Google says the feature, which saves a web page snapshot, is no longer needed.
One of Google Search‘s oldest and best-known features, cache links, are being retired, Google’s search liaison said in an X post seen by The Verge. Best known by the “Cached” button, those are a snapshot of a web page the last time Google indexed it. However, according to Google, they’re no longer required.
“It was meant for helping people access pages when way back, you often couldn’t depend on a page loading,” Google’s Danny Sullivan wrote in the post. “These days, things have greatly improved. So, it was decided to retire it.
Nowadays, however, the feature is used for more than just a web page backup. Many people rely on it to check to validity of a site, and SEO managers can employ the feature to check their pages for errors. Many users, particularly news professionals, use the cache to see if a website has recently been updated, with information added or removed. And sometimes, a cache can let you check a site that’s geoblocked in your region.
Previously, clicking on the three-dot menu next to a result would open an “about this result” dialog with the Cached button at bottom right. Now, however, it opens a much larger menu showing a website’s “about” page, a Wikipedia description, privacy settings and more. The cached button is now nowhere to be seen.
None of the comments in Sullivan’s replies were positive, with one SEO user saying “come on, why delete the function? It’s really helpful for all SEO.” Sullivan did say that Google may one day add links to the Internet Archive where the cache link button used to be, within About This Result.
However, that sounds like it’s far from a done deal, and would shift a massive amount of traffic over to the Internet Archive. “No promises. We have to talk to them, see how it all might go — involves people well beyond me. But I think it would be nice all around,” he wrote.
In the age of big-box online retailers, social media influencers and the option of next-day delivery on most online purchases, brands are often left to wonder how (and if) traditional retail growth should be prioritized. Over my 25 years working in the apparel industry, I’ve found the answer to be a resounding yes. Based on this experience, here’s my playbook for successful retail expansion in the e-commerce era.
1. Don’t guess; follow the data.
Most executives know that it’s important to delegate and defer to the expertise of others when needed. For our company, when it came to selecting locations for new storefronts, I knew that we needed real expertise in real estate and market research. So we engaged a company to assist with site selection. This taught me the importance of analyzing metrics such as total population, local home values and average incomes.
Another important data point when considering a storefront is tourism data: What percentages of potential visitors live in the area, and how many are visiting? This analysis can help ensure you’re meeting your current customers where they are. Additionally, examining demographic data such as age, income levels and lifestyle preferences in the target location can provide valuable insights for tailoring your retail storefront to the local community. Understanding the landscape of competitors, including similar businesses and their success rates, can also help you with strategic positioning.
Lastly, evaluate the accessibility and convenience of the chosen location, like transportation infrastructure and parking facilities. These features can be essential to enhancing the overall customer experience and attracting a diverse clientele.
2. Use retail spaces as an interactive way to tell your brand story.
Once you’ve identified the ideal spot for a new store, focus on the experiential aspects of the build-out. Even as you expand to new markets, keep in mind what your current and future customers expect when they come to your location, and ensure the same top-quality experience across all of your locations, from the look and feel to messaging and staff training. Staying committed to making your brand story tangible can allow you to take the next step toward incorporating unique design touches and merchandising that will make customers in the area feel understood.
3. Make smart decisions, and don’t be afraid of rapid growth.
When pursuing expansion, it is important to develop a robust strategy. Instead of spontaneous choices, devise long-term strategies that incorporate potential growth avenues. Keep an eye out for market situations that present favourable conditions, and stay in tune with sector trends and consumer patterns in order to make informed decisions. By recognizing and adjusting accordingly to demand swings, your business can flourish and become more resilient—which helps make long-term growth sustainable.
While strategically growing my company’s retail footprint, our key takeaways have pointed to the continued importance of traditional retail in an e-commerce-driven world. By emphasizing data-driven decision-making, the branded experience your storefronts provide and a diversified channel mix, you can achieve informed, strategic growth. In an era of uncertainty and rapid change, embracing opportunities, investing in expertise and maintaining a strong physical presence can be pivotal as you forge lasting connections with your customers.
LinkedIn has added some new features for job seekers, including job listings by different categories, job preference highlights, and new AI job application assistant tools.
Which still seem counter-productive, given that employers probably want to assess a job seekers actual communication skills, as opposed to getting a robot-written message. But inevitably, this is the way that things are headed regardless, so it probably makes sense for LinkedIn to incorporate such direct.
First off, LinkedIn is rolling out “Job Collections”, which will categorize open roles into different sectors and settings.
As you can see in this example, Job Collections will list open roles in various sector and business categories, making it easier to find the job that you want, based on differing parameters.
“Job Collections allows you to expand your job options and explore collections of relevant jobs across a variety of industries, specialties and companies that you may not have otherwise been aware of. To start, visit the Jobs tab on LinkedIn. Look for “Explore with Job Collections” and click on any of the collections that align with your passion and interests, including jobs that offer remote work, good parental leave, or a focus on sustainability.”
It’s a handy filtering tool, which will help to streamline your job search based on a range of additional parameters.
Along the same line, LinkedIn’s also adding a new Job Preferences filter option, which will enable you to set specific parameters and elements that you’re most interested in. Recruiters will then be able to see these preferences, while LinkedIn will also highlight the relevant aspects on every job role displayed to you in the app.
You can see the parameters highlighted in green, adding another way to more easily find relevant options in-stream.
Current preference options currently include: employment type (full-time, part-time, contract, etc.), location type (remote, hybrid, on-site), as well as minimum pay preference for U.S. members.
LinkedIn says that it will look to add more options over time, providing more ways to more easily find jobs with the most desirable elements.
LinkedIn will now also enable you to flag interest in a specific company from a job ad.
This option isn’t new as such, as you can already flag interest in a company on their business profile page. But having the button available on every job will make it a more readily accessible marker.
Finally, LinkedIn’s also testing some new job seeker tools for Premium users, including more advanced job search filters to highlight more relevant job matches, as well a new AI-powered LinkedIn Premium experience to help you assess if a particular job is a good fit for you, and even write an intro message.
As you can see in this example flow, LinkedIn also now enables Premium users to draft both job application and introductory emails via generative AI, which as noted, does seem a little counter-intuitive within the job search process.
But again, you can already do this in ChatGPT anyway, why not integrate it direct, I guess?
These are some interesting additions, which will provide more options for job seekers in the app. And with many more people looking to switch roles or careers in 2024, especially in the early months, it makes sense for LinkedIn to make this a focus.
You can read more about LinkedIn’s latest job seeker updates here.
2024 – A year when economics will play second fiddle to elections
Places are filling fast!
We have had a great response so far for our next #Toolkit webinar with Jim Power and Chris Johns to take part in our next Toolkit session on Tuesday, February 27th at 9AM.
76 states will have elections of one kind or another during 2024. Some analysts think that will be the largest number in history. A lot of those elections could be very consequential.
We start the year with Taiwanese elections – the outcome could well provoke China, widely thought to be preparing for a possible war by the end of the decade.
We end with the possible return of Trump. How bad could that be? Unimaginably bad.
With Jim Power and Chris Johns. Jim Power is the owner manager of Jim Power Economics Limited, an economic and financial consultancy, which he set up in 2009. He is a board member of Love Irish Food, BMW Financial Services and the Arboretum. He is a member of the Institute of Directors in Ireland and completed the IOD exams in 2022.
He is a graduate of UCD and holds a BA and a Master of Economic Science Degree. He lectures part-time on the MSc Management and the MBA at Smurfit School of Business, UCD. He is a native of Waterford.
Chris has worked in financial services, mostly asset management and investment banking. He was CEO and CIO (Chief Investment Officer) at Bank of Ireland Asset Management. He also worked as an economist in the UK Treasury, the National Institute of Economic & Social Research and UBS Philips & Drew in London, whilst also teaching economics in London and Cambridge Universities.
He is currently Chairman (non-executive) of Evelyn Partners Europe and a member of the Acuvest Investment Committee.
They are both also responsible for the very successful podcast, “The Other Hand”.
A little pivot here. A little pivot there. There’s no better way to successfully navigate today’s changing marketplace. Yet, all that pivoting could lead you down some disastrous paths if you’re not careful. It’s fine to be creative, but you don’t want to make big moves without conducting due diligence.
The problem, of course, is that it can be hard to resist making major pivots. When your industry gets shaken up by a competitor, you may be tempted to follow suit. Or you may be worried that you’ll miss out on an opportunity if you don’t embrace the latest trend. While both cases might be true, they aren’t always. Sometimes taking time to consider your options makes the most sense. You don’t want to pivot too rashly, quickly, or dramatically.
This doesn’t mean you should rest on your laurels and let the world rush by. Obviously, pivoting can be a good decision. YouTube was originally a dating site, after all. Without a pivot, you might be swiping left on videos rather than binge-watching TED Talks. The point is that you need to pivot, but you need to do it in a way that protects your company rather than exposes it.
To determine whether you should pivot, ask yourself the following three questions. They’re designed to help you evaluate the situation and refocus on your core business.
1. Is it worth productizing your service?
Many pivots involve businesses productizing their services. For example, let’s say you have a service that you want to scale. Your first instinct? Turn it into a product. That way, you can sell the product en masse, especially if you can set up subscriptions or another recurring income stream. There’s little doubt that productizing can be your ticket to more money. However, you don’t always have to productize, as noted by Greg Alexander.
As the founder of the mastermind networking group Collective 54, Alexander works with many other founders. He admits that one thing they often say is that they want to be software companies. Why? “Some founders believe that service firms are more work-intensive and that somehow building a SaaS company means a better work-life balance,” he explains. But according to research, the five-year survival rate of professional service firms is 47.6%. In contrast, the five-year survival rate of product companies is 23.%. “It is wiser to play the odds and start a service firm instead of a product company,” Alexander says.
This doesn’t mean you can’t productize. Just be certain that you’ve exhausted all service opportunities in your business niche. You may have overlooked some possibilities by assuming that productization was the only way to achieve your goals. If you’re still set on productizing, then thoroughly test your product on a small audience before scaling.
2. Can your intended market absorb another player?
You’re seeing your competitors engage in similar pivots that involve a market you’ve never tried. Is it your turn at bat? Maybe, or maybe not.
Did your parents ever ask, “If everyone were jumping off a bridge, would you jump off it, too?” They were worried about you giving in to peer pressure. When your peers seem to be appealing to a specific target market, you will notice it. What you might not think about, however, is the fact that the market may be a mirage. As noted by CB Insights research, one of the major reasons that 35% of startups go under is a poor market fit.
The way to avoid this is to be certain that you (1) identify a real market with a real need and (2) the identified market can support you and all your competitors. This is where you must get your hands dirty and do some serious focus group and market research. Your job is to figure out the total addressable market because you can’t use it to sustain your organization if it’s too small. Joseph DeWoody, CEO and cofounder of Valor, says, “This knowledge helps you craft a unique value proposition, develop a clear business strategy, and identify potential challenges and opportunities.”
Once you’ve completed a comprehensive assessment, you’ll know whether you should plan to enter a new market. If you’re still not convinced, you can always make a minimally viable product and test the waters.
3. Should you add or take away something?
Companies often get rid of major services or products as a pivoting move. BuzzFeed is a great example—and a cautionary tale. It officially shuttered its news division in 2023. The problem wasn’t the journalism. Rather, the division was no longer sustainable. Many wonder if the company waited too long.
Whether you’re thinking of closing a department or offering or adding a new one to your lineup, you have to be strategic. It’s not enough to just be comfortable with your choice. One wrong move could affect your profits, reputation, etc.
Even if you think removing or adding something is obvious, guess again. In 2022, franchisor McDonald’s and its American franchisees couldn’t see eye to eye on whether to keep or ditch $1 drinks. The conundrum was that the ramifications went beyond economics. Was it more profitable on paper to get rid of the menu option? Yes. Did it make sense from a marketing standpoint? Not always.
Data can help you make decisions, but you need to look beyond your profit margins. Jettisoning a beloved product or service—even if you’re replacing it with something you think is better—can be a liability.
Pivoting isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s not something to necessarily avoid, either. Just be sure to always look before you leap.
Co-founder Accountability Inc. Rhett Power (The Accountability Coach) is a best-selling author and contributor at Forbes. Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work here.
If you opened Facebook, Twitter or Instagram about a decade ago, you’d likely see posts from friends and family, in chronological order.
Nowadays, users are hit with a barrage of content curated by an algorithm. Passionate about plants? Sports? Cats? Politics? That’s what you’re going to see.
“[There] are equations that measure what you’re doing, surveil the data of all the users on these platforms and then try to predict what each person is most likely to engage with,” New Yorker writer Kyle Chayka explains. “So rather than having this neat, ordered feed, you have this feed that’s constantly trying to guess what you’re going to click on, what you’re going to read, what you’re going to watch or listen to.”
In his new book, Filterworld, Chayka examines the algorithmic recommendations that dictate everything from the music, news and movies we consume, to the foods we eat and the places we go. He argues that all this machine-guided curation has made us docile consumers and flattened our likes and tastes.
“For us consumers, they are making us more passive just by feeding us so much stuff, by constantly recommending things that we are unlikely to click away from, that we’re going to tolerate [but] not find too surprising or challenging,” Chayka says.
What’s more, Chayka says, the algorithms pressure artists and other content creators to shape their work in ways that fit the feeds. For musicians working through Spotify or TikTok, this might mean recording catchy hooks that occur right at the beginning of a song — when a user is most likely to hear it.
Though the algorithms can feel inescapable, Chayka says increased regulation of social media companies can mitigate their impact. “I think if Meta, Facebook’s parent company, was forced to spin off some of its properties, like Instagram or WhatsApp, and those properties were made to compete against each other, then maybe users would have more agency and more choices for what they’re consuming,” he says.
Interview highlights
On how the internet takes power away from gatekeepers
There’s this huge power of the internet to let anyone publish the art that they make or the songs that they write. And I think that’s really powerful and unique. … [In] the cultural ecosystem that we had before, there were these gatekeepers, like magazine editors or record executives or even radio station DJs, who you did have to work through to get your art heard or seen or bought. And so these were human beings who had their own biases and preferences and social networks, and they tended to block people who didn’t fit with their own vision.
Doubleday
Now, in the algorithmic era, let’s say rather than seeking to please those human gatekeepers or figure out their tastes, the metric is just how much engagement you can get on these digital platforms. So the measure of your success is how many likes did you get? How many saves did you get on TikTok or bookmarks? How many streams did you get on Spotify?
So I think there are advantages and disadvantages to both of these kinds of regimes. Like, on the internet, anyone can put out their work and anyone can get heard. But that means to succeed, you also have to placate or adapt to these algorithmic ecosystems that, I think, don’t always let the most interesting work get heard or seen.
On the difficulty of knowing what’s going outside your specific algorithm
These digital platforms and feeds, they kind of promise a great communal experience, like we’re connecting with all the other TikTok users or all of the other Instagram users, but I think they’re actually kind of atomizing our experiences, because we can never tell what other people are seeing in their own feeds. We don’t have a sense of how many other people are fans of the same thing that we are fans of or even if they’re seeing the same piece of culture that we’re seeing, or experiencing an album or a TV show, in the same way. So I think there’s this lack of connection … this sense that we’re alone in our consumption habits and we can’t come together over art in the same way, which I think is kind of deadening the experience of art and making it harder to have that kind of collective enthusiasm for specific things.
On how success on social media determines who gets book deals, TV shows and record deals
Every publisher will ask a new author, “What is your platform like? How big of a platform do you have?” Which is almost a euphemism for, “How many followers do you have online?” — whether that’s [on] Twitter or Instagram or an email newsletter. They want to know that you already have an audience going into this process, that you have a built-in fan base for what you’re doing. And culture doesn’t always work that way. I don’t think every idea should have to be so iterative that you need fans already for something to succeed, that you have to kind of engage audiences at every point in the process of something to have it be successful. So for a musician, maybe you’ll get a big record deal only if you go viral on TikTok. Or if you have a hit YouTube series, maybe you’ll get more gigs as an actor. There’s this kind of gatekeeping effect here too, I think, where in order to get more success on algorithmic platforms, you have to start with seeding some kind of success on there already.
On how some film and TV shows lean into becoming internet memes
You can see how TV shows and movies have adapted to algorithmic feeds by the kind of one-liner, GIF-ready scenes that you see in so many TV shows and movies now. You can kind of see how a moment in a film is made to be shared on Twitter or how a certain reaction in a reality TV show, for example, is made to become a meme. And I think a lot of production choices have been influenced by that need for your piece of content to drive more pieces of content and to inspire its own reactions and riffs and more memes.
On how algorithms impact journalism
Algorithmic feeds, I think, took on the responsibility that a lot of news publications once had. … In decades past, we would see the news stories that we consumed on a daily basis from The New York Times front page on the print paper or as on TheNew York Times homepage on the internet. Now, instead of the publication choosing which stories are most important, which things you should see right away, the Twitter, or X, algorithmic feed is sorting out what kinds of stories you’re consuming and what narratives are being built up. We now have TikTok talking heads and explainers rather than news anchors on cable TV. So the responsibility for choosing what’s important, I think, has been ported over to algorithmic recommendations rather than human editors or producers.
On how passive consumption affects how deeply we think about culture
I think passive consumption certainly has its role. We are not always actively consuming culture and thinking deeply about the genius of a painting or a symphony. … It’s not something we can do all the time. But what I worry about is the passivity of consumption that we’ve been pushed into, the ways that we’re encouraged not to think about the culture we’re consuming, to not go deeper and not follow our own inclinations. … And I suppose that when I really think about it … the kind of horror that’s at the end of all this, at least for me, is that … we’ll never have the Fellini film that’s so challenging you think about it for the rest of your life or see the painting that’s so strange and discomforting that it really sticks with you. Like I don’t want to leave those masterpieces of art behind just because they don’t immediately engage people.
Feature Image Credit: Getty Images
Sam Briger and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
Pluralsight’s AI skills report surveyed 1,200 executives and IT professionals across the US and the UK to better understand how organizations deploy AI and its effects on businesses and their employees.
The report found that implementing AI in organizations had promising results, with 97% of organizations that have already deployed AI technologies benefiting. Moreover, 18% reported experiencing increased productivity and efficiency, 13% reported improved customer service and repetitive task reduction, and 11% said AI reduced business costs.
Pluralsights
Despite the benefits, 25% of these organizations said they don’t have plans to deploy AI, while 20% already have and 55% plan to. The hesitation stems from inadequate budget or talent required to use the new tools properly.
A majority of the professionals acknowledged that hesitation could be disastrous in the long run, with 94% of executives and 92% of IT professionals sharing that organizations investing in AI in the near future will be better able to compete, according to the report.
However, the lack of talent to properly use the new tools is an obstacle to the successful implementation of AI, and the report finds that the answer may lie in organizations helping upskill employees.
The report cites IDC research that found investments in skills and digital training of employees will be organizations’ most enduring technology investments in 2023 and 2024, even over investments in generative AI solutions.
Out of the professionals surveyed, 95% of executives and 94% of IT professionals believe that AI initiatives will fail due to a lack of employees who do not know how to use the tools efficiently, again pointing to the need for investing in talent and training.
Some ways to invest in talent and training include creating an AI skill development strategy before adopting AI technology, assessing employees’ current AI knowledge and skills, and providing hands-on learning opportunities, according to the report.
In the digital era, where social media’s clout is undeniable, creating content that stands out can often feel like searching for a needle in a haystack.
If you’ve been grappling with the content creation conundrum, you’ll be pleased to know that there’s a method to the madness. Enter the innovative approach to content creation using ChatGPT, a tool that is transforming the way we think about and produce social media content. This method promises to elevate your content strategy from mundane to remarkable, ensuring that your posts not only captivate but also connect with your audience on a deeper level.
The journey from being a Domino’s pizza driver to a social media maestro might seem like a distant dream, but it’s entirely possible with the right strategy. The cornerstone of this approach is the GAP framework, which stands for Growth, Authority, and Personal content. This strategic trio is designed to magnetize followers, establish trust, and forge a personal bond with your audience. But how do you implement this strategy effectively?Here’s a step-by-step guide to leveraging ChatGPT for your social media content creation.
Understanding what constitutes quality content is crucial for any brand looking to make an impact on social media. It’s not merely about disseminating information; true quality lies in the ability to engage and personalize content that mirrors the unique essence of your brand. This involves crafting messages that not only inform but also entertain and connect with your audience on a personal level, making your brand’s voice distinct and memorable.
Here’s where ChatGPT steps in as a valuable tool in your content creation arsenal. By feeding it precise and detailed inputs about your brand’s values, goals, and the interests of your target audience, ChatGPT can generate ideas and content that truly resonate with your brand’s identity. This process ensures that every piece of content you produce reflects the nuances of your brand’s voice, fostering a stronger connection with your audience.
Personalization is Key
Creating content that directly addresses your audience requires a personal touch, integrating unique aspects of your brand and the journey behind it. This personalization makes your content not just another message in their feed, but a story that speaks to them, resonating on a deeper level. By embedding your brand’s distinct characteristics and your own experiences into your content, you forge a stronger, more meaningful connection with your audience.
ChatGPT excels in customizing content to align with the specific nuances and details you provide. This adaptability ensures that the content produced is not only engaging but also genuinely relatable to your audience. By effectively communicating the essence of your brand and personal narrative through ChatGPT’s tailored outputs, you create content that captivates and connects, setting your brand apart in the crowded digital landscape.
Know Your Audience
Grasping the nuances of your audience’s preferences and desires is fundamental to crafting content that resonates. Knowing who your audience is, along with their interests, challenges, and aspirations, allows you to create messages that speak directly to their hearts and minds. This deep understanding is the cornerstone of any successful content strategy, enabling you to produce material that genuinely engages and captivates your audience.
Leveraging ChatGPT in this context offers the capability to precisely adjust your content strategy to meet the specific tastes and requirements of your audience. By inputting detailed insights about your audience into ChatGPT, you can generate content that not only aligns with their interests but also addresses their unique needs. This ensures that every piece of content you create is on target, enhancing the effectiveness of your communication and reinforcing the connection between your brand and its audience.
Creative Content Creation Prompts
ChatGPT stands as an invaluable ally in the creative process, offering a collaborative approach to generating new and innovative content ideas. As a brainstorming partner, it provides a wellspring of inspiration, supplying prompts and suggestions that ignite discussions and pique the curiosity of your audience. This collaborative interaction fosters a fertile ground for creativity, allowing you to explore diverse topics and themes that resonate with your followers.
Engaging ChatGPT in your content creation strategy enables you to craft messages that transcend mere information dissemination. By posing strategic questions and exploring varied angles, you harness the power to produce content that is both enlightening and captivating. This not only educates your audience but also offers them a delightful and interactive experience, ensuring they remain connected and engaged with your brand.
Content Production
Finally, the creation of your content should feel as natural as possible. Whether it’s video or written content, ChatGPT can help script or outline your ideas, making the production process smoother and more authentic.
To maximize your content’s reach, consider repurposing your videos into text for blogs, emails, or social media posts. This strategy not only doubles your content output but also caters to different audience preferences, enhancing your brand’s visibility and engagement.
Summary
The process of creating captivating and engaging social media content often appears intimidating, yet it need not be an overwhelming challenge. By integrating ChatGPT into your content strategy, you unlock the potential of artificial intelligence to generate content that is not only of high quality but also deeply personalized. This ensures that every piece of content you produce resonates strongly with your target audience, enhancing the connection they feel with your brand. ChatGPT empowers you to tailor your messages, ensuring they align perfectly with your audience’s interests and preferences, thus elevating your brand’s profile in the digital landscape.
Therefore, adopting this cutting-edge approach can transform your social media strategy, leading to significant growth and a vibrant, engaged community around your brand. Embrace the future of content creation with ChatGPT and witness the transformative impact on your social media engagement and brand elevation.
If you run a small, local business, chances are you’ve got some sort of a website. You may even be set up to sell a few products online, here and there. But you may not have tapped the massive potential of building out a real e-commerce arm for your business. And you might not realize just how easy — or how lucrative — it’s become for small, local businesses to move online.
If you’re still mostly bound to brick-and-mortar, it’s time to consider a change. Here are some low-risk, high-reward ways to successfully scale into the digital world.
1. Do a Digital Reboot
As noted, you may already have a great website or even a decent online store. But it’s likely you could be doing much more to make it competitive with other e-commerce sites in your niche.
If it isn’t already, your site should be hosted on—or at least integrated with—a platform that’s designed for e-commerce, like Shopify, Squarespace or BigCommerce. Make sure it’s easy to use, intuitive to navigate and has a clean, simple design. It might be worth having a specialist conduct a user experience audit.
Perhaps most importantly, ensure your site is optimized for mobile users. Remember that 91% of Americans ages 18 to 49—likely the bulk of your target customers—shop on their smartphones. Most web design platforms let you convert your desktop designs to mobile layouts almost automatically. But you still need to make sure the mobile version is attractive and usable.
2. Leverage the Power of Online Testimonials
Getting good product reviews on your site and on other platforms can do wonders for your business. Consumers don’t trust brands, but they trust other people’s experience of a brand or product. Positive reviews can be just as effective as hearing directly from people they know in real life.
Smallbiz Technology recommends that businesses feature reviews and testimonials directly on their website and social media channels, natch. But they also note that positive reviews on third-party sites like Google, Yelp, and Trustpilot can generate tons of traffic.
To encourage customers to write reviews, they suggest offering customers free products or discounts as incentives. But note that if you sell products through a marketplace like Amazon, exchanging gifts for reviews could violate their policies. Alternatively, you can reach out and simply ask customers who like your product to take a moment to do a short write-up.
3. Offer Convenient Payment and Shipping Options
Your customer won’t buy from you online if you don’t make it as easy for them as shopping on Amazon. It’s imperative to offer fast, free or cheap shipping and eliminate any trace of friction from the shopping experience. The smallest details can send a customer packing even when they were already pretty serious about making a purchase.
Whatever you do, don’t force your customers to create an account before checkout. That’s one of the fastest ways to turn a ready-to-buy customer into one who’s just closed your site’s browser tab. It’s also vital to offer a number of convenient payment options, including PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay in addition to the standard credit cards.
Packing and shipping your own orders in-house may save you money when you’re just starting out. But as a small business, you don’t have the infrastructure to keep doing that at scale. Eventually, you’ll need to contract with a third-party fulfilment service. Shopify offers its own in-house option and maintains a list of other recommended fulfilment services you can try.
4. Be Smart About Email Marketing and Social Media
One advantage you have as a small local business owner is that you already have a devoted following. You’ve got people in your corner who support your business and want to see it flourish. If you create content that speaks to your biggest champions, they’ll be excited to share it with others.
Email marketing remains one of the best ways to drive engagement and sales for your brand. After all, it’s one of the few forms of brand communication that customers actually enjoy receiving. Still, carefully consider your content—you don’t want to irritate your loyal fans with ads for the same old products. Use email to make announcements, share informative blog posts or offer valuable discounts. That’s the kind of content your devotees will be happy to pass along to their friends.
Social media is likewise a powerful tool for bonding with current customers and reaching new ones. This is especially true if you actively engage with users, such as responding to Instagram comments or stitching videos on TikTok. Partnering with influencers through a platform like Grin or Afluencer could also help drive engagement.
Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
As recently as five or 10 years ago, small businesses had to transition to e-commerce on their own. They needed their own systems for everything from packing and shipping to handling customer service to accepting credit card payments.
All that has changed. Now, there’s an easy, affordable third-party solution for just about any e-commerce problem you can think of. You’ve already got a small, likely overworked staff. Don’t make them—or yourself—create systems from scratch when there’s probably a ready-made solution a short Google search away.
John Hall is a sales keynote speaker and virtual keynote speaker. He’s an adviser for the growth marketing agency Relevance, a company that helps brands be the most relevant in their industry. He’s also the co-founder of Calendar, a scheduling and time management app. You can book him as a keynote speaker here.
The market is getting more competitive, but these positions are still in demand.
Keeping track of the constantly fluctuating job market over the past few years has often felt like a job itself, as both employers’ and employees’ priorities continue to shift. The skill sets required for jobs have also evolved, changing 25 percent since 2015, according to data from LinkedIn. Unsurprisingly, this is especially true for tech professionals, as the use of artificial intelligence and advanced automation has become increasingly common across industries, even as inflation-driven economic volatility has triggered a wave of tech worker layoffs.
Alarming headlines aside, while tech industry hiring slowed down heading into summer 2023, it picked back up in the last few months of the year, and is now up nearly 12 percent compared to July (versus overall hiring). Even with that growth, there’s still significant competition for tech roles, thanks in part to being the top industry for remote work and hiring stabilization.
But some positions are in higher demand than others—including those identified in a new report from LinkedIn.
The fastest-growing tech jobs in the U.S.
Of the top 25 fastest-growing jobs in the United States included in LinkedIn’s “Jobs on the Rise” report, three are squarely tech roles, while several others focus on business development in tech industries:
Artificial intelligence consultant
What they do: Advise organizations on implementing AI technologies in their business operations and product offerings.
Most common skills: Machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing (NLP)
Artificial intelligence engineer
What they do: Develop, implement, and train AI models and algorithms using programming languages
Most common skills: Machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing (NLP)
Product security engineer
What they do: Ensure the security of a product or system by analysing and addressing potential vulnerabilities through risk assessments, threat modelling, and protective measures.
Most common skills: Threat modelling, application security, vulnerability assessment
Non-tech roles on the rise in tech industries
Other examples of jobs with significant growth in the tech industry include:
Chief growth officer
Director of revenue operations
External communications manager
Recruiter
Influencer marketing manager
Head of partnerships
Instructional systems specialist
How were these jobs identified?
To come up with these figures and calculate the growth rate for each job title, LinkedIn Economic Graph researchers gathered data from the millions of jobs the site’s members started between January 1, 2019 and July 31, 2023. In order to be ranked, a job had to see consistent growth and reach a “meaningful size” by 2023.
