Lately it seems like people have a trillion different things to give their attention to. TV shows, social media platforms, blogs, you name it. Even ads win the time of much of their audience. So, how do you stand out?

It all boils down to the experience that you provide for your audience. This is different than relationship-building — it’s experience-building. How do you make your audience feel?

Carla Johnson is an expert in experience marketing. For today’s Listen, she’s got some stellar lessons on how to create an experience that stands out from the status-quo. Among other things, Carla covers:

• Brands that have mastered creating meaningful experiences through content.
• Why you need to accept change to truly create an experience that connects with your audience.
• How to create content that is connected to an experience.

One of our favorite lessons from this podcast comes near the end. Carla says that, if you really want to break through the status-quo, you have to stop looking at what everyone else is doing. Stop copying your competitors. Look at completely different brands and ideas and figure out how you can best implement those things in your company.

Good looks, Carla.

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If you’re looking to improve your landing page design, or anything for that matter, it always pays to check out what others are doing well (and not-so well). But, like Carla Johnson says in today’s Listen, don’t just copy your competitors. Making the nuanced elements of a landing page the “best” often depends on your own goals.

We don’t always talk about design in the Carnage, but when we do, we ask our majestic UX designer for some words of wisdom. “Just KISS it.” Lol, what? “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” Well, okay then. (He also wanted to make sure we included this .gif with it, and who are we to deny a .gif?)

For the sake of time, here are the top 10, as picked by HubSpot. Dive in for the full list and a more in-depth discussion on why they’re so fond of these particular pages.

1. Wistia — that color combo tho
2. Unbounce — if you write a book on landing page conversions, you better top the list
3. IMPACT Branding & Design
4. Muzzle — we’re giving this one bonus points for its brand name
5. Bills.com — wait, wait, not that… this
6. Trulia
7. Teambit — cartoon animal illustrations FTW
8. Landbot — landing-page-turned Chatbot
9. Webprofits
10. Inbound Emotion

Let’s get to the point — today’s Watch is killer. It’s from Buffer, so you know it’s good. They always go above and beyond, but we’re gonna save you a click and give you all the lessons right here. You don’t even have to watch it! 

Buffer’s tips to grow your social channels:

1. Engage with your community. This means more than just engaging with people who interact with you. Go out and find more opportunities to engage. Answer questions in Facebook groups, tweet @ people to start conversation, get down with Reddit. Figure out where people are and talk to them (Inbound is a fav of ours).
2. Create and curate content that actually provides value. Curating content is overlooked by lots of brands, but you’ll be amazed at the growth you can get from it. (Seems to be working for our Facebook page ::cough:: shameless plug ::cough::)
3. ABL or, Always Be Learning. Social media changes by the day. Take time every single day to learn things like video editing, infographic creation, writing tips, or whatever you feel like you need to learn more on. Ask your peers to teach you things they know.

…or don’t