have more than one tile to ensure everyone is included.

43. Whisper Down the Lane

Whisper Down the Lane is an icebreaker game where team members form a larger circle and share a random message whispered into the ear of someone to their left. This game can get funny pretty quickly, as a whisper down the lane can get misinterpreted over and over again.

44. Simon Says

Simon Says is a game as old as time, but it never stops being fun. The leader of the group will instruct players to do an action beginning with the words, “Simon says…” like, “Simon says touch your knees,” or, “Simon says grab your elbow.” Whoever doesn’t do the actions proclaimed will be booted out of the game.

The real trick is for the leader to confuse players by giving fast Simon Says commands, then giving them a command without saying the keywords. This could work like, “Simon says touch your hips, Simon says hop on one foot, Simon says touch your nose — touch your ears!” Whoever does the action (like touching your ears) will be booted out of the game because it wasn’t a Simon says action.

45. Things in Common

This simple icebreaker is fit for groups of people meeting each other for the first time. All that has to be done is mingle with one another to find some things you have in common, and try to form groups based on those attributes. Bonus points if you can learn the names of those who you relate to, and brownie points if you can relay all their names when asked.

46. Team Jigsaw Puzzle Competition

For this game, you’ll need to prepare by purchasing two identical jigsaw puzzles. Divide your large group into teams of two and set a timer to see which group can work together to make the most progress on their respective puzzles.

47. Clump

Have team members walk around and mingle amongst themselves in a large, open space. The leader of the icebreaker will then yell out a random number under 10. Every person mingling will then have to quickly form a group in the size of the number called.

Gradually people will be made to exit the mingling space or find a seat until the last person standing wins.

Ice Breaker Games for Small Groups

48. Fun Questions

Asking fun questions is an easy and effective ice breaker game. To play, simply go around the room and have each person provide an answer to a fun question. The questions are up to you, but if you’re stuck, here are a few ideas:

If you’re stranded on a desert island and have the option of bringing three items with you, what three items would they be?
If you could be any animal, what would you be and why?
What was the first concert you ever went to?
If you could have any celebrity over for dinner, who would it be and why?

These questions serve two purposes — first, they allow your coworkers to get into a sillier, more creative mindset. Second, they encourage conversation on topics typically reserved for outside the office, which enables members of your team to get to know one another on a deeper level.

Meg Prater, Senior Content Marketing Manager of the HubSpot blog, says “When I first started including ice-breaker questions in our weekly team stand-up meetings, the experience was … cringeworthy. It felt like exactly what it was: organized fun. But we kept at it. I listened to feedback and tried to incorporate it into better ice breakers.”

She continued, “For example, some folks on our team don’t watch a lot of T.V. and felt a little excluded when we’d fall down a rabbit hole of shows we were binging. Keeping the ice breakers inclusive keeps everyone engaged. Now, our ice-breakers can take 15+ minutes to get through and yield some of our biggest laughs and revelations of the week.”

49. Personality Quiz

This ice breaker can promote team bonding, and it’s one of the easier options on the list. Simply choose a brief personality quiz on your phone or computer (if you’re stuck, here’s a list), and pull it up on a projector or send the link to everyone.

Once everyone has completed the personality assessment, have each colleague mention one thing they agree or disagree with from their results. This game allows your team members to gain a new perspective on their peers, and it’s also a fun and easy way to get an interesting conversation started.

50. Who is it?

Have everyone write a unique, strange, or unexpected fact about them on a piece of paper. Then, put the pieces of paper into a hat and mix them around. Pull from the hat and read each fact.

Allow the team to try and guess who wrote it. After they guess, ask the employee who wrote the fact to identify themselves and give any further context if necessary. This could be a great way to get to know surprising new things about your teammates.

51. Marshmallow Challenge

Tom Wujec, a business visualization expert, initially presented his Marshmallow Challenge at TED. To play, you simply divide your team into groups of four and give each group 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string, and a marshmallow. Whichever team can build the tallest structure, wins — the trick is, the marshmallow must be on top.

There are a few reasons this game works as both a great ice breaker and a team-building exercise. First, the most successful teams are the groups of people who don’t spend time competing for power.

The game forces your colleagues to work collaboratively when brainstorming potential solutions. Second, the Marshmallow Challenge encourages people to think quickly and offer alternative solutions when their initial idea fails.

With the Marshmallow Challenge, you can strengthen your team’s brainstorming and problem-solving skills, and your team can also have some fun. A win, win.

52. Scavenger Hunt

At HubSpot, we conduct a scavenger hunt for new hires on the first day of their training. It’s fun and encourages collaboration, but additionally, it can help employees learn their way around the office.

Fortunately, you can conduct a scavenger hunt for your team even if they’ve worked at your office for years.

Simply split up your team into groups, and give each group a shortlist of items to find — if you work in a smaller space, maybe you can hide some funny items around the office ahead of time. You might even provide an incentive for the winning team, like a $50 Amazon gift card.

A scavenger hunt is also an exceptional opportunity for cross-department interaction. Consider reaching out to managers from other departments and creating groups of employees who don’t often get to work together.

53. No Smiling

This game is simple and meant to energize your team. Get your colleagues in a circle and ask one volunteer to sit or stand in the middle. Tell the volunteer that they can not laugh or smile, regardless of what happens. Then have each other colleagues take turns telling the volunteer a work-appropriate joke.

The goal of the volunteer is to hear a joke from every colleague around the circle, while the goal of the other team members is to make the volunteer laugh.

This icebreaker can be helpful in new-employee or management training to lighten the pressure of starting a new job. It can also be helpful as a way of lightening the mood on teams that regularly deal with stressful projects or situations.

54. This is Better Than That

Aside from being a fun team activity, this might be a great energizer for sales employees or others that regularly pitch, market, and sell products.

Ask your team to find four to seven items around the office and bring them to one room. These items could be something they use daily, like a pen or a chair. However, you should encourage them to find items that are more odd or unique. This will make the game more challenging.

Line the items up and split the group into sub-teams. Task each team with picking an item they would use to survive if stranded on a desert island.

Tell team members that they cannot pick more than one and must assume it is the only item they will have on that island. Allow the teams time to deliberate and then ask them to present the item they chose and why.

Virtual Icebreakers for Dispersed Teams

55. Choose Your Favorite

For this icebreaker, all you have to do is answer the question about your favorite things. You’ll ask your team to choose their favorite movie, song, T.V. show, etc. The question can change every week.

This icebreaker helps your team get to know each other even when they work remotely and can spark conversation on what everyone likes or dislikes.

56. Trivia Game

If you’re looking for a remote icebreaker that’s more of a game, and less discussion-based, you can host a trivia game.

Kahoot is a trivia platform you can use for free (hosts up to 10 people). To get started, all you’ll need to do is sign up for a free Kahoot account.

Then, you can choose a featured trivia game to play. To run this remotely, you’ll want to share your screen with your team. Everyone will need to have a separate device to use so they can enter the game and submit their answers.

57. Share an Embarrassing Photo

This is one of my favorite icebreakers because it’s a fun way to get to know your team. For this game, have everyone bring in an embarrassing photo and tell the story behind it.

Have your team members share their screen or send a file to the team leader to share with everyone.

To make this more interesting, you can have people guess whose photo it is before your team member shares their story. Doing this icebreaker is a great way to build connections remotely.

58. One Word Pulse Check

For this icebreaker, have everyone on your team go around and share a word or phrase that represents how they feel that day.

Christina Perricone, former Senior Content Marketing Manager on the HubSpot blog, says this is her favorite icebreaker.

“The person sharing gets to decide whether or not to elaborate, and everyone listens without response. The purpose of the exercise is to give people a chance to release and/or reveal emotional setbacks, obstacles, wins, highlights, or anything else that might be impacting how they show up to work that day. It provides a space for participants to bring their entire self to work and it gives the team context for how to support that team member that day,” Perricone adds.

59. Meet my Pet

Nothing fills a meeting with smiles like photos of colleagues’ furry friends. Take turns showing off the cutest pictures and videos of your pet.

For those who don’t have any, they can either make a joke pet (the infamous pet rock) or share a dream pet they would have.

60. Let’s Make a Mixtape

This icebreaker works by asking your coworkers to choose one of their favorite songs from a certain genre. Once everyone has their song in mind, have someone compile either a Youtube or Spotify playlist of everyone’s choices, and share the link with everyone in the group afterward.

Not only is it fun at the moment, but then everyone has the chance to discover new artists and tunes they haven’t heard of before.

61. Emoji Mood Guesser

With this icebreaker, you’d ask everyone in your team to drop the most accurate emojis of their current mood or state of mind in a chat box (assuming they’re using Zoom, Microsoft Teams, etc.) Everyone can guess what adjective someone is trying to convey, and can even share why if they want to.

Would You Rather Ice Breakers

62. Food Would You Rather Questions

You’d be surprised how passionate some of your coworkers can get over food. When asking “Would You Rather” questions, ask about various savory or sweet food staples and which they would prefer to eat forever.

Example: “Would you rather eat only cake forever or eat pasta forever?”

63. Travel Would You Rather Questions

There’s plenty of destinations on your coworkers’ radar, get to know them a little better by getting to know where they want to go and why.

Example: “Would you rather travel to only island destinations or mountainous destinations?”

64. Talent Would You Rather Questions

Explore more uncommon talents and see which your coworkers would like to have in this type of questionnaire.

Example: “Would you rather your special talent be opera singing or in playing the banjo?”

65. Super Hero Would You Rather Questions

There are hundreds of superheroes from Marvel and DC, and chances are your coworkers are familiar with them, too. Ask which hero they would like to be and why based on their stories or abilities.

Example: “Would you rather be Ironman or Captain America?”

66. Super Power Would You Rather Questions

On a similar note to heroes, find out what powers your coworkers would rather have and why. Bonus points if you ask them whether they’d label themselves as a hero or villain.

Example: “Would you rather have super speed or super strength?”

67. Sport Would You Rather Questions

Your coworkers may be involved in sports outside of work, and maybe they’re fans of different leagues and teams. Ask which sports they’d rather play and see which they’d prefer and why.

Example: “Would you rather play basketball for the rest of your life or football?”

68. Fashion Would You Rather Questions

Even if your coworkers aren’t tuned into NYFW, they’re sure to recognize some of the most popular clothing brands. Ask them which they’d prefer to dress in and why.

Example: “Would you rather wear only Louis Vuitton or Gucci?”

69. TV Would You Rather Questions

With tons of streaming services to choose from, your coworkers are bound to have some favorite TV shows. Ask questions like which shows they’d rather watch, or be a part of.

Example: “Would you rather be a cast member in Euphoria or Ozark?”

70. Movie Would You Rather Questions

Movie fanatics across any team or department will enjoy questions about them. Ask coworkers which genres they’d rather watch, or which they’d want to be in.

Example: “Would you rather be cast in a comedy movie or action movie?”

Break the Ice and Get to Business

Icebreaker activities can seem cringeworthy but are actually a great way to build trust within your team. We hope you found some good ice breakers to incorporate in your future meetings with our list of favorites. And even if you work remotely, team bonding is an important part of running a productive, effective team.

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

 

How to Write an Effective Communications Plan [+ Template]

Remember the “Tide Pod Challenge?” That horrendous time at the beginning of 2018 when adolescents filmed themselves ingesting laundry detergent?

While it was a funny (albeit dangerous) start to the new year, this small boost of infamy was a PR mess for the detergent brand in question, Tide, whose crisis communication team had to figure out how to respond to America’s teens swallowing their toxic product. Tide’s parent company, Procter & Gamble, was swift in their response, thanks in large part to their communication plan.

In this post, you’ll learn how to create an effective communication plan that prepares you and your company for any situation.

Communication plans can help you clarify the purpose of a product launch or new initiative and officially determine the messages you want to deliver to your intended audience(s).

Additionally, a communication plan can help your business during a time of crisis if a previous marketing message or business decision damages your reputation with internal stakeholders or customers.

If companies don’t have a communication plan, they’ll be unprepared when disaster strikes. It may be unlikely that your company will find teenagers eating your product for internet fame, but not so unlikely that you’ll never find yourself needing a procedure to effectively handle difficult situations.

Need a free, easy-to-use communication plan template? HubSpot has 12. Check out this toolkit for everything you need to build your own.

This is part of a template offered in the toolkit. For this particular template, the organization is separated into phases, a description of that phase, and who needs to complete that action.

Download These Templates for Free

Now that we’ve gone over how a communication plan can be helpful, let’s learn how to write one that will be effective.

1. Conduct an audit of your current communications materials.

Before sitting down to get rollin’ on your plan, you need to first decide where it’ll fit into your business. So it’s important you complete a “state of the union,” or an audit of the current climate of communications within your company. This can help you identify any problem areas.

For instance, let’s say you need to create a communications plan for a new product launch. To create your plan, you’ll first need to perform an audit to identify gaps in your current marketing approach.

After performing the audit, you might find there is a major gap in your marketing materials in which you rarely discuss a topic that aligns well with your new product. You’ll want to ensure this topic makes it into your communications plan.

To conduct an audit, you’ll need to carefully gather and interpret data on your current marketing plan performance and build a path forward based on those results. Additionally, you might consider hosting focus groups or sending surveys to your audience to find gaps in your current communications materials.

Of course, you’ll want to have the goal of your communications plan in-mind when conducting an audit. In the example above, noticing you’re lacking material on a certain subject only matters if your goal is to drive leads and conversions to a product that aligns with that subject.

For instance, if you’re launching a new email marketing tool and you notice you’re lacking content on Google Ads, this might not be relevant information for your communications plan. However, if you’re missing content on email marketing best practices, that’s important information you can use to tailor your communications plan appropriately.

2. Set SMART goals for your communications plan based on the results from your audit.

After your audit, you’ll want to lay out a few goals based on the data from the results. What do you want to achieve with this plan?

When in doubt, remember that your goals should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based.

For instance, if a small agency is writing a communications plan for its client, they might write a goal along these lines: “We plan to increase employment applications for our client by 25% over the course of one quarter.”

Alternatively, perhaps your HR team needs to write a communications plan to pitch designing a new growth matrix for individual contributors who don’t want to become managers.

If that’s the case, your HR team will need to identify specific goals they hope to achieve as a result of their plan, even if the results are less quantifiable — for instance, their goal might be to “increase employee retention rates by 10% over the next year” or even “increase employee satisfaction, as indicated by their next NPS scores.” They’ll need to pitch these goals to stakeholders to get leadership on-board.

Download Your Free SMART Goal Template

3. Identify the audience to whom you plan to deliver your communications plan.

Good communication starts with knowing and understanding your listener. In this case, if a crisis communication plan is for stakeholders, which one(s) are you writing for? Stakeholder examples include employees, investors, customers, local government officials, or media outlets.

If you’re writing for media outlets, a press release detailing your goals is a good idea for that audience. There should be a process for who will speak to the media outlets, an outline of what they will say, and an action plan put in place moving forward.

Alternatively, if your audience is your employees, you might want to create an up-to-date internal document for employees to refer to, as well as the contact information for the internal DRI if they have follow-up questions.

4. Outline and write your plan, keeping your audiences in-mind.

When you’re ready to outline and write your plan, it’s likely easiest if you start with a table or chart to identify the messages you need to promote, to whom you’re targeting those messages, and on which channel(s).

Once you’ve created a general outline, here’s how you’ll want to structure your communications plan (feel free to copy these sections into a Table of Contents for your own plan):

Purpose (what is this communications plan for)
Escalation Framework (including ‘first line of defense’ and ‘greater response team’)
Roles and responsibilities of each employee
Do’s and Don’ts
How to maintain an effective response plan

(If you need help writing a communications plan, download our free, ready-to-use communications plan templates.)

When writing your communication plan, work with groups or representatives from your stakeholders to improve accuracy. Strategies should solve for goals or potential risks.

For instance, if you work for an agency aiming to promote a client’s product, a risk might be spending money on paid ads without a guaranteed ROI. To solve for that risk, the agency should detail different steps to ensure the ads are effective before going public.

5. Determine the channel(s) on which you need to deliver your messages.

The channels you choose to communicate with your audience depends on your message, and to whom you want to deliver that message. For instance, if you’re creating a communications plan for internal employees, you might send out your communications plan in a company-wide email, or use in-person team meetings to deliver your message.

Alternatively, if you’re communicating with customers, you might determine it’s best to communicate via an email newsletter, or via a press release.

Of course, the channel(s) you choose will depend on your goals, but it’s important as you’re writing your communication plan that you keep your distribution methods in-mind.

6. Decide which team members are responsible for delivering the message.

Once you determine your audience and channel(s) on which you’ll deliver your communications plan, figure out the DRI for delivering the message.

For instance, if your HR team is pitching a new growth matrix to leadership, you might ask your Director of HR to deliver the initial pitch in the first meeting. Once leadership is on-board, you might ask each HR representative to deliver one training session for each internal team to ensure every employee understands what’s changing internally, and why.

7. Estimate a timeline for how long each step should take.

You should have a ballpark estimate of how much time each step in executing your strategy will take. For instance, if your plan needs to go from the higher-ups down to the employees, it’s good to take into account how long going through the chain of command will take. It’s also smart to infer how long a media cycle will last.

For instance, for a minor slip-up on an ad campaign, the advertising agency might estimate the cycle for controlling the issue will take a month — including meeting with the client, stakeholders, and employees to discuss steps moving forward.

8. Measure the results of your plan after presenting to stakeholders, and determine successes and areas for improvement.

There’s always room for improvement. Measure the results of the plan after presenting it to stakeholders, and determine aspects that went well, and areas for improvement next time.

For instance, the ad agency might not have met its goal of increasing prospective applications by 25% within a quarter. They might rework their goals to give themselves more time or pivot their quarterly focus to fit those goals.

Alternatively, if you notice certain language in your communications plan evokes a level of stress or fear with internal stakeholders, consider how you can re-word next time to ensure your communications plan feels helpful, beneficial, and positive.

Some aspects of building a communication plan can be a “choose your own adventure” journey. The key is choosing aspects that best reflect what your business needs in times when effective communication is key. What do your stakeholders need to know, and how are you going to best communicate that?

Communication plans can get tricky, but writing an effective one will prove itself with its longevity. The following communication plans include analysis for stakeholders you’d respond to and the procedures for what to include in those communications.

1. Strategic Communication Plan

Bright Hub Project Management’s communication plan explains how, when, and why communication happens within its organization.

This example is great because it details how communication managers write crisis plans and acknowledges that sometimes the busy marketer or project manager takes on this responsibility.

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2. Project Communication Plan

Here’s an example of a Billing Upgrade Project from Simplicable. This communication plan maps out all the important meetings and documents needed for the project. As you can see, it also includes necessary sections including audience, goals, format, and DRI.

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3. Marketing Communication Plan

A marketing communication plan is essential for communicating to your target market, especially when launching new products or initiatives. This example from Smartsheet allows you to plan marketing communications strategies for customers, sales prospects, media partners, internal stakeholders, and events.

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4. Corporate Communication Plan

Corporate communication plans outline how organizations communicate internally and externally. This example from Smartsheet is a nine-step roadmap that includes space for a mission statement, executive summary, situation analysis, key messages, and more.

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5. Crisis Communication Plan

This communication checklist below, by Prezly, gives a great overview of the details of a crisis plan from beginning to end. It can be used as an effective guide when drafting a crisis management strategy.

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Communication Planning Tips

Communication planning can be tricky, so here are some extra tips to keep in mind to help your plan shine: when describing procedures for handling crises, include who the situation involves. This lets stakeholders envision decision-making processes.

Additionally, if you’re part of a larger company with a broad stakeholder list, it’s okay to split up target audiences for your plan.

For instance, maybe your audience is more than just “consumers.” Split stakeholder groups for easier comprehension and more distinct solutions.

Ultimately, your communications plan needs to clearly and succinctly provide necessary information to everyone involved in the business decision, product launch, or PR crises. Use the strategy mentioned above, as well as our communication plan templates, to ensure yours is as effective as possible.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in September, 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

The Ultimate Guide to Content Distribution

Year after year, hundreds of marketers report increased efforts and spending on content marketing — or the intention to do so.

But great content is wasted if your audience doesn’t know it exists.

Content distribution is integral to your content strategy, if not the most essential part.

This guide will equip you with the tools you need to distribute the content you create. By the end, you’ll be able to build a content distribution strategy that gets your content in front of — and consumed by — your audience.

Today, social media plays a huge role in content distribution — let’s take a moment to review what this entails.

No matter which type of content distribution you focus on, the distribution process will happen after you create your content.

However, you should know where and how you’re going to publish and promote your content before you put the proverbial pen to paper. Otherwise, your time and resources could go to waste.

Take a look at these content distribution statistics:

60% of marketers create one piece of content each day.
8,726 tweets are posted to Twitter each second.
Google processes over 8.5 billion searches per day.

As you can see, in recent years, we’ve seen a rapid influx of content met with dwindling demand. With almost 4.5 million blog posts published daily, we can consume only so much content. Marketing influencer Mark Schaefer argues that because of this “content shock,” content marketing may not be a sustainable strategy for every business.

While I won’t agree or disagree with this theory, I will outline everything you need to know to distribute your marketing content successfully.

Various content distribution channels through which you can share your content include:

eBooks
Podcasts
Videos 
Infographics
Case studies
Webinars 
Blogs

Content Distribution Channels

Content distribution channels are the channels through which you share and promote the content you create. The channels you use to distribute your content will vary based on your audience and resources.

Three overarching content distribution channels cover several more specific distribution channels: owned, earned, and paid.

The following diagram illustrates how these three content distribution channels overlap and how you can combine them to enhance their impact and reach.

Owned Content Distribution

Owned channels are the content properties your company owns. You can control when and how content is published on your owned channels. These include your website, blog, social media profiles, email newsletter, or mobile publishing app.

Earned Content Distribution

Earned channels (also known as “shared” channels) are when third parties promote or share your content. These third parties could include customers, journalists, bloggers, and anyone who shares your content for free — hence the name “earned.”

These channels include public relations, social shares and mentions, guest articles and roundups, and product reviews. They also have forums and communities like Reddit or Quora — while posting on these sites is free, the content is owned by these third parties and therefore falls under earned channels.

Paid Content Distribution

Paid channels are when your company pays to distribute your content on specific channels. This includes pay-per-click (PPC), paid social advertisements, and paid influencer content.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Ads

With PPC, an advertiser pays when people interact with their ad through impressions or clicks. PPC falls under search engine marketing (SEM) and, when done right, helps you earn quality leads.

PPC ads are most common in search engine results pages (SERPs) but are also used on social channels. When paired with an SEO strategy, PPC can be integral to your inbound marketing efforts. One of the top platforms for PPC is Google Ads.

Sponsored Content

Sponsored content is promotional media paid for by an advertiser, created and shared by another person, brand, influencer, or publisher.

Sponsored content is most effective when it includes a person or brand that already targets your audience and buyer personas and already aligns well with your brand.

As a result, sponsored content feels natural rather than invasive or disruptive. You can use sponsored content in various ways, including images, videos, podcasts, social media, and any influencer content.

Paid Influencer Content

Paid influencer marketing requires you to employ leading content creators in your business’ niche to help you improve your brand awareness, traffic, and conversions among your shared target audience to your target audience.

Influencer marketing is effective because it taps into powerful strategies such as word-of-mouth marketing and social proof, which — for today’s buyers — may feel more trustworthy and believable than the marketing a company does for itself. Brands are expected to spend up to $15 billion on influencer marketing by 2022.

Paid Social Ads

Paid social ads can include PPC, sponsored, or influencer content. Paid social media ads share your marketing messages and campaigns on social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram, while targeting a specific sub-audience on those platforms.

PPC advertising, branded or influencer-generated content, and display ads are all examples of paid social media. A paid social media strategy will likely incorporate tools native to specific social media channels, like Facebook Ads or Instagram Ads, to create, schedule, and share ads to reach your target audience.

Next, let’s review what a content distribution strategy is and why it’s so important.

A content distribution strategy is important for a few reasons:

It boosts your content impact past curation and creation. As I said above, great content is useless if nobody reads it. A content distribution strategy gets your gorgeous content in front of the right eyes.
It aligns your team and the teams you collaborate to create and share the content. Depending on the size of your company, you may have several cooks in the content marketing kitchen. (I know we do at HubSpot.) A content distribution strategy aligns all these parties and ensures you collaborate efficiently.
It sets goal benchmarks against which you can measure your distribution performance. Content distribution can be vague — a simple press of the “Publish” button, and you’re done. A content distribution strategy helps you set benchmarks and challenging goals to chase while publishing and promoting your work.

Here’s how to build a content distribution strategy for yourself.

1. Research your target audience.

Content distribution is about getting your content in front of your audience — not just any audience. You can’t do this properly if you don’t know where they are and what they like to read. Before you build your strategy any further, research your target audience to know precisely who will consume your content.

Start by collecting demographic data from your website visitors, email subscribers, social media followers, and customers. Look at your audience’s gender, age, income, location, education, and related categories. You can pull this information from Google Analytics or your social media analytics tools.

Next, collect feedback directly from your customers, email subscribers, and social media followers. Ask them about their pain points and needs, as well as how they feel about your current content and distribution efforts.

Use these two data points to create your buyer persona. Your buyer persona(s) act as models of your ideal customers and content consumers and represent their pain points, information preferences, and motivations as you build out the rest of your content distribution strategy.

2. Audit your content.

You may already have some published content, such as blog posts, videos, social media content, and more. While your new content distribution strategy doesn’t involve removing that content, you should audit it to understand if it’s helping or hurting your distribution efforts.

Auditing your current content will also remind you which topics you’ve already written about and which ones you can expand on.

A thorough content audit is comprised of three main parts:

Logging your content. Logging your content can be done manually or with a tool. (We recommend the latter, especially if you’ve been publishing content on multiple properties and channels.) Tools like Screaming Frog can help you crawl and collect your content, listing each URL, title, and description in a spreadsheet. The free version crawls up to 500 URLs. If you opt for a manual content audit, follow the steps in our blog post here.
Assessing your content impact. If you crawl your content with SEMRush, the tool will also list content length, social shares, and backlinks. This information can help you assess the impact of each piece of content, alerting you to anything that needs to be updated, rewritten, or erased.
Identifying your content gaps. You can also identify gaps in your content using the Ahrefs Content Gap tool or by performing keyword research to discover new keywords or phrases to add to your content, thus helping it rank higher and for more terms.
Check out
this blog post
for 30+ more content auditing tools.

3. Choose your content distribution channels.

Your content distribution channels are arguably more important than your content itself, hence why this step comes before content creation and after target audience research. Once you know your target audience, you’ll have a better idea of getting your content in front of your followers and customers.

Depending on your analysis, you may post on forums and communities like Reddit or Quora — and pay to promote your content on those sites, too. Alternatively, you may choose to share content on social media channels exclusively, or perhaps you find that traditional PR is your best route.

Regardless of your content distribution channels, ensure they align with your audience’s preferences and behaviors.

Also, optimize your owned distribution channels — your blog, email newsletter, and social media profiles — as these are relatively inexpensive and in your control. Even if research shows that your audience prefers forums to social media or news sites to company blogs, never neglect your owned properties, as these reflect on your brand and product.

As you work through this step, set aside time to optimize your blog-to-gain readership, brush up on how to send email newsletters (or start sending them), and learn about organic social media marketing.

4. Decide on your content types.

After determining your distribution channels, consider what types of content you’d like (and have the resources) to create.

Many companies choose to publish all of their content on their blog and then repurpose and re-publish it. Blog posts are universally consumed, easy to repurpose and localize (i.e., translate into other languages), and simple to share — not to mention that almost 50% of buyers read a company’s blog while making purchase decisions.

For these reasons, we recommend building a business blog and then expanding your content types to share on other channels.

Consider the content types we discussed at the beginning of this guide, and think about how you’ll repurpose and distribute them.

5. Set your content distribution KPIs and goals.

Goals help us recognize where we’re going and what success might look like when we get there. Your content distribution strategy should involve setting goals for your content key performance indicators (KPIs) and their subsequent metrics:

KPIs related
related metrics

Traffic/each unique
Unique page views by channel and source

Engagement
Bounce rate, average time on page

Top content (and falling content)
Top page views, top exits

Impact
Click-throughs, conversions, backlinks

Sentiment
Comments, social shares

These metrics may vary based on your distribution channel (i.e., you can’t track comments on your email newsletter or top exists on your social media ads), so be sure to choose the metrics that correspond best to each channel. Establishing a baseline for each channel might take a few months, especially if you haven’t used it before.

Set SMART goals for your content using these metrics. Here’s an example:

Specific: I want to increase our blog’s organic traffic by boosting backlinks from other reputable websites and blogs. This will increase our search engine ranking, thus bringing in more organic traffic.
Measurable: I’d like 30 new backlinks to our blog.
Attainable: We’re already generating 10 new backlinks each month without an intentional strategy, so I believe 30 new backlinks with our approach is feasible this month.
Relevant: This goal aligns with our broader organic content marketing strategy and could boost our earned media as we get mentions from press outlets and third-party bloggers.
Time-bound: I’d like to receive these backlinks within the next month.

6. Build an editorial calendar (and include distribution).

Content marketing and distribution require lots of planning to be successful. This is where an editorial content calendar can come in handy. You can create one in Excel or Google Sheet, or even use Google Calendar. Tools like CoSchedule, Asana, and Trello are helpful, too.

Your editorial calendar, like your content distribution strategy, helps your team stay aligned and work towards common goals. It also gives your writers and editors a roadmap for what they’ll be working on in the coming weeks and months.

Here’s what your editorial calendar may look like (using this post as an example):

Your editorial calendar is the perfect place to include your content distribution plans and goals. Here’s what that may look like on your editorial calendar:

See how the right-hand columns now include categories like “Publish Destinations” and “Repurposing Plans”? Your editorial calendar shouldbes your hub for all content creation and distribution plans.

Manage and plan your social media content with a free Social Media Content Calendar Template.

7. Create your content.

After you research your audience, audit your content, decide on your distribution channels and content types, and build your editorial calendar … it’s time to create your content.

Content creation will vary based on your resources, team size, industry, and brand, so to get the most pointed, applicable advice, check out our Guide to Content Creation.

As you work on your new content, check out these tools:

AnswerthePublic, which can help you flesh out topics and understand what your audience is searching for
Canva, which can help you build gorgeous infographics and images
Vidyard, which is a video hosting and publishing platform made for marketers
Anchor, which is a free podcasting tool for beginners

We’ll talk more about content distribution tools in the next section.

8. Distribute and market your content.

You’ve created your content … now it’s time to put it out in the world. Following your editorial calendar and chosen distribution channels, publish and market your new content. As for any marketing channel, follow rules to optimize your posts on each channel.

For example, our HubSpot team paid for Reddit ads and found that it was helpful to organically engage with Redditors and found that it was useful to organically engage with Redditors as well as pay for ad space. Alternatively, if you’re posting on (or paying for) social media, follow the guidelines for the best times to post and share content — the same goes for sending emails.

9. Measure and analyze your results.

As always, keep an eye on your content distribution results. Remember those KPIs, metrics, and SMART goals you established in step five? Time to pull those out.

After you’ve published your content, look at Google Analytics, your social media analytics dashboards, and your blog performance — depending on where and how you distributed the content. Make sure you set a routine time to measure and analyze (weekly, monthly, or quarterly) to establish a baseline and know which numbers you can beat the following week or month.

Whew! So, that’s what it takes to build a content distribution strategy. Be sure to iterate on this process; these guidelines may change as you expand your content efforts and scale your team.

Now, let’s discuss the tools you need to get it done.

Content distribution can be an arduous process, but thankfully there are many content distribution tools out there to help you get your work discovered and consumed.

These tools help you publish your content on additional networks and forums to reach broader audiences.

1. HubSpot

HubSpot is an all-in-one CRM for small to enterprise companies. It includes a Marketing Hub, meaning its useful for email marketing, analytics, content creation, social amplification, and more.

You can monitor, schedule, and post content to your social networks. You can also access information from your email marketing campaigns so you have the big picture of your readers and customers.

Price: Free and paid

2. Medium

Medium is a content platform that individuals and businesses alike use to publish content. You can use Medium in addition to or in lieu of your traditional blog. (We recommend this  in addition to your blog as this will give your content the broadest reach.)

Medium is where thousands of readers consume content. It’s a one-stop-shop platform for all kinds of content … kind of like Amazon is for products. For that reason, consider publishing to Medium to increase the number of people who see your content.

Price: Free and paid

3. PR Newswire

PR Newswire is a press release distribution network. The platform helps you target and contact journalists and outlets by specific industries, geographic areas, and topics. It offers packages for state and local, regional, and national press.

Price: Paid

5. HARO

HARO stands for Help a Reporter Out, an online platform connecting journalists and sources. In this case, you’d be the source.

When you sign up for HARO, you’re sent daily emails with journalist queries. Respond to these queries to be potentially featured in an article. This is a reactive content distribution tool that helps get press mentions and backlinks.

Price: Free and paid

6. ClickToTweet

ClickToTweet is a tool that equips your readers to share soundbites of your content on Twitter with a single click. You create your content soundbites, and ClickToTweet provides a link. When readers click that link, the tool opens their Twitter with the content soundbite already ready to post.

It also links to your Twitter account and content — allowing your readers to distribute your content for you.

Price: Free

7. GaggleAMP

GaggleAMP is a social amplification tool that allows you to aggregate your employee’s social networks and post company content directly to them.

Employees can review and improve content before its posted or allow it to go through automatically. This is a great alternative to constantly bugging your staff to post about your business.

You can also use this tool to link to social networks from partners, customers, brand advocates, and more.

Price: Free and paid

8. AddThis

AddThis is an on-page social sharing tool. It allows your readers to share your content without bouncing from your page (and potentially getting distracted). You can also integrate AddThis share buttons into your email newsletter and other assets.

Price: Free

These tools help you measure and analyze the impact of your social posts and other distribution efforts.

9. Mention

Mention is a social media monitoring tool that provides social media listening, publishing, crisis management, and more. You can use Mention to monitor any mentions of your brand name, content, or social networks and respond accordingly.

This is an excellent tool for measuring the impact of and engagement around your content and seeing who is promoting it for you.

Price: Free and paid

10. SharedCount

SharedCount is a tool that helps you measure the engagement of your social media posts. Simply input a URL, and SharedCount will report its likes, shares, comments, and other engagement measures.

While it can’t help you distribute your content, it can alert you to which pieces are performing well and which components may need to be updated or scrapped.

Price: Free and paid

11. Outbrain

Outbrain is a paid amplification tool aggregates your content at the bottom of other articles. You can set up content campaigns with an RSS feed or specific URL(s), and Outbrain will place them under related content, encouraging readers to click and read yours.

Outbrain works with an impressive network, including digital publications like NYT and Mashable.

Price: Pay-per-click

12. WiseStamp

WiseStamp is an email tool that allows you (and your employees) to share your latest content in your email signature. Your email signature is often a forgotten but essential piece of digital real estate that practically everyone who opens your emails will see. WiseStamp helps you make the most of that space.

Price: Paid

Distribute Your Content to Grow Better

Amazing content is a waste if no one is consuming it. Content distribution is a critical piece of the content marketing puzzle. It’s is also the key to boosting your brand awareness, collecting loyal followers, and encouraging your readers to click, act, and become customers.

Put these content distribution tips and tools to get your content in front of your audience.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in July 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.