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When Is the Waterfall Methodology Better Than Agile?

November 24, 2021 No Comments

Ask any two software developers what the best approach to development is, and you’ll probably get two different answers. Development is both a logical and creative pursuit, so there’s a lot of room for personal opinion.

That said, most methodologies can be broadly categorized into two competing approaches: waterfall and agile. Agile software development is arguably more popular, used by a greater percentage of individual developers and businesses. It’s also commonly touted as the “superior” approach – but is it? And are there situations or projects where the waterfall methodology is better?

What Is Waterfall Development?

Let’s start by analyzing the waterfall development methodology.

Think of a waterfall in nature. The water flows in one direction, from its source, through the fall, and down to the pooling water below. In a similar way, waterfall development is unidirectional. You’ll start with a specific, detailed plan on what you’re going to develop and how you’re going to develop it. Across a series of phases, including research and planning, you’ll flesh out the details, then start building the architecture.

Your goal is to create the product from the ground up, as completely as possible, with minimal changes along the way.

There are several advantages to this approach:

Clear central planning. With the waterfall methodology, you’ll invest a lot of time and effort at the beginning of your project. You’ll analyze the competition, make thorough documentation about the type of product you want to build, brainstorm the possibilities, and make critical decisions that will impact the project for weeks or months to come. This front-loaded process leaves you with more information and a clear direction to follow for the entirety of the project.
A clean, phased approach. Waterfall development also has a very clean, phased approach. There’s no ambiguity as to when a phase is over and you’re not bogged down by competing priorities. In many environments, this leads to painless, straightforward development.
Easy coordination and workflow. Many developers also find that waterfall makes it easy to collaborate, especially with people working in other roles (like project management). It’s very obvious when the project should change hands, and there’s no question about when the project is ready for launch.
Less back and forth. As we’ll see, conversation and the “back and forth” process of collaboration can be valuable for software development. However, it can also be time-consuming, confusing, and complicated. In waterfall development, there are fewer micro conversations that need to occur and fewer meetings that need to take place. Developers can spend less time talking and more time coding.

What Is Agile Development?

By contrast, agile development is all about flexibility and adaptation. You’ll still spend time researching and planning – but nowhere near as much as you’ll need to spend if you’re following the Waterfall methodology. Here, the goal is to start working as soon as possible, building a loose sketch of a product, then filling in the details later.

During this process, you’ll be reviewing your work, talking to clients, collaborating with others, and fine-tuning your approach. You’ll be developing continuously, even after your product launches, polishing old features and adding new ones.

These are some of the best advantages:

Faster startup. The intensive planning in the initial phases of waterfall development can be beneficial, but they can also delay your startup. If you’re interested in developing a minimum viable product as quickly as possible, or if you need to get rolling immediately, agile development will work out better for you.
Easy modifications. There are many reasons why you might want to change the nature of your product, or its core features, in the middle of development. There might be new technologies, new competitors, or new market dynamics to think about. You might second guess a key feature or come up with a new idea on the fly. You might even find that your original idea isn’t working out the way you want. In any case, agile methodologies allow you to adapt – rather than being stuck with your original plan.
Continuous testing. Thanks to AI and other powerful testing tools, agile software developers have the advantage of continuous testing on their side. They can discover flaws and bugs as they’re developing, so they can stamp them out long before they ever impact a user.
Active client involvement. Agile development is also popular because of its ability to support active client engagement. Project managers and clients alike can get into conversations with developers, analyze the product, provide new direction, and guide the product to the finish line together.
Constant communication and refinement. The agile methodology also provides opportunities for constant communication and refinement. You can consistently polish your product until it’s as perfect as you originally imagined it.

Why Agile Has Become Dominant

Agile software development has slowly grown to become the dominant methodology in the development field. It certainly has plenty of advantages, but why has it become this popular?

There are a few influential factors:

Evolving scope. Scope creep is a problem for all kinds of projects. Clients change their minds. Stakeholders come up with new requirements. People get new ideas. With agile, scope creep isn’t nearly as big of a problem; you can adapt to the new requirements responsively and keep making progress toward the finish line.
Changing landscapes. The landscape for your software is always changing. You’ll experience the introduction of new competitors, new technologies, and new ideas. Waterfall can lock you into a position you don’t want, while agile gives you an opportunity to escape.
Faster progress. Tech businesses have a desperate need to generate revenue as quickly as possible. Only agile development allows you to hit the ground running.
Customer service. In many ways, agile development also provides opportunities for better customer service. Your customers are more involved and more invested in the development process; accordingly, you’re likely to see better results if you’re creating products for others.

When Is Waterfall Better?

Is waterfall ever better?

The short answer is yes. Waterfall is more efficient, more streamlined, and faster when it comes to specific types of projects like these:

Small, quick projects. Generally speaking, the smaller the project, the better suited it is to waterfall development. If you’re only working with a few hundred lines of code or if the scope of the project is limited, there’s no reason to take the continuous phased approach.
Low priority projects. Low priority projects – those with minimal impact – don’t need much outside attention or group coordination. They can easily be planned and knocked out with a waterfall methodology.
Internal projects. One of the best advantages of agile development is that your clients get to be an active part of the development process. But if you don’t have any clients, that advantage disappears. If you’re working internally, there are fewer voices and opinions to worry about – which means waterfall might be a better fit.
Projects with few stakeholders. Similarly, if the project has few stakeholders, waterfall can work better than agile. If you’re working with a council of managers or an entire team of decision makers, agile is almost a prerequisite. But if it’s just you and one other guy, waterfall may be ideal.
Fixed projects not subject to change. It’s sometimes hard to tell which projects will be “fixed” and which ones will be subject to change in the future. But if you feel confident your project isn’t going to change or evolve in the future, you should consider waterfall development.

The agile development approach is so popular and so well-received that it’s even influencing organizational culture beyond the realm software development. But despite its appeal and lasting popularity, it’s not a perfect system – and there are some projects that perform better with the help of waterfall development. Analyze your project and your goals completely before deciding which methodology to follow.

By Nate Nead

Nate Nead is the CEO & Managing Member of Nead, LLC, a consulting company that provides strategic advisory services across multiple disciplines including finance, marketing and software development. For over a decade Nate had provided strategic guidance on M&A, capital procurement, technology and marketing solutions for some of the most well-known online brands. He and his team advise Fortune 500 and SMB clients alike. The team is based in Seattle, Washington; El Paso, Texas and West Palm Beach, Florida.

Sourced from readwrite

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Why Businesses Can’t Afford To Skip Market Research

November 24, 2021 No Comments

By Andrew Faridani

When launching a new campaign, product or new line of service, many businesses – both large and small – choose to forgo an important step: market research. While many companies cite cost as the reason to skip this crucial step, others think it’s too time consuming or simply not necessary.

This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Market research is the most critical piece of a marketing launch because it helps businesses understand the audience segment and, by extension, the actual need of a product or service.

Some companies think it should be the first thing cut when discussing an upcoming launch. Because it’s a long-term payoff and doesn’t immediately turn into revenue, it’s quickly ignored or discarded for something more immediate.

If you’re not doing market research, what needs to be remembered is it’s very likely your competitors are. And the business with the better understanding of what a consumer needs and wants is going to come out on top.

Take Target. It’s hard to believe from such a large company, but when they launched their brand in Canada, they skipped market research and banked on name recognition to drive customer traffic. After buying the leases for a defunct discount chain in Canada in 2013, Target quickly turned the empty stores into new Target stores.

The big store conglomerate spent millions on marketing on social media, radio, TV and billboards but never took the time to deep dive into the specific Canadian consumer segment. Customers in Canada knew the brand, but when they went into stores, they saw different products than what they’d seen in U.S. stores and prices were higher. It took less than two years for Target to close its Canadian stores and call the launch a failure.

The main lesson learned is: Do your market research! The time and cost of doing proper research is worth the investment, every time. And here’s a secret: it doesn’t have to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Sure, if you’re Pepsi and launching a new beverage or Nike testing out a new shoe, market research will cost upwards of millions. But if you’re a small business trying to determine whether you should launch a new line of business, or if a product is a good fit for a specific locale, there are cost effective ways to do your market research. Some are even free!

Here are a few of the best tried-and-true best practices in market research:

Free Please!

Before you dip your toe into paid research, use the free online tools at your disposal. The best tool? Google. Search the phrase you’ll use to describe your product and review its popularity. If the popularity is high, ie. millions of searches, it’s in high demand. If there are only a couple hundred results, you may be barking up the wrong tree.

Another important tool is the keyword search query within Google Adwords. Their keyword research tool tells you how frequently certain words and phrases are searched and how they changed over time. This tool gives insight not only into what is being searched, but how. It will help refine the best words and phrases to use when promoting your product or business. And it will also give insight into the popularity and search volume of those terms.

Go Digital

For many, the image that comes to mind when you say “market research” is a person standing in the grocery store offering free samples of a new product. And while that can be effective, the digital realm is a much easier and faster option. You don’t get quite as many opinions standing in line in the grocery store as you might running an online poll. Think 20 people versus 5,000: That’s a significant difference.

LinkedIn and Twitter both host online polling and provide solid results. It’s important to slice and dice the audience until you’re polling the right segment. Make sure your geographical location is accurate – it’s not uncommon for those polling to accidentally use a much bigger geo target setting than necessary, which can skew results.

You can hire a third party vendor to do your polling and/or surveying or find a self-serve platform, like Survey Monkey. The best way to determine which solution is by budget and campaign size. If your budget is $10,000 or less, use a plug-and-play, self-serve option. Anything over $10,000 should be handled by the pros.

And don’t forget simple ad campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter. Running an A/B test using different images, slogans, and copy can tell you what is resonating with your target audience – and what isn’t.

Email For The Win

Another smart tactic to use for market research is an email marketing campaign. Whether you use an internal email list or purchase one from companies that specialize in list creation, targeting a segment audience via email works phenomenally well.

There are many digital ad agencies that specialize in surveys. They help you buy legitimate lists to purchase within a specific vertical which is a great way to target specifically. For example, if you’re a dental manufacturing company, there are very specific lists you can buy to help you find and target dentists. You can break down the list by location, speciality, size of practice, etc. Email marketing is an effective way to do market research without breaking the bank.

Market research can make or break your business. Be smart and put in the time and effort to make sure your product or line of business is truly going to resonate with your target audience.

Feature Image Credit: getty

By Andrew Faridani

President and CEO at BreezeMaxWeb. Read Andrew Faridani’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

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The Simple Superpower of a Follow-Up Email

November 24, 2021 No Comments

By Rosie Spinks

If there is one piece of professional advice that is wildly underestimated in its impact, it is the power of the follow-up email.

When I was a full-time reporter, I saw the power of this from both sides of the inbox over and over again.

I can’t count the amount of times a dream interview or ambitious pitch would have never come to fruition if I had not followed up on it judiciously. When I was in the freelance pitching game, I kept a spreadsheet with the dates of my initial pitch to an editor, and would tick off one week later when it was time to follow-up. If I got no response within a few days, I’d confidently move onto the next editor and the cycle would begin anew.

Equally, I can’t tell you how many times I received a tip or story idea from a source or PR I maybe wanted to write about, but didn’t have time to answer it in that moment. Then, how grateful I would be to receive a follow-up when I was less busy which prompted me to respond—rather than lose it to the morass of my inbox.

Now, of course, there are many ways to get the art of the follow-up wrong. You can use it too much, in which case you become annoying and may even provoke a curt reaction. (Like me to every PR to emails me more than twice about a story idea: “Please remove me from your list.”)

You can send an email with even more info, context, and words than your first one, thereby giving the recipient even more work to do to parse out your initial ask. Or you can be following up on an initial ask that is completely unreasonable or entitled. In which case your follow-up email ‘aint gonna help your case.

So, some general rules of thumb:

If your email is one of cold outreach — meaning you have not previously corresponded with this person, or they did not in any way ask to be contacted by you—then you only get one single follow-up. You can send it at minimum a week later if it’s a time-pressed issue, but if it’s a bigger ask it might be wise to send it a few weeks or a month later. I usually stick with somewhere in the one to two week range.

If, on the other hand, the recipient had previously agreed to something and then gone quiet, or this person knows who you are in real or online life, and perhaps they are just tremendously busy and in-demand, then two or even three follow-ups may be necessary, over a month or two period. But these cases are rarer (especially three attempts) and should be treated with caution.

Next, the follow-up should be one or two lines maximum, in the same thread as your prior email, and it should not pressure the person to respond or read as expectant. Something as simple as: “Hi [person], I appreciate you probably get loads of requests, just following up on my note below once for good measure. Thanks for your consideration.” It’s a gentle ping rather than a loud knock at the door.

Remember, there is a not-insignificant chance this person read your email the first time and wanted to respond but, you know, life happened. This will give them some impetus to do so now. If they read your email the first time and had no intention of ever responding, they now know that they won’t be receiving another email from you. They will respect you more for bowing out of the exchange with dignity.

Lastly and perhaps more importantly, ask yourself if your ask is reasonable. Never, ever ask to “pick someone’s brain.” (Unless, of course, you’re willing to pay for it, or have given this person some kind of labour-for-free favour in the past.) Lay out your request or ask clearly: How much of their time it will take. What you will be providing in exchange. Essentially, what’s in it for them. In general, if you repeatedly get no response from people, you may need to consider that you’re asking for way too much.

If you’re a young professional or student starting out and asking for advice, ask 2–3 specific questions—rather than “I wondered if you could tell me how to succeed in your industry?” This question is both uninspiring and time consuming to answer.

The beauty of the follow-up email is the clarity it provides. You either get a response, or you don’t, and both situations allow you to move on with your life.

If you get no response, you can rest easy knowing you tried and move forward without the uncertainty of wondering if your initial email got lost in the ether. It limits the resentment you might feel, and is a sign of respect to yourself, too. Two unanswered emails most likely means this: This person is just not that into you or your request. That’s okay. Go find someone else who is!

If you do get a response, then, woohoo! You’ve showed yourself as a diligent, polite, and on-top-of-it person who follows up on emails. You’ve also built a little more confidence that your ideas or instincts are good, and that sometimes the difference between a No and a Yes simply a follow-up email. You’ll never forget it.

Feature Image Credit: Simple Superpower of a Follow-Up Email

By Rosie Spinks

Sourced from Forge

In News

Social media platforms reportedly lost nearly $10 billion thanks to Apple’s App Tracking Transparency policy

November 23, 2021 No Comments

By Cal Jeffrey

ATT effect on individual advertisers is unclear as they shift ad budgets to more effective platforms

In context: Last year, Apple announced new policies requiring app developers to publish “privacy nutrition labels” in their App Store listings detailing their data collections practices. More importantly, the company revealed that it added a feature to iOS that would allow users to opt out of ad tracking for individual apps.

Facebook warned that Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policies that give users control over how their data is collected would spell catastrophe for its developers and advertisers. It “conservatively” estimated a 50-percent drop in revenue from its Audience Network platform.

The Financial Times reports that Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and YouTube lost a combined $9.85 billion in the two quarters following the full implementation of Apple’s ATT plans in April. While nearly $10 billion is a significant decline, it is nowhere near the 50-percent adpocalypse Facebook was shouting about in full-page newspaper ads.

According to adtech company Lotame, by nature of its size, Facebook owns the vast majority of the ad revenue share, so it took the biggest monetary hit. However, it was only a dip of 13.2 percent. Snapchat also suffered a 13.2-percent blow and is a much smaller company, so it probably felt the effects even worse. YouTube and Twitter saw smaller ad revenue declines of 7.7 and 7.4 percent, respectively.

Of course, the median 12-percent drop for these social media platforms does not necessarily translate to an equivalent loss for the smaller companies who advertise with them. Lotame’s COO Mike Woosley points out that, depending on the company, individual advertisers can lose close to 50 percent of their advertising power. He illustrates this with an example of a men’s underwear line buying a $5 ad targeted at 1,000 men.

“Well, now to get 1,000 men, you have to show it to 2,000 people because all of a sudden you don’t know who is a man and who is a woman,” Woosley explained. “And you still only have $5 for those 2,000 impressions. So your acquisition costs doubled, and the lost yield is 50 percent.”

It’s worth noting that there is a difference between bang for your buck and lost revenue. Even still, Lotame’s estimates might lean to the conservative side. Adtech consultant Eric Seufert claims that Facebook alone could have lost $8.3 billion since April. He also says that losses are likely to continue as advertising groups adjust to a new “privacy-centric paradigm.”

“Some of the platforms that were most impacted—but especially Facebook—have to rebuild their machinery from scratch as a result of ATT,” Seufert said. “My belief is that it takes at least one year to build new infrastructure. New tools and frameworks need to be developed from scratch and tested extensively before being deployed to a high number of users.”

In the meantime, many companies are finding that Facebook is no longer a viable advertising platform because of its continually increasing costs and the now diminished ad power. Wayflyer CEO Aidan Corbett said that many advertisers have been moving to TikTok because the cost per 1,000 impressions is much lower.

This shift in advertising budgets is the reason these big platforms are seeing declines. It’s not that companies have cut their ad spending. They have simply moved it from poorly performing venues to more effective ones. So it’s hard to determine how much individual advertisers have been affected overall.

Twitter and Google said the effects of Apple’s ATT policies were minimal. Twitter claims its ad sales climbed about 41 percent last quarter. The company says its ad platform relies less on tracking users’ mobile habits and more on “context and branding.” Alphabet says that it has enough first-party data that it does not need to track users across third-party apps. The exception would be YouTube, but Google claims even the effects of ATT on YouTube were “modest.”

Unsurprisingly, Apple has faired well since implementing its transparency policies. Last month, the App Store’s Search Ads platform tripled its growth over last year. Where it once held only 17 percent of the iPhone’s advertising market share, it now stands at 58 percent. Of course, a significant part of that growth reflects the market’s atrophy as advertisers shift more funds to other platforms.

By Cal Jeffrey

Sourced from TECHSPOT

In News

Clippy is back to troll your friends in Microsoft Teams

November 23, 2021 No Comments

By Mark Hackman

It’s Monday, and your co-workers are digging into a long, gruelling database project. If you’re nice, you’ll bring them coffee and bagels. But if you’re feeling less charitable, there’s always an animated Clippy sticker to help get their week started off on the wrong foot.

Microsoft recently confirmed that, yes, you can pull a number of animated Clippy images from within Microsoft Teams. In case you’re too young to remember Clippy, the animated paperclip was introduced to Microsoft Word in 1996 as an “office assistant,” and is unfondly remembered as a precursor to virtual assistants like Siri and the Google Assistant. Now, Clippy is back as an animated retro sticker pack within Microsoft Teams.

We’re on record as standing against animated emoji, specifically the ones Microsoft said would arrive in Windows 11. Fortunately, Microsoft took our advice, and the distracting, animated emoji have yet to make an appearance. Animated stickers, however, have appeared within Teams for some time. And now Clippy has entered that arena.

To select from among the dozens of animated and non-animated Clippy stickers, you’ll want to launch the main Teams app and scroll down to the small icons underneath the chat window. There, you’ll find a list of “Clippy” stickers accessible from the left-hand rail nav, or you can simply type in “Clippy” inside the search box. Either way, now you’ll have a number of Clippy icons from which to choose.

Microsoft Teams Clippy sticker pack — Here’s how to find the Microsoft Clippy pack within Microsoft Teams.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Microsoft stopped using Clippy as a formal part of Microsoft Office years ago, but the animated paperclip has snuck back into the tech zeitgeist via everything from Greenpeace protests to a Microsoft Office game (yes, seriously) called Ribbon Hero. Clippy was supposed to eventually replace the “paperclip” emoji within Windows 11, but so far that hasn’t happened.

By Mark Hackman

Sourced from PCWord

In News

21 Success Secrets From America’s Top Business Leaders

November 23, 2021 No Comments

Sourced from Inc.

How the nation’s highest performing CEOs run circles around everyone else? They have an edge, of course.

very leader has a cheat sheet for success: the things they’ve learned overtime that have helped them cultivate strong teams, manage under fire and just generally inspire a thriving organization–even when the odds are stacked against them.

Below, some of the most effective leaders among this year’s 250 Best-Led Companies share their top-secret tips for business success.

My Secret to Finding Focus: A Post-it Note on my monitor

“When I was 13, I had this great soccer coach, Andy. He had this saying: ‘Focus, focus, focus.’ I still hear it ringing in my head: ‘Focus, focus, focus, Zach, focus, focus, focus.’ I write it on Post-it Notes and put them on my monitor and I talk about it frequently around the company. Doing one thing well as opposed to many things slightly well–that continues to be so important.”

–Zach Perret, co-founder and CEO of financial services company Plaid

My Secret to Breaking Down Silos: Sharing goals

“One of my first initiatives when I joined Exabeam was to realign objectives to force us to share goals that were more collaborative across the company. We had to break down organizational silos and even have certain roles report to two different organizations.”

–Michael DeCesare, CEO of cybersecurity firm Exabeam

My Secret to Business Longevity: Shared ownership

“One-third of our company is owned by employees. We wanted to create a business that people would join and where they would be happy to stay.”

–Jim Henderson, co-founder and CEO of insurer AssuredPartners

My Secret to Effective Meetings: Built-in prep time

“Carve out time during the first 10 to 15 minutes of your meetings for everyone to read memos. It really helps create more structure around a discussion, and allows people to have all the information before jumping into one. Everyone gets all the data, so people can make comments and see those of others–creating a much richer meeting environment.”

–Dev Ittycheria, CEO of database platform MongoDB

My Secret to Successful Partnerships: Letting people in

“I was able to get co-founders I look up to by being unselfish. It’s about letting your ego go a little bit and letting people share in the decision-making and take ownership in the business. A lot of company leaders guard that equity for themselves. Making sure the people around the table are incentivized is important.”

–Kurt Workman, co-founder and CEO of Owlet Baby Care

My Secret to Winning: Hiring people who hate to lose

“We all enjoy the feeling of winning, but that feeling lasts for only a few hours. Our hatred of what it feels like to lose can last for days, even weeks. People who hate to lose use that feeling as motivation to rise to the top and achieve things that others never thought were possible.”

–George Kurtz, co-founder and CEO of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike

My Secret to a Productive Workplace: Making employees feel safe

“People are happiest and most productive when they have a sense of psychological safety. To create that kind of environment, the leadership team needs to celebrate both success and failure, visibly, in front of the whole company. I love opportunities to go in front of the company and say, ‘Look, this is an area where I got it really wrong.’ ”

–Stuart Landesberg, co-founder and CEO of natural home products maker Grove Collaborative

My Secret to Leading Remotely: Connect, personally

“Don’t just jump into the transactional work at the beginning of a call. Take the space–two minutes–to check in with what’s going on in their world. Maybe it’s an interesting book in their background or you hear a dog barking or a kid. Those moments of rapport-building start to unlock the things you have in common, and it snowballs in a positive way. But you have to make the choice to build the relationship.”

–Hayden Brown, CEO of freelance work platform Upwork

My Secret to Building Great Teams: Being intentional

“Define your culture as carefully as your business strategy. Build your guiding principles–mission, values, and vision–into your hiring and leadership.”

–Tim Brown, co-founder and co-CEO of eco-conscious sneaker brand Allbirds

My Secret to Shaping Employees: Mentorship

“Make sure that you and your employees are getting to know people up and down the organization. We have formal mentor programs. We hire people right out of school, and we pair them with our chief architects, because we know they have the potential to learn very quickly. A true meritocracy [comes when] people can grow as fast as they’re ready to.”

–Karl Sun, co-founder and CEO of Lucid, a visual collaboration software company

My Secret to Taking Criticism: Learn to Love It

“If you don’t, the person who suffers the most is going to be yourself. It hurts less and less over time. We’re all unfinished products. If you look at feedback like data and you learn to love it, then the better off for your team and your business.”

–Zachariah Reitano, co-founder and CEO of Ro, a telehealth and online pharmacy startup

My Secret to Staying Cool: Don’t Dilute Your Brand

“We are very careful with our brand and what we do with it. We try to have depth in the communities we operate in, but we try not to be everything to everyone.”

–Matt Reintjes, CEO of YETI, maker of insulated tumblers and outdoor gear

My Secret to Leading the Competition: Stay Nimble

“I remind my team frequently that we are literally creating a new industry, and it’s still so early. When we see an opportunity, we go after it. That mindset not only rallies people to embrace change, but also empowers them to lead through change.”

–Jason Robins, co-founder and CEO of DraftKings, the sports-betting operator

My Secret to Being Relatable: Demonstrate Vulnerability

“We have a speakers series named after our former CEO, Dave Goldberg, who passed away. So far, we’ve brought in more than 60 leaders, ranging from athletes, politicians, and business executives, to speak to us. It’s an opportunity for employees to not only learn from them, but also to see me be vulnerable and ask questions to people I admire.”

–Zander Lurie, CEO of business solutions platform Momentive (known for SurveyMonkey)

My Secret to Course Correcting: Dig Into Feedback

“I decided a number of years ago that I would read and respond to every Glassdoor review. We actually shine a light on those; it often leads to nuggets of insight about what we could be doing better, or it shows me a blind spot that I didn’t realize.”

–Dan Burton, CEO of health-data storage and software company Health Catalyst

My Secret to Grooming Leaders: Making Them Want It

“High performers want to be challenged and stretched. We want our team members engaged and pushing for their next role at the company.”

–Deanie Elsner, CEO of Charlotte’s Web Hemp, maker of cannabinoid wellness products

My Secret to Building Trust: Empathy

“Understand your team members’ priorities, their concerns, what they need to achieve personal and emotional health, and how social issues impact them. Then, remain open to feedback and demonstrate your commitment to constant growth and development as a leader.”

–Scott Cutler, CEO of luxury footwear and apparel marketplace StockX

My Secret to Leveling Up: Start With Your People

“Focus on the four P’s: people, plan, process, and performance. If you get the people piece right, you can develop a robust plan. Having the right people also enables you to have the right processes in place because they know what is needed. You do all of those things and you drive the performance of the organization consistently.”

–Nick Vlahos, CEO of The Honest Company, the personal care company founded by Jessica Alba

My Secret to Resilience: Confidence

“You are going to be told no so many times. You are going to have so many challenges that you didn’t anticipate. There are so many reasons to quit. And if you don’t have this attitude of ‘I’m gonna fix this; I’ve got this; and we’ll figure it out,’ then you won’t make it.”

–Julie Wainwright, founder and CEO of online luxury consignment shop The RealReal

My Secret to Leading With Agility: Get Cozy With Change

“You have to have a long-term vision of what to do, but you have to be able to use agility within that framework–and everybody has to feel like they are a part of it. Everyone has to understand that change is a daily occurrence.”

–Mindy Grossman, CEO of WW (formerly Weight Watchers)

My Secret to Radical Transparency: Put It All on Slack

“Our number one form of communication is Slack, and all channels are open, whether it’s our diversity numbers, or how we did on user growth, or a boardroom debrief. Transparency is about having the information searchable and at your fingertips, so you don’t even have to ask someone for it. I trust my team with all the information, good or bad.”

–Wes Schroll, CEO and founder of savings app Fetch Rewards

Sourced from Inc.

In News

LinkedIn Launches Service Marketplace, but Can It Compete With Fiverr and Upwork?

November 22, 2021 No Comments

By Aya Masango

LinkedIn has launched Service Marketplace, a platform to help freelancers find and get paid for projects. Here’s what it offers and how it competes.

Freelancers can now find work projects on LinkedIn. The popular professional social network is opening up opportunities for professionals to find work on its platform, going beyond merely giving them the tools to advertise their skills and experience.

LinkedIn will do this through Service Marketplace, a new feature to compete with the likes of Fiverr and Upwork, but does Marketplace stand a chance against these platforms? Let’s find out.

LinkedIn Launches a Service Marketplace for Professionals

LinkedIn has added a new feature, Service Marketplace, to help professionals get paid on its platform, and compete with popular freelance sites like Fiverr and Upwork.

LinkedIn’s Service Marketplace is a freelance platform that allows users to advertise their services for short-term or freelance jobs. Users can set up a freelance profile that can help recruiters find and contact them for projects. It will make payment via a digital wallet offered by Microsoft.

LinkedIn is now rolling out its Service Marketplace feature to everyone, more than 800 million LinkedIn users, nearly eight months after rolling it out to two million users in a testing stage.

This is a big move for LinkedIn, which is known for helping to find permanent, full-time, and all sorts of jobs for professionals.

What Services Does LinkedIn’s Service Marketplace Offer?

The Service Marketplace is starting off with 250 job categories and will be doubling that to more than 500.

LinkedIn Marketplace is still in its development stage, so LinkedIn has released limited details around the offering. What we do know, however, is that Marketplace will focus on freelance work like consulting, writing, marketing, and graphic design.

As the workforce shifts to more flexible, short-term, and freelance roles, Marketplace could help employers and recruiters find the right kind of talent to fill these roles, and could help jobseekers to secure the right opportunities to suit their needs.

The new platform will be similar to Fiverr and Upwork, which host freelance work and take a cut of each job paid for.

Can LinkedIn’s Service Marketplace Compete With Fiverr and Upwork?

LinkedIn’s upcoming launch of Marketplace places it in direct competition with Fiverr and Upwork, both of which are popular freelance platforms.

The marketplace is likely to have features similar to Fiverr and Upwork, but with a unique spin: Businesses can search for freelancers, compare rates, and share job posts. After a job is complete, businesses can leave reviews about the freelancer who completed the job.

But it seems unlikely that Marketplace can, at least as it stands, compete with Fiverr and Upwork because it is missing a few key functionalities. For instance, Marketplace currently does not allow for the negotiation of fees or the sending of invoices.

Also, the job-seeking process is one-sided—employers can seek out freelancers for jobs, but freelancers cannot look for jobs on the platform.

This is frustrating because it means that freelancers have to wait for opportunities to come knocking at their door, or optimize their profiles and hope for the best, which could make it difficult to set personal targets.

Can LinkedIn’s Service Marketplace Compete With Fiverr and Upwork?

Whether you’re an established freelancer or just getting started, LinkedIn Marketplace offers new opportunities for you to connect with potential clients.

This makes sense if you’re already a LinkedIn user, and might be worth a try, but don’t go deleting your Fiverr and Upwork accounts just yet. And don’t get excited either, LinkedIn still has to polish up its Service Marketplace platform before it can become a formidable player in the freelance market.

By Aya Masango

Aya is a freelance writer with a passion for brands, marketing and life in general. When she isn’t typing away, she’s keeping up with the latest news, pondering on the essence of life, and thinking about new business opportunities. Most productive when working in bed.

Sourced from MUO

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How to see who’s tracking you online and how to easily stop it

November 22, 2021 No Comments

By Maggie Tillman

If you’ve become hyper-aware of being tracked online and having your data collected without your explicit consent, you’ve arrived at the right place. We describe how to stop yourself from being tracked, or how to limit it anyway.

Who is collecting your data and why?

First, understand that “data collection” is a vague concept. Data can include personally identifiable information, such as your email address and social security number. It can also be your internet activity, including the pages you visit and even metadata like when you visit those pages. Your email conversations, online purchases, medical information, and even financial details like credit card numbers are all considered data, too.

As for who collects this data and why, there are a couple different culprits.

Hackers can use techniques like phishing to scam you and steal your data. But there’s also internet service providers, which, in the US, are allowed to monitor your internet activity and use it as a revenue stream. They collect anonymous browsing logs from users and sell that “data” to marketers, which use it to develop hyper-targeted online ads.

Your internet activity can also be tracked by cookies – small bits of text that are downloaded and stored by your web browser. These are used by most websites and services to log a user’s online habits, which, again, is data that is then used to tailor ads. It’s also used to improve your internet experience as a whole. Even mobile apps and browser extensions can track your activity.

Your data is the new gold, and they want it.

How to see who’s tracking you and stop it

Extensions and plugins

There are several browser extensions available that claim to help you see who is tracking your web-surfacing habits, but many of them invasively track themselves. The following ones are recommended as safe to use, in that they either help protect you or let you know who is tracking you – while not tracking themselves, or, if they do, it’s minimally so.

– HTTPS Everywhere: Visiting a HTTP website that doesn’t support encryption by default? This plugin forces it to use encryption, which helps protect your online purchases, payment details, and general web surfing from malicious actors who are eavesdropping for theft purposes.

– Privacy Badger: This extension, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), works on Opera, Firefox, and Chrome. It monitors third parties and ad networks that try to track you through cookies and digital fingerprinting and can even auto-block them.

– Disconnect: Disconnect, an extension available for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera, is designed to visually show you which websites are tracking your activity in real time. Invisible trackers that monitor you can also be easily blocked with Disconnect.

– NoScript Security Suite: Supported by Edward Snowden, this browser plugin for Firefox and other Mozilla-based browsers can disable active content including JavaScript, which may be used to track your online activity. You can also specify which domains to trust and whitelist.

– Blur: Blur, available for Firefox and Chrome, can be used as a password manager and generator, ad blocker, and for encryption. We also like it use of “masked cards” in the premium version. These throwaway virtual cards are used at online vendors in place of your credit card data.

What else can you do?

Remember, it’s very hard to escape data collection and surveillance. If you use Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or Twitter, be aware most of these online services track you and only recently began adopting end-to-end encryption. Every big tech company – Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Apple – has even been caught using contractors in the past to listen to user conversations recorded by their apps and assistants.

Browsers

There’s no way to get around it: Browsers are at the heart of data collection. Ad networks track you across sites, while internet provider log the pages you visit, and hackers try to use insecure Wi-Fi connections and unencrypted websites to successfully gain access to you and harvest data. To protect yourself from all this, use a secure web browser, such as Tor, on your desktop and mobile device.

– Tor browser: Tor is like a regular browser, but it lets you anonymously browse the web. However, while you can use Tor for anything, streaming video can be slow, and some plugins (like Flash) are disabled. You can also use the mobile version of Tor, Tor for Android on Google Play Store. There’s the Orbot for Android and Onion Browser for iOS app, too. They’re both trusted by leading security researchers.

Search engines

Google, Yahoo!, and Bing all collect your data to provide “personalised” experiences. To prevent that, consider using an alternative search engine that does not record your search history and blocks advertising trackers. Examples include DuckDuckGo, Qwant, and Startpage.

Virtual private networks

A virtual private network is perhaps the best way to create a secure tunnel and mask your online presence. Data packets are encrypted before they are sent to a server, hiding your IP addresses and your location. Because of that alone, VPN usage is banned in some countries. If it’s legal in your country, like in the US or UK, you have a multitude of ones to choose from.

Premium VPNs are often more trustworthy, as free services may track and sell your data, negating the point of using a VPN for privacy. Our favourites include NordVPN, Private Internet Access, ExpressVPN, and TorGuard.

Encrypted apps

Lastly, use encrypted apps to keep your online conversations private between you and the person you intended to view your communications.

– Signal: Signal is considered the most secure messaging app when it’s correctly used. Available for iOS and Android and desktop, it’s end-to-end encrypted and doesn’t collect metadata. It’s also open-source, for anyone to inspect the code.

By Maggie Tillman

Sourced from Pocket-lint

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5 Genius Ways to Convert Leaving Website Visitors Into Customers

November 22, 2021 No Comments

By James Njoya

Do you hear that? The grave silence on your newsletter subscription form?

Do you feel it? The undying urge by your visitors for closing popups on your website as soon as they appear.

Well, you are not alone in this. It’s a problem that most marketers deal with – turning visitors into raving email fans and customers.

We all know that email is here to stay. Whether you are an affiliate marketer, a blogger, or own an eCommerce website, an email list is among the most valuable business assets you will ever need.

One study shows that for every $1 you spend in email marketing, you can expect a return on investment of roughly $42. That’s an impressive return on investment, right?

So in this article, I will show you how to boost your conversion rate by converting leaving visitors on your website into customers.

Let’s jump right into it.

#1. Use heatmaps to know your audience better

Email marketing is dynamic. What used to be effective five years ago will hardly work today. Readers are getting significantly smarter nowadays. Just placing a subscription form in the sidebar a couple of years ago with a “subscribe to our newsletter” call to action would boost your email list.

What about today? Crickets!

This is why you need to know your readers very well. Specifically, how they interact with your site.

When it comes to monitoring your web visitors’ behaviour, heatmap tools come in as useful tools. You get to know what area of your site your readers are spending more time at. What’s making them bounce back to SERPs. Where they click and what content or sections on your site are overlooked.

Say, for example, you have a newsletter signup form placed right at the sidebar in each of your blog posts. And then the form seems to be getting little or no attention from your readers. That indicates, your readers do not have any interest in signing up for your newsletter.

Your lead magnet is just a dead element.

In that case, you need to work on your form. Either by eliminating it or optimizing its copy to attract more leads or even maybe running an A/B test.

Heatmaps also help you understand the best places on your site to put your lead magnet. For example, you can use the scroll tracking heatmaps to know where readers reach while reading your content. If most of your readers hardly scroll beyond 50% of your page, and you have placed your “bribe” to the very bottom, your lead magnet will hardly convert.

That being said, it would be wiser if you move your lead magnet to the area on your site where your readers are. You have a high chance of making a conversion there.

Heatmaps also help spot the distracting elements on your lead magnet. This way, you can identify what’s distracting your readers from converting.

For example, take a look at this image.

This is an advert. But what do you see at your first glance? Scarlett Johansson and her spectacular red lips, right? You don’t even notice what product is being advertised.

Now, just take a look at the eye-tracking heatmap that was generated from this advertisement.

Most people moved their mouse over to the face of the model. Which shows that the image was just a distraction to readers. It prevented them from seeing what was being advertised and instead their attention was drawn to the image.

Now replicate the same scenario with your lead magnet. Whatever your image is can act as a distraction to your readers. It doesn’t have to be an image that is distracting your visitors. It could be the colour of your call-to-action buttons, the fields on your form, or the general styling of your subscription form.

This way, you are able to know your readers’ behaviour on the subscription form and what’s preventing them from signing up for your newsletter.

When you have that data in mind, you’ll know the best place on your website to put your lead magnet and solve what’s preventing your visitors from converting.

#2. Integrate exit intent popups

I love exit-intent popups for one reason: they don’t distract readers and they only appear when a visitor is about to leave a website.

At this time, when you throw in your popup you have nothing to lose. After all, your readers were leaving.

However, just creating an exit-intent popup won’t guarantee thousands of signups. Don’t forget; your readers are always looking for a reason to close any element that comes their way. Nobody cares about your free updates, your free ebook, or the free online course anymore. Just put yourself in the same shoes. Would you really sign up for a newsletter just to get free updates? Probably not.

In the same case, you need to give your visitors a perfect reason not to leave your site before taking any action. And this is where you need to get very smart with your pop-ups. How? By using content upgrade popups.

A content upgrade is a piece of bonus content that supplements what a reader is already interested in. Usually, the bonus is ultra-specific and more relevant to what the reader wants.

For example, I searched for a guide on “keyword research” where I landed on Backlinko’s blog. When I was about to leave the site, I came across this popup.

Brian knows that most probably when I read his “keyword research” guide, I would also love reading his “SEO guide.” Genius.

Instead of creating a generic lead magnet to show on all your pages, content upgrades can help boost your conversions.

This is what you need to do:

Find the pages that are receiving a ton of traffic. Then create your content upgrade. It can be a pdf copy, a spreadsheet, a template, or even a cheat sheet. Just make sure it’s related to what your visitors are reading. Then offer the bonus to your readers using the exit-intent popup.

That way, you have a strong chance of getting more conversions.

#3. The “free tool” hack

We are living in the age of Do It Yourself (DIY) type of marketing. Tools have affected that. For example, back in 2000, you couldn’t create a website without hiring a web designer. What about today?

Platforms like WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, and Weebly have made it possible to create a stunning website without knowing how to code.

Tools help most online entrepreneurs improve the performance of their online business and automate everything. Which also reduces costs associated with hiring professionals.

In the same case, you can skyrocket your conversions by offering a relevant tool to your readers.

A good example, when you visit CoSchedule and you are about to leave, they will hit you with this popup.

If you struggle writing powerful headlines, you cannot resist signing up to use their Headline Analyzer tool.

#4. Use quizzes to boost your conversions

Sometimes you don’t always need to shout “signup” on your popups or subscription forms for visitors to subscribe to your newsletter.

As I said earlier, readers are getting smarter nowadays. They have experienced such types of popups that promise them “a free online course” only, later on, to be bombarded with a blast of promotional emails.

However, you can capture their attention before they leave and convince them to convert. And guess what, quizzes are one magical way to convert leaving visitors.

Quizzes help your audience interact with your site, convince them to make a purchase, and even help collect more data about your target audience.

That’s because, when you ask your visitors questions, they expect something in return. That is, how they have performed after taking the quiz. In fact, according to BuzzSumo, on average, a quiz gets shared 1900 times on social media.

Marketers like Neil Patel know exactly how to use quizzes to boost their conversions. When you visit his site, and you are about to leave, this quiz will immediately pop up.

To get your results after taking the quiz, you will need to sign up using your email and any identifiable information. And using this clever trick, he won’t have directly asked for your email. That way, you become his potential lead.

#5. Use push notifications to subscribe lazy visitors

Sometimes, it feels as if it’s a lot of work to sign up for a newsletter. You know it – filling in your email and moving to your email inbox to confirm your subscription. In places where there’s a slow internet connection doing all those things, especially on mobile devices can be hectic.

That’s where web push notifications become effective tools. With the click of a button, your visitors are subscribed.

Push notifications are an effective way to communicate with your audience. When used appropriately, push notifications have a much higher engagement rate than mass emailing.

However, the bad news is that push notifications can be annoying to your audience. If you overdo it and send irrelevant messages to your subscribers, they are more likely to block your notifications.

Just remember, when users enable notifications from your site, they trust that you will send them something valuable.

The question is how do you boost conversions using web push notifications?

The first step to the effective use of push notifications is telling your readers what to expect when they accept to be receiving push notifications from you. I love how Copyhackers do it.

Instead of showing you a generic message telling you to subscribe to their web push notification, they have customized it in a way that doesn’t sound robotic to visitors. Furthermore, they tell you what to expect from them.

What’s next is personalizing your push notifications. The marketing success of push notifications is personalization. The goal is to entice your audience to click on your messages. So, take time to segment your subscriber list. Don’t just send the same message to all of your subscribers. Write a custom notification to every segment.

This way segmentation will help minimize sending your subscribers messages that they don’t need. Use emojis, geotargeting, and the customer’s lingo to add a personal touch to your notifications.

Wrapping up

Upping your conversion rates can be a hectic task. You need traffic. And not just any traffic but valuable traffic to your website. Then after getting the traffic you need to create a perfect customer journey map to get more conversions.

I hope this article has taught you how you can convert leaving visitors on your website to email subscribers. Did you love this masterpiece? Don’t forget to share it with your friends, team, or your community.

By James Njoya

Guest author: James Njoya is a freelance writer for hire who writes flawlessly on topics related to WordPress, CRO, and Digital Marketing. When he’s not writing in his blog he’s busy learning how to speak English with a Cockney accent.

Sourced from Jeffbullas.com

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Instagram Teams Up With Pearpop to Allow Creators and Brands to Buy Collaborations With Larger Creators and Celebrities

November 19, 2021 No Comments

By Sophie Webster

Instagram creators can now use Pearpop, a marketplace for social collaborations, after expanding on the social media site. Pearpop was previously only available to TikTok users.

Instagram Teams Up with Pearpop

The platform, which launched in 2020, allows creators and brands to buy collaborations with celebrities and larger creators. Pearpop will also become available on Twitter this November and on Twitch in December, according to PRWeb.

Last month, the marketplace did a soft launch on Instagram. Pearpop stated that in less than a month, more than 10,000 Instagram creators had joined the marketplace.

The company said that users had requested the feature to be available on Instagram. More than 90% of the creators are already active on Instagram.

The early users of the marketplace on Instagram include Jake Paul, Swae Lee, Paris Hilton, Post Malone, Tom Felton, and Noah Schnapp.

Cole Mason, Pearpop CEO, and co-founder said that the initial concept of the platform came out of an obvious gap within the space because no marketplace existed for creators to monetize through collaborations that are beneficial to both parties.

Mason told TechCrunch in an interview that he built Pearpop as the social capital marketplace that helps creators earn, promote and expand their services across all social media platforms.

Mason added that the company’s vision is to move the industry away from platform-driven awareness marketing and push more for people-driven ones.

The idea brought in athletes, musicians, actors, and entertainers, including The Weeknd, Amy Schumer, Diddy, The Chainsmokers, Gary Vaynerchuk, Josh Richards, Griffin Johnson, Marshmello, Mark Cuban, Moe Shalizi, and Snoop Dogg.

Instagram has been working on helping its creators. In October, the social media platform launched a tool to help creators get monetized.

Instagram also allowed creators to monetize their content through IGTV.

Pearpop Funding

In April, Pearpop announced that it has a funding of $16 million for expansion. The funding was divided between a $6 million seed funding round co-led by Slow Ventures and Sound Ventures, owned by Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary.

An additional investment of $10 was led by Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six. Bessemer also participated, according to KPVI.

Since the platform’s last funding announcement, the company has added other investors, including Lil Nas X, Noah Schnapp, Swae Lee, Dre London, Gabrielle Union, King Bach, YG, Jake Paul, Paris Hilton, and James Corden.

Pearpop has been compared to Cameo since it was launched. Cameo is a popular app that allows users to pay celebrities to create videos with shout-outs and dedications.

Mason said that Pearpop and Cameo couldn’t be compared. Cameo offers personalized video messages that are used for gifting, and this is not what Pearpop does.

Mason said that Pearpop is a social media tool that can help both brands and creators reach their goals.

The CEO also stated that Pearpop would continue to expand to other platforms and focus on refining its current features, like “Challenges,” which allows artists to offer rewards to their creators when they reach a certain number of followers while promoting their work. He also said that the real goal for Pearpop is to see everyone as a social media creator.

Pearpop is not only for those with thousands of followers, but it is also for those who are starting their journey and are looking for a way to monetize it.

Feature Image Credit: (Photo : Unsplash/ Christian Wiediger) Instagram app

By Sophie Webster

Sourced from TECH TIMES