Tuesday, 31 December 2019
At enterprise companies, SEOs cannot ‘do’ most of the SEO (An article to forward to non-SEO teams in your company)
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
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The major deals and integrations that shaped technology for markters in 2019
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The New Approach to Work-Life Balance
CareerBuilder found that nearly half of American workers check email after they leave work, and 45% say they do work during non-business hours.
Additionally, this phenomenon crosses global borders, prompting new laws in France and a campaign in Japan to limit working hours.
Of course, we'd all love a little more balance in our lives. But it's more than that. We need it.
Today's "always on" mentality has serious consequences. Stanford professors Joel Goh, Jeffrey Pfeffer, and Stefanos Zenios found that more than 120,000 deaths per year and approximately 5%–8% of annual healthcare costs may be attributable to workplace stress from long working hours, job insecurity, work-family conflict, high job demands, and low social support at work.
But achieving work-life balance is hard. Obviously, reducing workplace stress is essential. But, despite finding that those who take vacation and travel are happier in their personal and professional lives, Project Time Off also found that more than half of American workers don't take all of the vacation days they've earned.
By contrast, many other countries offer or mandate additional vacation days. For example, The Center for Economic and Policy Research found that the United States is the only country surveyed that doesn't have a law requiring paid leave. Compare that to Germany (20 days), the United Kingdom (28 days), and Australia (20 days). With the exception of the United States, laws in other countries mandate a minimum of 10-30 days of paid leave per year.
The Work-Life Balance Matrix
Work life balance can (and should) look different for everyone, based on what's most important to you. There may be times in life when you're focused on career and personal development, and other times when your focus turns to family or a favorite hobby.
In other words, work-life balance examples run the gamut. But we've got some tips to help you find the work-life balance that's just right for you.
Before addressing areas that might be out of balance, it's a good idea to first understand what you value and how satisfied you are with the time you're allocating to those areas of your life. When I was touring colleges, I used a weighted decision matrix to score each campus on the things I cared about. Ever since, I've used this handy tool to evaluate everything from jobs, to apartments, to vacation spots.
Here's a sample of a completed matrix, with steps to complete your own, below:
Step 1: Create a list of 4-6 categories that most contribute to your satisfaction in life. I recommend using categories that are broad enough to encompass changing life phases, but narrow enough to act upon. You can use anything that contributes to your satisfaction, from hobbies, to career, to family, to spirituality, and volunteer work.
I also recommend that these categories have a significant effect on how you make life choices, how you spend your time, and have actionable and measurable steps associated with them.
For example, while it may significantly increase your satisfaction to "be a successful person," a better category might be career. Or, if your satisfaction is impacted by "helping people," a more actionable category might be "volunteer work."
Step 2: Assign each of the chosen categories a percentage for the amount that the category impacts your satisfaction. For example, if your categories include family, career, hobbies, charity work, and education, you might say that family is 30%, career is 25%, hobbies are 10%, charity work is 20%, and education is 15%.
Be honest with yourself when choosing and rating each category. If you honestly don't receive much satisfaction from hobbies, don't give it more weight than career.
Step 3: Assign a percentage for your current satisfaction in each category. Are you 100% satisfied in your career? Are you only 50% satisfied with your family life? Go through each category and give an honest percentage with how satisfied you are with that area of your life.
Step 4: Multiply the satisfaction percentage with the weight of each category. Now add the categories up. The end percentage is how satisfied you are with your life. What's your total? It's rare than anyone will be 100% satisfied, but maybe 90%? What if your percentage is low, say, 30% satisfied?
Step 5: Analyze the results, and determine which areas of your life are causing the most dissatisfaction. What steps can you take to change that? How much of your satisfaction is built on choices and situations within your control, and how much is not in your control?
7 Work-Smart Strategies
Once you've quantified your life satisfaction, it's time to start tackling areas with lower scores. Most people struggle with finding enough hours in the day to fit it all in, especially for personal time. Working smarter and savvy time management help you free up mental capacity, physical hours, and emotional space to accommodate more of the activities you love.
1. Just say no to low-impact work.
We all want to play as a team, but helping out on too many projects sucks up your time, leaving too little for the work that really matters. Setting quality OKRs (objectives and key results) is the key to knowing which activities are high-value, and which will distract you from accomplishing your goals.
And this doesn't stop with office tasks. If the committee you've chaired for three years no longer brings you joy, step down and get back to participating in a way that feeds your soul. Are too many hobbies making you feel stressed and frenetic? Pare them down to the activities that bring the most pleasure. If an activity is not bringing you joy and helping you progress towards your goals, give it up!
When going through these steps last year, I recognized that I was feeling stressed and guilty about my role as a board member for a local community theater. I kept skipping meetings because of other commitments and I felt like I wasn't contributing. I still wanted to volunteer on an ad-hoc basis, so I sent a note to the board president explaining that while I didn't have time to make the required commitment to board duties for the coming year, I'd still love to participate by helping staff auditions, contributing time and money to opening night festivities, and acting as the house manager for productions. This allowed me to keep the things that brought me joy, and provided much needed support on a more reliable cadence for the theater.
2. Stop multi-tasking.
Seriously. How many browser tabs do you have open right now? Multitasking makes you think you're getting more done, but research from the American Psychological Association has shown it reduces productivity by as much as 40%.
Instead, break each project into time-bound tasks, and spend focused amounts of time completing each element. Prioritize the tasks that require input from others for completion so that you can finish your portion of the project and hand it off to the next worker. Parallelizing work (where multiple work streams happen at the same time by different people) is an efficient use of time, but trying to do it all yourself is a recipe for disaster.
3. Break work down into achievable tasks.
Create a project plan that includes all the tasks you need to accomplish for the quarter. Then, divide the tasks in monthly and weekly to-dos. These can be kept on a team whiteboard, personal notepad, or shared Trello board. Whatever method you choose, make sure that you can check things off the list when complete, and move activities to the next phase of the project when ready.
4. Make your meetings matter.
Many people assume a weekly check-in meeting is needed for their projects … but is it? Do you really need to get in a room for 30 minutes to talk about the status of the checklist, instead of looking at the shared board or exchanging comments in writing?
Useless meetings waste tons of valuable time, so get 'em off the calendar if they aren't adding value! If you want to take a bold step, delete all the recurring meetings off your calendar for the next quarter. Ask organizers to re-send the invites to meetings you should attend, and confirm why they feel your presence is valuable. You might find that check-ins for old projects never re-appear, and the meetings that remain actually do help you move work forward each quarter.
5. Create checklists.
Don't procrastinate on checking things off your list. Sometimes we waste more energy worrying about doing the thing than actually doing the thing itself . David Allen, who wrote the book "Getting Things Done" and offers training on how to be more productive, says that the mind is for having ideas, not holding them.
He advocates for making a series of lists to capture and process all the things that you need to accomplish in a day. Once captured, do. Sometimes we get so mired down in the need to make the list perfect, make the steps perfect, make our desk perfect, that we forget that the act of starting means we're one step closing to finishing our task. Once you've got a plan in place, take action.
6. Evaluate your daily schedule.
A long commute is another area that eats up time and contributes stress to most peoples' lives. Want to reduce these effects? Try negotiating for a work-from-home day once or twice a week. Gallup found that in 2017, 43% of Americans said they worked remotely at least some of the time, and with collaboration tools like video, chat, and email, you can stay just as connected to your team.
If a long commute is non-negotiable, use that time for something that you've deemed important to your work life balance. For instance, if you have a goal to advance your knowledge or learn a new skill, you can listen to podcasts or audiobooks, or if you want to focus on well-being you can use apps like Headspace that offer guided meditations for relaxation.
7. Make time for self-care.
As you're thinking about your daily plans, revisit your routines for physical health. You can gain time and nutrition benefits by meal planning and cooking in bulk on the weekends. Freeze meals in pre-portioned containers for easy reheating in the evenings. The time and stress you save each evening allows you to spend more time unwinding with your family, and getting to bed at a reasonable hour.
Speaking of which … how's your sleep schedule? Are you going to bed at a reasonable time, getting a solid night's rest, and waking with energy? If not, commit to a bedtime routine for 30 days, and see how you feel at the end. Keep the elements that improve your rest, and experiment with changes to ensure you get a good night's sleep.
Of course, all of these new habits take time to build and practice to maintain. Some tactics, like deleting all your meetings and negotiating a regular WFH day, can be done right away. Others, like declining low-impact work and focusing on tasks individually, require diligent attention throughout the year.
This article was originally published on Atlassian.com and republished with permission.
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Monday, 30 December 2019
The big list of Google My Business changes, upgrades and tests in 2019
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
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Pop-up ads: Why everyone hates them and why they’ll never die
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How Consumers Actually Responded to All Those Black Friday Ads [New Research]
Although Cyber Monday is described as the biggest online shopping event of the year, more than $7.4 billion in online purchases were made on Black Friday in 2019.
While a majority of Black Friday purchases happened online, a Fiserv study found that brick-and-mortar store purchases rose by 4.2% compared to 2018. The same study found that a quarter of people traveled 25 miles or more to stores with Black Friday discounts.
By now, you may know that this was one of the biggest Black Fridays ever. But, as a marketer, you might be wondering what drove people to overcrowded stores and ecommerce websites during the national shopping event. You also might want to learn more about consumer shopping behaviors to strengthen your overall strategy in 2020.
To help you discover more about the consumer behaviors behind Black Friday's 2019 results, I surveyed a pool of more than 300 people using Lucid Software to learn what led them to engage with or purchase products in Black Friday ads.
In this post, I'll fill you in on what I learned from these consumers, arm you with other helpful stats and facts about Black Friday, and offer takeaways that you can use in 2020.
Black Friday's Online Ad Engagement
With crazy Black Friday deals comes an inundation of Black Friday ads throughout all forms of media. It's no surprise that millions of people shopped on Black Friday -- but which ad strategies actually led to purchases?
With more brick and mortar stores than ever, and the bombardment of ads that comes with them, do these Black Friday promotions actually influence purchases? To learn more about the Black Friday ad behaviors, I asked consumers about how they interacted with ads for the shopping holiday.
While you might think that people would get annoyed with the constant stream of ads, or try to completely disregard them, you'll be slightly surprised by the results.
When I asked participants, "Did you engage with any online ads or promotions for Black Friday?", 61% said they engaged with one or more ads in some way, while only 39% said they disregarded them.
Data Source: Lucid Software
Of that 61% of people who engaged with one or more ads, 38% clicked on the promotions without making a purchase, while 23% converted to a customer after clicking the ad.
When it comes to where people saw the ads they clicked on, 62% found promotions on social media.
Data Source: Lucid Software
"Non-social media sites" were also a fairly successful place for promotion, with 38% of people saying they clicked on ads in these locations. These sites could include websites owned by other brands where a native ad is located, search engine platforms, or other areas of the web that aren't considered social media.
Although only 32% of people said they clicked on ads shown in marketing emails, recent research still shows that this tactic is still a vital part of digital marketing. In fact, CampaignMonitor recently published research showing that email marketing was responsible for 20% of holiday-related traffic.
Aside from the ad's location, the product or service advertised could have played a role in an audience's level of engagement. To get an idea of which products were most popular, I asked survey participants, "Which best describes the products or services that were featured in the Black Friday ads you clicked on."
Of those who said they clicked on or purchased something from an ad in the first question of the survey, roughly 36% said the ads they engaged with featured products in the "Gadgets and Technology" category. Meanwhile, two other popular categories were "Fashion and Beauty" and "Home Goods, Furniture, and Decor" which both received votes from more than 18% of participants.
Ads and Black Friday Foot Traffic
In 2019, in-store Black Friday foot traffic dropped 6% lower than in 2018. However, this shopping event was still significant for brick-and-mortar stores as earnings from in-store purchases still rose by 4.2%.
Much of the in-store foot traffic and purchases could have also been because of ads. When I asked consumers if they "entered a store on Black Friday after seeing an ad or promotion for its sales," more than half said, "Yes."
Data Source: Lucid Software
To determine how much impact online ads made on Black Friday foot traffic as compared to physical ads, I asked the same consumers, "Where did you see the Black Friday ads for the store you visited on Black Friday?" Those surveyed could choose from a long list of ad style options from more digital social media promotions to traditional TV commercials or newspaper advertisements.
Although these participants decided to brave crowded physical stores on Black Friday, the survey found that they weren't pulled into them by physical or more traditional ads like billboards, newspaper promotions, or commercials.
Again, social media was the front-runner, as 38% of people who entered stores on Black Friday found ads on these types of platforms first.
Aside from social media, 15% of those who visited a store due to a Black Friday ad said they saw it on the store's own website. Only small portions of those surveyed said they went to a store after seeing television commercials (7%), email marketing ads (7%), newspaper promotions (8%), or physical signage (1%).
However, keep in mind that this was still a rather small sample and that it should not completely rearrange your marketing strategy in 2020.
While only 7% of those surveyed found ads that led them to visit a physical store in marketing newsletters, data shows that including ads and offers in emails is still a vital strategy for gaining web visits, leads, and even in-store foot traffic. We don't encourage pulling email marketing from your strategy just because of one pool of shoppers' Black Friday behaviors.
What Black Friday Means for 2020 Marketing
If you're running a brick-and-mortar or ecommerce operation, these results, as well as mounting research show the importance of developing or constantly improving on a web presence, whether that means purchasing online ad space or taking on free strategies like building a social media profile or creating a Google My Business for your store.
Due to social media's popularity and track record for ROI, you'll definitely want to consider advertising or at least posting for free about your products on platforms that align well with your audience if you aren't doing so already.
If you're trying to build your social presence, or determine which platforms you should be promoting your products or deals on, check out this research-based blog post where I reveal which social media platforms people use to learn about products.
You should also consider experimenting with or expanding on other online tactics to expand on or create a highly digital promotional strategy. For example, continue marketing products your own website, placing native ads on other websites, and embracing email marketing within your strategy.
Boosting your web presence will not only help you promote sales and events, such as Black Friday. But this strategy could also boost brand awareness and conversions throughout the rest of the year.
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Bing revives its cashback program with Rebates
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
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How Consumers Actually Responded to All Those Black Friday Ads [New Research]
Although Cyber Monday is described as the biggest online shopping event of the year, more than $7.4 billion in online purchases were made on Black Friday in 2019.
While a majority of Black Friday purchases happened online, a Fiserv study found that brick-and-mortar store purchases rose by 4.2% compared to 2018. The same study found that a quarter of people traveled 25 miles or more to stores with Black Friday discounts.
By now, you may know that this was one of the biggest Black Fridays ever. But, as a marketer, you might be wondering what drove people to overcrowded stores and ecommerce websites during the national shopping event. You also might want to learn more about consumer shopping behaviors to strengthen your overall strategy in 2020.
To help you discover more about the consumer behaviors behind Black Friday's 2019 results, I surveyed a pool of more than 300 people using Lucid Software to learn what led them to engage with or purchase products in Black Friday ads.
In this post, I'll fill you in on what I learned from these consumers, arm you with other helpful stats and facts about Black Friday, and offer takeaways that you can use in 2020.
Black Friday's Online Ad Engagement
With crazy Black Friday deals comes an inundation of Black Friday ads throughout all forms of media. It's no surprise that millions of people shopped on Black Friday -- but which ad strategies actually led to purchases?
With more brick and mortar stores than ever, and the bombardment of ads that comes with them, do these Black Friday promotions actually influence purchases? To learn more about the Black Friday ad behaviors, I asked consumers about how they interacted with ads for the shopping holiday.
While you might think that people would get annoyed with the constant stream of ads, or try to completely disregard them, you'll be slightly surprised by the results.
When I asked participants, "Did you engage with any online ads or promotions for Black Friday?", 61% said they engaged with one or more ads in some way, while only 39% said they disregarded them.
Data Source: Lucid Software
Of that 61% of people who engaged with one or more ads, 38% clicked on the promotions without making a purchase, while 23% converted to a customer after clicking the ad.
When it comes to where people saw the ads they clicked on, 62% found promotions on social media.
Data Source: Lucid Software
"Non-social media sites" were also a fairly successful place for promotion, with 38% of people saying they clicked on ads in these locations. These sites could include websites owned by other brands where a native ad is located, search engine platforms, or other areas of the web that aren't considered social media.
Although only 32% of people said they clicked on ads shown in marketing emails, recent research still shows that this tactic is still a vital part of digital marketing. In fact, CampaignMonitor recently published research showing that email marketing was responsible for 20% of holiday-related traffic.
Aside from the ad's location, the product or service advertised could have played a role in an audience's level of engagement. To get an idea of which products were most popular, I asked survey participants, "Which best describes the products or services that were featured in the Black Friday ads you clicked on."
Of those who said they clicked on or purchased something from an ad in the first question of the survey, roughly 36% said the ads they engaged with featured products in the "Gadgets and Technology" category. Meanwhile, two other popular categories were "Fashion and Beauty" and "Home Goods, Furniture, and Decor" which both received votes from more than 18% of participants.
Ads and Black Friday Foot Traffic
In 2019, in-store Black Friday foot traffic dropped 6% lower than in 2018. However, this shopping event was still significant for brick-and-mortar stores as earnings from in-store purchases still rose by 4.2%.
Much of the in-store foot traffic and purchases could have also been because of ads. When I asked consumers if they "entered a store on Black Friday after seeing an ad or promotion for its sales," more than half said, "Yes."
Data Source: Lucid Software
To determine how much impact online ads made on Black Friday foot traffic as compared to physical ads, I asked the same consumers, "Where did you see the Black Friday ads for the store you visited on Black Friday?" Those surveyed could choose from a long list of ad style options from more digital social media promotions to traditional TV commercials or newspaper advertisements.
Although these participants decided to brave crowded physical stores on Black Friday, the survey found that they weren't pulled into them by physical or more traditional ads like billboards, newspaper promotions, or commercials.
Again, social media was the front-runner, as 38% of people who entered stores on Black Friday found ads on these types of platforms first.
Aside from social media, 15% of those who visited a store due to a Black Friday ad said they saw it on the store's own website. Only small portions of those surveyed said they went to a store after seeing television commercials (7%), email marketing ads (7%), newspaper promotions (8%), or physical signage (1%).
However, keep in mind that this was still a rather small sample and that it should not completely rearrange your marketing strategy in 2020.
While only 7% of those surveyed found ads that led them to visit a physical store in marketing newsletters, data shows that including ads and offers in emails is still a vital strategy for gaining web visits, leads, and even in-store foot traffic. We don't encourage pulling email marketing from your strategy just because of one pool of shoppers' Black Friday behaviors.
What Black Friday Means for 2020 Marketing
If you're running a brick-and-mortar or ecommerce operation, these results, as well as mounting research show the importance of developing or constantly improving on a web presence, whether that means purchasing online ad space or taking on free strategies like building a social media profile or creating a Google My Business for your store.
Due to social media's popularity and track record for ROI, you'll definitely want to consider advertising or at least posting for free about your products on platforms that align well with your audience if you aren't doing so already.
If you're trying to build your social presence, or determine which platforms you should be promoting your products or deals on, check out this research-based blog post where I reveal which social media platforms people use to learn about products.
You should also consider experimenting with or expanding on other online tactics to expand on or create a highly digital promotional strategy. For example, continue marketing products your own website, placing native ads on other websites, and embracing email marketing within your strategy.
Boosting your web presence will not only help you promote sales and events, such as Black Friday. But this strategy could also boost brand awareness and conversions throughout the rest of the year.
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Personality Tests: a Gimmick or Helpful Management Tool?
My coworkers and I love personality tests. We share them with each other to have fun and get to know each other — an important task since half of our team is remote and sprinkled across the country.
Personality tests have allowed us to gain insight into our lives outside of work. They’ve also helped us better understand our communication and collaboration styles, which has made projects, meetings, and feedback sessions much easier to navigate.
Personality tests can be major assets for teams of any size, location, and skill set. They unlock professional preferences such as how each coworker likes to receive criticism and feedback, and they can boost camaraderie and communication between even the most polar opposite team members.
Let’s dive into the accuracy of personality tests and how to navigate results in the workplace.
How accurate are personality tests?
Personality tests are like going to the gym — you only get out what you put in. If you don’t take personality testing seriously, you shouldn’t expect accurate results.
This is true for any questionnaire you take, but it especially applies to the handful of scientifically-designed personality tests that are often taken within, and applied to, professional settings.
Certain tests — such as the DiSC Assessment, Myers-Briggs, and Holland Code Career Test — were developed by psychologists with a background in mental health and scientific experimentation. Professional opinions about each test vary, but companies around the world still use them, if only just to learn more about their employees and coworkers.
In my opinion (which is not that of a trained psychologist or test-maker), personality tests do have some merit. I’ve taken quite a few professionally-designed tests — and a healthy serving of the fun ones on Buzzfeed, but we won’t count those — and have seen a lot of accuracy in my results.
I’ve also seen some crazy, out-of-character results.
The fact of the matter is, while there are some truths in the Myers-Briggs, DiSC, and Enneagram, our personalities, preferences, and day-to-day dispositions vary too much to take those results as concrete truth.
I think the question here isn’t as much about the accuracy of personality tests (because that question is directly proportional to how seriously your employees take the test, and you can’t count on everyone to do so). I think the more important ask is this — what should you do with the results?
Personality tests are fantastic conversation-starters. They’re good at helping us articulate those intangible preferences, aversions, habits, and weaknesses we otherwise don’t know how to name. They’re also fun for making connections and bridging gaps at work.
As insightful as personality tests are, however, they shouldn’t be the guiding light in how you treat and collaborate with your team — nor should they be the defining factor for hiring and firing decisions. Now, let’s unpack the pros and cons of personality tests.
Pros and Cons of Personality Tests
Personality tests are fun, insightful activities — unless they’re used for major employment and business decisions. If this is the case, it’s wise to scrutinize the benefits and drawbacks of such tools to avoid blindly relying on nuanced results.
PROS OF PERSONALITY TESTS | CONS OF PERSONALITY TESTS |
Employers can examine results to see how a candidate may fit into the team and company culture. | Employers can neglect to get to know the candidate and instead assess his or her fit based on test results. |
Managers can use results to better understand how to communicate with and provide feedback to employees. | Managers can miss out on important communication opportunities if the setting doesn’t perfectly align with the employee’s test results. |
Personality tests provide a relatively unbiased, consistent means of assessing candidates and employees. | Not every candidate or employee may take the personality test seriously and/or not have the capability to fill the test out to the best of his or her ability. |
Personality tests look into what a candidate will do in a given situation, versus what he or she has done. | Companies may administer the wrong personality test for the wrong situation. |
Personality tests can be fun (more so than the SATs) for candidates to take, and they may be personally invested in the results as well. | Personality tests can be costly and time-consuming for companies, candidates, and employees alike. |
When it comes to using personality tests as management tools, don’t allow the results to speak for your employees. Let them complement each person, not replace them — and be careful not to judge a person by their personality test results.
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Friday, 27 December 2019
Amazon holiday 2019: Record new Prime memberships as one-day shipping gets baked in
Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
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Spotify latest platform to halt political ads
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The PPC changes that bugged and elated marketers most in 2019: An unscientific poll
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