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Maybe it’s Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference next week, maybe it’s just the stars aligning, but salespeople have had a great last couple of weeks, with sales tools popping up and getting overhauls. Email tracking tool Yesware is the latest of these.

The company, which got its start as a tool for tracking whether or not customers and prospects have opened, clicked, browsed, and so on, is now taking a new step. Today, it’s announcing that it’s adding PowerPoint presentation tracking and a built-in phone call tool to its toolkit. It’s also officially releasing support for Microsoft Outlook, which was previously in beta.

“We started the company as an email solution and we always wanted to the get the other ways that salespeople work,” Yesware chief executive Matthew Bellows told VentureBeat in an interview.

Yesware finally arrived on mobile, only iOS for now, a couple of weeks ago, as a first step to branching out.

Rounding out the “sales toolkit”  

Presentations are only the latest in a series of items Yesware has added tracking for. After getting its start with plain old email opens and link clicks, it added attachments last spring, after acquiring Attachments.me.

Now Yesware can do the same for PDF and Microsoft PowerPoint presentations sent via email. This feature was built using Box’s BoxView API, an HTML5-based rendering technology it unveiled last March.

Salespeople can now also call customers or prospect directly from their emails. Built with Twilio’s Voice API, the feature was quietly included in the initial mobile app release, but Yesware is now promoting it more heavily and has integrated it into the desktop version of its product as well.

When a salesperson places a call, a notes field pops up in which they can jot down notes. The notes are then added into the contact’s Salesforce file to help the salesperson stay organized with minimal effort.

Studies have shown that calling a prospect right after they’ve opened an email yields about a 30 percent rate of connecting with them, compared to the 1-3 percent overall industry rate, according to Bellows. So, not surprisingly, other companies such as Stitch are also helping salespeople place calls soon after an email has been opened.

And speaking of email (again), Yesware is finally making Outlook support officially available for everyone. Bellows told me that it’s been one of the most popular requests since the beginning of Yesware; and after a beta phase, it’s finally here. It will have the same pricing as the original Gmail version.

With the $13 billion sales acceleration market headed to reach $30 billion in the next three years, according to Bellows, Yesware is not the only company to turn to the all-in-one solution as its gameplan. InsideSales, best known for integrating voice calls with customer relationship management software, acquired email tracking company iHance in May to enhance its offering shortly after raising $100 million. ClearSlide, a company that made its name in presentation tools for salespeople, added email tracking and acquired Crunch to bolster that. It, too, raised $50 million this year.

But with the Dreamforce conference coming up, at which Salesforce will very likely announce its “Analytics Cloud,” data and analytics are really where Yesware — and these other companies — are now focusing. (Cue reference to hockey legend Wayne Gretzky’s famous quote about skating to where the puck will be, not where it is.)

The previously mentioned Stitch, an email app for salespeople, just added a data- and machine learning-driven smart assistant to its app as it, too, is trying to play in the data analytics phase the industry is entering.

As a Salesforce partner, Yesware’s tools will surely play nicely with whatever the enterprise giant announces next week, especially given the amount of data its tools feed into Salesforce. But it’s not hard to sense that Bellows and his team are already skating to the analytics puck, so to speak. He only vaguely said that they’ve been looking at data analytics and have hired a data scientist and data engineer. So even though he wouldn’t divulge any specific plans, analytics are sure to be part of Yesware’s next announcements.

Yesware helps salespeople sell smarter, right from their Gmail or Outlook inbox. By injecting data insights and custom-tailored communication features into your existing email workspace, Yesware removes barriers to productivity and emp... read more »

Leaders have always shown their mettle in times of liminality. The term comes from Arnold van Gennep, the Belgian anthropologist who first outlined the common patterns in how cultures mark transitions from one human state to another (for example, from adolescence to adulthood). In his 1909 book The Rites of Passage he described three stages of separation from one world and entry into another. The liminal (or threshold) stage is central. Commenting later on van Gennep’s work, anthropologist Victor Turner explained it as “a moment when those being moved in accordance with a cultural script were liberated from normative demands, when they were, indeed, betwixt and between successive lodgments in jural political systems. In this gap between ordered worlds almost anything may happen.”

Organizations must also periodically go through such wrenching times of transition, and it is during such liminal times that leaders have their greatest impact. They must manage to both craft the new world with smart strategy, often in the wake of disruption, and cause the organization to embrace the required change. Lou Gerstner’s arrival at IBM in 1993 is a classic example of leadership through a liminal period. Parachuted in to salvage a beleaguered organization, he pushed the company toward a new way of thinking, ultimately growing IBM’s value and revenues by more than 40 percent.

Procter & Gamble provides another example. It was the summer of 2000 and the company had quickly lost $85 billion in market capitalization. Newly minted CEO A.G. Lafley was thrust into the spotlight. Employees were disengaged. External analysts, stakeholders, and shareholders were questioning everything. It had become a time of liminality for P&G, and it was Lafley’s turn to try to make things work. As he stated in a 2009 Harvard Business Review article, “the CEO’s [role] is to interpret the organization’s values in light of change and competition and to define its standards. This was a top priority in my first year as P&G’s chief executive, after setting goals but ahead of strategy.” By 2010, P&G exceeded $80 billion in revenue, its market value had increased by over $100 billion dollars and the number of billion-dollar brands – such as Gillette, Pampers, and Tide – increased from 10 to 24, suggesting that Lafley’s leadership through P&G’s liminality was a success.

Times of liminality are disconcertingly chaotic; therefore, a leader’s job is to provide some firm footing for people, with assurances of what will not keep changing. Gerstner did this with his clear and consistent view of where IBM needed to go, and Lafley did it with his reassertion of bedrock values. Great leaders also act as mentors, providing counsel and coaching to the people in the organization during various stages of transition. And perhaps the ultimate work of leaders in times of organizational change is to ensure high engagement levels. Lawrence A. Bossidy, former CEO at AlliedSignal, once said, “We need people who are better at persuading than at barking orders, who know how to coach and build consensus. Today, managers add value by brokering with people, not by presiding over empires.”

This suggests that many leaders themselves will need to experience liminality. If they are truly interested in seeing their organizations accomplish great things, many will have to make a transition from an immature mode of invoking hierarchy, territorial ownership, and formal positional power, to a more mature phase of gathering and channeling group energies with influence, engagement, and other elements of what I call  “open leadership.”

In my role at the Canadian telecoms company TELUS, I’ve witnessed first-hand the progress that can be made during a liminal time, both for the enterprise and its leaders. Fourteen years ago, Darren Entwistle arrived as a young CEO (he is now Executive Chair) and immediately began transforming the regional telecommunications player into a global entity. Between 2000 and 2014, the TELUS brand grew in value from a few hundred million dollars to $4.3 billion, and its revenues increased from $6.4 billion to $11.7 billion. But Darren never saw the change required as only a matter of capitalizing on new technologies and developing new products. He insisted on the need for “behavioral innovation” – that is, shifting leaders’ mindsets throughout the organization to the importance of innovation and the values of courage, passion for growth, enthusiasm for change, and belief in spirited teamwork.

What has been most amazing to me is that, in a time of such rapid change, employee engagement at TELUS also rose dramatically (from 53 percent to 83 percent) – clearly bucking the generally negative trend. The causal relationship between a highly engaged organization and marked improvements with customer satisfaction, stock price and revenues is irrefutable, famously outlined at Harvard Business Review back in 1998 with “The Employee-Customer-Profit Chain at Sears”. For Darren, the implication for leaders is clear. They must “make team members feel like they have equity in what they are doing.” Engagement comes, he believes, with “the business ownership mentality.”

As imperatives to change come more and more frequently to companies, leaders’ ability to manage through times of transition will be tested like never before. In a previous HBR post entitled “The Renaissance We Need in Business Education,” Johan Roos calls for a more humanistic curriculum in business schools to prepare our future enterprise leaders. As part of that, perhaps writings on liminality should be required reading.

This post is part of a series leading up to the annual Global Drucker Forum, taking place November 13-14 2014 in Vienna, Austria. Read the rest of the series here.

What would you do if you had a working prototype of a revolutionary tablet computer that was receiving rave reviews well before Apple came out with its iPad? Cancel further funding for the project in favor of developing an updated version of an existing company product? In hindsight that seems crazy, but it’s exactly what Microsoft did with its prototype “Courier” tablet.

Similar fates often befall innovations within large companies. It is not enough to come up with next great idea. To turn that idea into a reality you have to influence people and gain their support. You must do that in the face of vast forces arrayed against innovation within an established organization, which include inertia, resistance to change, fear of failure, financial disincentives, and the tendency of people and organizations to favor what has worked in the past. Then there’s what might be the biggest hurdle of all, people’s inability to envision something that is truly different.

Gaining support for an idea for which people have no point of reference is a huge challenge for innovators. It is hard to win over someone who cannot see what you see. Traditional influencing theory — as expounded, for example, by Robert Cialdini in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion — offers “invoking authority” as a way to persuade others to support things that are new to them. If you are a recognized expert in the field, your audience may trust that you know what you are talking about even if they don’t exactly understand it themselves. Often, however, truly groundbreaking innovation comes from people that do not yet have a track record of success. What then?

We have been conducting a series of interviews with individuals who have successfully championed innovation in large organizations and traditional settings, overcoming resistance and inertia within those organizations, in order to identify the commonalities in their efforts. Our research suggests that these influencing approaches offer innovators a possibility of success:

UNDER THE RADAR: Incremental improvement which can be readily understood is not considered nearly as threatening as groundbreaking innovation. So in some cases the best course of action is to present what you’re doing as simply building on current practice, keeping the truly innovative aspects hidden under the radar until it is so far along, and showing sufficient promise, as to make it impossible to shut down.  George Petsching, who led the incubation of the Courier tablet at Microsoft, told us that he attributes its demise to the research team’s product plans being “leaked” to the media. That gave the project a much higher profile, leading many at Microsoft to try to become part of it — which may have played into then CEO Steve Ballmer’s decision to abandon the project in favor of devoting resources to improving existing product lines. It hadn’t stayed under the radar.

When Instinet launched the first electronic trading system for automated buying and selling of securities in 1983 it introduced the system to brokers and exchanges as an incremental improvement rather than as the transformative innovation that it turned out to be, former Executive Vice President David Manns told us. Manns described the approach as “getting to breakthrough innovation indirectly by letting the end users get comfortable incrementally until you have achieved a critical mass that cannot be reversed.”

DEMONSTRATION: It is difficult for people who have never experienced the benefits of a particular innovation to recognize its value. That is why a demonstration can have a far greater impact in terms of gaining support than data or studies showing why the innovation makes sense. Gary Starkweather, the inventor of the Xerox 9700, the high-speed laser printer that revolutionized the printing industry, initially had to work on it his spare time behind a black curtain because his superiors thought it was a silly idea. After he threatened to leave for IBM, Starkweather was transferred to Xerox’s newly opened Palo Alto Research Center, where he did get the resources to build a prototype. But Xerox management remained skeptical — it was only after Starkweather was able to demonstrate the superiority of his prototype in a competition pitting it against incremental product innovations that management thought were more promising that he began to break through the resistance.

PILOT PROJECT: Another of the major methods of persuasion outlined by Robert Cialdini is the “principle of consistency.” That is, once we have taken an action, we experience personal and social pressure to behave consistently with it. Those pressures will cause us to respond in ways that justify our earlier decision. This principle can be applied to gain support for an innovative idea. When additional support or resources are needed to develop your innovation, and simply keeping your work under the radar will not suffice,  proposing an innovation as research or as a pilot project that does not require a major commitment can garner support. Once managers have committed to the research or pilot project, it becomes difficult for them not to support the implementation that naturally follows from its success.

For example, after demonstrating that his high-speed laser printer prototype outperformed the alternatives, Starkweather still faced internal resistance in bringing it to market. He and his boss came up with the idea of grafting lasers onto older, excess inventory printers, turning them into working laser printers at minimal cost, and offering them for free to several good customers to test. The response to these first laser printers was overwhelmingly positive, spawning a multi-billion dollar business for Xerox.

INEVITABILITY: When an industry is changing rapidly, it opens the door to obtaining support for an innovative idea that, in a more stable business environment, management might not consider. Particularly when coupled with one of the above techniques, such as under the radar or the pilot project, it can be effective to argue that since change is inevitable the organization ought to get ahead of it.  The choice then becomes either support the proposal now and exert control over how the business evolves, or be forced to accept changes later on others’ terms.

Colin Foster described to us how, in 2008, when he was the head of online and internal communications at drug-maker Novartis, he was able to overcome strong resistance to employing social media to engage customers. The company’s lawyers and its top management, to the extent they understood social media, opposed its use because of their inability to control the content. So Foster arranged a meeting with the company’s president, bringing along an expert from IBM to explain social media. At the start of the meeting Foster opened his computer and typed “Novartis” into a Twitter search, stating “We’ll get back to this later.” About an hour later, as the meeting was ending, Foster turned back to his computer. Over 600 tweets mentioning Novartis had been generated, all without any participation from the company. The president seemed to suddenly recognize that the company was going to be the subject of social media conversation regardless of what it did, and directed Foster to form a high-level team to examine how the company should use social media.

The more successful an organization, the more likely it will continue to do what has made it successful in the past and resist breakthrough innovations. Leaders can, and often do, try to make corporate cultures more receptive to innovation. However, providing innovators with the influencing tools needed to gain support for their ideas within the prevailing corporate culture, whatever that culture may be, will likely have a greater impact.

Private online communities are not a universal business solution. According to Gartner, at least 70% of all online communities fail.

Lack of planning, poor business integration, unattainable market share, unaligned organizational motives and unrealistic expectations are all factors that impact community viability. However, you can avoid being a statistic by ensuring your online community has a foundation for success before making a costly investment.

Here are four prerequisites every organization should consider first:

Essential #1) Proof of Concept

Obtaining an online community proof of concept requires two qualifiers:

1. An isolated, niche common identifier
2. Audience inclination

The common identifier for your target audience should be specific enough that potential members will easily grasp a sense of inclusion, but not so specific that the total feasible audience size would be too narrow to reap a return on investment. Hobbies, industries, professional associations and other general interests, in combination with a geographic location or a niche specialty, is a good way to define an audience.

In other words, a format of ‘people who do X in Y’, such as people who do mountain biking in North America, or people who do computer programming in Ruby. This common identifier will be the basis for your online community.

Once you know the common identifier that will define your online community, understanding how and if that specific audience will gravitate to an online community concept is critical.

Look for proof of social spaces on the web where people who fit your target audience are already interacting. Is there evidence of ongoing participation? If you can’t find or access an example of a similar social concept, (or even if you can) reach out to individuals who meet the profile in offline groups or via LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Collect feedback from enough people to ensure you have a reliable sample size to decide whether or not audience inclination exists.

Essential #2) Market Share

When you researched social spaces that aligned with your target audience, did you see other pre-existing, well-rooted online communities?

Be wary of being just another fish in the sea. Even if you pick a platform that has all the newest bells and whistles, well established online communities have one big benefit you don’t – an ingrained sense of community. The loyalty and attachment between members of your target audience elsewhere will make it difficult to convince them to spend their limited time somewhere new.

Every type of audience has a total feasible market size, so if the market is already saturated with other online community options, you might not be able to get the share in which you were originally hoping.

(Note that one exception is brand-owned online customer communities. Big brands can typically beat out independent brand-oriented user groups over time.)

Essential #3) Bandwidth

If you hope to succeed, online community management is not an option, it’s a requirement.

No online community grows 100% organically. In order to obtain audience buy-in, the online community needs to illustrate value via content, audience engagement and strategically communicated value propositions.

Establishing, implementing and executing processes for each is a full time job. Budgeting for this type of role might seem hard to justify at first, but betting on a platform without a process is like betting on half a horse.

Having someone in place who can constantly focus on driving growth will not only make revenue generation a possibility, it will lead to a positive return on investment much quicker. If your organization wants to commit to a private online community, commit to staffing it as well.

Essential #4) Executive Buy-In

Successful online communities happen when they are part of a fully integrated and widely supported business plan.

If future community members sense that the online community isn’t a priority for the organization, they won’t feel like their participation, insight and feedback are valued. Without executive buy-in, online communities lose audience buy-in. This makes championing the community concept a key role for your organization’s decision makers.

According to the Community Roundtable’s 2014 State of the Community Management report, “data suggests the critical role executives play in both supporting the community and in modeling behavior.” Comprehensive survey results showed that executive participation does not only significantly impact online community engagement rates, but also factor in to whether or not the community has a fully funded roadmap.

Abandoning ship too early by dropping staff overhead or platform support kills far too many online communities before they are ever given a chance. If your organization’s perception of an online community doesn’t have total buy-in, proceed with caution.

Private online communities are a fantastic solution for an organization’s long term customer retention, acquisition, and brand awareness objectives. Companies and membership organizations who properly plan and align the right support system have seen remarkable results. You can find success too.

Before launching your very own private online community, vet your audience, market space and key decision makers to ensure a secure foundation to build a thriving online community. (And if you need help, we’d love to lend a hand!)

How you handle the first 10 minutes of your workday can largely determine how productive and effective you'll be the rest of the day.

"Getting off on the right foot isn't just important with relationships, it's important with the start of any workday, as well — particularly busy ones," says Michael Kerr, an international business speaker and author of "You Can't Be Serious! Putting Humor to Work." "The first 10 minutes can also set the tone and your attitude for the day — so it's imperative that you start it off right, with a clean slate."

Lynn Taylor, a national workplace expert and the author of "Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant: How to Manage Childish Boss Behavior and Thrive in Your Job," agrees. "Those brief moments can predict your all-important mindset because they're the first impression of your day ahead," she says. "The first few minutes at the office can be the most stressful because there's a level of anxiety about what you may face: a sudden onslaught of urgent emails; last minute crises or meetings; a call to stop by the boss's office; a cranky coworker, and so on. It takes greater self-awareness, a positive mindset, and self-training each morning to counter what feels like negative gravity pulling you down as you face overwhelming demands."

She says you can, and should, choose to proactively resist the temptation to succumb to chaos by viewing morning developments as new challenges that you're equipped to handle. "You'll have a much more positive outcome by day's end, and in general," she says. "This is how the most successful people typically start their workdays." 

Kerr says successful people tend to thrive on routine and habits. "Creating consistent habits is largely what makes them successful," he explains. "And a key time for habit-forming practices is at the start of the day." 

Taylor concurs. She says successful people most often follow a routine each morning to add some level of predictability to an otherwise unpredictable time of day. "They're about to face an array of new and unexpected issues, and they counter this with a strong positive mindset; a reliable, doable set of actions; discipline; and ability to focus." Once you've set a strong foundation for a productive day, you're in better stead to get meaningful results. 

Here are 13 things the most successful people do in the first 10 minutes of their workday:

1. They reflect.

Achieving your best results requires you to reflect on where you've been, where you are, and where you're going, says Taylor. "Successful people build in quiet time and solitude to do this first thing. They ask themselves: 'What did I accomplish toward my goals so far this week — or last week?' 'What is the status of my current projects?' 'What do I need to accomplish today in light of this?'" 

2. They take a moment to pause and be present.

'This may sound very 'Buddha-like,' but it's important," Kerr says. "If you arrive and walk into a tumultuous situation with phones ringing and people clambering to see you, you run the risk of starting off on the wrong foot, getting derailed both emotionally and time-wise, and letting other people set the agenda for you." Centering yourself and being fully present will help make sure you manage the day ahead, rather than allowing it to manage you.

3. They get comfortable.

Successful people take a minute at the beginning of the workday to make sure their chair is adjusted properly and the items they frequently access — keyboard, phone, computer mouse — are all in comfortable reach, Taylor says. "Ensure that you have proper lighting," she adds. "Your day will go well if you have an ergonomic environment that's functional."

4. They review their to-do list, make any necessary adjustments, and mentally map out their day.

"This helps them remember the need to stick to the plan and focus on the things that are truly important, and not simply urgent," Kerr explains. Mentally running through their day also helps successful people visualize success, which can boost confidence levels tremendously. "It can also help you see where potential challenges may lie with how you've scheduled your day, so you can make the necessary adjustments."

They also review their calendars to assess if anything needs changing or rearranging with how their day is planned, and to see if there's any preparatory work that might need scheduling in before a call or meeting.

5. They prioritize.

A positive outcome of some big picture reflection is the ability to better prioritize your "to do" items, Taylor says. "Go beyond just making a list, and challenge yourself to create a realistic hierarchy for your projects." 

6. They stretch, stand, and walk.

Successful people make sure to stretch and get their circulation going before they get into a sedentary sitting position. "Consider walking or standing in the first few minutes of your workday," Taylor suggests. "This can give you a feeling of greater control, too, as you tackle the day's agenda — much as speakers establish authority by standing before their audience."

7. They take time to greet their team. 

This is especially critical if you are a leader, Kerr says. "But no matter what role you're in, it's important."  

Taylor says visiting and checking in with your boss and team will help yourself and others kickstart the day. "To advance in your career, you just can't skimp on your people skills. You can be the most technically savvy person in the room, but your attitude can amplify or chip away at the value of your technical skills." Being friendly first thing in the morning makes the workplace more pleasant for everyone — "and your humanistic approach will be contagious."

8. They take a temperature read of their staff/coworkers.

Strong managers take a moment in the morning to talk briefly with their staff to ensure they seem engaged and motivated. "At a glance, these savvy professionals can often get a cursory reading of the energy level and job satisfaction of their staff," Taylor says. "If things seem awry, they are best tackled later on in the day."

9. They organize their workspace area.

Not being able to find things is a huge office time waster. "So while you may pride yourself on jumping into the fray with no down time, clutter will catch up to you," says Taylor. "Facing a clean or cleaner slate on your desk and desktop will better clear your mind for the day's tasks." 

10. They strategically check email.

"I emphasize 'strategically' because email can quickly become a time-wasting, distracting quagmire," Kerr explains. "Checking email can become one of those tasks that make it feel like you are accomplishing things, wherein the danger is you are not attending to priority action items and you're letting others set your agenda."

Successful people understand this, and are extremely efficient with email, which means their first 10 minutes of the day may simply mean a quick scan and prioritizing of emails to answer later as part of your pre-planned day — not necessarily diving into the entire mass at once.

11. They anticipate and avoid distractions.

We all face some of the same anticipated distractions at the start of the day. "Successful business professionals know how to mitigate them to maximize their first few minutes at their office," says Taylor. "These may include low priority calls, unnecessary optional meetings, chatty coworkers, new incoming emails or texts, social media, or other low priority notifications — all of which challenge you to focus on your day's plan."

12. They smile and laugh.

"Many successful people I know have a routine of starting their morning with a simple chuckle — whether it's from a 'joke of the day' email they subscribe to, or some tradition they've created to give themselves a chance to laugh each morning," says Kerr. "starting their day with a smile has become a must-do for them as a simple way to check their attitude and start with the right frame of mind."

Taylor notes that studies consistently show that by using your "smile muscles," your mood becomes more positive. "You don't need to create a phony smile, but a pleasant expression will have the added benefit of reminding you of your power."

13. They take a moment to be grateful. 

"A great way that successful people start their day is to identify something they're grateful for, and it may be personal or business-related," Taylor notes. "It's motivational and reminds them to put small things in perspective. 

Taylor says all successful people take advantage of the first few minutes of their workday to get grounded and focused. "Once you've adopted the right mindset and routine for success, the rest of the day flows much more smoothly."

SEE ALSO: 12 Things Successful People Do In The First Hour Of The Workday

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Los Angeles (AFP) - Electric car giant Tesla on  unveiled a new two-engine vehicle designed to perform in bad weather, featuring four-wheel drive and anti-collision technology.

Performance in inclement conditions was considered one of the weak spots of Tesla's existing models and with the new car, the company is trying to win over drivers in regions where the weather is not the nearly year-round sunshine that its California base enjoys.

Founder Elon Musk said the new version of the Model S will feature the additional letter D -- D for dual motor, one in the front and one in the back.

Musk unveiled the new car at an event at Hawthorne airport in Los Angeles where Tesla has a design studio and engineering lab.

Musk said the new car will come in three versions: 60D, 85D and the top of the line P85D, with progressively higher engine power.

The car's anti-collision features include forward-looking radar. "It scans the car in front of you in the fog, snow and sand," Musk said.

The top of the line model will be able to reach 250 kilometers (155 miles) per hour, with acceleration that Musk described as "insane".

- Delivery starts this year -

The P85D will be delivered in North America beginning in December, while the 60D and 85D will be delivered starting in February. Deliveries in Europe and Asia will come in the months to follow, Tesla said.

Electric cars represent only 3.5% of sales in the US but that stake is growing.

Tesla last month announced plans to build the world's largest lithium-ion battery plant in Nevada, as part of an effort to bring down costs and boost popularity of electric vehicles.

Tesla will run operations while its Japanese partner Panasonic will make battery cells destined for the plant and invest in equipment and machinery.

Panasonic and Tesla said the plant should drive down the cost of batteries and eventually help popularize electric vehicles.

While Tesla produces relatively few vehicles, it has become a star in the sector due to keen demand and a reputation for high quality.

A surge in its share price over the past year has pushed its value over $30 billion.

Tesla's Model S, which came out in 2012, sells for around $75,000.

It is working on a 4x4 crossover model that is supposed to come out next year. It is also working on a less expensive Model 3 that is expected to cost between $35,000 and $40,000.

Musk had created a frenzy of speculation with a tweet earlier in the day. It said: "about time to unveil the D and something else." He did not elaborate.

At Thursday's evening event he said, "since I’ve tweeted about the D I’ve learnt a lot including things I didn’t think were physically possible."

He was joking about all the speculation as to what the D could mean.

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Sustainability leaders are no longer hard to find. With the proliferation of global sustainability reporting and detailed web presences, it has become much easier to track the outstanding characteristics that separate the leaders from the rest of the pack.

However, I am a realist, too…generalizations can sometimes rear their ugly heads. But by and large, sustainability leaders and their organizations distinguish themselves by embracing strategy in seven important ways:

1. Building and utilizing Enterprise Risk “Radar.”

These organizations possess the ability and corporate competence to identify critical risks that could either damage or enhance their success. This capability goes beyond traditional financial risks and includes risks from social, environmental, and ethical practices.

2. Clearly defining sustainability strategies, which are integrated into the long-term company strategy.

Usually the long-term organizational strategy embraces sustainability in their values and in their goal setting.

3. Deliberately deploying sustainability initiatives.

Most of these companies employ some form of balanced scorecard to ensure that initiatives are driven by the strategy and that progress can be assessed with clear measures and metrics.

4. Being accountable and transparent.

Coca-Cola, BMW, and Walmart reported progress against mileposts or goals at all levels in the organization, and most organizations reported them through publicly available annual reports, either through their normal annual report or through guidelines from the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).

5. Assessing the sustainability of the supply and value chains.

Successful transformations occur in companies that recognize their sustainability responsibility throughout their value and supply chains. Accountability in the supply chains, compliance to supplier codes of behavior and conduct, enforcement of all proprietary sustainability requirements, and leveraging the power of being the “owner” of the chain were all approaches used by the companies that Nathalie Udo and I studied in our book.

6. Using a collaborative approach to solving industry-wide sustainability challenges.

In nearly all cases, the companies were willing to partner with universities, NGOs, and even competitors to solve industry-wide sustainability problems. They recognized that there were some problems that were too large for one company to tackle, no matter how large the company.

7. Having governance models that are responsive, accountable, and informed.

In all cases, the companies recognized that informed decision making regarding sustainability initiatives is critical to success. This meant that decision makers were connected to strategy and responsible for execution. You never have to go looking for a decision in these organizations!

Buggy whips. Cassette tapes. VHS. QR codes. What do all of these things have in common?

 If you said, “Why, they’re all antiquated pieces of technology that people no longer use save for recluses who live in the mountains,” you’d be correct.

Many of you probably remember QR codes – the funny-looking black-and-white symbols that started popping up all over the place in the latter half of the first decade of the 2000’s. They were promising, the golden symbols of what the Internet could mean for us all: faster communication; more effective information sharing; all the data you could want with just one, quick scan.

For marketers, QR codes held even greater promise: a better way to get people to go to a website or a landing page. For a few years, everyone scurried to take advantage of QR codes.

But then, for whatever reason, they inexplicably fell out of use. Now, they sit gathering dust on direct mailers, social media profiles, emails, virtual business cards, and other places. The QR code scanners we all downloaded to our cell phones have long since been pushed to the background – or just flat-out deleted.

The QR code, it seems, is dead.

…Or is it?

Could the QR code actually be making a comeback?

The QR Code Revisited: Why Use Them?

QR codes could make a comeback – if marketers decide they ultimately have use.

After all, they do have advantages. It’s easier to scan a QR code than to input a website’s URL, especially if you don’t know the URL. You can make QR codes quickly, and can distribute them in a wide variety of places. They’re also cooler to use, frankly, than clicking on a link.

The amount of info that can be conveyed in a QR code is impressive. With one swipe, you can be taken to anywhere in the virtual world, and can view marketing collateral, like a landing page, from your cell phone or tablet no matter where you are. This includes videos, dynamic graphics, links, text – you name it, QR codes can do it.

Of course, there are barriers to QR code usage, too.

One big barrier: People have to have QR code scanners. That means going through the whole rigmarole of downloading and installing one, very specific app that does just one, very specific thing.

That’s actually one of the reasons why QR codes flamed out like they did. People didn’t like the inconvenience of using the apps – not that they’re particularly hard to use. But the incentive to whip out your phone and snap a picture of a QR code that is on, say, a real estate “For Sale” sign (one common use for QR codes) just isn’t there.

Another barrier: unfamiliarity. Even today, years after they were first introduced, people honestly just don’t know what to do with them. The percentage of people who see QR codes and wonder, “What in tarnation is this contraption?” is still staggeringly high – and without a concentrated education campaign, one that says, “Here’s what they’re for and here’s how to use them”, that percentage won’t decrease. And we tried that, five years ago, when they first burst upon the scene.

How QR Codes Can Come Roaring Back

So, can they come back? Or like Betamax and Segways, are they doomed to be good ideas that just never got traction?

A marketer has to be smart about he or she uses these codes. Putting them on billboards, like many have done, doesn’t make a lot of sense and is a misuse of the technology. You need to be able to take a steady picture of the QR code, so any medium that doesn’t provide that opportunity is a no-go.

In 2011, most people who used QR codes did so to learn more about products, and to quickly and easily order them and have them shipped. Retail giant Target provided a great example of this when they put QR codes on the top 20 hottest toys they sold for Christmas a few years back. Parents could use QR codes to easily order the product in the store – even if they were sold out – and have the toy shipped.

That, perhaps, is the hidden promise of QR codes – things that allow you to perform a task, like order a product or sign up for something, and take care of a bunch of small steps in one fell swoop.
Instead of thinking they belong everywhere and should just direct people to a company’s website, which was by far how most businesses used them back in the day, QR codes should have very specific, very targeted purposes. They should lead to even more information, or truly engaging content, or should be used to order products or sign up for services or participate in contests and promotions – things that would make people actually want to download and use a QR code.

Bottom line, there has to be some real value behind a QR code, enough to entice people to go the extra step to use them.

(That, and have Apple and Google create proprietary one-touch QR scanners that come included with every phone. Hey, we can dream, can’t we?)

QR codes may not make a comeback. They may silently go the way of the dodo, a dodo that is dressed in baggy MC Hammer pants carrying a Walkman while rollerskating. They could fade out of existence without a struggle.

But perhaps there is some use we can find for QR codes. What do you think: are they gone for good – or merely waiting for their next big opportunity?

As the consumer and corporate world goes more mobile every minute, health care is playing catch up. The problem is that many health care providers simply don’t know where to start when it comes to mobile health.

HealthBeat 2014 gives health care providers and leaders in mobile health tech a unique chance to come together and talk about ways in which mobile devices and apps are being used to improve outcomes and reduce costs.

At their session, “Bridging the Digital Divide,” Validic CTO Drew Schiller and Martin Entwistle, executive director of the Druker Center for Health Systems Innovation, explore what’s achievable — right now.

For example, Validic’s mobile health integration platform provides access to digital health data from clinical and remote-monitoring devices, sensors, fitness equipment, wearables and patient wellness applications. Both caregivers and employers can use the platform to monitor patient and employee wellness.

This kind of integration is key to solving interoperability challenges, particularly as health care becomes more focused on value-based care and population management. The goal is to keep patients well, and to use mobile technologies to stay engaged with them over time. Doing this effectively could not only improve quality of care, but could ultimately save $30 billion annually in the U.S.

Mobile solutions are perfectly synergistic with The Druker Center’s first incubation project: supporting aging in the community through human-centered design and scalable technology. Its goal is to create linkages among older adults and family caregivers through social networks that will improve both care and quality of life.

Schiller and Entwistle will discuss how health data integration platforms can help move data from the consumer realm into the health system where it can be used to improve care.

Get the full agenda for HealthBeat, October 27 – 28, featuring some of the most innovative companies working in health tech today. Register here to save your spot.

Image Credit: Jon Mountjoy

Dreamforce 2014 is coming next week and rabid hordes of marketing technologists will be descending on San Francisco to learn about all things Salesforce.

Well, probably not rabid.

But who are these people who are driving $4 billion in Salesforce revenue in 2014? Predictive analytics leader Mintigo turned its analytics on that question recently, and the results are pretty clear: Small and medium-sized software companies are driving Salesforce’ success more than any other industry.

Almost 33 percent of Salesforce customers are in the software industry, according to Mintigo’s data. 55 percent of them are under $10 million in revenue, and 78 percent of them are under $50 million in revenue.

We’re studying mobile app marketing automation for VB Insight
Answer our survey, and we’ll share the data with you

Mintigo collects and continuously updates thousands of data points on millions of companies, a company representative told me. That includes public information such as financials, staff, and hiring, as well as data on the technologies, marketing, and sales tactics that can be derived from an in-depth analysis of the company’s digital footprint — much like a Datanyze, Builtwith, or HG Data.

Interestingly, while only about a third of Salesforce customers also use a marketing automation system to complement their CRM, Marketo is about twice as popular as Salesforce’s own marketing automation solution, Pardot.

Here’s all the data, in infographic form:

With more than 100,000 customers, salesforce.com is the enterprise cloud computing company that is leading the shift to the social enterprise. Social enterprises leverage social, mobile and open cloud technologies to put customers at t... read more »

Mintigo is a leading predictive marketing platform that helps marketers find buyers faster. With Sequoia Capital backing, Mintigo is leading the new era of marketing based on predictive analytics and big data. Like a GPS for marketers,... read more »

Well AdWeek is over. Yawn. We found out that Jerry Seinfeld loves advertising. Or at least getting paid by advertisers.

People are still talking about millennials. Even though many of those talking about it are millennials. Video and mobile platforms are growing in importance. Nothing really new there.

So while the advertising industry spoke about many of the same things we’ve all been talking about for a few years now, there were a three consistent themes across all these conversations that emerged.

First, of course there was a lot of talk about how programmatic ad buying will continue to grow as publisher revenues and the public interest in banner ads shrink.

Second, content marketing is emerging as the counter weight to advertising that we hate. Can brands create stories people love? Is Native advertising somewhere in the middle?

Third, there was a lot of discussion about the future of the agency. The discussions were rather ominous and generally revolved around fear that the glory days are over. If machines are buying the ads, what is left for the agency to do? The message: follow the fear. Be funny. Be Human. Find that big idea for your clients. Storytelling is the answer.

A few weeks ago, I wrote an opinion piece on these very themes in AdAge called How Brands Can Remain Human When Native And Ad Tech Collide. And so the timing seemed right to share it here now.

Programmatic. Native Advertising. Content Marketing. Human Storytelling.

As we all know, John Oliver gave a very funny and blistering rant on native ads earlier this year on his HBO program, “This Week Tonight.” He equated the lowering of editorial’s long-held barrier with advertising departments to a surgeon ripping a patient’s heart out and thinking it doesn’t matter — that readers’ trust in their news source is, in fact, all that matters. I can only imagine what he’d think if he knew that native advertising is now being discussed as moving toward a programmatic model.

I believe that native ads and content marketing will never be bought 100% programmatically — there are too many nuances to ensuring that content and the publication align. Humans will always play a role.

When it comes to native ads, I see the primary challenge coming from aligning branded content with a specific publication, and feeding back data to brands that allow them to adjust what they create over time.

How will programmatic buying evolve to better serve native ads and other non-traditional content, and what should marketers look for when looking to make investments in native ads more efficiently? Here are three strategies:

1. A semi-automated approach is effective for meeting readers where they are. For example, Outbrain is creating totally new content-based modules that will replace the traditional banner ad. They’re based on a CPC model and, in addition to targeting via demographics, they’re leading the charge to leverage data for automated and semi-automated content discovery.

In other words, they help buyers both place content and understand where it might get the most traction or response, since that has implications for what they license and create on the front end.

Lesson: Brands should track targeting results and test often to be sure content placement and context feels authentic.

2. The future of targeting is spontaneous, custom ad creation. OneSpot is literally trying to replace the banner with content vs. ads by basically overriding display inventory with content-driven creative. Brands still buy inventory through the exchange on a CPM basis, but they have a cool “engine” that takes content and embedded images and creates a new kind of banner unit on the fly.

Steve Sachs, CEO of OneSpot, blogged “Content marketing may not look or feel like digital advertising, but its backend needs to work more like today’s existing programmatic ad technology stack for brands to really succeed in a digital environment.” His point is that creating content at scale is no longer the challenge (debatable, in my opinion, for high-quality content), and that the hurdle is real-time audience targeting from customer data.

Lesson: When using this type of technology, it is in the best interest of your brand to not rely on the engine until it proves entirely effective to your goals as well as seamless and on-brand for your readers.

3. Transparency and creativity are the only way this model with thrive. We see other approaches through Nativo and Sharethrough, which are leading the pack with true native ad units vs. recommendation widgets. We also are seeing native ad platforms like Syndicate beginning to bring transparency to native ad pricing, which may very well be the first step required as this market matures.

And most recently we saw Taboola, another content recommendation company, acquire Perfect Market, with the goal of marrying their programmatic ad platform and content recommendations to better publishers’ bottom lines. In an ancillary space to watch, Rocketfuel also acquired [X+1] bringing together its programmatic ad network and [X+1]‘s dual demand-side platform (DSP) and data management platform (DMP) solution.

Lesson: Your users should never feel tricked or deceived when clicking on your content. The point of programmatic is to serve up relevant content in an efficient, timely manner to reach your audience when your content is what they’re looking for.

Ultimately, I believe that audiences will feel deceived no matter what if they are led to a really bad piece of content — programmatically or otherwise. Our industry needs to create standards and ethics to ensure that the integrity of the publisher and the brand are upheld while also delivering value to the reader.

To do this, the content “inventory” needs to be reviewed thoroughly to ensure that the right content is aligned to the right publisher — and that quality always wins.

We’ve seen in our own native ad buys that the most success comes from deeply collaborating with the publisher to make it a truly native — and also valuable — experience for the readers.

For now, placing native ads into a programmatic strategy is something that brands can do — but they are wisely being careful about its application so far, since getting it right is ultimately about providing content that audiences actually want.

Native isn’t just about placement. It’s about the content being just as indigenous as the readers who dwell there. Brands must work with publishers to meet that mutually-beneficial goal or risk being the butt of even more jokes.

What do you think?

In this three-part series, I examine the six keys of building and growing a thriving Revenue Marketing practice – strategy, content, people, process, technology and results. In Part One, I talked about Strategy and Content and Part Two covered People and Process . In today’s final installment, I’ll addresses Technology and Results.

The Fundamentals: Marketing Automation And CRM

Technology, more specifically marketing automation integrated with CRM, is the foundation for any Revenue Marketing practice. These tools provide the ability to track and report on real revenue contribution from marketing.

More broadly, many marketing departments use multiple systems to run marketing. I was recently working in one large company, and we quit counting how many systems marketing was using at 22! Clearly, this is too many to be effective.

It is critical, especially in larger organizations, that the entire revenue marketing architecture is reviewed and optimized. What is the purpose of each system? How does data flow from one system to the other? What needs to change in each system once these data flows are optimized? Who do these changes impact and how will they be trained? Who will update and administer the system architecture? In other words, what is the optimal set of technologies and how are they best optimized to deliver an optimal revenue marketing result?

Revenue Marketing Operations

Answering all of these questions points to the potential need for a separate revenue marketing operations group with the goal to optimize marketing effectiveness with leading edge technology, optimized processes, clean and current data, and rigorous analysis. Within this revenue marketing operations group key functions include marketing technology management, data management, process optimization, reporting/analysis/strategy and marketing automation power users/admins.

Managing this much technology is often a challenge for marketing and thus requires either the hiring of technical skills or a good working relationship with IT. One thing is clear for marketing: Technology is now the enabler; just as CRM spawned the rise of sales operations, marketing automation and other tools are doing the same for marketing operations.

Results: What Gets Measured, Gets Done

In terms of a revenue marketing practice, results are reflected in the metrics that your CEO, CFO, CSO and board care about the most: revenue. For many marketers, making the transition – going from reporting on activities such as number of leads generated to reporting on percentage and dollar amount of the sales funnel sourced by marketing — is a huge transition that goes beyond just acquiring a marketing automation system. For this transition to be successful, there must be a rabid focus on ROI.

To give you an example of the impact that an ROI focus has on results, let’s look a key data point from the recent study from the Lenskold Group and sponsored by the Pedowitz Group — In the study, of the companies using marketing automation and ROI metrics, 69% reported an increase in total marketing revenue contribution. Contrast this with the 19% increase in total marketing revenue contribution reported by users of marketing automation and traditional metrics.

This data points out that investing in marketing automation is the first step, but the more important step is focus on ROI in order to make a substantial contribution to top-line revenue.

The Revenue Marketing Funnel

In order to achieve and report on key revenue metrics, marketers must develop and manage a revenue marketing funnel. Just like a sales funnel, the marketing funnel establishes the rate of conversion from one stage of the funnel to the next. The end-game here is to become so accurate on these conversion metrics that marketing can forecast the upcoming impact on revenue.

The ability to drive repeatable, predictable and scalable revenue contribution is the hallmark of the Revenue Marketer. And now, it can be done thanks to marketing automation technologies.

Reporting Dashboards And Cadence

Developing dashboards in a revenue marketing model takes on two distinct flavors – one to help run the day to day practice and one for reporting to senior management.

Day to day dashboards usually include lots of data and will report on metrics such as open rate, click-through rate, bounce rate, form conversion rate, number of MQLs sent to sales and percentage of conversions of MQL to opportunity — all broken down by lead source and all key metrics the team needs to work to optimize. These metrics are reviewed in real-time and as part of a thorough continuous improvement program.

Dashboards for senior management include far fewer but more highly focused revenue metrics such as percentage of sales pipeline sourced by marketing, dollar amount of sales pipeline sourced by marketing, percentage of closed business sourced by marketing and dollar amount of revenue sourced by marketing. The best case is that the executive dashboards are available 24×7, and the next best case is that the dashboard is an automated report that can be generated at any time.

Clearly there is a huge correlation between results and technology in that technology is the enabler to drive a real revenue result from marketing. Once marketing can get comfortable with using technology as a business driver and applying an ROI focus to marketing, revenue results begin to happen.

The transformation of marketing from a cost center to a revenue center is a complex initiative that requires a holistic approach across all six elements of strategy, content, people, process, technology and results. There is no silver bullet, but marketing organizations that approach this transformation as a journey, rather than as an event, will become true Revenue Marketers.

Content. It’s the cornerstone of any successful inbound marketing campaign. Creating your own high-quality unique content is the best way of enticing new fans and potential customers to embrace your business and having them understand precisely what makes you different from everyone else out there. You can share all the great industry-associated fun articles, videos and blog posts you want via social media, but in order for your audience to know WHO YOU ARE, you need to create your own content.

But, in my experience, content is a seven-letter word that strikes fear into the hearts of even the most experienced small business owners. Whether their background is in tourism/hospitality sales, counselling, healthcare or interior design, I’ve had scores of clients come to me and say that they’re stuck on creating content for their website, their blog or for great social media updates. They’re all very knowledgeable and comfortable in their expertise and yet, when it comes to expressing themselves on paper, they’re stymied.

In honor of all my awesome clients and to help make your lives a little easier, I thought I’d go through the first part of 34 awesome content hacks that I’ve found can help you plan better, write better and even design better. Without further ado, here’s the first section of planning tricks.

6 Planning Tricks You Need to Know

1) Create a Headline Swipe File

What is a headline swipe file, you might be asking? Well, whenever you notice great headlines that might help you generate new ideas for content, simply put them into a document and keep it on hand to help inspire you whenever you get stuck or share it with your team to inspire them. Try taking a look and them and focusing on what could make your audience want to click on the link or give you their email addresses. Headlines need to grab attention ASAP.

2) Use RSS Feeds to Find Newsjack-Worthy Content Topics

What do they mean by “newsjacking”? Newsjacking allows you to use current relevant news stories as a marketing opportunity for your company. While having a story directly related to your industry is ideal, you could also use a human-interest story or a celebrity news story. In your RSS reader like Feedly or in Google Alerts, you can set up search alerts based on keywords of interest and have relevant news stories delivered to your inbox daily.

Try searching for keywords with the highest rate of search volume and incorporate those into your original content. Make sure you also look into the original story to ensure that you have your facts straight and to make sure you’re not copying other content that’s already out there.

Remember, newsjacking isn’t about re-writing the news story word-for-word, it’s about using that news story to TIE INTO your original content, while keeping in mind exactly why you audience should be interested in the story. It’s about using the story to leverage ideas that your fans and potential customers will want to read.

3) Turn Questions Your Clients Have Into Content Ideas

Over the course of running your business, no matter what industry you’re in, you’ve probably gotten a ton of questions about your industry, on how your products and services work, what to look for when hiring a technician, buying a house, booking a vacation etc. The list goes on and on. What you may not know is that in addition to answering what questions you can in person during client meetings or networking events, you can also use these questions to create blog posts, ebooks, videos and white papers.

Not only will this provide answers for people who have personally asked you questions, having great content will also help those who have questions that need to be answered, but haven’t asked them. Great content pushes them to visit your website, turns them to leads, nurtures that relationship, shortens the sales cycle and turns them into happy customers.

4) Organize Content Ideas Using Evernote

Coordinating content ideas for your blog as well as other social media platforms and following industry trends can be as bad as herding cats (For the record, Mythbusters proved it can’t be done.) Enter Evernote. As I talked about in one of my previous posts, 21 Awesome Online Tools to Make Your Business More Efficient, you can use Evernote to organize content ideas by notebook, labelling them as ‘blog ideas’ or ‘meeting notes’ to better manage where different content strategies are coming from.

If you have Chrome for your web browser, you can even install Evernote Clipper, which takes anything you’re interested in from the Web and organizes it into notebooks for you!

5) Share Relevant Content With Your Team

If you work in an agency, you’re undoubtedly creating content for clients in a wide variety of industries. When you’re going through RSS feeds, emails and social media updates, you’ll definitely find fresh content that is very relevant to one of the client accounts. So, to make things easier on everyone, make sure you always forward that awesome content on to that particular account manager. That way, they’re always up to date and organized on what’s going on out there that could make for great content for the accounts they manage.

6) Host a “Ask me Anything” Event

If you’re like me, you’ve obviously heard of AMAs. Reddit is famous for hosting AMAs for a wide variety of people (some of my favorites include the Hillstrand brothers from Deadliest Catch, Adam Savage from Mythbusters, Jamie Hyneman from Mythbusters and the late, great Robin Williams). But, AMAs aren’t just for celebrites, authors or well-known people of note. You can host an AMA for your fans too!

Hosting an AMA allows your audience to ask you anything that’s on their minds and you give them amazing answers! The two-way conversation allows you to develop relationships with your audience, establish yourself as an authority and give them insight into who you are. You can host an AMA on Google Hangouts, which lets your audience get some face time with you, or as a Twitter chat with a hashtag so all questions with that hashtag are easier to organize OR even as an online meeting on a platform like GoToMeeting.

6 Tricks for Writing You Have to Know

1) Always Start With a Working Title

One of the many reasons people struggle with writing is because they get stuck trying to come up with a title. It’s something that’s plagued me in the past so I understand how hard it can be to write a title.

That’s why, instead of going with one title from the very beginning, start writing with the knowledge that your title is a working one. Make it one that’s reflective on what you’re writing about, but recognize that sometimes, even if you create an outline, the final product is always going to turn out a little different than you think it will. Not worrying about the title means that you can wait until you’re done writing that article, that blog post or that ebook, before writing in the title, which cuts down on stress.

2) Reuse Existing Copy for New Content

The more your company grows, the more you’ll start seeing the value for re-purposing content. You might have written a PR release 6 months earlier and now you’re looking for some bullet points to put in a blog post, you can abbreviate that content from the press release. You can reuse parts of older content and re-post them in different ways to allow different segments of your target market to absorb it. For example, the audience who reads your PR releases might be different from the one that reads your blog posts, but there’s nothing wrong with sharing the same content with both audiences in different formats.

3) Guide Your Writing W/ Themed Blogging Days

Writing can sometimes be made easier by having a theme for each day to help make it more fun and entertaining. The best way to start with themed blog posts-and build on your previous blog success-is to analyze your most successful previous blog posts and then create similar posts.

If your most popular post is about “Top 25 Best Mexican Restaurants in San Franciso”, try writing about the “Top 25 Best Latin American Restaurants” next. Designate a day for your themed blog and let the ideas flow!

4) Keep a Dictionary and Thesaurus Handy

Sometimes, when you’re writing a lot of articles or blog posts that use several descriptors, it can be hard to not to repeat yourself. There’s absolutely no shame in keeping a dictionary and a thesaurus on hand to give you some new synonyms to insert into a piece. It can also help you refine what you’re writing, in case you get stuck on defining a word you want to use.

5) Listen to some classical/easy listening/ambient music while you work

In my experience, listening to the latest Foo Fighters record or some old-school Boyz II Men while working can sometimes distract you. You start singing along and stop writing. I find that that easy-listening, classical or ambient music is really great for stimulating the brain, but it doesn’t have the loud lyrics to distract you. If Beethoven isn’t your thing, I’d also recommend Enya for easy listening or even look up original scores for your favorite video games or movies. I find inspiration from the soundtrack for Assassin’s Creed 3, for example. Anything that keeps your brain stimulated but doesn’t compete with that inner voice works.

6) Use Wikipedia as your style guide

Every academic and professional muscle in your body is probably screaming at the tip above. After all, weren’t you always told that you can’t use Wikipedia as a source for your writing? Well, this isn’t about using information on Wikipedia, it’s about using it as a style guide. If you’re ever unsure about whether something should be capitalized, in quotes or italicized, check Wikipedia instead of diving into a massive style guide. They’re very accurate regarding style.

5 Design Tips You Have to Use

1) Create CTAs with Keynote

If you don’t want to spring the cash for Photoshop to create an awesome looking CTA, that’s OK! You can use Keynote instead. Just open a new image in Keynote, add a background or fill color, put in an image if you’d like one, add a text box and type in your offer copy. Then you can do a screen capture of the CTA and you automatically have a .PNG image that you can put in any blog post!

2) Snag Images for Your Blog with SnagIt

SnagIt is a great screen capture program that captures video display and audio output. You can easily use it to add relevant images to your blog. If you see an image you want to use, you can simply SnagIt, copy and paste it into your blog post as a .PNG. It’s just that easy!

3) Change Up the Visuals to Break Up Text-Heavy Paragraphs

Keep your blog post visually interesting for readers by changing up the visuals you use. You can use infographics, call-out text blocks, quotes and other images. You can also label diagrams, images and graphs with descriptions to summarize the materials for readers that skim.

4) Always Sketch Out Your Ideas

Before opening any design program, try sketching out a few thumbnail versions. Don’t focus on the details, focus on the composition, the relative scale of the elements and the spacing. Creating the first basic versions force you to think about the basic structure of the design and past the first couple of versions. Sketching takes time, but it can help you save energy later when you’re designing the image in a program like Photoshop.

5) Add Text Overlays to Your Images with the Over App

With the Over app, you can crop the image, change the lighting and add text and inspiring icons to it. You don’t have to spring for Photoshop, Over is available in almost any app store and it’s fairly inexpensive, easy to use AND you can do it to all your high-quality photos WHILE you’re on the go!

Stay tuned for Part 2 of 34 Awesome Hacks to Create Great Content, coming soon!

Google has been up to its old tricks of algorithm updates, and this time it has emphasized the importance of quality content on your website – again! The search engine has potentially penalised well-known brands such as Hallmark and Microsoft Office 365, as well as popular gaming sites, that it deemed to have duplicate or thin content, suggesting no site is safe when algorithms are enforced.

The Panda 4.1, as it’s being referred to, is the latest algorithm change to be rolled out by the search engine giants aiming to improve the experiences of users online. Panda updates have always been content and query-based algorithm changes, unlike the Penguin algorithm which targets spammy links. Panda is all about ensuring websites have rich and relevant content. In short, the Panda algorithm attempts to filter out out poorly-written sites with low-quality content, leaving behind only those that provide users with additional value.

So, why does Google roll out algorithm changes?

Put simply, it’s to ensure online user experience is the best it can be. Starting in 2000 with the Google Toolbar, Google allowed webmasters to monitor how well their site was performing with a page ranking. After the Google Toolbar, came the first major change in 2002, which took most webmasters completely by surprise as the update wiped strong-performing sites off the search results pages. Intended to target all aspects of a website’s performance and credibility, this update was just the first of many documented, the algorithm roll-outs quickly became less than quarterly, with each update having a greater impact and targeting more specific behaviors.

Google had started to crack down on websites that were contravening the way they perceived sites should behave, by simply decreasing their visibility. Since the first algorithm change rolled out in 2002, Google have made major alterations to influence search results, targeting everything from backlink profiles, advert placement to keyword stuffing and all content in between, penalizing sites that behave in a manipulative or unnatural manner.

With the first Panda update hitting websites back in 2011, Google have finely tuned their algorithm to fight against any manipulative or unnatural content being produced, solely to drive traffic to a website. Content farms were the first to be targeted with Panda, in 2011, hitting sites such as Ezine and Hubpages, causing them to lose nearly 90% of their visibility in search results.

How it could affect your site?

The Panda updates has been referred to in the SEO world as the ‘ranking’ algorithm, due to the impact they have on a site’s ability to rank for keywords or terms. In short, Panda has the ability to alter the visibility of your site on search engines, depending on whether it considers your site to have good content. If your site has bad content; keyword stuffing or no content at all, it will suffer in the aftermath of this algorithm update, your site will simply not rank for your chosen search terms. It will affect your organic traffic reports, conversion rates (if you’re tracking them) and even worse, if you rely on your ecommerce website to generate income, it will affect your site’s ability to generate sales and make you money.

How to identify if you’ve been hit by Panda 4.1

As this algorithm update has been rolling out for over two weeks, it will be fairly simple to identify a dip in your site’s traffic over recent weeks. A decrease in organic traffic is the first sign your site has been affected, that is of course if you haven’t received a penalty message in your webmaster tool account from Google themselves. There are other methods of ensuring your site complies to Google’s algorithm, by running SEO checks, or by keeping your website regularly refreshed with content via a blog or news section. There are specific tools available, some for free such as Copyscape and Moz toolbar, which will analyse your website content and tell you whether there is any duplicate text or simply not enough words on the page!

It’s not all bad news

Like everything, as well as the losers, there are also winners emerging from this update. News-related website vice.com and the internationally known woman’s magazine, glamourmagazine.com to name a few, had a huge 45% increase in visibilty within search engine results.

In Google’s ever-present plight to rid the online world of the rubbish, the emphasis behind the latest Panda update is the biggest hint yet; if you haven’t addressed your website content recently, you really should. If your site is plagued with bad black-hat SEO techniques and poor website content, whether its keyword stuffing, or building poor links, it will eventually get caught out. Recovery from a penalty is reliant on how fast you are to act, once you have received a message from Google. The quicker you act, the more likely your site will recover, although the process will be a slow one. As always, prevention is the best cure for these algorithm updates so ensure you are regularly running SEO audits on your site as well as keeping up to date with Google and it’s changes.

From a user’s perspective, beta tests can be quite fun, exhilarating and fulfilling. While I’ve had my fair share of doing beta tests, almost all of those instances involved testing online entities (public websites or intranets).

Those betas were a necessary part of the many digital marketing projects which I undertook and saw to complete. It felt like work and it, well, was work. And even though I was not exactly part of the team who actually dealt with infrastructure headaches like load-balancing servers or fixing code, my role was equally critical in facilitating the flow of feedback and communication between testers and the technical team.

I am currently beta testing an awesome social app. And from what I see and sense so far, the creators of this app are doing a fine job keeping the beta test in stealth mode while ensuring a steady incremental build.

(I know, the language of this post is technical. But you’re a modern marketer, so I won’t apologize for that =)

So how does all this make me (or you for that matter) a better marketer? Three things:

• Respecting the stealth environment engenders trust and builds no-nonsense credibility
  Many misinterpret closed beta tests and typically assume a hidden agenda is being played out, that these small groups are cliquey and too esoteric for any pedestrian user to understand.While it may look and feel la-di-da from the outside, it’s actually not simple keeping the lid tight while fostering constructive testing. Leaks happen, ‘patches’ to leaks are rolled out, and at times, you just completely lose testers’ attention and interest.

Those who go with the natural flow of development are compelled to abide by the rules. Not just because their bottom dollar’s on the line, but more importantly, because the sense of belonging is overwhelmingly spontaneous enough to instill an unsaid bond of trust. Whether invested from the inside or out, the one common goal towards birthing a unique creation guides them, superseding all motives and intent.

This is the non-obvious stuff of team work rarely fleshed out and appreciated. If it sounds touchy-feely and idealistic, it probably is. But guess what, it’s also the actual glue that binds the random fragments (gushers and haters alike). In the end, all parties win and the swag you get to take with you is the most valued loot bag: credibility.

• Hands-on testing of a social app revs up your creative mojo
  Closed beta is testing in a box. Ironically, thinking outside the box is the hallmark of creativity—a dominant trait of any marketer worth his or her salt. Anybody can market themselves out of a paper bag, but not everybody can do it creatively.The most iconic social apps are often ones that have worked very hard at distilling elements that embody both (i) a distinct modus operandi as well as (ii) securing functionalities that are self-evolving.Wait, what—? Come on Tex, keep up ;)

Self-evolving functionalities (this may or may not be an official term, but semantically it works for me): features in any given app that are designed to easily scale (adjust, change, evolve) according to users’ needs. If a corporate marketer were to ask you, “but what is the value proposition?” you’d point them to this.

While beta testing this social app—note how I’ve steered clearly at even mentioning anything about it—I was noticing how quickly ideas popped into my head. So much so that generating these ideas become somewhat of an addictive endeavour, since the app beckons you to play of multiple mediums and manners of expression.

• Experiencing the raw science of social behaviour sharpens your decision making skills
  You remember Twitter, right? Of course you do. You were probably just tweeting something when you came across this random post.

Now go back to the time when you first started using Twitter. Remember? You were all like, “I don’t get it .. It’s like a bulletin board .. wish I could like tweets .. check out, how funny, witty, snarky I can be, hashtag hashtag, etc ..” It was a torrent of random tapping that flooded timelines and almost got you killed while crossing the street. Right?It’s very easy to speak your mind. Whether or not others care what your mind shares is another story. Beta testing is a great space to observe the predictability of patterns in behaviour—behavioural tendencies which are revealed in how and what users choose to share as content. And over the course of the testing period, you yourself also begin to notice how your mind starts to deploy filters.

Conscious or not, this type of reaction is what helps harness your ability to thoroughly assess situations, weigh all known facts to arrive at a balanced perspective, and exercise good judgment to make the call.

Now, these thoughts and observations don’t just apply to marketers. You can be practicing any profession and still notice a difference in how you look at things, especially in the way you conduct yourself to achieve goals.

Are you part of beta test now? What’s YOUR experience been like?

How many three to four year olds own a tablet?

Read on to find out, along with other stats on party political conference buzz, digital ad spend, B2B procurement habits and much more.

For more online marketing statistical insight, download the Econsultancy Internet Statistics Compendium.

Fewer TVs in children's bedrooms, much higher tablet ownership

Ofcom this week published its Children and Parents Media Use and Attitudes Report 2014.

• The report shows 34% of children aged 5-15 in the UK now has their own tablet computer. This figure has nearly doubled in year-on-year (up from 19%).
• Twice as many children are using a tablet to go online (42% versus 23% in 2013).
• For the first time, the proportion of children accessing the internet on a PC or laptop decreased (now at 88%, down from 91% in 2013).
• Looking even younger, 11% of children aged three to four now own their own tablet (up from 3% in 2013).

TV

The number of children with a TV set in their bedroom has decreased by a third over the past five years (from 66% in 2009 to 46% in 2014).

The proportion of children watching TV on a tablet has risen by a third in a year to 20% (up from 15% in 2013) while a third (33%) watch on-demand TV. 

UK political party conference social buzz

Hotwire monitored all social mentions for the UK party conferences and found that the Conservative party generated the most social buzz.

• #CPC14: 206,483 tweets 
• #LAB14: 154,879 tweets 
• #LDCONF: 57,532 tweets 

However, negative tweets were shown to be the most engaging, making this buzz difficult to interpret. Here is a couple of the most popular tweets:

How Tory policy affects you: a handy flowchart #cpc14 (done for @huffpostukcom) http://t.co/a6KAmRF7ja pic.twitter.com/2QIQ1Pqmwt

— David Schneider (@davidschneider) October 1, 2014

“I stood up to Rupert Murdoch” claims Ed at #lab14 pic.twitter.com/e4RnvNtJR6

— Raheem Kassam (@RaheemJKassam) September 23, 2014

B2B procurement habits

Acquity Group’s State of B2B Procurement study explores the purchasing habits of corporate business procurement professionals in organizations across the U.S.

The 2014 report surveyed 500 procurement officers with annual purchasing budgets in excess of $100,000.

40% conduct online research for a majority of goods priced under $10,000 and 31% do so at that frequency for goods costing at least $100,000.

Respondents were about as likely to say that no sales person is necessary (10.4%) as they were to say they’d like to speak with a sales rep in person (12.4%). The remaining respondents are split between preferring phone or live chat.

Amazon and personalisation

Amazon sets the standard for retailers when it comes to personalising experiences for its customers. This, according to a study by BloomReach that sampled 1,000 UK consumers and 122 UK online retailers.

• 82% of UK consumers said that no company offers the same levels of web-personalisation as Amazon.
• 34% of retailers said they thought that brand reputation was the most important factor when consumers choose a retailer (only 2% thought a personalised shopping experience was an important factor).
• 31% of consumers said they would be more likely to make purchases if they were offered personalised experiences such as product recommendations or tailored content.
• 85% of consumers said brand reputation was not an important factor.

Ad spend

The IAB/PwC Digital Adspend released this week shows a 59% combined year-on-year rise in spending to £202m in the online and mobile video advertising industry in the first half of 2014. 

The report predicts that digital consumer spending will overtake traditional spending next year. It also predicts digital advertising will overtake TV advertising in 2017.

Email still important

Forrester has conducted research with Monetate revealing the continued importance of email to marketers. 

The study finds that email marketing is still the channel most used by marketers. However, there’s still room to innovate with email.

• 40 percent report that failing to innovate with email will result in loss of customers.
• 58 percent report that email is effective at driving sales.
• 73 percent report that email is effective at generating leads.
• 66 percent report that email is effective at building loyalty.
• 39 percent of respondents say that dynamic content, such as changing an offer based on a user’s profile, is one of the top three email innovations needed.

Opera Mini used by 30m in Indonesia

More than 30 million Indonesians use the Opera Mini mobile browser according to Opera Software’s State of the Mobile Web report.

• The average age of Opera Mini users in Indonesia is 24 years old.
• 4 out of 10 users are still at school or university.
• 90% said speed is one of the top features they look for in a browser.

SME marketing budgets up 20% in 2014

Optimus Performance Marketing  polled 1,149 SME owners throughout the UK. Each SME employed 20 or more individuals and was established at least five years ago.

• 59% revealed their marketing budgets had increased within the past year (an average increase of 19.5%).
• 31% admitted that budgets had remained the same.
• 10% stated their budgets had reduced.

Of those that increased marketing budgets, the main reasons were as follows:

• Overall increased emphasis on the power of digital/social media for the company in 2014 (43%). 
• An increase of commissioning externally outsourced marketing tasks to other businesses and freelancers (28%).
• Higher number of employees working in the marketing department and the creation of brand new digital roles (17%).
• More strategic planning of marketing plans with longer-lead goals and targets (14%).
• Cost of training existing employees in new online/digital skills and qualifications (7%). 

The number of employees currently working for each SME owner polled emerged as around 92.5, with an average of 7 individuals working within the company’s marketing or communications function. 

28% of purchase abandonment due to methods of payment 

Skrill has surveyed 2000 UK adults and found that 28% of people who give up on an online purchase do so because the website they are using does not offer their preferred method of payment. 

Other key statistics include: 

• 43% said the website being too slow or crashing was the main reason for abandoning a transaction.
• 25% claimed not trusting the website’s security was another key issue.

Marketing skills

Nearly two thirds (62%) of European and close to half (47%) of North American mid-market companies believe their marketing teams have the best skills to extract value from information.

However, less than 1% think these teams should have a responsibility for data protection, according to a report by Iron Mountain and PwC. 

Greetings, weary internauts! 

How’s it going? Had a hard week of, you know, marketing and stuff? Yeah, tell me about it. I wrote a whole blog post and went to an event, so I’m pretty beat myself.

Unfortunately regular round-up wrangler Christopher Ratcliff has taken the day off to go to New York Comicon, so it looks like it’s up to me to guide you through everything utterly amazing we saw online this week.

Oh, hang on, that actually sounds like brilliant fun – let’s go! 

RIDE THE TI-GAH! 

The diminutive voice of fantasy-metal may be gone, but his wisdom lives on. Even if his wisdom mainly consists of shouting things about ‘evil eyes’ or spending $100,000+ on two fake dragons (admit, if you could, you would too).

Anyway, now you too can access these startling insights thanks to the Ronnie James Dio advice generator: 

2046AD: 30 years after the Simon Cowell wars. 

Meet Hatsune Miku, one of Japan’s most popular synthetic singers, making her US debut on Letterman this week.

Technically speaking, she’s a ‘Vocaloid’. That’s basically a synth that’s been wired up to one of the cast of Tank Police (several of you will remember Tank Police, and will currently be pretending you don’t) and taught to siiiiing.

Just like whoever is currently on ‘The X Factor’, amirite? 

 “I’m not very likeable. I hate people, and I just want to be left alone. Oh, and can I come work for you? “

Hunter S. Thompson’s cover letters are not like other people’s cover letters.

Read the whole thing on BoingBoing, then give up your day job and head on out to bat country.  

What’s the time, Mr. Wolf?

I’m assuming that most of the people reading this copy my example when choosing breakfast, and go for a balanced combination of some fag ash that’s lurking in the flat can of beer next to the bed, but, in a shocking revelation, it turns out that different people do different things around the world, and none more so than our children.

For every Snap Crackle and Pop, there’s a ‘hit it over the head with a stick first’ going on at breakfast tables worldwide, as this fascinating NYT article discovers... 

Hey Ho, let’s never go to this website again. 

Although the changing URL is quite cool 

Monitoring buzz metrics in a world gone mad

I spend at least… oh I don’t know, four minutes a week trying to smash our engagement targets on Twitter (It helps that we don’t actually have any).

If only I’d known about this earlier I could have saved myself a lot of effort: 

If you want blood, you got it! 

Frankly, I can only see this making a mess when it comes out of your 3D printer in a few years time.

Now if we can just develop a side salad that compliments you on your figure. 

Me, a name I call yo momma

Admit it, this is amazing. 

Pink helmet corner

Ben Davis sent me this link earlier in the week.

Was it because I was threatening my telephone with a hammer? Or maybe he just thought I’d look stylish.

Anyway, combat work stress with a pink helmet. Tune in next week when we combat hypertension with platform shoes 

Cage corner

As you can see from this picture, Nic Cage watches over us in the Econsultancy office.

In a way he’s always been here, guiding our actions. Firing out alerts via an iBeacon we accidentally stuck to his head, so it feels only fitting that we end this week’s round-up in salute to our absent leader.

Here’s his top ten most insane performances for you. 

Right, that’s it for another week. Why not sneak out of the office early today, and treat yourself to an autumnal stroll through the park?

Me and the internet are off to wait under the bridge so we can jump out and scare you. BYE!

When Warren Buffett talks about investing, everyone listens.

Now, those listeners can sign up for a constant stream of Buffett's investing wisdom, along with insight from other major investing names including Carl Icahn, George Soros, and Ray Dalio through an app called iBillionaire.

"The stock market is volatile," says iBillionaire cofounder and CEO Raul Moreno. "As an investor, you're deciding if you need to buy or sell or hold. One of our missions is to help investors make these decisions, and we thought, 'Who would you want to help with that decision?' In an ideal world, you'd want the best in the industry to guide you through the process."

And that's what iBillionaire aims to do. By tracking the activity of billionaires chosen for both their proven ability to do well in the market long-term and their status as industry thought leaders, the app provides a constant stream of information about their investments.

This information comes from publicly accessible SEC filings that ostensibly, anyone could look at.

"By learning what the billionaires are doing and what they think, we provide the value," Moreno says. "Obviously the information is available publicly, but it's not easy to understand or to see on a phone, where people are making the decisions."

iBillionaire has a few parts: There's the app, which provides a running commentary of what billionaires are doing with their money and allows investors to compare their portfolios to those of the billionaires; an index created from 30 large-cap equities popular among said billionaires; and an ETF (IBLN), which tracks the index and allows anyone with at least $25 to invest.

"The reason we chose an ETF structure is we believe that it allows any type of investor," Moreno says. "It trades like a stock: You can buy it from any bank — JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, all of them. We believe in the democratization of these investors' ideas that historically have only been available to rich people. We have the diversification, the liquidity, but not the high fees or high investment minimums. That's one of the reasons we like ETFs, and why we're bullish on them as an investment vehicle."

Moreno says the iBillionaire Index ETF currently holds $36 million in assets, and iBillionaire's site says the index outperforms the S&P 500.

The iBillionaire app itself has 160,000 global downloads, and 90% of those downloads are from individual investors, Moreno estimates. The other 10% is from financial advisers.

"We assume the market is volatile, and as a result of that reality, you will have to make investing decisions, and those decisions are not always buy and hold," Moreno says. "We give you the information about what the billionaires are doing and thinking, so you can make your own decisions and think for yourself about what's best for you. I guess it goes against the traditional view of passive investing, but it's not completely active investing, either. It's a mix of both."

If Acorns, the app that invests small amounts of money ETFs that we've previously discussed, is an app for people just dipping their toes into the investing waters, iBillionaire is for those who are already nose-deep.

Anyone might be interested in seeing how billionaires invest, but it's that next step that might be intimidating to rookie investors: connecting that insight with your own portfolio.

iBillionaire is very clear about the fact that it's not an investment adviser and that the information it provides may apply to each investor in a different way, but applying any investing insight to your situation involves a certain amount of knowledge.

Still, it's pretty cool to get a push notification about Seth Klarman.

NOW WATCH: Here's The Trick To Not Feeling So Stressed On Sundays

SEE ALSO: This Startup Wants To Be The Yelp Of Investing

Join the conversation about this story »

GUEST POST

Image Credit: Chris Potter

Failure is the fertilizer of Silicon Valley, or so we would have you believe. Like fraternity hazing, we take excessive pleasure in warning plebes (aspiring entrepreneurs) that 80 to 90 percent of all startups fail.

But failure, when you get right down to it, is neither inevitable nor anything to brag about. As Silicon Valley veterans — Oracle, Sun, SynOptics, and over 40 startups and tech giants — we’ve had ringside seats to some of the greatest successes and flame-outs in tech history. And while everyone associated with technology startups knows that you need to kiss a few frogs at times, we’ve created an early warning ‘failure list’ that we consult before we pucker up:

1. It’s the technology, stupid. If they take this approach, they’re lost before they start — and yet it’s the single largest startup sin. The founders have spent years creating their technology and so assume it’s as compelling to others as it is to them. It isn’t. It’s not what the technology can do (speeds and feeds), it’s what it can do for the customer. Solutions sell, technology doesn’t.
2. Make the CEO a rock star. Too many first-time CEOs think they’re the next Steve Jobs — down to the bullying behavior and grandiose statements. But even Jobs had his Wozniak. VCs invest in teams, not individuals. As Walter Isaacson’s new book The Innovators attests, if a CEO doesn’t bring in a strong exec team, listen to them, and share the credit, the startup will soon be a true one-man operation for all the wrong reasons.
3. Spend early and big on branding. Don’t create your brand in a cocoon, or with the help of a high-priced branding agency. Let it evolve organically, based on your company culture and customer reactions. The resulting brand will be truer — and cheaper.
4. Give the UX director power over the brand. A powerful UX director, strong on visuals and light on Marketing, can do great damage to your marketing efforts. If you’re not going to let your VP of Marketing design your UX, don’t let your UX director have control over your brand.
5. Let your people choose their own job titles. Then consider what titles like “sales guru” and “growth hacker” are costing you in enterprise sales.
6. Print T-shirts to mark product milestones instead of customer milestones. The more t-shirts your company has before its first major sale, the quicker investors should head for the door.
7. Go virtual from the start (flex time over face time). This is a tough one, since we know how hard it is to hire these days, especially with Google and Facebook poaching the best talent. But hiring remotely from the start is a recipe for failure. Too many of a startup’s best ideas happen in ad hoc meetings and shared work space. Bottom line: Face time trumps flex time, at least in the early, formative days of a startup.
8. Revise your value proposition early and often. Many companies, having read The Lean Startup, think that just because they can throw their product out into the market, gauge initial reaction, and quickly respond, they can do the same with their core value proposition to the customer. Nope. Playing with your core customer value doesn’t make you look responsive, it makes you look indecisive. Challenge and iterate your positioning and messaging before you launch, then go through one sales cycle before you make any major changes.
9. Leadership, not management, is the key to success. “Vision” (usually the domain of the CEO) is critical to a strong launch. But once you’ve had a strong start and early sales success, it’s time to focus on growth and execution. The days of everyone reporting to the CEO are over, as are the days of the CEO making every major decision. It’s time to manage — in some cases ‘manage managers’ — an entirely new (and essential) skill. If the CEO can’t make the transition, make him/her ‘Chief Evangelist’ and find a new CEO.
10. Let your Board of Directors be very hands-on. The more you see board members on-site at a startup, the better the chances that the company is flailing. A strong CEO needs to rely on the BOD without depending on them.

So, if you believe you need to fail before you can succeed, make sure you fail in an original way. Because all of the above are avoidable.

Tom Hogan and Carol Broadbent are the founders and principles of Crowded Ocean, a Silicon Valley marketing agency that has launched over 30 startups, with 10 of those companies being either acquired or gone public.

The marketer’s job keeps getting harder. In one way, modern marketing technology empowers marketers to connect, reach, engage and measure results like never before. The problem is that without a sizable ad budget, the marketing department’s reach is limited. The solution isn’t to ask for more headcount or more ad budget. The solution is the employee population. The solution is employee advocacy.

Content Shock

When Mark Schaefer published his article titled Content Shock, he shocked the entire marketing industry, especially those passionate about content marketing. Schaefer’s key point is premised on supply and demand. We’re living at a time where brands have produced so much content (supply), that it’s simply too much for our audience to consume (demand) because the volume of content has accelerated, and continues to skyrocket. Schaefer doesn’t make the case that brands should abandon content marketing. He argues (logically) that brands need to acknowledge the limitations of their reach, and consider ways to overcome the content shock factor. In a follow up post, Schaefer says:

“I sincerely believe that “be more human” is the killer app for Content Shock. The best way to build long-term relationships that lead to business benefits isn’t going to be through backlinks, sponsored posts, or native advertising. It is going to be through authentic human connection.”

The Connected Age

It’s been said that we live in the digital age. That was truer in the last decade. Now, we live in the connected age. The connected paradigm spans our personal and professional lives. We connect with people on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Beyond these three social channels, the person-to-person connection has permeated virtually every other social channel. Even my email system, powered by HubSpot’s Sidekick is smart, allowing me to see the social media attributes of any person that emails me. Connecting with people online one-on-one is not just easy. It’s normal behavior. The impact of this behavior on brand’s approach to marketing is huge. People don’t want to engage with a “logo.” People want to engage with other people. This means that when your marketing department distributes any form of communication, whether it’s an awesome piece of content, or an awesome ad campaign, it’s being received by people as coming from your logo….Unless….

Person to Person (P2P) is The New Marketing

Your employees use social media. Hopefully, that’s not a news flash to you. The culture of your company can range from very open, permitting employees to use social media, to very closed where social media channels are blocked through the corporate network. Employees easily access their social media accounts through smart phones, with or without your permission.

Employees represent the largest marketing potential based merely on their sheer size and reach. Consider how many full time people work in your marketing department. Calculate the percentage they represent of your employee population. If your marketing department has 5 people, and the total employee population is 100, the math is obvious. Ninety-five percent of the employee population is outside the marketing department. Next, consider that within that 95% there is more domain expertise pertaining to your company’s products or services, industry, competitors, partners, governance, systems, etc. Not only does your 5 person marketing department represent just 5% of the employees, it doesn’t contain nearly the core expertise that the remaining 95% contains.

Harnessing the collective wisdom of the employee population for marketing value becomes a matter of logic and survival. The bridge to this paradigm though needs planning. Simply asking employees to become social marketers is a flawed approach.

Start with a culture check. If you’re one of those companies that blocks social media, you’ll score low on the social business culture meter. The C-Suite must understand the importance of employee advocacy by embracing the convergence of employee branding and corporate marketing.

Once your culture supports employee advocacy, it’s time to develop processes. This might require creating a governance policy that communicates to employees how you want them to engage in social media while representing your brand. Allow the governance policy to build confidence, not fear. Training is also very important. The biggest reason employees don’t advocate on behalf of your brand today is because they don’t know how.

Train your employees on best practices. Make the training about the employee. Offer it as a benefit to the employee. For example, conduct a LinkedIn Optimization workshop to help employees become LinkedIn power users. By helping employees understand both the “why” and the “how” of using social media in a professional setting, many will willingly advocate for your brand. Consider offering certifications or badges for employees who complete a series of training exercises and demonstrate acumen for advocating for your brand. Recruit domain experts to contribute to your content strategy. In other words, help some of your employees build their personal brand. Embrace it!

Employee Advocacy is not just a marketing strategy. It’s a business strategy. In order to build an employee advocacy plan, the C-Suite should embrace it and lead by example. At least one person in the C-Suite should be visible in the use of social technology in advocating for the brand. Even if leading by example is limited to internal social networking through an enterprise social network (ESN), this method allows the executives to engage P2P with employees. It will inspire employees to participate in social in productive ways.

In the connected age the lines are blurred between the personal and professional brand. Rather than fight a battle that can’t be won, embrace employee advocacy as a business strategy. I welcome your thoughts on this topic.

Use Recommendations to Add Value to Your LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn has more than 300 million active users, at least as of May 2014. (That’s more than Twitter.)  One report found that 13% of these 300 million users log into the site at least one time per day. It’s safe to say, then, that this popular professional networking site should be taken seriously.

But how seriously should we be taking the recommendations feature?

If you have a LinkedIn profile, you have likely been asked to give a recommendation or asked for one yourself. So just how valuable are these recommendations on your profile? Well, that depends on how you go about them.

Recommendations vs. Endorsements

Before we explore the value of recommendations, we need to define the term as LinkedIn defines it. The site offers two ways for your connections to offer feedback on your qualification: recommendations or endorsements.

Recommendations are written by other LinkedIn members as a way to recognize or applaud a business partner or colleague.

Meanwhile, endorsements are less specific. These are more vague virtual thumbs-ups that your connections can give you to supposedly authenticate your experiences. Surely you have logged into LinkedIn and received popup notices asking you about a connection’s skills set, such as: “Does Bill Faeth know about financial management?”

Your response is probably something like, “Well, I know Bill owns his own business, so I guess he knows something about financial management. Sure, I’ll endorse him for that! What the heck?”

In my opinion, these endorsements don’t carry much weight (although LinkedIn bills them as great ways to build your personal brand). By contrast, recommendations are more reputable than endorsements because a connection actually has to write something about your professional qualifications. Including recommendations on your LinkedIn profile can add value, especially if you are job hunting.

How To Request LinkedIn Recommendations

To request a recommendation:

1. Hover over your profile photo in the top right corner of any LinkedIn page.
2. Choose “Privacy and Setting” from the drop-down menu.
3. Under the “Settings” header on the “Profile” tab, select “Manage Your Recommendations”.
4. Click the “Ask for Recommendations” tab at the top and follow the prompts.

Including recommendations on your LinkedIn profile can add value and serve as a testament to your skills and abilities. Many corporate recruiters turn to LinkedIn daily to find qualified candidates to fill open positions.

In fact, LinkedIn states that hiring managers prefer to work with someone who has been recommended. So, including recommendations can be a valuable asset. Although some studies have shown that not having a recommendation won’t hurt you, having the wrong kind of recommendation could hurt.

Creating Value with LinkedIn Recommendations

If you plan to include recommendations on your profile, you need to make sure that what your colleagues post about you enhances your virtual resume. If you want your recommendations to be meaningful and avoid the “Sure, why not?” scenario common with endorsements, you need to make sure the person writing your recommendation can actually speak to your skills, work ethic or experience.

Below are 5 best practices to employ when requesting LinkedIn recommendations:

Make Your Ask Personal

You are much more likely to get a prompt reply and a quality recommendation if you ask someone personally. LinkedIn offers you the opportunity to send an auto-generated email prompt requesting a recommendation. However, your response rate will increase if you rewrite the email and make a more personal request. Which leads me to my next point…

We all love to read glowing remarks about ourselves, such as “Susanne was such a pleasure to work with. Her smiling face and enthusiasm lit up our office every day. I would definitely recommend her to anyone who wants to hire her!” This makes us feel good, right? But, to a hiring manager, reviews of this nature add little value. You are much better off asking a colleague to recommend you for a specific skill set or qualification.

Request Specific Details

Did you work on a specific project to relaunch your company’s website? Ask a team member to recommend you on your attention to detail, your ability to meet deadlines, or your coding skills.

Did you step up and fill in a vacant position? Ask your then-supervisor to write about your ability to take on additional responsibilities while still completing your assigned tasks. Make sure he or she elaborates on your team-player attitude as well.

Ask a Teammate

Sure, it may look good on your profile to have recommendations from the presidents and CEOs of every company you’ve worked for. But unless you worked directly with those individuals, your recommendation may not mean much. When asking colleagues to write a recommendation for you, make sure to ask people who can actually speak to your experience. Typically, those who serve with you on a task force or work with you on a specific project have great insight into your skills and abilities. Plus, they can attest to what it is like to work with you, which is a critical factor for many recruiters and hiring managers.

Collect a Variety of Recommendations

You want to have several different recommendations that speak to your different abilities or experiences. Including feedback from former managers or from those whom you have managed will give readers of your profile a more comprehensive view of who you are as an employee, a manager and a person. Be careful not to ask for too many recommendations, though. You don’t want to have so many different opinions that the feedback becomes watered down.

Look Outside the Workplace

Recommendations don’t have to be limited to professional experiences, either. Those teammates and colleagues you work with in professional or civic organizations can make great references as well. And sometimes, these individuals can speak to your skills sets even better than your supervisor or cubemate. These types of recommendations, such as your ability to manage volunteers or lead a committee, can be especially valuable if you are looking to make a career change.

There you have it. Five ways to make LinkedIn recommendations work for you. Next time you log in to the site, consider sending a few recommendation requests to former or current coworkers. And make sure to return the favor! If someone asks you for a recommendation, have the courtesy to complete one in a timely and professional manner. Maybe that’s the start of another blog post…

Image source

It’s a common myth that anyone who writes well can be a copywriter. The truth, however, is that great copywriters possess unique skills and traits that aren’t common to all writers. If your goal is to be an effective copywriter, the good news for you is that these skills and traits can be learned. As in most things, the key to writing great copy is lots of practice.

If you’re looking to hire a copywriter for your business, the following 5 characteristics of great copywriters will help you sort out the truly talented from the merely mediocre.

• Great Copywriters Solve Problems

A good copywriter will understand the core of your business as well as its ability to solve a customer’s problem. A great copywriter can translate that into copy that helps you gain customers. People are attracted to fresh, unique copy, but they also need to feel an emotion before they’ll pull out their wallets and buy your services or products. Promising a solution to their problem often does the trick.

A talented copywriter knows how create copy that makes an emotional connection, often by looking at your product from a customer’s point of view and stressing the benefits of choosing yours over your competitor’s. Writing copy is about solving a problem, as illustrated by Copyblogger.

• Great Copywriters Understand Websites

Whether intuitively or through years of experience, a professional copywriter knows the essentials of great website copy. They know how to fill a site with compelling content, not fluff and word count. Your copywriter should be filled with the creativity to produce original copy ideas for your business and be willing to make suggestions to benefit your site.

A great copywriter will be able to point out the areas of your site that are working while making recommendations regarding those that might need to be changed. A talented copywriter understands the tone or voice that your company has developed and will mesh their work seamlessly into your existing content. Not sure your website copy is doing the trick? Check out this post by Unbounce.

• Great Copywriters Want to Build a Partnership

Great copywriters have many things in common, and the most important is a desire to see your company succeed. If you’ve hired the right copywriter, it will feel like you have a partner who revels in the success of your business as much as you do. They understand the path to success and will take in your ideas while also providing some of their own.

Often, great copywriters will go above and beyond to help you succeed. They will usually lend value and knowledge beyond the bare minimum required to meet their obligations. They will appreciate the business relationship developing and strive to be supportive partners working for the success of your company. And why wouldn’t they? After all, your success equals their success.

• Great Copywriters are Interested in Trends

Successful copywriters are intensely curious. They write on a variety of topics and don’t mind doing research if they don’t have knowledge of a subject. They have a thirst for trivia and tidbits, which means they can spend a lot of time researching obscure ideas. This can translate into unique content ideas that will help evolve your business.

Good copywriters will give you a new spin on a common subject, too. With all the research that copywriters do on a daily basis, they tend to have a solid understanding of current trends in web design, content creation and marketing. This information is extremely valuable for your business.

• Great Copywriters are Flexible

Sometimes business owners and copywriters will have different ideas about the path of the copy creation or implementation. A business owner might not have a clear direction for their content, or they might have misguided goals. Maybe they’ve bought into common copywriting myths. A great copywriter will be confident enough to voice opinions and ideas that help the client meet their goals, but know when to step aside and let the client make decisions.

A professional copywriter is able to answer questions knowledgeably, take constructive criticism, and make changes based on your direction. Copywriters might voice their opinions about changes to the copy, but they understand that it’s your business and ultimately your decision.

A great copywriter will do their research and work hard to create copy that speaks to your audience and converts readers into paying customers. Knowing how to hire (or be) a great copywriter often comes down to knowing what traits to look for, and this list is a good place to start.

Do you have anything else to add? Let us know in the comments!

Not long ago I had a great conversation with a marketer whose company had recently adopted Act-On. He said nice things about our content (always music to our ears) and asked the $64,000 question:

Any tips on developing our own content marketing library?

I like hearing this question, because I love answering it. Here are three tips on creating a content library that will meet the needs of your customers and prospects – and position your company as the source for thought leadership in your industry.

1. Assess your existing content

Begin by understanding your own customer base, and the content that they find useful and valuable at the progressives stages of the buyer’s journey. Talk to your sales team, and find out what conversations and questions they’re asked that move the needle. Then:

• Formalize the stages of that buyer’s journey. If it doesn’t map to what you currently think of as stages in the sales funnel, you may want to reorient that sales funnel around the way the buyer actually purchases. Again, do this in tandem with your sales team.
• Once sales and marketing are in agreement about the buyer’s journey, create a chart. Give each stage of the journey a column on the horizontal axis of the chart.
• You could add columns for different products if that makes sense for your business.
• Assign all your content to one (and only one) stage. Assign it to as many product categories as necessary.

Your grid might look something like this:

You can also use a content management system to visualize your content. Whatever you choose, your goal is for sales and marketing to understand the usability of what you already have, and to perceive the gaps.

2. Decide what content to create.

Every team in your company needs content. The demand generation team is working to attract new customers, and is creating campaigns for buyers at every stage of the journey. The sales team needs bottom-funnel pieces like pricing sheets and product specs. Your customer support team may have their own needs. Visualizing your content will help you balance out each team’s needs and timing.

As a company begins to build out a library of content, the emphasis is usually placed on lead generation and the first three-quarters of the buyer’s journey. This is because these days, buyers don’t engage (or, often, even identify themselves) until fairly late in the buying cycle. Your content has to do all the heavy lifting in the early stages, including attracting the unknown prospects and converting them to prospects, so this is where you need it most.

No matter where you decide to start – top of funnel or post purchase – remember you’re actually creating that content for the customers and prospects who will consume it. Keep your reader persona in mind as you create or outsource your content.

3. Create that content.

Now you’ve analyzed what you have and what you need, the teams are in agreement, and you’re ready to make content happen. Buy or build? If you have the talent and time in-house, building your own is the best bet. It’s easier for your own creators to stay on message and within branding guidelines, and there’s more accountability. You also develop an in-house sensibility around search engine optimization that gets organically shared across your content.

(Gratuitous plug warning) If you decide to “buy” – please consider one of the very talented marketing agencies that partner with Act-On Software. You can research them here.

Here are four ways to get the biggest bang for your time and money:

• Use the “Rule of 4.” Try to create content that can be broken down into at least four pieces when possible. That white paper should also be a blog post or two, plus a data sheet… and can be the foundation for a webinar. Or your notes for a webinar can be revised into a paper, which is abstracted for a blog post, which becomes an infographic.
• Interview people inside your company about your customer challenges. You’ll be surprised at how much content you can write just through these conversations. Bring a digital recorder everywhere. These can be converted into podcasts with relatively little effort and editing … which in turn can be transcribed into papers and blog posts.
• Fast facts. Compile research about your industry into a paper, or have it available as snippets to pepper these into your other content pieces. Use proper citations. This helps bolster your credibility as an industry expert. Revisit this regularly to keep it current; outdated facts can be worse than no facts.
• Customer quotes and testimonials. Nothing is more credible than an independent endorsement. Find your evangelists and take them to dinner/lunch/drinks. They want to tell their story. You get to write it and make them heroes.

Caveats:

• Set expectations you can fulfill. It’s easy to plan a full slate of content projects; it’s much harder to create them all. A well-written blog post can take four to six hours; a well-written two-page four to six days, and a well-written eBook four to six weeks. Don’t set yourself up to fail (that demoralizes the team) with too many projects or too-short deadlines.
• Don’t be afraid to outsource when you need to. (Again, the Act-On partner roster is a great place to look for agencies that understand how to create marketing content.)
• Pay attention to your competitors’ content, so you know what your potential buyers are being exposed to. Do it a little differently…or do it a little better. Be edgier, if that suits your company’s personality.
• Don’t let the Great be the enemy of the Good. You want everything to be an A+, but sometimes you might have to take a B+ to get something out the door on time. As you continue to create content and see the traction it gets (or doesn’t) you’ll get a sense of what it takes for a piece to perform well. Plus – it takes a heckuva lot of time to get from 80% to 95%, and even more to get from 95% to 100%.
• Speaking of traction: Keep track of what gets downloaded and what contributes to conversion at the various points in the funnel. You may find that the short, practical pieces produce more than the long white papers at a certain point, or (more likely) that you really need a certain kind of mix. Whatever that truth may be for your unique set of future customers, you need to know it, so you can act on it.

Inspiration by walking around

Make sure your content creators are interacting with others inside and outside the company. The best performing content piece I ever created was a “3 Myths” white paper. It came from a 10 -minute conversation I had with a COO who was complaining about some pesky customers (this was in one of my former lives). I put those frustrations on paper, showed how our company solved the problems, and began using the resulting paper.

Is there something your prospects or customers commonly mistake? Analyze that, and write about the solutions. You’ll be solving a problem for someone, or showing how your product or service solves that problem, and that makes your company the good guy.

Interview your salespeople, and hang out with customer service as much as humanly possible. The people on the front lines, the ones who routinely talk with customers and prospects, know what’s real and what’s important … what hurts and what heals. Make them a part of the creative process – you’ll be surprised how many ideas are sitting right under your nose. Many will be good, some will even be great.

If you’re starting a content marketing program from scratch…

…you can skip that first step (“assess your content”) and go straight to number 2, “Decide what content to create.” Start with lighter content to use at the top of your funnel, and then build heavier, decision- support stuff for later stage opportunities. Know what you want that content to do, and where it should be presented in promotions. Mind the gaps. Focus on the conversion points.

Another way to scale content

Keep track of your content, and refresh it when it gets tired. If your industry is changing fast, stay on top of that so you retain the position of trusted, up-to-the-moment expert. If you have an asset that’s serving a particular purpose really well, don’t replace it; just keep it up to date. That way you can use your resources to build a new piece of content that serves a different purpose.

The guiding lights

In the end (and the beginning, and the middle), it’s all about your buyers. Always keep their needs in mind, and build your content for them. Not sure what they want? Ask them, or have your customer-facing people ask them. Make the right content, distribute it in the right places, and they will come.

Want to get a jump-start? Check out Act-On’s free content marketing toolkit:

We all want to give gifts that are appreciated, and we know what qualities make a gift appreciated. You can put that knowledge to work in your social media strategy, because the principles that make gifts welcome to their recipients make your content welcome to your target audience.

Most of us wouldn’t give a friend or relative a highly flattering vanity portrait of ourselves as a gift. Yet, technology marketing organizations and marketing agencies do it all the time: push out self-promoting content about our brand, our news, our successes, or our participation in industry events. You don’t have to go any further than the nearest press release to find examples of this self-serving marketing prose. Has anyone ever described themselves as anything other than a “leader, “innovator,” or – in more edgy businesses – “industry disrupter”?

The fact is that we all know what makes a good personal gift, but we sometimes fail to put that knowledge to work in our marketing solutions.

1. Understand What Content People Care About

Content is based on an understanding of what’s important to others, what interests them, what they care about. To do that you have to listen. In business-to-business marketing, one thing that fills the lead and demand generation pipeline is content that gives your audiences insight and information on the subjects they care about.

On top of your regular social media engagement, you can go one step further to connect with your buyers by following industry forums, blogs, interest groups and webcasts where they also share content. For example, IT.Toolbox.com does a fantastic job of not only understanding their IT audience, but engaging them with the right content. You can find blogs, research and discussion groups ranging from topics like technology trends and business intelligence to storage and security hardware. Content is available in real-time to stay relevant and engaging while providing insight into industry behavior and patterns.

2. Make Your Content a Gift That Gives Continual Value

Give people content they can use long after their initial visit. After a lead becomes a buyer, valuable content will keep them engaged. Cisco Communities is a great example of how you can provide a wealth of buyer-generated content around trends, implementation and performance tuning. Help your buyers share what delivers results for them.

One organization found that its Facebook posts generated more interest and followers when it provided tips on using social media effectively, than by simply announcing product marketing news. Everyone wants to know where marketing technology is going, so start a conversation. Ask “what, why and how” questions. Give your audience direct links to industry research and to the thought leaders who are talking about tomorrow’s technology.

Promote others’ relevant content, including that of your industry’s thought leaders. Find out who the thought leaders are in your industry and what they’re talking about. For example, searches in Cisco Communities not only include Cisco’s own product marketing content, but content from other partners and interest-based communities as well. Cisco even provides a filter so visitors can get to that non-Cisco content directly.

3. Be Surprising

People love a surprise. One sure-fire way to surprise people these days: give them content without asking for something in return – their personal information, or an offer to “chat now.” Highlight your buyers’ successes, even when it has nothing to do with your solution. Offer an unexpected additional service or a one-time upgrade at no charge.

Stepping outside the “just business” zone can also favorably surprise your audience. Find out what community service organizations your top buyers support and get involved. Rotary International is one organization with a long track record of proven success at building business by building goodwill. Work with them, or a similar organization, and share what you are doing.

In a nutshell, your content strategy is all about giving content “gifts” that raise your value in the eyes of your buyers. Differentiating your brand isn’t only about your product marketing. It’s also about how you engage with your buyers: Understanding what they care about, reaching out to them wherever they are, supplying content with ongoing value, and, finally, surprising them with unexpected value.

What are some ways your content has given great value? Share what you’ve done in the comments below.

This article originated from exclusive podcast with Rishi Dave, former Executive Director of Digital Marketing at Dell.

In this post, I will provide a comprehensive inbound marketing audit for Shift.

Before we dive into the inbound marketing audit, let’s cover the basics…

Who is Shift?

Shift is a Salesforce.com Platinum Cloud Alliance Partner that I selected from the Salesforce AppExchange. They are headquartered in Toronto, have an office in Vancouver and regional presence in Ottawa, New York State and Los Angeles. Shift delivers expert service and flawless rapid implementations of Salesforce from start to end. Think of Shift as a strategic growth engine for your business. With personalized service, strategy, implementation, and support for the Salesforce/Force.com platform, you can truly turn positive change into positive ROI.

Why Shift?

Like everyone working in inbound marketing, we all overlook or miss things (even the basics). The goal of this post is to help Shift, and others, to learn ways to improve their online marketing, as well as to give a third-party perspective on a successful company.

To be fair, “audit” sounds like a terrible word, but in this case I ask that you think of “audit” as a metaphor for “being helpful”. The purpose of this audit is to give an outsider’s view of a great company. I hope that Jason and his marketing team find this post helpful.

Disclaimer

Before I jump into the nitty gritty of the inbound audit, it’s important to note that I have no affiliation with Shift. Shift did not ask me to perform this audit. As a result, I don’t have access to any of the site’s analytics or webmaster tools accounts, and I don’t have access to any of their back end marketing automation systems – if they have one.

In a typical audit, I would begin by sifting through the data and then narrowing in on problem issues. So, if I make wildly inaccurate observations, I blame my data from third party tools (Quicksprout, Moz, etc…). These tools are very helpful; however, first party tools do provide better information.

The goal of this audit is to help Shift. The aim is never to critique in a non-constructive, harmful way, but instead, to help Shift to improve their inbound marketing by giving them the perspective of an objective third party. With those disclaimers out of the way, let’s begin.

Note: If you have questions, please use the comment form below.

Since this post will be fairly long, here is a summary of what I’ve covered to help you understand where you are throughout this audit.

Website

1. Home page optimization

Traffic Generation

1. Blogging
2. SEO

Lead Generation

1. Calls to Action
2. Landing Pages
3. Premium Content Offers
4. List Building

Social Media

1. Twitter
2. LinkedIn

Summary

1. Key take aways

Website

If you had to pick just one reason to have a website, what would it be? For most companies, I would say that it would be to give prospective customers information about your company so that you can help them to become customers.

In other words, the primary purpose of a website should be to generate leads for the sales team to close.

When it comes to lead generation, the home page isn’t actually the most important part of the website; however, as the home page usually gets a large amount of traffic, it’s still a pretty important page to get right.

As we’ll see later in my audit, the blog is the place where most leads are captured, and so I will be paying special attention to Shift’s blog in just a bit.

But first…let’s talk about Shift’s home page.

Overall, I quite like Shift’s website. Their site runs on WordPress and uses a mobile responsive theme. The site looks modern, is well designed, and will display properly on any device thanks to the theme they are using.

What They Do Right

Above the fold on their home page, they have two ways to capture leads; an eBook and a form to request a consultation.

Below the fold they do a terrific job of ensuring that a first time visitor knows that they are a Salesforce.com platinum partner and they also display a few of the clients they work with. From a social proof perspective, this is excellent.

Then, below that (highlighted in red) they have some copy that tells the visitor that they are the right Salesforce consultant to help transform your organization.

Overall, Shift has done a pretty darn good job of their home page. It is much better than most that I see.

Where They Could Improve

If I was being really nit picky, I would suggest the following.

See the area I have highlighted in red? I would suggest that they change the wording here a bit…but given how far down the page this is, it’s really not that big of a deal. The reason I think that there is room for improvement in this snippet of copy is that it doesn’t really use language that a potential client would use to describe their problems.

For example, let’s assume that a common problem for Shift’s potential clients is that they struggle with converting leads to customers (a pretty common problem).

If that was the case, and it was a top priority for a large number of the companies in the target market Shift is going after, I would change the wording to something like this:

Companies come to Shift when they are having trouble converting leads into customers. This is often the result of having gaps in their sales process as well as an under utilized implementation of Salesforce.com software. Our best clients are companies that rely on Salesforce.com and a direct sales team to sell high value, complex offerings to sophisticated buyers that are likely to remain clients for years. For companies like this, our award-winning team brings technical, strategic, and industry-specific expertise to your Salesforce.com implementation or enhancement project to ensure you get the best results possible.

When writing copy like this, the key is to describe the problem you solve using the same words that your customer would use to describe the problem.

I would also move the link to the blog from the smaller secondary navigation bar to the main navigation bar. With heat map testing, we could easily determine if a move like this generated more clicks.

The only other area of the home page that I think would benefit from some minor tweaking would be the request a consultation form at the very top. I do like the idea of offering visitors this call to action; however, I’m not a fan on how much real estate they have used for it.

If I were redesigning that portion of the home page, I would emulate what I’ve shown in the two examples below.

Examples of Highly Optimized Home Pages

Below are screenshots of HubSpot and Copyblogger. I know both companies very well and they are both extremely successful with their online marketing.

I have included these screenshots because both companies have done a very good job of their home pages (plus I know they both split test like crazy so you can be sure that whatever they are doing is working very well).

In HubSpot’s case, they make it very obvious that they are focused on helping their customers to grow their business, and they have 11,500 customers as proof. It’s pretty hard to argue with that kind of proof.

For a call to action, they offer either a free trial of their software, or link to learn more about the software. As well, a link to their blog is prominently displayed on the nav bar.

In Copyblogger’s case, they are promoting their new Rainmaker platform and the headline they’ve chosen tells visitors that if they are using WordPress, their Rainmaker platform is going to greatly simplify their lives, at an affordable cost. Their calls to action include the option to watch a video (which is VERY well done), take a tour, or sign up for a free trial.

Traffic Generation

Now that we have spent some time reviewing their home page, let’s have a look at what Shift is doing to generate traffic. If a site isn’t getting much traffic, it can’t be generating very many leads, so traffic is pretty important.

As you can see below, Shift’s traffic rank (data from Alexa) is 1,022,694. In other words, they aren’t getting very much traffic.

When a site isn’t generating much traffic, it is generally for one of two reasons:

1. Not enough content
2. Content no one wants to read

With only 145 indexed pages, Shift doesn’t have a lot of content, so that is part of the problem. However, you’ll notice that our own site has just 207 pages of content, yet we get the most traffic of the five sites I’ve compared below.

I’ll touch more on the reasons for this when I audit their blog a little further down.

To give you context on how Alexa ranking relates to traffic, Groove’s site, which is ranked at 104,805 for traffic, received 12,070 visitors in the 30 days leading up to Sep 25, 2014.

Blogging

As you can see from the screenshot below, blogging can have a dramatic impact on the amount of traffic and leads generated so it’s incredibly important to ensure that your blogging strategy is an effective one.

Source: Hubspot’s 2013 Marketing Benchmarks Survey (click this image to get the survey)

The reason that Shift’s site receives so little traffic is that the content they are publishing to their blog isn’t getting traction. While I don’t have access to their analytics, I’m quite sure my assumption is correct because the posts that they have published have very little in the way of social shares. If the posts were getting read, people would be sharing them on their social networks.

There are a number of possible reasons why their blog isn’t getting traction.

The most likely reason is because they are publishing content that no one cares about. Whenever I see this, it’s generally because they haven’t invested the time to create an inbound marketing strategy. There is a very specific process to be followed with inbound marketing, and it starts with strategy.

The very first step in creating this strategy is to understand who you are trying to attract (buyer persona), what they care about, and the questions they are asking. Skip this, and your efforts are likely to fail – as appears to be the case with Shift’s blog.

Here’s a list of their 5 most recent blog post titles:

• Salesforce CRM as an experience management tool
• Usability: A critical component of CRM software
• Salesforce healthcare solutions: A supply chain asset?
• User Interface: Our take on salesforce.com Summer ’14 Release
• Many businesses have yet to deploy CRM programs

The post titles you choose are incredibly important because if your post title fails to grab the attention of your target audience (buyer persona), they aren’t going to read it.

For the purposes of this audit, let’s assume for the moment that Shift has done a good job of identifying topics their target market is interested in (which I don’t believe they have done). IF that was the case, then some headlines that I think would generate more page views would be as follows:

• 3 Ways to Leverage Salesforce CRM as an Experience Management Tool
• Is Usability a Critical Component of CRM for Today’s Leading Organizations?
• Are Salesforce Healthcare Solutions Making Your Supply Chain Sick?
• 5 Ways Salesforce.com’s New User Interface Will Boost Productivity 10-20% or More
• The Real Cost of Not Having a CRM in Today’s Competitive Marketplace

As a further example of the importance of blog post titles, have a look at the last five post titles on HubSpot’s (very) popular blog:

• Want to Improve Your Blog’s Conversion Rates? 11 Tests to Try
• Are These the Best Campaigns of the Year? Grand CLIO’s 2014 Award Winners
• How (and Why) to Simplify Your Sales Incentive Plan
• Language Matters: How to Communicate More Effectively With Your Team
• How to Use New Anonymous Targeting to Get Sales Faster

How to Get Clicks

An effective blog post title makes the reader curious enough to click through and read the post. Of course, if the post is crap, they won’t stay around long, so getting the post right is also an incredibly important part of successful blogging.

For Shift, it looks like the bigger problem with their blog is that they aren’t creating content that people are interested in reading. This is most likely because they haven’t identified their target buyer personas as well as a list of topics that they are interested in reading.

To do this requires an organization to think more like a media company.

Thinking like a media company – like a magazine – requires that you focus on publishing content that your target audience actually wants to read. That can sometimes mean that you are publishing content that has nothing to do with your product.

For example, Field & Stream publishes a wide variety of articles that are of interest to it’s target audience. Then, to monetize their publication, they sell advertising around the articles.

Think of your blog like a magazine with your company as one of it’s advertisers. If you only write articles about your product, most people won’t care.

To be successful, you need to write about what they want to read as doing so will allow you to build an audience that will then give you permission to send them marketing messages about your products and services.

Blogging Summary

Getting traffic isn’t hard once you understand the process, and you avoid some pretty common mistakes. The key is to be interesting to your target personas.

SEO

When it comes to getting traffic, more content is better.

Source: Hubspot’s 2013 Marketing Benchmarks Survey (click this image to get the survey)

With more content, you create an opportunity for more inbound links, and as you can see below, Shift’s site has only 17 back links.

A low number of backlinks is another indicator that very few people are interested in the content you are publishing. If people love your content, they link to it.

While not as important as they used to be, inbound links do still play a role in SEO.

Lead Generation

When it comes to lead generation, the #1 influencer is content (more content = more traffic), and the easiest way to consistently create more content is to have a blog.

Source: Hubspot’s 2013 Marketing Benchmarks Survey (click this image to get the survey)

In looking at Shift’s blog posts, I noticed that none of the ones that I looked at had a graphical call to action. Without this in place, it’s simply not realistic to hope that people will read a blog post and then navigate their way over the the ‘contact us’ page.

This is very likely killing their conversion rate.

If you are going to successfully convert a portion of your website traffic into leads, there is a specific process to be followed in order to maximize your conversion rate. To see a shining example of perfection, have a look at any blog post on HubSpot’s very popular blog.

When you do, you will see that there is a compelling Call to Action at the bottom of every blog post. Generating leads with way is also very cost effective!

Calls to Action

Here’s an example of a call to action. We put these at the bottom of every blog post. So does HubSpot. So does Appirio on this post.

Without a proper call to action in place, it’s very unrealistic to expect that more than about 0.5% of your total traffic is going to convert to leads. With optimized calls to action in place, converting 2-3% of total traffic to leads is quite achievable.

When it comes to quickly increasing conversion rate, adding blog articles with calls to action is the low hanging fruit.

Landing Pages

As with content, the more landing pages a site has, the more leads it will generate.

Source: Hubspot’s 2013 Marketing Benchmarks Survey (click this image to get the survey)

When clicked, a call to action should take the visitor to a landing page.

I was only able to find one landing page on Shift’s site. As you can see from the data above, having more landing pages generates more leads.

Below is a screenshot of Shift’s landing page. I have highighted in red the clickable areas that should be removed. Whenever a visitor has too many options to click, the conversion rate goes down.

What they Do Right

As far as design goes, theirs is an OK landing page. I have definitely seen much worse. The use of images and color is very good.

What They Could Improve

The landing page has few areas to improve:

• Headline / eBook Title
• eBook cover image
• Sign up form
• Social sharing

Headline: The headline It’s a bird….it’s your plan….it’s YOUR CUSTOMER doesn’t create any curiosity, nor does it tell me specifically why I should download the eBook. (What’s in it for me?)

According to the sales copy, the eBook looks to be about how the consumer has drastically changed over the last 10 years. Some possible titles that would create more curiosity might include:

• 5 Ways Customers Have Radically Changed and Why Your Marketing Isn’t Working
• Understand Today’s Connected (and Empowered) Customer and How You Can Better Capture Their Interest
• The Modern Sales Playbook: How to Use Technology to Drive New Customer Revenue
• Power Shift: How to Keep Up with Today’s Evolved Consumer

Cover Image: In addition to improving the title of the eBook, conversions would also increase with an improved cover design. HubSpot has a helpful eBook on this topic.

Sign up form: The web form only asks for an email address and the button doesn’t draw much attention. Improving the button design will increase conversions. Asking for more information will increase the quality of leads. Here at Groove, when we started to ask for more information on our landing pages, conversions did decrease slightly, but the quality of our leads improved.

Social sharing: By not having any social sharing buttons on the page, they are missing out on additional traffic and conversions.

With a properly optimized landing page, conversions should be in the 30-50% range.

Premium Content Offers

Premium content is most typically a downloadable eBook that is offered on a landing page (like the one above).

As I mentioned previously, Shift has only one eBook that I could find. Plus, they have failed to use graphical calls to action at the bottom of each blog post to bring attention to their premium content offers (eBooks). As a result, I’d guess that their site-wide conversion rate is well under 1%.

When it comes to premium content, the more offers you have, the more leads you will capture. Helping our clients to figure out what types of premium content to create is just one of the things we cover in an Inbound Marketing Game Plan.

List Building

There is no more powerful way to increase the flow of qualified leads than to build an email list. The easiest way to build an email list is to offer premium content for download via landing pages.

When a visitor downloads a free report from your site, they convert into a subscriber, and when that happens, all sorts of amazing things start to happen.

With a list of subscribers, you can:

• Drive traffic to your blog on demand
• Invite prospects to a webinar
• Send prospects to a new landing page offering premium content
• Segment and nurture your prospects based on whatever criteria you like using lead scoring
• And so much more…

By offering downloads, Shift is building an email list; however, without access to their systems, I can’t comment on their marketing automation solution’s ability to nurture those leads.

If your company doesn’t have a marketing automation solution in place, it’s very likely that leads are not being nurtured down through the funnel.

A top of funnel lead is a very different lead than a bottom of funnel lead.

The goal of using a marketing automation system is to automate a lead nurturing process that will convert as many top of funnel leads into bottom of funnel leads as possible. Without having this in place, conversion of leads to customers is likely much lower than it otherwise could be.

Social Media

When it comes to driving traffic by promoting your content, social media can be a very powerful tool. For B2B companies like Shift, Twitter and LinkedIn are the way to go.

Twitter

The greater a company’s Twitter reach, the more traffic they will get.

Source: Hubspot’s 2013 Marketing Benchmarks Survey (click this image to get the survey)

As you can see below, Shift’s has just 75 followers. With so few followers, Twitter really isn’t going to do them much good and this is a missed opportunity for more traffic and leads.

One of their competitors, Appirio has done a better job of building a following of just over 11,000, so building a larger Twitter following in their industry is definitely do-able.

To improve their results from Twitter, some of the activities that Shift should pursue include:

• Focus on sharing their own (and other’s) content
• Promote their Twitter profile to increase their following
• Engage in some influencer marketing to build relationships with people who already have a large following

LinkedIn

Shift’s LinkedIn company page (shown below) is just fine. Although if they worked on increasing their following, they would get more exposure for their content.

Probably more important than improving their company page would be to improve the LinkedIn profiles for their staff. In looking at Jonathon Millman’s (Director of Marketing) profile, there are a few tweaks that could be made.

Syndicate Blog Content: Shift should take advantage of the new publishing capabilities of LinkedIn and syndicate their blog posts to each executive’s user profile. (See my profile as an example.)

Promote Premium Content: This is the byproduct of syndicating blog content; however, as I have done on my profile, Jonathon and his colleagues could also be promoting their premium content offers on the publications section of their respective profiles. This would create opportunities for lead capture every time someone viewed their profile.

Summary

If you have read everything in this audit example, I am truly impressed. If you have skipped straight down to this section, that’s ok, too. Either way, this section contains a summary of my most important observations for Shift and tips for you as you audit your own site.

Make Your Home Page Count

1. Ensure you have a modern looking home page that answers three key questions: What does your company do? What problems do you solve? Why do I need your help?

Traffic Generation

1. The key to steadily increasing traffic is to steadily publish content. Blogging is ideal for this.
2. If you are going to start blogging, make sure you have clearly identified your target audience and what they are interested in reading. Do NOT just write about your company’s products and services on your blog. People won’t care.
3. SEO is simply a byproduct of blogging done correctly.

Lead Generation

1. Put a call to action at the bottom of every blog post. Make that call to action link to a landing page.
2. Create optimized landing pages where visitors can download your premium content.
3. Create premium content that is going to capture the interest of your target audience. More premium content = more leads.
4. Use your premium content to build a list of subscribers and do everything you can to engage that list. These are your best prospects. Treat them right, and they will reward you.

Social Media

1. For B2B companies, focus on Twitter and LinkedIn.
2. Ensure all your profiles are completed and optimized.
3. Use social media to promote your blog posts and drive additional targeted traffic.

Final Thoughts

Inbound marketing, when done correctly, can have a dramatic impact on website traffic and lead generation. I hope this audit has given you insight into how to succeed with inbound marketing. Building a successful company is a huge challenge for anyone, and I have the utmost respect for the entrepreneurs behind Shift for building a successful organization. My hope is that they will be able to use this information to become even more successful.

This audit has proven three things:

1. No company is perfect. Even the best companies have to constantly monitor their online marketing. This should be encouragement for us all.
2. Inbound marketing requires a very specific set of skills. You can be a brilliant entrepreneur, but if you haven’t studied what it takes to succeed with inbound marketing, you will need to find help.
3. You can build a successful company without being good at inbound marketing. Inbound marketing just makes it easier to succeed.

I will be doing a limited number of inbound marketing audits each month. If you would like to request one for your firm, fill out the form here.

If you are with Shift and wish to call me to talk about this audit, I can be reached at 208-391-2057.

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