Want to know just how many people actually care about what you’re tweeting? A new Twitter experiment spotted by ex-Twitter platform head Ryan Sarver will show many you how users are clicking on the links in the updates you post, with a handy link directly in the expanded Tweet view in the iOS application. As usual with Twitter’s features, this is limited to a small sample pool of… Read More
A nighttime landscape, a winding road through fog, candlelit portraits and creatures crawling in the dark — these are the kinds of photos we saw in this week's Mashable Photo Challenge.
We asked you to photograph darkness, a theme that is fairly open-ended. Whether that meant spooky images taken on Halloween or surreal black and white shadow shots was entirely up to you
Linnéa Wilhelmsson, an Instagram photographer from Gothenburg, Sweden, was our guest host
"I'm so impressed with the submissions," she said. "Some were really spot on with the theme, and captured something very thoughtful and mysterious." Read more...
More about Photography, Night, Halloween, Social Media, and Apps SoftwareIn the American workplace, few things are valued as highly, or pursued as aggressively, as productivity. On average, Americans work more hours than just about any other industrialized nation in the world. They spend more hours at the office, take fewer vacations, and even go to work when they’re sick.
For many, this isn’t a choice – it’s just what they have to do to survive. For some, however, the cult of productivity has become an all-powerful idol, and one that businesses all over the country fervently worship.
Work-related stress has become a badge of honor. Employees regularly boast of how early they come in, how late they stay, and how little vacation time they’ve used. Even in casual conversation, many Americans simply can’t help mentioning how hard they’re working.
Admit it – if you’re reading this at work, you’d probably rather be somewhere else, and that’s exactly how it should be. There’s more to life than work. This school of thought doesn’t mean you have a bad work ethic, it means that you see work as what it is – a means to an end.
If you’re a content marketer, you’re likely familiar with the pressures of life in the trenches, but in today’s post, I’m going to show you another way – several, actually – of doing things. Don’t get me wrong. I like my job, but as the old saying goes, I’d rather be fishing.
The very definition of a “no-brainer.”
Here are some tips (and tools) that can help you get more done in the office so you can spend more time out of it.
It’s amazing how much you can get done if you stop procrastinating and actually sit down to work. I can usually write a 2,000-word blog post in a day. However, when you factor in constant distractions such as email, meetings, and the insidious temptation of internet browsing, writing a blog post can quickly become a task that spans several days, if not a week.
If you need to sit down and write something, sit down and write something. Don’t check your email. Keep meetings to a bare minimum. Resist the temptation to tweet about how productive you’re being. Just sit down and get it done.
If you really can’t stop checking the headlines or sneaking a peek at Twitter when you should be writing, give RescueTime a shot.
This software program tracks your computer usage and shows you exactly how you’re spending your time. It also offers optional features such as site blocking for specified periods of time, alerts, goal tracking, and other productivity tools.
Image via rescuetime.com
Before we go any further, it’s important to note that I’m not recommending you use RescueTime (or any similar programs) so you can become one of those insufferable people who need to account for every waking second of their day. As I said in the introduction, I want to show you how to get things done while you’re at work, not find new ways for you to stay late and get even more done.
Don’t lose sleep about how many minutes of work you “lost,” or what you could have accomplished in a given period of time – use RescueTime as a tool to get some work done so you can go out and enjoy your life when 5 p.m. rolls around.
Wendell Berry is one of my all-time heroes. In addition to being an incredibly prolific and talented writer (with more than fifty books and counting to his name), Berry is a farmer and a passionate advocate for agriculture who still makes time to tend the fields of his farm in rural Kentucky every single day.
One thing Berry does not have in his Kentucky farmhouse, however, is a computer.
Although using a typewriter is impractical for content marketers, there’s a lot to be said for simplifying your writing environment. If you write using Google Drive, you’re only a tab away from a world of enticing distractions, whereas navigating the needless complexities of Microsoft Word can feel more like a punishment than anything else. However, you still need to actually write if you’re going to publish new content, so what can you do? Strip away everything that stands between you and your copy.
Admittedly, when I first heard about OmmWriter, I was skeptical. However, after just a few days, I was sold. I personally don’t use this free program for every writing project, but when I need to make some serious headway, OmmWriter is awesome.
OmmWriter is a minimalist writing program that offers you the Zen-like peace of a completely unobtrusive interface. In fact, much of OmmWriter’s UI actually fades from view while you write, leaving you with just a calming background, a cursor, and an optional ambient soundtrack.
I find OmmWriter to be a great tool when drafting. I’ll often do the lion’s share of a rough draft in OmmWriter before taking it into another program for polishing and restructuring. It doesn’t support image insertion, hyperlinking, or other features you’d expect from a word processor, but it excels at removing obstacles between you and that all-important first draft.
Nothing wastes more time – and thus pushes your deadline beyond the point of reason – faster than disorganization.
It’s GOT to be in here somewhere…
The longer you have to spend looking for research, links to relevant articles, or anything else, the longer it’s going to take you to finish your post/white paper/whatever. More time equals more work. This is great if you get paid by the hour, but if you’re salaried (or a freelancer), this is death. If you’re going to rock it as a content writer, you need to be great and fast.
No blog post about productivity would be complete without a mention of Evernote. Specifically, I’d like to recommend the Web Clipper tool, which makes Evernote even more awesome.
For longer or more in-depth writing projects, Evernote’s Web Clipper is a blessing. It allows you to save literally anything you can find on the web – images, text, video, multimedia, .gifs of cats – into easily accessible bulletin boards for later review.
Web Clipper can be synchronized across multiple devices, so no more emailing links to yourself or hunting for that graph you saw but forgot to save. If you find and clip something on your desktop, you can access it from your phone and vice versa. You can also add a Web Clipper button to your web browser, allowing you to quickly and easily save everything you need for your next smash-hit content project.
You’ve probably experienced “the zone” – that peculiar state of hyperconcentration in which time seems to slow down and you get more done than you actually thought possible. It’s a magical place, and one that lame self-help productivity “gurus” are always talking about. However, finding the zone is one thing; staying in it is another thing entirely.
There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man…
Getting – and staying – in the zone requires a certain atmosphere, namely one in which you can concentrate and eliminate the bustle of the environment around you. Unfortunately, with most modern offices being open plan (despite the seriously negative impact such environments can have on workers’ mental health), it’s hard to eliminate external distractions.
First, get yourself a decent set of headphones, then fire up your laptop/word processor and keep Rainy Mood open in another (minimized) tab.
Rainy Mood is a website that plays a looped audio track of a heavy rain storm. This might not sound that exciting, but it’s remarkable how the simple sound of rain and the occasional rumble of thunder can drown out office noise. You can also set music to play in the background if the rain alone isn’t enough to block out the sounds of noisy coworkers – yeah, those guys.
Not a fan of Rainy Mood? Prefer the background bustle of latte machines and the low murmur of conversation? Then check out Coffitivity, a similar site to Rainy Mood that offers you the (possibly) soothing ambient noise of a coffee shop.
Coffitivity has several settings to cater to different preferences. For example, you can specify the site to play the low-key hum of an early morning coffee shop, or the more boisterous background of a university coffee shop at lunch time. If you want to enjoy the atmosphere of your favorite coffee place without having to worry about your laptop being stolen while you go to the bathroom, Coffitivity might just be the answer.
Admit it – you’re terrible at multitasking.
Don’t worry, we all are. Several studies suggest that humans simply aren’t built for doing multiple things at once. Rather than beat yourself up over your limitations, embrace it and get on with your life by using a to-do list program.
Despite its terrible name, Todoist is one of the best list management applications on the market.
Available in both free and premium versions (Todoist premium has an annual subscription fee of $29), Todoist offers several excellent tools for keeping track of what you’ve got going on. It’s a cross-platform tool that integrates with virtually all the programs you need it to (even Mozilla’s aging email client Thunderbird), and can sync across multiple devices. Overall, a rock-solid to-do management app that can help you get more done in the office.
Although Todoist is robust and fully featured, it might have a little too much going on for the minimalists out there. If you’d rather use a free app without all the bells and whistles, check out Any.do.
I use Any.do all the time, and it meets my needs perfectly. Add tasks, set reminders and flag items by importance, then simply swipe across each task to strike it through and mark it done (and then experience the immense satisfaction of a complete to-do list). What more do you need?
These days, we’re all working harder, for longer – but it doesn’t have to be that way. Hopefully, these tips and tools have given you some ideas on how to get more done in the office so you can spend more time with the people you care about, doing what you really love.
If you’ve got any suggestions on how you can be more productive at the office, let me know in the comments. I’m always looking for ways to get more done – when I’m at work.
Halloween may be over but the season of the witch, if you will, lives on. And it is in this season where many marketers, be they B2C or B2B fall prey to the deadly sins of content marketing.
Fear not marketers for we are here to help guide you from this dark side where deadly sins abound. In our new eBook, The 7 1/2 Deadly Sins of Content Marketing (And How To Avoid Them), we illustrate each deadly sin along with a remedy to cure them as well.
In our post last week, we talked about the first three of these deadly sins of content marketing:
1. Making It All About You. The focus should be always on your customer. Quite simply they do not care about you, they care about what you and your product or service, etc. can do for them.
2. Not Adhering To The N.A.S. Doctrine. AKA the Not Always Selling Doctrine. In other words resist the temptation to try and sell something via every single marketing communication you have with your customer or prospect.
3. Wrong Church, Wrong Pew. Do you know your customers and prospects? I mean really know them? Or are you basically shooting blind, hoping for the best? Those of us in the real world know that far too many brands and businesses simply do not know who their customers are and therefore cannot target them in the first place with their content marketing strategies.
Today we'll discuss sins 4 through 6:
4. Forgetting The 3Rs Of Content Marketing. Never mind Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic, far too many brands big and small forget to repurpose, reuse, and recycle content.
5. Failing To Plan. If you fail to plan you plan to fail. It can't be any easier than that, right? So why do so many marketers fail to create a content marketing plan?
6. On The Wrong Track.You track every other marketing campaign. So why would content marketing be any different? Establish your goals then track and measure your content marketing efforts to ensure you’re meeting or exceeding those goals.
Stop the Sinning Now!
Regardless of how many of the deadly sins of content marketing you have been committing, you can be reformed by downloading The 7 1/2 Deadly Sins of Content Marketing (And How To Avoid Them) today.
Tinder is moving forward with a testing plan for Tinder Plus, a new paid version of the app that brings premium features to users and finally starts a revenue stream for the growing IAC-owned dating company.
With the paid version, users will have access to two new central features of the app, Undo and Passport. Undo lets people go back on the person they just swiped left on, a highly common… Read More
November is for writers
No, that's not another lame T-shirt slogan (though, maybe it should be). November is National Novel Writing Month, wherein eager writers aim to author 50,000-word novels between Nov. 1 and midnight on Nov. 30
Using the NaNoWriMo site, participants can track their daily writing goals, earn badges when they meet word counts and broadcast progress. But the social movement has expanded beyond the nonprofit's online community. Thousands of people contribute to the #NaNoWriMo hashtag every day, charting their progress and looking for tips from other writers — though we see a lot of procrastinating, too. (You know who you are.) Read more...
More about Books, Entertainment, Social Media, Features, and Writing
With just 24 hours to go, tickets to tomorrow night's 2014 Mashies at Gotham Hall in New York City are officially sold out.
We'll be revealing the year’s most outstanding examples of digital media in more than 20 categories, from Best Branded Facebook Page to Best Viral Video.
The event, which will be hosted by comedians Jake Hurwitz and Amir Blumenfeld, will also feature special guests, surprise entertainment and more.
Didn’t get your ticket in time? We'll be using the event app Topi to showcase the work of the Mashies finalists and to provide networking opportunities at the event. You can use this app to check out the winning campaigns, even if you can't attend the Mashies in person. Download Topi for iOS or Android, and enter code "MASHIES" to get started. Read more...
More about Marketing, Media, Social Media, Mashies, and Mashies 2014Social Fresh West 2014, billed as the “secret weapon for social media success,” wrapped up in sunny San Diego last week. This much anticipated conference brought together some of the brightest marketing professionals, thought leaders, and trendsetters in the social media space.
The presentations were intentionally brief, focused and engaging, featuring marketing and media experts like Elani Tavantzis of Lilly Pulitzer and Oracle Marketing Cloud’s own content and social media director, Chris Moody.
A common theme that emerged throughout this two-day gathering was how important it is to constantly listen to your own customers, rather than just follow the best practices or rush to adapt the “latest/greatest” new practices. To build your business and enhance your brand, you have to simply listen to and customize to your customer.
As social media marketers, we are challenged daily between following what we know as “best practices” in our industry vs. what would be best for our customers and for our brand. So how do marketers find what’s best for their brand? One answer: social listening.
Here are three case study examples profiled at the conference for their social best practice takeaways:
HP and the Power of Social Listening
One of the speakers who embraced the power of social listening was Paula Berg, digital media manager at Hewlett-Packard. She followed the words of her leader, CEO Meg Whitman: “Good strategy is as much the art of exclusion, as it is inclusion.”
Berg decided to turn directly to their customers to ask what and how they wanted to be “fed.” The answers she got were contrary to known best practices for social media, the daily feeding schedule of posts. HP customers were most concerned with the steady cadence of posts. They clearly stated that they didn’t want or need to hear from them everyday. Rather, they wanted their content all at once, condensed and concise.
HP created their own online magazine, Hpmatter.com, where customers could turn to once a month to get their dose of content.
Berg noted: You are your own brand expert in addition to these takeaways:
1. Strategy is as much about inclusion as it is exclusion.
2. Your audience isn’t average.
3. Nobody knows your business as well as you do.
4. Ask your customers if you need to. Listen carefully.
TV Land Learns Social Listening Lessons via Trial & Error
Sue Funke, social media brand manager at TV Land, faced a similar problem – what do you do when what is known to be the tried and true best social media practice gains no traction or engagement?
TV Land tried posting a still frame photo from one of their shows each day on Facebook and saw zero or negative engagement. They tried a variety of content scenarios with relatively low or negative engagement on both Facebook and Pinterest. They listened to their own customers and decided to try posts of lyrics to TV theme songs or popular songs from the show era. The results were incredibly positive. For Pinterest, they created images with quotes from the scripts of their shows and saw improved engagement.
Funke and her team learned through trial and error what their customers wanted to see that triggered their social engagement. Listening to your customer and not going with traditional wisdom of proven practices in the social media and marketing space is invaluable. What floats the boat of customers for one business or brand doesn’t work for everyone in the social media sphere. Sometimes posting a fun photo simply isn’t enough – you have to be able to connect with your customers.
Arby’s Uses Social Media to Listen to their customers for Ad strategy
Josh Martin, the director of digital and social media at Arby’s, relayed similar experiences about the power of listening to your customer through the real time interaction social media provides.
Through social media, the Arby’s team noticed their customers talking about loving their sauces. By providing this real time customer feedback to product development and the brand marketing team, the “Saucepocalypse” campaign was born. Several posters were created that told stories of the apocalyptic impact on people not having their sauce.
Arby’s had a repeat experience in picking up similar comments through social media about meats other than roast beef. This valuable feedback came from their own customers when they launched their “Meat Mountain” campaign poster showing all different meats other than roast beef. Their customers mistakenly thought it was a new sandwich and through social media, indicated they were anxious to try it. Thus the birth of Arby’s new $10 Meat Mountain sandwich.
For more takeaways from Social Fresh, follow the event discussion on Twitter with the hashtag #SocialFresh. How are you actively implementing your social media listening into your engagement plans?
Recently, the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO) suggested that a code of ethics be created to govern how SEOs conduct themselves. In light of the black-hat tactics that regularly make headlines in industry publications, it’s understandable – but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea, or even practical.
SEMPO’s proposal for a code of ethics is admirable. After all, with many self-styled SEOs still using underhanded tactics on behalf of their clients or for their own sites, something needs to be done. However, the creation and enforcement of a formalized code of ethics would create many more problems than it would solve.
As numerous SEO experts have said, the creation of a legally binding code of ethics would throw open the doors to frivolous lawsuits by disgruntled clients. Imagine it – an SEO makes a promise they can’t keep, the disappointed client decides they’ve been taken for a ride, and subsequently sues.
Not only would this waste a lot of people’s time (and money), it sets a dangerous precedent. What would happen if a site were mistakenly penalized by Google in a future algorithm update, and the SEO in question weren’t actually to blame? Would there still be grounds for a lawsuit? And that’s before you even start to ask questions about potential damage to the SEO’s reputation and livelihood.
Another problem with SEMPO’s proposal is one of adoption.
There are basically two ways that SEMPO’s code of ethics could work. Either SEOs voluntarily opt-in and sign a legally binding contract saying they won’t do anything shady, or they’re forced to – and both approaches are inherently flawed. The third option, which seems most likely to me, is that there is no obligation to participate at all, which renders the whole system pointless.
Firstly, how would SEMPO even mandate that SEOs agree to sign the code of ethics? A hollow ultimatum of “sign it or else,” or some other equally weak coercion? How many groups, committees, and individual SEO practitioners would have to sign up for the idea before it became so widespread that not adhering to it became an issue?
The optional route is just as problematic. Just take a look at Google AdWords certification – sure, a Google logo on a website makes some clients feel more comfortable, but it’s hardly a guarantee that the certified professional actually knows what they’re doing.
Whether people agree to the code of ethics voluntarily or as part of a mandated industry standard, bad (or unethical) SEOs are still going to keep doing what they’re doing. All the creation of the code will accomplish is a lot more work for everyone with little to no payoff.
One of the biggest problems with SEMPO’s proposed code of ethics is that of who would actually enforce it. SEMPO’s CEO has publicly stated he doesn’t want the organization to oversee enforcement of the code – he just wants SEMPO to suggest who might do it.
The proposed system involves one of nominating members of regional SEMPO groups. Delegates would be nominated by their peers, and only one delegate could be nominated from each group.
This all sounds well and good, but SEMPO has recommended that groups be at least in the process of choosing their delegate by “early 2015.” How much time could elapse between groups choosing their nominee, approving their delegate, and actually appointing them in an official capacity?
Then there’s the matter of approving items to be added to the code. According to the SEM Post, 75% of nominated delegates must agree on an item for it to be included. In the result of a split vote, the process must begin all over again – including the appointment of new delegates.
Think of how many changes are likely to take place under this kind of system – by the time the code of ethics is in a position to be enforced, the industry will have already moved on.
In all the years I’ve been involved in the search industry, I’ve seen huge changes come and go. Practices that were once widely accepted and commonplace have become grounds for punishing manual penalties, and smaller sites struggle every day to play nice with Google and make sure their rankings aren’t affected by the latest algorithm change or shift in position.
With search moving so quickly as an industry, how is the proposed code of ethics supposed to evolve with the rest of the field? How would SEOs already certified as being compliant with the code go about maintaining their certification? The rapidly changing nature of search is hard enough to keep up with as it is without adding an extra layer of legal obfuscation to the mix.
Don’t get me wrong. I have the greatest respect for the people of SEMPO, and firmly believe that it was instrumental in the evolution of the search industry in its early years. However, SEMPO’s desire to create an industry-wide code of ethics is a solution in search of a problem.
Just look at how SEOs have adapted on their own to changing attitudes in search. Sure, black-hats are still out there, and naïve clients still buy into their promises of page-one rankings for cheap. However, the marketplace has adjusted, and the sector is largely self-policing – and that’s without taking Google’s increasingly zero-tolerance policies into account.
I believe strongly that a commitment to transparency would be far more effective than an SEO police force. For new search businesses and agencies seeking to carve out a niche, transparency could be a major selling point, and one that several larger shops have already implemented. This commitment to true transparency would be much more effective than SEMPO’s Boy Scout pledge of honesty or any self-appointed task force.
The industry doesn’t need SEO cops to chase the bad guys. It needs what it already has – a thriving community of ethical SEOs that recognizes and values best practices, and their clients’ rankings. Appointing a task force to do something that the industry is largely already doing is a complicated task that offers little benefit to businesses employing SEOs, the industry at large, or individual SEOs themselves.
What do you think? Is there a genuine need for an SEO code of ethics?
Facebook addicts, rejoice — you don't have to be on Facebook to still be on Facebook.
With the help of browser extensions, you can read your News Feed, send messages to friends and post status updates from your browser's toolbar. Extensions can also improve your experience on the Facebook site itself with special tools, such as Photo Zoom, which magnifies any photo your cursor hovers over.
See the list below for more handy Facebook extensions.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
BONUS: The Evolution of the Facebook Profile Read more...
Why, on a philosophical level, has Facebook been so staggeringly successful? A startup that swelled into a multi billion dollar revenue generating business in a relatively short span of years, one which continues to attract billions of users every month? Read More
